"Couchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "My only friend, my dear," said she, "You see 'tis mere necessity Hath sent me to your house to whelp: I die if you refuse your help." With fawning whine, and rueful tone, With artful sigh, and feigned groan, With couchant cringe, and flattering tale, Smooth Bawty[3] did so far prevail, That Music gave her leave to litter; (But mark what follow'd—faith! she bit her;) Whole baskets full of bits and scraps, And broth enough to fill her paps; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went off (as it never came again; ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... he said,—the room was glowing with light, the boys in a knot about the fire; some sitting, some standing, one or two couchant upon the rug. Sam was the spokesman just then—the rest listening, interrupting, applauding; the flashing firelight shewing such different faces! such varied indications!—they looked like a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... There stands his suit of armour, too, newly blackleaded, whose coat of arms is a couchant ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the Devil's Mountain, and on the right the rocky height known as the Lion's Head, while a long, round-backed hill, running north from the Lion's Head, is known as his Rump, the two hills together having somewhat the appearance of a lion couchant. Cape Town has not lost the character given to it by its Dutch founders. Down the principal street runs a canal, and several are shaded by rows of trees. The houses are flat-roofed, with glass windows composed of a number of small panes. They are either white-washed or gaily painted, and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... noms prdestins des rois que tu chris. Tu m'coutes. Ma voix ne t'est point trangre. Je suis la Pit, cette fille si chre, 20 Qui t'offre de ce roi les plus tendres soupirs. Du feu de ton amour j'allume ses desirs. Du zle qui pour toi l'enflamme et le dvore La chaleur se rpand du couchant l'aurore. Tu le vois tous les jours, devant toi prostern, 25 Humilier ce front de splendeur couronn, Et confondant l'orgueil par d'augustes exemples, Baiser avec respect le pav de tes temples. De ta gloire anim, lui seul de tant de rois S'arme pour ta querelle, et combat pour ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... gelid love, I keep, O Earth, thy worship, Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more Athwart its roseal glow Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put'st on Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll Made derelict of day, Couchant and shadow-ed Under dim Vesper's overloosened hair: This, where emboss-ed with the half-blown seed The solemn purple thistle stands in grass Grey as an exhalation, when the bank Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... will prove this by a learned expectoration of the principle of the law. Now butter is made of grass, and, it is laid down by St. Peter Pindar, in his principle of subterraneous law, that grass is couchant and levant, which in our obicular tongue, means that grass is of a mild and free nature; consequently, my client had a right to grass and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... but, however skilfully executed or admirably designed, I do not like such monuments so well, nor think them so appropriate to our cathedrals, as the rude effigies of knights and warriors in complete armour, with their feet on couchant hounds, or those stately though sometimes gaudy and fantastic monuments, in which, among crowds of emblematical devices and armorial bearings, the husband and the wife lie side by side in the richest costume of the day, while their ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... between both, towards the middle, are figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a cup with a lamb. The outer arch is adorned with knobs, and within both is a small slit or loop. At the bottom of the outer arch are two beasts couchant. If one of them by his proboscis was not evidently an elephant, I should suppose them the supporters of the Scotch arms. Parallel with the Crucifix are two plain stones, which do not appear to have had anything upon them. Here is not the least trace of a door in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... outbreak to point a moral in one or two of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto Who shall rouse him up?; and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one called A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the Beast and the False Prophet. It was a fierce diatribe against ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... whose raised hand the seas Leap, playful lions, or with head and main Across their paws lie couchant—it is pain To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees, And vital breathings are infinities, Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane In finger tips, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... sphinxes in Egypt. The sphinx was called Neb, i. e., the lord. The lion-couchant had either a man's or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the rain came down in torrents, accompanied with thunder and lightning, which kept me within my tent and caused me to exclaim with Dr. Henry, "O, ye lightnings, that brood and lie couchant in the sulphureous vapours, that glance with forked fury from the angry gloom, swifter and fiercer than the lion rushes from his den, or open with vast expansive sheets of flame, sublimely waved over the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... throwing spells over the ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink of a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to all others seemed the form of a lady, armed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... appeared an iron gate, of considerable size, dividing a lofty stone wall. And upon the top of that one of the stone pillars supporting the gate which I could see, stood a creature of stone, whether natant, volant, passant, couchant, or rampant, I could not tell, only it looked like something terrible enough for ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... les vend a Lyon, &c." Folio. At the end is the date of 1525, over the printer's device of a lion couchant, and a heart and crown upon a shield. It is a small folio, printed in a neat and rather brilliant gothic ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire, Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire; Le nuage eclatant qui le cache a nos yeux Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux, Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'etendue. Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur suspendue, La lune se balance ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... that "Lions of sundry-kinds have sundry-names. Tear-in-pieces like a lion. That he ravin not, make-a-prey; called a plueker Renter or Tearer, and elsewhere Laby that is, Harty and couragious; Kphir, this lurking, Couchant. The reason of thier names is shewed, as The renting-lion as greedy to tear, and the lurking-Lion as biding in covert places. Other names are also given to this kind as Shachal, of ramping, of fierce nature; and Lajith of subduing his ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... its sight you look; 'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brook The fair cathedral storm'd and took; But, thanks to Heaven, and good Saint Chad, A guerdon meet the spoiler had!) There erst was martial Marmion found, His feet upon a couchant hound, His hands to heaven upraised: And all around, on scutcheon rich, And tablet carved, and fretted niche, His arms and feats were blazed. And yet, though all was carved so fair, And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer, The last ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and rabbit couchant, and coextensive—so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... like couchant lions, Their cannon, through the night, Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance, The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... look up with dull, peering eyes, and impotently snarl! But you,"—and here his gazed rested doubtfully, yet questioningly, on his companion's open, serene countenance—'you, if rumor speaks truly, should have been able to tame YOUR bears and turn them into dogs, humble and couchant! Your marvellous achievements as ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... addition to the garden, irrespective of its historical associations. The chalet is of dark wood varnished, and has in the centre a large carving of Dickens's crest, which in heraldic terms is described as: "a lion couchant 'or,' holding in the gamb a ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... dont je me suis convaincu, n'y avoir adjouste rien de sien. Brochard, de son cote, proteste de son exactitude. Non seulement il a demeure vingt-quatre ans dans le pays, mais il l'a traverse dans son double diametre du nord au sud, depuis le pied de Liban jusqu'a Bersabee; et du couchant au levant, depuis la Mediterranee jusqu'a la mer Morte. Enfin il ne decrit rien qu'il n'ait, pour me servir des termes de son traducteur, veu corporellement, lui, estant ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... War's couchant tigers in their lair The tranquil time to one brings not repose— A voice was whispering to his soul—"Despair! The gods will give the triumph to thy foes." Can sleep, with leaden hand, our eyelids close When throng ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... man's appetite and the drug which restores him to health. On the ermine which decorates the judge and the rope which hangs the criminal. On the brass nails of the coffin and on the ribbons of the bride. At bed or at board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road, and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine (which has paid 7 per cent) into a spoon (which has paid 30 per cent), throws himself back upon his chintz bed (which has paid 22 per ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... that gigantic Empire, insolent Spain, spurred fiercer resentments up like steeds Revolting, on the curb, foaming for battle, In all men's minds, against whatever odds. On one side of the throne great Walsingham, A lion of England, couchant, watchful, calm, Was now the master of opinion: all Drew to him. Even the hunchback Burleigh smiled With half-ironic admiration now, As in the presence of the Queen they met Amid the sweeping splendours of her court, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... are distant. The Sphinx is really unexpected, because it is found suddenly in a hollow, and unnaturally near. Its face is turned away; and the effect is as creepy as coming into a room apparently empty, and finding somebody as still as the furniture. Or it is as if one found a lion couchant in that hole in the sand; as indeed the buried part of the monster is in the form of a couchant lion. If it was a real lion it would hardly be less arresting merely because it was near; nor could the first emotion of the traveller be adequately ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... d'Yvetot Pen connu dans l'histoire, Se levant tard, se couchant tot, Dormant fort bien ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... snuffed from afar off the living waters which marked the place of repose and refreshment. But a distant form separated itself from the trees, and advanced towards the knight at a speed which soon showed a Saracen cavalier. The Crusader, whose arms were a couchant leopard, disengaged his lance, and well acquainted with the customs of Eastern warriors, made a dead halt, confident that his own weight would give him the advantage if the enemy advanced to the actual shock; but the Saracen, wheeling his horse ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... plain of mud could not be beautiful. Yet the mind could dwell contentedly on this new and curious estate of nature, this substance that was neither earth nor water, this place that was neither land nor sea. It had its own colours: in the shadow of the great couchant cloud whose mane was brassy with sunshine that had lodged in the upper air it was purple; otherwise it was brown; and where the light lay it was as bright as polished steel, yet giving in its brightness some indication of its ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... railings of the Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the Parish Church guarded under its long flank its ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... monotonous, reiterate, indestructible chord in the creature's mystic existence, that, once struck by some mighty, shrouded Hand of Power, still reverberated, and trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... authority, gives the following very different account: 'Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver medals, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... know,— A giant Sachem, good as great, Reigned in and over our Bay State. So huge was he, his realm so small, He could not exercise at all, Except by taking to the sea. [For which he had a ticket free, Granted by Neptune, with the seal, A salient clam, and couchant eel]. His pipe was many a mile in length, His lungs proportionable in strength; And his rich moccasins,—with the pair, The seven-league boots would not compare. Whene'er siestas he would take, Cape Cod must help his couch to make; And, being ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... "About Day-light Gate."] Day-light Gate, i.e. Evening, the down gate of daylight. See Promptuarium Parvulorum, (edited by Way for the Camden Society,) page 188, "Gate down, or downe gate of the Sunne or any other planet."—Occasus. Palgrave gives, "At the sonne gate downe; sur le soleil couchant." ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... thee, close within our reach, Here, where the grass is smooth and warm, Between the holly and the beech, Where oft we watched thy couchant form, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... great Virgil stayed Greeting Sordello's couchant shade, Which to salute him rose ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... a cumbrous vehicle, whose faded linings and tarnished hammer-cloth, together with its panels of changing color, denoted the want of that art which had once given it luster and beauty. The "lion couchant" of the Wharton arms was reposing on the reviving splendor of a blazonry that told the armorial bearings of a prince of the church; and the miter, that began to shine through its American mask, was a symbol of the rank of its original owner. The chaise which conveyed Miss Singleton was also ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... volcan souterrain, Grece qu'on connait trop, Sardaigne qu'on ignore, Cites de l'Aquilon, du Couchant, de l'Aurore, Pyramides du Nil, Cathedrales du ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally been a winevault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the building. The ceiling was so ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... great occasion," he mused. "We have seen what we came out to see, and what more have we a right to demand? The dear people rampant, the respected mayor quiescent, but biding his time, Cobbens couchant but fanged, the President raised to a sublime apotheosis. It is always a pleasure—is it not?—to witness transcendent ability, even if it be in the line of practical politics. The perfection of each thing is worth observing. These local politicians are fools compared ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... home, escorted valiantly by three stout boys, who guided her by a most circuitous route across Bruntsfield Links, that she might gain a moonlight view of the couchant lion of Arthur's Seat. They amused her the whole way home with tales of High-school warfare. On reaching the garden-gate she was half surprised to hear the unwonted cheerfulness of her own laugh. The sunshine she daily strove to cast around her was ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... him through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... fair. Gazing across her shoulder's gentle depression, I could have desired to have the couchant brow, and round cheek, and rounding chin no more than a young man's dream of woman, a picture alive, without the animating individual awful mind to judge of me by my acts. I chafed at the thought that one so young and lovely should meditate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vineyard full of grapes, With Ariadne kneeling at his side; His arm was thrown around her slender waist, His head lay in her bosom, and she held A cup, a little distance from his lips, And teased him with it, for he wanted it. A pair of spotted pards where sleeping near, Couchant in shade, their heads upon their paws; And revellers were dancing in the woods, Snapping their jolly fingers evermore! But all is vanished, lost, for ever lost, For I have broken my divinest cup, And trod its fragments in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... from the burning sands of the desert. Two or three palms arose near a well, and there two horsemen faced each other warily. One was a Christian knight in a coat of linked mail, over which he wore a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and bearing more than once the arms of the wearer—a couchant leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was circling swiftly about the knight of the leopard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a strong hand and unerring ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... With taper finger, solemn face, In the cool shade sits at ease Calm and grave as Socrates— Where the sluggish buffaloe Wallows in mud—and huge and slow, Like massive cloud of sombre van, Moves the land leviathan—[114] Where beneath the jungle's screen Close enwoven, lurks unseen The couchant tiger—and the snake His sly and sinuous way doth make Through the rich mead's grassy net, Like a miniature rivulet— Where small white cattle, scattered wide, Browse, from dawn to even tide— Where the river watered soil Scarce demands the ryot's toil— And the rice field's emerald ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... rock in the strait the central tower rises to a height of two hundred and thirty feet, and other towers are built on each shore at a distance of four hundred and sixty feet from the central one. Couchant lions carved in stone guard the bridge-portals at each end, and this famous viaduct cost over $2,500,000. A short distance below the Anglesea Column towers above a dark rock on the northern shore of the strait. It was erected in honor of the first Marquis of Anglesea, the gallant commander of the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... it, opposite my place of rest, Two figures faced each other, large, austere; A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, An angel standing in the moonlight clear; 10 So mighty by magnificence of form, They were not ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... said this remarkable pulpit was put up; and notwithstanding its great age, which appears to be 832 years, it is still in good condition. At the foot of the steps is a large figure, intended to represent a lion couchant, but carved after so grotesque a fashion, as to puzzle the naturalist in his attempts to determine its proper classification. In other respects the ornamental sculpture about the pulpit is neat and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... sullenly taken seats, with guns threateningly at the ready, they glared at me like tigers ready to spring. Soon a man, I had, on my way, sent to the store, arrived with a box of good Florida cigars, and I quietly passed them around to my "lions couchant," took a seat on the platform facing them, lit up, and commenced the enjoyment of a ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... much fresher, but the design not so elaborate. There is a similar paling to that on the other side, the 'Park' being dotted about with several plants, ferns, and tufts of grass. Near each corner is a deer, one feeding, one 'couchant,' one 'tripping,' and one 'courant,' and one 'lodged' in the centre. There are also two snakes worked in silver thread with small colour ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... That poets should love and live among lakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock—so are the Salisbury Craigs noble craigs—and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of cards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... air Are golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) Shines like an angel-market. High aloft Over his couchant Lions, in a haze Shimmering and bland and soft, A dust of chrysoprase, Our Sailor takes the golden gaze Of the saluting sun, and flames superb, As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... and its willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant leopard, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... coast, you see a long, long monotonous line of beach, trending northward ten miles from end to end, forming a great curve from the sandspit on the north side of the treacherous bar to the blue loom of a headland in shape like the figure of a couchant lion. Back from the shore-line, a narrow littoral of dense scrub, impervious to the rays of the sun, and unbroken in its solitude except by the cries of birds, or the heavy footfall of wild cattle upon the thick carpet of fallen leaves; and then, far to the west, the ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... who wuz sedooced into takin a Post Offis, begged to hev it taken off his hands, that he might save his circulashen before it wuz everlastinly too late. And finally we come to wun, the seal uv wich wuz a coat-uv-arms—bull dog rampant, bowie-knife couchant, supported by trottin horses, on a field uv green cloth. It wuz from Hon. John Morrisey, who hed jest ben elected to ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby |
