"Ebbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not the prophecies of continuous advance; they were but incidental fluctuations in a historic process which knew no progress as a whole. Even the Stoics saw in history only a recurrent rise and fall in endless repetition so that all apparent change for good or evil was but the influx or the ebbing of the tide in an essentially unchanging sea. The words of Marcus Aurelius are typical: "The periodic movements of the universe are the same, up and down from age to age"; "He who has seen present things ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... his ebbing fame went less, But when fresh laurels courted him to live: He seemed but to prevent some new success, As if above ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... right, to left; darkness of birth, of death, and only the palpable fog between. He did not sigh for this. What irked him was the thought that while he had followed the mill-round of duty, strength had been ebbing away ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the tides, old John Lilly writes: "There is nothing thought more admirable, or commendable in the sea, than the ebbing and flowing; and shall the moone, from whom the sea taketh this virtue, be accounted fickle for encreasing and decreasing?" [336] Another writer of the sixteenth century says, "The moone is founde, by plaine experience, to beare her greatest stroke uppon the seas, likewise in all things that ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... to preserve, that by the Enjoyment of your dear and nearest Conversation, Madam, (persu'd he to Lucretia) I may be prepar'd to endure the only greater Joys of Heaven. But O! My Words prey on my Spirits. And all the World, like a huge Ship at Anchor, turn round with the ebbing Tide.—I can no more. At these Words both the Ladies shriek'd aloud, which made him sigh, and move his Hand as well as he could toward the Door; his Attendant perceiv'd it, and told 'em he sign'd to them to quit the Room; as indeed it was necessary they should, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... horse was the solitary mourner who watched his unconscious master while life was ebbing and sought to comfort him with mournful whinnies of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... he expected, for Bonbright had left on his desk several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They saw only each other ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... his hands to prevent his senses from leaving him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the Prime Minister might ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Spada, the statue of Pompey; the statue at whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure! I imagined one of greater finish: of the last refinement: full of delicate touches: losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid majesty as this, as Death came ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... blushed wave on wave, league on league, red as the heart of a rose. The wind-whipped earth was still. The trees held their breath. Very black against the glow the carved cross on the adjoining gable stood out. And in another moment the mighty tide of color went as it had come, swiftly ebbing across its infinite shores of sky. And the waiting night came ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... ideals that animated the rebels, but it was simply ridiculous when judged by the hard common-sense standards of stern reality, though it was probably never meant for anything more than a rhetorical protest in the name of the fast-ebbing ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... although he reeled in the effort. To steady himself, he caught hold of the table. His strength was fast ebbing. He was losing his power to resist. The captain saw he was weakening, and he smiled with satisfaction. He'd soon get a confession out of him. Suddenly bending forward, so that his fierce, determined stare glared right into Howard's ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... blood—the blood of others—Crispin stood before them now. He was breathing hard and sweating at every pore, but still grim and defiant. His strength, he realized, was ebbing fast. Yet he shook himself, and asked them with a gibing laugh did they not think that they had better ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... slender sip of water came to moisten my burning mouth. It was but one sip but it was enough to recall my ebbing life. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... life was fast ebbing away, replied, that "he might do with his body what he list, for that he esteemed it not; and as he was carried out of the ship he swooned, and reviving again, desired the company to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... on and stop fooling!" Though she laughed, his wife's patience was ebbing. It would be dreadful for Arethusa to come and find no one to meet her. "You always hurry so, Ross, when there's no real necessity for it and ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets, seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going—vast oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... ebbing too swiftly for him to have any chance of gaining safety through either of the distant side walls. His only hope of fighting back to the purple mists was to pass Blake and go through the nearby end wall through which he ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... bordering on the supernatural, because neither the Drumtochty houses nor his manners were on that large scale. He was accustomed to deliver himself in the yard, and to conclude his directions with one foot in the stirrup; but when he left the room where the life of Annie Mitchell was ebbing slowly away, our doctor said not one word, and at the sight of his face her ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... dread, for he knew that he was swimming more laboriously, and that his limbs were like so much lead; but still he struggled on. Every now and then, too, the water washed over his face, telling him that his position was lower, and at last, when all seemed to be over and his strength was ebbing away, he raised his head for a last farewell look-out for help, and one of his hands struck against ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... uncontrolled—rose until it seemed to have the whole of his body in his grasp, swaying it, ebbing and flowing with swift powerful current through his heart into his brain. Now he could only see the flushed, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... gazing intently upon the beautiful face as if he would stamp its image upon his heart, so that whatever came, whether for weal or woe, he should never forget it; and then he prayed fervently, that, if possible, God would give back the life now ebbing so low, and that he yet might win the prize he longed ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Rose began to move gently forward. It was a strange wavering motion. The breath came quickly through her slightly parted lips; her bright colour was ebbing. She was conscious of nothing but the grasp in which her hand was held—otherwise her mind seemed a blank. Her state during the next few seconds was not unlike the state of some one under the partial influence of an anaesthetic; a benumbing grip was laid on all her faculties; and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Tom's enthusiasm was ebbing fast. What a prodigious bore this race was going to be! The wind was blowing up his legs, and his light spring overcoat was far from ample. The seats were too close together and were of a granite hardness; but he and Lily were wedged into the back and could not escape ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... moment longer, and threw off his black soutane, having determined to take to the water, although it was truly a desperate chance, the current running like a mill-race with the ebbing tide, and, moreover, being choked with ice-floes. Ah, there was Blazer's bay, he must lose no time. Without another glance at that silent, rigid figure, he stepped quickly through the long window and gained ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... in the recollection that just ten years later when Scott lay in his study at Abbotsford—the strength of that noble mind slowly ebbing away—the very passage in The Borough just quoted was one of those he asked to have read to him. It is the graphic and touching account in Letter XII. of the "Strolling Players," and as the description of their struggles ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... furiously. "You traitor! you coward! can you look at her sitting there helpless, her very life ebbing away already with every minute that passes, and tell me coolly that ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... gaz'd through the woodland so dreary, Slowly approaching, a warrior was seen; Life's ebbing tide mark'd his footstep so weary, Cleft was his helmet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... in his life passed quickly, its frantic routine ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a space. He walked leisurely down the length ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is a glorious city in the sea; The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed Clings to the marble of her palaces. No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea, Invisible: and from the land we went, As to a floating city—steering in, And gliding up her streets, as in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had become of Purvis, no one cared. Each was trying with all his might to save a life very dear to them which was slowly ebbing away. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and Dick, fighting like a tiger, but helpless in the hands of the wharf-rats, was dragged towards the river, where his captors intended to roll him in the deep mud left by the ebbing tide. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... tried hard to seize the fleeing man, but Captain Lewis swerved to one side and ran round the gunwale of the sloop with both men after him. When he reached the stern he leaped beyond their reach, and plunged head first into the water, sinking out of sight where the fast-ebbing tide was now ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... The one scene is that mysterious translation on the further bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber, where an old man was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one speaker is the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had despised the latter prophet's teaching while he lived, but was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... tired of hearing him say the same old thing time after time: "While there is life, there is hope." She knows there is no hope, though everything possible has been done to save the precious life now ebbing so swiftly. Thank God, they are no longer poor as when she was a child. Her salary is a splendid one and she has been able to have the best advice, the best care possible, for her dying mother. No, they are no longer poor, but of what avail is money now? It cannot ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... love, Soft tears his eyes would blind— When up there crept and swiftly leapt A man who stabbed behind— "'Tis you," he cried, "who stole my bride, This night shall be your last!" ... When Fergus fell, the warm, red tide Of life came ebbing fast ... ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... are almost over. Exposure and misery have nearly finished their work. I feel my strength ebbing from day to day, and I know that I must soon die, and die, it may be, with the purpose which has sustained me all these years unattained. Knowing this, I have determined to write in this book the story of my life, hoping that when I am dead—"found dead," it may be, like a tramp or vagabond—some ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... of thee as pieced rot, Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead; Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought And what thou wert in me had never fled. Nay, I had fixed the moments of thy beauty— Thy ebbing smile, thy kiss's readiness, And memory had taught my heart the duty To know thee ever at that deathlessness. But when I came where thou wert laid, and saw The natural flowers ignoring thee sans blame, And the encroaching grass, with casual flaw, Framing ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... selfish grief, even when he sings with breast against the thorn, so in his life do we find no word of bitterness or moaning or complaining. Even amid the terrible blight of war and its final utter ruin, prophet-like, he speaks in faith and hope and courage. His own heart breaking, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his stricken people. It is so true and prophetic that we quote the words written ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... sadness, and infinite yearning Liftest thy crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,— Evermore ebbing and flowing, and evermore returning Over thy fathomless depths, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... one failed fast. Vomiting succeeded, and the little fountain of strength was ebbing fast away. Little did the poor mother think, when she arrayed her little infant in her comfortable flannel robe, it would be the last time she would be dressed till she was wrapped in her ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Newman) we survey the stream of human affairs for the last three thousand years, we find it to run thus:—At first sight there is so much fluctuation, agitation, ebbing and flowing, that we may despair to discern any law in its movements, taking the earth as its bed and mankind as its contents; but on looking more closely and attentively we shall discern, in spite ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth—an artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days. But the next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... do diligently obserue the flowing, and ebbing in euery place, and how the tides do set, which way the flood doth come, and how much water it doth high in euery place, and what force the same tide hath to driue a ship in an houre, as neere as ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... neither the Son of Joy nor the Son of Sorrow, but seven white doves were in the cedar beyond the pool, cooing in low ecstasy of peace and awaiting through sleep and dreams the rose-red pathways of the dawn. Down the long grey reaches of the ebbing day He saw seven birds rising and falling on the wind, black as black water in caves, black as the darkness of night in old ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the realization that she had wished the death of a fellow human being! She looked away from Jack; and then it occurred to her that he must be bleeding. He was again a companion of the trail, his strength ebbing away. Her impulse was retarded by no fear of the gallery now. It brought her to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... leagues to the east of New Year's Isle, was 1 deg. 55' east, with the ship's head W. N. W.; and at thirteen leagues on the west side, 1 deg. 20' with the head N. W.; these being corrected to the meridian, will be 0 deg. 23' and 0 deg. 12' east. The tide ran strong to the N. W. whilst it was ebbing by the shore, so that the flood would seem to come from the westward; whereas in the neighbourhood of Cape Arnhem the flood came mostly from the opposite direction: whether this change were a general one, or arose from some opening to the S. E. of New ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... look at the pallid face as it bends o'er the dreary work; The stitch, and stitch, and stitch that she knows she dare not shirk! Her strength is ebbing away so fast That she ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... the long line of the vacant shore, And the sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more. Then heard I, more distinctly than before, The ocean breathe and its great breast expand, And hurrying came on the defenceless land The insurgent ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... before the mind, and like a servant unexpectedly summoned, does not know what to do with its master from home? or is it that the master wakes first, and the servant is too sleepy to answer his call? Quickly coming to himself, however, he sought the cause of the perturbation now slowly ebbing. But the dark into which he stared could tell nothing; therefore he abandoned his eyes, took his station in his ears, and thence sent out his messengers. But neither, for some moments, could the scouts of hearing come upon ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... moments to open the outer door. Then, with a thrill of pleasure, such as only those who love the water can fed, I thrust out into the river, on to the last of the ebb, then fast ebbing. The fall under the bridge at that state of the tide was truly terrifying. It roared so loudly that I could hear nothing else. It boiled about the bridge piers so fiercely that I was scared to see it. I had seen the sea in storm; but ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ago last autumn, we walked on the sea beach together, and with a strange and prophetic kind of poetry, he likened the scene to his own failing health, the falling leaves, the withered sea-weed, the dying grass upon the shore, and the ebbing tide that was fast receding from us. He told me that he felt prepared to go, for he had forgiven his enemies, and could even rejoice in their happiness. Surely this was a grand condition in which to step from this world across the threshold to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Musselburgh or Shinnecock, In motley Hose or humbler motley Sock, The Cup of Life is ebbing Drop by Drop, Whether the Cup be filled with Scotch ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... Diable!" I cried, going a pace nearer, which seemed to bring back the ebbing life. "Le Grand Diable! You cannot stay here among the wolves. Tell me whereto find Miriam and I'll take you back to the camp! Tell me and no one shall harm you! ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... ghosts. When they stood lowering, in corners of rooms, and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. When they had full possession of unoccupied apartments. When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers, while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebbing waters when it sprang into a blaze. When they fantastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared and half-amused, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... first fair nature's face encumber; Quite near the spot where first with skill John Perkins built his little mill, Where Philip Thompson many a year Ago, commenced his bright career, And took the ebbing of the tide, Which into golden waves did glide; He man'd his craft and steered her well O'er placid calm and tossing swell, And independent of the gale Hath snap'd his oar and furled his sail. 'Twas just above "the whitefish hole," How dear that spot is to my soul! There Allan Cameron ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... if thy glories here be found, Streaming with radiance all around, What must the fount of glory be! In thee we'll hope, in thee confide, Thou, mercy's never ebbing ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... clatter of home-going wagons; lights winked out of kitchen windows; the tinkle of distant cow-bells was in the air; on Main Street the commerce of the town was gently ebbing, and man and nature seemed utterly oblivious of the great event that had happened. The course of human events was not changed; the great world rolled on, while Priscilla Winthrop went home to a broken shrine to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... desired to cross, although broader than that about a mile distant; preoccupied by Mr. Telford's suspension bridge—was of course one of the narrowest that could be selected, in consequence of which the ebbing and flowing torrent rushes through it with such violence, that, except where there is back water, it is often impossible for a small boat to pull against it; besides which, the gusts of wind which come over ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... words that you said,— Secretly, tenderly sweet, All through the tropical day, Till, when the sunset was red, I, who lay still at your feet, Felt my life ebbing away, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... I did sing of One, The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; Again I seize the theme, then but begun, And bear it with me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of life—where not a ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, those that on the sands with printless foot chased the ebbing Neptune, the demi-puppets that by moonshine made the sour-green ringlets which ewes would not bite, those whose pastime was to make midnight mushrooms, reminded them that he had, among other mighty ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... beauty Mount Arlington, in the State of Virginia. Shaded by the primeval forest to the rear, and in front beautified by the gently sloping lawn, decorated by variegated flowers and artistically trimmed shrubbery, with the dark-green waters of the Potomac ebbing and flowing not far away and in full view the mighty nation's splendid capital city, stands the stately old mansion, with its classic columns, where nearly fifty-five years ago was born our departed friend and colleague, and one of the beloved Representatives of the people of Virginia—Gen. ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... time the noble mob was slowly heaving away, leaving at every angle of the counter either a murmur or a menace, as the waves leave foam or scattered seaweed on the sands, when they retire with the ebbing tide. In about ten minutes Moliere reappeared, making another sign to D'Artagnan from under the hangings. The latter hurried after him, with Porthos in the rear, and after threading a labyrinth of corridors, introduced him to M. Percerin's ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... come, they weighed anchor, and by moonlight, without setting sail, committed themselves to the ebbing tide, which gently brought them down the river, till they were near the castle; being almost over against it, they spread their sails with all possible haste. The Spaniards perceiving this, transported with all speed their guns from the other side, and began to ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... not discovered for some time. It requires several 'moves,' as the phrase goes, several augmentations of the rate of discount by the Bank, before the really effectual rate is reached, and in the mean time bullion is ebbing away and the 'reserve' is diminishing. Unless, therefore, in times without precaution the actual reserve exceed the 'apprehension minimum' by at least the amount which may be taken away in the inevitable interval, ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... rain slackened, the wind died down, and people started gathering in the square. For a time, they milled about, wading through the ebbing flood. They examined the damage, then they ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... entailed. Two miles to starboard lay Gueboroa Island, its coastline curving north to west like an immense arm. To the south and east, heads of coral were already on display, left uncovered by the ebbing waters. We had run aground at full tide and in one of those seas whose tides are moderate, an inconvenient state of affairs for floating the Nautilus off. However, the ship hadn't suffered in any way, so solidly joined was its hull. But although it could neither sink nor ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... except in answering occasional questions, in a feeble and almost inaudible voice. To feel oneself so sick and so far away; to think that it wanted so many days before he could reach home! Would he ever live until then, with his strength ebbing away? Such a terrifying feeling of distance continually haunted him and weighed at every wakening; and when, after a few hours' stupor, he awoke from the sickening pain of his wounds, with feverish heat and the whistling sound in his pierced ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... ebbing tide doth pour Out by the low sand spaces, The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... from Spithead, lads: Only an hour from home!" So sang the captain's cheery voice As we spurned the ebbing foam; And each young sea-dog's heart sang back, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... had recovered the feeble use of her speech. But, oh, faithful, dear friend and sister! even then she remembered me, and refused to tell (what no one else among her fellow workmen knew), where she lived or with whom. Life was ebbing away fast, and they had no resource but to carry her to the nearest hospital, where, of course, the fact of her sex was made known. Fortunately both for her and for me, the doctor in attendance was ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... without danger to himself—permit a mortal to exercise. I hand you a tooth: already does the great powwow of the Cherokees feel, with the increase of the strength of his mind, the decrease of the strength of his body: here is the rattle, his strength is ebbing away; the eye, I behold him helpless on the bed of death. His face is bright with the wisdom and knowledge imparted by the gifts he hath obtained from us, but, alas! his tongue is nerveless, he may not communicate the knowledge he hath gained. Hasten back in peace, Muscogulgee, deliver to him ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... among the last to admit that she had bought on an ebbing tide. She contended that her house was well worth the price she had paid; what if speculation had come to a stop? So much the better; her house was still worth its price. She would stand firm. It was not until the Metfords, whose ostentation had brought them before her notice, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... serious the matter, then?' cried Mrs Pendle, the colour ebbing from her cheeks. 'What is it, George? Tell me at once. I can ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... "All his vices were and are nothing now; we remember only his woes," writes Charlotte. They buried him in the same vault that had been opened twenty-three years ago to receive the childish, wasted corpses of Elizabeth and Maria. Sunday came round, recalling minute by minute the ebbing of his life, and Emily Bronte, pallid and dressed in black, can scarcely have heard her brother's funeral sermon for looking at the stone which hid so many memories, such useless compassion. She took her brother's death very much to ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... water of late years, it would not be thought extraordinary if on a blazing morning he should bathe. He took off his clothes, and in a moment was in the sea, striking out for the river channel and the ebbing tide, which he knew would bear him away to the ocean. He saw nothing, heard nothing, till just as he neared the buoy and the fatal eddy was before him, when there escaped from him a cry—a scream—a prayer of commitment ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... gloom was only broken by the ghastly glare of the foaming breakers, the minds of the seamen were full of dreary apprehensions, and some of them fancied they heard the cries of their lost comrades mingling with the uproar of the elements. For a time, too, the rapidly ebbing tide threatened to sweep them from their precarious anchorage. At length the reflux of the tide, and the springing up of the wind, enabled them to quit their dangerous situation and take shelter in a small bay within Cape Disappointment, where they rode in safety during the residue of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... rite. On this road you may sometimes meet a little English bishop from the Provinces, in his apron. and knee-breeches; and there is a certain bridge over a narrow estuary, where in the shallow land-locked pools of the deeply ebbing tide you may throw stones at sculpin, and witness the admirable indifference of those fish to human cruelty and folly. In the middle distance you will see a group of herring weirs, which with their coronals of tufted saplings ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... blood was flowing fast, life was ebbing away, and Sir Reginald's breath was failing, as Eustace, relieving Gaston from his weight, laid his head on his breast, and laved his brow with water from the river. "You have done gallantly, my brave brother; I did wrong to doubt your spirit. Thanks be to God ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skilled in watching the advance of death to be aware that the little life was ebbing fast. The look of waxiness had been increasing, all night long; the breathing was becoming fitful; the tiny figure seemed relaxed in every weakening limb. The eyes, though heavy and lustreless, were wide, wide open, and the white little lips wavered into a ghost of a smile, as Brenton crossed ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... without either food or fire, and evidently left by his tribe to perish there; he was a very aged man, and from hardship and want was reduced to a mere skeleton, how long he had been on the spot where we found him I had no means of ascertaining, but probably for some time, as life appeared to be fast ebbing away; he seemed almost unconscious of our presence, and stared upon us with a vacant unmeaning gaze. The pleasures or sorrows of life were for ever over with him: his case was far beyond the reach of human aid, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Jakey really could use the job?" Chris asked, his courage ebbing as he pictured to himself the dark little shop with its bow window of small panes, and Mr. Wicker, so thin and wizened he seemed only bones and wrinkles. "Think he really needs ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... narrowly, and in all its long stretch there was not a sign of friend or foe. About a mile back the fatal reef, bared by the ebbing tide, showed its line of black heads high out of the water, but of ships there was no vestige to be seen. It was long past mid-day by the sun, and he knew that he must have been unconscious for some hours. In that time, such of the Vikings as had ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... true. The boy's life had been saved just when it had been ebbing away, but that was all. With the cruel blow which struck him down all recollection of the past was cut away, and the boy had, as it were, to begin life all over again, not as a little child, for he could talk and chat merrily; but the dark ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... so much freakish humour, and clothed in language so apt, droll, and emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all who knew him before the clouds began to settle on his mind. His use of language was both just and picturesque; and when at the beginning of his illness he began to feel the ebbing of this power, it was strange and painful to hear him reject one word after another as inadequate, and at length desist from the search and leave his phrase unfinished rather than finish it without propriety. It ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... body erect while the life was ebbing from it; and the rain came down again in sheets. The Indians fell back before the charge was well begun. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... so long ago that lords and nabobs monopolised these pleasures; but nowadays i a month's tour in Switzerland is no more a jeu de prince than a Sunday excursion. To watch this huge Anglo-Saxon wave ebbing through Berne suggests, no doubt most fallaciously, that the common lot of mankind isn't after all so very hard and that the masses have reached a high standard of comfort. The view of the Oberland chain, as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was worn out in body and spirit, and had no strength to rally. She was weeks dying, but her life was steadily ebbing all that time. It was a kind of slow fever. She was delirious when I first saw her, and delirious or unconscious, with few lucid intervals, until she died. And the jargon of her wandering mind was in reality the outpouring of a tortured soul. It was the title and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and break with might, While farther seaward in a bland delight, I see them shining where a rainbow shook. On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look On waves that like sea-armies swing to sight, To send upon the shore their billows white, And, ebbing, to leave ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... but we could see no sign of human habitation. As far as could be made out, the river was about three hundred yards broad, and about this time we became aware that it must be very nearly low tide, for the stream which passed us was growing more and more sluggish, till at last it ceased ebbing, and the Teaser began to swing slowly round, a sufficient indication that ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... As, First, How it comes to pass, that there are sometimes salt Springs much higher then the Superficies of the Water? And, Secondly, Why Springs do not run faster and slower, according to the varying height made of the Cylinder of Sea-water, by the ebbing ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... depths of naked crags, He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind.... Such was the Boy,—but for the growing Youth, What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked: Ocean and earth, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... him. He intended during the voyage to decide upon a course of action, but he held all this away from him for the present and lay in a blessed gray oblivion. Deep down in him somewhere his resolution was weakening and strengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him went on as steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it. He was submerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at intervals the sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... passion from every point of view, as a doctor may dissect a body, showing its source, its origin, its evil, and its good, and its proper uses, as designed by Providence and Nature"; that is, Burton pursued his inquiries on this subject in the same spirit as that which has animated Kraft-Ebbing and Moll, and other men of science. But from what I have read in The Arabian Nights and elsewhere, it seems to me that Burton's researches in this direction were rather of an ethnological and historical character than a medical or scientific one. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... things as these, Soft as I am, I'll make thee see I will not brook contempt from thee! I'll give all thoughts of patience o'er (A gift I never lost before); Indulge at once my rage and grief Mourn obstinate, disdain relief, Till life, on terms severe as these, Shall ebbing leave my heart at ease; To thee thy liberty restore To laugh, when ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... actually fled while he yet stood erect, battling with all the energies of soul and body against man's latest enemy. The bosom of his gray tunic, rent asunder, displayed the deep gash which had let out the spirit, whence the last drops of the thick crimson life-blood were ebbing ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... infant need but more life? What does the bosom of his mother give him but life in abundance? What does the old man need, whose limbs are weak and whose pulse is low, but more of the life which seems ebbing from him? Weary with feebleness, he calls upon death, but in reality it is life he wants. It is but the encroaching death in him that desires death. He longs for rest, but death cannot rest; death would be as much an end to rest as to weariness: even weakness cannot rest; it takes strength ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others. I have often wondered how my ideas flow or ebb without the influence of my will; sometimes when I am with those I love, flowing faster than tongue can utter, and sometimes ebbing, ebbing, till nought but ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the meaning of the image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity, (as, I suppose, few in looking at the Cephalus and Procris of Turner, note the sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the nymph; unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked by Shelley in the Alastor;) but the imagination is not shown in any such modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable (in the Cephalus they would be utterly destructive,) ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... met In recreation's hour. And those who passed The angel's cell would lightly tread, and breathe A prayer that death might pass the angel by And let her longer stay, for she lay ill — Her frail, pure life was ebbing fast away. Ah! many were the orisons that rose From all our hearts that God might spare her still; At Benediction and at holy Mass Our hands were lifted, and strong pleadings went To heaven for her; we did love her so — Perhaps too much ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... of growing horror. 'Seneca his preceptor, he forced to kill himself.' And there was Petronius, who had called his friends about him at the last, bidding them talk to him, not of the consolations of philosophy, but of love and gallantry, while the life was ebbing away through his opened veins. Dipping his pen once more in the ink he wrote on the last page of his diary: 'He died a Roman death.' Then, putting the toes of one foot into the water and finding that it was not too hot, he threw off his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... towards his family." If he had proof positive that I was an impure woman, there was no use quarrelling with his decision. Besides, moral delinquencies engender more than physical weakness. I felt my boasted energy ebbing away fast. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... friend, Dr. Garden, who was established in the neighbourhood, and whose society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression which ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... o'erpow'r'd me, And beat me to the ground, cover'd with wounds— But, oh! 'tis done! my ebbing life is done— I feel death's hand upon me—Yet, I die Just as I wish, and daring for a crown, Life without rule is my disdain; I scorn To swell a haughty Brother's sneaking train, To wait upon his ear with flatt'ring tales, And court his smiles; come, ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... bear their sufferings nobly; I have hardly heard a word of complaint from one of them. A soldier from the 'stern and rock bound coast' of Maine—a victim of the slaughter at Fredericksburgh—lay in this hospital, his life ebbing away from a fatal wound. He had a father, brothers and sisters, a wife, and one little boy of two or three years old, on whom his heart seemed set. Half an hour before he ceased to breathe, I stood by his side, holding his hand. He was in the full ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the shrubs and trees Of thy small cottage-croft, whilst murmuring bees Went by, and almost touched thy temples bare, Edged with a few flakes of the whitest hair. And, soothed by the faint hum of ebbing seas, And song of birds, and breath of the young breeze, Thus didst thou sit, feeling the summer air Blow gently;—with a sad still decadence, Sinking to earth in hope, but all alone. Oh! hast thou wept to feel the lonely ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... not chide him, though I knew That he was false to me. Chide the exhaling of the dew, The ebbing of the sea, The fading of a rosy hue,— ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... looks to heaven bend, And send thy parting sigh unto thy friend: Or where immeasurable wilds dismay, Forlorn and sad thou bend'st thy weary way, While sorrow and disease, with anguish rife, Consume apace the ebbing springs of life. Again I see his door against thee shut, The unfeeling native turn thee from his hut; I see thee, spent with toil and worn with grief, Sit on the grass, and wish the long'd relief; Then lie thee down, the stormy struggle ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... with velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the absence of all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication between the centre and the extremities of a great people, kept up with a uniformity of reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing and ebbing of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human heart; day and night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding to each other with more absolute certainty than the acts of the metropolis and the controlling notice of the provinces, whether in the way of support or of resistance. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Just as the ebbing tide had lowered the yawl fairly on the baulks, another steamer came in from France, crowded with passengers, and the waves of her swell lifted my poor little boat off her position, and rudely fixed her upon only one baulk, from which it was not possible ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... ago, using an image I have already borrowed. "He would be no honest and successful pilot who was to apply himself with less industry to avoid rocks and sands and bring his vessel safely home, than to search into the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea, which, though very well for a philosopher, is foreign to him whose business it is to secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so, though he be a ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Horn found his cousin in a more serious mood. The poor young man told him something of his sad history; and "Cobbler" Horn spoke many earnest and faithful words. It became increasingly evident to "Cobbler" Horn, day by day, that life was ebbing fast within his cousin's shattered frame; and he grew ever more anxious to bring the poor young fellow to the Saviour. But somehow the work seemed to drag. Jack would express a desire for salvation; and yet, somehow he seemed to be holding back. The hindrance was revealed, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... artery. Had he been instantly taken from his horse and a tourniquet applied, he might perhaps have been saved. When reproached by Governor Harris, chief of staff and his brother-in-law, for concealing his wound while his life-blood was ebbing away, he replied, with true nobility of soul, "My life is nothing to the success of this charge; had I exclaimed I was wounded when the troops were passing, it might have created a panic and defeat." In ten minutes ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... that prairie turned to water, so deep that you could not touch bottom with the longest line you ever saw,—the ocean would look so; only remember that it is always in motion—ebbing, and flowing, and roaring, and dashing against the land and the rocks, its waves sometimes running very high, topped ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... the operation was performed. The boy rapidly sunk,—when his mother came was past speaking, and could only express with his dying eyes his great love for her. Kneeling beside him, she watched intently, but without a tear or a sob, the dear life fast ebbing away. The expression of that mother's face no one who saw ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... century, and it brought with it the achievements of modern engineering and medicine. We are still fully under the influence of this gigantic movement and its real achievements will never leave us; and yet this realistic wave is ebbing to-day and a new period of idealism is rising. If the signs are not deceitful, this new movement may reach its historical climax a few decades hence, when new leaders may give to the idealistic view of the world the same classical expression which Darwin and others gave to the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... priesthood, the gorgeous barge of Cleopatra, the victorious trireme of Antony, the screaming vessels of fighting soldiers, the stealthy boats of Christian monks, the glittering, changing, flashing tumult of thousands of years of life,—ever flowing, ever ebbing, with the mystic river, on whose surface it seethed and bubbled. And the germ of all this vast varying scene lay quietly hidden in the wonderful lake at my feet. But human life is always composed of inverted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... strong, that it cannot be resisted? Are we borne without hope of rest upon the ebbing tide? Can we never separate ourselves from the theory, and with the coolness of an observer, watch the various emotions, motives, and passions by which the human world is moulded and swayed? Can we not trace the influence of the changes and chances of this ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... cries Helluo, "mercy on my soul! Is there no hope!—Alas!—then bring the jowl." The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires. "Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke" (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke); "No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face: One would not, sure, be ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... down in such plenty, that the two boats were laden, sent off, cleared, and laden a second time, before noon; by which time also the launch had got a full supply of water, and the botanical and shooting parties had all come in, except the surgeon, for whom we could not wait, as the tide was ebbing fast out of the cove; consequently he was left behind. As there is no getting into the cove with a boat, from between half-ebb to half-flood, we could get off no water in the afternoon. However, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned out ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... night, dark night at Grassy Spring, and the summer rain, which all the day had fallen in heavy showers, beat drearily against the windows of the room where a fair young girl was keeping watch over the white-faced man whose life was fast ebbing away. They were alone,—Dr. Griswold and Nina—for both would have it so. He, because he felt how infinitely precious to him would be his last few hours with her, when there was no curious ear to listen; and she, because she would have Miggie sleep. Nina knew no languor from ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... I should die, how kind you all would grow! In that strange hour I would not have one foe. There are no words too beautiful to say Of one who goes forevermore away Across that ebbing ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... abstain from meddling with what they know nothing about! And as for Plimsoll, I would tie one end of a rope round his neck, and attach the other to a fire bar, and chuck him in there," pointing to the ebbing ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... response to this appeal the dog gave no motion, for, indeed, his strength, like a tide ebbing in the night, was gliding silently and swiftly outward in the gloom, gliding outward and beyond all questioning and answering, but he opened wide his glorious eyes and fixed them steadily on his master's face with such a great love in ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... respective types of leaf organ. Again, a detailed examination of spiny plants practically excludes the hypothesis of mammalian selection altogether, and shows spines to arise as an expression of the diminishing vegetativeness—in fact, the ebbing vitality ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... quite sudden, quite abnormal; not that afterglow of hope that sometimes follows a dark plunge of despair, but a gentle firm trust that seemed, without explaining, yet to make all things plain; not ebbing and flowing, not changing with physical sensation or mental weariness, but deep, abiding, sustaining. You may think it rash of me thus, after so short an interval, to write so assuredly of it; but even if I lost the sense (and I shall not) the memory of that ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him to be one of her lovers. That she was liberal enough to consent appears clearly from the growth of passion in his plays. It is certain, too, that she went on deceiving him with other lovers, or his jealousy would have waned away, ebbing with fulfilled desire. But his passion increases in intensity from 1597 to 1604, whipped no doubt to ecstasy by continual deception and wild jealousy. Both lust and jealousy swing to madness in "Othello," But Shakespeare was so great an artist that, when he took the story ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... were his thoughts as he sat there, idly watching the crisp-curling waves racing past. One of the trio had passed away, and, without food or water, without mast or sail, with their strength rapidly ebbing away, the situation of the remaining two was hourly growing more critical. Had they not had the misfortune to lose both mast and sail, George would have endeavoured to return to the Isle of Pines; but to do so with the oars alone, now that they had scarcely strength ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... tired content on his shoulder, and together they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished. Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London |
