"Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arch-enemy, tuberculosis, is ever on the watch for victims. But the new era is slowly dawning. Now, instead of hooking "Welcome Home" into the fireside mat, you find "DONT SPIT" worked in letters of flame. It is the harbinger of the feminist movement ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... of the farmers newly arrived, the notice was a harbinger of good. It stood for progress, markets and a higher price for land; albeit he wondered "hoo he wad be keepit up." But his hard-wrought, quick-spoken little wife at his elbow "hooted" his scruples and, thinking of her growing lads, welcomed with ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... as our own. [Exeunt WARRIORS in haste. This Scene is dark, and doubtful the Event; Some great Decree of Fate depends upon it, And mighty Good or Ill awaits Mankind. The Blood of Princes cannot flow in vain, The Gods must be in Council to permit it: It is the Harbinger of their Designs, To change, new-mould, and alter Things on Earth: And much I fear, 'tis ominous of Ill, To me and mine; it happen'd in my Kingdom. Their Father's Rage will swell into a Torrent— They were my Guests—His Wrath will centre here; Our guilty ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... paid the price of the purchase of our liberties. It is inattention and inconsideration, protracted till the crisis is past, and the things which belong to our peace are hid from our eyes. And blessed be God, that the tokens of a national waking up, the harbinger of God's ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... qualities are very generally known, for it is most tempting to the eye by its delicate fringe-like bunches of white flowers. Even the touch of this shrub is poisonous, and produces violent swelling. The arbor judae is abundant in every wood, and its bright and delicate pink is the earliest harbinger of the American spring. Azalias, white, yellow, and pink; kalmias of every variety, the too sweet magnolia, and the stately rhododendron, all grow in wild abundance there. The plant known in England as the Virginian creeper, is often seen climbing to the top of the highest ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, but the harbinger of tempest and terror. It yet remains to be shown what form that cloud assumed, and from what quarter the tempest came. The history of Charlotte Halliday has grown upon the writer; and the completion of that history, with the fate of John Haygarth's fortune, will be found ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and sometimes watched through the night, starting with convulsed rapture at every sound, because it might possibly be the harbinger of him, he was busied in carefully looking over marriage articles, fixing the place of residence with his destined bride, or making love to her in formal process. Yet, Agnes, vaunt!—he sometimes thought ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... of a ruling selfishness seeks to obliterate the loftier ideal. But while he summons all his strength to prevent the embodiment of the new thought, there are other faculties that perceive the star of promise and follow it as a harbinger of truth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ears to the singing of birds, the whispering of winds, the gay ripple ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with haggard eyes this ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... "the cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in the world cannot ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale! [1] Say that we come, and come by this day's light; Fly upon swiftest wing round field and height, [2] But chiefly let one Cottage hear the tale; There let a mystery of joy prevail, 5 The kitten frolic, like a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... respect to it as the harbinger of fortune. Has a cat insight into the future? Can it presage wealth or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the shark, crow, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... are you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel In Danger's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. Heretofore, this has been occasioned chiefly ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... looking on. Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice. Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after. During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... recognized; and, besides, I was following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as soon as I ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... became in her turn anxious to effect a reconciliation with the King, even upon terms less favourable than those to which she had hitherto aspired. Gaston seldom entered her apartments, nor was his presence ever the harbinger of anything but discord; while Puylaurens and Chanteloupe openly braved and defied each other, and the two little Courts were a scene of constant broils and violence. Monsieur, moreover, forbade his wife to see her royal mother-in-law ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... first pale star! braving the rear of Day! And all heaven waiting till the sun has drawn His long train after him! then half creation Will follow its queen-leader from the depths. O harbinger of hope! O star of love! Thou hast gone down in me, gone down for ever; And left my soul in such a starless night, It has not love enough to weep thy loss. O fool! to know thee once, and, after years, To take a gleaming marsh-light for ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... proved the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed from ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... lay there in the ditches by the roadside, the early morning air bit sharp and chilly, having a touch of frost in it—the harbinger of colder weather to come—but still retaining a dampness that searched into ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... when the cock proclaims the rising day, And milkmaids sing around sweet curds and whey, Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night, Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light, I can unwearied from my casements view The Plaid, with something still about it new. How are we pleased when, with a handsome air, We see Hepburna walk with easy ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... not for long. The zone of yellow light in the east grows rapidly larger and brighter. The brilliant edge of the god of day tips the horizon; a burst of light follows; and now the morning sun, day's harbinger, "comes dancing up the east." The summits of the trees far away in the silent bush are bathed in gold. The near trees, that looked so weird-like in the moon's half light, are now decked in green. The chill of the night has departed. It is already broad day. By the time we reach ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... man's lips, with smiles apart, Bespoke the gladness of his heart. And in his arms he took the boy The harbinger of future joy; Delighted that indulgent Heaven To his fond hopes this pledge had given, It seemed as if, to bless his reign, Irij had come to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of Gott sent this harbinger of good-will. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Hark! how the noise increases! through the gloom 115 Of the still evening—harbinger of death, Rings the tocsin! the dreadful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin more than a century ago (Political Justice, second edition, 1796, vol. i, p. 248), "will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." And Professor Lester Ward, in insisting on the strength ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... abhorrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of these much-injured men, and reconcile them to the shame and infamy of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... than I could have been as a man. I shall always be the friend of men, and keep near their dwellings. I shall ever be happy and contented; and although I could not gratify your wishes as a warrior, it will be my daily aim to make you amends for it as a harbinger of peace and joy. I will cheer you by my songs, and strive to inspire in others the joy and lightsomeness of heart I feel in my present state. This will be some compensation to you for the loss of glory you expected. I am now free from the cares and pains ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again until when, in the depth of winter, they showed up in their weird splendour ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... display'd: Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down to ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... was no other room in their house from which the sound could proceed. She was not devoid of the superstitious feelings of the age, and had heard before of ghostly tappings that were said to be a harbinger of coming death ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... false love with some show of blindness: Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; 10 Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15 What simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Sad harbinger of things to harrow, Another came, ah! soon a day, To tell him his dear winsome marrow From this sad world had passed away. No more for him those eyes so merry, That were to him so sweet to see! No more those lips red as the cherry, That were to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... regulate to a great extent the activities and output of his plant. And when college and university days are over, where does the young professional man turn his eyes? To the West. Westward, with the sun, he travels; its fiery course is an invitation to and a harbinger of ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... shock sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations of religion. Repentance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which this, merry morn was the harbinger, the arrivals of guests at the castle had been numerous and important. First came the brother of the duchess, with his countess, and their fair daughter the Lady Katherine, whose fate, unconsciously to herself, had already been sealed by her noble relatives. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Watson called. He wanted to congratulate us on the relations we have for so long maintained. We have never spoken of it, but you must have known the risk of coming here. He has seen it, says he has watched you closely, and you are an exception to all known law, or the harbinger of a new era ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... remained with frequent additions, a long and rigorous winter reigned in absolute sway. But now, on the last of February, the sun wheeled high on his circuits; thaws and rains ensued, and the first robin on the leafless maple sang, sweet harbinger of spring. Winter recalled his tyrant ministers, or restrained them in their wrath; and milder days and warmer skies appeared in pleasant alternation, with many ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... from being carried to Paris, I know nobody that would do more to promote peace, or that will bear the want of it, with a better grace than myself. If I don't send you an actual declaration of war in this letter, at least you perceive I am the harbinger of it. An account arrived yesterday morning that Boscawen had missed the French fleet, who are got into Cape Breton; but two of his captains(582) attacked three of their squadron and have taken two, with scarce any loss. This is the third time one of the French captains ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... to the waves—her colors almost touching the water—the captain, who was absent from his ship, found his flag upon his return. A harbinger as it proved of the issue that ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... difference, however, that the art of the latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretations of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scientific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory; and the picture-charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The chariot of progress, of which the will of man is the driver, is drawn ...
— Progress and History • Various
... neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of it." ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... was more essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. One of the most tenacious and troublesome of the little visitors is the jigger, which has an uncomfortable habit of seeking a soft ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... night, however, and the day was clear and sparkling. Very beautiful the white world looked when the sun came to light it up; but the snow made tracking less easy, and warned the travellers that no time must be lost in reaching their destination, for it was a harbinger of the winter blasts ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... symbolizing eternal life. Among the sons and grandsons of Ndengei were Roko Mbati-ndua, the one-toothed lord; a fiend with a huge tooth projecting from his lower jaw and curving over the top of his head. He had bat's wings armed with claws and was usually regarded as a harbinger of pestilence. The mechanic's god was eight-handed, gluttony had eighty stomachs, wisdom possessed eight eyes. Other gods were the adulterer, the abductor of women of rank and beauty, the rioter, the brain-eater, the killer of men, the slaughter god, the god of leprosy, the giant, the spitter ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... captured. Every brigade commander and every field officer except one fell. Lee and Longstreet had seen from the edge of the woods, with great exultation, the blue flag of Virginia waving over the crest occupied by the Union troops. It seemed the harbinger of great success to Lee. He thought the Union army was conquered at last. The long struggle was over, and peace would soon come, accompanied by the acknowledgment of the independence of the Southern Confederacy. It was but a passing ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... blustering winds had departed, and now April's showers and sunshine were gladdening the hearts of the settlers. Patches of green freshened the slopes of the hills; the lilac bushes showed tiny leaves, and the maple-buds were bursting. Yesterday a blue-bird—surest harbinger of spring—had alighted on the fence-post and had sung his plaintive song. A few more days and the blossoms were out mingling their pink and white with the green; the red-bud, the hawthorne, and the dog-wood were in bloom, checkering ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, expanding with her rosy fingers the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... before the fire with Desgenais. The window was open; it was one of the early days in March, a harbinger of spring. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... a sarcastic or of a bitter nature, I might have imputed this curious train of mishaps to the malign influence of that maternal tabby cat which Uncle Si had hailed as a harbinger of good luck. As it was, I could not resist giving play to my desire for retaliation when Uncle Si confided to me one morning that some unscrupulous person or persons had invaded the premises the night before and had carried off about six thousand ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... praying herself now, and Morris' broad chest heaved as he glanced at her kneeling figure, and then at the death-like face upon the pillow, with the pinched look about the nose and lips, which to his practiced eye was a harbinger of death. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... prodigies foretold it: A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking states. When public villany, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Scriptures, on which the Mormon defenders of their faith so largely depend,—as for explanations of modern revelations, miracles, and signs,—was preached to so extreme a point by Ohio Disciples that Alexander Campbell had to combat them in his Millennial Harbinger. An outcome of this literal interpretation was a belief in a speedy millennium, another fundamental belief of the early Mormon church. "The hope of the millennial glory," says Hayden, "was based on many passages of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger." Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors and colors—a theory which might never have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... "carminger" the cobbler means harbinger, an officer; who preceded the monarch during progresses, to give notice ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... intense suffering, that we were in great apprehension for his life. Horrible days, and yet more horrible nights! But they were succeeded by fine weather, and at length we had the consolation of seeing the moon, smiling placidly down upon us, like a harbinger of peace. On the evening of the twenty-sixth the full moon rose with a troubled countenance, her disk obscured by angry clouds. She shook them off, but still looked turbid and superb. A gloomy cloud, black as night, still stretched over her like a pall, thickly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... into bloom seen against the sunrise sky, or a bough bending its blossoms to the bosom of a stream, is subject enough for their greatest masters, who thus wed, as it were, two arts in one,—the spirit of poesy with pictorial form. This plum-tree is but a blossom. Precocious harbinger of a host of flowers, its gay heralding over, it vanishes not to be recalled, for it bears no ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... by her praise, to remove the chagrin which her ingenuous countenance (ever the faithful harbinger of her thoughts) betrayed so plainly—"I assure you, my dear," said she, "that for some time you performed very prettily; didn't you think so, ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... comfortable tree to climb, for its grey-green branches were studded with wens each armed with a keen prickle, long and tough. It offered the hospitality of its shade to man, but little else, save flowers to gladden his eyes, though it stood as a perpetual calendar, or rather floral harbinger, of some of the most excellent things in life. At a certain season its big, trilobed, hollow-stalked leaves changed from bright green to pale yellow and lingeringly fell, and often before the last disappeared, flower-buds registered the date with almost almanac ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... whimsical instrument, take it altogether! But what, thinkest thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into the state ought to have a triple proportion of courage. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... evidence and token of the Divine pleasure. Death is the wages of sin, the harbinger of retribution, the seal of man's humiliation and defeat. The fear of death is a bondage under which the race of man lies, save only where Christian faith and hope alleviate the terror and inspire a superhuman courage before which ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a slowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last. When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant more than an eighth of the heavenly circle. The moon could not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... bought this one, never questioning that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a ready colour of her own, which now mounted high ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... seize this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius—another and a brighter star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... still, and dashing: Now a rush, And now a roar, and now a fainter fall, And still remoter, and yet finding still, For the white anguish of their boiling whirl, No resting-place. Over my head appear'd, Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen, Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky, Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star Magnificent; that, with a holy light, Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood, Drinking the beauty of that gem serene, How long I wist not; but, when back to earth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... beetles, and other creatures in check, which might otherwise multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... was Hope's harbinger. I heard the door of my prison open and close softly, and sat still, wondering whether the murderers had entered at last, wondering, too, whether I should snatch the sword and strike blindly till I fell. Next I heard another sound, that of a woman weeping; ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... is known as Frau Gode, or Wode, the female form of Wuotan or Odin, and her appearance is always considered the harbinger of great prosperity. She is also supposed to be a great huntress, and to lead the Wild Hunt, mounted upon a white horse, her attendants being changed into hounds and all manner ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... absurd. Poe was the truer worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance of one whose vision beholds, ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... first of all her band, The fairest of her gems, We hail thee as a welcome guest, Which Winter still contemns. For thou art still the harbinger (A credit to her choice) To tell that pleasant times draw nigh, For which let ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Comes this way sailing Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails fill'd, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play; An amber-scent of odorous perfume Her harbinger, a damsel train behind!"] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... says nothing more. When he passes a shop-window in which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not only to envelop her, but to caress her. She thought neither ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... letter in his hand, hobbled from the cook-tent toward them; like a sinister harbinger of evil he advanced, grinning deprecatingly ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... a forerunner for us—'Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus' (Heb 6:20). This office of harbinger is distinct from, though it comes by virtue of, his priestly office; therefore they are both mentioned in the text—'Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high-priest for ever, after ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... cherish carefully a salutary horror at the German style, and hold off my admiration as long as ever I can. But all my importance is quite at an end. For now that Doctors of Divinity and the solemn Review itself have broke silence to praise you, I have quite lost my plume as your harbinger. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... an echo in the heart of Sidney Wilton, who, seated near the entrance of the ball-room, watched every arrival with anxious expectation. But the anxiety vanished for a moment under the influence of the fantastic and frolic strain. It seemed a harbinger of happiness and joy. He fell into a reverie, and wandered with a delightful companion in castles of perpetual sunshine, and green retreats, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... 'tis excellent; for in this kind the hand, you know, is harbinger to the tongue, and provides the words a lodging in the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... bringing you into contact with the great and the good—giving you an opportunity of laying before them facts relative to the condition of the Indians, which eventuated in so much good. We do indeed rejoice in the formation of the 'Algic Society,' which is, I trust, the harbinger of great and extensive blessings to this ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... laughed a blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and was posing ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... daughter of a rich Portuguese, who had migrated from Damascus to Gaza. Opulent and zealous, he devoted himself henceforth to preaching the Messiah, living and dying his apostle and prophet—no other in short than the Elijah who was to be the Messiah's harbinger. Nor did he fail to work miracles in proof of his mission. Merely on reading a man's name, he would recount his life, defaults and sins, and impose just correction and penance. Evil-doers shunned his eye. More readily than on Sabbatai men believed on him, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Andrew and my fathers soule, I thinke the peevish boy be too too well But speake, who was your passions harbinger? ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he commanded the reinforcements sent to Spain in 1367), had scarcely begun to play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... that carried with it affliction to the friends of these unfortunate men, was the harbinger of joy to the family and friends of young Heywood. The happy intelligence was communicated to his affectionate Nessy on the 26th, who instantly despatched the joyful tidings to her anxious mother in the following ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... of knowledge and the blessings of religion,"—so might the son of Ulva carry the same blessings to Africa, and be remembered, perhaps, by millions of the human race as the first pioneer of civilization, and the first harbinger of the gospel. It was graceful in the Bishop of Oxford (Samuel Wilberforce) to advert to the debt of unparalleled magnitude which England, founder of the accursed slave-trade, owed to Africa, and to urge the immediate prosecution of Livingstone's plans, inasmuch as the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... who desire to lead the child's mind through a long sequence of thought from the lower to the higher life, the amphibian affords an easy step in this ascending scale. And among amphibians that familiar and picturesque harbinger of spring, the frog, and his cousin the friendly ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves, floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before her a curry prepared ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening, and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by were turkey peas, which she had hunted and eaten ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... than the calm way in which ripe age looks on at things which ought to amaze it. And yet any little one of its own concerns grows more important, perhaps, than ever as the shadow of the future dwindles. Major Hockin had found on the beach a pebble with a streak of agate in it. He took it as the harbinger of countless agates, and resolved to set up a lapidary, with a tent, or even a shop, perhaps—not to pay, but to be ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good. Minister of torment! Jealousy! Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal! Who steals and poisons others' good, Under thy cruel breath does languish The sweetest flower of all my hopes. Proud of thyself, unlovely one, Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill, The heart thou visitest by thousand doors; If entrance unto thee could be denied, The reign of Love would so much fairer be, As would this world ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the Euxine, that had the quality of closing upon every vessel which attempted to make its way between them and crushing it to pieces, a danger that could only be avoided by sending a dove before as their harbinger, they at length arrived. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put the two ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... William Allingham," edited by George Birkbeck Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as "The Germ. Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... death did seem to her Of long-lost joy the harbinger— Like an old household servant, come To take the willing scholar home; The school-house, it was very dear, But then the holidays were near; And why should she be lingering here? Softly the servant bore the child Who at her parting turned and smiled, And ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... intended to publish the twenty-first chapter later as a second volume. At half-past nine he retired to his bedroom. Lady Burton then repeated "the night prayers to him," and while she was speaking "a dog," to use her own words, "began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shalt go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... again in our children," he said, as they sallied forth just as the east was growing rosy with the harbinger of dawn. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the harbinger of night The torches of the sky doth light, How he admires th'immortall rayes breake forth, And their bright Orbes, more large then earth; How through his trickling teares, he heips his fight, Unto the open Courts of light, Which with thy selfe, o Christ, thy selfe ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... were gone; the lonely lover's pain Had loosed his golden bracelet day by day Ere he beheld the harbinger of rain, A cloud that charged the peak in mimic fray, As an elephant attacks a ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... now elapsed since the departure of Mendez and Fiesco, without any tidings of their fate. For a long time the Spaniards had kept a wistful look-out upon the ocean, flattering themselves that every Indian canoe, gliding at a distance, might be the harbinger of deliverance. The hopes of the most sanguine were now fast sinking into despondency. What thousand perils awaited such frail barks, and so weak a party, on an expedition of the kind! Either the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... birds is confined practically to the turtledove.[16] This homely inert creature is considered the harbinger of good and evil, and is consulted at the beginning of every journey and of every undertaking where its prophetic voice can be heard. Should its cry forebode ill, the undertaking is discontinued no matter how urgent it may be. But should the cry presage ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... The Koil or kokila (Cuculus Indicus) as the harbinger of spring and love is a universal favourite with Indian poets. His voice when first heard in a glorious spring morning is not unpleasant, but becomes in the hot season ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... child of the Great Rebellion, born in the old Buckinghamshire manor house, while her father was at Falmouth with the Prince—born in the midst of civil war, a stormy petrel, bringing no message of peace from those unknown skies whence she came, a harbinger of woe. Infant eyes love bright colours. This baby's eyes looked upon a house hung with black. Her mother died before the child was a fortnight old. They had christened her Angela. "Angel of Death," said the father, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... mind, Early Victorian furniture in a travelling circus. However, you will always have relays of people from the suburbs to listen to the Mocking Bird of yesterday, and sincerely imagine it is the harbinger of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Hannah! Trust me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through small, To greater liberty, until at last I shall behold ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of making public amusements subservient to party, has, I doubt not, much contributed to the destruction of all against whom it has been employed; and theatrical calumny seems to be always the harbinger of approaching ruin to its object; yet this is not the greatest evil which may arise from these insidious politics—they are equally unfavourable both to the morals and taste of the people; the first are injured beyond calculation, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... to where in wooden cell The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud Storm-borne from crag to crag. Serener breeze, With alternation soft in Nature's course, Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger, Thus spake he: 'I must keep the Feast at home; My children there expect me.' Parting thence, He left his brothers three to consummate His work begun, Celin, and Cynabil, And Chad, at Lichfield Bishop ere he died. Thus Lastingham had birth. Beside the Thames Meantime dark deeds were done. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... high and breaking in fiery sparkles. The silver sharks unwearyingly kept their silent vigil about the rocking buoy. Up the eastern horizon was stealing a faint pallor, harbinger of ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Delightful harbinger of joys to come, Of summer's verdure and a fruitful year, Who bids thee o'er our northern snow-fields roam, And make all gladness in thy bright career? Lo from the Indian Isle thou dost appear, And dost ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... be sent freely from one German state to another without the payment of duties at each boundary line. This yielded some of the advantages of a political union. This economic union, of which Prussia was the head, and from which Austria was excluded, was a harbinger of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... when what was his amazement to find that it was a plaster cast of that little statuette of the Dying Hercules which had won for him the Adelphi Gold Medal so many years before in London. There was the token of his first artistic success appearing to him out of the gloom as the harbinger of another success which he hoped would also soon emerge from ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... whenever I have heard the word 'but,' and I have heard it many times in the course of eighty-eight years, it has been each time, I am sorry to say, the harbinger ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... joked, they laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death's harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison's gate to drive them ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... co-operation with us. There is no finer spectacle to be seen at present than that complete and cordial co-operation which is existing between your fleet and ours. They work as one. I always think to myself and hope that the co-operation of our fleets, of our navies, is the harbinger of what is to come in the future when the war is over, of that which will still continue then. Magnificent is their work, and I glory always in the thought that an American admiral has taken charge of the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... a kingdoms, or of a camp (an honourable place); also, a blacksmith; also, a farrier, horse-leech, or horse-smith; also, a harbinger," ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... from his yellow teeth in that smile which Emerson had come to recognize as a harbinger of the violent acts that ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... his diary at the time of my Mother's death. He said that the thought that Rome was doomed (as seemed not impossible in 1857) so affected my Mother that it 'irradiated' her dying hours with an assurance that was like 'the light of the Morning Star, the harbinger of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... his habit at odd intervals to foray down the village streets with one grievance or another rankling in his bosom, seeking some unlucky one upon whose head to wreak his resentment. We had come to recognise the heavy, slow tapping of his thick cane as a harbinger of trouble, even as you might prognosticate a thunderstorm from the rumbling beneath ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five foot rattler killed ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall, fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little of what is called the 'Norman' type—having a certain firm regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge—but that which in the elder man seemed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an old musket slung at her back, which Adone had taught her to use, and her small, bronzed feet leaping over the ground like a young goat's, was a figure which soon became familiar and welcome to the people. She seemed to them like a harbinger of hope; she had few words, but those words reverberated with courage and energy; she moved the supine, she braced the timid; she brought the wavering firmness and the nervous strength; she said what Adone had taught her to say, but she put into it all ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... castles. The arrival of the Italian family which had come from Florence to settle in New York, bearing letters of introduction to Tom from his mother, just in time to fit into his plans to make her a painter of children, seemed a harbinger of good fortune. The father had been most enthusiastic when Tom mentioned the "rising young artist" to him, and was anxious that the sittings should commence immediately, before her time was ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance. While the sea runs mountains high, and every wave threatens destruction to the labouring vessel, this little harbinger of storms is seen enjoying itself, on rapid pinion, up and down the roaring billows. When the storm is over it appears no more. It is known to every English sailor by the name of Mother Carey's chicken. It must have been hatched in Aeolus's cave, amongst a clutch ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... East Indies, no doubt could be improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in his West ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... the Harbinger of Day, Smiled gently down on Shirley's prosperous sway, The Prince of Light rode in his burning car, To see the overtures of Peace and War Around the world, and bade his charioteer, Who marks the periods of each month and year, Rein in his steeds, and rest upon High Noon To view ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre; nay, I doubt whether pity and love are so near a-kin as poets feign, for I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Though, should you get there before him, he says that Comte du Perron, with whom you are a favorite, will take that care. You see, by this one instance, and in the course of your life you will see by a million of instances, of what use a good reputation is, and how swift and advantageous a harbinger it is, wherever one goes. Upon this point, too, Mr. Harte does you justice, and tells me that you are desirous of praise from the praiseworthy. This is a right and generous ambition; and without which, I fear, few people ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... as I told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin. As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he is the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace, She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphear,{9} His ready harbinger,{10} With turtle{11} wing the amorous clouds dividing, And, waving wide her mirtle wand, She strikes a universall ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... wretch cowered and shivered in the bed, sleepless and fearful he knew not why. He feared the storm and the night. He feared everything. His guilty heart made terrors out of the night and nature's healthful workings. The very storm, blessed harbinger of clearer days ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... time still enshrouded in mystery, and when one of those erratic wanderers made its appearance in the sky it was beheld by the majority of mankind with feelings of awe and superstitious dread, and regarded as a harbinger of evil and disaster, the precursor of war, of famine, or the overthrow ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... thy spirit's friend and love, Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; Though pale she lay when in the winter grove Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her And the red wings of frost-fire ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... comet that, during the whole of the hot summer of 1811, hung threatening in the heavens, appeared as the harbinger of great and important vicissitudes to the enslaved inhabitants of the earth, and it was in truth by an act of Divine providence that a dispute arose between the two giant powers intent upon the partition ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up On freshen'd wing the air of May, and breathes Of fragrance, all impregn'd with herb and flowers, E'en such a wind I felt upon my front Blow gently, and the moving of a wing Perceiv'd, that moving shed ambrosial ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... room. I want to show you a present I got to-night." Then silence. Wesley had no watch. The rebels had relieved him of that at Bull Run. But it must be quite midnight. He opened one of the windows softly. Oh, the glory of the night, harbinger of his high emprise, his deathless glory! The wondrous, wondrous stillness of the scene—and to think that over yonder, in the dark depths of the forest, fifty, perhaps a hundred, men were waiting for him—for him? Yes, the mighty arms of ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the holy scarabaeus of the ancient Egyptians; it appears shortly after the commencement of the wet season, its labours continuing until the cessation of the rains, at which time it disappears. Was it not worshipped by the ancients as the harbinger of the high Nile? The existence of Lower Egypt depending upon the annual inundation, the rise of the river was observed with general anxiety. The beetle appears at the commencement of the rise in the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... always been deemed psychic, and they figure ominously in the folk-lore of many countries. I myself can testify to the fact that they are often the harbinger of death, as I have on several occasions been present when the screeching of an owl, just outside the window, has occurred almost coincident with the death of someone, nearly related either to myself or to one of my companions. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Thirty-six years of peace, marked by an enormous development of manufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by the victory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle so impressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger of a new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and the rivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancement of the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the cause for which they contended, The unhappiness ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... rose, the morning of her nuptials, on a day so bright and cloudless, that Inez hailed it as a harbinger of future happiness. Father Ignatius performed the offices of the church, in a little chapel attached to the estate of Don Augustin; and long ere the sun had begun to fall, Middleton pressed the blushing and timid young ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... (Lagash), became the sun-god of the springtime and of the morning, bringing joy and new life to the earth, while Nergal of Kutha was regarded as the sun of the summer solstice and of the noonday heat—the harbinger of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... oportuna (of things). Hang (intrans.) pendi. Hang up pendigi. Hanker deziregi. Hansom kabrioleto. Hap okazi. Hapless malfelicxa. Haply eble. Happen okazi. Happiness felicxo. Happy felicxa. Harangue parolado. Harass enuigi, lacigi. Harass (milit.) atakadi. Harbinger antauxulo. Harbour haveno. Hard malmola. Hard (difficult) malfacila. Hard (severe) severega. Harden (to make hard) malmoligi, hardi. Harden (to become hardy) hardigxi. Hardly apenaux. Hardness malmoleco. Hardwareman kuirilvendisto. Hardy hardita. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... enthusiasm in Allied countries when it declared war on Austria-Hungary August 27th. A sudden descent by a Roumanian army into Transylvania on August 30th was hailed as the harbinger of further successes. These hopes were turned to ashes when von Mackensen headed an irresistible German and Austrian rush which fairly inundated Roumania. The retreat from Transylvania by the Roumanians was turned into a rout. Bulgarian forces invaded the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... innocent changes in the relations of the mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had been created in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he had but ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... breezes from North-East with rain; at daylight weighed and made sail, the Harbinger in company; shaped a course to pass between Cape Direction and the low sandy island which lies off it; passed close to the latter; I observed the reef extending from the North-East end further than laid down on the chart; after passing it, and giving ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... construction of duty, be the doing of good to one another. Think you, sir, that the universal exercise of this right would promote the fulfilment of the "new commandment that ye love one another?" Think you, it would be the harbinger of millenial peace and blessedness? Or, think you not, rather, that it would fully and frightfully realize the prophet's declaration: "They all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his neighbor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the head, neck, and arms, frequently attend those, whose lungs are oppressed, as in some dropsies and asthma. A cold sweat is also frequently the harbinger of death. These are from the inverted motions of the cutaneous lymphatic branches ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... fierce legions, a more stubborn, desperate and lavish resistance has not been witnessed against attack so resolute, systematic and overwhelming. The Roman eagle never presaged a wider, more thorough desolation than that of which the flag of the Union was the harbinger. For four years the struggle was maintained against this mighty power. When in the spring of 1865, one hundred and thirty-four thousand wretched, broken-down rebels stood, from Richmond to the Rio Grande, confronting one million fifteen thousand veteran soldiers, trained ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... fat, religious gentleman ... big enough to be a pope. His gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock's. His big belly walks in state before him, like a harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it. Never was such a tun of devotion seen.—Dryden, The Spanish ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... flying Rumour, harbinger of the heavy woe, fills Evander and Evander's house and city with the same voice that but now told of Pallas victorious over Latium. The Arcadians stream to the gates, snatching funeral torches after their ancient use; the road gleams with the long line of ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... have decayed a little of late, in all its original strength and freshness of novelty; or, as though he wished to send immediately before him an act of atrocity that should form an appropriate herald or harbinger of his ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... at that moment was satisfaction at the sudden appearance of Ranger's white head, the sure harbinger of his master and Alick, and she sprang up to meet them in the shrubbery path—all her morbid shyness at the sight of a fresh face passing away when her hand was within Alick's arm. When they came forth upon the lawn, Alick's brow darkened for a moment, and there was a formal ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only effect produced upon his bodily health, his mind had suffered a severe shock which was not equally obvious. Fancies, each gloomier than the preceding, took, henceforth, more and more possession of his imagination. He seemed the harbinger of misfortune to all connected with him. Frequently rose up the image of his dead brother, mingling with his dreams and obtruding itself even into his waking thoughts, at one time dripping with water as when taken from ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... bind our realm in brotherhood, Firm laws and equal rights, Let each uphold the Empire's good In freedom that unites; And make that speech whose thunders roll Down the broad stream of time The harbinger from pole to pole Of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book called Comenii Pansophiae Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio (Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers.] When the thing actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Burgoyne thrilled the whole land, for all felt it to be the harbinger of final triumph. The people went wild with joy; salvos of artillery, toasts, bonfires, illuminations, everywhere testified to the general exultation. The name of France was hailed with acclamations. At once a sense of national dignity and solidity took the place of uncertainty and ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... I'll tackle that case of the missing pendants to-morrow," he continued, flicking the ash from his cigar and gazing up at the ceiling with that strange twist in his eye which I had learned to regard as the harbinger of a dawning idea in his mind. "There's ten thousand dollars for somebody in that job, and you and I might as well have it ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the East. It is the Heb. "Shaked" and the fruit is the "Loz" (Arab. Lauz)Amygdalus communis, which the Jews looked upon as the harbinger of spring and which, at certain feasts, they still carry to the synagogue, as representing the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
