"Recreant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whereto we're bound? Alack! or we must lose The Country, our dear nurse; or else thy Person, Our comfort in the Country. We must find An eminent calamity, though we had Our wish, which side shou'd win. For either thou Must, as a foreign Recreant, be led With manacles thorough our streets; or else Triumphantly tread on thy Country's ruin, And bear the palm, for having bravely shed Thy wife and children's blood. For myself, son, I purpose ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... brain in search of some tangible shortcoming of theirs upon which to thrust the blame of their helplessness. "Criminal helplessness," he called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea—or the idea tried to define itself—that they had somehow been recreant to their social caste, by getting down into the condition and estate of what one may call the alien poor. Carondelet street had in some way specially vexed him to-day, and now here was this. It was bad enough, he thought, for men to slip ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... disputing in a whisper, the one of them in violent agitation and terror, and the other upbraiding him, and urging him on to some desperate act. At length I heard the young man in the Highland garb say indignantly, 'Hush, recreant! It is God's work which you are commissioned to execute, and it must be done. But, if you positively decline it, I will do it myself, and do you beware of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?" But the drum Answered, "Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant.—Come!" ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,—Le Desir du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... than innate love, These to my wish must recreant prove; Nor whilst an impulse here remain, Can ever hope the soul to gain; For memory scanning all the past, Relaxes her firm bonds at last, And gives to candor all the grace The heart can in ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... thought—every grief that finds utterance from these victims in the quarries of Portland will go up to heaven freighted with curses on the Nagles, the Devanys, the Masseys, the Gillespies, the Corridons, and the whole host of mercenary miscreants, who, faithless to their friends and recreant to their professions, have, paraphrasing the words of Moore, taken their perfidy to heaven seeking to make accomplice of their God—wretches who have embalmed their memories in imperishable infamy, and given their accursed ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... acquired thereby. His "adventures" is among the list of Historic Tales in the Book of Leinster, but unfortunately there is no copy of this tract in existence. It was probably about this time that a recreant Irish chieftain tried to induce Agricola to invade Ireland. But the Irish Celts had extended the fame of their military prowess even to distant lands,[88] and the Roman general thought it better policy to keep what he had than to risk its loss, and, perhaps, obtain no compensation. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... looking out a husband for her. How it happened, I should not be able to tell you; everything might seem so untrue. She became pregnant. I had already long felt dismay at my own weakness and meanness. Shame, despair, dread of the world, waged war within my soul, and made me their recreant slave. I sent her away in my distress, provided for her, richly, prodigally; but my heart was turned to stone. Grief, sadness, doubts in herself and in God, bitter mortification that she had forfeited my love, or was unworthy of it, while she ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... scarcely be called cordial; though not wanting in the technical respect and ceremony due to him as a gentleman of wealth and influence, he could perceive a half concealed suspense and misgiving, due unmistakably to his attitude as a recreant clergyman. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... silent; he was especially anxious not to say anything which might offend the burgomaster by openly differing from him; but his remarks encouraged others connected with certain persons, their relations or friends, recreant Hollanders, who had sided with the Spaniards and professed to have returned to the Faith of Rome. These men were familiarly called Glippers; their object was to induce their countrymen to follow their example. A few holding their opinions remained in the city, either kept ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... vindictive actress might take it into her head to suddenly appear, and publicly denounce him as her recreant lover, and thinking thus, is especially glad that he told Lady Ruth ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... anger from the tower. But he went right heavily, since he must leave behind his friend. In his train rode all those knights who had drawn together to that town for the great tournament. Not a knight of them all but plighted faith to follow where he led, and to hold himself recreant and shamed if he failed ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... Still, if the recreant lover had married another, would Aunt Jane have kept her treasure chest and her wedding gown? Ruth knew that she herself would not, but she understood that aunts were in a class by themselves. It was possible ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... his voice a roar. "Release my mother, depose Zuleyman, recall that fugitive recreant who cursed me, and humble myself to seek pardon at the hands of this insolent Italian cleric? May my bones rot, may I roast for ever in hell-fire if I show myself such a craven! And do you counsel it, Emigio—do you really counsel that?" He was in a ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the loftiest honor. To repay them with treachery and desertion was foreign to his nature and, drawing a long breath, he sprang to his feet with the conviction that he had chosen aright. A fair woman and the weak yearning of a loving heart should not make him a recreant to grave duties and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the moment she entered the room, "I am a wretch. It was I who compelled Medwin to promise me, upon his honor as a man, that he would not fight Allington; and now that all the world has frowned upon him, I, too, have turned recreant, and cast him off. Mother, speak to me no word of command or remonstrance. I will never see Mr. Allington again; and I will this very hour go to Medwin, and throw myself on my knees before him. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... condensed the case against Lois Montgomery, reducing it to its harshest terms for Phil's contemplation. It was in Phil's mind that she had nothing to do with those things; that the woman against whose cheek she had laid her own was not Thomas Kirkwood's recreant wife, but another and very different person. She did not know how to express this; it seemed preposterous to insist to her father that his former wife was not the same woman that she had held speech with ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... beautiful in England; it is a pile of ruins, like your faith! I wander round in your villages. Your tenants have gone the way of their lord. Roman Catholicism is a dying power. Hideous chapels have sprung up in all your districts! The true faith is neglected! And who is to blame for it all? Your recreant family. You, who should have been the most zealous upholders of religion, have drifted down the stream of fashion, nerveless and indifferent. Oh! it is heresy, rank heresy, to think of a De Vaux, such as you, dwelling indifferent amongst the mighty associations ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.) ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... no doubt dead long ago. As to this Chute, he seems to me perhaps to have been a kind of tool of the lover, who employed him probably to settle his forgery business, and also to take care of the unhappy woman whom he had ruined and deserted. He wrote these few letters to keep the recreant lover informed about her fate. In the midst of these there is the last despairing farewell of the unhappy creature herself. All these the conscience-stricken lover has carefully preserved. In addition to these, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... she answered firmly. "She has flown back to me in wild affright—the mere wreck of what she was, poor child! when I gave her into your keeping—and the inviolable sanctity of my house is around her. I much fear, Leon Dexter, that you have proved recreant to your trust—that you have not loved, protected, and cherished that delicate flower. The sweetness of ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... the baroness, firmly and decidedly—"never will I abandon my religion and prove recreant to my faith, to which my family and my tribe have faithfully adhered for thousands of years. The curse of my parents and ancestors would pursue the renegade daughter of our tribe and cling like a sinister night-bird to the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... marked the campaign of 1600 in Munster. On the other hand, O'Donnell had twice exercised his severe supremacy over southern Connaught, burning the Earl of Thomond's new town of Ennis, and sweeping the vales and plains of Clare, and of Clanrickarde, of the animal wealth of their recreant Earls, now actively enlisted against ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... conceded to him because he had more than once replaced the instructor in still-life there. But there remained a misgiving with some whether Cornelia was right in giving up her art for him; whether she were not recreant to the Synthesis in doing that; the doubt, freshly raised by her beauty, was not appeased till Charmian met it with the assertion that Cornelia was not going to give up her art at all, but after her marriage was coming back to study ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... indeed, that the Catholic Church spares no pains and stops at no sacrifice in order to induce mankind to embrace her faith. Otherwise she would be recreant to her sacred mission. But she scorns to exercise any undue influence in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... sir—they not doing no good now, sir—the negroes an't!"—and on she went abusing the apprentices, and denouncing abolition. No American white lady could speak more disparagingly of the niggers, than did this recreant descendant of the negro race. They did no work, they stole, were insolent, insubordinate, and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... It is needless to repeat that it is painted from Fielding's first wife, or to insist that, as Lady Mary was fully persuaded, "several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact." That famous scene where Amelia is spreading, for the recreant who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the historic little supper of hashed mutton which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, "while her Husband ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mis-government.... We remonstrated; we were derided.... We were goaded on to madness, and were compelled to show that we had the spirit of resistance to repel injuries, or to be deemed a captive, degraded and recreant people. We took up arms, not to attack others, but to defend ourselves."—Letter to Lord Durham from Dr. Wolfred Nelson and others, confined at Montreal, June ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... have declared to all the earth the power and tenderness of that Immaculate Heart, which pursues with importunity and tears those who fly from her Divine Son. Loving him, she cannot bear that those for whom he suffered should be recreant to their high destiny; but May could only commune with the unseen guardians of her soul, and through them declare her rapture, which ebbed and flowed in sweet numbers, like ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... officials so lost to self-respect as to accept appointments against the known and expressed wish of the people, and so craven and degraded as to need an army to protect them in their position, we feel that we should be recreant to every principle of self-respect, honor, integrity, and patriotism to bow tamely to such high-handed tyranny, a parallel for which is only found in the attempts of the British government, in its most corrupt stages, against the rights, liberties, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... might make discoveries you little dream of, dear cousin Jack. You speak of its being time to cease roving, of settling yourself at last, of never parting, and, prodigal as you are, of making Eve the future mistress of your fortune. Now to all this, recreant, confess, or I shall never again ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... every one of his friends—and who wasn't his friend?—to hail the owner and summon him to his work. He ran into "Rosemount," the big brick house where the handsome Miss Armstrongs lived, to make arrangements for a Choral Society practice, he drummed up a half-dozen recreant Sunday-school teachers within the space of two blocks, and he roared across the street to Doctor Archie Blair to be sure not to forget that thae bit bills for the Scotchmen's picnic maun be gotten oot that week. For Lawyer Ed belonged to every organisation of the town in church or ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... again, and sickened me with her unmeaning laughter. I remembered the object of my visit, and struggled for composure. Had I become a recreant so quickly? Had I not a word to say for my Master? Nothing to offer the needy creatures, perishing, perhaps, of spiritual want? Alarmed at my own apathy, and eager to throw it off, I turned to the poor girl, and spoke to her. I asked her many questions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... did not design to trespass upon the time of the Conference at this stage of the debate. But statements have been made upon this floor to-day which I cannot permit for a single hour to remain unanswered. I should be recreant to my conscience, and especially to my State, if I did not answer them ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... that the passive susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in good time, if you do not turn recreant," answered the fairy, with a significant smile. "But away, away, my prince. Mount and away. Follow the course of the river, and once more, never turn aside let what will be before you, remembering that nothing is impossible to courage, conduct, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... successful, I could feel that part of the creating power was mine; for had I not trusted him? Let a man realize that there is some one who has faith in him, and the battle is half won. Even suppose he were to prove the recreant and the impostor predicted, the world would not be able to jeer at me; I could hug my wretched secret, and none would be the wiser. Decidedly, I was to be envied in the acquisition of this new interest. It would be almost like having ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... shuddering to the awful mystery of being; strange and terrible words have been spoken—words never to be forgotten—"phenomenon," and "thing-in-itself"; not knowing what these words mean, you are ignorant and recreant to the truth; knowing what they mean, you tug no more at the veil. Also we have learned that time and change are our portion, "the plastic dance of circumstance"; we talk no more of immortality. We have turned our hopes to the ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Claribel withhold? Go tell him straight, Sir Knight, thou must resign The captive queen;—for Claribel is mine." Away he flies; and now for bloody deeds, Black suits of armour, masks, and foaming steeds; The giant falls; his recreant throat I seize, And from his corslet take the massy keys:- Dukes, lords, and knights, in long procession move, Released from bondage with my virgin love:- She comes! she comes! in all the charms of youth, Unequall'd ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,—Come!'" —BRET HARTE. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... intend to offer no evidence to show that the first wife,—for there was such a wife,—was living when the second marriage was contracted. We have no such evidence, and believe that none such can be found. Then that recreant nobleman, in whose breast there was no touch of nobility, in whose heart was no spark of mercy, made a second statement,—to this effect—that his first wife had not died at all. His reason for ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... the story quite honourable to both parties. It was for the sake of her rouge friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... worst, therefore, though allowing that, from disappointment or disgust, he might have been led to withdraw all personal participation in such a cause, in no case would he have shown himself a recreant to its principles; and though too proud to have ever descended, like Egalite, into the ranks of the people, he would have been far too consistent to pass, like Alfieri, into ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... would help her, if possible; would encourage her to love the helpless blind man, whose step was heard In the hall. He was coming to rejoin them, and instantly into Edith's eyes there flashed a startled, shrinking look, such as the recreant slave may be supposed to wear when he hears his master's step. Grace knew the feeling which prompted that look full well. She had felt it many a time, in an intensified degree, stealing over her at the coming of one whose snowy looks and gouty limbs had mingled ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... for one shake of Monsieur's fringed paws; her heart yearned after Aunt Ursel and Miss Mary; she longed after the chants of the choir; and when she thought of the effort poor Gerard Godfrey had made to see her, she felt him a hero, and herself a recreant heroine, who had well-nigh been betrayed into frivolity and desertion of him, and she registered secret resolutions ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in sore despite; "A murrain seize that traitrous knight, For that he lies!" he cried— "A base, unchristian paynim he, Else, by my beard, he would not be A recreant to his bride! ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... ourselves possess one of the most beautiful; so that the strange pleasure of property, that instinct which makes Lizzy delight in her broken doll, and May in the bare bone which she has pilfered from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfoundland, is added to the other charms of this enchanting scenery; a strange pleasure it is, when one so poor as I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by the poor, with the rich it may be less intense—too much diffused and spread out, becoming ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... imagine him seeing clearly what justice and humanity, the national law and the national welfare require him to do, and resolved to do it. I can imagine him patiently enduring not only the mad cry of party hate, the taunt of "recreant" and "traitor," of "renegade" and "coward," but what is harder to bear, the amazement, the doubt, the grief, the denunciation, of those as sincerely devoted as he to the common welfare. I can imagine him pushing firmly on, trusting the heart, the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... did not triumph was due first to their carelessness, and second to chance, in the person of Monsieur Harleston. He plays the game; and is violating no rule of diplomacy by his course in the affair. Indeed he would be recreant to his country's service were he to do otherwise. And France would infinitely prefer the United States to have the letter rather than Germany. It's unfortunate, but it's not as unfortunate as it ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... her behalf. It was as much injured by its charges in fitting out an armament against the Spaniards, during the time of the Armada, as by the fines and confiscations levied on it by Elizabeth for harbouring of priests, obstinate recusancy, and popish misdoings. A recreant of James's time was momentarily perverted from his religion by the arguments of that great theologian, and the fortunes of the family somewhat restored by his timely weakness. But the Earl of Camelot, of the reign ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as before, unmoved by all the exhortations of the priests and monks. Even when instigated by his tempters, the unhappy Doctor Augustine Cazalla urged him to be reconciled to the Church of Rome, he turned on him a look of sorrow and compassion, mingled with contempt, which at once silenced the recreant from the truth. Herezuelo's calmness seemed to excite the rage and all the evil passions of the priests and soldiers. They cursed and swore and reviled him in every possible way. "Ah! ah! in a short time, in spite of your bold looks, you will be in hell with your associate, ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... Barry! Thank you, Carus. And I may add that I have seen little of you since Friday; not that I had noticed your absence, but meeting you on your favorite promenade reminded me how recreant are men. Heigho! and alas! You may hand me to my chair before you leave me to go ogling Broad Street ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was—the dreaded moment. Deveny saw the men around him stiffen rigidly; he heard their slow-drawn breaths. The thought to draw his gun was strong in him, and he fought hard to force his recreant muscles to do the will of his mind. For an instant he stood, his right hand poised above the holster of his pistol, the elbow crooked, ready ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and dastard fear. Locks and bolts could not secure him from dismal apprehensions. A sound shook him, as the unseen wind makes the tall poplar shudder—a voice struck terror in his ear, and sickness to recreant heart. He could not be alone—for alarm was heightened by the speaking conscience that pronounced it just. He journeyed from place to place, his brother ever at his side, and the shadow of the avenger ever stalking in the rear, and impelling the weary wanderer still onward. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... evening wandering. But a bright gleam of sunshine darted through the trees—the stream foamed and leapt towards it—the waterfall sparkled beneath—the arrowy fern glittered like gold, and Netta's heart forgot her duty, and thought of her recreant lover. Her repentance must come in ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... his inability to escape when pursued so closely by numbers. On the contrary, all his energies were aroused in order to meet his expected fate, with a calmness that should do credit to his colour and his manhood; one equally removed from recreant alarm, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or complicated position ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the pretty superior smile of a young empress pardoning a recreant subject, and suffered him to draw her again, but with more gentleness, into his embrace. She put up her lips to meet his—I looked on like a man in a dream! I saw them cling together—each kiss they exchanged was a fresh stab to my ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... opinions, I should be unfaithful to my own convictions of duty, and recreant to the trust which has devolved on me as a citizen of the United States, and by inheritance from an ancestor who took a part in the deliberations of the Convention which framed our Constitution, and to whose public services, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... I rejoined. "Or possibly he has returned home. I no longer take account of his existence. Felix, I shall never leave my wife. I had rather prove recreant to the oath I took before I realized the worth of the woman whose happiness I vowed to destroy. This is what I have come to tell you. Make it easy for me, Felix. You are a man who has loved and suffered. Let us bury ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... fear that I am trespassing too far away from my sworn fealty to Northern opinions and feelings. I begin to fear that I may be tempted to be recreant to my inborn, inbred notions of liberty, while holding converse with you, for there is something extremely seductive to a Northerner in slavery; it is like the apple and the serpent to the woman; so that whoever goes to the South, or has anything to do with slave-holders, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... to his indignation; "fear ye to meet my eye? would that its lightnings could blast ye, perjured and recreant that ye are! ay, look upon the ground, which should have drank your heart's blood before it witnessed your disgrace; look not on me, whom you have betrayed—look not on the banner of your country, which you have stained by ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... calling puts in an occasional appearance. The recreant Sosia in Amph. 958 ff. mimics the dutiful slave. As. 259 ff. contains an ironical treatment of augury, while in 751 ff. the poet has his satirical fling ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... saddler. There were seven children in the family, and never a servant crossed the threshold. One daughter survived Immanuel, and in her eighty-fourth year she expressed regrets that her brother had proved so recreant to the teachings of his parents as practically to alienate him from all his relatives. One brother became a Lutheran minister and lived out an honored career; the others vanish and fade away into the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... grooms impelled the coursers on,— A fearful ending for Ganelon. His every nerve was stretched and torn, And the limbs of his body apart were borne; The bright blood, springing from every vein, Left on the herbage green its stain. He dies a felon and recreant: Never shall traitor ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the light boat was at the foot of the accommodation-ladder. Ghita now descended; and as soon as her uncle and she were seated, the skiff, for it was little more, whirled away from the ship's side, though two or three more, who had also been left by recreant boatmen for better fares, called out to him ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... woman does not want a right is not a justifiable reason for refusing it to another who does, yet it must not be forgotten that the enfranchisement of women confers not only a privilege but a grave burden and responsibility. We condemn the man who neglects to vote as recreant to his duty. If women are enfranchised, the right conferred becomes an obligation as imperious to them as to men; on those opposed as on those who favor the act. I think the women of Dakota should have a voice in determining whether ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a little gentleman of timorous and yielding nature, and rather overborne by a large and powerful feminine majority in his own household. Mr. Larkin was, it is to be regretted, the worst of the recreant party, being younger and more unmanageable, having not only introduced to public notice certain insignificant though somewhat talented persons in the shape of young men and women who talked well, or sang well, or wielded lively pens, but had ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... satisfactory; but then night-school day came again, and Bill felt that he was in a worse position than ever. He had played truant once with success; but he was aware that it would not do a second time. Bully Tom was spiteful, and Master Arthur might come to "look up" his recreant pupil, and then ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... endure it. I renounce This recreant monarch who forsakes himself. My valiant heart doth bleed, and I could rain Hot tear-drops from mine eyes, that robber-swords Partition thus the royal realm of France; That cities, ancient as the monarchy, Deliver to the foe the rusty keys, While here in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a prey Of all those energies that lift the soul To her congenial climes above the pole I know the various pangs that rend the heart; I know that noblest souls receive the dart Without defence, when Reason drops the shield And, recreant, to her foe resigns the field.— I saw the archer in his airy flight, I saw him when he check'd his arrow's flight: And when it reach'd the mark, I watched the god, And saw him win his way by force or fraud, As best befits his ends. His whirling throne Turns short at will, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Landry, the recreant, the apostate, the only seceder of our family from the just cause, who speaks thus?" said the old woman lifting her head with a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... virus "took" the child was declared immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus did not take the schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his hands of the recreant. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... country. Not only that, but we believe that we can now, in some sort of way, demonstrate the manufacture, because the country has obviously departed in many respects from the model which you claim to have set. Not only that, but it seems to me that you yourselves are becoming a little recreant to the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Isaac that he cheered him with such kind words. "To Mine enemy," He reproached him, "thou sayest, 'What shall I do for thee, my son?'" Isaac replied, "O that he might find grace with Thee!" God: "He is a recreant." Isaac: "Doth he not act righteously when he honors his parents?" God: "In the land of uprightness will he deal wrongfully, he will stretch his hand forth in days to come against the Temple." Isaac: ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... morn a Peri at the gate Of Eden stood, disconsolate; And as she listened to the Springs Of Life within, like music flowing, And caught the light upon her wings 5 Through the half-open portal glowing, She wept to think her recreant race Should e'er have lost that glorious place! "How happy," exclaimed this child of air, "Are the holy spirits who wander there, 10 'Mid flowers that never shall fade or fall; Though mine are the gardens of earth and sea, And the stars themselves have flowers for me, One ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... a commotion, as the ladies flocked with the children into the hall, with many exclamations of astonishment and reproach, surrounding the recreant young men. Mr. Errol, the Captain, the veteran, and even Mr. Perrowne, came to learn what was the matter. When they heard the intentions of the pair, Mr. Thomas and the parson were prepared to make ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... danced with her three successive evenings, leaving Kitty to freeze her feet in the one instance and fold her hands in the other, she just had a "good cry," gave her mother an extra kiss, and waited till the recreant Tom returned to his allegiance, finding his little friend a sweetheart in nature ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... turn, good Ximen?" said the Jew, shaking his head; "thou knowest well what my words drive at. Thy master is the pretended Almamen; and that recreant Israelite (if Israelite, indeed, still be one who hath forsaken the customs and the forms of his forefathers) is he who hath stirred up the Jews of Cordova and Guadix, and whose folly hath brought upon us these dread things. Holy Abraham! this ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... afraid it is the captain who is keeping them. It has become almost a mania with me, and every morning, the first thing when I wake, I go for my before-breakfast walk along the marble terrace that overlooks the sea, and scan the empty rounding for the recreant ship. I do not want to think so badly of human nature, as I must if the Little Sally never comes back, and I am sure you will not blame me if I should like her to bring me some word from you. I know that if she ever reached Boston you ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... throw off the yoke of the stranger. The huge embattled piles which flung their dark shadows over the streets of Florence tell of the ceaseless war between baronage and people. The famous penalty by which some of the democratic communes condemned a recreant cobbler or tinker to "descend" as his worst punishment "into the order of the noblesse," tells of the hate and issue of the struggle between them. But no trace of struggle or of hate breaks the annals of Venice. There ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... and Germans alike to horse. Through all the host the barons speedily arm themselves and mount. But the Saxon knight, all armed, his visor laced, has continued to pursue Cliges at a gallop. Cliges, who never wished to have aught in common with a recreant or coward, sees him come alone. First of all the knight has assailed him with words: he stoutly calls him baseborn fellow, for he could not conceal the mind he had of him. "Fellow," quoth he, "here wilt thou leave the forfeit ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... of being an inexcusable recreant where duty was concerned; she was understanding in better fashion the men and the manners of the north country and she realized the full force of the reasons for his flight and why the situation had overwhelmed ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... sweet viciousness of that "I wish it had rained!" I wonder if that man beats his wife, or if he just converses with her as he does with a recreant ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... that care for the poor Indians is the argument given for the course to be pursued in dealing with a recreant member! They had come to preach the Gospel to the Indians, and did not propose that evil should be learned through fault ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... "Seize this recreant priest!" he cried. "He is a backslider. He has gone back to his people. He is become a Jew again—he shall ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... which, without inconsistency, he cannot fail to offer? As prosecuting attorney for the Darringtons he would be recreant to his client, if he consented ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for revenging her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and courteous, but I felt that my face was darkening—her very presence forced forward things I had been keeping in the far background of my mind, "How can I be of service to ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... "practical." She arose each morning, like Solomon's ideal wife, while it was yet dark, and proceeded to set her house in order. She made the children go to bed when they were not sleepy and get up when they were. There was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... bridal feast, and appeared in red morocco shoes and a cap whose ruffles were the astonishment of the entire assembly. Mary Madeline's squealing baby detained her at home, and perhaps, also, she did not care to see her former lover, recreant and unfaithful though he had been to her, take the solemn vow of eternal ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... mud-walled fortress-palace by the Shannon, and with "all their people and all their chattels" went deep into the forests of Cratloe and the rocky fastnesses of the County Clare; and there they lived the life of robber chieftains, harassing and plundering the Danes of Limerick and their recreant Irish allies, and guarding against frequent surprise and attack. But so hazardous and unsettled a life was terribly exhausting, and "at length each party of them became tired of the other," and finally King Mahon made peace with ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... pallors, lavender, and pink, and creamy white. A group of girlish shapes in these colors, seen newly lighted at a doorway from a passing carriage, gave as they pressed eagerly forward a supreme effect of that sentiment in English dress which I hope I am not recreant in liking. Occasionally, also, there was a scarf, lightly escaping, lightly caught, which, with an endearing sash, renewed for a fleeting moment a bygone age of Sensibility, as we find it recorded in many a graceful page, on ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... wise and guileless sway Win every recreant today, And sorrow's vast and holy wave Blend all our hearts around his grave! Let the faithful bondmen's tears, Let the traitor's craven fears, And the people's grief and pride, Plead against the parricide! Let us throng to pledge and pray O'er ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... Lord's Day. "The hour of attack approaches." And it is a singular consideration what I risk; I may yet be the subject of a tract, and a good tract too—such as one which I remember reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy who was a very good boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one day kipped from it, and went and actually bathed, and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parade at the "assembly of the details," not so much to watch the work of the post adjutant pro tempore, as the effect of the sudden and unlooked for change on certain of the customary spectators. He had swiftly ridden to the camp of the recreant Stabber and purposely demanded speech with that influential chieftain. There had been the usual attempt on part of the old men left in charge to hoodwink and to temporize, but when sharply told that Stabber, with his warriors, had been seen riding away toward Eagle Butte ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... to take Troy without the arrows of Philoctetes, which are also emblems of the all-conquering rays of the sun. The recovery of the stolen treasure is like Menelaus's recovery of Helen, and it apparently brings as little happiness to Sigurd as his recreant wife did to the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... yourselves a couple of recreant knights: Sir Timorous is mine: I have won him in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... but a strong heart, and when she saw that Amy Holbrook was preferred, with steady hand and unflinching nerve, she wrote to her recreant lover that he was free. And now Amy, to whom the false knight turned, took it into her capricious head that she would not marry a farmer—she had always fancied a physician; and if young B—— would win her, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... States, the great aim and object of which was the conquest, and incorporation with her own extensive territories, of provinces on which she had long cast an eye of political jealousy, and now assailed at a moment when England (fighting the battles of the, even to this moment, recreant and unredeemed Peninsula,) could ill spare a solitary regiment to the rescue of her threatened, and but ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... power which wrong cannot provoke unchastised. Grant that we lose; a loss can be made gain by a king's brave death. Why should not our example rouse and unite all who survive us? Which the nobler example—the one best fitted to protect our country—the recreant backs of living chiefs, or the glorious dead with their fronts to the foe? Come what may, life or death, at least we will thin the Norman numbers, and heap the barriers of our corpses on the Norman march. At least, we can show to the rest of England how men should defend their native land! ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... door, called him with an imperative voice, and brought the recreant back to his duty of calling. Then she turned to the two girls, and said calmly, ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... The ancestral crime. When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed And the Fury burns with wrathful fires, A demon unholy, with ire unabated, Lies like black night on the halls of the fated; And the recreant Son plunges guiltily on To perfect the guilt ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... of horse and rider, in the lightning-like moment of passing. Obstructions were piled on the track for the "long jumps," and in one of the wildest leaps a good rider was unhorsed and rolled on the ground while his recreant steed that had balked at the last moment scampered around and around the arena in a wild effort to find the door beneath the tiers of seats to escape so fierce a competition. This accident reduced the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... outburst was a mild prelude to what poured forth now. She would not stay there until morning when the next train left. She demanded a special train; she ordered a handcar with which to overtake the recreant train; she called for a taxi to chase across to Williams with her, a mere eighty miles of ten-foot snowdrifts. Only shortage of breath occasioned by altitude and outraged sensibilities prevented her commandeering an airplane! None of these vehicles being forthcoming, she would stop in Washington ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... is preparing to free Italy; let England, as her part in the generous rivalry, free Poland. Russia is still England's enemy. This is England's opportunity. And he seems to have persuaded himself that, if she did not avail herself of it, she would be a recreant to the cause of liberty and humanity. It is ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... receding form of the mercenary, as the sun, now setting, shone slant upon his glittering casque, and said bitterly to himself—"Unfortunate city, fountain of all mighty memories—fallen queen of a thousand nations—how art thou decrowned and spoiled by thy recreant and apostate children! Thy nobles divided against themselves—thy people cursing thy nobles—thy priests, who should sow peace, planting discord—the father of thy church deserting thy stately walls, his home a refuge, his mitre a fief, his court a Gallic ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... there before him, looking like an angry queen about to condemn a recreant vassal to death. And Esterhazy, with the mien and gait of a culprit, carne into her presence with a bow that was almost ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... starting, "has that recreant youth dared to pollute the threshold of St. Ruth with his footstep? but you dream, Kit; there would be too much hardihood ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Lysander, speake againe; Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Speake in some bush: Where dost thou hide thy head? Rob. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, And wilt not come? Come recreant, come thou childe, Ile whip thee with a rod. He is defil'd That drawes a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... men at his back to slay the inmates and capture the fortress, is the saddest and most tragic of all. We saw high up in the wall, frowning over the river, the window of the chamber from which she had thrown herself after slaying her recreant lover in her rage and despair. A weird story it is, but if the luckless maiden still haunts the scene of her blighted love, an observant sojourner who fitly writes of Ludlow in poetic phrase never ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... own, And let the loud fierce knaves thy brethren quelled Ward off the wolves whose hides should line thy throne, Wert thou no coward, no recreant to the bone, No liar in spirit and soul and heartless heart, No slave, no traitor—nought of all thou art. A thing like thee, made big with braggart breath, Whose tongue shoots fire, whose promise poisons trust, Would cast a shieldless soldier forth to death And wreck three realms to ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... now Dead Shot's widow fully b'ars out that philos'pher who announces so plumb cold, that a-way, that women's the sublimation of the onexpected. Jack Moore's jest beginnin' to manoover that recreant public servant into p'sition on the widow's left hand, so's he can be married to the best advantage, an' the preacher sharp's gettin' out an' openin' his book of rooles, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... lov'd Spring surveys Passing, with volant step, o'er russet plains; Sees her to Summer's fierce embraces speed, Pale, and unrobed.—Faithless! thou well may'st hide Close in his sultry breast thy recreant head, That did'st, neglecting thy distinguish'd Isle, In Winter's icy arms so long abide, While Britain ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... doctrine?.... Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the portraits in the Hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American— the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... to the laws of the Union, and not the other? Why, sir, if the people of Pennsylvania could sustain a distinction so odious, the very shades of their ancestors would rise from the battlefields of the Revolution, from Paoli and Germantown, and call their children bondmen of Carolina, vassals and recreant slaves! I speak not now of the whiskey insurrection, when, at the order of Washington, the militia of Virginia and of other States moved against the people of Western Pennsylvania, under the command of the Governor of Virginia and Carolina, and the nation approved the deed; but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Rielle,'" she exclaimed, "you think you are entitled to pursue a recreant sheep of the flock even over here! Oh! it is not on account of the storm—I know that—that you follow me! I have seen this coming for some time, and I ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... meaning of her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down the street: ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... my way aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism," was my private comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that I found those I sought standing almost ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... know that in the latter days you will fall off from God, and you will kindle the wrath of Levi, and rise in rebellion against Judah, but you will not accomplish aught against them, for the angel of the Lord is their guide, and Israel will perish through them. And if you turn recreant to the Lord, you will execute every kind of evil thing, and do the abominations of the heathen, committing unchastity with the wives of the godless, while the tempter spirits are at work among you. Therefore you will be carried away into captivity, and in the lands of exile ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the prison; and these men were shot to death, even while under the governor's plighted pledge of protection. Hyrum fell first; and Joseph, appearing at one of the windows in the second story, received the leaden missiles of the besieging mob, which was led by a recreant though professed minister of the gospel. But the brutish passion of the mob was not yet sated; propping the body against a well-curb in the jail-yard, the murderers poured a volley of bullets into the corpse, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... way, it—it is just the reverse." (Shame! No! Wretch!) He vainly strives to rally under the fire of imprecation, but it is too late. The groomsmen are denouncing him, as he deserves to be, as a slanderer and recreant. Mr. Ferris and Mr. Waring spring to their feet to implore the assembly to reject any and all such statements as the emanations of an embittered, oft-rejected, and "subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man;" and poor Blake, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... In fact it presented the further theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his broker sent him that large check for his winnings ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... religion. Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a title to favor, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians, who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with them some errors and some superfluities, is rather more than any man, who has not become recreant and apostate from his baptism, will, I believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given from a spirit of controversy to that negative religion may by degrees encourage light and unthinking people to a total indifference to everything positive in matters of doctrine, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was lost by a majority of three, recreant Liberals again helping to defeat the just claim of a man whom they disliked; and Bradlaugh did not take his seat until the new Parliament in 1886 admitted, without a division, the right which the old Parliament had denied. Meanwhile, a few of us, actuated by the desperate hope of bringing ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... truth, beausire; and in all this do I see the malice and device of this false Atheling, the friend of your rebellious brother, Duke Robert, as you do know him to be; and I do brand him here, in this presence, as traitor and recreant to ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks |
