"Shimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I turned—I don't know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from a light shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the prevailing lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths— through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver. There was ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... head, and started to rise, but his shield was failing. Suddenly, he became aware of the overheating generator pack. Something was decidedly wrong. He reached for his own hand weapon, still searching for his attacker. At last, he noticed a slight shimmer, dead ahead. He ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... walked a long way out of the Edgware Road, and stopped for tea at the Welsh Harp, on the banks of the Brent Reservoir, I found, beyond the modern frontage of this inn, an old garden adorned with sham ruins and statues, and full of autumn flowers and the shimmer of clear water. Sitting there and drinking my tea—alone as I thought at first, in the twilight—I became aware that the garden had another occupant; that at another table, not far from me, a vague and not very prosperous-looking woman in a shabby bonnet was ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... on the way was that in the noontide halt, just as the shimmer of the Lake of Galilee met their eyes, under a huge terebinth-tree, growing on a rock, when all, except Sigbert, had composed themselves to a siesta, there was a sudden sound of loud and angry altercation, and, as the sleepers started up, the Emir was seen grasping ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but for her bright face and clear, innocent blue eyes, he would scarcely have known, so complete was the transformation. For a moment Neil felt as if he preferred the old linen, with its puffed sleeves and antiquated appearance, to the shimmer of the fawn-colored satin, with its facings of delicate blue, and the flush of the solitaires; but, as he watched her moving about the elegant rooms and discharging her duties as hostess just as kindly and thoughtfully as she had done at Stoneleigh, where the china was cracked and the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... language of Holy Writ, "there was no more spirit in her;" and she said: "Behold, the half was not told me; thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard." Both without and within, the spirit of beauty dominates the Mother Church, from its mosaic flooring to the soft shimmer of its starlit dome. ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... few women up or down the river was living that June at the Custer Trail. She was Margaret Roberts, the wife of the Eatons' foreman, a jovial, garrulous woman, still under thirty, with hair that curled attractively and had a shimmer of gold in it. She was utterly fearless, and was bringing up numerous children, all girls, with a cool disregard of wild animals and wilder men, which, it was rumored shocked her relatives "back East." She had ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Now, in the shimmer and sheen that dance on the leaf of the lily, Causing the bud to explode, and gilding the poodle's chinchilla, Gladys cavorts with the rake, and hitches the string to the lattice, While with the trowel she digs, and gladdens the heart ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... turned on his horse and gazed on the huge bulk of Schloss Hochstaden, and there a wonderful sight met his eye. The walls bristled with armed men, the sun glistening on their polished breastplates like the shimmer of summer lightning. The Archbishop turned toward the gate again, as though the sight he beheld brought ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... ancestry is upon the boy. The periodic migration for game or with the herds, the free range of wood and stream, or the excitement of the chase pulsates in his blood. Voices of the far past call to something native in him. The shimmer of the water just as they of old saw it, the joyous chance of taking game from its unseen depths, or of getting the full flush of bodily sensation by plunging into it, the unbridled pursuit of one's own sweet will under the free air of heaven—these ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... words in a tone of perfect respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that separate servitor and employer. He caught the shimmer of a wink upon Harry's eye, and he had ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... a splendour that transfigured the eternally white mountain-crest to a mighty shimmer of rose and gold, he turned at last and looked down at the white face pillowed upon his arm. The eyes were closed. The ineffable peace of Death seemed to dwell upon the quiet features. She had lain so for a long time, and he ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the bush was quiet as the grave. The man who rode my pony would find him a slow traveller, and I pitied the poor beast bucketed along by an angry rider. Gradually a hazy wall of purple began to shimmer before me, apparently very far off. I knew the ramparts of the Rooirand, and let my Schimmel feel my knees in his ribs. Within an hour I should be ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... transformed the terraces and gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his reassurances without question—she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am so happy," she murmured, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... to the wonderful Yo Semite Valley,—itself a stupendous miracle of nature, with its Dome, its Capitan, its walls of three thousand feet of perpendicular height,—but a valley of streams, of waterfalls from the torrent to the mere shimmer of a bridal veil, only enough to reflect a rainbow, with their plunges of twenty-five hundred feet, or their smaller falls of eight hundred, with nothing at the base but thick mists, which form and trickle, and then run and at last plunge into the blue Merced that flows through the centre ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... said, "that which I never saw before—a vast white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting blue. And now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It was but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire nothing more on earth than ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... so, unquestionably many would follow his example. But the urbanite has taught himself to doze upright. You may see many of us, standing dreamily before Chestnut Street show windows in the lunch hour, to all intents and purposes in a state of slumber. Yesterday, in that lucid shimmer of warmth and light, a group stood in front of a doughnut window near Ninth Street: not one of them was more than half awake. Similarly a gathering watched the three small birds who have become a traditional window ornament on Chestnut Street (they have recently moved from an oculist to a correspondence ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... jays, the milky call of the cuckoos in the spring, and the boom of the bittern from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of watching hollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow shimmer of their ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... side there would not be heard, on such nights, the slightest sound to break the quiet, unless that of little fish jumping playfully in the violet light, and sending out great circles to shimmer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tray on the counter. It was packed with more gold watches, adding to the extraordinary glitter and shimmer of the shop. He chose a small watch from ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the darkness broken, In the dawn of things to be. Power crowned— Earth around Like a sun-song rolled the sound. Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending— Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending Speech to thought. But lo! quick blending, All things speak! They sound and shimmer, Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer, Tint and tone combining, nearer, Meet as one-with all their thinking In one beauty, higher, clearer,— Heaven itself ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... waters, The high still stars and the lonely moon in her quarters, I fly to the city, the streets, the faces, the towers; And I leave behind me the hush and the dews and the flowers, The mink that steals by the stream a-shimmer among the rocks, The hawk o'er the barn-yard sailing, the little cub-bear and the fox, The woodchuck and his burrow, and the little snake at noon, And the house of the yellow-jacket, and ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... dwelling of the Home Farm in a flat space beyond the creek. It was the house of dull red brick, broad, low, square fronted, with many windows, the house in a green setting to which they had gone so many years before. Heat waves made it shimmer. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... memories of her life had arisen from those days, while she painted his portrait. Beth realized this now—days of strange achievement under his eyes—errant glimpses of life's inner beauty—moments in which she had felt the power to paint even that delicate and fleeting shimmer of sunlight about a humming-bird's wing, so intense was her vision—their talks, and the ride—well she knew that these would be the lights of her flagging eyes—treasures of the old Beth, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... lace curtains at the window. They caught the dainty silhouette of the young girl, playing with the loose tendrils of her hair around her forehead, and outlining with a thin band of light the contour of neck and shoulder, making the satin of her gown shimmer ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... such incidents before they reached the village where they were to sleep that night; and Weaver lay awake in his downy bed, staring at the faint shimmer of reflected starlight on the carved roof-beams, and meditating soberly on the unexpected, the appalling magnitude of the task he ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... turned and scooped and varnished and packed them. Think of the airy streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and the corner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juice bottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, and smoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolness wearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses. That's the kind of town we like to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... quality of thickening a few yards from its source, and it was this that produced the effect of misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the seven columns of rays streaming down from the crystalline globes high above us waned steadily; the glow within the chamber lost its prismatic shimmer and became an even grey tone somewhat like moonlight in a ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... light grew and grew, and slowly from the ground rose a frost-covered woman, her glittering icy hair flowing to her waist, the blue light about her causing her garments of frost to glance and shimmer and radiate sparkles ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... spirits as in apparel. Anything but high spirits and nonsense would be unpardonable on such a morning. Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning, in sight of the mountains, the green islands, the fringe of breaking sea in the distant opening, the shimmer and sparkle of the harbor, the white sails of pleasure-boats, the painted canoes, the schooners and coal-boats and steamers swinging at anchor just enough to make all the scene alive. "This is my idea," said the Major, "of going to sea in a yacht; it would be perfect if we were ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... watched the rising smoke, it became thicker and thicker, and filled the whole Temple. His eyes gazed from the Altar to the glittering gold curtains behind it. The reflection from the coals, and the playing of the blue and purple smoke on the golden sheets, caused them to sheen and shimmer until they faded entirely away into the blue and purple maze ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... a tiny star which shone as on immeasurable heights to show where life was. As she travelled deeper and deeper, it was a wonder to see how far that little ray penetrated down and down through gulfs of darkness, blue and cold like the shimmer of a diamond, and even when it could be seen no more, sent yet a shadowy refraction, a line of something less black than the darkness, a lightening amid the gloom, a something indefinable which was hope. The rocks ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... his mournful cry across the tree-tops, and was answered. Frogs added the booming of their tireless throats. A young moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue -gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint folklore ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the 'fifties rose up in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... without crystal, your palm or any astrological charts. See, I am always the fortune-teller. Listen." Her voice sank into deep, rich tones. "On your throne in Eldorado, with Cinderella beside you in her gold crown, there will come a day, an hour, when in the twinkling of an eye, all the shimmer, the shine, the purple and gold, the pomp and pride will grow dim before your eyes, and fade quite away, and you will see instead the long, brown path with the pines on either side marching up the hillside, on and on, up and up, and beyond them the snowy tips of the ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... resting his arm on the mantel, dropped his forehead upon it and stood so, the wonderful glowing colors of the painting seeming to shimmer on his bronze hair. At last, at the sound of Jonas's footstep in the hall, he lifted his head, turned off the light above the painting, crossed to his desk and, dropping the still unopened envelope into a secret drawer, locked it and put ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sleeve of his baize jacket, where by chance it had strayed and caught—for the fair owner liked to visit the greenhouse— and hold it admiringly and enthusiastically up in the morning sunlight, and I remember the golden shimmer it had in it, for he called my attention to it. A French writer's words seem to meet its description better than my own: "Non pas rouges—Mais blonde avec des reflets dors, on delicatement se jouait la lumire ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... scenery of the moor as I did that morning. For many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was shining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the tors, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... flowers. There was a strange simplicity, too, about her dress—a plain, tight-fitting, tight-sleeved dress of unrelieved black, her only adornment being some bands of big blue beads worn loosely round the neck. The black figure, in this shimmer of rose-pink and gold and flowers, was effective enough; but even the finest of pictures or the finest of statues has not the subtle attraction of a graceful carriage. Macleod had never seen any woman walk as this woman walked, in so stately and yet ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... haze hangs over the mouth of the estuary, and through the shimmer of the heat off the marsh, can be seen the silver windings of the Cull as it makes its way out to sea, and snow-white flocks of geese, and here and there the gleaming sail of a pleasure-boat. But in autumn, as Westray ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... time and efforts being in great measure taken up with an industrially unproductive rehearsal of the meritorious characteristics and exploits of the divinity; while the background of the presentation is filled with the shimmer of the precious metals and of the more expensive varieties of precious stones. It is only in the crasser expressions of devout fancy that this intrusion of pecuniary canons into the devout ideals reaches ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... beyond that elaborately carved entrance was, in contrast, severe. Rust walls were bare of any pattern save an oval disk of cloudy golden shimmer behind the chair at the long table of solid ruby rock from Nahuatl's poisonous sister planet of Xipe. Without a pause he walked to the chair and seated himself without invitation to ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... than a tiny village or solitary farm, is, to the dreamer and poet, sufficiently entrancing in itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century, spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green leaves,—between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin" sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy star-wort and wild strawberry,—the hedges lean close ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... showers fall steadily, the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday's lilies encumber the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping house-roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape of last night, as though an envious man had taken a water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a sponge. We go out a-walking in the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and powdered they shimmer and rustle and stream Westward, the night moths, masks of the Magdalen! See, Puck of the revels, he leaps through the sinister dream Waving his elfin evangel of Mystery, Puck of the bubble or dome of their scoffing or trust, Puck of the fairy-like tower with the clock ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of yellow panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate meshes ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... not mean so much in the fit of it, as in the complete suitableness of it and her. Her head was bent down over a book, and I could not see her face at first—only her hair, which was neither light nor dark, but had a kind of golden shimmer. Her hat lay beside her on the seat. Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of "Annas!" and then she stood up, and I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... West End tailor. His patent-leather boots were dandiacally diminutive; his glove fitted like that of a lady who lives but to be bien gantee. The feathery hair, which at Whitelaw he was wont to pat and smooth, still had its golden shimmer, and on his face no growth ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... through this golden weather, Where leaves have littered every forest way, If there be lovers, they should be together: For this is golden ... but the end is grey. Beyond this shimmer where the bright leaves fall, Behind this haze of silver shot with gold, There is a greyness waiting for it all,— A little longer ... and the ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... in the maddening perfume of her glorious hair, so perilously near his own face. The shimmer of her shoulders, the adorable curves of that enticing scarlet mouth murmuring so near his own, and yet so far away, in this soul-racking game of make-believe, stirred his blood as nothing else had done in ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... place which was to be his journey's end. In those moments—with the waters of the Bay beneath him, and beyond the beautiful view of the distant islands like shapeless sea monsters guarding the approach, with the mountains capped by Vesuvius, and the towns gleaming white under the shimmer of the lazy smoke wreaths—he felt the reality of life. But it was not his own life spent in a vain chase after glory, a struggle for something he could not have defined, now that he knew it was to end in nothing; no, it was the power of a life such as was designed ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... and his little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and trusting as a soldier should to the Deus ex machina who finally allows discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who had said, "In three days I will ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass. Behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills. The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on the flanks rode the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pine-wood it bore sharply to the left, and, clambering round an immense shoulder of rock, it emerged upon a long and comparatively level ridge of land that rolled in gentle undulations down into a wide park-like valley set out with clumps of birch and poplar, with here and there the shimmer of a lake showing between the yellow and brown of ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... reach, the trees were climbing. The sides were not all so steep as the one on which the house stood, but they were all rocky and steep, with here and there slopes of green grass. And down in the bottom, in the centre of the hollow, lay a pool of water. I knew it only by its slaty shimmer through the fading green of the tree-tops ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... sky—in an air of pure ether, set in films of silver grays in which shimmer millions of tones, delicate as the shadings of a pearl, towers the Acropolis, its crest fringed by the ruins of the greatest ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... four corners in half transparent tapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light shines upon a stage of fresh and fragrant flowers, up-bearing a long, high coffin. White lace of pure silver pendant from the border throws a mild shimmer upon the solid silver tracery hinges and emblazonings. A cross of lilies stands at the head, an anchor of roses at the foot. The lid is drawn back to show the face and bosom, and on the coffin top ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... hill-top, the sun shining on her face. In her hand was the lilac sunbonnet, making a splash of faint pure colour against the blonde whiteness of her dress. Ralph could just catch the golden shimmer of her hair. He knew but he could not see how it crisped and tendrilled about her brow, and how the light wind blew it into little cirrus wisps of sun-flossed gold. The thought that for long he should see it no more was even harder than parting. It is the hard things on this earth that are the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the gong; from where Olive sat she could see all the entrances and exits—as in a glass darkly—in the clouded surface of a mirror that hung on the wall and reflected the white gleam of shirt fronts, the shimmer of silks, and she was quick to note that Filippo was interested in what she saw as ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the mission of a good cigar. The pleasantness of the wide, cool piazza, with its flowers and vines and gay awnings; the charm of the summer morning, not yet dulled by wear and tear of the day; the steady, deliberate dash of the waves on the beach below; the play and shimmer of the big, quiet water, stretching out to the edge of the world; all this filled their minds, rested their souls. There was no need for words. The Bishop sighed comfortably as he pushed his great shoulders back against ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the hazy shimmer of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... one is haunted by the suggestion of artistic intention, so happy is the composition of this extraordinary picture. The foreground is the dark, tremendous gulf of Merced Canyon, relieved by the silver shimmer of Vernal and Nevada Falls. From this in middle distance rises, in the centre of the canvas, the looming tremendous personality of Half Dome, here seen in profile strongly suggesting a monk with outstretched ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... But all his preparations had not taken into account this newest emergency. He had not steeled himself to watch unmoved the gliding away of a treasure-satchel, apparently moving of its own will; nor the shimmer of two greenish sparks in the air just above it. And, for an instant, the man had to battle against a craven ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... day endeth, As the cool of night descendeth His last strength thy lover spendeth in returning to thy breast, Where beneath the Babul nightly, While the planets shimmer whitely, And the fire-flies glimmer brightly, thou shalt give him ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... us where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... shimmer of the rainbow, which unites earth to heaven?" So has there been a bridge built between this world and the next. Through the night of the grave we gaze upwards beyond the stars to the end of all things. Then we glance at the pearl of Sorrow, in which are concealed the wings which ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... beams, while closer at hand broad, irregular wastes of blackness sailed over the dry plateau as the clouds that caused them drifted across the dazzling face. Harsh and unlovely as were the surroundings by day, they lost something of their asperity under the softening shimmer of that mystic light. Far down by the stables she could hear the ringing watch-call of the sentries proclaiming half-past twelve o'clock and all well, and then—and then as a cloud floated away and the bright ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, through which they sailed into the pleasant land where summer reigned supreme. To Sylvia it seemed as if the inhabitants of these ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... into the court-yard. Inside he paused. In the main building many lights were burning. There came a rattle of wheels behind him, and he shifted to let a carriage pass. Through the window of the brougham he could see the shimmer of satin, lace, and soft white fur, and he had an instant's glance of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pans of golden cream, Set in a silver shining row, Swam in my eyes like the shimmer and sheen Of arms and banners, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... air in his sharp, whistling flight. The last white shimmer of daylight faded from the surface of the lake. The lovers floated on, gently, joyously, into their ocean ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... signalized by the performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his companions' revels in which he would sometimes indulge with the maddest debauchery as if to kill his own thoughts, he would escape to wander in the majestic ruins of the Coliseum and see the magic Italian moonlight shimmer through its broken arches, or stroll on the lonely Campagna till his clothes were drenched with dew. No fear of the deadly Roman malaria could check his restless excursions, for, like a fiery horse, he was irritated to madness by the inaction of his life. To him the dolce far niente ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... gain the freedom of a Singing Prisoner, and enable a Scheherazade to postpone from night to night her hour of death, are one and all pervaded by the same eternal magic. Pain, grief, terror, care, and bondage are all forgotten for a time when lakes of gems and enchanted waterfalls shimmer in the sunlight, when Rakshas's palaces rise, full-built, before our very eyes, or when Caballero's Knights of the Fish prance away on their magic chargers. "I wonder when!" "I wonder how!" "I wonder where!" we say as we follow them into the land of mystery. So Youngling ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... she had ever been in their house. He could see her plainly now—she stood clasping white gloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the uneven flooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, a shimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young in the group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to the thin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... noon-day the earth seemed to shimmer and swim in a radiance of its own; at evening the sun set in a glory incomparable; and at dawn it returned to its own. Then in the long breathless hours the cows sought out the scanty shadow of the canyon wall, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... silence as the great globe slipped into the sea—down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceased to shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till the first mate held his hand up to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... lazily in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great promise to ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... river there was a flash of something white amidst the pale green shimmer of the flood. Ida rose, but her companion beckoned her ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Bedouin owners, who had just arrived from the interior, bringing native goods, with dried fruits, to market, forming an assembly such as can only be found on the borders of the desert, and which, indeed, would be utterly out of place except beneath the glow and shimmer ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... to go a shimmer of brown hair streaked with gold struck upon his vision from just within the door. He paused, as if in response to a military command, while a pair of gray eyes met his with a flash. The cabin room was ill lighted; ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Hawthorne's things, it contains a great many light threads of symbolism, which shimmer in the texture of the tale, but which are apt to break and remain in our fingers if we attempt to handle them. These things are part of Hawthorne's very manner—almost, as one might say, of his vocabulary; they ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... bright relief from a background of mossy tree-trunks and rocks. After an hour's walking, made laborious by the spongy character of the ground,—a mixture of loose soil and decaying vegetation, in which one sank knee-deep,—the gleam of the ice began to shimmer through the trees; and issuing from the wood, the party found themselves in front of a glacier wall, stretching across the whole valley and broken into deep rifts, caves, and crevasses of dark blue ice. The glacier was actually about a mile wide; but as the central portion was pressed forward ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... ethics floated through his mind, and things wonderfully concrete and woefully incongruous—hunting scenes, stretches of sombre forest, vastnesses of silent snow, the glittering of ballroom lights, great galleries and lecture halls, a fleeting shimmer of glistening test-tubes, long rows of book-lined shelves, the throb of machinery and the roar of traffic, a fragment of forgotten song, faces of dear women and old chums, a lonely watercourse amid upstanding peaks, a shattered boat on ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... gay! the wilderness was floral, The sea a bath of wine to the laughing swimmer; Dawn was a flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... was a fascination about her, as about a fairy maiden. There was a yellow shimmer about her light hair; azure flames flashed from her blue eyes. These flames drew a magic circle about her, and the dozen young men who had strayed inside the circle flocked round her aunt the evening in the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... into an arching avenue of trees. It was like dropping into a cool, shadowy bowl, the first shoots and sproutings of baby leaves from the branches casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the golden-green shimmer of the grass. Through an open gate they shot, he close behind, out upon a hard metallic roadway of macadam. Here Mary Louise reined in her horse and Joe instantly drew ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... she was very attractive in 1820. Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and what better place is there for the meeting of dear friends? See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together." My eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the general glory—I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all those who in the past had ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... thrust the rifle forward inch by inch and, taking his time about it, settled himself comfortably for the shot. It was no easy shot in that uncertain light at a downward angle. The glare of the sun on the lake had troubled his eyes during the last few days. The shimmer of the moonlight was deceptive now. I wished he would pass the rifle to Will, or even to Brown of Lumbwa, who was digging his fingers into the earth beside me in almost uncontrollable excitement. But Fred was unperturbed, and the chief, who was nervous enough to detect the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the grass from window and door of the Turrentine house; Judith's play-party was in full swing. They were dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those altitudes, had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its illumination became necessary, for ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... silver-gilt rail at friends. She knew that people were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... ease and take his pleasure! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food—do you like shell-fish? Well, well, we won't linger ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... able to range afar over this great sea, it was because a peculiar light brought to view every detail of it. It was not the light of the sun, with his dazzling shafts of brightness and the splendour of his rays; nor was it the pale and uncertain shimmer of the moonbeams, the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No; the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that it must be of electric ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across the deep of the sea. Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal sanctity, and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift and shimmer and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his demarcation; the heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have had something to say to their disposition. If he had slept upon it another night, poor Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and east might meet ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the Sun one sometimes sees, now in the West, in the lingering shimmer of the twilight, now in the East, when the tender roseate dawn announces the advent of a clear day, a small star of the first magnitude which remains but a very short time above the horizon, and then plunges back into the flaming sun. This is Mercury, the agile and active messenger of Olympus, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and wynds dropping steeply down into the valley—opening here and there a glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth—while on the edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains and cloudy rolling vapours, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the screen, there was something like heat shimmer at the far end of the passage. Then she saw ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... and on. There was powdered gold in the sky till the moon rose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earth and stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard them whisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. The mountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of a river through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silent thoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... amazed. Where could such a trail lead? His answer came immediately. Away ahead of him, towering above the abundant foliage, he saw the distant shimmer of snowy peaks, and nearer—so near as to make him marvel aloud—the forest-clad, broken lands of the foot-hills. Immediate danger was past and he had time to think. At all cost he must endeavor to stop ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... information, and yet hardly what I wanted. He was an eccentric man, a devil-worshipper, and rumoured to have the power of the evil eye. I could believe the young lady's eyes, when endowed with that cold, grey shimmer which I had noticed in them once or twice, to be capable of any evil which human eye ever wrought; but still the superstition was an effete one. Was there not more meaning in that sentence which followed—"He had ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened. But hark! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles! Is it—can it be—the gray dawn peeping in the stormy east? The ghost's eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker ply the violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient clouds. Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sun rose next morning, he saw Daisy and Wee floating down the river in their boat. "Bless me! here's company," said the sun, and began at once to make them welcome in his most charming manner. He set the waves to sparkling with a sudden shimmer; he shot long rays of light through the dark hemlocks, till they looked like fairy trees; he touched Daisy's hair and it turned to gold; he chased away the shadows that lurked among the hills; he drew up the misty curtain that hovered over the river; ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott |
