"Couchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hedge, and was running down into the sandy hollow. The clear, cool air at once restored his exultation, and his mother's words became a buzz of flies which he had left behind. The sky was dreamy blue; the sandhills rose against it shapely like the backs and flanks of couchant lions. The red roof of the Mission on its ridge seemed placed there by some childish whim—a thing incongruous. As Iskender fixed his gaze on it, he saw a figure coming thence with speed—a figure in dark Frankish clothes ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... ruddy strife Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake. ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... d'Yvetot, Peu connu dans l'histoire; Se levant tard, se couchant tot, Dormant fort bien sans gloire, Et couronne par Jeanneton D'un simple bonnet de coton, Dit-on. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c'etait ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... peeping through the low eastern window of the vaulted Church of Saint Faith, Master Headley on his knees gave thanks for his preservation, and then put forward his little daughter, holding on her joined hands the figure of poor Spring, couchant, and beautifully modelled in bronze ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ladies. It was a cumbrous vehicle, whose faded linings and tarnished hammer-cloth, together with its panels of changing color, denoted the want of that art which had once given it luster and beauty. The "lion couchant" of the Wharton arms was reposing on the reviving splendor of a blazonry that told the armorial bearings of a prince of the church; and the miter, that began to shine through its American mask, was a symbol of the rank of its original owner. The chaise which conveyed Miss ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bar, where Rene d'Anjou, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, was imprisoned with his children. In the museum, which possesses many treasures in painting and sculpture, we saw the magnificently carved tombs of Philippe le Hardi and Jean Sans-Peur. Here, with angels at their heads and lions couchant at their feet, the effigies of these Dukes of Valois rest, surrounded by a wealth of sculpture and decoration almost unequalled. It would be well worth stopping over night at Dijon if only to see the magnificent tombs of these bold and unscrupulous old warriors ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, etc., etc. We thought we had got into fairyland. But ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... waste—for dwellers in the streets Of cities, whether Troy, or Tyre, or Ispahan, Consume, in point of cost, food at a single meal Much less than what is spread before this crowned man—- Who rules his couchant nation with a rod of steel, And whose servitors' chiefest arts it was to squeeze The world's full teats into his royal helpless mouth. Each hard-sought dainty that never failed to please, All delicacies, wines, from east, west, north or south, Are plenty here—for Sultan Zizimi drinks ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the Parish Church guarded under its ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... female sphinxes in Egypt. The sphinx was called Neb, i. e., the lord. The lion-couchant had either a man's or a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... following very different account: 'Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver medals, has been given to such as have distinguished themselves ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... outermost is a crucifix, and between both, towards the middle, are figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a cup with a lamb. The outer arch is adorned with knobs, and within both is a small slit or loop. At the bottom of the outer arch are two beasts couchant. If one of them by his proboscis was not evidently an elephant, I should suppose them the supporters of the Scotch arms. Parallel with the Crucifix are two plain stones, which do not appear to have had anything upon them. Here is not the least trace of a door ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... walked steadily on, and began to ascend the long, low eminence, which formed, as it were, the large body of the couchant lion, but which from where they were, seemed like the most ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... which time it is said this remarkable pulpit was put up; and notwithstanding its great age, which appears to be 832 years, it is still in good condition. At the foot of the steps is a large figure, intended to represent a lion couchant, but carved after so grotesque a fashion, as to puzzle the naturalist in his attempts to determine its proper classification. In other respects the ornamental sculpture about the pulpit is neat and appropriate, and presents a curious specimen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... beautiful and he had never seen anything like them before. They were of a wonderful blue, each one, and had a coat of arms in gold with raised figures on it; a scroll above with a Latin motto, and beneath the representation of a wild animal couchant. The Senor Valdez was quick to see Jim's interest and respond to it. "That is the coat of arms of my ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... handsome addition to the garden, irrespective of its historical associations. The chalet is of dark wood varnished, and has in the centre a large carving of Dickens's crest, which in heraldic terms is described as: "a lion couchant 'or,' holding in the gamb a cross ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... above. It was accounted for, however, by the golden crosses of the kingdom of Jerusalem waving above the watch-tower, that rose like a pointing finger above the keep, in company with a lesser ensign bearing a couchant hound, sable. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (adjutores), who pursued Caesar. We know, at all events, that Sylla formed a right estimate of Caesar's character, and that, from the complexion of his conduct in this one instance, he drew that famous prophecy of his future destiny; bidding his friends beware of that slipshod boy, "for that in him lay couchant many a Marius." A grander testimony to the awe which Caesar inspired, or from one who knew better the qualities of that Cyclopean man by whose scale he measured the patrician boy, ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... vile Around my brows, sliding into the sea At the ship's stern, I lay'd me on the flood. With both hands oaring thence my course, I swam Till past all ken of theirs; then landing where Thick covert of luxuriant trees I mark'd, Close couchant down I lay; they mutt'ring loud, Paced to and fro, but deeming farther search Unprofitable, soon embark'd again. Thus baffling all their search with ease, the Gods 430 Conceal'd and led me thence to the abode Of a wise man, dooming me still to live. To whom, Eumaeus, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... women likewise to gaze in the direction towards which their father's gloomy eyes pointed: and they saw an elaborate monument upon the wall, where Britannia was represented weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a couchant lion indicated that the piece of sculpture had been erected in honour of a deceased warrior. The sculptors of those days had stocks of such funereal emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St. Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these braggart heathen allegories. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... level, even, plane; flat &c. 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent[obs3]; lying &c. v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent[obs3], prostrate, recubant[obs3]. Adv. horizontally &c. adj.; on one's back, on all fours, on its ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gigantic or some angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... mistress's face. Next, he took note of her pointed finger, which she waved in a sort of comprehensive curve embracing the table-cloth with its appetising display of eatables; and then, as if he had made a mental list of all left in his charge, he laid down in a couchant position at the head of the table, if such it could be called, with his nose between his paws, along which his eyes were ready to take aim at any intruder, saying, in their fixed basilisk stare, "Now, you just touch anything, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more Athwart its roseal glow Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put'st on Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll Made derelict of day, Couchant and shadow-ed Under dim Vesper's overloosened hair: This, where emboss-ed with the half-blown seed The solemn purple thistle stands in grass Grey as an exhalation, when the bank Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. Not to the boy, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... laughed at me once for an experience of my own at the Piper's Knowe, on which any man, with a couchant ear close to the grass, may hear fairy tunes piped ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... not perceiving me) raised his clasped hands to Heaven, and muttered some words I was not able distinctly to hear. As I approached nearer to him which I did with no very pleasant sensations, a large black dog, which, till then, had remained couchant, sprung towards me with ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... canoe with a cat couchant in the bow, a young invalid comfortably reclining amidships and a husky youth in the stern started down the river and into the salt-water lakes. The first day's run was a short one and the camp ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... 7 Couchant upon these precious cushionets Were thousand beauties, and as many smiles, Chaste blandishments, and modest cooling heats, Harmless temptations, and honest guiles. For heaven, though up betimes the maid to deck, Ne'er made Aurora's cheeks ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... turning the point of red sandstone rock, which the Indians call Pug-ge-do-wau (Portage), the Porcupine Mountains rose to our view, directly west, presenting an azure outline of very striking lineaments—an animal couchant. As night drew on, the water became constantly smoother; it was nine before daylight could be said to leave us. We passed, in rapid succession, the Mauzhe-ma-gwoos or Trout, Graverod's, Unnebish, or Elm, and Pug-ge-do-wa, or Misery River, in Fishing Bay. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... feverish kind of excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... traduction, assure, ce dont je me suis convaincu, n'y avoir adjouste rien de sien. Brochard, de son cote, proteste de son exactitude. Non seulement il a demeure vingt-quatre ans dans le pays, mais il l'a traverse dans son double diametre du nord au sud, depuis le pied de Liban jusqu'a Bersabee; et du couchant au levant, depuis la Mediterranee jusqu'a la mer Morte. Enfin il ne decrit rien qu'il n'ait, pour me servir des termes de son traducteur, veu corporellement, lui, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Against the day of fight, in goodly gear And new, those warriors seek their limbs to deck. Blazoned upon Orlando's shield appear The burning bold and lofty Babel's wreck. A lyme-dog argent bears Sir Olivier, Couchant, and with the leash upon his neck: The motto; TILL HE COMES: In gilded vest And worthy of himself he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... his sister; but, however skilfully executed or admirably designed, I do not like such monuments so well, nor think them so appropriate to our cathedrals, as the rude effigies of knights and warriors in complete armour, with their feet on couchant hounds, or those stately though sometimes gaudy and fantastic monuments, in which, among crowds of emblematical devices and armorial bearings, the husband and the wife lie side by side in the richest costume of the day, while their children are kneeling ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... green woods and an outer girdle of blue sea. I know of nothing more wild than that gray waste of boulders; it is a natural Salisbury Plain, of which icebergs and ocean-currents were the Druidic builders; in that multitude of couchant monsters there seems a sense of suspended life; you feel as if they must speak and answer to each other in the silent nights, but by day only the wandering sea-birds seek them, on their way across the Cape, and the sweet-bay and green fern embed them in a softer and deeper setting as ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... our Bay State. So huge was he, his realm so small, He could not exercise at all, Except by taking to the sea. [For which he had a ticket free, Granted by Neptune, with the seal, A salient clam, and couchant eel]. His pipe was many a mile in length, His lungs proportionable in strength; And his rich moccasins,—with the pair, The seven-league boots would not compare. Whene'er siestas he would take, Cape Cod must help his couch to make; And, being lowly, it was meet ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... must note. It is a clock and musical-box combined, giving out a variety of twenty-seven tunes. The visible part of it is a pure alabaster representation of the tomb of our Henry II, supported by lions couchant. Rather a strange model for a musical-box containing ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Luce, dame Perrete, &c. J'en prends un dans le temps qu'il pleure A quelque autre, au contraire a l'heure Qui demesurement il rit; Je donne le coup qui le frit. J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se leve; En se couchant l'autre j'enleve. Je prends le malade et le sain L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain. J'en surprends un dedans son lit, L'autre a l'estude quand il lit. J'en surprends un le ventre plein Je mene l'autre par la faim. J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie, Et l'autre pendant qu'il renie; J'en saisis ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the rapid current. They were the same; the movement and music were the same; God was still with him; was he so base as to withhold the thanksgiving that had been checked half uttered in his heart by the spring of that couchant sorrow? Then in the sum of life's blessings he had numbered that hope of his, and now he had seen the perfect fruition of that hope in joy. It was not his own,—but was it not much to know that God ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... monotonous line of beach, trending northward ten miles from end to end, forming a great curve from the sandspit on the north side of the treacherous bar to the blue loom of a headland in shape like the figure of a couchant lion. Back from the shore-line, a narrow littoral of dense scrub, impervious to the rays of the sun, and unbroken in its solitude except by the cries of birds, or the heavy footfall of wild cattle upon the thick carpet of fallen leaves; and then, far to the west, the dimmed, shadowy outline ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Spain, spurred fiercer resentments up like steeds Revolting, on the curb, foaming for battle, In all men's minds, against whatever odds. On one side of the throne great Walsingham, A lion of England, couchant, watchful, calm, Was now the master of opinion: all Drew to him. Even the hunchback Burleigh smiled With half-ironic admiration now, As in the presence of the Queen they met Amid the sweeping splendours of her court, A cynic smile ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and found it delicious, soft and mellow as summer moonlight. While I sipped it the big Newfoundland, who had stretched himself in a couchant posture on the hearth-rug ever since Cellini had first entered the room, rose and walked majestically to my side and rubbed his head caressingly against ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... sky was studded with pale golden stars; the open air was dense with the perfume of the wood, the saline indication of the sea-ware. On the rocky edge of the islet at one part showed the white fringe of the waves now more peaceful; to the north brooded enormous hills, seen dimly by the stars, couchant terrors, vague, vast shapes of dolours and alarms. Doom stood long looking at them with the flame of the candle blowing inward and held above his head—a mysterious man beyond Montaiglon's comprehension. He stood behind him a pace or two, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... gateway, gave a double portion of depth and majesty to the high yet gloomy arch under which it opened. The, carved stone escutcheon of the ancient family, bearing for their arms three wolves' heads, was hung diagonally beneath the helmet and crest, the latter being a wolf couchant pierced with an arrow. On either side stood as supporters, in full human size, or larger, a salvage man proper, to use the language of heraldry, wreathed and cinctured, and holding in his hand an oak-tree eradicated, that is, torn up by ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... we have said, and delicate; everything about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... her head, out from the gloom of the thicket with the leap of a lynx, lithe and swift, sprang the crouching form of Louis Laplante. I felt Little Fellow all in a tremor by my side; the tremor not of fear, but of the couchant panther; and he uttered the most vicious snarl I have ever heard from human throat. Louis alighted neatly and noiselessly, directly behind the Sioux woman. She must have felt his presence, for she turned round and round expectantly. Louis, silent and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... escorted valiantly by three stout boys, who guided her by a most circuitous route across Bruntsfield Links, that she might gain a moonlight view of the couchant lion of Arthur's Seat. They amused her the whole way home with tales of High-school warfare. On reaching the garden-gate she was half surprised to hear the unwonted cheerfulness of her own laugh. The sunshine she daily strove to cast around her was ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... adorned with shields of arms and bears the figure of an earlier Sir Thomas Markenfield, clad in armour of the period between Poitiers and Agincourt, and wearing a very curious collar of park palings with a stag couchant in front, possibly (as has been suggested) a badge of adherence to the party of Lancaster. The figure of Lady ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... the mortgage?" asked Rose Mary in the gently hushed tone that she always used in speaking of this ever couchant enemy ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... out of bluish marble monoliths, remarkable for their workmanship and for their great size, which causes one to speculate how they could have been brought from the quarry. First, there are two columns decorated with sculptured clouds, two lions couchant, two lions rampant. Then, in similar manner, four camels, four elephants, and so on. After this come four military officials, four civil officials, four celebrated men, each made from a single block of marble, standing on opposite sides of the way, and all wearing the old Ming ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck |
