"Cower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There's no a bla'guard i' the haill queentry he wadna sell her till, sae be he was o' an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth o' siller. Haith! noo a days the last 'ill come first, an' a fish cadger wi' siller 'ill be coontit a better bargain nor a lord wantin 't: only he maun hae a heap o' 't, to cower ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... pacing home, rotund in their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses. Sometimes they stopped—their trousers legs flapping behind them—and trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Since my boyhood I have lived in terror of the just God—the just God—who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I—Baird—" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have hated Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word—and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, with ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... know how the parasite plants grow and prosper. They were not created to stretch forth their branches alone, and endure without protection the summer's sun and the winter's storm. Alone they but spread themselves on the ground and cower unseen in the dingy shade. But when they have found their firm supporters, how wonderful is their beauty; how all-pervading and victorious! What is the turret without its ivy, or the high garden wall without the jasmine ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... that he saw his property in the possession of another creature, and resented the spoliation. With an angry snarl he snatched the life-buoy and backed away, while the girl, surprised and a little indignant, followed with extended hands. He raised it threateningly, and though she did not cower, she knew intuitively that he was angry, and feeling the injustice, burst into tears; then, turning from him, she covered her eyes with her hands and crouched to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... that he did not know; not a policeman in Winnipeg that had not seen his swift and shadowy form in the gray dawn as he passed where he would; not a Dog in Winnipeg that did not cower and bristle when the telltale wind brought proof that old Garou was crouching near. His only path was the warpath, and all the world his foes. But throughout this lurid, semi-mythic record there was one recurring pleasant thought—Garou ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... enraged. All felt the swift contagion of his ire, For he was one who could arouse and fire The coldest heart, so ardent was his own. His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone, Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power, Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower. ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the hermit, roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... what doth Judea but cower down Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there. We are alone with ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... familiar with our native legends and tales, the willows and alders in the fields and by the brooks are peopled with hidden beings, fairies, and witches. They stretch out ghostly arms, as their veils wave over their loose hair, they bow, cower, raise themselves, become as big as giants or as little as dwarfs. They seem to lie in wait for the weak, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... kills hogs for the Squire, and has got a powerful muscle into his arms, sed he'd bet 5 dollars he could lick the Crisis in a fair stand-up fight, if he wouldn't draw a knife on him. So it went—sum was for war, and sum was for peace. The skoolmaster, however, sed the Slave Oligarky must cower at the feet of the North ere a year had flowed by, or pass over his dead corpse. "Esto perpetua!" he added! "And sine qua non also!" sed I, sternly, wishing to make a impression onto the villagers. "Requiescat in pace!" sed the skoolmaster, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... over the coals is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer Gurton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would have ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... gripping her composure in both hands. Far less susceptible to shame is the brazen Phoebe, who may be seen passing the opening on the arm of a cavalier, and flinging her trembling sister a mischievous kiss. The younger ladies note the incident; alas, they are probably meant to notice it, and they cower, as under a blow. ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... you walk, sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why in God's name ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... did the audience let loose their pent-up feelings. The place pulsated with a roar like that of a great waterfall in a deep gorge, salvo after salvo of cheers swelling and merging. The deep boom of their applause pursued Brinnaria and made her cower. The people would never forget her now. They were in ecstasy. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... brother, no man for another cares. The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek, Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu. Like a dog in his lair, So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven. Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:— All is turned to mire. This evil to the gods I announced, to the gods foretold the evil. This exterminating war foretold Against my race of mankind. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... back the smile to her lip or chase the look of sadness from her brow. She had, from the first, exhibited great signs of fear of the chief, and did she catch his eye resting on her she would hurriedly gather her child in her arms, and with a wild look of terror cower away into the corner of the room farthest from him she could get, and there sit murmuring in wailing tones to the babe nestling in ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... inventor of this game, but he openly renounced all patent rights. He said that everybody on board ought to take the stage in turn—he himself was quite content to retire on his early laurels. So all hands took pains to contradict Cranze and to cower with a fine show of dramatic ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... straight and severe, I ask you to believe that she had grace to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were as nothing ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the German way? Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts? Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves, Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness, Exalt their feelings with the censer's fumes, And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee, And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer? Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell, And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven? Is this the German way? Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... Now and then they dozed, but sound slumber did not come to a single one of the group. Uncle Toby was quite content to cower as close to Frank as possible, satisfied that the other was able to protect him. He seemed to exhibit the blind confidence of a dog in an emergency calling for energy; to him Frank was a type of ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... the day grows old; The spiders of care are weaving their net; All night 'twill be blowing and rainy and cold; I cower at his door from the wind ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... stood a massive altar. Overhead, With drooping boughs, a venerable bay Its shadowy foliage o'er the home-gods spread. Here, with her hundred daughters, pale with dread, Poor Hecuba and all her female train, As doves, that from the low'ring storm have fled, And cower for shelter from the pelting rain, Crouch round the silent gods, and cling to ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... seen the child-birds growing and gaining strength. Their muscles were now well developed, their bodies were clothed with feathers, they had learned to use their wings,—they could fly. Would it not have been passing strange, had they continued as they were, contented to cower and to crawl, when they had acquired the power to soar? And will you be content to remain forever only a fledgling, satisfied with having acquired the power of rising, but never actually using the wings which these years of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... 've seen thee o'er the lowly, A gracious chieftain ever, The Catach[145] self below thee, And the Gallach[145] cower'd for cover; But ever more their striving, When claim'd respect thine eye, Thy scourge corrected, driving To other lands to fly. Thy loyal crew of clansmen true, No panic fear shall turn them, With steel-cap, blade, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he seems to cower half timidly under the words, as if they were blows. Mary has already grasped her father's hand, and holds on ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... their emissaries. Let them send out their men to Louisiana; they will never return to tell their suffering, but they shall expiate the crime of interfering in our domestic institutions, by being burned at the stake." And Northern men cower at this, and consent to have their lips padlocked, and to be robbed of their constitutional right, aye, and their natural right, while travelling Southward; while the lordly slaveholder traverses the length and breadth of ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... of Richard Forester is connected with Chaucer's first in 1378, when Chaucer, about to go abroad on a mission for the King, had letters of attorney under the names of John Cower and Richard Forester, [Footnote: Life Records, No. 120, p. 216.] and again in 1386, when a lease for the house over Aldgate which Chaucer had occupied during his years as controller of the customs in London ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... and cower! Lo, for an end of breath, Clytie, hardy and frail, Anguisht after her death. For the Sun-flower droops and is pale When her king hideth his power, And ever draggeth the woe of her piteous tale, As a woman that laboureth Yet never reacheth the hour: So Clytie yearns to the Sun, for her wraith Moans ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... why then should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that way ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... and they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something he ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... to him. The man's evident intention, made obvious by his manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say something against her; the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any one, on any ground at all, who did not cower to him. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a hen takes to the water instantly without needing to be shown how to swim; why the chicken just out of its shell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes it according to the traditions ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... So, dear, we cower at our warning bell. Creep close to me, where shadows gird us round. Fear we that wild revealment? Nay, not we! "Ah, perilous play, to cross Love's stalking-ground!" You whisper... yet our eyes, our eyes could tell Of hearts that leap ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... sure. Father has no weapon, and that man did have one. It was the sight of your pistol that made him cower. You couldn't have chosen a more lucky minute ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... advancing, See upon the free winds dancing Pennon proud and gaudy plume. The strangers come in evil hour, In pomp, and panoply, and power! But, while upon our tribes they lower, Think they our manly hearts will cower To meet a ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... thou be made to stay in thy hiding-places until thy bleached bones would tell that Rome findeth starvation oft cheaper than the sword. From Dan to Beersheba doth the heathen purple fly over tower and wall, and under the dark shadow of her mighty eagle do the nations of the earth cower. Whence then could come thy succor? To lift the sword is but to bring it down on thine own neck. If he whom our hearts love escape, by the wit of man's mind must the thing be accomplished. Go thou, Lazarus, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... devour me; then would I spread my two arms thus, and welcome death, crying: 'Rend thou this Jew in twain, O beast! strike thy kindly fangs deep into this heart,—be not afeard, for I shall make no battle with thee, nor any outcry whatsoever!' But, lo, the beast would cower before me and skulk away. So there is no death for me; the judgment spoken is irrevocable; my sin is unpardonable, and the voice ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke; She left the down-trod nations in disdain, And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke, New-born, amid those glorious vales, and broke Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful hands: As rocks are shivered in the thunder-stroke. And lo! in full-grown strength, an empire stands ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... around. His snows descend And make the green Earth hoary. Chains of frost Straighten her breadth of waters. Dropping rains Refresh her summer thirst, or rending clouds Roll in wild deluge o'er her. Roaming beasts Cower in their dens affrighted, while she quakes Convuls'd with inward agony, or reels Dizzied with flashing fires. Again she smiles In her recovered beauty, at His will, Maker of all things. So, He rules the world, With wrath commingling mercy. Who may hope With finite ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 160 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... was, however, before which even Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind. When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... conscious of his power: Or, if he was, knew not its full extent. He knew his glance would make a wild beast cower, And yet he knew not that his large eyes sent Into the heart of woman the same thrill That made the lion servant of his will. And even strong men ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... house of the Pope, pressing upon the mailed Count's stout horse, and thronging upon the heels of the Captains and the Prefect, pounding down the heavy doors with stones, and with deep shouts for every heavy blow, while white-robed John and his frightened priests cower together within, expecting death. Down goes the oak with a crash like artillery, that booms along the empty corridors; a moment's pause, and silence, and then the rush, headed by the Knight and the leaders who mean no murder, but mean to have their way, once and for ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Rose-crowned men lean upon Indian cushions, holding golden beakers in their right hands. Women in yielding nakedness cower at their feet. Through the open door streams in a Bacchic procession with fauns and panthers, the drunken Pan in its midst. Brown-skinned slaves with leopard skins about their loins make mad music. Among them ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... must be the Queen Sudarshana who is approaching near. [Aside to SUVARNA.] Suvarna, you must not hide and cower behind me like that. Mind, the umbrella in your ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... it? She was afraid of her husband, and each movement of Hepworth's pen struck her with dread. Had she, indeed, laid herself open to the wrath of a man, who was so terrible in his anger, that it made even her brave heart cower? ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air— But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And so ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... but, except Lottie, whose rigor might have been meant sanatively, they treated her more with the tenderness people use with a wounded spirit; and Breckon fancied moments of something like humility in her, when she seemed to cower from his notice. These were not so imaginable after her family took to their berths and left her alone with him, but the touching mystery remained, a sort of bewilderment, as he guessed it, a surprise such as a child might show at some incomprehensible ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Christ of power, Thou need'st not before me cower; An unknown knight thou see'st in me, Sent forth by three ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... seek to lay their want of success at the door of the public. Modest merit is, however, too apt to be inactive, or negligent, or uninstructed merit. Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market, provided it exerts itself; but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. There is a good deal of cant too about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... to bed? You, with your crimes, go to bed? Why, you couldn't sleep! You would cower all night! Go to bed! Oh, my dear Struboff, think better of it. No, no, we'll none of us go to bed. Bed's a hell for men like us. For you above all! Think again, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... front of the perpendicular bank in which the Anthophora nests. What will be the result of the experiment? Will it once more cover me with confusion? The weather is cold and rainy; not a Bee shows herself on the few spring flowers that have come out. Numbers of Anthophorae cower, numbed and motionless, at the entrance to the galleries. With the tweezers, I extract them one by one from their lurking-places, to examine them under the lens. The first has Sitaris-larvae on her thorax; so has the second; ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... cannot be vain and arrogant? I think most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax—that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... possibilities hidden away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object, about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets; to-morrow-we lose ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Being, and even of Babylon itself. His capacious Soul now soar'd into Infinity, and he contemplated, with the same Freedom, as if she was disencumber'd from her earthly Partner, on the immutable Order of the Universe. But as soon as she cower'd her Wings, and resumed her native Seat, he began to consider that Astarte might possibly have lost her Life for his Sake; upon which, his Thoughts of the Universe vanish'd all at once, and no other Objects appear'd before his distemper'd Eyes, but his Astarte giving ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... the Lord, And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o'er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renew'd, And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... repeated the man with the bag; 'from Mr. Cower's, the solicitor's. Mr. Tuggs, I congratulate you, sir. Ladies, I wish you joy of your prosperity! We have been successful.' And the man with the bag leisurely divested himself of his umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to shaking hands with Mr. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine—because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... was a time thine eagles tower'd Resistless o'er the humbled world; There was a time the empires cower'd Before the bolt thy hand had hurl'd: The standards, thy proud will obeying, Flapp'd wrath and woe on every wind— A few short years, and thou wert laying Thine iron yoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... of pride and power, Of Empire vast beyond the sea; As here beside my hearth I cower, What mean such words as these to me? Oh, will they lift the clouds that low'r, Or light my load in ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... has pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but cool, thrusting its blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope of an orifice of escape. Somehow the man reminded her of the animal, the fierce little woods marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning to cower as would the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... time on the open deck. To stand out on the front (one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts of too much atmosphere to those of a depleted and poisoned one. David may have been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... one's transgressions. 'Gainst his judgment stern, tears and prayers avail not. He appears—one glance (from a god that glance comes!) At a flash decides what the youngster's fate is. At his will a crowd runs, at his beck it parteth. Doth he smile? all frolic; doth he frown—all cower. By a tone he threatens, gives rewards, metes justice. Absent though he be, every pupil dreads him, For he sees, hears, knows, everything that's doing. On the urchin's forehead he can see it written. He divines who laughs, idles, yawns, or chatters, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in the presence of manhood should cower; But, alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... chaotic heap on the floor. As darkness came on, the gale rose higher, the moon was obscured, the rack in heavy masses was driving across the stormy sky, and scuds of sleet and spray made the few venturous persons on deck cower under the nearest shelter to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood arated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... I had long wished to see, and they were in no sense a disappointment. Desolate, death-haunted, they pushed their white domes into the blue sky in savage grandeur. The little snow-covered towns seemed to cower at their feet like timid animals lost in the immensity of the forest. All day we rode among these heights, and at night we went to sleep feeling the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... hear the music float Along the gloaming lea; 'Tis sweet to hear the blackbird's note Come pealing frae the tree; To see the lambkins lightsome race— The speckled kid in wanton chase— The young deer cower in lonely place, Deep in her flowing den; But sweeter far the bonny face ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... so here. Dallas made a quick movement at last, turned over, and picked up a half-burned, still smouldering piece of pine, painfully raked others together with it, and threw it on the top, glad to cower over the warm embers, for the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... and the heart of a God in courage and patience; and Barbara became his slave for very love, his blessed child, the inheritor of his universe. Happily her life had not been loaded to the ground with the degrading doctrines of those that cower before a God whose justice may well be satisfied with the blood of the innocent, seeing it consists but in the punishing of the guilty. She had indeed heard nothing of that brood of lies until the unbelieving Richard—ah, not far from believing he who but rejected ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... enter, but only to have Nicolette, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst and of cold, and of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... infinite movement Still moving with you; For, ever some new head and heart of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend)— Cower beneath them. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the fiendish vengeance which awaited a spy. I knew that men with their lives in their hands would stick at nothing. All I could do was to cower at the bottom of the boat and listen silently to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and sucks up all brightness into its ghastly folds, and silences all song. He comes and says 'Stop'; and it stands fixed upon the spot. He arrests the march of Death. Not indeed that He touches the mere physical fact. The physical fact is not what men mean by death. It is not what they cower before. What the world shrinks from is the physical fact plus its associations, its dim forebodings, its recoilings from the unknown regions into which the soul goes from out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and plus the possibilities of retribution, the certainty of judgment. All ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the other which he had not seen. Accordingly, I wondered if I could frighten the lion that meant to leap at me. Acting upon wild impulse, I prodded him in the hind quarters with the spear. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a blooming idiot if that lion did not cower like a whipped dog, put his tail down, and begin to slink away. Quick to see my chance, I jumped up yelling, and made after him, prodding him again. He let out a bellow such as you could imagine would come from an outraged king of beasts. I prodded again, and then he loped off. I found Luki not badly ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... through the tent they were followed by the awful roar of the descending avalanche, and all awoke on the instant. But no one could do anything to save himself. They could only cower and pray ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... is bright as the sun. But the minions of Murder move softly; unseen they have crept from their lair, In a night that is darker than doom on the famishing face of despair. And they lurk and they tremble and cower, and stab as they lurk from behind, Like shapes from a pit Acherontic by hatred and horror made blind. These are not the soldiers of Freedom; the hearts of her lovers grow faint When the name of assassin is chanted as one with the name ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... abruptness there came a sound which could only be likened to rolling thunder by one uninitiated, but which caused Ixtli to shrink and almost cower, ere gasping: ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had Fortune frowned, he would have laughed in her face. It was her smile that made him cower. And, so long as she smiled, what mattered it if he cowered? Had Homer never nodded, gentlemen, till it was past his bed-time, neither you nor I would ever have ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Perhaps it would rather rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... fight hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed in as a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee from. He had seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before it;—she who stood beside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes, eyes of his girl-wife growing old in the likeness of her father. Hard, reluctant eyes forced to own the truth which the ashen lips denied. Are we responsible for our silences? He had not spoken ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... girl. She seemed to cower away from him, half lifting her hands as though in fear that he ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... dazzle me, snare, betray; Through the baits the Tempter brought To lure me out of the way; Through the peril and greed of power (The bribe that he thought most sure); Through the name that hath made me cower, "The holy bishop of Tours!" Now, tired of life's poor show, Aweary of soul and sore, I am stretching my hands to go Where nothing can tempt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... last Sunday," he said, looking about his chaotic domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday—somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt—a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there is something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... comes down almost to the brook—a mere strip of meadow between—is green too with rising wheat, high enough now to hide the partridges. Before it got so tall it was pleasant to watch the pair that frequent it; they were so confident that they did not even trouble to cower. At any other time of year they would have run, or flown; but then, though scarcely forty yards away and perfectly visible, they simply ceased feeding ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... gather myself together out of the pools of the individual that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower....' ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... lions fight until one is laid low; the lioness looks calmly on until the little problem of superiority is settled, and then she goes off with the victor. The horses on the Pampas have their set battles until one has asserted his mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly, and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we have that mysterious, immaterial ally ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... and came to usher her to its discomfort. But all her usual pleasure was gone. She nodded miserably over the 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 ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the rock, Wotan's voice is heard: "Bruennhilde, stand!" At the sound of it, Bruennhilde's heart fails her; the hearts of the sisters, too, soften. Crowding together on the rocky peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them. But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... shouted, and, as the next day waned with its violence undiminished, the frost crept in upon them till they rolled and tossed shivering. Twice they essayed to crawl out, but were driven back to cower for endless, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the view, but, when the white wreaths were scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions resolved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and, when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic. For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, and driving the fugitives in crowds, the British troops ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... with darkness round about, and scarce draw breath, Scarce lift eyes up toward the light that saves not, scarce may cast Thought or prayer up, caught and trammelled in the snare of death. Not as sea-mews cling and laugh or sun their plumes and sleep Cling and cower the wild night's waifs of shipwreck, blind with fear, Where the fierce reef scarce yields foothold that a bird might keep, And the clamorous darkness deadens eye and deafens ear. Yet beyond their helpless hearing, out of hopeless sight, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... In so worthy a cause much sycophancy may be forgiven him. To no one, however, was he so completely sycophantic as to the Archdeacon. He was terrified of the Archdeacon; he would wake up in the middle of the night and think of him, then tremble and cower under the warm protection of Mrs. Bond until sleep rescued him ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... "I will take it." "Then," said the miller, "if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the Chancery Court." At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamous demand. And the most imperious outrage against the working-classes will yet cower before the law. Violence and contrary to the law will never accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the incredible spaces—gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling—and then—again the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... man, in the worldly sense of that word; but in its broader and higher significance, he was an aggressive, fearless, tireless fighter. He would not kill, but he did not hesitate to brave death. He would not shoot, but he did not quail or cower before ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... be with this great nation, When woman tests her high vocation; Persuasion proves a futile power To quell the joints, but quick they cower At the whirling hatchets. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... paused here. In the crowd before him he saw scores of frightened faces. He saw men pointing and heard women cry out in terror. He saw children cower and scamper for ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... louder and yet more loud Till night be shamed of morn [Ant. 7. Rings the Black Huntsman's horn Through darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... may be bare, We may hae mony a dreary hour; But never, never nurse despair, For ilka ane maun taste the sour: Even kings themsels, wi' a' their power, Wi' a' their pomp and honours high, 'Neath adverse blasts are forced to cower, And jouk to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... so frightened. Where the stones had been there was a great hole gaping, like one of the mouths of the bottomless pit, and try how he would, he could not turn away his eyes from it. 'That's the place,' said this fearful thing; but my father was ready to cower down with terror. He could not speak, but he thought he saw a great long black arm thrust out of the hole. 'Take what he gives thee,' says Blackface, 'and make haste.' But he might as well have spoken to the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... within. . . . I cower to the earth, I waking, I only. High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the red glare of the burning shone On deeds so dire the pure Gods might not bear, Save Ares only, long to look thereon, But with a cloud they darken'd all the air. And, even then, within the temple fair Of chaste Athene, did Cassandra cower, And cried aloud an unavailing prayer; For Aias was ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the Boers, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... him—it is the immemorial fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes imagined he had some secret hold over her. Often I saw her cower and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze. But I decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over the weak—of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally because he kicks them. The bad-tempered ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... she recognised dimly the compelling power of this religion, and that it was one which, if sincerely embraced, would make the smallest details of life momentous with eternal weight, yet she knew that her soul could never respond to it, and whether saved or damned that it could only cower in miserable despair under a Deity that was so ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious who dream of being even comfortable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited flame. We have no comfort in the parlour yet: even the privileged kitten, wandering in vain in search of a resting-place, deems it but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the wheel, and his eyes were misty. Eben never saw him look at him in such a way before. Had he stormed and raged it would have but increased his defiance. But that look of silent reproach smote his very soul, causing him to cower conscience stricken. Without a word, he left his father's side and went forward. And there he stood with his hands behind his back, staring straight before him. The captain watched him anxiously. His mind was ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong. 'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom, The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no— Its roar is in the sky,—and they there be which cry, "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow." Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!) This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill— 'Tis hell that storms at heaven—'tis the black and deadly Seven, Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damned will! How the Ether ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... heart shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... across her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... matter with the Government. They have been brought up to slobber over the public and try to cheat it out of votes. They can't tell the truth. When hard deadly reality breaks through their web of make-believe, they cower together in corners and howl. I doubt if you will get a free hand, Dawson. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... them and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier and his eighty followers call out: "We are done! We are sold! Let us jump!" Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... day she sat in an easy chair under the trees, watching us as we played ball on the lawn, or cut weeds in the garden; and each time we looked at her, we both acknowledged a profound sense of satisfaction, of relief. Never again would she burn in the suns of the arid plains, or cower before the winds of a desolate winter. She was secure. "You need never work again," I assured her. "You can get up when you please and go to bed when you please. Your only job is to sit in the shade and boss the rest of us," and to this she answered only with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyl! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? O! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... her just then. Another figure had emerged from the front door—a rather largish figure, all in black—her left hand clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly, five. And this figure did not cower and hurry away. This figure halted, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... sojourn amongst the wild beauties of Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, upon such auspicious occasions, he does go off into something ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... he should be admitted, tremulously she awaited his sentence upon her mother's peace, and, as she thought of all he must have heard, all he must believe, she felt as if she must flee; or, if that were impossible, cower in shrinking dread of the glance of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed!—and their wild legion Cease to thunder at my door; Fleeting through night's rayless region, Hither they return no more. Clanking chains and sounds of woe Fill the forests as they go; And the tall oaks cower low, Bent ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... spending their time in genteel dissipations, For cutting their garments, and—poorer relations. Controlled by thy will, they select their society; Thou art their instructor in manners and piety. And thus they obey the decrees of a power, To which, in a servile allegiance, they cower— A power that binds them in thraldom, and then Makes puppets of women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and then do bloody word, as did your sires at old Thermopylae! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... other Peters about the country,—had filled his mind with sad foreboding. And there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly in his nature. He had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be mysterious with the Carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man as Yorke Clayton. The girls had seen this, and had declared that he was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no such allowance. And ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... to sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp our individualities ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... not cowards," said they. "We have never been foiled in battle; never have we been the vassals of a stranger. Why, then, shall we cringe and cower before such men as ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin |
