"Gapes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trampled; two May goslings that look almost full-grown have run into a house with a brood of ducklings a week old. There are twenty-seven crowded into one coop, five in another, nineteen in another; the gosling with one leg has to come out, and the duckling threatened with the gapes; their place is with the "invaleeds," as Phoebe calls them, but they never learn the location of the hospital, nor have the slightest ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... old fierce ruin there Of the old wild princes' lair Whose blood in mine hath share Gapes gaunt and great Toward heaven that long ago Watched all the wan land's woe Whereon the wind would blow Of ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... museums of Europe aim at the "instruction" of the special student rather than at the "edification" of the general public, whilst most aim at nothing at all except showing, without explanation or comment, a vast mass of specimens or pictures, at the sight of which the patient but bored public gapes with wonder. The public galleries of the Natural History Museum in London have been arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public than those of any other museum which I know. But they ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the nuptial couch, "I press'd, entreated,—not as thus in dread. "She said;—her arms extended wide, and stopp'd "His course. The angry son of Saturn flames "Swelling with rage; exhorts his furious steeds; "Throws with a forceful arm, and buries deep "His regal sceptre in the lowest gulph: "Wide gapes the stricken earth; an opening gives "To hell, and headlong down, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns th' ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and kiss the Son; Sinners, obey the Saviour's call; Else your damnation hastens on, And hell gapes wide to wait ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... here thirty years. Twenty mighty hard ones as a married woman; and ten tol'able easy ones as a widder. Mr. Skenk was a saintly man, but tryin' to live with on account o' deefness and the azmy. I never see a chicken took with the gapes but I think o' Abram Skenk. Yes, Mr. Ajax, my daughters was all born here, 'ceptin' Alviry. She was born in Massachusetts. It did make a difference to the child. As a little girl she kep' herself to herself. And though I'd rather cut out my tongue than say a single word against Laban Swiggart, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... is a hero-worshiper too. He knows his own and his neighbor's weaknesses, but he gapes up at the great with glamoured eyes, and listens to their smooth plausibilities as to the reading of the Gospel from the pulpit. He belongs to the large mass of those who believe, not to the small class ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... impossible, must, we fear, ever remain a tantalizing vision. As it is, of course many a man of real ability is drowned in the rushing waves of multitudinous authors, and his works pass undistinguished to that unknown grave which gapes so mysteriously in some hidden recess of the universe, and silently swallows yearly the vast masses of printed paper which has done its brief work and been thrown by read or unread, forgotten. It is to assist in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... get away from each other and indulge ourselves privately in a very orgie of gapes and stretchings. And yet, we stuck there, idiotically, making excuses and little polite recommendations for the others to retire, until Frank with a drastic quality of determination that he ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... hast thou not withstood, Tempest-despising tree, Whose bloat and riven wood Gapes now so hollowly, What rains have beaten thee through many years, What snows from off thy branches ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... figures on a painted canvas; and for you, they are not people in any living and kindly sense. You forget the grim contrariety of interests. You forget the narrow lane where all men jostle together in unchivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and unclean, that gapes on either hand for the defeated. Life is simple enough, it seems, and the very idea of sacrifice becomes like a mad fancy out of a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... travelers by their strength and size. Zbyszko was continually looking at the doors and windows of the mansion, hardly able to remain quiet. There was light in one window only, evidently in the kitchen, because steam was coming out through the gapes ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in the view, seems to cover the whole area of life: you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hideous welcome! You sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to Heaven. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the field, disguised in divers shapes, Death might you see triumphant on the plain, Drowning in blood him that from blows escapes. The king meanwhile with parcel of his train Comes hastily out, and for sure conquest gapes, And from a bank whereon he stood, beheld The doubtful ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... of arsenic, all livid, Likest the face of one long dead — they creep Along the dusty shelf like deadly beetles, Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood May run down easily to the blind mouth That snaps and gapes; and high above them there, My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow pot Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees Still moan among the low sweet purple clover, Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods, When the incredible ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... temptation is irresistible. Long galled, and harassed, and maddened by the shafts, the Anglo-Danes rushed forth at the heels of the Norman swordsmen, and sweeping down to exterminate the archers, the breach that they leave gapes wide. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heterogeneity. Your Irish immigrant at eight and ten shillings a week has as often as not never been inside any other household than her native hovel, and stares in astonishment to find that you don't keep a pig on your drawing-room sofa. On entering your house, she gapes in awe of what she considers the grandeur around her, and the whole of her first day's work consists of ejaculating 'Lor' and 'Goodness!' We once had a hopeful of this kind who, after she had been given ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... that by chance hath been Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin I noticed lengthwise through his carcass ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... name, for Bileaam or Balaam is he called in Hebrew, a swallower or swiller, like one who gapes his throat open, and swallows and devours all. This shameful name must he bear, because he has brought so many people into sin, insomuch that they ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... his boat with a grave celerity, leads the way up the stone steps on to the quay, and as speedily disappears down a sort of trap which gapes in the open street, in the immediate vicinity of the landing-place. Let him alone; Tom knows the way. We follow him down an almost perpendicular flight of stairs into a spirit kellar, and gratify Tom's little propensity ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again, The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair; The sea itself (which one would think Should have but little need of drink) Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up, So filled that they o'erflow the cup. The busy Sun (and one ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... able to bear the first surprise of this disappointment. Amy saw it, and gapes out (as was her way), "Lawd, madam! never be concerned at it; you see he is gotten among the priests, and I suppose they have saucily imposed some penance upon him, and, it may be, sent him of an errand barefoot to some Madonna or Notredame, or other; and he is off of his ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... 17. A fool gapes when to a house he comes, to himself mutters or is silent; but all at once, if he gets drink, then is the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... kill'd his brother, Is dancing on the ropes there, and he carries A money-bag in each hand, to keep him even, For fear of breaking 's neck: and there 's a lawyer, In a gown whipped with velvet, stares and gapes When the money will fall. How the rogue cuts capers! It should have been in a halter. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... the eye, I come, in the first place, on that so pungent saying of Solomon that 'the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.' Look at that born fool, says Solomon, who has his eyes and his heart committed to him to keep. See him how he gapes and stares after everything that does not concern him, and lets the door of his own heart stand open to every entering thief. London is a city of three million inhabitants, and they are mostly fools, Carlyle once said. And let him in this city whose eyes keep at home ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Satan's chosen drink. Who shall gainsay them? Verily I do think War is as hateful almost, and well-nigh As ghastly, as this terrible Peace whereby We halt for ever on the crater's brink And feed the wind with phrases, while we know There gapes at hand the infernal precipice O'er which a gossamer bridge of words we throw, Yet cannot choose but hear from the abyss The sulphurous gloom's unfathomable hiss And simmering ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... drift through shadow and light, Under yon rock the eddies sleep, Calm and silent, dark and deep. The Kelpy has risen from the fathomless pool. He has lighted his candle of death and of dool. Look, Father, look, and you'll laugh to see How he gapes and glares with his ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... my God!" Cazaio shrieked, "do you mock me, you misbegotten one! Before you can give me such another I shall have settled you outright. Already hell gapes for you. Fool, I ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... be thine. And surely shall the Tribune's power defied Find an avenging god; this Crassus knew (7), Who, followed by our curses, sought the war And met disaster on the Parthian plains. Draw then thy sword, nor fear the crowd that gapes To view thy crimes: the citizens are gone. Not from our treasury reward for guilt Thy hosts shall ravish: other towns are left, And other nations; wage the war on them — Drain not Rome's peace for spoil." The victor then, Incensed to ire: "Vain is thy hope to fall In ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... one? a sole? flat as a plate, thin as one of his own fillets; he gapes for the hook; down it goes; we have him; up ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... different to that he had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled Hessians, and a cocked hat were the most obvious items of his costume. He also affected a very curious tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. In this he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of the populace. It is evident that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety, he was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had become a prey to the love of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrained by taste, he parodied ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... in that he is [3727]freed from the tumults of the world, he seeks no honours, gapes after no preferment, flatters not, envies not, temporiseth not, but lives privately, and well contented with ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... falls upon his neck. OSORIO leaps out from the nook with frantic wildness, and rushes towards ALBERT with his sword. MARIA gapes at him, as one helpless with terror, then leaves ALBERT, and flings herself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... could point out your actual inability to live, however basely—deprived of character and credit—devoid of any relics of your fortunes! weighed to the very earth by debts, the interest alone of which has swallowed up your patrimonies, and gapes even yet for more! fettered by bail-bonds, to fly which is infamy, and to abide them ruin! shunned, scorned, despised, and hated, if not feared by all men. I could paint, to your very eyes, ourselves in rags or ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... last team on the road"; and Aunt Abby glanced nervously behind. "Elder Boone ain't begun the openin' prayer, though, or we should know it. You can hear him pray a mile away, when the wind's right. I do hate to be late to meetin'. The Elder allers takes notice; the folks in the wing pews allers gapes an' stares, and the choir peeks through the curtain, takin' notes of everything you've got on your back. I hope to the land they'll chord and keep together a little mite better 'n they've done lately, that's all I can say! If the Lord is ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not altogether luck," returned the other. "See you that spot on the bark of yonder tree—about the size of Maikar's mouth as it now gapes ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... muscles. This power of moving each jaw freely and in independence of the other, is peculiar to Ophidian reptiles. The frog may reach the stomach both alive and active, so that, if afterward, the snake gapes, as he is apt to do, a frog has been seen to leap out again. The processes of life are so slow in reptiles, that one meal will not be digested by the snake for many days. He is unable to digest vegetable matter. Our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... should they flee, Like simple birds, into a net, So grossly woven, and ill set, Her own teeth would undo the knot, And let all go that she had got. Those teeth fair Lyce must not show, If she would bite: her lovers, though Like birds they stoop at seeming grapes, Are dis-abus'd, when first she gapes: The rotten bones discover'd there, Show ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... fought against it with all her might, but the yawns would come; she fought against the yawns, and the tears flowed. To her horror the infection spread, and the girls began to yawn in their turn, with long, uncontrolled gapes. It was a junior class, and the new mistress shrewdly suspected that the infection was welcomed as an agreeable interlude. It was obvious that she could not afford to reject that cup of coffee. Good or bad it must be drunk! ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... waste of mist the valley fills, A solemn sea! whose billows wide around [108] Stand motionless, to awful silence bound: 410 Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops uprear, That like to leaning masts of stranded ships appear. A single chasm, a gulf of gloomy blue, Gapes in the centre of the sea—and through That dark mysterious gulf ascending, sound 415 Innumerable streams with roar profound. [109] Mount through the nearer vapours notes of birds, And merry flageolet; the low of herds, The bark of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... slow sinks the writhing spasm, And, black through the foaming white, Downward gapes a yawning chasm— Bottomless, cloven to hell's wide night; And, sucked up, see the billows roaring Down through ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the cross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is won; and—strange that it should be so—this is the highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history; there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has been given to do ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... follow Dr Senior among the peaks and passes of Switzerland (and remark, by the way, what a nice quiet boy Tom Senior is, when he has only his father and his mother to tempt him into mischief) can we possibly expect to regard very attentively the doings of Simon, as he gapes about before the London shop-windows, and jerks off a score or more stanzas of his "Hart's Earnings," which is now ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... for shelter, there is only here and there a corner to which a poor friendless, moneyless, homeless, but unfallen girl can fly for shelter from the storm which bids fair to sweep her away whether she will or no into the deadly vortex of ruin which gapes ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... heaving of the log showed twenty knots, it was a quiet time of the deck of the Bellevite, and all the excitement on board was confined to the engine and fire rooms. With sundry gapes Christy had taken in the situation, and then he concluded to avail himself of the commander's permission to retire to his stateroom, where he was soon in ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... winter-quarters. Miss Crowe received an invitation to pass the second fortnight in February at the great manufacturing town of Leatherborough. Leatherborough is on the railroad, two hours south of Glenham, at the mouth of the great river Tan, where this noble stream expands into its broadest smile, or gapes in too huge a fashion to be disguised ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... front of heaven when Sirius glares, And o'er Britannia shakes his fiery hairs; When no soft shower descends, no dew distills, Her wave-worn channels dry, and mute her rills; 365 When droops the sickening herb, the blossom fades, And parch'd earth gapes beneath the withering glades. —With languid step fair DYPSACA retreats; "Fall gentle dews!" the fainting nymph repeats; Seeks the low dell, and in the sultry shade 370 Invokes in vain the Naiads ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things—it has myriads more than it can look at; it has fallen into a habit of inattention; it passes weary and jaded through galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of human travail; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its way past them to ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... with grass four or five feet high. The Llanos and Pampas of South America are true steppes: they present a rich covering of verdure during the rainy season; but in the months of drought, the earth assumes the appearance of a desert. The turf is then reduced to powder, the earth gapes in huge cracks; the crocodiles and great serpents lie in a dormant state in the dried mud, till the return of rains, and the rise of the waters in the great rivers, which flood the vast expanse of level surface, awaken them from their long slumber. These appearances are often ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the yard of the Muets farm, among the outbuildings, the barn gapes like a cavern. It is always caverns for us, even in houses! When you have crossed the yard, where the manure yields underfoot with a spongy sound or have gone round it instead on the narrow paved path of difficult equilibrium, and when you have arrived ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... bizarre, At whom the urchin laughs and gapes. They were the day, of which we are The evening, and ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... different coffee-houses where private letters from abroad are received, may be obtained in a few minutes, and thus "news from all nations" may be very speedily manufactured with an air of authenticity. One wide portal gapes toward the Bank, in Bartholomew Lane; and there is a sally-port into Threadneedle Street, for those who do not wish to be seen entering or emerging the other way. From the dull and dingy aspect ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sorrow can ever become wholly bad; and I fancy that even the bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is passed from sight for ever, it is bitter—ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... inspire, and wrap thyself up in the littleness of thy heart.—But no, rise above them. Suffer thy desires to wander into a larger and more dangerous field. Run with open eyes into the mouth of that destruction that gapes to devour thee! Why shouldst thou attend to the voice of destiny, to the immutable laws of the Gods, and the curse that is suspended over thee? Be a man. Bravely defy all that is most venerable, and all that is most unchangeable. Oh how I long for thy ruin! How ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... two men will interest no one. Her hair she wore half in curls, according to the hideous custom of that day. Is it not always safe to abuse the old fashion? And at no time safer than the present, when the whole world gapes with its great, foolish mouth after every novelty. I remember that Lucille looked pretty enough; but you, mesdames, who laugh at me, are no doubt quite right, and a thousand times more beautiful in ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... moulder of brazen shapes— "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man 200 Ere his body find the grave that gapes? ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the Pope is heading his whole army of gay puppets, And the great machinery round us moving with an extra show: Genuflexions, censers, mitres, mystic motions, candle-lighters, And the juggling show of relics to the crowd that gapes below, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... it might not rain, and for many months the heavens had been cloudless. Day by day the sun had scorched and burned on, as though there was to be no more verdure, the trees are but the skeletons of their former selves, and the ground is cracked, and gapes for drink. Ah! it is soon to alter! The God who has answered by fire is about to speak in the shower, and all nature is to put on a new suit of green ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... mouth. The child is half afraid, half curious; and has an anxious, troubled look. Shyuote, however, evinces no sign of embarrassment or humility. Planted solidly on his feet, with legs well apart and both arms arched, he gapes and stares at everybody and everything, occasionally fixing his glance upon the resplendent sky overhead. In vain we search for Zashue and his ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... what's the way to Arcady? Sir Poet, with the rusty coat, Quit mocking of the song-bird's note. How have you heart for any tune, You with the wayworn russet shoon? Your scrip, a-swinging by your side, Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide. I'll brim it well with pieces red, If you will tell ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the Cross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows this side of the grave; which the grave gapes to finish before the victory is won; and—strange that it should be so—this is the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... it 'as been, and no kid, and dreary, too, and disappinting; Is it this Sosherlistic rot Society is so disjinting, The Hinfluenza, or Hard Times, them Hirish, or wotever is it? I couldn't 'ave 'eld on at all, I'm sure, but for the HEMP'ROR's visit. Ya-a-a-w! 'Ang it, 'ow I've got the gapes! Bring us a quencher, you young Buttons! And mind it's cool, and with a 'ed! Hour family is reg'lar gluttons For "Soshal Stir." The guv'nor, he's a rising Tory M.P., he is. And Missis all the Season through as busy as a bloomin' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... have nothing new To tell me: from the first I guessed as much. I know, instead of coming here himself, Leading me forth in public by the hand, The King prefers to leave the door ajar As though I were escaping—bids me trudge While the mob gapes upon some show prepared On the other side of the river! Give at once His order of release! I've heard, as well Of certain poor manoeuvres to avoid The granting pardon at his proper risk; First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords, Must talk ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in mocha brown Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes; The waiter brings in oranges Bananas figs ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that hell gapes for. And ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... sat down in the tall leather-covered chair which Pevensey had just vacated: and this Marlowe nodded his flaming head portentously. "Hoh, look you, I am displeased, Mistress Cyn, I cannot lend my approval to this over-greedy oblivion that gapes for all. No, it is not a satisfying arrangement that I should teeter insecurely through the void on a gob of mud, and be expected bye and bye to relinquish even that crazy foothold. Even for Kit Marlowe death lies ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... fittest time for business, and truly I thought so, till my lord treasurer assured me the spring was the best season for sallads and subsidies. I hope therefore, that April will not prove so unnatural a month, as not to afford some kind showers on my parched exchequer, which gapes for want of them. Some of you, perhaps, will think it dangerous to make me too rich; but I do not fear it; for I promise you faithfully, whatever you give me I will always want; and although in other things my word may be thought a slender authority, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Mr. Fujinami stirs, gapes, stretches, yawns, rubs his lean fist in his hollow eyes, and stares at the rude incursion of daylight. He takes no notice of his wife's presence. She pours out tea for him with studied pose of hands and wrists, conventional and graceful. She respectfully requests him to condescend ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... remained very conscious of that door. How often in his whispering dramas we are made aware of it! How often, without even the knock of warning, it suddenly gapes or stands ajar, and unseen hands are pulling, and children are drawn in, and young girls are drawn in, and wise men, and the old, while the living world remains outside, still at breakfast, still busy with its evening games and sewing, still blindly groping ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... lay resting on the table beside her. Into it she deliberately slipped, her own; and then gazed—flushed and defiant, but proud and smiling—round a circle composed entirely of faces belonging to people suffering from the gapes. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... yet it has taken me two months to write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked prowess, I am proud of the exploit! The real journalist must be a man not of brass only, but bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on chattering to you. This last part will be much less offensive (strange to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will never forgive me for; Knappe I pity and do not dislike; Becker I scorn and abominate. Here is the tableau. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rests. Once settled, this animal, thus far hardly more than a transparent oblong body without any distinct organs, begins to develop rapidly. It elongates, forming a kind of cup-like base or stem, the upper end spreads somewhat, the depression at its centre deepens, a mouth is formed that gapes widely and opens into the digestive cavity, and the upper margin spreads out to form a number of tentacles, few at first, but growing more and more numerous till a wreath is completed all around it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... deceased, am about to chronicle the events of one short year—a year in which was compressed the agony of a long and tortured life-time! One little year!—one sharp thrust from the dagger of Time! It pierced my heart—the wound still gapes and bleeds, and every drop of blood is tainted ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... victim gapes to eject the "choke pear," or to cry out for aid, the larger the hideous object becomes, until torture, suffocation and ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... sprigged with shadows. Double rows Of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows Of globed and golden fruit, the morning air Smells sweet with ripeness, on the pavement there A wicker basket gapes and overflows Spilling out cool, blue plums. The market glows, And flaunts, and clatters in its busy care. A stately minster at the northern side Lifts its twin spires to the distant sky, Pinnacled, carved and buttressed; through the wide Arched doorway ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... engineers in lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island pineapples. Carl gapes at Panamanian nuns and Chilean consuls, French peasant laborers and indignant Irish foremen and German concessionaries with dueling scars and high collars. Gold Spanish signs and Spiggoty money and hotels with American cuspidors and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... with a piece of white rag a couple of inches long, and attach it to a stout line. The fisherman then takes his seat upon the jibboom end, having first, if he is prudent, secured a sack to the jibstay in such a manner that its mouth gapes wide. Then he unrolls his line, and as the ship forges ahead the line, blowing out, describes a curve, at the end of which the bait, dipping to—the water occasionally, roughly represents a flying-fish. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... was an ugly hole in the wall— For an oven too big,—for a cellar too small! And mortar and bricks All ready to fix, And I said, "Here's a Nun has been playing some tricks!— That horrible hole!—it seems to say, 'I'm a grave that gapes for a living prey!'" And my heart grew sick, and my brow grew sad— And I thought of that wink at the Gardener-lad. Ah me! ah me!—'tis sad to think That maiden's eye, which was made to wink, Should here be compelled to grow blear and blink, Or be closed for aye In ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... gapes the mortar, That seldom gives quarter, When speaking to ship or to city; For, although deaf and dumb, Its tongue is a bomb— And so, there's an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to a ball. Mercy upon us! is this what you call dancing? A man of thirty years of age, and with legs as thick as a gate-post, stands up in the middle of the room, and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking all the time as if he were burying his grandmother. At a given signal, the unwieldy animal puts himself in motion; he throws out his arms, crouches up his shoulders, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... misrule, sits High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, Even like an earthly king: and whose dread work, Hell gapes forever for the unhappy slaves Of fate, whom he created in his sport, To triumph in their torments when ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... ordain'd To propagate the gospel—penn'd at Rome; Hawk'd through the world by consecrated bulls; And how illustrated?—by Smithfleld flames: Who plunge (but not like Curtius) down the gulf, Down narrow-minded self's voracious gulf, Which gapes and swallows all they swore to save: Hate all that lifted heroes into gods, And hug the horrors of a victor's chain: Of bodies politic that destin'd hell, Inflicted here, since here their beings end; And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Pennant's grim slate castle, towering above black woods, glitters metallic in its rays, like Chaucer's house of fame. He stops, to look back once. Far up the vale, eight miles away, beneath a roof of cloud, the pass of Nant Francon gapes high in air between the great jaws of the Carnedd and the Glyder, its cliffs marked with the upright white line of the waterfall. He is clear of the mountains; clear of that cursed place, and all its cursed thoughts! ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Doctor; and, devouring a whole mouthful of gapes, I lowered the lamp, wet the captain's head, and sat down on a hard stool to begin my watch. The captain lay with his hot, haggard face turned toward me, filling the air with his poisonous breath, and feebly muttering, with lips and tongue so parched that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Hawkins look round sociably. Essie, with a gleam of interest breaking through her misery, looks up. Christy grins and gapes expectantly at the door. The rest are petrified with the intensity of their sense of Virtue menaced with outrage by the approach of flaunting Vice. The reprobate appears in the doorway, graced beyond his alleged merits by the morning sunlight. He is ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... "was based on several facts. In the first place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... passage dipping into the brushwood, we might expect to find a secret cabin, a wadded cell where the Spider would take refuge in her hours of leisure. The reality is something entirely different. The long funnel-neck gapes at its lower end, where a private door stands always ajar, allowing the animal, when hard-pushed, to escape through the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... even in this light by the undulations of the withered grass-bents—the only produce of this upland summit except moss. Four minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. It is only the crest of the outer rampart. Immediately within this a chasm gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed. The shady bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of winding lane, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... fattening with our blood. Ay, and the time will come when there anigh, Heaving the earth up with his curved plough, Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike On empty helmets, while he gapes to see Bones as of giants from the trench untombed. Gods of my country, heroes of the soil, And Romulus, and Mother Vesta, thou Who Tuscan Tiber and Rome's Palatine Preservest, this new champion at the least Our fallen generation to repair Forbid not. To the full and long ago Our blood thy ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... not always laugh; he who weaves fraud works his own ruin; there is no deceit which is not at last discovered, no treachery that does not come to light; walls have ears, and are spies to rogues; the earth gapes and discovers theft, as I will prove to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... B flat, is bold, chivalric, and I fancy I hear the swish of the warrior's sabre. The peasant has vanished or else gapes through the open window while his master goes through the paces of a courtlier dance. We encounter sequential chords of the seventh, and their use, rhythmically framed as they are, gives a line of sternness to the dance. Niecks ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... text was announced, and a minister earned a name as a lazy preacher if he did not hold out until the sand had ceased to run. If, on the other hand, he exceeded that limit, his audience would signify by gapes and yawns that they had had as much spiritual food as they could digest. Sir Roger L'Estrange (Fables, Part II. Fab. 262) tells of a notorious spin-text who, having exhausted his glass and being half-way through a second one, was at last arrested in his career by a valiant sexton, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... money. There's more silver plate lying in his steward's office than other men have in their whole fortunes! And as for slaves, damn me if I believe a tenth of them knows the master by sight. The truth is, that these stand-a-gapes are so much in awe of him that any one of them would step into a fresh dunghill without ever knowing it, at ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... is concave or convex according to the side from which you look at it. From one it swells out into rounded fullness; from the other it gapes as in empty hungriness. So the rich fool of the preceding parable and the anxious, troubled man of my text are the same man looked at from opposite sides or set in opposite circumstances. The root of both the rest of the one and of the anxiety of the other is the over-estimate ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... appetites his needs, Behind a decorative cloak: Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law We read upon that building's architrave In the mind's firmament, by men upraised With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw, Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn, Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang, Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn; Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise, Seen are the pits of the disruptor, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last on awful hinge loud-clanging opens wide The Door of Doom:—and lo, behold what door-ward doth abide Within the porch, what thing it is the city gate doth hold! More dreadful yet the Water-worm, with black mouth fiftyfold, Hath dwelling in the inner parts. Then Tartarus aright Gapes sheer adown; and twice so far it thrusteth under night As up unto the roof of heaven Olympus lifteth high: And there the ancient race of Earth, the Titan children, lie, 580 Cast down by thunder, wallowing ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... soaks up the rain, And drinks and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth and are, With constant drinking, fresh ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... more excursive grown, Scan his glad coast from radiant zone to zone, Then Fortune's minion in a foreign clime, Cursed by his own and damned to later time, Of incest born and by the chances thrown A tainted alien on a ravished throne, Gapes the foul flatteries of a fawning train, And fatuous mock'ries, which themselves disdain, A fancied monarch, but the witless sport Of adulation, and a practiced court, Vaunts to his broad realms and Timour-like proclaims Illusive titles of barbaric names, Cheats his own ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... branded black, the rains Striped grey this piteous God of theirs; The face is full of prayers and pains, To which they bring their pains and prayers; Lean limbs that shew the labouring bones, And ghastly mouth that gapes ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... left sullenly, but the effect of their presence had thrown Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, and the Knight into a violent fit of the gapes. ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... grave. "Why, I think his fist gapes, finger and thumb, to seize Monna Beatrice," he said, and he said no more, but looked as ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as strange, the morbid avidity with which the world seizes upon the slightest evidence of abstraction in great men, to declare that their minds are fading, or impoverished: the public gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become imbecile immediately ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... jarring hinge. Markest thou what sentry is seated in [575-609]the doorway? what shape guards the threshold? More grim within sits the monstrous Hydra with her fifty black yawning throats: and Tartarus' self gapes sheer and strikes into the gloom through twice the space that one looks upward to Olympus and the skyey heaven. Here Earth's ancient children, the Titans' brood, hurled down by the thunderbolt, lie wallowing in the abyss. Here likewise I saw the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the spectacle] It is the fires of God round His Crucible. [He drops her hand and points downward.] There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth [He points east] —the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,—black ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... Renny," was all he said, at last, between two gapes, kicking the hearthstone significantly, and stretching his arms, "not even the wife." Then he flung himself ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls, The den expands, and expectation mute Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe; Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... director, "but the starfish doesn't know enough to quit. The pull he exerts is not so powerful but it is relentless and unceasing and no oyster muscle can resist it for more than a few hours. Presently the shell gapes open. The starfish lumbers over and commences to feed, other starfish often coming to enjoy ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... not his eyes. And you are very likely right, and I may be a simpleton: but, in my opinion, that knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul look upwards, and whether a man gapes at the heavens or blinks on the ground, seeking to learn some particular of sense, I would deny that he can learn, for nothing of that sort is matter of science; his soul is looking downwards, not upwards, whether his way to knowledge is by water ...
— The Republic • Plato
... pigs but not to black. In the Tarentino, black sheep are not injured by eating the Hypericum crispum—a species of St. John's-wort—which kills white sheep. White terriers suffer most from distemper; white chickens from the gapes. White-haired horses or cattle are subject to cutaneous diseases from which the dark coloured are free; while, both in Thuringia and the West Indies, it has been noticed that white or pale coloured cattle are much more troubled by flies than are those which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Street Hill, London. A dishonest merchant, wealthy, vulgar, and purse-proud. He is invited to a soiree given by lord Abberville, "and counts the servants, gapes at the lustres, and never enters the drawing-room at all, but stays below, chatting with the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... inverted, b, there is a decided change; we are struck by the resemblance to a frog or toad. The original legs, having dark concentric lines painted around them, look like large protruding eyes, and the mouth gapes in the most realistic manner, while the two short broken ends of the handle resemble legs and serve to support the vessel in an upright position, completing the illusion. The fetich-hunting Pueblo Indian, picking up this little ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... again, the parallel ridges terminate in great irregularity. The water therefore, that is collected from the parallel valley, is gathered into two great rivers, which break through those ridges, no doubt at the most convenient places, forming two great gapes in the blue ridge, which is the most easterly of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... very difference of style is not wider than the gulf which gapes between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But men of Shakespeare's stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat themselves. The echo of the passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream, describing the girlish friendship ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and some of its leaves are gone. The tip of one wing is missing. The head of the eagle, originally proudly and defiantly erect, has been bent backward so that, instead of a level glance, it looks upward, and there is a deep dent in it, as from a blow. And right in the breast gapes a great ragged shot-hole, which pierces the heart of the proud emblem. The eagle has seen service. It has been in action. It bears its honorable wounds. No attempt has been made ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the students of the law; not but that they were seated here much earlier, it appearing that they had leased a residence here from the Lord Grays, as early as the reign of Edward the Third. Chancery Lane gapes on the opposite side, to receive the numberless malheureuses who plunge unwarily on the rocks and shelves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... alone in the world for the child. The sweet consciousness of a common life is ample recompense for all the trouble and suffering—for suffering there is. Heaven save you, Louise, from ever knowing the maddening agony of a wound which gapes afresh with every pressure of rosy lips, and is so hard to heal—the heaviest tax perhaps imposed on beauty. For know, Louise, and beware! it visits only a fair ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... and fluff, damped and kneaded with cold soap-suds. Rear view of a girl covered with a damp, draggled, dirt-coloured skirt, which gapes at the waistband from the "body," disclosing a good glimpse of soiled stays (ribs burst), and yawns behind over a decidedly dirty white petticoat, the slit of which last, as she reaches forward and backs out convulsively, half opens and then comes together in ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a soul; she made up her mind long ago on this point. How can a creature with such mysteriously human eyes as Nelly possessed be less human than the great plodding, loose-mouthed ploughboy, who only gapes when he is spoken to, and contains what Mr. Grebby is pleased to call, "only half ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... occurs. In every case the passage is completely excavated; the entrance gapes wide open, as large and as carefully executed as though the skin of the pea were in its place. Reasons of security have failed to modify the usual method of work. This open lodging has no defence against the enemy; but the grub exhibits ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... impetuously. "Take the Arts. I, for example, dream of painting a picture that shall move the world to admiration,—but I seldom grasp the idea I have imagined. I paint something,—anything,—and the world gapes at it, and some rich fool buys it, leaving me free to paint another something; and so on and so on, to the end of my career. I ask you what satisfaction does it bring? What is it to Raphael that thousands of human units, cultured and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... his hand with a great clang, which confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... him from such shame; and when his third night comes round, he shall have penniworths for his coin, I promise you.—But here comes another-guess customer. Look at that strange fellow—see how he gapes at every shop, as if he would swallow the wares.—O! Saint Dunstan has caught his eye; pray God he swallow not the images. See how he stands astonished, as old Adam and Eve ply their ding-dong! Come, Frank, thou art a scholar; construe ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in every poultry book as one of the prominent poultry diseases, but are not common in the Northern and Western States. Gapes are caused by a parasitic worm in the windpipe. Growing chicks are affected. The remedy is to move the chicks to fresh ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... in the world to find an expression for their law. But coz, pray where did you get those two gorgeous teeth? the incomparable couple cut a grand and gloomy figure there across the chasm ... of your unfathomable mouth, and form a capital bridge over the gulf that gapes between the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... discerned him at a distance, but he never came. The anxious interval wore away unproductively. The others returned, the room filled again, benches were reclaimed and repossessed, and another hour of pleasure or of penance was to be sat out, another hour of music was to give delight or the gapes, as real or affected taste for it prevailed. To Anne, it chiefly wore the prospect of an hour of agitation. She could not quit that room in peace without seeing Captain Wentworth once more, without the interchange of one ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... he could not. His mouth felt as dry and stiff and hard as a chip, and he suddenly began to open it wide and shut it slowly, like a chicken with the gapes. ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... hen or chicken gapes a great deal, and sick, and complains of her throat, make pills of black pepper, cream, white flour, and put a pill in her mouth and make her swallow it till she takes down enough; the black pepper kills the worms. I ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce |
