"Looming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and clear, showing distinctly the delicate tracery of each branch and leaf overhanging the pathway. The cold, clear light threw into strong relief each giant maple tree darkly looming ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... clung to the earth, but over the north-east tower of Roselawn he could see the sun, monstrous and red, looming with ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... back into their channels and, coming with them, looming with its portentous realization above the others, the remembrance that only the evening before, he had drawn out the settlement upon her life. Now she knew why he had done it. Now she found the absolute trending of his mind. He had said ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Guiseppina drew the bolt and opened the door. There on the landing stood, not a policeman, but an elderly gentleman, his hat in one hand, Saint Antonio in the other, and his bald head looming out from the gloom—some Turin stairs are very dark—like the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... it by a piece of sheer luck. And the proprietor had been heavily fined and heavily warned, yet here he stood to-night, silent, respectful, hands up his sleeves, waiting. For once in his life, Lawson's imagination worked. He foresaw something portentous looming in the background of that impenetrable mind, revealed in the steady, unblinking stare of those slanting Chinese eyes, fixed steadily and fearlessly ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... not dwell on the well known incidents of his life outside the varied calls and promises by which he became the most favored man in human annals. It was his faith which made him immortal, and with which his name is forever associated. It is his religious faith looming up, after four thousand years, for our admiration and veneration which is the true subject of our meditation. This, I think, is distinct from our ordinary conception of faith, such as a belief in the operation of natural laws, in the return ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... belayed it The boat slipped quietly along close-hauled. The long line of islands which guards the entrance of our bay lay dim before use. Over the shoulder of one of them I could see the lighthouse, still a distinguishable patch of white against the looming grey of the land. The water rippled mournfully under our bows and a long pale wake stretched astern from our counter. "Fortune," banked money, good heifers and even enduringly fruitful fields seemed very little matters to me then. They must have seemed still less, far less, ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... love these vast red canyon walls towering above me. And the silence is so sweet. Think of the hellish din that filled my ears. Even now—sometimes, the brook here changes its babbling murmur to the roar of war. I never understood anything of the meaning of nature until I lived under these looming stone walls ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... character of whose inhabitants seemed to place it without the pale of such dire turmoils. But the Turks (the war with the Arabs ended, and at leisure) began to look about, and thought they saw an Eldorado looming beautifully in the mirage of The Desert, which would speedily replenish their exhausted treasures, and put the Government of Tripoli in easy pecuniary circumstances. A pretext was soon found to excavate in this newly discovered Desert mine. "The people of Ghadames," said the Pashas of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... any sorrow looming in the future was King Edward at this moment, that he was extremely jubilant over a project which he had just brought ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... this wise. Everything pointed to ultimate success. A board of representative business men was secured in order to meet legal requirements. By faith I now saw the beautiful, practical home for delinquent and dependent children looming up in the very ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... reflect that a Reform Bill and the liberation of Italy are "looming in the distance," it gives me no little wish to be in office; but when I consider what colleagues I should have, I am cured of any such wish. I can express my own opinions in ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... on, noticing nothing, except once, when with a start she saw the great black outline of Corfe Castle looming against the night-sky. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... sky was dun with cloud; And looming lurid o'er its edge The brows of awful forms were bowed, That forged in flame the fateful wedge Which waited ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... a block and tackle arrangement, one five miles north and the other ten or fifteen miles in the same direction, small lamps being placed on each, thus converting them into temporary lighthouses should we return to Cagayan after dark, or in the event of our return by daylight, the buoys themselves, looming up big and red, would serve as guides, observations having been made with the sextant ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... above. This was the signal for her to look out into the street, which she promptly did, and, behold! the four-in-hand had stopped before the door, a groom was standing at the leaders' heads, and the master of this splendid equipage was just coming in, his figure looming large and imposing ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... a flash, with a startled exclamation and an instinctive movement as if to shield herself from unbidden gaze. Her lips parted and her heart pounded like a hammer. Standing in the doorway was Randolph Shaw, his figure looming up like a monstrous, wavering genie in the uncertain light from the shaking lantern. His right hand was to his brow and his eyes were wide with incredulous joy. She noticed that the left sleeve of his dinner ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the two officers studied the haze of the night sea around them, unable yet to discern the form of the approaching vessel. And then came a huge specter, looming up directly off the starboard quarter of the Dewey in the proportions of a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... out into the darkness, and saw the looming of the great Temple rearing its majestic form in sable gloom, darker than the night; and she looked into the great unfathomable depths of the skies, and sighed like the deep moaning of the wind. But the heavens were as ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... nor any of the Orgreave children had ever seen the inside of a Sunday School; and the tendency up at Lane End House was to condescend towards the festival as towards a rejoicing of the proletariat. But in face of the magnitude of the affair, looming more enormous as it approached, this attitude could not be maintained. The preparations for the Centenary filled newspapers and changed the physiognomy of towns. And on the morning of the ceremonial ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... His reason told him that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, and, best of all armors, a righteous cause. How was an ill and tired and wicked old man to fight against these? It became ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... The Slide, Teeny-bits suddenly found himself dodging a thicket of small spruce trees. He escaped them by swerving quickly, but he went too far to the left. Other small trees confronted him; his body brushed sharply against the branches, and then looming before him was an old monarch of the forest that somehow had escaped when the slide had scarred the mountain-side. Its gnarled branches, standing out vaguely in the half-light of the moon and stars like the arms of an octopus, ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... forty effectives in all, with a couple dozen native converts behind us, who had been provided with some of the captured rifles and swords. As soon as we were clear, Captain A——, who was a tiny man, even among a tiny race, drew a little sword, and pointing to the enemy's barricades now looming up very close, ordered his bugler to sound the charge once more. The notes ripped out, and giving a mixed attempt at a European cheer, we quickened our pace, running as rapidly as we could over the rubbish which covered the ground and taking advantage of every ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... part of his hopes, and yet the man in him was intent upon the woman. She had now the air of detached judgment, while he could not refrain from speculating anxiously on the effect of his future course on her and on their intimate relationship. He forbore from thinking, now, of the looming events which might thrust them apart,—put a physical distance between them,—his anxiety was concerned with the possible snapping of the thread of sympathy which had bound them. In this respect, he dreaded her own future as much as his own. What might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at the appointed time, hoping Teddy wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor feelings. A call at Meg's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Daisy and Demijohn, still further fortified her for the tete-a-tete, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... youngish Jew who had acquired Parfitts, who was Parfitts, also cut a picturesque figure on the face of London. He, too, was spending money with both hands; for Parfitts itself was at stake. Last and most disturbing, was the individual looming mysteriously in the background, the inexplicable man who lived in Werter Road, and whose identity would be decided by the judgment in the case of Witt v. Parfitts. If Witt won his action, then Parfitts might retire from business. Mr. Oxford would ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... shadows long on the levels, and the hills were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of brown ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Monday morning, Bannon, looking out through the dusty window of the trolley car, caught sight of the elevator, the naked cribbing of its huge bins looming high above the huddled shanties and lumber piles about it. A few minutes later he was walking along a rickety plank sidewalk which seemed to lead in a general direction toward the elevator. The sidewalks at Calumet are at the theoretical grade of the district, that is, about five feet above the actual ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... of mood and whim; Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams Upon my nearing vision, less it seems A looming Alp-height than a guise of him Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, Of semblance to his personality In its quaint glooms, ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... is of different densities, which causes the rays of reflection of our ship to be bent, sending the image up on the shore. What sailors call 'looming,' often seen on our own shores, is produced in the same way; and we often see an island, or a vessel, looming up away above the water, from which it is sometimes separated by a strip of sky. The mirage is often seen in the desert, with a whole caravan up in the air, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... untouched with some sort of fear had crept into the man's eyes. Now he tried to smooth the threat of storm he saw looming. Furthermore, an uncomfortable feeling of his ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... looming, black mass, Sylvia fled away actually and physically, springing to her feet wherever she was, entering another room, taking up some ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of brass (not copper). The Hindus of Upper India have an Iram which they call Hari Chand's city (Colonel Tod); and I need hardly mention the Fata Morgana, Island of Saint Borondon; Cape Fly-away; the Flying Dutchman, etc. etc., all the effect of "looming." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... impossibly beautiful and tranquil; but I know that even then it was often marred by disappointments, and troubles, and fears. Little anxieties that have all melted softly into the past, that were easily enough borne, when it came to the point, yet, looming up as they did in the future, filled the days with the shadow of fear. That is the phantom that one ought to lay, if it can be laid. And is there hidden somewhere any well of healing, any pure source of strength and refreshment, from which we can drink and be calm and brave? That is a question ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hide until our expected visitors should arrive, and there remained until midnight. When the hitherto noisy villagers turned into bed, the silvery moon shed her light on the desolate scene, and the Mgogo guide, taking fright, bolted. He had not, however, gone long, when, looming above us, coming over the horizon line, was ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the hill stood a curious structure, actually small, but looming large in the grayness. The main body of the building was elevated upon posts, and was smaller at the bottom than where the spreading walls met the peaked roof. This roof spread out on both sides into broad verandas, and under these two wing-like ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... deserted houses. Even in daylight they have a sinister effect on me. They seem, in their empty spaces, to have held and recorded all that has happened in the dusty past. The Wells house that night, looming before me, silent and mysterious, seemed the embodiment of all the deserted houses I had known. Its empty and unshuttered windows were like blind eyes, ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and waterfalls plunging down wet ledges from the loins of rain-swept majesty; pine trees looming blue through a soft gray fog, and winds whispering to them, weeping to them, moving the mist back and forth again; shadows of clouds and eagles lower yet, moving silently on sunny slopes. And up above ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... water, looming high above her mainyard, came rushing and booming along, dark, terrible, opaque. For a moment I saw it curling overhead, and would have cried out, I believe, had there been time; but a midshipman, a mere child, slipped up before me, and caught hold of my legs, while I tried to catch his collar. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... for our strangely chopping wind now became apparent. From our elevation we could see piled thunder-clouds looming up from the west. They were spreading upward and outward in the swift, rushing manner of tropic storms; and I saw I must hustle if I was to get my fire going at all. The first little blaze was easy, and after that I had to pile on quantities of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... second too late, for I saw nothing but the looming figure of a second ruffian and his upraised arm; then painless darkness seemed to enfold me, and I was conscious of plunging down ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... on in the afternoon, and the sun was striking across the broad sheet of water. Tom glanced up along the shore. Something amid a clump of trees caught his eyes. It was the chimney of a house. The young inventor walked a little distance along the lake shore. Suddenly he saw, looming up in the forest, a large building. It needed but a glance to show that it was falling into ruins, and had no signs of life about it. Nor, for that matter, was there any life in the forest around him, or on the lake that ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... looming through the dusk; lights shining through its fine perpendicular windows, and the sound of familiar hymns surging out into the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for a storm, which they avoided by submerging, was uneventful until they found themselves in the company of scattered ice-cakes with the snow-capped ridges of the Aleutian Islands looming up before them. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... whirlwind of the fray, That waged in fury till the sun Sank, and the day's last loops were spun— Then terrible was Goll ... He rose A tempest of increasing blows, More furious and fast, as dim, Uncertain twilight fell ... More grim And great he grew as, looming large, He fought, and pressing to the marge Of ocean, he o'erpowered and drave The Viking hero back; till wave O'er ready wave that hurried fleet, Snuffled and snarled ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... the air in the car grew cooler, she fell asleep, and did not waken till the sun was down, and a great bank of black clouds was looming up in the west, with mutterings of thunder, and an occasional flash of lightning showing against the dark sky. She might not have wakened then if the car had not given a lurch, with a jar which brought every one to his feet. The train was off the track, and it would be two or three hours before ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... largely to be got as the answer to a sort of rule-of-three sum. If in one hundred years the population of London has been multiplied by seven, then in two hundred years—! And one proceeds to pack the answer in gigantic tenement houses, looming upon colossal roofed streets, provide it with moving ways (the only available transit appliances suited to such dense multitudes), and develop its manners and morals in accordance with the laws that will always prevail amidst over-crowded humanity so long as humanity ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... more nearly face to face. They remained for some minutes looking at it through the dim window which opened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the vague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the florid features, looming dimly, of Fanny's drawing-room. And the beauty of what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her burst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort, with the moments of their silence, above all, which might have represented ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... light I could make out the line of sentinel trees across the marsh, and off on the bay a ship, looming dim in the distance, coming on with wind and tide. There were no sounds except the long regular wash of the waves, the stir of the breeze in the chafing sedges, and the creepy stepping of the water ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the inspiration of a god; that an increasing number of liberal theologians are discarding the theory of the divine inspiration of the Bible. He likewise clearly perceives that there are as yet many men that have given this matter but little thought; with the Divine inspiration looming up as a corner stone in the Hebrew faith he realizes that it behooves him to ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... in fact, appear to the Doctor a little odd. That the young man should hint at his desire to ask Miss Derwent to marry him, or perhaps ask the parental approval of such a step, was natural enough; the event had been looming since the beginning of the voyage home. But to go beyond this, to ask the girl's father whether he thought success likely, whether he could hold out hopes, was scarcely permissible. It seemed a curious failure of tact in such a man as ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... face to glow with braver cheer, Making the serried mist to stand afloat, Subduing langour with an antidote, And strengthening love almost to cast out fear, Till for one moment golden city walls Rise looming on us, golden walls of home, Light of our eyes until the darkness falls; Then thro' the outer darkness burdensome 40 I hear again the tender voice that calls, 'Follow me hither, follow, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... slant, I feared for a moment that it would sweep us below the enemy's camp, and that my expedition would fail. By dint of hard rowing, however, we had got three-quarters of the way over, when I saw an immense black mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... birds were everywhere! little greenish birds flitting among the trees; larger grey-brown birds flying low; fairy-like blue and yellow birds that circled round the car as it ran east towards the far, looming mountains of the Djurdjura; larks that spouted music like a fountain of jewels as they soared into the quivering blue; and great, stately storks, sitting in their nests on tall trees or tops of poles, silhouetted against the sky as they gazed indifferently down ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... awkward predicament. Mr Hautaine had taken the command, and ordered the guns to be fired that the boat might be enabled to find them. The fourth gun was loading, when they perceived the smuggler's cutter close to them looming through the fog. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... mind was a large, looming sense of responsibility for the car. It was his mother's car, and it was new and shiny, and his mother liked to drive flocks of fluttery, middle-aged ladies to benefit teas and the like. It had taken a full hour of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the best map-reader or scout off his path and bewildered his calculations. One night about this time a party of us, including Hunt and 'Doctor' Rockall, the medical corporal, who had accompanied me round the front posts, lost its way hopelessly in the dark. Shapes looming up in the distance, I enquired of Hunt as to his readiness for hostile encounter, whereupon the reassuring answer was given that 'his revolver was loaded, but not cocked.' I leave the point (if any) of this story to the mercy of those whose fate it ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Mademoiselle Desceillets. They left the coach to await them on the Orleans road, and thence, escorted by a single male attendant, they made their way by a rutted, sodden path towards the grim castle looming ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... W. Ws. had been put out of business in American City, but the Socialists were still active, in spite of prosecutions and convictions. Also there was a new peril looming up; the returned soldiers were coming back, and a lot of them were dissatisfied, presuming to complain of their treatment in the army, and of the lack of good jobs at home, and even of the peace treaty which the President was arranging in Paris. They had ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... been away before, was on fire with impatience, and would sit smoking for hours with his legs astride the shank of the bowsprit, staring ahead at the skyline, in the hope that his friend's reckoning had been wrong, and that at any moment he might see the beloved coast line looming up ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... last in a dim shadow, and MacVeigh saw that it would pass very near to him. He made out, one after another, a human figure, three dogs, and the toboggan. There was something appalling in the quiet of this specter of life looming up out of the night. He could no longer hear the sledge, though it was within fifty paces of him. The figure in advance walked slowly and with bowed head, and the dogs and the sledge followed in a ghostly line. Human ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... poetic Edda the tragic tale of Balder is hinted at rather than told at length. Among the visions which the Norse Sibyl sees and describes in the weird prophecy known as the Voluspa is one of the fatal mistletoe. "I behold," says she, "Fate looming for Balder, Woden's son, the bloody victim. There stands the Mistletoe slender and delicate, blooming high above the ground. Out of this shoot, so slender to look on, there shall grow a harmful fateful shaft. Hod shall shoot it, but Frigga in Fen-hall shall weep ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... have circled, Grossmont—that island in the air—Point Loma, the southern tip of the United States, now, alas, closed on account of the war (Fort Rosecrans is near its point), and further north the mountains and orange groves—snow-capped Sierras looming ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty Enlightening the World. Liberty (absit omen!) is wrapped away in grimy cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly. That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... they breathed was rank with fetid odors bred of the gaunt dark warehouses that lined their way; the lights were few; beneath the looming buildings the shadows were many and dense. Here and there dreary and cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows conspicuous in a lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried on, they encountered, and made wide detours to escape contact with ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... open square in the very centre of the city was a building of such extraordinary size that we took it to be the palace of a king; but here the water was so deep that we could make out but faintly the looming far below us of its mighty walls. Never have I been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close to making discoveries of surpassing archaeological value, and yet I was as completely cut off from them as though they ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... was looming a very serious situation. Only sailors were available to help American settlers in seizing and holding the coast against a very active and exceptionally well-provided and intelligent Mexican, or Spanish-speaking, opposition. Fremont ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... looming through the chasms and rents made in the feudal order by civil war, the giant ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and a few minutes' steady swimming brought them within twenty or thirty yards of the light. The hulls of the gallivats and their tall raking spars could now be seen looming up out of the blackness. Desmond perceived that the light was on the outermost of the line, and, treading water for a moment, he caught the low hum of voices coming from the after part of the gallivat. Striking out to the left, still followed ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... said the Man-of-War Bird; "they saw the Great Admiral when he first sailed in these waters. They saw the three tall galleons looming out of a purple mist on the eve of discovery, their topsails rosy with the sunset fire. The Admiral kept pacing, pacing; watching, on the one hand, lest his men surprise him with a mutiny, and on the other, glancing overside ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Naples, M. Gay-Lussac and myself observed luminous phenomena very analogous to those which fixed my attention during a long abode at Mexico and Quito. These meteors are perhaps modified by the nature of the soil and the air, like certain effects of the looming or mirage, and of the terrestrial refraction peculiar to the coasts ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... towering wall of white rose directly in our path, and though I threw the helm hard over, and reversed our engine, I was too late to avoid collision. With a sickening crash we struck the high looming obstacle three-quarters on. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cut down expenses with the reckless energy of a man who saw the poor-house looming ahead for him; the results was that his bad shows grew worse, and the attendance wasn't enough to dust off the seats. The biggest item of expense about the place was 'Mighty Mardo,' the boa-constrictor; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the distant star, and in a short while it was looming upon the screen with sheets of atomic flame leaping out like the teeth of a circular saw. One huge explosion flicked a long tongue of heat at them. The corona of the sun gleamed and writhed like a thin band ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... investigate. Something was wrong down the highway, and the sooner it was set right the better. There was one thing, he wished he had his gun with him, but then—! And he swung on down for two miles, going faster and faster, seeing nothing but white still road, and quiet sleeping trees, with looming mountains against the sky everywhere. Then, suddenly, across the way in the blare of his lights a white face flashed into view, and a body, lying full across the road, with a bicycle flung to one side completing the block. He brought his car to a quick stand and jumped out, but before he could ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... added to her contentment whenever the recollection of it came to her. There was no longer any secret looming up between her and Barby like a dreadful wall. The letter telling all about the wonderful and exciting things which had happened in her absence was already on its way to Kentucky. It was not a letter to be proud of. It was scrawled as fast ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a place where a smooth stone lay between two pillared monoliths, as though it had been put there for a bench. Though all around me was dense mist, yet I could see above me the vague shape of a summit looming quite near. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... forwards, as they talked, John and his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller—though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never occurred to you to think of him as thin. Winthorpe's spare ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... and dazed the last few days were growing clearer. He noticed the different sounds the river made, and picked out the sharp crackle of ice among the stones, though he had hitherto only been conscious of a hoarse, pulsating roar. The rocks also took distinctive shapes instead of looming in blurred masses before his heavy eyes, and he found himself gazing with strained attention into each strip of deeper shadow. Still, though he walked cautiously, there was no sign of any life in the ravine. He was horribly weary, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... never so much at home as in the night, but he is aware not only of the night, but of the stars. Like a cheer out of the dark comes that wonderful scene in The Secret Sharer in which, at infinite risk, the ship is sailed in close under the looming land in order that the captain may give the hidden manslayer a chance of escaping unnoticed to the land. This is a story in which the "tonalities of the affair" are much more subtle than in Typhoon. It is a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... summer; Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high; Broken with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen; The numerous camp-fires scattered near and far, some away up on the mountain; The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering; And over all, the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... lamp and figure and village vanished. How could he possibly be in Chattanooga? The conjecture was absurd; she was the victim of some optical illusion. With a long, heavily-drawn sigh, she leaned against the window-frame and looked at the dark mountain mass looming behind her; and after a time, when the storm drew nearer, she saw it only ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... counts and barons, and princes not serene, but with fine German fortunes looming for them in the future, though none amounting to L1000 a day, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... that, a dark figure looming out of the gloom. And the next instant we had him one by each hand and pelted him ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... of serried shadows, Up cold aisles of buried glade; In the midst of river-meadows Where the looming kine are laid; From your dazzled windows streaming, From your humming festal room, Deep and far, a broken gleaming Reels and shivers on ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... unexpected as could be. They had been less than a month upon the farm. Uncle Jeptha had not been in his grave thirty days, and Hiram was just getting into the work of running the place, with success looming ahead. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... had quit all such follies. He took the volume, however, but neglected to look at it for several days. At last he read the pages. He laid the book down and began to pace the floor. Possibilities of creation were looming large before him—a rush of thought was upon him. His soul was not dead—it had only been ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... around the inclosure, lest thence they might afford vantage and ambush for musketry fire or a flight of arrows into the stockade. Through rifts in the foliage at considerable distance one could see the dark mountain looming high above, and catch glimpses of the further reaches of the Great Smoky Range, blue and shimmering far away, and even distinguish the crest of "Big Injun Mountain" on the skyline. The several cabins, all connected by that row of protective palisades from one to another like a visible ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the looming shadow of a catastrophe. In August he wrote to Lord Charlemont that the events in France had something paradoxical and mysterious about them; that the outbreak of the old Parisian ferocity might be no more than a sudden explosion, but if it should happen to be character rather than accident, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the blue summit of a hill. A sunlit wreath rose from around the abrupt and rugged Bass as we passed; and my heart leaped within me as I saw, for the first time, that stern Patmos of the devout and brave of another age looming dark and high through the diluted mist, and enveloped for a moment, as the cloud parted, in an amber-tinted glory. There had been a little Presbyterian oasis of old in the neighbourhood of Cromarty, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and day was breaking when a step on the door-sill of the bunk-house awakened him. He raised himself slightly on his elbow and stared at McArthur, looming large in the gray dawn, with a skull carried ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... and within an hour, as we ran down upon it at something like eight knots, the Island began to take shape. A wisp of morning fog floated horizontally across it, dividing its shore-line from the hills in the interior, which, looming above this cloudy base, appeared considerably higher than, in fact, they were. The shore itself along the eastern side showed almost uniformly steep—a line of reddish rock broken with patches of green, which we mistook for meadows (but ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... PEA, ABL) yields about 50 percent more seed and keeps on growing for weeks after Coco has quit. Do not bother to fertigate untrellised pole beans grown for dry seed. With the threat of September moisture always looming over dry bean plots, we need to encourage vines to quit setting and dry down. Peace Seeds and Abundant Life offer long lists of ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... by the high-rising moon, the crossing alley-way cut a slice of brilliancy as if with a knife. From the shadow into the moonshine two hands stretched towards her as Ned's voice greeted her. She saw his tall form looming ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... prehistoric life of which we are totally in ignorance. It is peculiarly useful to the student of Roman religion because he stands on the borderland and looking backwards sees just enough dark shapes looming up behind him to crave more light. For in many phases of early Roman religion there are present characteristics which go back to old manners of thought, and these manners of thought are not peculiar to the Romans but are found in many primitive peoples of our own day. The greatest ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... after leaving the Orkneys we sighted Fair Isle, looming faintly through a mist of snow, far to starboard. With difficulty we tacked to windward, for the northeast wind had driven us considerably out of our course. Darkness came on at about three o'clock in the afternoon in these latitudes, and we wanted to make the harbour in daylight. But ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... a very common occurrence; but in my case its progress and result were specially modified and conditioned. There was the political aspect, looming large to the alarmed Right; there was the struggle for more intimate influence over me, in which my mother fought with a grim intensity; in my own mind there was always the curious dim presence of an inexorable fate that wore the incongruous mask of Elsa's ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... a short distance, and saw looming through the darkness a company of horsemen approaching us from Reitz. I thought at first that they were some of my own burghers—the ones who had taken to their heels—but it turned out to be General Wessel Wessels, who was nearer than I knew with ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... her; letters for which she had wished nervously so long; now she was near Fiji and her new life; now she dared to realize, she could not help it, what all the voyage she had refused to think of, as still in a hazy distance of the future. Here it was, nigh at hand, looming up through the haze, taking distinctness and proportions; and Eleanor's heart was in a state of agitation to which that sound little member was very little accustomed. However, the outward effect of all this was to give her manner even an unwonted degree of cool ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound; in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there, many years ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Beyond the looming roofs as they descended the hill she saw white sails sink out of sight. All the little panorama upon which she had looked down sprang up around her, large and living. He whistled to the car as he helped her down the last steep pitch, whistled and waved, and they ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... sailor's lodging-house—the small creature told us, still trotting by our side, until we found ourselves walking alongside a low wall over which we inhaled strong odours of the sea and of longshore sewage, and spied the riding-lights of the harbour looming through the fog. At the end of this we came to the high walls of a row of houses, all very quiet and black to the eye, except that here and there a chink of light showed through a window-shutter or the sill ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... day for which he had been so carefully prepared and trained looming terrifyingly large in the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... da Cunha was sighted, looming in the evening light like some huge monster rising out of the ocean. Looking over the sides the water appeared unusually clear; and I could see, far down, the fish swimming about by the side of the ship. Even Mr Hooker, however, did not succeed in catching any. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... all is prepared," said Demdike, coming close up the mule on which Paslew was mounted, and pointing to the gigantic gallows, looming above the abbey walls; "wilt them now accede to my request?" And then he added, significantly—"on the same terms ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the land in a northwestern direction on a bright day you can see South Mountain, "forerunner of the sierrated Alleghanies," looming up between the town and Cumberland Valley. Back of it the serried ranks of the Alleghanies rise in hazy indistinctness and blend imperceptibly with the blue ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, such visions of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Doom, but in others Jeremiah leaps in a moment from the vague and far-looming to the near and exact. He follows a line which songs of vengeance or deliverance often take among unsophisticated peoples in touch with nature. They will paint you a coming judgment first in the figure of a lowering ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... little girl's birth she went all to pieces, and he had to "put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is six now, a sweet, lovely little thing to look at, but, I judge from what he said, quite abnormal. He has a trained nurse with her always. Just think of all that tragedy looming over our poor patient good doctor, for he is patient, despite being the most impatient ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... in a style no less polite than the dinner; and after tea, the young gentlemen rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the unfinished tasks of that day, or to get up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. In the meantime Mr Feeder withdrew to his own room; and Paul sat in a corner wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, and what they were all ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... dwellings and the present safety of the town, open on all sides, unguarded and free from fear, is very marked. But not less complete is the contrast between the ancient hamlet, thus hidden for security amid the waters, and the great cromlech, looming black against the sky on the hill's summit, exposed to the wildness of the winds, utterly unguarded, yet ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... unconscious as the landscape unrolled beside her. When she rocked her baby at evening, maybe she fell into a Polish slumber song, or she talked sometimes to herself in Polish. Otherwise she did not think of Poland, nor of that life to which she had belonged. It was a great blot looming blank in its darkness. In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darknesses ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sultry day in that little town near the Western coast of Africa when Afa Bibo came. He had had a long, long journey from his home among the Ntum people far to the south of Efulen. So he, as well as the men who had brought him, was glad when they saw the rude little hospital looming up at the end ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... somewhere came a monotonous drip of water. The tapping of picks sounded incessantly out of the darkness, and occasionally there were hoarse voices raised in wanton curses or harsh commands. Shores of heavy timbers supported the sides and roof of the tunnel, looming grotesquely gigantic as some passing light touched them; this was the newest of the workings, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... looming darker, and the thudding of waves upon the sand sounded louder every instant upon my ears. I could already see the quick dancing gleam of the surf in front of me. Suddenly, as I peered through the deepening shadow, a long dark boat shot out from it, like a trout ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... own joys, loves, memories, and sorrows, and these he felt impelled to enshrine in song. It may, indeed, be doubted if his cast of mind would have led him to sympathise with bold and savage scenery. In proof of this, we remember that, although he often had seen the gigantic ridges of Arran looming through the purple evening air, or with the "morning suddenly spread" upon their summer summits, or with premature snow tinging their autumnal tops, he never once alludes to them, so far as we remember, either in his poetry or prose; and that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Catholics and Protestants, is now, in the interest of the past, endeavoring to rescue them from utter ruin. It is a worthy task. What subjects for a painter most of them present! How picturesque are their old cloisters, looming up dark, grand, and desolate against the sky! How worn and battered are they by the storms of years! How tremblingly stands the Cross upon their ancient towers, as if its sacred form had become feeble like the fraternity that ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... the grey centre, rose a bold hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the left, Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants talked together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop above Deep Run. With suddenness the fog parted, was upgathered with swiftness by the great ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... she thought—everything was wonderful to-night, most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosy roadsters ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for nearly two hours the storm had come so much nearer that the lightning constantly blinded his eyes. He heard now the rushing of the river, and, as he turned into the road by its side, he saw the black hill looming large. Nothing but the momentum of a will already made up kept his intention turned to the climb, so unpropitious was the time, so utterly lonely the place. As it was, with quiescent mind and vigorous step, he held on down the smooth road that lay ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... wakened in the middle of the night by a distant jangle of sabres and rattle of hooves. Seeing our officer of the day, Lieutenant R.E. Callan, standing not far away and looming gigantic against the sky, I asked him the meaning of the noise; and he replied that it was Captain Macomb's troop of cavalry just coming in. I lit my pipe and talked for a while with the lieutenant of other things ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... waiter's proffer of breakfast was an insult. And, as I stared out at misty trees and hedgerow I began as it were to sense a grimness in the very air—the million-sided tragedy of war; behind me the weeping girl, before me and looming nearer with every mile, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... Straits, and is an island lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese at Singapore. They dominate the Strait ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... not only inside, but outside his empire; and, in the long run, it will doubtless be found to have wrought powerfully for right reason. As an example of an utterance of his which to many might seem to be the result of a momentary impulse, but which reveals sober contemplation of problems looming large before the United States as well as Germany, I might cite a remark made last year to an American eminent in public affairs. He said, "You in America may do what you please, but I will not suffer capitalists in Germany to suck the life out of the working-men and then fling them ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... hill upsprung With pointed rocks against the light, The crag sharpshadowed overhung Each glaring creek and inlet bright. Far, far, one light blue ridge was seen, Looming like baseless fairyland; Eastward a slip of burning sand, Dark-rimmed with sea, and bare of green, Down in the dry salt-marshes stood That house dark latticed. Not a breath Swayed the sick vineyard underneath, Or moved the dusty southernwood. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... up on the Mojave stage, I met Salty again crossing Indian Wells, his face from the high seat, tanned and ruddy as a harvest moon, looming through the golden dust above his eighteen mules. The ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the trembling policemen tried vainly to control them; but the panic soon ended when they saw that the leviathan's arms remained crossed and his smile kinder yet. By now he dwarfed the houses, his body looming a hundred and fifty feet into the sky. At this moment a woman back of the semicircle slumped to her knees and ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... With his destination in sight, with no signs in any way suspicious during the trip over, Herr Schmidt had become very easy in mind. With many of the other passengers be went forward and from the deck watched the looming horizon of New York's skyscrapers. A most interesting sight the skyline, something to engross your attention. I was interested in ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... and a bitter-sweet clung to the roof and pillars of the porch. These details of the place (which she had never before known as Mr. Jenney's) flashed into Victoria's mind before she caught sight of the great trees themselves looming against the sombre blue-black of the sky: the wind, rising fitfully, stirred the leaves with a sound like falling waters, and a great drop fell upon her cheek. Victoria raised her eyes in alarm, and across the open spaces, toward the hills which piled higher and higher yet against the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... windward, but always keeping her sails full and plenty of way on her. At last they were through the swashway; and though the sea was again heavier, and the waves frequently swept over the decks, Jack gave a sigh of relief. They could make out the hull of the vessel now looming up black over the white surf that surrounded it. She had ceased firing, either from the powder being wetted or her ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... uttered no complaints, made no petitions. He had come to the conclusion that both were useless; but his opinions and wishes were no longer frankly, boldly, iterated. He and his father stood upon different platforms, with an invisible, but an insurmountable barrier looming up between them. Count Tristan, albeit irritated, galled, grieved, could discover no mode of reestablishing the olden footing. After spending a month in Paris, he returned to Brittany, his mind filled with discomforting ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... city is before me, looming up across the Rhine, which lies spread out like a molten looking glass, all quivering and wavering, reflecting the thousand lights of the city. We have been on the Rhine all day, gliding among its picture-like ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... looming enormous before them. And its planets, heavily defended now by the combined Sirian, Terrestrial and Venerian fleets and great ray screens as well as a few matter-bomb stations, were suffering losses none the less. For the old Sixth of Negra, the Third here, had fallen. Slipping in on the night side ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... too, whether, in such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of cardinal movements, half-frantic in themselves, could be of soft nature? As in dry Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand! The air itself (Travellers say) is a dim sand-air; and dim looming through it, the wonderfullest uncertain colonnades of Sand-Pillars rush whirling from this side and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a hundred feet in stature; and dance ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... unworthy suspicions of her, and they were on amicable terms. Don Mariano was almost dozing when he was startled broad awake by a familiar grunt. Peering between two of the posts of the stockade, he saw coming across the clearing, looming huge and distinct in the moonlight, two bears. They were headed straight for the corral. Don Mariano knew they could not climb the stockade, and he watched them with languid interest. But the corral was evidently their objective point, for they lumbered ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... We halted on the public square, or common, and the ladies of the town gathered in large numbers and supplied many of us with cake and other refreshments. Here the regiment and battery rested until 5 P. M., when the march was resumed. Entering a pass of the South Mountain, the acclivity looming up on both sides, every precaution was taken against any possible surprise by the enemy. The battery was divided, one-half in the advance and the remainder in the rear ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... suggestion of the Professor, Clifford was left in quiet, while John and the boys deferred their further attempts to explore the mysterious occurrences that were looming up. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... sharp crisis—the only role to play. How many of these people there might be he could not tell. The present gathering he estimated at about a hundred and fifty or a hundred and seventy-five; and moment by moment more were coming down the slope, looming through the vapor, each carrying a cresset on a staff or a swinging ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... after an unenthusiastic breakfast, they found themselves standing in the antiseptic-white chamber, before the looming, impersonal intricacy of ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... yucca, and thereafter she made grimaces at each of the ugly plants they passed. It was new to her, and wonderful. Everything, weird or ugly, possessed a strange fascination for her, and when they lurched over the crest of a hill and she saw, looming somberly in the distance in front of her, a great cottonwood grove, with some mountains behind it, their peaks gleaming in the shimmering sunlight, thrusting above some fleecy white clouds against a background of deep-blue sky, her eyes glistened and she sat very erect, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... arm about her and pressed her dear head protectingly to his breast. Spurred on by his love for her his courage mounted high. Looking to where she directed his gaze, he, too, saw, looming out of the murky clouds, a great shape, fierce and terrible—the ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the long chaffron, or pike, which projected from its barbed frontal dropped with gore as it scoured along. No line of men, however serried, could resist the charge of that horse and horseman. And vain even Gloucester's dauntless presence and thrilling battle-cry, when the stout earl was seen looming through the vapour, and his cheerful shout was heard, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... atmosphere and causing remote objects to be seen double, as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in the air. It is frequently seen in the deserts, presenting the appearance of water. The Fata Morgana and Looming are species of mirage." The mirage is one of the most beautiful scenes I ever beheld and can only be seen on the plains or in deserts in its complete beauty. It has to be seen to be appreciated. It makes a buffalo look like it had ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... retreating on the hills, Looming and sinister and black, The stealthy figure swift and huge Of One who strode ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... and King Leodogran rejoiced, But musing "Shall I answer yea or nay?" Doubted and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw, Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, Field after field, up to a height, the peak Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king, Now looming, and now lost: and on the slope The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven, Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick, In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind, Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with the haze And made it thicker; while the phantom king ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... sets for sail, The sun is her masthead light, She tows the moon like a pinnace frail Where her phospher wake churns bright, Now hid, now looming clear, On the face of the dangerous blue The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, But on, but on does the old earth steer As ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of publishers make a very pleasant sort of reading. They offer, as it were, a distant prospect of the great works of the future, looming in a golden haze of expectation. A gentleman or lady may acquire a reputation for wide research by merely making a careful study of the short paragraphs in the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and so long and high and gaunt and strong of limb that he tears sometimes from the sledge ranges the best dog of all their pack and leaps easily away into the forest with him; a beast who transcends in real being even the old looming gray wolf of mediaeval story who once haunted northern Germany and the British Isles and the Scandinavian forests, and who made such impress upon men's minds that the legend of the werewolf had its birth. There were thick skins of the moose ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Franklin, among the pots and kettles of life, could not help recalling what this poor sailor lad had done for himself when he saw the brick house looming over the bowery lane. ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Looming up dark and forbidding ahead of them they beheld the all-familiar sight of the huge, shadowy thicket of pine and Balm o' Gilead clumps that fringed the west end of Gully's ranch. Entering its gloomy depths, they felt their ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... normal action, and that I should be obliged to continue a very moderate use of the drug during the remainder of my life. I saw, in dismal perspective, that small fractional part of the opium of years which was now represented by a single grain, looming up in endless distance, not unlike that puzzling metaphysical necessity in the perpetual subdivision of a unit, which, carried as far as it may be, always leaves a final half undisposed of. But in this I did myself injustice. I had really gained much in these few ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... back, my ball-dress had arrived. Hephzibah had unpacked it, and it was lying on my bed—such billows of pure white!—and it fitted! Well, it gave me pleasure, with all the uglies looming in the future, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray. Lose not a moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come from all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy vision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions. Come, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... palace-yard! What ruder sound this soft air ever smote Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note? What darker crimson ever splashed these walks Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks? And yet—what means that charred and broken wall, That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall, Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say This happened, as it were, but yesterday? And here the Commune stretched a barricade, And there the final desperate stand was made? Such things have been? How all things change and fade! How little lasts in this brave ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... we begin, the first time we saw F. Hopkinson Smith. (We are ashamed to say that he was known among our confrere, the salesmen, as "Hop" Smith.) He introduced himself to us by his moustache. Looming rapidly and breezily upon us—"Do you know me?" he said, swelling out his "genial" chest (so it seemed) and pointing, with a militarish gesture, to this decoration. We looked a moment at this sea gull adornment, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... sent us for," said Bernard, in a low voice. "And here are, looming in the distance, all the posse ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Destiny was guiding him upward. In every way Chance had worked for him. His poverty had been a cloak of honour; the thrice-blessed pawn ticket a patent of nobility. His kingdom lay before him, its purple mountains looming through the mists of dawn. And he would enter into it as the Awakener of England. He stood thrilled. The ambition was no longer the wild dream of yesterday. From the heart of the great affairs in which he would have his being he could pluck his awakening instrument. The ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... beside the little hill, with a hand on its top, his huge bulk dwarfing it! Franklin, a titan, his head and shoulders looming monstrously against the inky blackness ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... long-feared, but now vanquished Paris, which for centuries had not seen a conquering enemy near its walls—lay at their feet. The steeples of Notre-Dame, of St. Genevieve, the large cupola of the Hotel des Invalides, the countless spires proudly looming up, the vast pile of the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, where for twenty years Napoleon had given laws to trembling Europe, were plainly discerned. And this great city, with its temples and palaces, was in the hands of ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... just after she first came to the strange truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest hold ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... said Clif, after a time, to the lieutenant, as they both peered forward at the coast line now looming up before them. "The Spaniards don't seem ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... a young man in the dress of a cavalier and a beautiful girl in a simple high-waisted gown of white, strolling through a field of starry daisies. On both faces was the rapt expression of complete absorption that betokened the knowledge of their great love for each other. Looming up, a trifle in their rear, a gigantic black-robed figure, with a terrifying face, was hurrying, with great strides, across the blossoming meadow to overtake the absorbed pair. One had only to glance at the painting to realize that in simply naming it "Fate" ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower |
