"Reft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone; equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... indeed, before his door he stood, And, as a man awaking from a dream, Seemed waked from his old folly; nought seemed good In all the things that he before had deemed At least worth life, and on his heart there streamed Cold light of day—he found himself alone, Reft of desire, all ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Reft of a carriage, life is poor: A well-conducted set Needs ready money to procure Their butler and Debrett. The country totters to its fall, Disgraced to all intents, Unless you instantly recall Our solid Three ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... unaccustomed words, tripped over his tongue to meet her. What a lovely vision she had made!—"Una donzella non con uman' volto (a gentle lady not of human look)." Well, what next? Ah, something about "Amor, che ha la mia virtu tolto (Love that has reft me of my manly will)." Then should come amore, and of course cuore, and disio, and anch' io! This was very new; it was also very strange what a fascination he found in his phrenetic exercises. Rhyme, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... he could not hate Was reft at once—and he deserved his fate, But did not feel it less; the good explore For peace, these realms where guilt can never soar; The proud—the wayward—who have fixed below Their joy, and find this earth enough for ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve, Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above, What art thou but ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... fond recollections of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... her head, and frowned in absolute shame and despair, already perceiving how matters must go, and feeling as if the hope of her brother's vindication were slipping away—reft from her by Rachel's folly. Colin gave an indignant sigh, and whispering to her, "Come out when Lady Temple does, I will meet you," he made his way ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had I learnt the names of all that press Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight Nigh reft my wits ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the father's mind, Reft of his son, a murderer of his kind; His guilty sword distained with filial gore, He beat his burning breast, his hair he tore; The breathless corse before his shuddering view, A shower of ashes o'er his head he threw; "In my old age," he cried, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... go alive," cried William at that, seeing himself reft of his arms. "It were great villainy to do to death ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... he set his lips, and pulled up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel above his ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of the men in it reminded me of this man. But the dancing was the least part of it. It was neither sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell, but something far more potent. In an instant I found myself reft away from the present with its dull dangers, and looking at a world all young and fresh and beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had vanished. It was a window I was looking from, and I was gazing at the finest landscape on earth, lit by the pure ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... he found so sharp a sword, And a knife with a golden heft: “King Sigfred be God’s grace with thee, For here thy life was reft! ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Barbarian, that if only for a while Fate has reft power from my hands. Oh! this is the bitterest drop in all my cup, that I who for a score of years ruled the world must live to suffer the ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... with a reft in the jetty sky, the faint shine of a little pale blue there, and—a while later—a glimpse of water, or what seemed to be ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... nose having been slit, and subsequently sewed together again, but so clumsily that the severed parts had only imperfectly united, communicating a strange, distorted, and forbidding look to the physiognomy. Clement Lanyere, the owner of this gashed and ghastly face, who was also reft of his ears, and branded on the cheek, had suffered infamy and degradation, owing to the licence he had given his tongue in respect to the Star-Chamber. Prosecuted in that court by Sir Giles Mompesson, as a notorious libeller and scandaller of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... him for the fair person, which in its Bloom was ta'en from me, yet the mode offends. or, Seized him for the fair form, of which in its Bloom I was reft, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... a second course again, They forward came with might and main, Yet which had better of the twain, The seconds could not judge yet; Their shields were into pieces cleft, Their helmets from their heads were reft, And to defend them nothing left, These champions would ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Sire, went footing slow, His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, 110 (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... me—I would that I had ne'er to Susa gone, To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son. Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes! All desolate—my native land, reft of her children, lies!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... spell Into the peasant's being! A sublime And fervid mind was his, whose pencil trac'd The grandeur of this scene! Oh! matchless Claude! Around the painter's mastery thou hast thrown An halo of surpassing loveliness! Gazing on thy proud works, we mourn the curse Which 'reft our race of Eden, for from thee, As from a seraph's wing, we catch the hues That sunn'd our primal heritage ere sin Weav'd her dark oracles. With thee, sweet Claude! Thee! and blind Maeonides would I dwell By streams that gush out richness; there should be Tones that entrance, and forms more exquisite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... with the 'elfin grey' who might have been an 'earthly knight'; and he tells her how, as a youth, he had been reft away to fairyland: ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... bowl, The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl{25} A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle{26} bray, Lance to lance, and horse to horse? Long years of havoc urge their destined course, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and linger forth my time In longer life to double my distress? O me, most woeful wight, whom no mishap Long ere this day could have bereaved hence. Might not these hands, by fortune or by fate, Have pierc'd this breast, and life with iron reft? Or in this palace here where I so long Have spent my days, could not that happy hour Once, once have happ'd in which these hugy frames With death by fall might have oppressed me? Or should not this most hard and cruel soil, So oft where I have press'd my wretched steps, Some time had ruth ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... time, woe worth the day, That reft us of thee, Tabitha! For we have lost, with thee, the meal, The bits, the morsels, and the deal Of gentle paste and yielding dough, That thou on widows did bestow. CHOR. All's gone, and death hath taken Away from us Our maundy; thus Thy ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... think, as he walked along the street, that every one was pointing him out as the eminent literary man who was the pride of the district, and that the whole town was ringing with that magnificent effusion. Mr. Tennyson, it is certain, felt that his crown was being reft away. But, on the other hand, there is no commoner form of morbid misery than that of the poor nervous man or woman who fancies that he or she is the subject of universal unkindly remark. You will find people, still ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Peace? Ay, when the peasant has shot away his last arrow, and the wolf has reft the last lamb from the fold, then is there peace between them. But 'tis a strange friendship. Well well; let that pass. It is fitting, as I said, that the harness hang bright in the hall; for you know the old saw: ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... spring, ah happy day! Underneath a leafy spray With her sister stands my may. O sweet love! He who now is reft of thee ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... terrible thing, my friend, to be thus reft of all you hold dearest in life. If I had seen her touched by the hand of disease, and watched the rose fading from her cheek, leaf after leaf falling away, until death claimed at last his victim, I could have borne the severe ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... brighte sun had lost his hue, For th' horizon had reft the sun of light, (This is as much to say as: ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... mine, 1110 And shown by many a bitter sign. 'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh, I knew but to obtain or die. I die—but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed. Shall I the doom I sought upbraid? No—reft of all, yet undismayed[eg] But for the thought of Leila slain, Give me the pleasure with the pain, So would I live and love again. 1120 I grieve, but not, my holy Guide! For him who dies, but her who died: She sleeps beneath the wandering wave— Ah! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... oration. He had girded himself with his sword and gone forth to the war; now he was returning from the field laden with the spoils of the foe. The cob and the cameos, the violoncello and the pianoforte, were all as it were trophies reft from the tent ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... while my lonely watch I keep, Dear heart that wak'st though senses sleep To thee my heart turns gratefully. All it can give to thee is given. From all besides, its heartstrings riven. Could ne'er be reft more fatefully. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... turf and allowed successive waves to pass over their bodies, whilst others, driven wild by the blows, returned them with their hunting-crops and walking-canes. And then, as half the crowd strained to the left and half to the right to avoid the pressure from behind, the vast mass was suddenly reft in twain, and through the gap surged the rough fellows from behind, all armed with loaded sticks and yelling for "Fair play and Gloucester!" Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only flower neglected left, Cast down and trodden under foot ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean of the Vast, Nor see thy world ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... authors of sweet peace and unity, But pleasing to th' infernal empery, Under whose ensigns Wars and Discords fight, Since an even number you may disunite In two parts equal, naught in middle left To reunite each part from other reft; And five they hold in most especial prize, Since 'tis the first odd number that doth rise From the two foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... you have been whole save by the blood of this Black Knight. And for this carried they off the body piecemeal and the head, for that they well knew you were wounded; and of the head shall I have right sore need, for thereby shall a castle be yielded up to me that was reft from me by treason, so I may find the knight that I go seek, through whom it ought to ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... fell on strife; Sweet fruits are sair to gather: The tane has reft his brother of life; And the wind wears ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fancy I can see Thee amid the daffodils. Golden wealth thy basket fills; Golden blossoms at thy breast; Golden hair that shames the West; Golden sunlight round thy head! Ah! the golden years have fled; Thee have reft, and me have left Here alone, thy ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... same moment he Is as softly moved—"no rose Would he pluck before the storm Reft it ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... may sleep if the wind will let him; but such fearsome visions I have had of late, that I ha' been just nigh 'reft o' my wits. Wilt be a queen or a queen-mother, Marian? Something spake to me after this fashion; but I was weary with watching. The spirit passed from me, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in turn awake From virtue, as a man from his brief love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those dear; obsessed by your possessions With a dull round ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... for an angel of a young woman, daughter of the gentleman of the house. This charming girl was engaged to be married to Crookshanks. Waked by the firing and horrid din of battle in the piazza, she was at first almost 'reft of her senses by the fright. But the moment she heard her lover's voice, all her terrors vanished, and instead of hiding herself under the bedclothes, she rushed into the piazza amidst the mortal fray, with no armor but her love, no covering but her flowing tresses. Happily for her ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... mingled, and if men forebore the shout, Yet the din of steel and iron in the grey clouds rang about; But how to tell of King Volsung, and the valour of his folk! Three times the wood of battle before their edges broke; And the shield-wall, sorely dwindled and reft of the ruddy gold, Against the drift of the war-blast for the fourth time yet did hold. But men's shields were waxen heavy with the weight of shafts they bore, And the fifth time many a champion cast earthward Odin's door And gripped the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... gone. They pulled it down in the forties—that unhappy decade for anything ancient and quiet in Surrey villages; all they left was the tower, a mighty mass of stone and ivy that stands with its nave reft from it, the forlornest and most meaningless of ruins. If the tower might stand, why not the nave? They pulled the nave down, and left the tower standing, so Mr. C.J. Swete, one of Epsom's historians, tells ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... "Now tell me, Hagen, / upon whose command Barest thou thus to journey / hither to this land, And knowest well what sorrow / through thee my heart must bear. Wert thou not reft of reason, / then hadst thou kept ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... redeemer none is born. Such is the guerdon of thy love for man. A god thyself, thou gav'st, despite the gods, To mortals more than is a mortal's due. And therefore must thou keep this dreary rock, Erect, with frame unbending, reft of sleep, And many a bootless wail of agony Shalt utter. Change of mind in Zeus is none, Ruthless the rule when ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... think on the lads an' the land I hae left, An' how love has been lifted, an' friendship been reft; How the hinnie o' hope has been jumbled wi' ga', Then I sigh for the lads ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... night when his spirit was by treachery and violence reft from his body, there was no rest for ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the foremost of ages called the Kirta is said to set in" (ibid., p. 228). "The King must be skilful in smiting" (ibid., p. 174). "Fierceness and ambition are the qualities of the King" (ibid., p. 59). "The King who is mild is regarded as the worst of his kind, like an elephant that is reft of fierceness" (ibid., p. 171). Indeed, failure to treat subjects with rigour is visited with penalties as tremendous as failure to protect them. "They forget their own position and most truly transcend it. They disclose the secret counsels ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... once raised his pinions An eaglet; A huntsman's arrow came, and reft His right wing of all motive power. Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove, For three long days on anguish fed, In torment writhed Throughout three long, three weary nights; And then was cured, Thanks to all-healing Nature's Soft, omnipresent balm. He crept away from out the copse, And stretch'd ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and doubtful business. Funds had to be collected to buy instruments. Musicians who could play the instruments had to be picked out from among the men, and nobody knew how to find them. Hardly anybody stayed long in these base camps, and a good musician might at any moment be reft away ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... thy soul like mountain tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... unjust! Can you behold this fact, this bloody fact, And shower not fire upon the murderer? Ah, peerless Lingua! mistress of heavenly words, Sweet tongue of eloquence, the life of fame, Heart's dear enchantress! What disaster, fates, Hath reft this jewel from our commonwealth? Gustus, the ruby that adorns the ring, Lo, here defect, how shalt thou lead thy days, Wanting the sweet companion of thy life, But in dark sorrow and dull melancholy? But stay, who's this? inhuman ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Criseyde, allas! What subtiltee. What newe lust, what beautee, what science, 1255 What wratthe of iuste cause have ye to me? What gilt of me, what fel experience Hath fro me raft, allas! Thyn advertence? O trust, O feyth, O depe aseuraunce, Who hath me reft Criseyde, al ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... see in Helen's face so mild, And in her bashful mien, The winning softness of the child, The blushes of fifteen. The witching smile, when prone to go, Arrests me, bids me stay; Nor joy, nor comfort can I know, When 'reft of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... he imagined her an injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indeed still led to desolate cities. Roman camps still crowned hill and down. The old divisions of the land remained to furnish bounds of field and farm for the new settlers. The Roman church, the Roman country-house, was left standing, though reft of priest and lord. But Rome was gone. The mosaics, the coins which we dig up in our fields are no relics of our English fathers, but of a world which our fathers' sword swept utterly away. Its law, its ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... large were rolling from those haughty eyes, which men who shrank from their indifferent glance little deemed were capable of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through the aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary mourner; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen intensity of grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that hour and on that spot, he sat with Isabel's young cheek upon his bosom, and listened ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mentor the gallant and goodly, and Troeilus prompt with the war-team; Hector, a god among men—he, too, who in nothing resembled Death-doom'd man's generation, but imaged the seed of Immortals— Battle hath reft me of these:—but the shames of my house are in safety; Jesters and singers enow, and enow that can dance on the feast-day; Scourges and pests of the realm; bold spoilers of kids and of lambkins! Will ye bestir ye at length, and make ready the wain and the coffer, Piling in all that ye see, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the Maximilianeum," she exclaimed, reft with an intense admiration for the grandeur of what was before her; "I don't want to leave the Bavarian moon; oh, I don't want to leave Munich; ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... Phillis, wrathful Phillis that repines me All grace but death, may deign to come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... at the girl, who was kneeling, consoling the dog, who, reft 'tween pride and pain, showed a lamentable countenance. Suddenly she looked up and ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... arms aloft, in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive, headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cries in the boughs above Grated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length. I knew Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth, White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth, God, immortal and dead! Therefore I go; never to rest, or win Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the crow he started, like one mad, And tore out every feather that he had, And made him black, and reft him of his stores Of song and speech, and flung him out of doors Unto the devil; whence never come he back, Say I. Amen. And hence all ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... part of Gallia as Gal. Mon. saith.] After that Leir was fallen into age, the two dukes that had married his two eldest daughters, thinking it long yer the gouernment of the land did come to their hands, arose against him in armour, and reft from him the gouernance of the land, vpon conditions to be continued for terme of life: by the which he was put to his portion, that is, to liue after a rate assigned to him for the maintenance of his estate, which in processe of time was diminished as well by Maglanus as by Henninus. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (2 of 8) - The Second Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... multipartite^, abstract; disjunctive; secant; isolated &c v.; insular, separate, disparate, discrete, apart, asunder, far between, loose, free; unattached, unannexed, unassociated, unconnected; distinct; adrift; straggling; rift, reft^. [capable of being cut] scissile [Chem], divisible, discerptible^, partible, separable. Adv. separately &c adj.; one by one, severally, apart; adrift, asunder, in twain; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Rupert had come to her, and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak, solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl who did ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... answer came instantly. He had left indecision behind when he agreed to the Arab's conditions, and it was surely better to try whatever fixed plan the other had in mind than remain in Massowah, a prey to hopeless, purposeless agony. For he knew now what it would mean to him if Irene Fenshawe were reft from his life, and the knowledge made his eyes blaze, and sent the passionate blood coursing through ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... much affrighted, and on asking who they were, was answered: "We be they whom Dagobert hath called, and are come to snatch him from the hands of the devils and bear him to Abraham's bosom." The saints then vanished from before him and sped against the devils and reft the soul from them, which they were tormenting with threats and buffetings, and bare it to the joys perdurable of Paradise, chanting the words of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... ETC." Lessing's drama closes thus: "Odoardo: 'God! what have I done!' Emilia: 'Thou hast merely plucked a rose ere the storm reft it ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Prince of True Believers, was thus keening over the folk of the house,[FN341] behold, out came a black slave therefrom and said to me, 'Hold thy peace, O Shaykh! May thy mother be reft of thee! Why do I see thee bemoaning the house in this wise?' Quoth I, 'I frequented it of yore, when it belonged to a good friend of mine.' Asked the slave, 'What was his name?'; and I answered, 'Jubayr bin Umayr the Shaybani.' Rejoined he, And what ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... was stretched the Eurasian girl, Zarmi. Her picturesque finery was reft into tatters and her bare throat and arms were covered with weals and bruises occasioned by ruthless, clutching fingers. Of her face, which had been notable for a sort of devilish beauty, I cannot write; it was the awful face of one who had did ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... written in the handwriting and sealed with the seal of the accused who, when he looked upon them, trembled in every limb, and his tongue was knotted for a while, nor could he find power to speak a word, and he was reft of all his reason and of his knowledge. Wherefor he bowed his brow groundwards and held his peace. But when the King beheld this his condition, he bade them slay him by smiting his neck without the city, and Nadan cried aloud, "O Haykar, O blackavice, what could have profited thee such ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... and ambrosia—what the throne Of high Olympus—what the power I own, The golden sceptre of the starry skies— What the omnipotence that never dies, What might eternal, immortality— What e'en a god, oh love, if reft of thee? The shepherd who, beside the murmuring brooks, Leans on his true love's breast, nor cares to look After his straying lambs, in that sweet hour Envies me not my thunderbolt of power! She comes—she hastens nigh! Pearl of my works, Woman! the artist who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... poor Louise! Thy treasure's reft. I know not if by force or theft, Or part by violence, part by gift; But misery is all that's left ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... favourite place for these performances. There was also a school of defence, or fencing school, here in Queen Elizabeth's time; so many a hot Tybalt and fiery Mercutio have here crossed rapiers, and many a silk button has been reft from gay doublets by the quick passadoes of the young swordsmen who ruffled it in the Strand. This quondam inn was also the place where Banks, the showman (so often mentioned by Nash and others in Elizabethan pamphlets and lampoons), exhibited ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... she went with me, pouring still with patient spirit Balm upon my wounded feelings, peace upon my burning soul; So that though man's love was reft me, 'twas the better to inherit That which far transcends man's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... web is reft, The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers, And hapless innocence is left With no assets save sighs ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an irritated hurry out of the back parts of a town. The last glimpse of a place you may have grown to like or love is, ignobly, interminable rows of the bedroom-windows in mean streets, a few hovels, some cinder-heaps, and a factory chimney. As like as not, you are reft from a last wave to the city's unresponsive and dingy back by the roar and suffocation of a tunnel. By sea one takes a gracefuller, more ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... noble twice, by virtue and by birth, Of Heaven lov'd, and honour'd on the earth; His country's hope, his kindred's chief delight, My husband dear, more than this world's light, Death hath me reft. But I from death will take His memory, to whom this tomb I make. John was his name (ah, was! wretch must I say), Lord Russell once, now my ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... there it is;—(breaks the sword)—take it—and with it all Th' allegiance that I owe to France; ay take it; And with it, take the hope I breathe o'er it: That so, before Colonna's host, your arms Lie crush'd and sullied with dishonour's stain; So, reft in sunder by contending factions, Be your Italian provinces; so torn By discord and dissension this vast empire; So broken and disjoin'd your subjects' loves; So fallen your son's ambition, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... dreams, Then in a vision did I seem to view A golden-feather'd eagle in the sky, With open wings, and hov'ring for descent, And I was in that place, methought, from whence Young Ganymede, from his associates 'reft, Was snatch'd aloft to the high consistory. "Perhaps," thought I within me, "here alone He strikes his quarry, and elsewhere disdains To pounce upon the prey." Therewith, it seem'd, A little wheeling in his airy tour Terrible as the lightning rush'd he down, And snatch'd me upward even ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... arrogance, whose cynical materialism, whose dogmatic intolerance, put them on a level with the bigoted mediaeval ecclesiasticism which they denounce. Yet our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and our civilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which most highly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of science during the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never has philanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development as now; and though we must ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... equality with the Crown. In seizing on the control of the Church through his organized prelacy James held himself to have seized the control of the forces which acted through the Church, and to have won back that mastery of his realm which the Reformation had reft from ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare, Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast; Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray, Lance to lance, and horse to horse? Long years of havoc, urged their destined course, And through the kindred squadrons ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... still faithful to me, and still I remember the war song that summons them up to confront you! Ayesha, Ayesha! recall the wild troth that we pledged among the roses; recall the dread bond by which we united our sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though my scepter is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!" ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... "A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof: A bed, a bed empty, that was once pressed in love: And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still, Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!" For she whom he desireth is beyond the deep sea, And a ghost in ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... scorched by grief, wept aloud. Approaching the king, Gandhari, O bull of Bharata's race, and the other ladies of the household, all fell down on the earth, deprived of their senses. Then Sanjaya, O king, began to comfort those ladies stricken with grief, bathed in tears, and reft of consciousness. Comforted (by Sanjaya), those ladies began to tremble repeatedly like a plantain grove shaken by the wind. Vidura also, sprinkling that descendant of Kuru with water, began to comfort the puissant ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... his people through the strife, With his strong purpose turning scorn to praise, E'en at the close of battle reft of life And fair inheritance ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... him to the mould below; With the well-known sailor ballad, Lest he grow more cold and pallid At the thought that Ocean's child, From his mother's arms beguiled. Must repose for countless years, Reft of all her briny tears, All the rights he owned by birth, In the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... self-acting, when in fact they are the merest shuttlecocks bandied about between the battledores of knavish devils on one side, and devilish knaves upon the other, and between the two the poor fallen wretches are nearly heart-reft and destroyed." ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... has reft us But the brave and kindly clay ('Tis but dust where Lander left us, And but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... flame-coloured line alone marking the horizon. In the south-west rose cloud upon cloud of crimson and gold, crossed by rapid flashes of pale yellow and white lightning, which momentarily obliterated their rich colours. To the south was a great bank of black thunder-cloud crested with crimson, reft to its deepest darkness by successive flashes of forked lightning. Immediately overhead a narrow curtain of leaden clouds was driven hither and thither by uncertain winds; while below, the prairie and all its varied life lay bathed in the warmth and ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... that she was indeed a woman; then turning to Ambrogiuolo she haughtily challenged him to say when she had ever lain with him, as he had boasted. Ambrogiuolo said never a word, for he now recognised her, and it was as if shame had reft from him the power of speech. The Soldan, who had never doubted that Sicurano was a man, was so wonder-struck by what he saw and heard that at times he thought it must be all a dream. But, as wonder gave place to conviction ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to me, Sir,' muttered the unhappy boy. 'They have been reft—reft from me, and I have done nothing for them. Walter of Albany has them, and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. 'Ah! who hath reft,' quoth he, 'my dearest pledge?' Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain— The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. He shook his mitred locks, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... torment rather than betray the secret of the dream, now that it could no longer be a secret lay reft of all but memories and the wild longing to hold to her breast some shred which was her own. He let her wail, but when her wailing ceased helplessly he bent ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Richard III. offered L1000 reward to any one who would deliver up the duke, Banastar betrayed him to John Mitton, sheriff of Shropshire, and he was conveyed to Salisbury, where he was beheaded. The ghost of the duke prayed that Banastar's eldest son, "reft of his wits might end his life in a pigstye;" that his second son might "be drowned in a dyke" containing less than "half a foot of water;" that his only daughter might be a leper; and that Banastar himself might "live in death and die ...
— 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.
... biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the crouching ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... see her sitting bowed and black, Stricken and seared with slavery's mortal scars, Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet Still looking at ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... could desire; but often in the five years did she remember the woodman's hut on the bank of the great blue river where she had spent her childhood; often she thought of her father living there alone, reft of his little daughter, the one comfort of his life. Then would the Prince come with his kind love, and quite drive away such sad thoughts. As the years went by she thought less of her former life; indeed it was so different from the present that she persuaded herself that she had died in her ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... wild flowers, and creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but because they have sown themselves on the decay of greatness; they are monitors to our fancy, like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead. Battlements riven by the hand of time, and cloistered arches reft and rent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, of the pride of their might, and the consolations of their sorrow: they revive dim shadows of departed life, evoked from the land of forgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply when the brightness which the sun flings on the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... fled. Proud harbinger of day, Who scar'dst the vision with thy clarion shrill, Fell chanticleer! who oft hast reft away My fancied good, and brought substantial ill! O to thy cursed scream, discordant still, Let Harmony aye shut her gentle ear: Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill, Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions tear, And ever in thy dreams the ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... I my journey make: Rama, my child, thou must not take. A boy unskilled, he knows not yet The bounds to strength and weakness set. No match is he for demon foes Who magic arts to arms oppose. O chief of saints, I have no power, Of Rama reft, to live one hour: Mine aged heart at once would break: Rama, my child, thou must not take. Nine thousand circling years have fled With all their seasons o'er my head, And as a hard-won boon, O sage, These sons have come to cheer mine age. My dearest love amid the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI |
