"Riven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand: his voluptuous paradise; his robes of silk, his palaces of marble, his riven, and shades, his groves and couches, his wines, his dainties; and, above all, his seventy-two virgins assigned to each of the faithful, of resplendent beauty and eternal youth—intoxicated the imaginations, and seized the ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... uneasy he became. He got up and placed the two rifles upon the table close beside him, and returned to his chair where he sat, straining his ears to catch the faintest night sounds. He started violently at the report of a frost-riven tree, and the persistent rubbing of a branch against the edge of the roof set his nerves a-jangle. And so it was that while the captive slept, the captor worried and ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... captain's cabin the entire vessel was filthily dirty, eloquently testifying to the objectionable habits of the pirates; and everywhere they went they encountered significant traces of the recent furious combat, in the shape of splintered timbers, riven planking, blood splashes, gashes in the wood-work from sword and axe-blade, holes made by cannon-shot—havoc and destruction reigned supreme. But even this could not disguise the barbaric splendour of the fittings and furniture of the ship. Rich silken curtains were hung anywhere and everywhere ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... who should stand gazing upon the ruins of Westminster Abbey, while the shadows of night crept into their dark caverns and into their yawning chasms of chaotic masonry, with a gleam of moon upon their riven towers and fingers of pale light touching the ribs of isolated arches. In the spaciousness of the Grande Place at Ypres my friend and I stood like the last men on earth in a ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... already been exemplified abundantly in the eastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with a few implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a few days a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or of riven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees and clear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roasting ears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty; lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sword-light in the sky Flashed a swift terror on the dark. In that sharp light the fields did lie Naked and stone-like; each tree stood Like a tranced woman, bound and stark. Far off the wood With darkness ridged the riven dark. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the supple delicate shape at his side, was put forth only in her service. They walked against bushes. He broke a stick, and with it probed every yard of the ascent which they were obliged to make. Helping his companion from bush to log, from seam to seam of the riven slope, from ledge to ledge, he brought her to a level of high forest where the fog was thinner, and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... earth—like a single being—fills And expands with heaven. It is the hill where Celia used to go To watch Monadnock and the miles that met In slow-ascending slopes of peace. She said: "When I am here, I find release From every petty debt I owe, The goods I bring with me increase, The ills are riven And blown away. And there remains a single debt Toward all the world for me, A single duty and one destiny." "There shall be many births of God In this humanity," She said, "and many crucifixions on ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... day, I have been out in the country; down by the sea on my favourite coast between Granton and Queensferry. There was a delicate, delicious haze over the firth and sands on one side, and on the other was the shadow of the woods all riven with great golden rifts of sunshine. A little faint talk of waves upon the beach; the wild strange crying of seagulls over the sea; and the hoarse wood-pigeons and shrill, sweet robins full of their autumn love-making among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... benches, stood there like a pair of silent actors. What I called touching just now was the thought that here the human voice, the utterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armour, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... I calm. The heart I had to bring Was marred with imperfection and decay, Now the free spirit, riven from the clay, Drinks at the fountain whence all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... she sits, you see,' said Eugene, when they were standing under the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. 'There's the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths, the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Kailasa's hospitable care, With peaks by magic arms asunder riven, To whom, as mirror, goddesses repair, So lotus-bright his summits cloud the heaven, Like form and substance ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,—a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred fathoms deep and broken into ravines,—flows a torrent coming from some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days! "Let no bell toll!—lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, "Should catch the note, as it doth float—up from the damned Earth. "To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven— "From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven— "From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... faded, ever faded, and her eyes were ever turning Southward toward the Capilano, while her voice had hushed its song, And her riven heart repeated words that on her lips were burning: "Not to friend—but unto ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... space, gave a quick look, and almost reeled. The globe itself seemed to have suddenly yawned asunder, leaving me trembling on the hither brink of two dissevered hemispheres. Vast as the bed of a vanished ocean, deep as Mount Washington, riven from its apex to its base, the grandest canon on our planet lay glittering below me in the sunlight like a submerged continent, drowned by an ocean that had ebbed away. At my very feet, so near that I could have leaped at once into eternity, the earth was cleft to a ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... war with these phantoms that gird thee round No limbs dissevered may strew the ground; No blood may flow, and no mortal ear The groans of the wounded heart may hear, As it struggles and writhes in their dread control, As the iron enters the riven soul. But the youthful form grows wasted and weak, And sunken and wan is the rounded cheek, The brow is furrowed, but not with years, The eye is dimmed with its secret tears, And streaked with white is the raven hair; These are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... great lamenting paine, And piteous plaints she filleth his dull eares, That stony hart could riven have in twaine, 390 And all the way she wets with flowing teares: But he enrag'd with rancor, nothing heares. Her servile beast yet would not leave her so, But followes her farre off, ne ought he feares, To be partaker of her wandring woe, 395 ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... clothing, and with very little hope that they should ever escape from the perils that surrounded them. They had only left the wreck in time to hear her dashed to pieces against the rocks; her timbers quivering, rending, and groaning, as they were riven asunder by the remorseless waves. When day dawned upon the cheerless group, its light only revealed new horrors: the sea on all sides was strewed with fragments of the wreck; not a sail was visible on the waters, and many of their comrades were seen clinging to spars and planks, tossed ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... well that Anne Ashton was suffering from the shock caused by his conduct. The love of these quiet, sensitive, refined natures, once awakened, is not given for a day, but for all time; it becomes a part of existence; and cannot be riven except by an effort that brings destruction to even future hope of happiness. Not even Mr. Hillary, not even Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, could discern the utter misery that was Anne's daily portion. She strove to conceal it all. She went about the house ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... electricity that the train had to be stopped several times, and the wheels of the cars drenched with water to prevent their taking fire. As night closed in, incessant flashes of white sheet lightning almost blinded us. Each white flash was riven by red forks of flame, until, with the horizon one constant blaze, the plain seemed a vast sea of fire. Over our heads, in great zigzag lines, shot the fire fluid, as the thunder rattled, roared, crashed, and broke around ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... fairly dangerous, being forty to the beech's one, and pines are less so, their ratio being fifteen. Not only this, boys, but a good deal depends on the way in which a tree is struck. An oak-tree may be riven into splinters, showing the terrible resistance that it gives to the stroke. A beech-tree, usually, is killed outright, yet shows but little outward injury. The oak has resisted the current, it is a bad conductor; the beech has allowed the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the walls in ward Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven While we flash from the gate like a single sword, True steel to the hilt, though ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... solemn, measured tread. The Bedouins became serious and silent, and looked steadily before them, as if to catch the first glimpse of some revered object. The space before us gradually expanded, when suddenly Tualeb, pointing to a black, perpendicular cliff, whose two riven and rugged summits rose some twelve or fifteen hundred feet directly in front of us, exclaimed, "Gebel Mousa!" How shall I describe the effect of that announcement? Not a word was spoken by Moslem or Christian, but ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... with spring grass, tenderly lighted by an April sun, to where the river—the Skern—shone with a pleasant, homely, silvery glitter, twining through the smiling meadows till he bent round the solemn overhanging cliff crowned with mournful firs, which went by the name of the Rifted or Riven Scaur. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... solemn pause in earth and heaven; The Conqueror now His bonds hath riven, And Angels wonder why He stays below; Yet hath not man his lesson learned, How ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... ask nothing back. Still, it is not quite kind of him to stay away thus. But a man is not like a woman. He must have so many conflicting and engrossing interests, whilst I"—— Here her thought broke and dissolved like a rock-riven wave. She dared not yet confess that she had no interest in the world save what was linked ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Our linked hands loosened and lapsed in sunder, Love from our limbs as a shift was shed, But paused a moment, to watch with wonder The pale pained body, the bursten head. While our sad souls still with regrets are riven, While the blood burns bright on our bruised brows, I have set you free, and I stand forgiven— And now I had better go call ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... bright harp of thousand strings By the spoiler's hand was riven, But the realm seraphic rings With the victor notes of heaven. Over death triumphant—lo! See thy cherished one appear! Mourner, dry thy tears of wo, Trust, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... martyrs are the broken heart, But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquenched soul—parched—wearied—wrung and riven. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to be a sightly one. The wild and rugged reaches of the Rockies stretched away at their feet as far as the eye could see, the hills and low mountains rising in sheer slopes, broken by cliffs and riven by deeply ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... companion, sullen, fearing nothing, ready to fight, but asking only to be let alone—quite alone. He had but one keen pleasure in his sombre life—the lasting glory in his matchless strength—the small but never failing thrill of joy as the foe fell crushed and limp, or the riven boulders grit and heaved when he turned on them the measure ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the land rose up at the sound of war: Heard ye not the battle horn? Reaper! leave thy golden corn! Leave it for the birds of heaven; Swords must flash, and spears be riven: Leave it for the winds to shed,— Arm! ere Britain's turf grows red! And the reaper armed, like a freeman's son; And the bended bow and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... more, and Mr. Billings found himself standing on the edge of a broad shelf of the mountain,—a shelf covered with huge boulders of rock tumbled there by storm and tempest, riven by lightning-stroke or the slow disintegration of nature from the bare, glaring, precipitous ledge he had marked from below. East and west it seemed to stretch, forbidding and inaccessible. Turning to the sergeant, Mr. Billings ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... boulders strewn as though in pre-historic times Titans had waged there a mighty battle. Here and there were trees, but they seemed hardly to withstand the fierce winds of winter; they were old and bowed before the storm. One of them attracted his attention. It had been struck by lightning and was riven asunder, leafless; but the maimed branches were curiously set on the trunk so that they gave it the appearance of a human being writhing in the torture of infernal agony. The wind whistled strangely. Arthur's heart sank as he walked on. He had never seen ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... agitation"; and then fancy the calm changing to a storm: "the wind at west; the whole volume of the Atlantic rolling its wild mass of waters on, in one sweeping flood, to dash and burst upon the black and riven promontory of the Dunnet Head, until the mountain wave, shattered into spray, flies over the summit of a precipice, 400 feet above the base it broke upon." But this was precisely what we did not want to see, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... moving heaven, The rapid waste of roving sea, The fountainpregnant mountains riven To shapes of wildest anarchy, By secret fire and midnight storms That wander round their windy cones, The subtle life, the countless forms Of living things, the wondrous tones Of man and beast are full of ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... towards the easel. Then his hand shot out, and the next moment there was a grinding sound of ripping and tearing as, with the big blade of his clasp-knife, he slashed and rent and hacked at the picture until it was a wreck of split and riven canvas. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... like the burst from death to life; From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven; From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife, To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven; Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven, And mortal puts on immortality, When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key, And Mercy's voice hath said, Rejoice, thy soul ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that few forget; In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought.... Stand thou alone and fixed as destiny; An imaged god that lifts above all hate, Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate. Stand thou as stands that lightning-riven tree That lords the cloven ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... thine? How shouldst thou dare—how dream—to let him live? Is he not loyal? art not thou Locrine? What less than death for guerdon shouldst thou give My son who hath done thee service? Me thou hast given - Who hast found me truer than falsehood can forgive - Shame for my guerdon: yea, my heart is riven With shame ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... by my side on ground that was literally blood-soaked. Since the previous night we had both seen Death in his most terrible guise; Death swinging his dripping scythe through scores of lives at a stroke. We had been in England's riven heart throughout the day of England's bitterest humiliation; and Mrs. Van Homrey had bed and bath waiting, with "something hot" for Constance to take in ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... body, her ardent soul—and asked no interest for the usufruct. Have I not seen her rain kisses upon the tomb of St. Antony more passionately than I could have dared upon her hand? Had she ever risen from the outpouring of prayer without the dew of happy tears to bear witness in her eyes to her riven heart? Her piety was, indeed, her great indulgence, so eager, so luxurious, pursued with such appetite as I have never seen in England or France, nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much decorum, in the practice of religion. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... clergyman, preaching honesty and moral conduct, and living fairly well up to his preaching, too, as far as he himself was concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and the mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father's wickedness. But then sins committed against oneself are so much more sinful than any ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... roar of pressure would come to us across the otherwise silent ice-fields, and bring with it a threat and a warning. Watching from the crow's-nest, we could see sometimes the formation of pressure- ridges. The sunshine glittered on newly riven ice-surfaces as the masses of shattered floe rose and fell away from the line of pressure. The area of disturbance would advance towards us, recede, and advance again. The routine of work and play on the 'Endurance' ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Scripture, and depended so entirely on it for comfort and strength, that her words carried conviction with them. They fell on the riven heart of Walter like balm, and restored a measure of peace to it. Before he could make any answer, a quick knocking, and the uplifting of the feeble voice from below, indicated that the old man was impatient of the girl's delay. She hastily lifted the pocket-book, relocked the safe door, and, with ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... at the end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and white liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the storm-king hurled a mighty thunderbolt at the oak-tree, and the brave, strong monarch of the greenwood was riven. Then, with a shout of triumph, the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... like the sky, a part of Heaven, But changes night and day, too, like the sky; Now o'er it clouds and thunder must be driven, And Darkness and Destruction as on high: But when it hath been scorched, and pierced, and riven, Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye Pours forth at last the Heart's blood turned to tears, Which make the English climate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... feeling that I have never felt before—a delicate, wonderful shock through my nerves, as if sparks of cold light quivered through them—it was as if catching sight of my shoes I had met with a kind old acquaintance, or got back a part of myself that had been riven loose. A feeling of recognition trembles through my senses; the tears well up in my eyes, and I have a feeling as if my shoes are a soft, murmuring strain rising towards me. "Weakness!" I cried harshly to myself, and I clenched my fists and I repeated ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... morning Snarley had reached the scene of the picnic. He gazed about him in all directions: nothing was stirring but the peewits. Then he climbed down the gorge with some difficulty, found the kettle, and examined its riven side. Climbing back, he went some distance further up the valley, ascended a little knoll, took out his whistle, and blew a peculiar blast, tremulous and piercing. No response. Snarley blew again, and again. At the fourth ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... blood, and agony, on Calvary's cross it gleams; It lights with radiance divine Mount Vernon's humble tomb, And sparkles on Harmodius' sword bright flashing through the gloom. Ho! slaves of yesterday, arise, now will your chains be riven. Ho! tyrants, tremble, for behold a day of vengeance given. Gaze on our banners stained with blood—think of your brethren slain; Say, has not freedom, crushed to earth, sprung forth to life again? Freedom, high freedom, friend of man, sheath not thy crimson steel; Still ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... boundless. Port Isaac Bay lies just below, sweeping far back into the land, half hidden by the Eastern Horn of Pentire. Across the bay Tintagel lies directly opposite, eight miles away over the sea, every crevice and gully of its riven island clearly marked in the translucent air; and beyond it the eye follows leagues and leagues of iron cliffs towering far higher than any others in the west, and point after point of noble jagged promontories, past Boscastle, set back a little out of sight, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... of England and her friendly relations with several of the South American States were much developed during the period to which this chapter refers, although with other portions of that vast region it was impossible to hold any intercourse, so riven were they by faction, oppression, and civil war. With Brazil the commercial connections of England were important, and the amity of the two states assured. Chili, Peru, and Panama dealt largely with the European western nations, and should the liberal party in those countries succeed in checking ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Nor check'd the tender tear to Misery given; From Guilt's contagious power shall that protect, This soften and refine the soul for Heaven. But dreadful is their doom whom doubt has driven To censure Fate, and pious Hope forego: Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, But frown on all that pass, a ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... up from his gardening, startled by the sudden peal of thunder. Absorbed in his task, he had not noticed the gathering storm. The sky was black with clouds, riven even while he looked with a vivid flash of forked lightning. The ground beneath his feet seemed almost to shake beneath that second peal of thunder. In the stillness that followed he heard the cry of a woman in distress. He threw ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow. He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack—at the dead baker-boy. The pavement and the road were strewn with wounded—some ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... by the riven granite there, And my soul shook off its weight of care, As my voice rose clear on the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... small and beautiful city, well planted with trees, the houses large and set in ample ground. Two riven meet there to form a third, the Thames, at the head of which is the port or Landing as it is called. At the port of the city I had for the first time seen steamers and sailing vessels. Strange and wonderful creatures they were to me, and I asked a thousand questions about them without ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... The hide-house was practically blown away. The great white cedar by the lagoon was struck by lightning, and lay, a chaos of dry branches and splintered limbs, one side of the trunk standing up jagged and charred where it had been riven in two. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... proved to be perfectly accurate. Such a passage indeed was found walled up at the back of the chair containing the bones of the hunchbacked king. It descended very sharply for a distance of several hundred yards, after which for another hundred yards or more its walls and roof were so riven and shaky that, for fear of accidents, we found it necessary to timber them ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... can consecrate the ground, Where mated hearts are mutual bound; The spot, where love's first links are wound, That ne'er are riven, Is hallowed down to Earth's ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... point where fell the pebble in the purple lake, come the grateful twilight waves, red with the last kiss of day; like the fierce struggles of the storm-beaten ocean floods come the lightning waves, blazing through the thunder clouds, howling in riven agony: so great is the variety of character in these orbicular disturbances, which, acting upon the optic nerves, produce the sensation of multiform light ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as applied to him, has inflicted intolerable INJUSTICE: Has persecuted more often than blessed. And so and thus, its perusal finished, its pages closed and laid aside, you are shaken and swayed in your feelings, even as a tree, bent and riven before the march and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... low clouds have riven A little rift through. The hill climbs to heaven, Far away ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... all the more dear because stamped upon the memory when life was young. Oh! Time! Time! the wrecks that lie scattered in thy pathway! That little brooklet, and the peepers, the fountain, the maples, and the meadow, are all gone. The brave old oak was riven by the lightning. The fields have crept up to the very summit of the hills, and even the stream that came down from the mountain has vanished away, save when the rains, or the melting snows send it in a freshet over the rocks ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... is given, When their earthly bonds are riven; Ere the spirit is called away, Heaven begins ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... his shoulders, not seeming to think that necessary. They rode on in silence, which was only broken from time to time by the colonel, who asked harmless questions as to the names of the mountain summits now appearing through the riven clouds, or the course of the rivers, or the ownership of the wild and rocky land. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... And from his love continuous didst wring Sem-uk-ki[4], till he to appease thy love, The mighty gods of heaven then sought to move To pity with his daily offerings. Beneath thy wand upon the ground he springs, Transformed to a hyena; then was driven From his own city—by his dogs was riven. Next Is-ul-lan-u lov'st, uncouth, and rude, Thy father's laborer, who subject stood To thee, and daily scoured thy vessels bright: His eyes from him were torn, before thy sight. And chained before thee, there thy lover ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... pirates on the great financial interests of this country can be shaken off. David slew Goliath with one pebble from his sling, but the giant "System," intrenched in the stoutest citadel ever constructed, and armored in gold and riven steel, will yield to no mere call for surrender. My own part I have cheerfully taken with no delusions as to the difficulties of the contest. He who interferes between the lamb and the wolf is likely to provoke the wrath ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... great waste moor, going on to Dun- Culain. Culain's new hound cowered low when he saw him. The boy sprang over moat and rampart at one bound and burst open the doors of the smith's house, breaking the bar. The noise of the riven beam was like ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... dead— Beat his strong vans o'er earth, and air, and sea. And they have heard; Hark to the Jubilate of the bird For them that found the dying way to life! And they have heard, And quicken to the great precursive word; Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; The graves are riven, And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! Before his way Went forth the trumpet of the March; Before his way, before his way Dances the pennon of the May! O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree Mournful belief and steadfast ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the steep-to wall of rock was a large and regularly built "humpy," in which Douglas Fraser and Kate lived. The ascent to the summit of the bluff was by a narrow path that had been found by Kate in one of the many clefts riven in the side of the black-faced cliff, and her father's mates had so improved it with pick and shovel that Aulain could discern ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... wild beyond description, lying in the lap of mountains that had in some day of world infancy been riven into a mighty boulder-strewn fissure between walls of sheer ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a distant sandhill in the plain. There were two groups of them. Riven and Jerry made for one of these. Becoming suddenly imbued with an idea worthy of a hunter, Jerry diverged to the right, intending to allow his companion to start the game, while he should lie in wait for ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven, Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... of that great thunder-crash there burst upon us so mighty a flood of rain that it seemed as though the lightning had riven solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour, and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... will not weep, though I could shed such streams As when the clouds from riven breast pour down Their torrent agonies!... How strange, my lord, The guards should venture ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... riven stone steps, and seated herself on some ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The place she had chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In centuries long gone by, the stream of human sin and human suffering had flowed, day after day, to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was heard rolling through the sky; and distant flashes, seen through the trees, showed that the storm was approaching. Suddenly a tremendous crash was heard close to us; and, looking back, a tall tree, one of the giants of the forest, appeared riven from the crown to its roots, and a vast branch lay across the path we had just passed. Nothing now was required to expedite our steps. The wind roared, the mighty trees rocked to and fro as if they had been reeds, the thunder rattled in deafening peals, and the lightning, in zigzag form, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... eye, an eye For days and nights full seven; I'll avenge my murder certainly Ere life from me is riven. ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... of my God, How do thy towers in ruin lie, How art thou riven and strewn abroad, Under the rude and wasteful sky!" 'Twas thus upon his fasting-day The "Man of Loves" was fain to pray, His lattice open toward his darling west, Mourning the ruined home he still must ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, Manacles riven and ramparts defaced... (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...) Ankle chains ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... himself was engaged at the moment fastening the tarpaulins over the baggage hold, and he was confident that the explosion occurred among the cargo. But he could give absolutely no more information: the entire ship seemed to be riven asunder, and he was thrown into the sea, stunned, and knew no more until he recovered consciousness and found ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap. The fissure went ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Uncle Welcome's house. When you have turned in and come suddenly out from the plum thicket you find your road winding along with cultivated patches on the left—corn and peas—a fenced-in garden, the palings riven out by hand, and thick dark woods on the left. A lonesome, untenanted cabin is seemingly in the way but your car swings to the left instead of climbing the door-step and suddenly you find you are facing a bog. The car may get through; it may not. So you switch off and just sit a minute, seeing how ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... faithful ministry Inculcated, within these hallowed walls, The truths, in mercy to mankind revealed. Worthy were these three brethren each to add New honours to the already honour'd name; But Arthur, in the morning of his day, Perished amid the Caribbean sea, When the Pomona, by a hurricane Whirl'd, riven and overwhelmed, with all her crew Into the deep went down. A longer date To Alexander was assign'd, for hope For fair ambition, and for fond regret, Alas, how short! for duty, for desert, Sufficing; and, while ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... hereabouts, are encountered in the pass; they invariably halt and look back after me as though endeavoring to comprehend who and what I am, but that is all. Emerging from the canon, I follow in a general course the tortuous windings of the Dele Baba Su through another ravine- riven battle-field of the late war, and up toward its source in a still more mountainous and elevated ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the hall of festival is riven in twain, the walls crumble, he sees himself again in his own chamber, sleeping in the escutcheoned chair of his ancestors. Silence, horror, and remorse are around him—and at this moment the great clock of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out at last upon the foot of the last ascent. The eminence seemed to be a smooth, cone-shaped hill. On it grew a number of trees, but the enormous old pine, lightning-riven and dead at the top, stood much taller than any ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... cottages, meandered for many miles along a still, romantic valley. Down the sides of the mountains that encompassed this valley, and with whose rocky heads we had an equal altitude, hundreds of cascades were seen leaping among the riven crags, and hid for a time from sight by the firs, would burst again upon the eye, and roll in one large spout of foam down the ravines, till they mingled with the sleeping waters of the lake now thrown into deep shadow by the gigantic mountains, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... fell over the thin white hand which propped his head. His face was like ivory with dull yellowish stains in it. His eyes did not see the mountainous roofs humped and piled into vast masses of brick and stone, crossed and riven by streets, and swept by masses of gray-white vapor; they saw a little valley circled by low-wooded ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... begins with a twenty-page Description of Sloppy Weather: "Long swirls of riven Rain beat somberly upon the ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles, as compared to AEschylus,—a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have AEschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... were we driven; 'twixt desert and foe are we penned. To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend; Ours till the world be riven in the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... And riven by the winds and waves, Thy fame is deathless from thy child, Whose glory filled ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Lord and God!" Thereat, for fear they tear us, all we fled Amazed; and on, with hand unweaponed They swept toward our herds that browsed the green Hill grass. Great uddered kine then hadst thou seen Bellowing in sword-like hands that cleave and tear, A live steer riven asunder, and the air Tossed with rent ribs or limbs of cloven tread, And flesh upon the branches, and a red Rain from the deep green pines. Yea, bulls of pride, Horns swift to rage, were fronted and aside Flung stumbling, by those multitudinous hands Dragged pitilessly. ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... pentavalent nitrogen was instantaneously released—and the four insensately murderous spheres disappeared into jagged fragments of wreckage, flying wildly away from the centers of explosion. One great mass of riven and twisted metal was blown directly upon the fifth globe, and Nadia stared in horrified fascination at the silent crash as the entire side of the ship crumpled inward like a shell of cardboard under the awful impact. That vessel was probably out of action, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... June's withered rose again: Ask grace of the salt sea: She will not answer thee. God would ten times have shriven A heart so riven; In her cold care thou would'st ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... have seen him elate when the black clouds were riven, Terrific and wild, by the thunder of heaven, And smile at the billows that angrily rave, Incessant and deep o'er the mariner's grave; Then say not the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... drawn in, That gaping gorge within; The best of both these armies torn and riven! Between Thy jaws they lie Mangled full bloodily, Ground into dust and death! Like ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Follow thee! I have followed long Thy path of desolation, as the wave Sweeps after that before it, alike whelming[au] The wreck that creaks to the wild winds, and wretch Who shrieks within its riven ribs, as gush 60 The waters through them; but this son and sire Might move the elements to pause, and yet Must I on hardily like them—Oh! would I could as blindly and remorselessly!— Lo, where he comes!—Be still, my heart! they are Thy foes, must be thy victims: wilt thou beat For those who ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "kopjes" (as they are called in South Africa), the slightly more friable rock found in these hills decomposes under the influence of the weather into curiously picturesque and fantastic forms, with crags riven to their base, and detached pillars supporting loose blocks and tabular masses, among or upon which the timid Mashonas have built their huts in the hope of escaping the raids of their warlike ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... were riven, When unto all his sons was given The hero's glorious reward, Reaped by the sword,— Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains Hung heaviest, within whose veins The oldest blood of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... sergeant is seated, here where we tread, supported by the riven timbers that once formed the shelter of a sentry. There is a little hole under his eye; the thrust of a bayonet has nailed him to the planks through his face. In front of him, also sitting, with his elbows on his knees and his fists on his ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... world of chivalry and romance; and in the midst of it that simple flat stone, which thrills the heart with a deep feeling at once of love, sorrow and reverence; that stone which recalls the desolate night which, in darkness and ruin, amid torn banners, and scutcheons riven, saw the Martyr king go white to his grave. Marian entered into all these things, in spite of her anxiety, for her mind was free enough to be open to external objects, now that her brother was in Edmund's hands, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hung his bridle to a branch of a scathed and riven elm, and advanced alone into the middle of the space. "Dread and prophetic power that art within me!" said the Hebrew, aloud,—"this, then, is the spot that, by dream and vision, thou hast foretold me wherein to consummate ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... valleys of delight, and, behold! it is very good. Storms have swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We have heard in its thunders the Voice that woke once the echoes of the Garden. Its lightnings have riven a path ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... when from the darkened sky The thunderbolts are driven, And wheresoe'er we turn our eye Our earthly hopes are riven; But could we look beyond the storm That threatens all before us, We might observe a heavenly form Guiding the tempest ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... valiant till danger stared him in the face; I've known them, too, that consaited they were kind and ready to give away all they had to the poor, when they've been listening to other people's hard heartedness; but whose fists have clench'd as tight as the riven hickory when it came to downright offerings of their own. Besides, Judith, you're handsome—uncommon in that way, one might observe and do no harm to the truth—and they that have beauty, like to have that which will adorn it. Are you sartain you could ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell |
