"Shimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... window. They caught the dainty silhouette of the young girl, playing with the loose tendrils of her hair around her forehead, and outlining with a thin band of light the contour of neck and shoulder, making the satin of her gown shimmer with ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... beautiful tall flower in this garden of flowers. There was a strange simplicity, too, about her dress—a plain, tight-fitting, tight-sleeved dress of unrelieved black, her only adornment being some bands of big blue beads worn loosely round the neck. The black figure, in this shimmer of rose-pink and gold and flowers, was effective enough; but even the finest of pictures or the finest of statues has not the subtle attraction of a graceful carriage. Macleod had never seen any woman walk as this woman walked, in so stately and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dress stood in earnest talk with the superintendent of the railway, a knot of curious citizens surrounding them, eager to pick up any point with reference to the troops or their transportation. Expectant eyes were cast towards the east where the towers of the great bridge loomed in the shimmer and glare of the hot noontide. "She ought to be here now," said the railway-man with an impatient snap of his watch-case. "What keeps No. 5, Gus?" he asked ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... his gray goat's-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger's propositions. Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them. Such is the last picture of them ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was shining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the tors, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... men stared silently at each other. MacVeigh turned slowly toward the child. She had fallen asleep, and he could see the dull shimmer of her golden curls as they lay scattered over ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... bank or side of this Titan Goblet, like the visioned future which glows before the sight of happy youth, and then vanished. The gold rim vanished also; still there appeared to be no disposition among the party to leave the scene. Twilight began to shimmer, and now the stars trembled forth from the dusky sky. At last night settled on the landscape, and the girls expressed a wish to see the hollow lighted up with torchlight. Scattering ourselves amongst the trees of the bank, some splinters ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... treating and expecting everybody else to treat The People, the will, the vision, the glory, the destiny of The People as a Ghost—unholy, cowardly, voiceless, helpless—just a light in its eyes—just a vast national shimmer at a world, without hands and ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... so new to me. Our table was set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond, the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the thunder and clang ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... been thought that the actual scene out-spread below her—the descending gardens, the tennis-courts, the farm-lands sloping away to the blue sea-like shimmer of the Hempstead plains—offered, at the moment, little material for her purpose; but that was to view them with a superficial eye. Mrs. Ansell's trained gaze was, for example, greatly enlightened ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... was turning to go a shimmer of brown hair streaked with gold struck upon his vision from just within the door. He paused, as if in response to a military command, while a pair of gray eyes met his with a flash. The cabin room was ill lighted; but the crepuscular ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... sailors clambered up into the rigging and loosened the sails. Then the captain from his bridge called out, "Hoist the anchor!" Then the great iron hooks that held the ship fast were lifted up, a cannon sounded a final farewell. Robinson stood on the deck. He saw the great city shimmer in the sunshine before him. Very fast now the land was being left behind. It was not long until all that could be seen of his native city was the tops of the highest towers. Then all faded from sight. Behind, in front, right and left, he ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... and shrivelled lean hand resting on the sole and supporting his chin, as he looked through the iron stainchers abroad on the ocean that was sleeping in a blessed tranquillity around, all glowing and golden with the shimmer ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of Life we sat together, Hand in hand, in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise, When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... hand before creeping softly out; and I followed, to find that the darkness was as black as inside the tent; that the fire-flies had ceased to shimmer and flash about the low trees, and that the fire was so nearly out that there was nothing ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... above us, veritable hanging gardens, brilliant as tulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the contour of faces and figures—indeed, any effect of line whatever-and there was only the color of bodices past counting, the shimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, ecru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and there the dead shadow of a frock coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded them as though they ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a group of Bedouins, just arrived from the interior with dried fruits, dates, and the like. Camels and men, weary after the long tramp, are reclining upon the ground, forming a picture only to be seen on the border of the desert, and beneath the glow and shimmer ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... speaking thus, one of the brethren rose up with a cry, and, shading his eyes with his hand, pointed into the west. Far away in the shimmer of the sea and the clouds they perceived an outline of land, and they changed their course a little to come to it. The wind carried them bravely on, and they began to distinguish blue rounded hills and ridges, and a little later green woodland, and still later, on the edge of twilight, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... battled round a point, I heard a rustle and a rush of something coming, and the bowsprit of a large sloop glided into view close by me. She was painted in stripes of all colors above her green bottom. The shimmer of the water shook the reflection of her hull, and made the edges of the stripes blend together. It was as if a rainbow had suddenly flung itself down for me to ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... days of April had passed and there was still no sign of spring, we began to grow impatient. How often I watched the hedges around the Michailoffsky Palace, knowing that the buds would there first swell! How we longed for a shimmer of green under the brown grass, an alder tassel, a flush of yellow on the willow wands, a sight of rushing green water! One day, a week or so later, we were engaged to dine on Vassili Ostrow. I had been busily occupied until late in the afternoon, and when we drove ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... sparkling with innumerable stars, and the crescent moon was shining like burnished silver, while level with his breast rolled a limitless, silent, and mystical ocean of cloud which broke against the dark peaks in soundless surf, and spread away to the east in ever-widening shimmer. All the lesser hills were covered; only the lords of the range towered above the flood in sullen and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... she did not blush and simper, she showed no pretty reluctance, no graceful displeasure. She thanked him, but coldly, and the two climbed the ridge above the lake, whence the whole glen may be seen winding beneath. It was still, hot July weather, and the far hills seemed to blink and shimmer in the haze; but at their feet was always coolness in the blue depth of the loch, the heath-fringed shores, the dark pines, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... him, a red shimmer passed before his eyes. Gazing at it more intently, he saw that it emanated from a young girl in a red frock who had just come out from the house, and was then standing on ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... where the advance-guard stood halted. It was not an inviting picture. The dust and vapour seemed unable to face the perpendicular violence of the midday sun; the only perceptible movement in the middle distance was the shimmer of the atmosphere, squirming as it were under the relentless heat; while the great pall of dust and smoke, as if ashamed to raise its head, mushroomed out against the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... more such incidents before they reached the village where they were to sleep that night; and Weaver lay awake in his downy bed, staring at the faint shimmer of reflected starlight on the carved roof-beams, and meditating soberly on the unexpected, the appalling magnitude of the task he ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... white satin skirts in both hands and stepped lightly across the pavement. Tavernake stood on one side to let her pass. She seemed to him to be, indeed, a creature of that other world of which he knew nothing. Her slow, graceful movements, the shimmer of her skirt, her silk stockings, the flashing of the diamond buckles upon her shoes, the faint perfume from her clothes, the soft touch of her ermine as she swept by—all these things were indeed strange to him. His eyes followed her with rapt interest ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and fuse ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... blew over it; great old forest- trees a little on one side; and, beyond them again, to be seen only by standing very close to the side of the window-sill, or by putting her head out, if the window was open, the silver shimmer of a mere, about a quarter of a mile off. On the opposite side to the trees and the mere, the look-out was bounded by the old walls and high-peaked roofs of the extensive farm-buildings. The deliciousness of the early summer silence was only broken by the song of the birds, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a dirty thrick." At this Nicholas's experience was like that of a desert traveller who should see a mirage of palms and pools grow swiftly before his delighted eyes into a substantial oasis, and then anon, or ever he could approach it, shimmer back, with all its sheen and shade, into mocking illusion again. For thus did it fare with his hopes as his grandfather talked of renouncing Mr. Polymathers's bequest. Moreover, the grounds which the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... easily made decorative in negligee or tea gown, and it makes no difference whether fashion is for voluminous, flowing robes, ruffled and covered with ribbons and lace, or the other extreme, those creations of Fortuny, which cling to the form in long crinkled lines and shimmer like the skin of a snake. The Fortuny in question, son of the great Spanish painter, devotes his time to the designing of the most artistic and unique tea gowns offered to modern woman. We first saw his work in 1910 at his Paris atelier. His gowns, then popular ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... composer who appreciated the genius of the instrument, discovered its latent tone colors and developed its resources to their full capacity for artistic beauty and expression. Chopin was the first to make the pianoforte both shimmer and sing. Rubinstein said that the art of music could go no further than Chopin and called him the pianoforte bard, rhapsodist, mind and soul. "How he wrote for it I do not know, but only an entire passing over of one into the other could call such music into life." George Sand ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... ball-dress," he scoffed, and pointed a finger at Susanna's snowy confection of tulle and satin and silver embroidery, all a-shimmer in the artificial moonlight of the electric lamps, against the background of southern garden,—the outlines and masses, dim and mysterious in the night, of palms and cypresses, of slender eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... let th' "dank wynd" moan, "Shimmer th' woold" and "rive the wanton surge;" I ask not much; grant but an "eery drone," Some "wilding frondage" and a "bosky dirge;" Grant me but these, and add a regal flush Of "sundered hearts upreared upon a byre;" Throw in some yearnings and a "darksome hush," And—asking nothing ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... was a flash of something white amidst the pale green shimmer of the flood. Ida rose, but her companion beckoned her to ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... an open belt of country. Behind them lay the dark line of pine woods; far off, across a wide shimmer of sun and sandy fields sweetened by purple clover; and flowering grasses, was a blue ribbon of sea. But even in this remote shelf of New Jersey the implacable hand of Chuff was at work. From a meadow near by they saw an observation balloon going up and the windlass unwinding ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... was skimming across the Atlantic like a veritable sea-bird. She was bound for the lone Bermudas, and the night was a heavenly one. So no wonder that, as the two young sailors leaned over the bulwarks and gazed at the moonlit water that seemed all a-shimmer with gold, their thoughts went back to their homes ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... know the nurses apart, and to realize he was feeling better. As yet the past lay like a blurr of pain on his mind, and he hadn't a care about anything save just to lie and know that it was good to smell the salt, and see the shimmer of blue from the window. At times when he slept the sound of bells in old hymns came to him like a dream and he smiled. But on the fifth morning he lifted his light head uncertainly and looked out of the window. Gee! That was pretty! And he dropped back and slept ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... her. Indeed, the night at present was so dark, that one standing still and looking for her would hardly be able to define her figure. And yet, dark as it was, she could see something of the movement of the waters beneath her, some shimmer produced by the gliding movement of the stream. Ah! she would go now and have done with it. Every moment that she remained was but an ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... apparently unshaken. Their front was now nearly five miles long, and composed of great masses of men joined together by thinner lines. Behind and near to the flanks were large reserves. From the ridge they looked dark blurs and streaks, relieved and diversified with an odd-looking shimmer of light from the spear-points. At about ten minutes to six it was evident that the masses were in motion and advancing swiftly. Their Emirs galloped about and before their ranks. Scouts and patrols scattered themselves all over ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... awful figure throwing his eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened. But hark! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles? Is it — can it be — the grey dawn peeping in the stormy east? The ghost's eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker ply the violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient clouds. Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... Farnham's house; they seemed to her a concrete idea of luxury. Her mind was crowded and warmed with every detail of her visit: the dim, wide hall; the white cravat of Budsey; the glimpse she caught of the dining-room through the open door; the shimmer of cut glass and porcelain; the rich softness of the carpets and rugs, the firelight dancing on the polished brass, the tender glow of light and repose of shadow on the painted walls and ceilings; the walk in the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... leaves cast a shimmer of green, Against our whited walls, And in the phlox, the courteous ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... tresses of a cloud. He did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared—a muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the horizon—with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser element, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... steadily, the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday's lilies encumber the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping house-roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape of last night, as though an envious man had taken a water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a sponge. We go out a-walking in the wet roads. But the roads about Grez have a trick of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over her eyes again. A vision of Solomon in all his glory swept across her. Even to Walton had spread rumors of the immense fortunes acquired in the China and India trade, and the gold of Cathay seemed to shimmer over the form before her, so strong, so able to contend with, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... almost screaming. "Why, that must mean the stake yonder; that must be the mark." And he pointed to the oaken stick with its red tip blazing against the white shimmer of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... tall, lithe, and graceful, with the long soft curves of budding womanhood. Her face was sweet rather than beautiful, but an artist would have revelled in the delicate strength of the softly rounded chin, and the quick bright play of her expression. Her hair, of a deep rich brown, with a bronze shimmer where a sunbeam lay athwart it, swept back in those thick luxuriant coils which are the unfailing index of a strong womanly nature. Her deep blue eyes danced with life and light, while her slightly retrousse nose and her sensitive smiling mouth ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... engraving or photograph after such a picture as the Louvre "Pastoral Symphony" fails utterly to convey the sense of exhilaration one feels in presence of the actual painting, simply because the tonic effect of the colour is wholly wanting. The golden shimmer of light, the vibration of the air, the saturation of atmosphere with pure colour are not only ingredients in, but are of the very essence of the creation. It has been well said that almost literally the chief colour on Giorgione's palette was sunlight.[146] His masterly treatment of light and ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... the Princess's courtyard were indeed as high and forbidding as those of a dungeon. A shimmer of water reflected the night sky, and looking down, Chris saw a dark, glistening mass beneath him. It seemed to be trees, but when his dangling legs touched them, sharp edges cut his legs and he quickly veered away. At ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... it contains a great many light threads of symbolism, which shimmer in the texture of the tale, but which are apt to break and remain in our fingers if we attempt to handle them. These things are part of Hawthorne's very manner—almost, as one might say, of his vocabulary; ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... soon as their carriage had driven away, the Godmother appeared. Once more she touched her godchild with her wand, and in a moment she was arrayed in a beautiful dress that seemed as though it had been woven of moon-beams and sunshine, so radiantly did it gleam and shimmer. She put her arms round her Godmother's neck and kissed and thanked her. "Goodbye, childie; enjoy yourself, but whatever you do, remember to leave the ball before the clock strikes twelve," the Godmother said, and ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... up. He saw the golden brown shimmer of Lady St. Craye's hat, and knew that it matched her hair and that there would be violets somewhere under the brim of it—violets that would make her eyes look violet too. She was coming up—a man ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... shall purely be born, And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to the East give morn, And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old regretting and scorn, Yea, the stream of the light shall give off in a shimmer the dream of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... after uttering these words in a tone of perfect respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that separate servitor and employer. He caught the shimmer of a wink upon Harry's eye, and he had ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... novel and bewitching. The North and South Mountains, Round Top, the jagged peaks bounding the Plattekill Clove, the narrow cleft of the Stony Clove, and the terraced slope of Clum's Hill swept across the horizon bathed in a soft September shimmer. A few birds were still piping, golden rods and purple asters lighted up the wayside, and luscious blackberries, large as Lawtons, hung in great clusters, from which no mortal hand had as yet plucked a ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... lapwing's flight, Backward she hurried to the little spring, Led by a power that knoweth not the night, But flies through darkness with unerring wing; And so e'er morning shimmer'd in the East, She clasp'd her dead ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... rustle of a woven fabric, such as a woman's dress. To confirm this opinion a soft laugh followed. He rose, deciding it could only be some assignation with a maid from the Hall, and no business of his. He had turned to retreat when he noticed the eastern side of a silver fir reflect a faint shimmer. Glancing along the beam of light that filtered through a fantastic fretwork of delicate birch twigs arching a drive, he saw a broad, bright disk hanging low above the edge of the moor. It struck him that perhaps the poachers had used ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... such an inheritance, will you wantonly cast it away? With such a goal in prospect, will you suffer yourself to be turned aside by the sheen and shimmer of tinsel fruit? With earth in possession, and Heaven in reversion, will you go sorrowing and downcast, because here and there a pearl or ruby fails you? Nay, rather forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... writing-table drawn up close to his side, her head resting upon her left hand, the pen in her right fingers sketching idle figures at the bottom of the sheet which she had just written. She was wearing a dress of strange-colored muslin, a shade between gray and silver, but from underneath came a shimmer of blue, and there were turquoises about her neck. Her large, soft eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his. There was a sort of question in them which he seemed to have surprised there more than once during ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the cranes, and choose with loud clamor their leaders. The breath of the evening is cold, and lurid along the horizon The flames of the prairies are rolled, on the somber skies flashing their torches. At noontide a shimmer of gold through the haze pours the sun from his pathway. The wild-rice is gathered and ripe, von the moors, lie the scarlet po-pan-ka,[BF] Michabo[85] is smoking his pipe,— 'tis the soft, dreamy Indian Summer, When the god of the South[3] as he flies ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... She had only stopped because, though burned with the desire to see him, she yet had an instinct to postpone the encounter. She was almost minded to return. But she went on. The town was really very near. The illuminated clock of the Town Hall had dominion over it; the golden shimmer above the roofs to the left indicated the electrical splendour of the new Cinema in Moorthorne Road next to the new Primitive Methodist Chapel. He had told her about that, too. In two minutes, in less than two minutes, she was among houses again, and approaching ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that the girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... had ever been in their house. He could see her plainly now—she stood clasping white gloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the uneven flooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, a shimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young in the group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to the thin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... though little; nay of real sense for the ludicrous, in any form, he had not much for a man of his vivacity; and you remarked that his laugh was limited in compass, and of a clear but not rich quality. To the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike half-embarrassed shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance; curiously mingling with its ardors and audacities. A beautiful childlike soul! He was naturally a favorite in conversation, especially with all who had any funds for conversing: frank and direct, yet polite and delicate ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... enough to do so, unquestionably many would follow his example. But the urbanite has taught himself to doze upright. You may see many of us, standing dreamily before Chestnut Street show windows in the lunch hour, to all intents and purposes in a state of slumber. Yesterday, in that lucid shimmer of warmth and light, a group stood in front of a doughnut window near Ninth Street: not one of them was more than half awake. Similarly a gathering watched the three small birds who have become a traditional window ornament on Chestnut Street (they have recently moved from an oculist to a correspondence ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... thick black hair was worn in a fringe of wavy locks that rested lightly on his flaring collar. His leathern doublet fitted close to his slight, strong figure, and through its slashed sleeves there was a shimmer of fine silk. In his right hand he held his plumed sombrero against his breast; his left rested carelessly on the hilt of ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... Road, and stopped for tea at the Welsh Harp, on the banks of the Brent Reservoir, I found, beyond the modern frontage of this inn, an old garden adorned with sham ruins and statues, and full of autumn flowers and the shimmer of clear water. Sitting there and drinking my tea—alone as I thought at first, in the twilight—I became aware that the garden had another occupant; that at another table, not far from me, a vague and not very prosperous-looking woman in a shabby ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... men so foolish," she whispered on. "We want really a few things only; quiet, rest, peace, tranquil bodies, and this great earth to shimmer and change forever." His eyes followed her face. Her skin was so transparent that each word seemed to make a dot of flashing color; her bosom gently moved in rhythm to her words, and her eyes with the heavy falling lids smiled at him in conspiracy ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... men whose souls dominate their bodies, he had a piercing sight which could reach to enormous distances and seize, with admirable ease and without fatigue, the fleeting tints of the clouds, the passing shimmer of the waters. On days of perfect stillness his eyes could see the manifold tints of the ocean, which to him, like the face of a woman, had its physiognomy, its smiles, ideas, caprices; there green and sombre; ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... be careful to give the latter picture not too small a share. The artist has done nothing more felicitous and interesting than this view of a rich dim, rather generalized French interior (the perspective of a hall with a shining floor, where screens and tall Japanese vases shimmer and loom), which encloses the life and seems to form the happy play-world of a family of charming children. The treatment is eminently unconventional, and there is none of the usual symmetrical balancing of the figures in the foreground. The place ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... disappeared for his amusement. A comfortable low came at intervals from the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All living things seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying, after their kind, the last gleams of the sunset, which were making the whole vault of heaven glow and shimmer; and, as he watched them, Tom blessed his stars as he contrasted the river-side with the glare of lamps and the click of balls ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... bloomed quite a collection of moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long stems, numerous edible sea urchins of various species, plus green sea anemones with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... for those poor Poles and Jews, who have so little to brighten their dull lives, to see such a picture as that before their doors! The frosty morning air made Rataplan's great black limbs and the beautiful curves of his back and sides gleam and shimmer with every gambade. As for me, the rattle of hoofs upon a road, and the jingle of bridle chains which comes with every toss of a saucy head, would even now set my blood dancing through my veins. You may think, then, how ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... line of stately shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the way was that in the noontide halt, just as the shimmer of the Lake of Galilee met their eyes, under a huge terebinth-tree, growing on a rock, when all, except Sigbert, had composed themselves to a siesta, there was a sudden sound of loud and angry altercation, and, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these things, my friend, when you know that they are useless?" she replied, with a look which grew in the end so soft that Wilfrid ceased to behold her eyes, but saw in their place a fluid light, the shimmer of which was like the last vibrations of an ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... second or two the tiny sounds began again. I had a feeling, though my eyes could not assure me, that the man before me was at work, and was using a very small shaded torch. There was just the faintest moving shimmer on the wall beyond, though that might come ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the name came back a fortnight of the last summer—perfect bright days, far-off skies filled with drifting fleets of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce recognized, but giving hue and tone to them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... moved far forward when his quick sight picked out the shimmer of a woman's hair, like spun gold, about amidships in the rank of deck-chairs. He made sure it was Miss Searle; and it was. She sat alone, with none near her, her head resting against the back of the chair, her face turned a trifle forward; so that she ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... in spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and wynds dropping steeply down into the valley—opening here and there a glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth—while on the edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and you should like to look at the massive headland from the level of the sea, row out a mile from the beach. Eastwards a bank of red vapour shuts in the sea, the wavelets—no larger than those raised by the oar—on that side are purple as if wine had been spilt upon them, but westwards the ripples shimmer with palest gold. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom A savor steals from linden trees in bloom And gardens ranged at many a palace door. Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour Their ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... in the screen, there was something like heat shimmer at the far end of the passage. Then she saw her cabin door ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... spot we have described, turn back before you have advanced far, and see the great cliff wall going up beyond the slender tracery of young trees, with the street lights, just turned on, making a level strip of golden shimmer at its base, curiously suggestive of crowds and gaiety. There is at all hours a certain charm to be found in the long line of high hotels and apartment houses which line the Park to the west, when you view them over treetops, rock ledges, and running brooks, or over white fields ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... journey to the front of war, and the sound fell cheerlessly upon Miss Betty's ear, as she stood leaning against the sun-dial among the lilac bushes. Her attitude was not one of reverie; yet she stood very still, so still that, in the wan shimmer of the faded afterglow, one might have passed close by her and not have seen her. The long, dark folds of her gown showed faintly against the gray stone, and her arms, bare from the elbow, lay across the face of the dial with unrelaxed fingers ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... were climbing. The sides were not all so steep as the one on which the house stood, but they were all rocky and steep, with here and there slopes of green grass. And down in the bottom, in the centre of the hollow, lay a pool of water. I knew it only by its slaty shimmer through the fading green of the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... gardener take a stray one from the sleeve of his baize jacket, where by chance it had strayed and caught—for the fair owner liked to visit the greenhouse— and hold it admiringly and enthusiastically up in the morning sunlight, and I remember the golden shimmer it had in it, for he called my attention to it. A French writer's words seem to meet its description better than my own: "Non pas rouges—Mais blonde avec des reflets dors, on delicatement se jouait la lumire ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the air in his sharp, whistling flight. The last white shimmer of daylight faded from the surface of the lake. The lovers floated on, gently, joyously, into their ocean of hope ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... cliff has picked up a bit of gauzy silver, which he is winding round his scraggy neck. And now, here comes a cascade right over our heads; a cascade, not of water, but of cloud; for the poor little brook that makes it faints away before it gets down to us; it falls like a shimmer of moonlight, or a shower of powdered silver, while a tremulous rainbow appears at uncertain intervals, like a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... one sometimes sees, now in the West, in the lingering shimmer of the twilight, now in the East, when the tender roseate dawn announces the advent of a clear day, a small star of the first magnitude which remains but a very short time above the horizon, and then ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... instrument, I would advise, if you want the work strong, that you should paint the matt so that it will just yield, and only just, and that with difficulty, to the scrub; and, before you use this tool, just pass the finger, lightly, backwards and forwards over the matted surface. This will take out a shimmer of light here and there, according to the inequalities of the texture in the glass itself; the first touches of the scrub will not then look so startling and hard as if taken out of the dead, even matt; and also this rubbing of the finger ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... only the superficial observer rejoices. If one examines a little more closely the impression which this vehement and kaleidoscopic play of colours makes upon one, does not the whole seem to blaze with the shimmer and sparkle of innumerable little stones borrowed from former civilisations? Is not everything one sees merely a complex of inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arrogant superficiality?—a ragged suit of motley for the naked and the shivering? A seeming dance of joy enjoined ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Shimmer of rose and pearl, Sheen on an opal sky; Day's crimson banners unfurl, Purple-pleached shadow-gleams die; Dawn flowers bourgeoning fair, Meads with the dawn-dews wet; Rare is the morn—ah, rare! But in the ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... otter's skin, And about their bodies the sacks were tied, and they carried their harps within, With stitches of silver and golden thread each case for a harp was sewed; And, beneath the embroidery gleaming red, the shimmer of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... comfortably staring up at the glimmer on the wall, the four gold lines of the frame began to stretch up and out and the dark block of the picture to recede until it became the great hall of a palace again, and there was the Princess coming toward him in a golden shimmer. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... brother opened his eyes and looked about him: and on all sides he saw nothing but the radiance and shimmer of all sorts of white and yellow objects. He took about a dozen of the little things and hid ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... sun rose next morning, he saw Daisy and Wee floating down the river in their boat. "Bless me! here's company," said the sun, and began at once to make them welcome in his most charming manner. He set the waves to sparkling with a sudden shimmer; he shot long rays of light through the dark hemlocks, till they looked like fairy trees; he touched Daisy's hair and it turned to gold; he chased away the shadows that lurked among the hills; he drew up the misty curtain that hovered over the river; and, with the warmth of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the delights of this mellow afternoon. On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through scrub we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till we suddenly push out from the scrub, and before us lie the Marshes. There they sweep for miles away, with their different ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... cigar. The pleasantness of the wide, cool piazza, with its flowers and vines and gay awnings; the charm of the summer morning, not yet dulled by wear and tear of the day; the steady, deliberate dash of the waves on the beach below; the play and shimmer of the big, quiet water, stretching out to the edge of the world; all this filled their minds, rested their souls. There was no need for words. The Bishop sighed comfortably as he pushed his great shoulders ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... cloud would darken it and raise a tempest. Its aspect was ever changing. A complete calm would fall, and all would assume an orange hue; gusts of wind would sweep by from time to time, and turn everything livid; in keen, bright weather there would be a shimmer of light on every housetop; whilst when showers fell, blurring both heaven and earth, all would be plunged in chaotic confusion. At her window Helene experienced all the hopes and sorrows that pertain to the open sea. As the keen wind ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the hazy shimmer ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... terraces and gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his reassurances without question—she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am so happy," she murmured, slipping an ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... John Pontiac to jeer any one, but there was his face in that moon,—Peter made it out quite clearly. He looked up the road to where he could see, on the hill half a mile distant, the shimmer of John Pontiac's big tin-roofed house. He thought he could make out the outlines of all the buildings,—he knew them so well,—the big barn, the stable, the smoke-house, the store-house for ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking canoe. I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... power; at other times it finds a voice by which the air is possessed and thrilled. The old stained walls, the rugged ladders by which the folk descend to their boats, are washed by the clear, pure waters; the shimmer of water enters the dwelling-rooms and is reflected on the ceilings, a fluctuating quiver of light, moved by every breeze that ruffles the surface of the stream. The small gardens are green to the edge of the walls that drop sheer to the river; these ladders and gardens are ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... most beautiful hair in the world," says he, touching with gentle, reverential fingers the silken coils that glint and shimmer in the sunlight. "And it is a name that suits you,—and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... come out in the sky, That shimmer wherever the shadows may sweep, And their steps are as soft as the sound of a sigh And I welcome them all ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... Falstaff, presenting them with an easy and leisurely restraint; and Mr. BASIL GILL both in form and manner made a quite good King. The minor parts upheld the standard of His Majesty's; and a pleasant rattling of steel and shimmer of mail ran through the scenes of active service. Mr. PERCY MACQUOID had seen to it that the period was there, and Mr. JOSEPH HARKER had taken good care that the jewelry of SHAKSPEARE'S verse should have the right setting, though I could easily ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... awaiting her visitor. The Dowager was downstairs before her, looking grave enough, and Jock, slim and dark, supporting a corner of the mantelpiece, like a young Caryatides in black. Lucy's brightness, her pretty shimmer of blue, the flower in her hair, relieved these depressing influences. She stood in the firelight with the ruddy irregular glare playing on her, a pretty youthful figure; and her husband's assiduities, and the entire cessation of any apparent consciousness on his ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... "masses of them, but I am not at all sure that they flower at the same time as the roses and lilies and carnations. I don't know much about gardening. Well, you walk down the pathway into a grove of olive-trees—a shimmer of pale silvery green, a sort of dim aisle in fairyland—until you come to the water's edge. There is an old stone seat, and you can just sit and look and look and drink it all in. No, not the water—the view, I mean. Blue water, brilliant heavenly blue, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... smiling faces of the guests all helped. Then there were the dainty flower girl, little Kate, the charming maid of honor, Billy, the stalwart, handsome best man, Bertram, to say nothing of the delicately beautiful bride, who looked like some fairy visitor from another world in the floating shimmer of her gossamer silk and tulle. There was, too, not quite unnoticed, the bridegroom; tall, of distinguished bearing, and with features that ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... There is something in the very make of a bird's-nest which rouses thoughts of blue or red-spotted eggs, of callow young birds, with their large hungry eyes and beaks, or of twittering fledglings, training for a shimmer life of pleasure. To see, instead of these, their silent empty habitations, extended in a long row, would be enough to make any one dull and sad. So Roger found. He kicked them into a heap under a tree, and thought that they would ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... not, there, a white shimmer? Something with pale silken shrine? No; it is the column's glimmer, 'Gainst the gloomy hedge ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... tin fish or a waterfly flashing so swiftly over the water that its wings cannot be told from its antenna, which seem to be growing before, behind and on all sides. . . . Quivering in the air like an insect with a shimmer of bright colours, the bustard flew high up in a straight line, then, probably frightened by a cloud of dust, swerved to one side, and for a long time the gleam of his wings could be ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... very hot. The afternoon sun still flamed in the vividly blue Italian sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... pure blue crystal throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently exposed to the air by turning over. But in all of them, old and new, there are azure caves and rifts of ineffable beauty, in which the purest tones of light pulse and shimmer, lovely and untainted as anything on earth or in ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... take his pleasure! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food—do you like shell-fish? Well, well, we ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... is a vicarious leisure, their time and efforts being in great measure taken up with an industrially unproductive rehearsal of the meritorious characteristics and exploits of the divinity; while the background of the presentation is filled with the shimmer of the precious metals and of the more expensive varieties of precious stones. It is only in the crasser expressions of devout fancy that this intrusion of pecuniary canons into the devout ideals reaches such an extreme. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... 1,250 feet above the level of the sea, and in view of an amphitheater of mountains 2,400 feet high. On the west are rocky peaks of great size; on the north lofty summits clothed with low trees; on the east a broad beach with a road track, and covered with pumice stones, which shimmer through the leafy screen of the bushes; on the southern side rise volcanic cones behind a forest flat. Such is the majestic frame that incloses this vast sheet of water whose roaring tempests rival the cyclones ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a small tray, full of rings—not dissimilar in style and appearance to those which he held in his hand: old-fashioned rings. The light from the gas- brackets above the mantel-piece caught the facets of the diamonds in those rings and made little points of fire; here and there he saw the shimmer of pearls. But there was another object. Close by the tray of old rings lay a book—a beautifully bound book, a small quarto in size, with much elaborate gold ornament on the back and side, and gilt clasps holding the ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... soul of the sweet melody to sing, in purest dirge, without the shimmer of attendant motion save a ghostly shadow ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... generally glad of her assistance in all such matters. However, perhaps it was only under-clothing and house-linen, and such things that she was buying. All that was the prosy part of shopping. It was the poetry of it that Hilda loved,—the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace. So the girl went on her usual way, finding life a little dull, a little tiresome, and most people rather stupid, but ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... door stood temptingly half open; no creature was to be seen—no sound to be heard. Rose's heart throbbed fast; the mysterious stillness of the night, the ghostly shimmer of the moonlight, the mystery and romance of her adventure, set every pulse tingling, but she did not hesitate. Her slippered feet crossed the hall lightly; she was beside the green door. Then there was another pause—a moment's breathless listening, but the dead stillness ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... general sense of coming Spring. The elder-bushes are bursting, the buds swelling. A topaz shimmer plays amid the shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of the lime-trees. The bushes are decked with catkins. The boughs of the chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds. Fresh green patches are springing up amid the yellow matted ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... conversation. When they reached the 'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the Trianon Avenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind its iron gates, the gleaming facade of the Petit Trianon; woods all about them, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhile the dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them in a soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human in their planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties' ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that the latter's lips bore evidence of petty larceny, or would regard himself as almost criminally negligent if he placed a priceless pearl necklace where an ignorant chimney-sweep might fall under the hypnotism of its shimmer, will calmly allow a condition of things in his own brokerage or banking office where a fifteen-dollars-a-week clerk may have free access to a million dollars' worth of negotiable securities, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to be furnished, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had been swung, but she was already coming to, and a few seconds later her jibboom was pointing straight for the middle of the passage, with the Heads looming up on either hand, black as ebony against the faint shimmer of starlight on the waters of the lagoon beyond. Gurney and Saunders now came aft and proceeded to complete the hoisting of the second quarter boat; and seeing that Grace seemed to know pretty well what she was about with the wheel I left her at it, directing ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... me I feel the rushing, Cool heaven. Behold—I am in front of a Streaming church. Large and quiet it takes me in. Here I shall stay for a while. Immersed in its dreams. Dreams out of gray Silk that does not shimmer. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... was clear, with a sharp breath of frost. The fields gleamed with frost, offering to the eye a fine shimmer as of diamond-dust under the brilliant blue sky, overspread in places with a dapple of little ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in the midst of which her nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-shimmer that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge of the cliff, as if poised in air, a woman whose face and form were as sharply cut in profile on the azure sea and sky as white cameo features on black ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the world was round me; it hummed up from the streets, it boomed down from the spires. I became a part of it, and so forgot it. To Effie there were ever stealing rumors of yet a world beyond, of courts and coronets, of satin shimmer and glitter of gems, but they glanced off from me,—and other than thus I have never yet found that great world that used to lie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... how this would be in a country where there was never a house or a tree and scarcely anything that grew more than knee-high to a man. The long sand-swells, and the shimmer of heat-waves in the air looked even more like the sea now that they were level with it. Off to the right what seemed a vast sheet of water spread out like quicksilver on the plain; it moved with a crawling motion, and a coyote that ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... kept green by sprinkling. If a section of it gives up the struggle, the tray may be replaced with a fresh one. From time to time a blush of tiny pink flowers runs over the wall. There seems to be no season for the blossoms, but whenever the sun shines, this delicate shimmer of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... with the moonlight waking her dark hair into a somber luster and a gossamer shimmer on the white of her evening gown. Her hands lay unmoving in her lap and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... olives, Amor—amor—amor, and all this is the great goddess Venus. And opposite to me, as I write, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea, streaked like a Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the white houses and walls, the steeple and towers, an enchanted Fata Morgana city, of dim Porto Venere; ... and I mumble to myself the verse of Catullus, but addressing a greater and more terrible goddess ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... to the mouth of the ravine, and there the voices of the people woke him. And Rold knew nothing that he had done in his sleep, and looked in amazement at the sword in his hand and said: 'What art thou, thou beautiful thing? Lights shimmer in thee, thou art restless. It is the sword of Welleran, ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... warm breeze was frosting the water, blending moonshine and star shimmer; the ocean lay like a lake, yet the nearest mainland was perhaps a ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was completed; and when they passed out from the coppice into the whiter air, behold! the wild March skies had parted somewhat, and there was a shimmer of silver sunlight along the broad highway between the hedges. It was an auspicious omen—or, at least, their full hearts may have thought so; and then, again, there was a wedding chorus all around them from the birds—from the bright-eyed ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from a light shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the prevailing lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths— through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... have paid a rare visit to my tree to find many things changed since my last sojourn there. The bees are silent, for the honey-laden flowers of the sycamore are gone and in their place hang dainty two-fold keys. The poplar has lost its metallic shimmer, the chestnut its tall white candles; and the sound of the wind in the fully-leaved branches is like the sighing of the sea. The martins' nests are finished, and one is occupied by a shrill- voiced brood; but for the most part the birds' parental cares are over, and the nestlings in bold flight ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... the shimmer of water lying white and still under the moon's rays, tipped by the silvery light ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... brilliancy of the sun is produced by the rapid vibrations of the rays; the twinkle of the distant star, the waves of the ocean when ruffled by the winds; the shimmer of the moon on its crested surface; the brain in thinking; the mouth in talking; the beating of the heart; all, alike, obey the one grand and universal law ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... lofty yet they glimmer, Apples of Hesperides! Blinded by their radiant shimmer, Pushing forward just for these; Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred, Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred, Always thinking soon to seize And possess the ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell |
