"Snaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mythological ages of the world. Conceived in this way, with what thoughtfullness we should contemplate the Graces, the Muses, the Furies, the Fates, Nemesis, Vesta, Fortuna, Diana, Eris, Ceres, the majestic port of Juno, the frosty splendor of Minerva, the melting charm of Venus, the snaky horror of Medusa, Egvptian Isis, throned among the stars, and Scandinavian Hela, crouching in her ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,—it looks to you like just such a bit of iron as the other,—and lo! it leaves them all,—the tugging of the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,—it leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Worm uncoiled its snaky twine from around the hill, and came to its rock in the river. When it perceived the Childe waiting for it, it lashed the waters in its fury and wound its coils round the Childe, and then attempted to crush him to death. But the more it pressed, the deeper dug the spear-heads into its sides. Still ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... great gate, took a flying leap right over the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak, and his winged cap and shoes, and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, who heard his voice from the top of the stairs, and who loved to recreate himself with Quicksilver's merry talk, called ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... much insisted on his merit as the supreme of artists for grandeur of design and breadth of style; and because, apart from this momentary connection with my paper, the man himself merited a record for his matchless audacity, combined with so much of snaky subtlety, and even insinuating amiableness, in his demeanor; but also because, apart from the man himself, the works of the man (those two of them especially which so profoundly impressed the nation in 1812) were in themselves, for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... pate. When he awoke, he found His body wrapp'd around With grave-clothes, chill and damp, Beneath a dim sepulchral lamp. 'How's this? My wife a widow sad?' He cried, 'and I a ghost? Dead? dead?' Thereat his spouse, with snaky hair, And robes like those the Furies wear, With voice to fit the realms below, Brought boiling caudle to his bier— For Lucifer the proper cheer; By which her husband came to know— For he had heard of those three ladies— Himself a citizen of Hades. 'What may your office be?' The phantom ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the streaming skipper, "that was a near thing for you and me when she shipped it. If I hadn't been on the right side of the mast, both on us must have gone." Dawn rose slowly; the sky became blotched with snaky tints of dull yellow and livid grey; the gale kept on, and the schooner was hove-to to meet a sea of terrifying speed and height. Two of the ladies were below, only craving to be left alone even by the stewardess; but the hideous fascination ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety in the mountains. The tone pursued him, but he felt that it had a less bestial quality. Casting his eyes upon the vague plateau below he witnessed two-legged creatures ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... see a whole howling mix-up of "mug" booky, dog-owner and rough, A-watching of snaky-shaped hounds pelting 'ard 'after bits o' brown fluff, I see—and the Sportsman within me began for to bubble and burn, And I yelled, "O my hazure-horbed Mistress, can't you and me 'ave jest ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... tragic errand, the snaky purpose, coiled behind those graceful, ambiguous forms of speech! Not new the tale to the man who sat and heard. She admired the black-haired, powerful head, and the square, pale face with its short, aquiline, rather heavily-modelled features, and the broad, white forehead that the single ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... they reached the first familiar landmark—Roop's Dam—and the home coming began to seem a reality indeed. The Susquehanna was six miles distant as the crow flies, but almost thrice six by the snaky curvatures of the channel down which ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... nothing, my right undear brother. Out on your snaky speeches and beguiling ways! You'll have your succade, and I'll leave you to digest it, and much ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the fat lady start out, so I followed her, but I located the nest of Mexicans before she did, and got a good deal out of their drunken jargon. And then I cat-footed it back after a snaky-looking, black Spaniard that seemed to be following her. There were three of us in a row, but the devil hasn't got the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... then the stainless freshness and delicacy of the texture, that a touch would soil! These gracious things, uncurling themselves hour by hour, blooming, fading, in obedience to the strange instinct of life, surprised him by a sudden thrill. Here was a bed of irises, with smooth blade-like stalks, snaky roots, the flowers of incredible shapes, yet no two exactly alike, all splashed and dappled with the richest colours; and then the mixture of blended fragrance; the hot, honied smell of the candytuft, with aromatic spicy scents of flowers that he could not name. Here again ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance the substitution of "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin" carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... Greaser, but still he punished me cruelly. Suddenly he got his snaky hands on my throat and began to choke me. With all my might I swung my fist ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... significance of such a scene, in which patriotism and religion become one—and feel, too, the exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, of families, and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... the deep, and Moira's action in making for the rocks at top speed betrayed her terror of whatever it was that followed her. Hastily descending the cliff I ran to her assistance, when I saw Moira spring on to a flat rock upon which she generally landed from her canoe. At the same moment a snaky tentacle rose out of the sea and caught her, while other tentacles quickly enveloped her. The monster now dragged its shiny bulk upon the rock, and except in a nightmare surely no man had beheld such a creature before. It resembled a monstrous spider, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... his eyes looked snaky, as though he would like to strike, but dared not. We motioned to him, and led the way to the small private room where Mr. Critchet was lying, and when he saw his uncle's wan features, he turned pale, and his agitation ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... it be between us twain," said High, and laid his hot palm against the cold, snaky palm of the other. "And he to whom the honour ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Simultaneously, northwest, east and southeast of our line three huge German captive balloons reared their heads for all the world like golden hooded cobras. Away, twenty miles to the south, in the sky could be seen the snaky outline of a zeppelin. The Germans were taking observations. When I reached the headquarters' line of trenches in front of our brigade headquarters, a few hundred yards west of St. Julien, I sent the horses back with Smith, my groom, and stood ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... received its death-blow on that occasion. Its possibility had been demonstrated. The very next year (1851) Mr T.R. Crampton, with Messrs. Wollaston, Kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between Dover and Calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky submarine electric cables. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... slave-driver (or hegemonus), recognized by his raised eyelids, his wrinkled brows and his twists of hair done up in a wig; that of the wizard, with immense eyes starting from their sockets, seamed skin covered with pimples, with enormous ears, and short hair frizzed in snaky ringlets; that of the bearded, furious, staring, and sinister old man; and above all, those of the Atellan low comedians, who, born in Campania, dwell there still, and must assuredly have amused ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... was bustling about over pots and stew-pans, getting supper; old Peter stood at the table peeling potatoes. In an arm-chair before the fire sat another old woman with snaky-black eyes, hooked nose, and incipient ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... was speeding up at a dizzying rate. The German artillery had sprung to sudden and wholesale activity. Far to the right of the Here-We-Come regiment's trenches a haze had begun to crawl along the ground and to send snaky tendrils high in air-tendrils that blended into a single grayish-green wall as they moved forward. The hazewall's gray-green was shot by yellow and purple tinges as the sun's weak rays touched it. To the left of the Here-We-Comes, ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... it! If he had only acknowledged his offence and begged her pardon she might perhaps have forgiven. A moment later, however, the grim outlook before her presented itself again. There were two things for her to choose from; one was that fitly named Roaring River along whose bank the road wound its snaky trail and the other consisted in the cheap little pistol in her bag. Well, there might be comfort after all in this wild land, upon the scented fallen needles of the pines or under that pure white ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... him, not he; he would rather munch dry bread and cheese for every meal all the year round, though he could get bits as easy as the other and without begging. The gipsy is a cook. The man with a gold ring in his ear; the woman with a silver ring on her finger, coarse black snaky hair like a horse's mane; the boy with naked olive feet; dark eyes all of them, and an Oriental, sidelong look, and a strange inflection of tone that turns our common English words into a foreign language—there they camp in the fern, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... when at length Weston carefully clamped down a big copper cap on a length of snaky fuse and inserted it ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that; Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... said. "I wonder how long we have been moving parallel with the creek instead of toward it? Some of those snaky ravines we passed through must have turned us around ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... out to sea Silence once more, and then a mountain cock, who had scorned the sweeping rain, uttered his shrill, cackling, and defiant crow, as he shook the water from his black and golden back and long snaky neck, and savage, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... wall and my rifle clattered down. I pulled myself together, absolutely mad with fear, because I kept on thinking of the last time I went on guard and the court martial and the death sentence. I ground my teeth and stared at the tree again. But the trunk began to wobble with snaky undulations and the green blur grew bigger and bigger in sudden jerks, while I tried frantically and desperately to keep it small. But it got the better of me and all at once it obscured everything with a rush and I dropped ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... they rounded disclosed nothing more alarming than lichened boulders and pebbly shore, with here a dead fish, and there a heap of shining snaky kelp, and yonder a flock of startled gulls,—but who could tell what the next projection might be hiding? They walked with their fists gripped hard around their weapons, their eyes shifting, their ears strained, while the waves hissed ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the place of meeting. The treaty which initiated the great league was then and there ratified by the representatives of the Canienga and Oneida nations. The name of Odatsehte means "the quiver-bearer;" and as Atotarho, "the entangled," is fabled to have had his head wreathed with snaky locks, and as Hiawatha, "the wampum-seeker," is represented to have wrought shells into wampum, so the Oneida chief is reputed to have appeared at this treaty bearing at his shoulder a quiver full ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... of these balls he whipped round, picked it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping and with laughter, removed ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... beyond its ragged fringe lay the flat and fertile fields of Eastern Bengal. A dark spot seen indistinctly through the hot-weather haze marked where the little city of Cooch Behar lay. Sixty miles and more away to the south-east the Garo Hills rose beyond the snaky line of the Brahmaputra River wandering through ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... would not hesitate at murder, and that his expression about getting his knife into Fraser was meant in a very literal sense. "I mean to get even with my man if I come across him again. But I won't be such a fool as to attempt it here. Take a look outside and see if Snaky is about." ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Mr. Walker's school library a book, one well known as Mrs. Trimmer's "Natural History." This I read, as usual, thoroughly and often, and wrote my name at the end, ending with a long snaky flourish. Years passed by, and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping in at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, "a blind bundle" of six books tied up with a cord. It was a bargain, for I found in it in good condition the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... dark, agate-looking clouds were gathering in the zenith, and the heavy, close atmosphere told the coming of a storm. Now and then the snaky lightning darted across the heavens and coiled itself ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... grandchildren; a thousand and one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return. So, as I could not understand what they were saying,—gabbling a sort of patois of bad French and worse English, with a sprinkling of Indian,—and as the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... here cycle-of-dance portrayals. The first one wasn't much dance; it was mostly slow, snaky motions with the arms and other things, and it was to portray a mother cobra mourning her first-born. At least that's the way I understood it. Another one was called "The Striving Soul," to which the prof played something livelier. Vernabelle went round and round, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... earth, and ye eternal lamps That restless keep his course in order due; Thou, Phoebe bright, that scatterest the damps Of darksome night, I make my plaints to you. And thou, Alecto, hearken to my call; Let fall a serpent from thy snaky hair; Tisiphone, be swift to plague them all, That make a pastime of my care and fear! And thou, O Jove, that by thy great foresight Rulest the earth and reign'st above the skies; That wreak'st the wrongs of them that master right ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... a supernatural appearance on the stage existed (says an old writer) about the beginning of the eighteenth century. A dance of infernals having to be exhibited, they were represented in dresses of black and red, with fiery eyes and snaky locks, and garnished with every pendage of horror. They were twelve in number. In the middle of their performance, while intent upon the figure in which they had been completely practised, an actor of some ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... men had the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to be all moist ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... feels from Judah's land The dreaded infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine; Our babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... drapery, raising His hand as though to draw her into life. There is, perhaps, an excess of dramatic action in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of pantomimic language in the expressive hands of Eve and her Creator. The robe, again, in its voluminous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of the Deity, convey an effect of heaviness rather than of majesty. Yet we feel, while studying this composition, that it is a noble and original attempt, falling but little short of supreme accomplishment. Without this antecedent sketch, Michael Angelo ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Garcia's snaky glance just rose to the honest woman's face, and then crawled hurriedly all about the veranda, as if trying to hide in corners. Thanks to Coronado's fluency and invention, there was a mutually satisfactory conversation between the couple. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... and along the cheeks in front of the ears, being what we call "banged." The only exception to this style of hair dressing I saw was the manner in which Ci-ha-ne, a negress, had disposed of her long crisp tresses. Hers was a veritable Medusa head. A score or more of dangling, snaky plaits, hanging down over her black face and shoulders gave her a most repulsive appearance. Among the little Indian girls the hair is simply braided into a queue and tied with a ribbon, as we often see the hair upon the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... boys, she was as withered and wrinkled and brown as an old frosted punkin-vine; and her little snaky eyes sparkled and snapped, and it made yer head kind o' dizzy to look at 'em; and folks used to say that anybody that Ketury got mad at was sure to get the worst of it fust or last. And so, no matter what day or hour Ketury had a mind to rap at anybody's door, folks gen'lly thought it was ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Battle stand guard outside, we followed the Indians who had led us from the fort. Lifting the tent-flap, we found ourselves inside. A withered creature with snaky, tangled hair, toothless gums, eyes that burned like embers, and a haunched, shrivelled figure, stood gesticulating and crooning over a low monotone in the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and placed in a convenient corner among certain trusses of hay; it being the intention of the amiable woman to occupy the chair during her journey. Mrs Pipchin herself is next handed in, and grimly takes her seat. There is a snaky gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp snappings at poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress's ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. They had lines of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... incredibly ragged and dirty old man with a dingy cotton fillet around his snaky locks, hailed them with wild shouts of laughter, paddled to meet them, and clung to the dug-out, fondly stroking Stonor's sleeve. The sight of Clare caused him to go off into fresh shrieks of good-natured merriment. His name, he informed them, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... dragged the writhing serpentine creature close to the surface. Then, quick as thought, Josh had the great snaky fish by the head with his short sharp gaff-hook, drew it over the gunwale, and before Arthur could realise what was done the axe had descended with a dull thud, and Josh dragged the quivering half inert conger over ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony—instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this? You do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a snaky place and that is what I was afraid of. We trod carefully along the bottom and made noises to scare them off. Then I had a happy thought; I had a box of matches with me, and I kept on striking them till we found a handful of dry twigs which burnt up ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Lynx, as you see; An amiable beast, and fond of tee. Indigenous to all the country round, His snaky length lies prone along the ground. It is the fashion o'er this beast to rave, But have a care, ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... with cautious step the wet, wild seaweed; glancing down into hollows where the brine lies fathoms deep and emerald clear, and seeing there wilder and stranger and huger vegetation than is found on land, with treasure of shells—some green, some purple, some pearly—clustered in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry. Looking up and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall, pale thing—shaped like man, but made of spray—transparent, tremulous, awful. It stands not alone. They are all human figures that wanton in the rocks—a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in several emphatic forms, Chip's spirits grew perceptibly lighter—so much so that he rolled a fresh cigarette and finished the drawing in his hands, which demonstrated the manner in which a particularly snaky broncho had taken a fall out of Jack Bates in the corral ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... The girls wear pretty print frocks, made in the English style, and several of them wore the hibiscus in their shining hair. Some of the older girls were beautiful in face as well as graceful in figure, but there was a snaky undulation about their movements which I never saw among Europeans. All looked bubbling over with fun and frolic, and there was a refinement and intelligence about their expression which contrasted favourably with that of the ordinary female face on ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of an ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... on the snaky fire, Crushes the curling heads till smoke is thickened And the ash sinks beneath the billet's weight, And then again the hissing heads are quickened: Just as this wood, by fretful fangs new stung, Glows angrily, then whitens in the grate And slowly smouldering smoulders away, And dies defeated ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... hanging o'er the waste dark seas, The massy rainbow curved in front of it Beyond the village with the masts and trees; The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit, Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions 40 Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions, The "MELENCOLIA" that ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... named had all the appearance of an original character. He was tall and thin as the blade of a rapier, with a cynical expression of countenance, and long snaky tresses of hair hanging down over his shoulders, like thongs of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... again on the quivering form with a fearsome growl; then shook it savagely, tore it apart, cast it aside. Over the ground it now undulated, its shining yellow breast like a target of gold. Again it stopped. Now in pose like a pointer, exquisitely graceful, but oh, so wicked! Then the snaky neck swung the cobra head in the breeze and the brown one sniffed and sniffed, advanced a few steps, tried the wind and the ground. Still farther and the concentrated interest showed in its outstretched neck and quivering tail. Bounding into a ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Judas land The dredded Infants hand; The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;{61} Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... light, do those dismal things, Its gleam they dare not face. Their snaky writhings, their bat-like wings, Their quaking menace of fangs and stings Make horror ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. "Snaky" was Belle's thought of the woman; "sinuous" was Garlock's of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head—not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... "He's the long, snaky knife that hangs in the parlor," said Hortense. "Then there's Alligator Sofa, too. We'll get him to play, if he'll wake up. He's so slow I suspect ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... a moment awe-struck as I gazed at the shrivelled and dwarfish bodies, the long, ape-like arms, and huge disproportioned heads, from which fell their hair in snaky tangles, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... very upright now, and gazing in the face of Ned's father. "Yes, snakes. Made the water taste snaky. Horrid! Dries up your tongue. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... harder sort of poros, and the figures are practically in the round, though on account of the connection with the background the work has to be classed as high relief. We see a triple monster, or rather three monsters, with human heads and trunks and arms the human bodies passing into long snaky bodies coiled together. A single pair of wings was divided between the two outermost of the three beings, while snakes' heads, growing out of the human bodies, rendered the aspect of the group still more portentous. The center of the pediment was ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... land The dreaded Infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne: Nor all the gods beside Dare longer there abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. Our Babe to shew His Godhead true Can in His swaddling bands ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... towered courts, is oft in shepherds' cells), And too-too well the fair vermilion knew And silver tincture of her cheeks, that drew The love of every swain. On her this god Enamour'd was, and with his snaky rod Did charm her nimble feet, and made her stay, The while upon a hillock down he lay, And sweetly on his pipe began to play, And with smooth speech her fancy to assay, Till in his twining arms her lock'd her fast, And then he woo'd with kisses; and at last, As shepherds do, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... all. This evening, till a strong breeze blew them away, they were intolerable. Aunt Judy goes about in a dignified silence, too full for words, only asking two or three times, "W'at I done tole you fum de fust?" The food is a trial. This evening the snaky candles lighted the glass and silver on the supper-table with a pale gleam, and disclosed a frugal supper indeed—tea without milk (for all the cows are gone), honey, and bread. A faint ray twinkled on the water swishing against the house and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... same purpose as the phonograph, but in a somewhat different manner. The phonograph recorder digs vertically downwards into the surface of the record, whereas the stylus of the gramophone wags from side to side and describes a snaky course (Fig. 151b). It makes no difference in talking-machines whether the reproducing stylus be moved sideways or vertically by the record, provided that motion is imparted by it to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out of which he had once wrought a head of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lee, high in the heaven, a glowing smother hung in the dark over a snaky brood, darting red tongues ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... The black, snaky orbs of the boys twinkled like stars through their overhanging hair. Glancing first at their mother, who did not deign to notice them, the eldest picked up his younger brother, who was grinning from ear to ear with delight, and, summoning all ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into Angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fallen log, perhaps—and he watched in alarm to see if the stallion would answer that sound with start or whinney. The black lay perfectly still, and instead of lifting up to answer or to look, the head lowered with ears flat back until the long, outstretched neck gave the animal a snaky appearance. The dog, too, though it showed murderous fangs whenever Vic moved, did not stir from his place, but lay ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... down by a remorseless enemy who is on his scent, and now comes into sight in turn, running in a leisurely way exactly along the track taken by the rabbit, though this is out of sight. There seems to be no hurry on the part of the little, slight, snaky-looking, browny-grey animal, with its piercing eyes, rounded ears, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... tiny sail which was John Oxenham's. Upon him was a painful sense that, unless he came up with her in time, something fearful would come to pass; but the ship would not sail. All around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her bows with their long snaky coils of weed; and still he tried to sail, and tried to fancy that he was sailing, till the sun went down and all was utter dark. And then the moon arose, and in a moment John Oxenham's ship was close aboard; her sails were torn and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... after them, appear to have adopted a sort of measured tread, by way of impressing a regular cadence upon the music of their feet. The chains of gold were exchanged, as luxury advanced, for strings of pearls and jewels, which swept in snaky folds ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... business trip, sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagramor out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at a place well behind the line, and not at all wrecked, except for holes here and there. But the river! Oh my aunt! It's marvellous. It winds in and out of low hills, and as I saw it this evening, from an eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning. There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating rivers I've seen. Hooded crows sailing over ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... miss? I should—well, to put it in one word, I should scatter. Where's the harm, I'll ask you, if you try another girl or two, before you make your mind up. I shall be proud to introduce you to our slim and snaky sort at Coolspring. Yes. I mean what I say; and I'll go back with you across the pond." Referring in this disrespectful manner to the Atlantic Ocean, Rufus offered his hand in token of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... frowning Mars; Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk? And these assume but valor's excrement, To render them redoubted. Look on beauty And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it; So are those curled, snaky golden locks, Which make such wanton gambols with the wind Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowers of a second head; The scull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the treacherous shore To a most dangerous sea! Thou meagre ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,—of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,—cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming their spring song through the dark underbrush; sea-mew and Mother Carey's chickens screaming and clacking overhead; the snowy summits ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... who admired John greatly from her lowly sphere, and who for her own sake as well as Dorothy's was jealous of Queen Mary. "They do walk together a great deal on the ramparts, and the white snaky lady do look up into Sir John's face like this"—here Jennie assumed a lovelorn expression. "And—and once, mistress, I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... With Essex' sudden and accomplish'd fall. The trampled corse of all his envy'd greatness, Lies prostrate now beneath thy savage feet; But still th' exalted spirit moves above thee. Go, tell the queen thy own detested story: Full in her sight disclose the snaky labyrinths, And lurking snares, you plant in virtue's path, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... another chance to ride over to Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle Emsley's. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and told her about Snaky McFee's new way of skinning cows, and described the trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one another's estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be persuaded to migrate, I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake receipt, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... about their limbs as close as wet muslin. They were bare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but it was not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another had hazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colour of ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... far too sweeping. The Vishnu of the Veda is not only the same god with the Vishnu of the next era, but in that next era he has become greatly magnified. The Puranic All-god Vishnu stands in as close a relation to his Vedic prototype as does Milton's Satan to the snaky slanderer of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... drains a large lake, in which there is an immense multiplication of vegetable growth that floats perpetually to the Bay, and is called "lilies," though having the look of small cabbages. The stream is almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi. The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance. The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does not rise and fall enough to ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... combatants that Hell Grew darker at their frown; so matched they stood; For never but once more was wither like To meet so great a foe. And now great deeds Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung, Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat Fast by Hell-gate and kept the fatal key, Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. "O father, what intends thy hand," she cried, "Against thy only son? What fury, O son, Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart Against thy father's head? And know'st for ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... or serpent kind it something looked, But monstrous, with a thousand snaky heads."—Pollok, B. i, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown |
