"Phantom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his face, though pale as that of one long dead, was stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he stretched his hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang sounded hollow; the gyves broke at the clash—I sprang to my feet, and I stood side by side with the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the mitre on the skull changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned, trunkless and harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;—a Thing above giants, with its crest to the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the spinster would filter through with the mien of an apologetic phantom, and Raikes at once established the basis of indulgence by tentative nibbles of this and that, which were almost Barmecidian in their meagerness, and the sister, under his sordid supervision, followed his ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus—which I can only describe as bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on which we stand, and look down into "The ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... married. He had taken to wife a forlorn, meek-spirited, feeble young woman, a seamstress, whom he found dwelling with her mother in a contiguous chamber of the old gubernatorial residence. This poor phantom—as the beautiful and noble companion of his former life had done brought him a daughter. And sometimes, as from one dream into another, Fauntleroy looked forth out of his present grimy environment into that past magnificence, and wondered whether the grandee ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him: my lips can frame No syllable but Rama's name. Each sight I see, each sound I hear, Brings Rama to mine eye or ear, The wish was in my heart, and hence The sweet illusion mocked my sense. 'Twas but a phantom of the mind, And yet the voice was soft and kind. Be glory to the Eternal Sire,(848) Be glory to the Lord of Fire, The mighty Teacher in the skies,(849) And Indra with his thousand eyes, And may they grant the truth to be E'en as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... electric headlight threw a beam, long and bright, that burrowed into the black void far in front. But for this and the few red-glowing chinks in her firebox and the thunder of the wheels, the freight might have been some phantom reptile rushing through the land with two red ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... ordered Annouschka to shut the door; for she wished to see Foedor once more, and to bid a last farewell to him who had been her lover. Annouschka obeyed; and Vaninka, with flowers in her hair and her breast covered with jewels, glided like a phantom into her ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... chest, with a cough, but only a trifling cough, which I still have at times. The pain between my shoulders likewise amazed me much. Say nothing about it, for I confess I am too much disposed to be nervous. This nervousness is a horrid phantom. I dare communicate no ailment to Papa; ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... always had been. He would paint portraits and everything that was given to him as a commission; he would please the public; he would make more money, he would adapt his art to meet his wife's jealous demands, that she might live in peace; he would scoff at that phantom of human ambition which men call glory. Glory! A lottery, where the only chance for a prize depended on the tastes of people still to be born! Who knew what the artistic inclinations of the future would be? Perhaps it would appreciate ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the bible is simply and purely of human invention—of barbarian invention—is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition—then read the holy bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was a favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision. The earth beneath had become such a flitting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, , and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by successive days' journeys I might reach the region of eternal day, beyond the tapering shadow of the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... to be with you often on the voyage, for the love of adventure alone." Finishing what he had to say, he again doffed his cap and disappeared as mysteriously as he came, returning, I suppose, to the phantom Pinta. I awoke much refreshed, and with the feeling that I had been in the presence of a friend and a seaman of vast experience. I gathered up my clothes, which by this time were dry, then, by inspiration, I threw overboard all the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... The three days at sea passed like a horrid dream. So covetous was his gaze, that the crew instinctively clutched their nether garments and looked to the buttoning of their coats as they passed him. He saw coats in the mainsail, and fashioned phantom trousers out of the flying jib, and towards the end began to babble of blue serges and mixed tweeds. Oblivious of fame, he had resolved to enter the harbour of Battlesea by night; but it was not to be. Near home the wind dropped, and the sun was well ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... looking herself something like a simpleton, her shy blue eyes anxious and restless, and her lips turning to an ashy whiteness. A strange feeling of wonder, of superstition was creeping over Barbara. Was that man behind her in sober, veritable reality—or was it but a phantom called up in her mind by the associations rising from her mamma's dream; or by the conversation held not many ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... wildernesses of my soul.—'Soul! spirit!'—thus I often cried to myself laughing, and even now I cannot refrain from laughter,—'can there be anything else? And if this be so, in what does spirit differ from matter? where is the party wall between life and death?' In the spectral phantom of life, in the sphinx-born riddle of being, in that terrific fiat out of which the worlds sprang forth, to roll convulsively onward and evermore onward, till they can drop back into rest and nothingness—in this all contradictions and contrarieties ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Two members of the government (in Rousseau's sense of the term), namely the houses of parliament, usurped the power which they ought only to have exercised along with the crown.[269] The Whigs denounced the proceeding as a fiction, a forgery, a phantom, but if they had been readers of the Social Contract, and if they had been bitten by its dogmatic temper, they would have declared the compact of union violated, and all British citizens free to resume their natural rights. Not even the bitter ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... One long, wailing note; then again the night was voiceless ... and in the radio room at Maricopa Flying Field two men stood speechless, unbreathing, to stare at each other with incredulous eyes, as might men who had seen a phantom—a ghost that spoke to them ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... could not shake free from the chill foreboding that had descended upon him, and when Piers had gone he stood for a long time before his open window, wrestling with the dark phantom, trying to reason away a dread which he knew ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the second poem to Dorothy being yet possibly a "Wife and Friend"; nor to the fact that it was originally addressed "To a beautiful Young Lady." Neither Dorothy nor Mary Wordsworth were physically "beautiful," according to our highest standards; although the poet addressed the latter as "a Phantom of delight," and as "a lovely apparition." It is quite true that it was Mary Wordsworth's old age that was "serene and bright," while Dorothy's was the very reverse; but the poet's anticipation of the future was written when his sister was young, and was ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... you know, by decree of the King!—these precious old infants. But they did not realize it; they could not be called conscious of it; it was an abstraction, a phantom; to them it had no substance; their minds could not take hold of it. No, they did not bother about their nobility; they lived in their horses. The horses were solid; they were visible facts, and would make a mighty stir in Domremy. Presently something was said about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of seeing; the act of seeing; a supernatural appearance; a spectre; a phantom; a dream; something shown ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... submission then existing in England to be present at the sights exhibited in a despotic government. A thousand times, in like manner, have I wished that those European philosophers whose closet speculations exalt a state of nature above a state of civilization, could survey the phantom which their heated imaginations have raised. Possibly they might then learn that a state of nature is, of all others, least adapted to promote the happiness of a being capable of sublime research and unending ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... too, came another innovation which might or might not have pleased the Bard of Avon. For as Macbeth wrestled with his fears, the phantom of the murdered Duncan, a cloaked, shadowy shape, crossed slowly by him from right to left, traversing the breadth of the screen, while the orchestra rendered shivery music in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... life, even when he is so stiff with exertion, that he can do little more than roll along. All of us have, at one time or another, experienced in nightmares, the agony of attempting to fly from some pursuing phantom, when our limbs refuse to serve us. This, I fancy, is much what a fox suffers, only his pains are intensified by the grimness of stern reality. If he stops, he loses his life, therefore he rolls, and flounders, and creeps along when every movement has become a fresh torture. The cock, quail, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... word or two at long intervals. And as usual he stared through the port. A breath of wind came now and again into our faces. The ship might have been moored in dock, so gently and on an even keel she slipped through the water, that did not murmur even at our passage, shadowy and silent like a phantom sea. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... close of my seventy-third year, I have a most vivid remembrance of her, and the beautiful objects with which she was surrounded." Nay, more; he has elsewhere informed us, with some naivete, that the first few lines of his exquisite poem to his wife, She was a phantom of delight, were originally composed as a description of this Highland maid, who would seem almost to have formed for him ever afterwards a kind of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... in brown array, Stand waiting through the placid day, Like tattered wigwams on the plain; The tribes that find a shelter there Are phantom peoples, forms of air, And ghosts of vanished ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... armchair he'd just been occupying that the Professor's pin-striped gray suit, which he had eagerly consented to wear, seemed an arbitrary interruption between him and the chair—a sort of Mother Hubbard dress on a phantom conjured from its leather. ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... weird theory chimed in with his own feelings. The fourth dog, the one that had hid from the bullets, was a phantom, leading the savages on to vengeance for his dead comrades. Now and then he still bayed as he kept the trail, but the fleeing five sought in vain to make him a target for their bullets. Seemingly, he had profited by the death of his comrades, as his body never showed once among the foliage. Search ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... line between vice and virtue, and then only, when balanced and sanified by a rich ballast of facts, can it with advantage slowly work its way over to the larger and higher philosophy of conduct, which, when developed from this basis, will be a radically different thing from the shadowy phantom, schematic speculations of many contemporary moralists, taught in our ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... master and man, turns away from the door, and catches sight of a white-robed, hairy-headed reflection in the looking-glass, the phantom face of which at once expands in a genial expression of mirth; an impalpable arm is outstretched, and the mouth ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... could see by their joyless smile of satisfaction, was rough, and bare, and forbidding. In that soft afternoon, standing in mournful groups upon the small deck, why did they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of wintry New England? That phantom-ship could ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... I answered lamely. "Sufficient do I account the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these tawdry rags, and strap a soldier's ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Diamond Adamant. Balsamon Balm Balsam. Blasph[-e]mein (to speak ill of) Blame Blaspheme. Cheirourgon[9] Chirurgeon Surgeon. (a worker with the hand) Dact[)u]lon (a finger) Date (the fruit) Dactyl. Phantasia Fancy Phantasy. Phantasma (an appearance) Phantom Phantasm. Presbuteron (an elder) Priest Presbyter. Paralysis ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... same in the summer heat—a phantom ocean of water. Garry's eyes loved to follow the quivering blue expanse that seemed so cool and deep. It rippled softly away to end in a line of white, like distant breakers ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... hearer. The imagination must be sensitized ere it will take the impression of those airy nothings whose image is traced and fixed by appliances as delicate as the golden pencils of the sun. Then that becomes a visible reality which before was but a phantom of the brain. Your own passion must penetrate and mingle with that of the artist that you may interpret him aright. You must, I say, be prepossessed, for it is the mind which shapes and colors the reports of the senses. Suppose you were expecting the bell to toll for the burial of some beloved ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... dreamy darkness of the heavy foliage. Its faint sickly odor overpowered her like a spell. Even the white bunches of elder flowers seemed to grow alive in the twilight, and to change into faces, looking at her whithersoever she turned. She shut her eyes, and tried to summon back the phantom of the golden chariot, and especially of the king-like man who sat inside. Scarce had she seen him clearly, but she felt he looked a king. If wishing could bring to her so glorious a fortune, she would almost like to have, in addition to the splendors of rich dress and grand palaces, such a noble-looking ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... them, as Balzac had them. If one reads Turgenieff's stories with the knowledge that they were composed—or rather that they came into being—in this way, one can trace the process in every line. Story, in the conventional sense of the word—a fable constructed, like Wordsworth's phantom, 'to startle and waylay'—there is as little as possible. The thing consists of the motions of a group of selected creatures, which are not the result of a preconceived action, but a consequence of the qualities of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... day's excursion, was to be our guard of honor on the lonely road. A body-servant accompanied him, likewise mounted. Don Antoito rode a milk-white Cuban pony, whose gait was soft, swift, and stealthy as that of a phantom horse. His master might have carried a brimming glass in either hand, without spilling a drop, or might have played chess, or written love-letters on his back, so smoothly did he tread the rough, stony road. All its pits and crags and jags, the pony made them all a straight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... waxed and waned upon their love, and the luminous autumn came, with its vapors of phantom gold, its ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... smiles, but he says no more; and Honor feels that the appearance of this phantom has cast a gloom over the house that was ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... in thy purest ray, Free from the clogs and taints of clay, Hovers divine the Archetypal Man! Like those dim phantom ghosts of life that gleam And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream, While yet they stand in fields Elysian, Ere to the flesh the Immortal ones descend— If doubtful ever in the Actual life, Each contest—here a victory crowns the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... this end of time—even on Englishmen's eyes— Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place, Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Every lovely face, On which I gaze, A phantom seems to me, That vainly strives to copy thee, Of all the graces that our souls inthral, Sole ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... but the reality evoked a new and almost as poignant tenderness. Cecile—phantom of a life-time's love, reborn in the flesh, young as on the last day of her earthly existence, coming back into his life again, even the same as she had left it! A second wonder, almost as sweet as the first! He clung to it as one clings to the presence ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... sake what she has or would like to have—only THEN does he look upon her as "possessed." A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... attentive to my voice. Nature calls the majority of men to her in vain. Each of them forms an image of her for himself, and invests her with his own passions. He pursues during the whole of his life this vain phantom, which leads him astray; and he afterwards complains to Heaven of the misfortunes which he has thus created for himself. Among the many children of misfortune whom I have endeavoured to lead back to the enjoyments of nature, I have not found one but was intoxicated with his own miseries. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Arthur and Charlemagne recurs to him when he is seeking for the topmost reach of human power and splendour that he may belittle it by the side of Satan's rebel host; and the specious handmaidens who served the Tempter's phantom banquet in the desert are described as lovely beyond what ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... now he was both heartless and hopeless; he knew he was the bond-slave of the drink, and, whatever he might say to others, he felt in his own heart that it was useless any longer to try and cheat himself with the transparent phantom of a lie. Yet he could not for shame acknowledge thus much to others, nor would he allow his conscience to state it deliberately to himself; he still clung to something, which was yet neither conviction nor ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... the man who had been the chosen and cherished confidant of the father was looked upon by the son as a grim tyrant, from whose clutches he had escaped, and in which he determined never again to find himself. 'Old Dacre,' as Lord Fitz-pompey described him, was a phantom enough at any time to frighten his youthful ward. The great object of the uncle was to teaze and mortify the guardian into resigning his trust, and infinite were the contrivances to bring about this desirable result; but Mr. Dacre was obstinate, and, although absent, contrived ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... of anything else so ill-named as the phantom called the "Philosopher's Stone"? A talisman that shall turn base metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any but fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble souls, nature has ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... too, has a drift, as it were, which is tragically marked by the way in which its last stage is described: 'Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time that they were carried away to Babylon.' Josiah had four successors, all of them phantom kings;—Jehoahaz, who reigned for three months and was taken captive to Egypt; his brother Jehoiakim, a puppet set up by Egypt, knocked down by Babylon; his son Jehoiachin, who reigned eleven years and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... wave like a thing of life, until Isenstein, with its tall towers and its green marble halls, sank from sight in the distance and the mist. And Siegfried and his noble steed seemed to be the only living beings on board; for the sailors who plied the oars were so silent and phantom-like, that they appeared to be nought but the ghosts of the summer sea-breezes. As the ship sped swiftly on its way, all the creatures in the sea paused to behold the sight. The mermen rested from their weary search ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... all the wiles you employ To gain the pleasure of seeing; No tree is so tall, but you reach its top limb, No water so deep, but in it you swim, No ice is so smooth, but o'er it you skim Like a phantom, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... somewhere exist in the creation. For her I could have resigned title, fortune, family, every thing that is dear to man, save the life, through which alone the reward of such sacrifice could have been tasted, and to this phantom I had already yielded up all the manlier energies of my nature; but, deeply as I felt the necessity of loving something less unreal, up to the moment of my joining the regiment, my heart had never once throbbed for ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of the dead, O songs without a sound, O fellowship whose phantom tread Hallows a phantom ground— How in a gleam have these revealed The faith ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... unknown lady looked at the performance with the immobility of a statue, and with her eyes, like those of a phantom, she laughed not. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... snow-covered court was deserted. Only in the shadows of the paling and the end of the house was it possible for a man to be concealed, and before he stepped away from the door Estein ran his eye carefully along both. He could see nothing, and had just stepped forward a pace, when noiselessly as a phantom a dark form appeared round the corner of the hall, and without pausing an instant came straight up to him. He saw only that the man was small, and wrapped in a cloak of fur; his sword flashed, and he was almost in the act of striking ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... Christendom was finally healed at the Council of Constance. There were three "phantom popes" at this time, but they were all deposed in favor of a new pontiff, Martin V. The Catholic world now had a single head, but it was not easy to revive the old, unquestioning loyalty to him as God's ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... when examined by the natural reason—a thing that melts away inevitably first to haze, and then to utter nothingness. And for a time we feel convinced that it really is nothing. Let us, however, again retire from it to the common distance, and the phantom we thought exorcised is again back in an instant. There is the sphinx once more, distinct and clear as ever, holding in its hand the scales of good and evil, and demanding a curse or a blessing for every human action. We are once more certain—more certain of this than anything—that ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... and rating them soundly where they failed. She was a Bretonne, but of the better type, with sharp, clearly-cut features, and eyes full of vivacity, that seemed in all places at once. She wore list shoes, and would flit like a phantom from one end of the room to the other, her cap-strings flying behind her, directing, surveying all. Very independent, too, was she, and evidently held certain of her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... vain; Awakened once, she could not sleep again. She saw, each day and hour, more worthless grown The heart for which she cast away her own; And her soul learnt, through bitterest inward strife, The slight, frail love for which she wrecked her life, The phantom for which all her hope was given, The cold bleak earth for which she bartered heaven! But all in vain; would even the tenderest heart Now stoop to take ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... husband nor her child had ever observed. There was a fine moisture on her forehead, and this added so greatly to the natural transparency of her features that, standing there in the wan light, she might have been mistaken for the phantom of her daughter's vivid flesh and blood beauty. "I wonder if you would mind going on to Bolingbroke Street, so I may speak to Belinda Treadwell a minute?" she asked, as soon as she had recovered her breath. "I want to find out if she has engaged Miss Willy ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... countenance of him I had slain appeared to follow me. Wherever I turned my head I beheld it behind me, hideous with the contortions of the dying moment. I have tried in every way to escape from this horrible phantom; but in vain. I know not whether it is an illusion of the mind, the consequence of my dismal education at the convent, or whether a phantom really sent by heaven to punish me; but there it ever is—at all times—in all places—nor has time nor habit had any effect in familiarizing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... a most singular performance, had for centuries been popularly known as the 'Trionfo della Morte.' It is divided by an immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death, personified as a female phantom, batwinged, claw-footed, her robe of linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of them agreed to that afterward—but it was Crailey who answered, while Tom could only stare, and stand wagging his head at the lovely phantom, like ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... light in one erratic, unexpected window would give them a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind them with their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on the road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still MacIan stood up staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had flung open flapped loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of dumb amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and gone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter. The ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... explanation lies in sin. Death is but the projection of a sin-burdened conscience upon the mists of the unknown. Thank God that it has been given to our generation to tear away the veil from this falsehood, and to recognize the absolute unreality of the phantom which the ignorance and superstition of guilty humanity have conjured up." The smooth, deliberate voice of Mrs. Staggchase broke the silence which ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... say," Raskolnikov went on, twisting his mouth into a smile, "that I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am mad, and have only seen a phantom." ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... later he started forward. The ship that had come so silently and phantom-like across the waves seemed right in the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the autumn of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic interludes that in their unexpectedness and naive naturalness remind me of the comic passages in Marlowe's Faustus, I waited (I admit in vain) for some beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic worshipper ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of superstitious awe ran through him. But it was awe, not fear. The stag, gigantic and almost a phantom, did not threaten. It pitied, and as Henry gazed at it with the fascinated eyes of one in a dream or in an illusion so deep that it was a twin brother to reality, the deer turned and walked slowly among the trees. Twenty paces, and, stopping an instant, it looked back. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hesitated whether to speak to the figure, or arouse the family. The first idea I considered as a dangerous act of heroism; the latter, as a risk of being laughed at, should the subject of my story not prove supernatural. Therefore, after taking a third view of the phantom, I mustered up all my resolution, jumped out of bed, and boldly went up to the figure, grasped it round and round, and found it incorporeal. I then looked at it again, and felt it again; when, reader, judge of my astonishment—this ghostly spectre proved to be nothing more than a large ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... brasses and the inscriptions; and I look for the image of the Deity or presiding Spirit between the altar- groups of convoluted candelabra. And I see—only a mirror, a round, pale disk of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... BARKER: I expressly and explicitly made exceptions. I only wish that Mr. Nevin may not base his remarks upon a phantom. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and swallowing all the time that she thought about it. She tried to comfort herself with the idea, that what he imagined her to be, did not alter the fact of what she was. But it was a truism, a phantom, and broke down under the weight of her regret. She had twenty questions on the tip of her tongue to ask Mr. Bell, but not one of them did she utter. Mr. Bell thought that she was tired, and sent ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... heard in this neighbourhood from aged persons when I was a child, but I never found but one person who had ever actually seen the phantom. Perhaps some of your correspondents can give some clue to this extraordinary sentence. The coach and four horses is attached to another tradition I have heard in the west of Norfolk; where the ancestor of a family is reported to drive his spectral ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... on, the young people again loitered down to the water's edge, and there, seated side by side, on a rocky knoll, watched the phantom gold lift from the willows and climb slowly to the cliffs above, while the water deepened in shadow, and busy muskrats marked its glossy surface with long silvery lines. Mischievous camp-birds peered at the couple from the branches of the pines uttering satirical ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... his guest, "no vision can I expect, unless my aunt, Lady Grinington, should betake herself to the tomb; and then it would be the substance of her heritage rather than the appearance of her phantom that I should consider as the support of my good resolutions. But this same breakfast, Master—does the deer that is to make the pasty run yet on foot, as the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... to you; hear me. You hug a phantom to your heart; Russell does not and will not love you, other than as ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... dignitaries would kindly have lent their aid to heighten the frolic of the Carnival. But, for all its show of a martial escort, and its antique splendor of costume, it was but a train of the municipal authorities of Rome,—illusive shadows, every one, and among them a phantom, styled the Roman ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brakes and dells With thy phantom light, And my soul receives the spell Of thy mystic night. To the meadow dost thou send Something of thy grace, Like the kind eye of a friend Beaming on my face. Echoes of departed times Vibrate in mine ear, Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes, As I wander here. Flow, flow on, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the brain? Since its presence depends directly on life, so far as I know, it belongs to the body rather than to the brain. I once made a rabbit live an hour without its head. With a man that experiment would need careful manipulation—I would like to try it. Or is it all a question of that phantom, Vitality? Then the presence of the soul depends upon the potential excitability of the nerves, and, as far as we know, it must leave the body not more than twenty-four hours after death, and it certainly does not leave the body ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... despair I felt; for the first time that phantom seized me; the first and only time for it has never since left me—After the first moments of speechless agony I felt her fangs on my heart: I tore my hair; I raved aloud; at one moment in pity for his sufferings I would have clasped my father in my arms; ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... poems of Wordsworth whose titles seem most familiar to him as he scans them over; such as "Tintern Abbey," "Yarrow Unvisited," "Solitary Reaper," "Lucy," "We are Seven," "The Intimations of Immortality," "She was a Phantom of Delight," and a few of the lyrical ballads; then let him read Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," "Maud," "The Idylls of the King," and a few of the shorter poems; let him read Browning's "Saul," "Abt Vogler," "The Grammarian's Funeral," ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... turned his pillow, to drive the image away. Whatever he had done or not done, the fact remained that a couple of weeks hence he had to make up the sum of over thirty pounds. And again he discerned a phantom self, this time a humble supplicant for an extension of term, brought up short against Ocock's stony visage, flouted by his cocksy clerk. Once more he turned his pillow. These quarterly payments, which dotted all his coming years, were like little rock-islands ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and I recommended ourselves to the protection of heaven with great devotion, and, when we no longer heard the noise, ventured to peep up and take breath. But we had not been long freed from this phantom, when another appeared, that had well nigh deprived us both of our senses. We perceived an old man enter the room, with a long white beard that reached to his middle; there was a certain wild peculiarity in his eyes and countenance that did not savour of this world; and his dress consisted ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... statement of each man—ever an ancient one in homeward-bound forecastles—was: "No boarding-house sharks in mine." Next, in parentheses, was regret at having spent so much money in Yokohama. And after that, each man proceeded to paint his favourite phantom. Victor, for instance, said that immediately he landed in San Francisco he would pass right through the water-front and the Barbary Coast, and put an advertisement in the papers. His advertisement would be for board and room in some simple working-class ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the man though he did, Nat was conscious of a feeling of pity for him that he could not control. He saw his lonely life on Eros, surrounded by those phantom humans of the past, and he understood his longing for Earth rule—he the planetary exile, the sole human being of all the planetary system outside Earth, perhaps, except for his dwindling company ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Why is it that I tremble when thine eyes, Thy human eyes and beautiful human speech, Draw me, and stir within my soul That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... business or with worry, and unable to sleep, unwisely resort to some narcotic mixture to procure rest. In these and other similar cases, the use of opiates is always most pernicious. The amount must be steadily increased to obtain the elusive repose, and at best the phantom too ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... throat and temple, of the desire for her room and darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and, as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose like ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard of it, and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person was. Nobody knew who had seen it, nor when, nor how. The ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... given ourselves up to this dark physical power, it often reproduces within us the strange forms which the outer world throws in our way, so that thus it is we ourselves who engender within ourselves the spirit which by some remarkable delusion we imagine to speak in that outer form. It is the phantom of our own self whose intimate relationship with, and whose powerful influence upon our soul either plunges us into hell or elevates us to heaven. Thus you will see, my beloved Nathanael, that I and brother Lothair have well talked over ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... horrors that drouth Engenders of slime in the land of the pest, Vile shapes without shape, and foul bats of the West, Bringing Night on their wings; and the bodies wherein Great Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin, Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fight Like a Titan, and threatfully warr'd with the light; I have heard the wild shriek that gave signal to close, When they rushed on that shadowy Python of foes, That met with sharp beaks and wide gaping of jaws, With ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... don't do anything,' said Herrick. 'There is nothing wrong; all is above board; Captain Brown is a good soul; he is a... he is...' The phantom voice of Davis called in his ear: 'There's going to be a funeral' and the sweat burst forth and streamed on his brow. 'He is a family man,' he resumed again, swallowing; 'he has ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly unwise to the last degree to provoke this demon, to control which as yet no means have been found. You cannot arrest the invisible; you cannot pour Martini-Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... o'clock I could see the faces of the audience well enough, but by and by the room became quite dark, and I seemed to be addressing an audience of silent and attentive ghosts. After I had finished, a Phantom arose in the far corner of the room and proposed a vote of thanks; and thereafter a Voice somewhere pronounced the benediction. Then there was a movement of feet, and the shadowy spectres trooped out into the night. The foolish virgins had no oil in their lamps; in Port Charlotte, there ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... shadowy corner where impurity might lurk under cover of the darkness and solitude, where hands were waiting to swoop down upon a shawl. Belated pedestrians saw her by the light of the street lanterns, an ill-omened, shuddering phantom, gliding along, almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with that appearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which sets the thoughtful man's heart and the physician's mind at work on the brink of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... he reached the upper field or first terrace of the Rancho. He could see the white walls of the casa rising dimly out of the green sea of early wild grasses, like a phantom island. It was here that the cut-off joined the main road—now the only one that led to the casa. He was satisfied that no one could have preceded him from Fair Plains; but it was true that he must take precautions against his own discovery. Dismounting ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... discover a psychical condition, a moral significance. At times the vision is so lucid as to produce actual pain in such minds, they feel themselves overwhelmed by the plenitude of life revealed to them and are terrified by the phantom of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... parroquet for Sir William Irby,(112) and the prattle of a drawing-room, nor Mrs. Clive for Aelia Lalia Chudleigh; in short, I could give up nothing but an Earldom of EglingtOn; and yet I foresee, that this phantom of the reversion of a reversion will make me plagued; I shall have Lord Egmont whisper me again; and every tall woman and strong man, that comes to town, will make interest with me to get the Duke of York to come and see them. Oh! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... monk answered in a low voice, not immediately turning his face towards him. "The legend, the mirage, and I are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a phantom." ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be in the wine-shop on the left-hand side of the road. When you return, give a gentle tap on the window-pane with the handle of your whip." Norbert sprang into the saddle, and sped away through the darkness like a phantom of the night. Jean had made an excellent choice in the horse he had brought for his master's use, and the animal made its way rapidly through the mud and rain; but Norbert by this time was half mad with excitement, and spurred him madly on. As he neared home a new idea crossed ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... fama f. reputation, report, rumor; es —— it is said. famoso, -a famous, renowned, notorious. fanal m. lantern, light, beacon. fanfarrn m. boaster, bully. fango m. mud, mire, slime. fantasa f. fancy, imagination, caprice, whim. fantasma m. f. phantom, ghost, specter, scarecrow. fantstico, -a fantastic, imaginary. farsa f. farce, humbug. fascinar fascinate. fatal adj. fatal, ominous, unfortunate. fatdico, -a baleful, sinister. fatigado, -a weary. favor m. favor, protection, help. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... noticed nothing. He was, indeed, a rather imaginative man, and he hoped he would not notice anything. He did not like coming down this ghostly street, which his weak mind would persist in peopling with phantom crowds from long-played picture dramas. It gave him the creeps, as he had more than once confessed. He hurried on, flashing his torch along the blind fronts of the shops in a perfunctory manner. He was especially nervous when he came to corners. And he was glad ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... feelings, sublime ideas, and above all an overpowering will, are here indubitably marked. Nor does the form, which her activity assumed, seem less adapted for displaying these qualities, than many other forms in which we praise them. The gorgeous inspirations of the Catholic religion are as real as the phantom of posthumous renown; the love of our native soil is as laudable as ambition, or the principle of military honour. Jeanne d'Arc must have been a creature of shadowy yet far-glancing dreams, of unutterable feelings, of 'thoughts that wandered through Eternity.' Who can tell the trials and the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... their places between dark, floating clouds. Near at hand the foliage shimmered with pale flashes of light; the perfumes of dew-laden flowers were like those of an oriental bower. Faint rustlings, soft undertones broke upon the ear from dark places; mists seemed drawn like phantom ribbons, now here, now there. He looked at the stars; watched one of them, very small, drop into the maw of a black-looking monster of vapor. As it vanished the sound of music was wafted from within; John Steele listened; ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him,—though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and noticed the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. I felt all the happiness destined for man. This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world, arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty.... I shall never inclose in a conception ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... twenty perhaps, and they were in gala dress. Head-dresses of eagles' feathers, gaily colored, hung from their crowns over the sides of their mounts, to the length of a man's height. They uttered no sounds, looked neither to the right nor left, but like a dreadful, phantom procession moved ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... no disaster, the Union will split, or I am a false prophet. How can it be otherwise? What is to hold us together? Congress is a shadow, the executive a phantom too thin to cast a shadow. With two hundred armed men I could drive Congress, the President and Cabinet into the Potomac; with five hundred I could take New York City. Ask ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... philosophy of it, young man, and hast uttered a biting truth, for those who waste their prime in chasing a phantom. Thou hast well bethought thee of these matters, for, if content with thy lot, no palace of our city would ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... coward all of a sudden—I, who had looked down the barrel of a gun a week ago and not quailed? The gleam of the white cross on the Gormans' tomb made me start and shiver. I seemed to hear footsteps in the long grass, and detect phantom lights away where ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... ever conceived. Unlike the other, against him no exorcism avails.... As if the soul about to be launched on the dim sea Eternity, after all lights and forms of the loved shore have become indistinct, must be cut loose from her moorings by this phantom. The idea that 'Death comes to set us free,' would hardly make us 'meet him cheerily, as our true friend,' were this his real shape. But were I disposed to enumerate our scarecrows, the list would be incomplete; as there are doubtless many that I have not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were certain limits on the right and on the left, which were very rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one side were ready to lay all our laws and franchises at the feet of our Kings. A few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing, through endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic. But the great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse to despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular rights were averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at 2.30 A.M. on February 10 we crept like a phantom ship into the little harbour of Oamaru on the east coast of New Zealand. With what mixed feelings we smelt the old familiar woods and grassy slopes, and saw the shadowy outlines of human homes. With untiring persistence the little ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that, very recently, bygone images and scenes of early life have stolen into my mind like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope—those twin realities of the phantom world! I do not add Love, for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and, so seen, as one.... Hooker wished to live to finish his Ecclesiastical Polity—so I own I wish life and strength had been spared to me to ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... blood; On cypress-boughs the Loves their quivers hung, Their arrows scatter'd, and their bows unstrung; And BEAUTY'S GODDESS, bending o'er his bier, Breathed the soft sigh, and pour'd the tender tear.— 585 Admiring PROSERPINE through dusky glades Led the fair phantom to Elysian shades, Clad with new form, with finer sense combined, And lit with purer flame the ethereal mind. —Erewhile, emerging from infernal night, 590 The bright Assurgent rises into light, Leaves ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure. In the pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet beheld an appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the freedom of one to whom speech is life's last boon, and the ear of the listener quite forgotten in the passion ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... judge of men in power, will doom this act to public execration. No necessity demanded, no policy justified it. Ulloa's conduct had provoked the measures to which the inhabitants had resorted. During nearly two years, he had haunted the province as a phantom of dubious authority. The efforts of the colonists, to prevent the transfer of their natal soil to a foreign prince, originated in their attachment to their own, and the Catholic king ought to have beheld in their conduct a pledge of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... which the derivation is apparent, I have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to custom; thus I write, in compliance with a numberless majority, convey and inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the primitive, as explain and ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... man's horse came home. Dave saw it coming up the trail, not running wildly, but with nervous gallop and many sidelong turnings of the head. As the boy watched he found a strange emptiness possess him; his body seemed a phantom on which his head hung over-heavy. He spoke to the horse, which pulled up, snorting, before him; noted the wet neck and flanks, and at last the broken stirrup. Then, slowly and methodically, and still with that strange sensation of emptiness, he saddled his own horse ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... Provence, revisited the tomb of my Eveline, saw my boy, sought absolution, made many prayers, but could not shake off the phantom. It was on a Friday I slew my foe, and on each Friday night he appeared. The young Simon de Montfort was about to form another band of crusaders, and he allowed me to accompany him, with the result I have described. During my stay in the monastery at Acre the phantom ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... standing, as if uncertain whether to advance or retreat, while with incredible rapidity she poured out her hurried entreaties that he would begone, sometimes addressing him as a real personage, sometimes, and more frequently, as a delusive phantom, the offspring of her own excited imagination. "I knew it," she muttered, "I knew what would happen, if my thoughts were forced into that fearful channel.—Speak to me, brother! speak to me while I have reason left, and tell me that what stands ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... their self-sustaining nature and towering spirit to wreak their own will. Once let them give their love to man, and it is the passion of their lives. Of gossip and the wagging tongue of scandal, and of that vague, shadowy phantom, reputation, they reck not. These unsubstantial fleeting barriers are dissipated in an instant before the mighty breath of their omnipotent passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it yield to less powerful sentiments, to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Rachel was obliged to go into her former room, and there to stand face to face with the white, still countenance so lately beaming with life. She was glad to be alone. The marble calm above all counteracted and drove aside the painful phantom left by Lovedy's agony, and yet the words of that poor, persecuted, suffering child came surging into her mind full of peace and hope. Perhaps it was the first time she had entered into what it is for weak things to confound the wise, or how things hidden from the intellectual can be revealed ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... together over the Somerset downs and along the coast of Devon, catching glimpses of the sea towards Bristol or Linton, and now and then of the skeleton masts and gossamer sails of a ship against the declining sun, like those of the phantom bark in "The Ancient Mariner." The first fruits of these walks and talks was that epoch-making book, the "Lyrical Ballads"; the first edition of which was published in 1798, and the second, with an additional volume and the famous preface by Wordsworth, in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... shrubbery was no longer a dismal mass of darkness, but showed all manner of shadings of glossy green leaves, which the moisture of the night had ornamented with shimmering edges of crystal beads. She found the phantom of the night before browsing among flowers behind the cottage, and very kindly disposed to make her acquaintance. As he had a thistle blossom sticking out of his mouth, she forthwith named him Thistle. She soon ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the Grecian leaders lie; Th' immortals slumber'd on their thrones above, All but the ever-watchful eye of Jove. To honour Thetis' son he bends his care, And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war. Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight, And thus commands the vision of the night: directs Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air, To Agamemnon's royal tent repair; Bid him in arms draw forth th' embattled train, March all his legions to the dusty plain. Now tell the king 'tis given him to destroy Declare ev'n ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... rumours, spread by evil-minded persons, to the prejudice of credit, and the eminent hazard of the public peace and tranquillity. The queen's recovery, together with certain intelligence that the armament was a phantom, and the pretender still in Lorraine, helped to assuage the ferment of the nation, which had been industriously raised by party-writings. Mr. Richard Steele published a performance, intituled, "The Crisis," in defence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the wall and waved her hands, as though it were not her son, but some phantom before her. "What have I done?" she ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his rosary, his eyes were fixed upon the walls where was depicted the Dance of Death. In terrible repetition, the artist had aimed at depicting every rank or class in life as alike the prey of the grisly phantom. Triple-crowned pope, scarlet-hatted cardinal, mitred prelate, priests, monks, and friars of every degree; emperors, kings, princes, nobles, knights, squires, yeomen, every sort of trade, soldiers of all kinds, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his task; he looked boldly down into the black abysms of Time, not without some shrinking, it is true, saw the "huge first Nothing," faced the spectres as they rose before him, wrestled with them, and triumphantly conquered by acknowledging each phantom as a friendly power—a creature on whose shoulders he had raised himself to higher and higher levels; he saw that though the blackness was peopled with uncouth and gigantic forms, out of all these there at last arose ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... exactly. I mean something more in the antique—something or other, you see"—here he began twirling his forefinger in the air and sketching an amorphous phantom of some sort, of an altogether unattainable character, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... its own creations, and also consumed by them; and breaking down in consequence under the first strain of real conflict and passion. The mysterious Italian poet,—scarcely known but as a voice, a mere phantom among living men—was well fitted to illustrate such an idea; he might also perhaps have suggested it. But we know that it was already growing in Mr. Browning's mind; for Sordello had been foreshadowed in Aprile, though the two are as different as their common poetic ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gossamer Tossed from the autumn winds' wild race Falls round some garden-statue's grace. Beneath, the blushes on her face Fled with the Naiad's shifting chase When flashing through a watery space. And in the dusky mirror glanced A splendid phantom, where there danced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... dress resembling a peacock's tail expanded, and with a Pan's pipe slung to his side, which ever and anon he seems to sound; and with a goad in his hand, mounted at one end with a representation of a hornet or gad-fly." But this phantom, like Macbeth's dagger, is supposed to be in the mind only. With a similar idea Apuleius, Apol. p. 315, ed. Elm. invokes upon AEmilianus in the following mild terms: "At ... semper obvias species mortuorum, quidquid umbrarum est usquam, quidquid lemurum, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... of the assembled craft, and leisurely pulled her way in and out amongst them. The decorated boats delighted her, some agleam with Chinese lanterns—giant glow-worms floating on the water, others with phantom sails of frail asparagus fern lit by swaying lights like dancing will-o'-the-wisps—dream-boats gliding ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... seemed to shed a lustre on the woodland around, like lightning illuminating masses of dark clouds. And they who saw her asked themselves, 'Is this an Apsara, or a daughter of the gods, or a celestial phantom?' And with this thought, their hands also joined together. They stood gazing on the perfect and faultless beauty of her form. And Jayadratha, the king of Sindhu, and the son of Vriddhakshatra, struck with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... lust of steel Or fury-woken blood, We live and die and wonder why In mud, and mud, and mud, And horror first and horror last And Phantom Terror riding past. We hear and hear the hounds of Fear Nearer and more near. We feel their breath.... Only the nights befriend And mitigate the hell; Of those who ponder, see and hear, Too well. The nights, and Death— The end. We feel ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythm in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it, naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion to piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick after slow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again; would never want to—not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head back to take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountains like a picture, and himself far out in the flat ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... longer there. He was pursuing the phantom of Pittonaccio across the rickety corridors. Scholastique, Gerande, and Aubert remained, speechless and fainting, in the large gloomy hall. The young girl had fallen upon a stone seat; the old servant knelt beside her, and prayed; Aubert remained ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... daughter retired; and while the old heart that had passed beyond the youth-life of love and passion, rested calmly in its tranquil sleep, the young heart by its side throbbed wildly, trembled, wept and sighed; tossing restlessly on its pillow, haunted by ill-omened dreams and ghastly phantom-shapes too hideous for reality. For there is no rest, or calm, or ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton |
