"Sunbeam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... race is entitled to it, and that it can be wrested from no part of them without the blackest and most aggravated guilt. The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Wilhelmina, and be our little sunbeam once more. Come back and cluster around our hearthstone at so ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke. When Drury drove up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted off across the moor. Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel? She put her feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on the road, in a happy reliance on ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... O'er the sea you go; Fairer than sunbeam, lovely as moon-gleam, All of us love thee so! While the breezes blow To waft thee, Polly O, We will be true to thee, Crossing the blue to thee, Polly—Polly! Dear little ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... said, the light coming into her eye and voice as if by an actual sunbeam. "Then it is true, what you wrote me last ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... it that made my bird so sad. It shall be free, and fly in a sweet sky, and feed on flowers with its faithful mate. Ah me! I am once more happy with my boy. There was no misery but thy absence, sweet! Methinks this dungeon is our bright kiosk! Is that the sunbeam, or thy smile, my love, that makes ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam—or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... have emerged,—from which of the seven circles of the Inferno did the scientist get his hint? Indeed, science everywhere reveals a carnival of mightier gods than those that cut such fantastic tricks in the ancient world. Listen to Tyndall on light, or to Youmans on the chemistry of a sunbeam, and see how fable pales its ineffectual fires, and the boldest dreams of the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... a precedent, remember, and Billy Louise had not objected to any great extent.) And—and— (I'm going to tell on Billy Louise. She wiped a knife for at least five minutes without knowing what she was doing, and she stared at a sunny spot on the floor where a sunbeam came in through a crack in the wall, and she smiled absently, and her cheeks were quite a bit redder ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... into this "bush," as Ned termed it, when they found themselves wandering almost blindly in the midst of a deep, sombre, greenish twilight gloom; the overhead growth being so dense as to almost entirely exclude the daylight, save where, here and there, an accidental break permitted a stray sunbeam to stream down and illumine a space of a few square yards. The effect of these partial illuminations was very beautiful, revealing as they did the long tangled festoons of creepers hanging black and ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any collection of water, beaten down by every summer shower into the streams or pools which receive or may be formed by such showers, and, by virtue of their tenacity of life, ready to develope themselves wherever they may find the requisite conditions ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... asunder, shot up to a height of fifty feet, entirely free from branches, which then, however, spread out at right angles to the stem, making the trees appear like gigantic umbrellas, and covering the whole morass with an impenetrable roof, through which not even a sunbeam could find a passage. On looking behind us, we saw the daylight at the entrance of the swamp, as at the mouth of a vast cavern. The further we went the thicker became the air; and at last the effluvia was so stifling and pestilential, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... before him on a day of heavy cloud and shadow, who sees at a distance, now here, now there, some feature in the landscape—hill or wood or tower or spire—touched and made conspicuous by a transitory sunbeam while all else remains in obscurity. The scenes, people, events we are able by an effort to call up do not present themselves in order; there is no order, no sequence or regular progression—nothing, in fact, but isolated ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... to Miss Amelia, who invariably breakfasted in bed, I inhaled the most delicious odour of heliotrope. It was wafted towards me, in a cool current of air, as I approached her bed, and seemed, to my childish fancy, to be the friendly greeting of a sparkling sunbeam that rested ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... room it is as though, when they are heard, there passed lovely waves of sound through the soft air, free winging birds, and the moist soughing of the wind. Through the window smiles a patch of blue sky; a sunbeam slips through the curtains to the bed. The little world known to the eyes of the child, all that he can see from his bed every morning as he awakes, all that with so much effort he is beginning to recognize and classify, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... To some fair damsel, who, intent to charm, Declares she thinks the weather fine and warm, Such words as these address her trembling ear— "I really think we shall have rain, my dear; Pray do not go, my love," cries soft mama; "You shall not go, that's flat," cries stern papa. A lucky sunbeam shines on the discourse, The parents soften, and Miss mounts her horse. Each tickled with some laugh-inspiring notion, Behold the jocund party all in motion: Some by a rattling buggy are befriended, Some mount the cart—but not to be suspended. The ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... out. And she seemed to look for something on the far-off border of the desert that never came. And I wondered if she were awake or asleep. And as I looked her body quivered, and a light came into her eyes, like when a sunbeam breaks into a ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... to go on with the rest ... as directly (be it understood) as is not injurious to your health. The whole conception of the poem, I like ... and the execution is exquisite up to this point—and the sight of Saul in the tent, just struck out of the dark by that sunbeam, 'a thing to see,' ... not to say that afterwards when he is visibly 'caught in his fangs' like the king serpent, ... the sight is grander still. How could you doubt about ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Attitude) almost too solemn, even for the Christ within. But some time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe 'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... hastily, "many of them are kindly folk, and many have slain in anger without thought. 'Tis a sad place, though, and thy young face is like a sunbeam on a winter's day. Come, I will show ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... just above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it about,—that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... I think men are the most irresponsible creatures! A woman wouldn't turn her family over to a neighbor and go off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam. I—I'm horribly disappointed in father. A man has no right to a family when he puts everything else first in his mind. He'll be gone three or four years, and will spend all he has, and we—can shift for ourselves. He only ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... Ralph's laughter came like the embodied spirit of Youth. It searched out the hidden corners, illuminated the shadows, stirred the silences to music. A sunbeam danced on the stair, where, according to Doctor Dexter's recollection, no sunbeam had ever dared to dance before. Ah, it, was good to have ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... was there. She pushed her way through a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through some tall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;—then she crouched down on hands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It was not so black inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted down through a chink in the roof; and ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... reached the column that concealed me, an electrical current doubtless warned her of my presence, for she shuddered as if struck by an unseen arrow, and quickly turned her head; a stray sunbeam lit up her face, and I recognised in Irene de Chateaudun, Louise Guerin; in the rich heiress, the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... unhelmed and stooped and went into the chamber, and took down the sword which the sunbeam had shown me. It hung from its own baldric with an axe and a round shield. Gerda bade me take the shield also, and I did so. Now I could see well enough to choose for the others, for the dimness was but the change ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... genius like his own, a germ of the finest fruit still hidden beneath the soil, the "Chante pauvre petit" of Beranger shall strike, like a sunbeam, and give it force to emerge, and wherever there is the true Crusade,—for the spirit, not the tomb of Christ,—shall be felt an echo of the "Que tes armes soient benis jeune ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... rumbling sound in his insides as if his feelings were getting quite too much for him, and then suddenly he sent a loud "cuckoo" ringing through the silent room. Instantly the little gray mouse leaped down from the table and scampered away to his hole in the wall, the golden sunbeam flickered and was gone, and shadows began to creep into the corners. "Cuckoo, cuckoo," he shouted at the top of his voice, "cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,"—six times in all,—and then, his duty done, he popped back again into his little ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... house, as she always did, like a sunbeam. Mrs. Bundle, who was getting old, and apt to be depressed in spirits from time to time, always revived when "Miss Mary" paid us a visit. A general look of welcome greeted her appearance in church on Sunday. My father made no ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... come the sunbeam. Our feet have not wandered for want of light. Look back for a moment. How dark all seemed when the question of leaving Jasper's service came up for decision. And yet how clear a light shone when the time for action came. Have you ever regretted ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... sighed. Reflecting on the hour of the night, and the profound solitude, her imagination became disturbed. Suddenly she flew, affrighted, from those dangerous shades, and those waters which seemed to her hotter than the tropical sunbeam, and ran to her mother for refuge. More than once, wishing to reveal her sufferings, she pressed her mother's hand within her own; more than once she was ready to pronounce the name of Paul: but her oppressed heart left her lips no power of utterance, and, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Divine Original,—unmistakable notes of purpose and design,—mysterious traces and tokens of Himself; not visible indeed to the scornful and arrogant, the impatient and irreverent; yet clear as if written with a sunbeam to the patient and humble student, the man who "trembleth at GOD'S Word."(313) Or, (if the Reader prefers the image,) the indications of a Divine Original to be met with in these verses shall be likened rather to those cryptic characters, invisible so long as they remain unsuspected, but which ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... has generally the effect of stopping tears, and Nell, astonished at Antonia's appearance and words, presently sat up on the grass, and, flinging back her heavy mane of hair, watched the priestess of art with great interest. How could Antonia imprison a sunbeam? It sounded interesting! Nell blinked her eyes and ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... "Little sunbeam—little clipped-winged bird—little pearl," were the terms of endearment he lavished upon her, as, with his feeble arm about her, he told her one night how he loved her. "Don't go Edith," he said, as he saw her stealing from the room; "sit down here beside me and listen ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... contraction or remove." Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowess ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... with a clear and penetrating glance the meek woman who sat before him, who accepted her joyless and gloomy future with such heroic resignation. Her mute anguish excited his compassion. He wished to throw a sunbeam into her dark future, to warm her heart with ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... winding, balsamic path to the unexpected hollow where a wood-spring lies have found the rarest secret the forest can reveal. Such was our good fortune that day. At the end of our path we found it, under the pines, a crystal-clear thing with lips unkissed by so much as a stray sunbeam. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... care To men, however mean or vile; E'en base Chandalas'[12] dwellings share Th' impartial sunbeam's silver smile. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... own cleverness in the sweet little lass. Wilks, I'd give a good deal to have that little sunbeam or one like her ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... great suffering she is the brightest, happiest one in the house, brimful and running over with fun and spirits. Papa calls her our sunbeam, and no one can grumble when they see how patiently and cheerfully she bears her pain. Her bright face and merry laugh will cure the worst case of "blues." She wants me to tell you how much she enjoys ST. NICHOLAS. It is a great ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... often shrouding in shadow the unimportant in the landscape, while high up above the gloom it holds up to your gaze a white candle of a minaret or the bared breast of an Alpine peak reflecting the loving look of a tired sunbeam bidding ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... mother had kissed her, "Why has papa don away? I 'ove my papa ever so much, and I asked him, before he went away, if he 'oved oo and Eddie and Allie, and he taid he did, and that he 'oved me, his 'ittle sunbeam, too, and ett he has don and left us all. I am ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... I was about to set the bloodhounds upon this little sunbeam! 'Tis long since these grim walls have echoed strains so sweet as hers. (Croons.) "Woa, LUCINDY," &c. "Dey tried him by a jury, way down in ole Missouri, an' dey hung him to a possum-dip tree!" (Goes to couch, and gazes on the little sleeper.) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... was movin' inside, lads," said Fuller, glancing up at the church clock. Ruth inclined her head to Ferdinand, gave a nod and a smile to Reuben (who nodded back rather gloomily), and passed like a sunbeam into the shadow of the porch. Fuller took up his 'cello in a big armful, and followed, with the brethren in his rear. Ferdinand, feeling Reuben's company to be distasteful, lingered in it with a perverse hope that the young man might ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... and possibly by Sunday she may come into her senses again," he told them before leaving. "And then she can thank you, madam, for all your kind heart has done for her. But that little boy is a sunbeam for any house. I have half a mind to steal ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... guest, and then bequeathed me, as she wrote, to Janet and baby Marian. It was a pleasant arrangement, for between baby Marian and me there existed a species of passion, I might almost say of betrothal, ever since that little three-year-old sunbeam had blessed my mother's house by lingering awhile in it, six months before. Still I went to bed disappointed, though the delightful windows of the chamber looked out upon the glimmering bay, and the swinging lanterns at the yard-arms of the frigates shone like some softer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Upon the mist that wreathes yon mountain's brow, The sunbeam touches it, and it becomes A crown of glory on his hoary head; O! is not this a presage of the dawn Of freedom o'er the world? Hear me, then, bright And beaming Heaven! while kneeling thus, I vow To live for Freedom, or ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... my line is preaching just now, and piloting, you know." The Pilot's smile was like a sunbeam on a rainy day, for there were tears in his eyes and voice. "And we have just got to be faithful. You see what he says: 'Well done, good and FAITHFUL servant. Thou ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... dried the bitter tear That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, I may look back on every sorrow past, And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile: As some lone bird, at day's departing hour, Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:— Yet ah! how much must this poor heart endure, Which hopes from thee, and thee ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other object worth aiming at—an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture, and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling. His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its contents are composed of three bellpull-handles, a valuable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... to that window and opened it; it seemed to him as if new life, and joy, and liberty itself were entering with this sunbeam into his cell, which, so dreary of late, was now cheered and irradiated by the ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Columbus must have felt when he was moving over strange waters. Then occurred the most notable event of my life. In the twinkling of an eye I was caught away from the Earth and, without any effort of my own, I was darting through space faster than a sunbeam. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... on the part of a base runner or a dancing sunbeam that gets into a fielder's eyes at some critical time in the play may cost a game; indeed, it has on more than one occasion, and yet to the man who simply judges the game by the reports that may read in ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... passed,—great shoulders of volcanic mountain thrust out to meet the sea, with steep green ravines furrowed in between them; and when at last we rounded the Espalamarca, and the white walls and the Moorish towers of Horta stood revealed before us, and a stray sunbeam pierced the clouds on the great mountain Pico across the bay, and the Spanish steamship in the harbor flung out her gorgeous ensign of gold and blood—then, indeed, we felt that all the glowing cup of the tropics was proffered to our lips, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Version. 'His glory' is the flashing brightness of the divine self-manifestation, and in that Light resides the strength which is the standard or measure of the gift to us. The tremendous force of the sunbeam which still falls so gently on a sleeper's face as not to disturb the closed eyes is but a parable of the strength which characterises the divine glory. And wonderful and condemnatory as the thought is, that power is the unlimited limit of the possibilities of our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... notice—a slim olive-coloured girl from a land where it is always spring. Her whole being translated into music, with hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the girl suggested an orange-leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The rasping street-organ, perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some flute-playing Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... found there which are unnecessary and superfluous if applied elsewhere. Many actions, innocent in themselves, are prohibited. All the mala prohibita are not mala in se. But one thing is as clear as a sunbeam, and that is a very important light to the student of Ethics; if God was the author of these laws, nothing morally wrong was commanded or allowed by them. When it was said of the Jews through the prophet, "I gave them statutes which were not good," it cannot ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... of the various animals, birds, insects, and flowers which are, apparently without rhyme or reason, placed in one great disarray in the Stuart pictures is said to have been heraldic and symbolic. The sunbeam coming from a cloud, the white falchion, and the chained hart are heraldic devices ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... doing those things, you may rejoice freely and heartily in your youth, believing that the smile of God, who gave you the power of being happy, is on your happiness; and that your heavenly Father no more grudges harmless pleasure to you, than He grudges it to the gnat which dances in the sunbeam, or the bird which sings upon the bough. For He is The Father,—and what greater delight to a father than to see his children happy, if only, while they are happy, they ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... to sail in their galleys from the Lucrine lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and the Caieta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Flammock," said the Welshman, "frame not thyself more unapprehensive than nature hath formed thee. The glen is dark, but a sunbeam can light the side of it. Thy utmost efforts cannot prevent the fall of this castle; but thou mayst hasten it, and the doing so shall avail thee much." Thus speaking, he drew close up to Wilkin, and sunk his voice to an insinuating whisper, as ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... soul is a forgotten well; Clad round with its own rank luxuriance; A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for, Sinking the lustre of its arrowy finger Through the long grass its own strange virtue [5] Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: Make me a broad strong river coming down With shouts from its ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... who had been sent out by the same thin little old lady who had sent Jack out. She was very pretty, and possessed of delightfully amiable domestic qualities. She grew up to be a very handsome girl, and was a very bright sunbeam in the homestead. But Jack did not fall in love with her. All unknown to himself his heart was pre-occupied. Neither did Nancy fall in love with Jack. All unwittingly she was reserving herself for another lot. Of course our hero corresponded diligently with the thin ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... are acquainted with, and which lighted a chamber forming part of what were called the little apartments. For the rest, a joyous beam of the sun, for the sun appeared to care little for the loss France had just suffered; a sunbeam, we say, descended upon them, drawing perfumes from the neighboring flowers, and animating the walls themselves. These two persons, so occupied, not by the death of the duke, but by the conversation which ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the whole, As round eve's shades their framework roll, Grandly fronts for once thy soul. And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam Of yet another morning breaks, And like the hand which ends a dream, Death, with the might of his sunbeam, Touches the flesh and the soul awakes, Then"— Ay, then indeed something would happen! But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's; {690} There grew more of the music and less of the words; Had Jacynth only ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... loveliest birds, of all glowing gleaming and radiant colors, which, unlike the brilliant birds we know in our world, sang deliciously, every one according to his color. The trees were not at all crowded, but their leaves were so thick, and their boughs spread so far, that it was only here and there a sunbeam could get straight through. All the gentle creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that killed, not even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat the snails out of their striped shells. As to the butterflies, words would but wrong them if they tried to tell how gorgeous ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... Antiopas spent a night, and waited to be pictured in the morning, among the leaves of my passion vine. Painted Beauties swayed along my flowered walks, and in September a Viceroy reigned in state on every chrysanthemum, and a Monarch was enthroned on every sunbeam. No luck was too good for me, no butterfly or moth too rare, except forever and always the coveted Cecropia, and by this time I had learned to my disgust that it was one ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... everywhere,—perhaps for the sake of his yellow hair and blue eyes, which were a wonder in that country; but more likely for the smiling ways and cheerful speech of him, that made his passing through that gloomy land like the passage of a sunbeam through thick clouds; and blessings ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Charlie," both garnished with verses, at once remarkable for devoted loyalty and eccentric rhythm. Between the two was Sir William Ross's sweet, maidenly portrait of our own Victoria. Opposite, on a shadowed wall, with one sunbeam kissing the face, was a large well-painted likeness, which Olive at once recognised. It was Mrs. Flora Rothesay, at eighteen. No wonder, Olive thought, that she was called "the Flower of Perth." But strange it was, that the fair flower ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... ordinary pairs of eyes." Another keen observer, Mr. Arthur Helps, has in the same spirit exclaimed, "What portrait can do justice to the frankness, kindness, and power of his eyes?" None certainly that ever was painted by the pencil of the sunbeam, or by the brush of a Royal Academician. Fully to realise the capacity for indicating emotion latent in them, and informing his whole frame—his hands for example, in their every movement, being wonderfully expressive—those who attended these Readings soon came to know, that ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the bending grass, A dragon-fly cuts a sunbeam through. The moaning cypress trees lift somber arms Up to skies of cloudless blue. A humming-bird sips from a golden cup, In the hedge a hidden bird sings, And a butterfly among the flowers Tells me that ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... a little sway, A sunbeam in a winter's day, Is all the proud and mighty have Between the cradle and the grave. Grongar Hill. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... my eye, I hope," says Joyce, laughing; "and, at all events, it doesn't mean that either. The poet who wrote this meant a sunbeam." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a labyrinthine thicket Is this place that I have entered! Nature here takes little trouble, Letting it be seen how perfect Is the beauty that arises Even from nature's careless efforts: Deep within this darksome grotto Which no sunbeam's light can enter, I shall penetrate: it seemeth As if until now it never Had been trod by human footsteps. There where yonder marge impendeth O'er a streamlet that swift-flying Carries with it the white freshness Of the snows that from the mountains Ever in its waves are melted, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... is good for me to draw near to God,' because, unless I do, and if I am separated from Him, my true self is dead, even whilst I seem to live. All that are parted from Him perish; all that are joined to Him, and only they, do live what is worth calling life. Cut off the sunbeam from the sun, and what becomes of it? It vanishes. Separate a soul from God, and it is dead. What is all the good of the world to you if your true self is dead? And what an absurdity it is to deck a corpse with riches and pomp of various kinds! That is what the men of the world are doing, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... afraid that Christian people in this generation have but a very imperfect belief in the actual, supernatural, and, if you like to call it so, miraculous manifestation of Jesus Christ, His very Self, to men that love Him and cleave to Him. Do you believe as a simple revealed truth, plain as a sunbeam in such words as these, that Jesus Christ Himself will do something on you, and in you, and for you, if you love Him and trust Him; that His hand will be laid on your eyes as it was laid of old; that He will indeed, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... adorned with paintings, principally of fruit and flowers. A large and superb picture of a sylvan dell in the side of a rock, was one exception. Its deep, cool shadows, and the pellucid water, which a wandering sunbeam accidentally revealed, were strikingly realistic. Nearly all of the pictures were upon panels of crystal that were set in the wall. The light shining through them gave them an exceedingly natural effect. One picture that I especially admired, was of a grape vine twining around the body and ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... which a parallel beam of solar light could enter and traverse the atmosphere. Surrounded by air not directly illuminated, the track of such a beam would resemble that of the parallel beam of the electric lamp through an incipient cloud. The sunbeam would be blue, and it would discharge laterally light in precisely the same condition as that discharged by the incipient cloud. In fact, the azure revealed by such a beam would be to all intents and purposes ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... clouds a Sunbeam shone, And far down under him, With a subtle grace that was all her own, The Mist ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... serious look; and at each angle of the mountain road he and Don Pablo would turn around, and with anxious eyes gaze back in the direction that led towards Cuzco. As yet they could distinguish the spires of the distant city, and the Catholic crosses, as they glistened under the evening sunbeam. Why did they look back with fear and distrust? Why? Because Don Pablo was in flight, and feared pursuers! What? Had he committed some great crime? No. On the contrary, he was the victim of a noble virtue—the virtue of patriotism! For that had he been condemned, and was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... had a taste of fame. She had a poem printed in the paper! It happened in this way. At the Sunbeam Nursery one morning Nyoda saw her surrounded by a group of breathlessly listening children and joined the circle to hear the story Migwan was telling. She had apparently just finished, and the childish voices were calling out from all sides, "Tell ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureola, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... churchyard small and shady. In this domestic chamber Mr Mould now sat; gazing, a placid man, upon his punch and home. If, for a moment at a time, he sought a wider prospect, whence he might return with freshened zest to these enjoyments, his moist glance wandered like a sunbeam through a rural screen of scarlet runners, trained on strings before the window, and he looked down, with an artist's eye, upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the night in fitful spells of slumber, at last awakened by the beams of sunlight, sat up in bed with a start, quite unrefreshed and possessed of an uncomfortable feeling that something unpleasant was about to happen. A venturesome sunbeam, casting its light upon a picture on the heavy walnut dresser, seemed to recall the cause of her sleepless night and present uneasy state of mind. Drawing her lips tightly together she frowned severely ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... thy pencil's truth, Portray Bathyllus, lovely youth! Let his hair, in masses bright, Fall like floating rays of light; And there the raven's die confuse With the golden sunbeam's hues. Let no wreath, with artful twine. The flowing of his locks confine; But leave them loose to every breeze, To take what shape and course they please. Beneath the forehead, fair as snow, But flushed with manhood's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... curls and shrinks away with a repulsive demeanour. But the beautiful fish on the least alarm retires within the many folds of its host, entirely disappearing, presently to peep out again shyly at the intruder. It is almost as elusive as a sunbeam, and most difficult to catch, for if the anemone is disturbed it contracts its folds, and shrinks away, offering inviolable sanctuary. If the fish be disassociated from its host, it soon dies. It cannot live apart, though the anemone, as far as can be judged from outward appearances, endures ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... round Svanhild, dearest of my children; Svanhild was like a glorious sunbeam in my hall. I dowered her with gold and goodly fabrics when I married her into Gothland. That was the hardest of my griefs, when they trod Svanhild's fair hair into the dust beneath the ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... of twilight, all the hues, all the emotions of the sky. There were pictured even the quiverings of the warm air at the light stroke of a bird's wing, even the delight of earth's odours throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil, behind that softened phantasm of the mighty life without, he could hear the rise of spring. He even felt stifled at times when in spite of the curtains' barrier the rush of the earth's new blood came upon him ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... kindliness from a heart at peace with all mankind. His gentleness of manner was an illustration of the possibility of beauty in conduct. He was wholly self-possessed—to imagine him in a passion would be impossible. His word was searching, but its power was that of the sunbeam and not of the blast. He was above all teapot tempests, a strong, tender, ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... they ran over Francis's bed with an infernal uproar, so that he could find no repose from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith and courage. "A single sunbeam," he used to say, "is enough to drive away ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Lights, scintillating, as they met and pass'd. Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, The atomies of bodies, long or short, To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line Checkers the shadow, interpos'd by art Against the noontide heat. And as the chime Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help With many strings, a pleasant dining makes To him, who heareth ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... who was fated to be carried off by a warlock if ever the sun shone on her before she had passed her thirtieth year; so the king her father kept her shut up in the palace, and had all the windows on the east, south, and west sides blocked up, lest a sunbeam should fall on his darling child, and he should thus lose her for ever. Only at evening, when the sun was down, might she walk for a little in the beautiful garden of the castle. In time a prince came a-wooing, followed by a train of gorgeous knights and squires on horses all ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... at a little distance, a group of boys were playing, their bare legs and white tunics flashing hither and thither as they ran. One of them, a tall slim lad, whose aureole of ruddy hair seemed to catch every wandering sunbeam, was evidently directing the game, for all seemed to look to him for orders. "A leader of men," smiled the Patriarch to himself, as a vigorous wave of the boy's hand brought all ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... in the trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in some stray sunbeam. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... mother, a plump, bouncing person, with a noisy though imperfectly articulate habit of speech, and the prominent hips and bust which composed the "fine figure" of the period, Florrie seemed to float with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood—of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... without God; that the ways of the world are very reasonable, and useful, and profitable, and quite good enough to live by, if not to die by. But all the while God is King, let them fancy what they like; and this earth, and everything on it, from the king on his throne to the gnat in the sunbeam, is under His government, and must obey His laws or die. We are in God's kingdom, my good friends, every one of us, whether we like it or not, and we shall be there for ever and ever. And our business is, therefore, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... This chief, Hihi, or Sunbeam, was not a bad fellow. Paganel's spectacles and telescope seemed to give him a great idea of Paganel's importance, and he manifested great attachment to him, not only by kindness, but by a strong flax ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... swarms of spark-serpents darting upward. They had heeded none of the priest's words, and did not notice now that he approached them, so eager were they to see which fiery snake would go highest among the oak branches. Foremost among them, and most intent on the pretty game, was a boy like a sunbeam, slender and quick, with blithe brown eyes and laughing lips. The priest's hand was laid upon his shoulder. The boy turned and looked ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... hortensias in full blossom, two swelling hedges of fire, where purple dissolved into blue and crimson, blue into a hundred green, mauve, and violet overtones and undertones of blue, and crimson into every palest, vaguest, most elusive, and every intensest red the broken sunbeam ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... snow, Thy HOWARD journeying seeks the house of woe. Down many a winding step to dungeons dank, Where anguish wails aloud, and fetters clank; To caves bestrew'd with many a mouldering bone, 450 And cells, whose echoes only learn to groan; Where no kind bars a whispering friend disclose, No sunbeam enters, and no zephyr blows, HE treads, inemulous of fame or wealth, Profuse of toil, and prodigal of health; 455 With soft assuasive eloquence expands Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands; Leads stern-ey'd Justice to the dark ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... begin again," thought the Tree. He felt the fresh air, the first sunbeam—and now he was out in the courtyard. All passed so quickly, there was so much going on around him, that the Tree quite forgot to look to himself. The court adjoined a garden, and all was in flower; the roses hung so fresh and odorous over the balustrade, the ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the smile that fell like a sunbeam upon his music scrolls. He closed them and let himself be drawn off on the by-paths of love. Leonora's life with the maestro was an absolute rupture with all her past. Her one wish was to love ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... flushed warmly with the glow of health,—and he had broad, bold, intellectual brows over which the rich hair clustered in luxuriant waves,—hair that was almost black, with here and there a curious fleck of reddish gold brightening its curling masses, as though a stray sunbeam or two had been caught and entangled therein. He was arrayed in a costume of the finest silk,—his armlets, belt, and daggersheath were all of jewels,— and the general brilliancy of his attire was furthermore increased by a finely ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the sun. Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that Rodd was as clear.... Of all that she had left she did not even think, so worthless was it. A career, money, power, influence? With love, the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... rain fell and it trickled through the ice and snow down into the ground. And presently a sunbeam, pointed and slender, pierced down through the earth, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... The young woman's face was thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out, like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it struck full upon whatever was there; it struck through many things that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white, strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... I grew surly and having made an end of my rough surgery, I went and cast myself upon my bed of straw and, lying there, watching the sunbeam creep upon the wall, I fell to pondering this problem, viz: How came I thus striving to soothe the woes of this man I had hunted all these years to his destruction; why must I pity his hurts ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... woman, "now you look lovelier than ever. That smile is like a sunbeam to my heart; it thaws the frost of age. Believe me, Myra, the sexton of St. Hubert's shall ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... elaborate preface. A general sketch of the voyage which it describes was published in the 'Times' immediately after our return to England. That letter is reprinted here as a convenient summary of the 'Sunbeam's' performances. But these prefatory lines would indeed be incomplete if they did not contain a well-deserved tribute to the industry and accuracy of the author. The voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been completed, without the impulse derived from her ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Smiling upon the golden fields of corn, And taste, delighted, of superior joys, Beheld through sympathy's enchanted eyes: With silent admiration oft we view'd The myriad hues o'er heaven's blue concave strew'd; The fleecy clouds, of every tint and shade, Round which the silvery sunbeam glancing play'd, And the round orb itself, in azure throne, Just peeping o'er the blue hill's ridgy zone; We mark'd delighted, how with aspect gay, Reviving Nature hail'd returning day; Mark'd how the flowerets rear'd their drooping heads, And the wild lambkins bounded o'er the meads, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... anyone—if it was not absolutely necessary—to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Virginia, leaving only troops enough to guard the passes of the Hudson. He marched directly for Williamsburg, to join Lafayette. On his way he called at Mount Vernon, from which he had been absent six years. "Here, unannounced, he darted into his home, like the first sunbeam after a storm, only to disappear again under as black a cloud as any of those that had brought the thunder. He had come but to tell his wife that he was on his way to seek a battle, an unequal though glorious contest, from which he ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... one possesses may speak, or look, or smile, a sunbeam between him and that worst madness ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... born Reared by her mother, Whiter and brighter Than is the bright day; She shall be Swanhild, She shall be Sunbeam. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same finger. The cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... For five years he served his apprenticeship, and for two years more he was surgeon's helper in the hospitals; but though skillful enough to win approval, he disliked his work, and his thoughts were on other things. "The other day, during a lecture," he said to a friend, "there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland." A copy of Spenser's Faery Queen, which had been given him by Charles Cowden Clark, was the prime cause of his abstraction. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... prayers is hardly a form of self-government which we should admire in the abstract, though it is very tempting in practice; and keeping your mother waiting for her breakfast, or else letting her have a solitary meal, is hardly a good way of being that domestic sunbeam which schoolgirls are supposed to have time to ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... which hat he wants. She knits and sews in a very creditable style, and manifests a desire to learn to do other kinds of work. She is neat and orderly in her habits, and ever acts in a ladylike manner, while in disposition she is cheerful as a sunbeam, and as playful as a kitten. For about one year, at irregular intervals, a young minister of the name of J. B. Howell, devoted one hour each week to her instruction, and she made some advancement, novel as his method was; but in June last he ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... down into a large room, the largest room he had ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the loveliest carpet ever woven—just like a bed of flowers to walk over; only nobody walked over it, the room being perfectly empty ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Along the dusky ridge. Long Marmion looked: at length his eye Unusual movement might descry Amid the shifting lines: The Scottish host drawn out appears, For flashing on the hedge of spears The eastern sunbeam shines. Their front now deepening, now extending; Their flank inclining, wheeling, bending, Now drawing back, and now descending, The skilful Marmion well could know, They watched the motions of some foe Who traversed ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... into the gloomy consulting-room like a sunbeam, delivered her message to the old gentleman, who appeared to be in some pain, and prepared ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard |
