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More "Fluttering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... striped shells. These again he subdivided according to the width and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering, shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted shorewards, and that the birds were feasting on them. Then', at ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... pressed my hand closer, the bird drew back, lost its balance, and fell down with outspread wings. I hastened to it, picked it up perhaps somewhat roughly, and as it tried to escape, I held some of its tail-feathers fast, so that it lay fluttering in my hand. I was very much frightened, and the merchant seemed so also. He soon laughed with malicious joy, and said that I should swallow the corn, because it would prevent the flight of the frightened prisoner. He said the same to the Prince, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... room. Now she was alighting from the elevator, and had started toward the main dining-room, when her eyes had rested on Whitney. In spite of all that he had said to us about her, he had received the glance as a signal and was fluttering over to her like a moth to ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... of her face which made Annie suddenly burst into tears. She wiped them fast, but before she could see clearly, the wharf was far distant, and Aunty's face was only a white spot among other white spots, which were partly faces and partly fluttering handkerchiefs. A few minutes more and the spots grew dim, the wharf could no longer be seen, the vessel began to rock and plunge in the waves, and the great steamer was ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... shape before him. How frail and faint the picture was! They seemed, he and she, like the ghostly lovers of the Grecian Urn, forever pursuing without ever clasping each other. To this day he did not quite know what had parted them: the break had been as fortuitous as the fluttering apart of two seed-vessels on a ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... that noise have been?" said little Hulda, lying down again. She had no sooner laid her head on the pillow than she heard it again; and, turning round quickly to look at the bracelet, she saw the little bird fluttering its wings, and close to it, with her hands covering her face, ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... expected to find a fluttering, fearful youngling, somewhat impressed with his graces and courage. This businesslike disposal of his case caused his active mind to change its tack, as soon as it sensed the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... busy upon their anvils. Up and down went the long, shining blades, round and round they circled in curves of glimmering light, crossing, meeting, disengaging, with flash of sparks at every parry. Here and there bounded Sir Nigel, his head erect, his jaunty plume fluttering in the air, while his dark opponent sent in crashing blow upon blow, following fiercely up with cut and with thrust, but never once getting past the practised blade of the skilled swordsman. The crowd roared with delight as Sir Nigel would stoop his head ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jilted—embarrassed and affecting an awkward ease; as if they knew something which, if they told, would free them from the supreme ridicule of their situation, but which, as men of delicacy and honour, they refrained from revealing. All those who had been in fluttering hopes, however faint, of receiving preferment, took courage now that the occasion had passed, and loudly complained of their cruel and undeniable deprivation. The constitution was wounded in their persons. Some fifty gentlemen ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... became the avenger; the girl born among the social filth of the faubourgs; the golden fly sprung from the rottenness below, that was tolerated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its wings the ferment of destruction, rising and contaminating the aristocracy, poisoning men only by alighting upon them, in the palaces through whose windows it entered; the unconscious instrument of ruin and death—fierce flame of Vandeuvres, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the yard, still in search of the pastor. They turned at the sound of fluttering leaves and beheld Douglas, hatless, tearing down the path. Strong called to him, but Douglas darted quickly behind the hedge. The deacons looked at one another in speechless astonishment. Presently the ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... is possible for them to raise. The hubbub goes on till the approach of dawn, when it gradually subsides and ceases altogether at sunrise. By this time the houses have been thoroughly swept, and all the frightened spirits are supposed to have huddled into the effigies or their fluttering drapery. In these wicker figures are also deposited the sweepings of the houses and the ashes of yesterday's fires. Then the demon-laden images are hastily snatched up, carried in tumultuous procession down to the brink of the river, and thrown into the water to the tuck of drums. The ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... at that, he checks deg.563 His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps Circles above his eyry, with loud screams 565 Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she Lies dying, with the arrow in her side, In some far stony gorge out of his ken, A heap of fluttering feathers—never more Shall the lake glass deg. her, flying over it; deg.570 Never the black and dripping precipices Echo her stormy scream as she sails by— As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, So Rustum knew not his own ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... the night I amused myself with keeping my fire alive, and listening to the noise of the birds that the unusual sight threw into a state of alarm. On the following morning, as I lay on my bed of reeds, a dozen antelopes, attracted by my kerchief fluttering in the wind, stood watching me, and every few minutes approaching a few steps. They were within easy shooting distance, but I had no occasion to kill them. So I lay perfectly still, watching their motions ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... I ask, Louisa, is, - and I ask it with a fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet, - that it may take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall never ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... told him Elizabeth's story so that he could inquire about the man. Soon we came to the crossing on Green River. Just beyond the ford we could see the game-warden's cabin, with the stars and stripes fluttering gayly in the fresh morning breeze. We drove into the roaring, dashing water, and we held our breath until we emerged on ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... coffee room, sporting prints, yellow old newspaper cutting framed on the mantelpiece describing gruesome murder committed in the house in 1760. Terrible night of storm—sleet tingling on the panes; crimson curtains fluttering in the draught; roads crusted with ice; savoury fumes of roast goose, plum pudding, and brandy. Pretty chambermaid in evident anxiety about something; guest tries to kiss her in the corridor; she's too distrait to give ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... in the mean while, kept up the most agonizing cry,—at times fluttering furiously about their pursuer, and actually laying hold of his tail with their beaks and claws. On being thus attacked, the snake would suddenly double upon himself and follow his own body back, thus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... over the scene, it was struck by some fluttering color at the open window of the old house. He had not noticed this before. He now looked at it attentively. Before long he saw a figure cross the window and return. It was a ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... faculties so exquisite, to be left thus unused and unfruitful? The feeling of his own quality, with this of a certain injustice and waste superadded, brought warm tears which he loved to let flow. Visions of the past, from girl playmates of his youth down to the Venetian courtesan, thronged in fluttering tumult into his brain. He saw himself surrounded by a seraglio of houris whom he had known, until his blood was all aflame and his head in a whirl. His imagination was kindled into deadly activity. "The impossibility of reaching to the real beings plunged me into the land of chimera; and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... said Lady Winterbourne, relapsing with a long breath from tragic emphasis into a fluttering indecision equally characteristic, "as you say, one is inconsistent. I was poor once, before Edward came to the title, and I did not at all like it—not at all. And I don't wish my daughters to marry poor men; and what I should do without a maid or a carriage when I wanted it, I cannot imagine. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and sighed. It was a soft, languid, fluttering sigh,—and, upon my life, it quite upset me. For the moment, I forgot business, and burned with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... metals manifesting a different response to certain drugs, just as different men and animals manifest a varying degree of similar resistance. The response of a piece of steel subjected to the influence of a chemical poison shows a gradual fluttering and weakening until it finally dies away, just as animal matter does when similarly poisoned. When revived in time by an antidote, the recovery was similarly gradual in both metal and muscle. A remarkable fact is noted by the scientist ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... been himself for a few minutes. He lifted the cup, and was in act to pledge them, when he suddenly dropped it on the table, and pointed, staring and trembling, up and down, and round the room, as if following some fluttering object. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... A fluttering of programmes followed and this is what the audience found on the last page, "Hark! and Hear the Eagle Scream, a new and original American national air written, composed, and sung for the first time in public by Professor Obadiah Strout, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... disrespect; for van Koppen, indeed, he cherished a liking which bordered on affection. He detected in the astute American what nobody else could detect—an element of childlike freshness and simplicity. As far apart, in externals, as two distant trees whose leaves are fluttering on either side of some tangled forest, he yet felt that their roots were interwoven below ground, drawing common life and nourishment and sympathies from that old teeming soil of human aspirations. Nor was he vainglorious of his achievement. His superiority over the art-expert he took as a gift ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Lincoln's Inn, and Anna stood on the wide steps looking at the pigeons fluttering over the old buildings, quite unaware, in her innocent excitement—though Malcolm was not—that many an admiring glance ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Wight, while myriad sea fowl rose screaming from every ledge, and with their black wings spotted the snow-white walls of chalk; and the lone shepherd hurried down the slopes above to peer over the dizzy ledge, and forgot the wheat-ear fluttering in his snare, while, trembling, he gazes upon glimpses of tall masts and gorgeous flags, piercing at times the league-broad veil of sulphur-smoke which weltered ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... prayer were answered at once, for a fluttering sigh escaped from the girl's bloodless lips, but ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the reply; "but something seemed to move just inside one of those openings. It may have been a garment fluttering in the breeze that must be blowing so far up the heights; and then, again, perhaps some hawk, or other bird, has its nest there, and just flew past. I couldn't say, Frank; but I ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... and Green football blanket, and crouching on the side-line, like some historic Indian, felt a thrill shake his splinter-structure, as the yell of "old Eli" rolled from the stand, across Bannister Field. In the midst of the Gold and Green flags and pennants, fluttering in the section assigned the Bannister cohorts, he gazed at a big banner of Blue, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... lovely and fair Is floating into the west. 'Tis an unknown land, where our hopes must go, And all things beautiful, fluttering slow; Our joys all wait for us there,— Far out in ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Dorn's step in the hall the fluttering ceased in her heart and she grew calm. How glad she would be to see him! It had been the suspense of waiting that had played havoc with ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... had come, to bear Lycabetta's bidding to the Moorish slaves. The others, fluttering like frightened doves before Lycabetta's dismissal, disappeared into the farther apartments of the palace. Lycabetta rose alertly, and, mounting the steps that rose behind the altar leading to another room, concealed herself behind the dividing curtains. In a few moments Zal ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... spontaneous kindness, the last sight that met our eyes before we turned the corner of the Peace was the whole convent force of Vermilion perched high on stumps and fence-rails, wishing us bon voyage with fluttering pocket-handkerchiefs, while Sister Thomas of Canterbury, on a ladder, surmounted the crowd and waved her ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... especially that of England. He governs his fury, also, with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's 'duty it was,' says this demoniac, to 'scourge the follies of good society,' and also 'to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely? something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of duty? ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... it was an arrest—took me unprepared, and threw me off my balance. I broke away a pace, drawing back my fist to strike: and in that moment I felt his hand relax with a curious fluttering movement as though his fingers drummed on the back of my neck. I heard him laugh too: and before I could hit out he sprang back, holding in his ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the English sparrow. At the heart of the deepest gully among the skyscrapers of our biggest cities we find this little bird hopping between the horses' feet, darting out from under the wheel of the push-cart, fluttering only a few yards to a place of safety, to return at once to his scanty meal upon the pavement as soon as opportunity offers. He is a typical city dweller and has learned to thrive there. Again in this matter he has distanced other ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... cellar below. That the leaves are thick, and, to those within, apparently hang like a curtain between them and the outer world, would make no difference to a demon's eyes, you know. Such folk can see where black walls intervene; how much more when only a fluttering screen like that shuts off the view." And, drawing back, she looked into his dazed face, and then into mine, as though she would ask: "Have I convinced you that I am ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,—made a glory and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery, against which grew, appropriately enough, some ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... no joy of the summer-tide. Silent she sat and combed her hair, That fell all round about her there. The slant beam lay upon her head, And gilt her golden locks to red. He gazed at her with hungry eyes And fluttering did his heart arise. "Full hot," he said, "is the sun to-day, And the snow is gone from the mountain-way The king-cup grows above the grass, And through the wood do the thrushes pass." Of all his words she hearkened none, But combed ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... something a little less inept in the matter of construction. As soon as we get above this level, at all events, the fostering of anticipation becomes a matter of the first importance. The problem is, not to cut short the spectator's interest, or to leave it fluttering at a loose end, but to provide it either with a clearly-foreseen point in the next act towards which it can reach onwards, or with a definite enigma, the solution of which is impatiently awaited. In general terms, a bridge should be provided between one act and another, along which the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Though proudly the victor comes With fluttering flags and prancing nags And echoing roll of drums, Still truth proclaims this motto In letters of living light, - No question is ever settled ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... barking, yelping, and howling. Some of the warriors ran for the horses to gather and drive them in from the prairie, some for their weapons. As fast as they could arm and equip they sallied forth; some on horseback, some on foot; some hastily arrayed in their war dress, with coronets of fluttering feathers, and their bodies smeared with paint; others naked and only furnished with the weapons they had snatched up. The women and children gathered on the tops of the lodges and heightened the confusion of the scene by their vociferation. Old ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... head: there stood a little girl of six years,—so filthy, dirty—so ragged, that she scarcely looked like a human being. Her skin was coated with dust; her pretty curly locks were one tangled mass; her dress was fluttering in strings around her bare legs and shoeless feet—and the little hand she held out to me for "a penny," so bony that it looked like a skeleton's. She looked so very hungry, I wouldn't make her talk till I had given her something to eat; ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... wall, sat a tall and aged man, with a beard like a hermit, all fluttering in rags—the very emblem of wretchedness. He was relieving his uneasiness by giving his back every now and then, a comfortable rub against the wall. A little on one side of this forlorn being, at the head of the table where the landlord sat, was a character that ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... Master-of-the-Great-Land indeed, Being a man, probably hast on the various island headlands thou seest, And on every beach-headland that thou lookest on, A wife like the young herbs. But as for me, alas! Being a woman, I have no man except thee; I have no spouse except thee. Beneath the fluttering of the ornamented fence, Beneath the softness of the warm coverlet, Beneath the rustling of the cloth coverlet, Thine arms, white as rope of paper-mulberry bark softly patting my breast soft as the melting snow, And patting each other interlaced, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... strongest instinct for the human and the liveliest reaction from the literal. The literal played in our education as small a part as it perhaps ever played in any, and we wholesomely breathed inconsistency and ate and drank contradictions. The presence of paradox was so bright among us—though fluttering ever with as light a wing and as short a flight as need have been—that we fairly grew used to allow, from an early time, for the so many and odd declarations we heard launched, to the extent of happily "discounting" them; the moral of all of which was that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... clanged in the engine-room, the screw revolved, and a gradually widening piece of water appeared between the steamer and the quay. Men on board suspended work for a moment for a last gaze ashore, and no fewer than six unfortunates responded ardently to the fluttering of her handkerchief. She stood watching until the steamer had disappeared round a bend in the river, and then, with a sense of desolation and a holiday feeling for which there was no outlet, walked ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... the vision unreal, while the woman before him had become human flesh and blood, adorable, to be desired. The red of this violent unexpected encounter rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell in a fluttering catch for breath; but her eyes were steady ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... funk, mind you, the little, creepy feeling in your waist, and your tummy tumbling down, and your heart sort of fluttering over the place where it used to be. I believe you can get over that. And I never had that—ever, except once when I saw Viola in a place where she'd no business to be. It was something much worse. It—it was in my head—in my brain. A sort of madness. And it never let me alone. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her brother Edward lay dead in the house,) could not disturb her outward serenity of demeanour. She was grieved over the loss of her brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham lost sight ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... at the foot of the mountain, glorified by a thousand lights and fluttering flags, reaped a harvest of rins and rens paid to the priests for paper prayers and bamboo flower-holders with which to decorate the graves. The cemetery was on the side of the hill, and every step of the way ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... with a narrow strip of greensward between the solid gray battlements and the blue, wind-rippled waters of the river. Along the whole distance, rising and falling with the undulations of the bank, are ranged a continuous row of gayly fluttering banners-red, purple, blue, green, yellow, and all these colors combined in others that are striped as prettily as the prettiest of barber-poles-probably not less than five hundred flags. These multitudinous banners flutter ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... marriage productive of the usual consequences of such imprudent arrangements—neglect on the one side, unhappiness on the other. Lord Roos was Sir Francis's sworn enemy. Like many other such gay moths, he had been severely singed by fluttering into the dazzling lights held up to him, when he wanted money, by the two usurers; and he had often vowed revenge against them for the manner in which they had fleeced him. Sir Francis did not usually give any great heed ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... particular, and with the world in general. Then came from a neighbouring wood the clear voice of the cuckoo. It seemed to sing purposely in honour of the good man; and I fancied I could see a ravenous hawk upon a tree, abashed at Mr. Prigg's presence and superior ability; and a fluttering timid lark seemed to shriek, "Wicked bird, live and let live;" but it was the last word the silly lark uttered, for the hawk was upon him in a moment, and the little innocent songster was crushed in its ravenous ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... seemed very far away and unreal the words of the Psalmist came to ring in his ears like the muffled tolling of a passing-bell. So it must be soon for all the living; and whether a little sooner or a little later, what could it matter? A breath more or less to be drawn; a longer or shorter fluttering of the feeble heart; ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the street, the blue ribbons fluttering in the wind, while one little ungloved hand was seen carefully adjusting about the old man's shoulders the ancient camlet cloak which had done duty for many a year, and was needed on this chill April day. The doctor saw all this, and the impression left ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... found dear little Thistle Goldfinch! He was very glad to see me, and soon told his short story. Through the summer Papa and Mamma Goldfinch and all the brothers and sisters had a fine time, singing together, fluttering over thistletops, or floating through the balmy air. But when 'little Jack Frost walked through the trees,' Papa Goldfinch said: 'It is high time we went South!' All were ready but Thistle; he wanted to stay through the winter, and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... his poet-touch, his dreams So full of heavenly gleams, Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark, And all thy nature dark Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire Of faint, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Webber's business, and as soon as he reached the city he went to the brokers' office. The morning session of the Exchange had just closed, and Einstein was fluttering in and out of his private office, sending telegrams and telephone messages. Sommers got his ear for a moment ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... flew on to the table and attacked my provisions; the cock flew after them, and noticing that everything was topsy-turvy, pounced upon the cheese with the eagerness of a craving long unsatisfied. When I found myself being driven from the table by this chaos of fluttering wings, I was filled with a gaiety to which I had long been a stranger. I laughed heartily, and looked round for the signboard of the inn. I thereby discovered that my host rejoiced in the name of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... strange, mysterious sounds that issue from its hidden depths. The distant fall of an ancient and decayed trunk, or the tread of animals as they prowl over the mouldering branches with which the ground is strown; the fluttering of unseen birds brushing through the foliage, or the moaning of the wind sweeping over the topmost boughs,—these all tend to excite the imagination and solemnize the mind. But the stillness of a forest is more startling and awe-inspiring than its sounds. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... attention to her. He was investigating the contents of his box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its fluttering contents. There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a crow of triumph the boy ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... all the possibilities—a fat, pretentious medium whom Annette's mind transformed by the alchemy of old affection into a presentable personage; a masculine and severe old woman with the "spook" look in her eyes; a fluttering, affected precieuse, concealing her quackery by chatter. Gradually as he thought on her, the second of these hypotheses came to govern—he saw her as the severe and masculine type. This being so, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... with his hand on Johanna's forehead, staring straight before him. He had been rudely awakened to the horror of life once more. Convulsive tremors passed through her tortured brow. It was as if he held in his hand a fluttering soul that had been trodden in the mire beneath heavy heels—a poor crushed fledgeling that could neither fly ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Of fluttering victory comes over me, That will not let me fear aright; my heart, Feel how it beats, love, strives to get to thee; I breathe so fast that my lips ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... a pretty sight to watch the birds drinking, as we sat in Breaden's sick-room, the cave. By keeping quite still we could watch them all. All day long the sparrows, diamond and black, are fluttering about the water, chirping and twittering, until the shadow of a hawk circling above scatters them in all directions. Then morning and evening flocks of little budgerigars, or lovebirds, fly round and round, and at last take a dive through the air and hang in a cloud ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... beauty. Still faint and cloud-like, they began to dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape, so that I was able to distinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august Egyptian faces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; and soon every mortal foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and in the troubled eyes that looked into untroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness of uttermost desire as though they had found at ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... the slightest heed to the old woman's words, for the most splendid of spectacles was unfolding itself before his eyes. The Bucentaur, with the Lion of the Adriatic on her fluttering standard, was coming along from St. Clement's to the measured stroke of the oars like a mighty winged golden swan. Surrounded by innumerable barcas and gondolas, and with her head proudly and boldly ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... her limbs she adorns and spreads out her bed— Imagining you on her fluttering couch of leaves— And so to indulge, in a hundred ways, in the sport of love She is fully resolved, arranging her bed with every adornment; Not another night may that beautiful girl endure without you. Why so much apathy, Krishna, beside ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... called her, was standing there in front of the trellised gate with her eyes fixed on the windows, her face was as pale as the face of a corpse, and her white hair was fluttering in the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... modulations had the tonic sadness of distant music, and it thrilled you to much the same magnanimity and yearning, cloudily conceived; and yet you could not but smile in spite of yourself at the quaint emphasis fluttering through her speech and pouncing for the most part on the unlikeliest ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... immediately Baxter was lying in bed watching it drop. He was frightened, but the idea of moving did not occur to him. The bomb fell very slowly, dipping and fluttering like a feather. It came closer and closer. Then it struck with a roar and ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... meeting are present in my memory; and I do not weary of living every moment of it over again. The air was cool. I still feel the caress of my sleeves, which the wind set fluttering over my arms. I drank the breeze in great gulps. It filled me, it revived me from head to foot. My skirts hampered me and I went slowly, holding my hat in both hands before my face and vaguely guided by the little patches of landscape that showed through the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... rage, are fled. 'The waters, bursting from their slimy bed, 'Bring health and melody to every vale: 'And, from the breezy main, and mountain's head, 'Ceres and Flora, to the sunny dale, 'To fan their glowing charms, invite the fluttering gale. ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... murmured inaudibly, fumbled with his papers, and edged to the rear rank. Someone, at Commodore Miller's fluttering, obtained a vacuum jug of ice water and a glass for the marshal, but Hennings chose instead to produce a long cigar from a pocket concealed beneath his resplendent ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe
... swords, With words of contumely, and mocking taunts, Scoffs at her woman's heart 'mid manhood's guise, Threats, rude defiances on every side. At first she clomb, nigh stunn'd with wrathful cries, Now at her side, whilst she would shrink in fear To feel the sword's point pierce her fluttering heart, Now from afar, below her and above, Till she scarce breath'd, awaiting o'erturn'd rocks To crush her in their fury as she went. Yet, minding well the Dervise, still she held Her pale face forward, with eyes ever bent Towards the misty summit ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... hangings, filled with the richly dressed youth of the city, moved in front; genii with attributes symbolizing the various gods, floated on machines hung in the air; below stood others grouped as tritons and nymphs; the air was filled with music, sweet odors, and the fluttering of embroidered banners. The Bucentaur was followed by such a crowd of boats of every sort that for a mile all round (octo stadia) the water could not be seen. With regard to the rest of the festivities, besides the pantomime mentioned above, we may notice ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall, Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign; And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine; Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite lock; Ariel himself shall ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... great a change in my course of life. I immediately abolished all the accustomed carousals and feasts that I had been in the habit of giving at Chisenbury-house. I continued the society of a few select friends, but I cast off the busy, fluttering, flattering throng—the fawning, cringing crew—that had been used to crowd my table. I took a house in Bath, and spent the following winter in comparative retirement, in which I was blessed with the society of two or three rational and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... dung for the moth. Bryophila Glandifera and Perla are the very image of the mortar walls on which they rest; and only this summer, in Switzerland, I amused myself for some time in watching a moth, probably Larentia tripunctaria, fluttering about quite close to me, and then alighting on a wall of the stone of the district which it so exactly matched as to be quite invisible a couple of yards off." There are probably hosts of these resemblances which have not been observed, owing to the difficulty ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... her, but Walter rushed in impetuously, pale, worn, agitated, yet enraptured at the first sight of her, and Mary threw herself round his neck in a moment, and he clasped her fluttering bosom to his beating heart, and this was the natural result of the restraint they had put upon a passionate affection: for what says the dramatist Destouches, improving upon Horace, so that in England his immortal line is given to Moliere. "Chassez le naturel, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... what," said Fritz, when the first few flakes of snow came fluttering down one afternoon as they were standing outside the hut, the sun having set early and darkness coming on. "We're going to have some of the old weather we ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... contorted, mocking faces, their fierce gestures, and their fluttering garments, they would have made a study for any painter who wished to portray Milton's conception of the army of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and she sank down with a fluttering sigh beside Miss Lottie Cressy, Carlotta's aunt. The latter stared at her, a little oddly she thought, and then looked up ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... put one hand on his, but a gust of wind took that opportunity of getting under her cloak and sending it fluttering over her back, so that he had to catch it and return ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above and blinded by the light of the candle, thrashed its zig-zag course about the shanty, banging first the window, then the door, and causing both watchers to lift their heads. They saw him as he fell fluttering to the floor, lifting his body pantingly up ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... sat in the sun and drank red wine. It was midday. From the thin, square belfry on the opposite hill the bells had rung. The old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread and figs. The boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the stream's shingle. A big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied in a red kerchief and perched on her head. It was one of the most precious hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... skirt of his fluttering blue silk robe and stored the bill away in a trouser wallet. It was the beginning and the end of the transaction. When he finally telegraphed his startling information to Hong-Kong, it was too late for O'Higgins to act. The quarry had passed out ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... two hours before noon when the worn-out horse pricked up his ears as he saw a flag fluttering in the skies a ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... knowledge, you do not accuse them of improbability, for you feel their potentiality in yourself, and easily account for them in the alien circumstance. I am not saying that the story has no faults; it has several. There are tags of romanticism fluttering about it here and there; and at times the author permits himself certain old-fashioned literary airs and poses and artifices, which you simply wonder at. It is in spite of these, and with all these defects, that it is so great and beautiful ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... fingers in the execution of a darling waltz, or touches the hearts of the fond youths with a plaintive melody accompanied with false notes. Thus far, or but little further, does music extend, save in a few scattered instances. Like a plover-call, it is used to allure the fluttering tribe into the meshes; but when it has done its office in that kind, is laid aside for ever. POPE SEXTUS QUINTUS, when he was a cardinal, hung up a net in his room, to demonstrate his humility, his father having been a fisherman; but as soon as he was made pope, he pulled it down again, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and proportionately wide, whom they called Mokerkialfi (mist wader). As they could find no human heart big enough to put in this monster's breast, they secured that of a mare, which, however, kept fluttering and quivering with apprehension. The day of the duel arrived. Hrungnir and his squire were on the ground awaiting the arrival of their respective opponents. The giant had not only a flint heart and skull, but also a ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the library with the composition, and presently, when Dick was walking around the house and saw bits of torn paper fluttering out of the open window, a light broke through his ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... tombs until they were huge objects of ugliness; the drapery upon his figures is so prominently treated that instead of being a minor object it sometimes seems like the principal one; it no longer serves to conceal forms, and at the same time show their grace and motion, but it is inflated, fluttering, grotesque in form and quite absurd when compared with statues in which it answers its ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... from Kentucky (Mr. Dixon), on the 16th of January, submitted an amendment which came square up to repeal, and to the claim. That amendment, probably, produced some fluttering and some consultation. It met the views of Southern Senators, and probably determined the shape which the bill has finally assumed. Of the various mutations which it has undergone, I can hardly be mistaken in attributing the last to the amendment of the Senator from ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... functions almost from year to year. For nine months or so it would manufacture buttons out of bone. Then it would suddenly produce brass buttons for coachmen's liveries. Then it would take a turn at embossed tin lids for candy boxes. The fact is that the poor old gentleman, with his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to manufacture anything at all. He wanted to retire. And he did retire when he was seventy. But he was so worried at having all the street boys in the town point after him and exclaim: ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... writhing in the soul. From the bosom of this torrent of love rises the scarlet poppy, its tassels about to open, spreading its flaming flakes above the starry jessamine, dominating the rain of pollen—that soft mist fluttering in the air and reflecting the light in its myriad particles. What woman intoxicated with the odor of the vernal grasses would fail to understand this wealth of offered thoughts, these ardent desires of a love demanding ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... dozen times the young ranger was on the point of waking Dud to tell him that he could not stand it alone. He recalled Blister's injunctions. But what was the use of throwing back his head and telling himself he was made in the image of God when his fluttering pulses screamed denial, when his heart pumped water instead ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze. I threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow that flung me headlong with a broken forearm; and the great monster, swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it, leapt over me and passed. I rolled over and over down the beach, tried to sit up, and collapsed upon my broken arm. Then Moreau appeared, his massive white face all the more terrible for the blood ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... with a wild strange laugh, our guide Looked at him; and he shrunk aside, Shrivelling like a flame-touched leaf; For the red-cross blossoms of soft blue fire Were growing and fluttering higher and higher, Shaking their petals out, sheaf by sheaf, Till with disks like shields and stems like towers Burned the host of the passion-flowers ... Had the Moonshee flown like a midnight thief? ... Yet a thing like a monkey, shrivelled and black, Chattered ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... rapidly in a high, but not shrill, voice, with a drawing-in of the breath before and after her speech, and a nervous little pant between the sentences, her bosom fluttering like that of a ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... coming out of church, an affected, flighty Frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited a-la-mode de Paris, claim our first attention. In dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. The whole congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in countenance, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... animals—rabbits and squirrels and porcupines and more deer, and the birds were calling and fluttering. The smoke rasped our throats; the air was thick with it and with the smell of burning pine. And ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... were not so grotesque and extravagant as Lina and her followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail. About the same distance from its head were two little wings, which it was forever fluttering as if trying to fly with them. Curdie thought it fancied it did fly with them, when it was merely plodding on busily with its four little stumps. How it managed to keep up he could not think, till once when he missed it from the group: the same moment he ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... a marble basin when he heard a strange and dreadful noise above him. He glanced upwards, and saw the bulk of a huge dragon sailing high above the tree-tops. It was making swiftly for the valley; one of its claws held a pendent form in fluttering drapery, and he knew too well that the captive could only be she for whom he had been searching. He had saved her once from the malice of her enemies—this time he was powerless! He raved and cursed in impotent rage and despair while a sudden gust swept the pool and sent ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... third week I got work as an orange-picker. It was a matter of swinging long ladders into fruit-flaunting trees, of sunshiny days and fluttering leaves, of golden branches plundered, and boxes filled from sagging sacks. There is no more ideal occupation. I revelled in it. The others were Mexicans; I was "El Gringo." But on an average I only made fifty cents a day. On one day, when the fruit was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... have done it. And how could I have shown my gratitude if I had done it for love? And it has been such dear, happy work, the little I have done, that it seems, after all, that I have done it for love of myself. But—but when you first told me—" She broke off with a strange, fluttering, half inarticulate little laugh that was half tears; and then resumed in another tone: "When you told me you cared that night—that night we were here—how could I be sure? It had been only two days, you see, and even if I could have been sure of myself, why, I couldn't have told you. Oh! ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the branches of which hung lilac and purple wreaths in rich festoons—while the sweet notes of the feathered songsters ever and anon burst forth, and here and there could be seen tiny humming-birds flitting from flower to flower, fluttering for a moment and then darting off with the speed of lightning, their gem-like plumage glittering in ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... hope of driving them away from her young charges. Frequently, too, after this, when neither the kittens nor her own brood required her care, and the cat went out about the garden or fields, the pigeon might be seen fluttering close by her, for the sake of ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... snatched at it in the first week of the War, as he had said, but that Vera had made it hard for him. She was not making it easy now. The dull, dark moth's wings of her eyes hovered about him, fluttering ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... the neighbourhood turned out. It began at midday with a grand procession through the town. Let me endeavour to give you an idea of the pageant. First came the well-mounted Clunes Lancers, in their light blue and white uniforms, 150 strong, blue and white pennons fluttering from their long lances. Then came lines of members of Friendly Societies, in gay scarfs, accompanied by banners. Then a good band of music. The Talbot 42nd Sectional Lancers next turn the corner of the street, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... danger to both alike lurked in each stolen glance and meeting. Better far we should have parted without further speech. I knew this, yet love constrained me, as it has constrained many another, and I lingered at her wish—a foolish moth fluttering to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... forgotten; for it seemed to them that the tide was heavy with human dead—passing out, processionally, to the great open. Very far, where the huge pitching of the swells was diminished by distance into a mere fluttering of ripples, the water appeared as if sprinkled with them;—they vanished and became visible again at irregular intervals, here and there—floating most thickly eastward!—tossing, swaying patches of white or pink or blue or black each with ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... philosophical conception of the universe that he set his mind to a conscious rebuilding of the world in space. His magic, that which makes his poetry, was but the final release in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and theories; it was ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... presentiment of what has happened. With a speed that her companion cannot use she hastens to the shore. Too late! Quick as the arrow in its flight the gondola bounds forward, and soon nothing is visible but a white handkerchief fluttering in the air from afar. Soon after this I saw the fair incognita and her companion ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... opposite hill, after he had left the Indian, a feeling of pride and awe welled up in his heart as he looked across at the Fort. He had heard much about it, but never until this day had he set eyes upon the place. He saw the big flag fluttering in the breeze, and the black muzzels of the cannon frowning seaward. He longed to hear them roar again, and he wondered how far they would shoot, much farther, he had been told, than ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... keep her afloat. My mother and Mrs King were looking on, and I have no doubt offering up prayers for the safety of their husbands. At length the boat got round to the lee side of the wreck. A cloth of shawl of some sort was seen to be fluttering from under the ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Moth that murmurs 'gainst your pane, Peering at your rest, As, so like its woolly wing, Ceasing scarce its fluttering, Heaves and sinks ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly fluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a veritable butterfly. I followed my butterfly fancies, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, a man again. Now how am I to know whether I was then, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and believed it to be true. Sometimes, when the moon lingered on the black glistening surface of the Moon Rock, she fancied she could see a misty fluttering figure on the rock, and hear it calling ... calling. She would sit motionless at her window, straining her ears for the reply. After a time the response would come faintly from the sea, at first far out, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... was trembling with something more than the fervour of the dance, and the little hand which had touched mine in lingering pressure a few hours before was not quiet for a moment. I could not see it fluttering in and out of the folds of her smoke-coloured dress without a sickening wonder if the little purple box which was the cause of my horror lay somewhere concealed amid the airy puffs and ruffles that rose and fell so rapidly over her heaving breast. Could ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... kill his antagonist, though the best swordsman in the south of France. His pretensions to quality were supported by a feathered hat, a long rapier, and a suit of embroidered taffeta, not much the worse for wear, in the extreme fashion of the Parisian court, and fluttering like a Maypole with many knots of ribbon, of which it was computed he bore at least five hundred yards about his person. But, notwithstanding this profusion of decoration, there were many who thought Monsieur le Chevalier so admirably calculated for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and shrunken days We conjured spring, lighting the blaze Of burnished tulips in the dark; And from black frost we struck a spark Of blue delight and fragrance new, A little world of flowers and dew. Winter for us was over and done: The drought of fluttering leaves had grown Emerald shining in the sun, As light as glass, as firm as stone. Real once more: for we had passed Through passion into thought again; Shaped our desires and made that fast Which was before a cloudy pain; Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined In a fair statue, strong ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
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