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More "Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heroic by nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles Town on an errand, then went directly to her bedroom, which was disconnected from the other rooms, and called her three devoted maids, Rebecca, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... gradations of the power of this column of air to produce the result in exquisite variations over the power and the coloring of his tones. Attack and management of the air column is an art in itself—a correct poise of the larynx. Upon the art of directing this column of air the quality of the tones depends. The greatest marvel is that those whom I have had to instruct do not know the first elements of breathing. To breathe to live and to breathe ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Saint-Pol. Jehane of the Fair Girdle, the beloved of Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Yea-and-Nay. Her eyes were gray green while yours are of the most wonderful blue, but there is something about your height and slenderness, your poise, the set of your head, the glory of your hair that suggests her. If Mother gives the fancy dress ball that she is threatening, please go as Jehane. I should ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... chonta trees grew a good five miles from the windfall. Suma had covered half the distance when a sharp odor in the air caused her to stop and, standing like an exquisitely chiselled statue, with tensed muscles and alert poise, to drink deeply the scent-laden air. The vision of a peccary dinner left her instantly and her pink tongue stole out gently until it touched her moist, black nose in anticipation of a far more ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... American citizenship entirely too cheap. We permit every creature that can poise on its hind legs and call itself a man, to sway the scepter of American Sovereignty—to become an important factor in the formation of our public polity; and then, with this venal vote on the one hand, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... phase of her life quite as freely as she did of the fashionable Misses Cabot's school, not at all ashamed to say she could not afford this or that, simple and unaffected but self-respecting and proud; a girl who was at all times herself and retained her poise and common sense even in the presence of handsome young demigod who had made two ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison—to the last man; and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious old Thunder-Bird and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity, my poise, my dignity? You would lose your own, in my circumstances. Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil. She is all energy, and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and pours out her prodigal love upon every creature that will take it, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... That nodded, fearful, o'er his brow; his hand Grasp'd two stout spears, familiar to his hold. One spear Achilles had, long, pond'rous, tough; But this he touch'd not; none of all the Greeks, None, save Achilles' self, that spear could poise; The far-fam'd Pelian ash, which to his sire, On Pelion's summit fell'd, to be the bane Of mightiest chiefs, the Centaur Chiron gave. Then to Automedon he gave command To yoke the horses: him he honour'd most, Next to Achilles' self; the trustiest he In battle to await ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... made ludicrous as they are by the operators, should be condemned by all intelligent men and women, not from the danger of hypnotism itself so much as from the liability of the performers to disturb the mental poise of that large mass of ill-balanced individuals which makes up no inconsiderable part of society." In conclusion he says: "Patients have been injured by the misuse of hypnotism. * * * This is true of every remedial agent ever employed for the relief of man. Every article we eat, if wrongly prepared, ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Any joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise and figures. Mark particularly Van Tromp's stiffened ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... composition which each of these lines presents is the same and the principle governing the solution of each identical; balance by equalization of forces. Given a line which coincides with but one side of the picture it becomes necessary for the poise of the quadrilateral to cross it with an opposing line. The rectangular cross, though more positive and effective, is no more potential in securing this unity than the crossing of lines at a long angle. A series of right angles will in ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... almost a shock. She was quite as good-looking as he had imagined, but she was far younger—she was indeed little more than a girl. Her eyes were of a deep shade of hazel brown, her eyebrows were delicately marked, her features and poise admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as pale as one whose eyes have been closed in death. Her lips, although in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet blossom upon a marble image. The contrast between her appearance and that of her companion ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better days coming, but, self-distrust was, after her affections, her strongest point, and there is small hint of inward poise or calmness till years had passed, though she faced each change with the quiet dauntlessness that was part of her birthright. But the tragedy of their early days in the colony still shadowed her. Evidently no natural voice was allowed to speak ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... all the beautiful women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to that ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... frame. Only a self-reliant girl could have moved as she moved, a girl made self-reliant by exuberant health and ideals and hope. When she stopped moving about and stood before her mirror, her hand on the great rope of shining hair that hung over her shoulder, her body assumed a rare natural poise, classically, ancestrally beautiful, Grecian. By and by she roused from the little reverie before the mirror, put out the light, and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Now he was at number one—the rattle of the iron links sounded horribly. At last number sixty! Calm from despair, Ben-Hur held his oar at poise, and gave his foot to the officer. Then the tribune ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the last I saw of her, a forlorn, pathetic figure in black, waving a farewell to me as I stood on the wharf. She wore, I remember, a low collar, and well do I mind the way it showed off the slim whiteness of her throat; well do I mind the high poise of her head, and the silken gloss of her hair. The grey eyes were clear and steady as she bade good-bye to me, and from where we stood apart, her face had all the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... confidence with which he had stated his view that the cupboard contained Fink-Nottles, it plainly disconcerted him to have the chap fizzing out at him like this. He gargled sharply, and jumped back about five feet. The next moment, however, he had recovered his poise and was galloping down the corridor in pursuit. It only needed Aunt Dahlia after them, shouting "Yoicks!" or whatever is customary on these occasions, to complete the resemblance to a brisk run with ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... known, and he was curious. He studied her, his eyes rarely leaving her face unless to follow the movements of her hands or shoulders. I studied her myself, and though it was I who maintained the conversation, I know that I was a bit shy, not quite self-possessed. His was the perfect poise, the supreme confidence in self, which nothing could shake; and he was no more timid of a woman than he was of storm ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Frejus that one never sees in native regiments of the British army. The French have none of our Anglo-Saxon feeling of caste and race prejudice, which makes discipline depend upon aloofness. French officers can be severe without being stern: and they know the difference between poise and pose. We Anglo-Saxons need to revise radically our judgment of the French in regard to certain traits that are the sine qua non of military efficiency. Energy, resourcefulness, coolness, persistence, endurance, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Annas alone was the progress of the fierce and deadly conflict written in terms of such hatred as made him appear almost inhuman. Yet the destructive force of the terrible vibration he sent out touched not the poise and calm of the Galilean, but after the law of like force it followed the arc of its own circle back into the breast ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... and reasonable. He was now in a "fix," and a worse fix indeed than that in which he and Toby had found themselves on Swile Island. Charley crouched with his back to the snow-laden blasts while he tried to gather his senses and his poise, and these thoughts flashing through his mind, gave him courage. It was bitterly cold and he knew that he must soon find shelter or he would perish. In his mad panic, he had not only lost knowledge of direction, but had ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... with her bright eyes, and O'Mally with his harmless drolleries. And no letter. It would not be true to say that he waited patiently, that he was resigned; he waited because he must wait. There had been a great shock, and she required time to recover her poise. Was there a woman in all the world like her? No. She was well worth waiting for. And so he would wait. She was free now; but would that really matter? There was no barrier; but could she love him? And might not her letter, when it did come, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop. Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell, His shriek of Winnur! But his dart and leer And poise are irresistible. PALL MALL Joys in him, and MILE END; for his vocation Is to purvey ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... march we would be caught in heavy rains. The dirt road would soon be worked into a loblolly of sticky yellow mud. Thereupon we would take off our shoes and socks, tie them to the barrel of our muskets a little below the muzzle and just above the end of the stock, poise the piece on the hammer on either shoulder, stock uppermost, and roll up our breeches to the knees. Then like Tam O'Shanter, we "skelpit on through dub and mire, despising wind, and rain, and fire," and singing "John Brown's Body," or whatever else came handy. But rainy days ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... acumen and rare versatility could not fail to impress all with whom he came in contact. His elegance of manner and diction, easy grace, with air of accustomed self-poise suggested ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... In front of him, at a bend in an avenue, were two women's faces looking at him. One, a young lady in black, with fine irregular features and fair hair, tail, elegant, with carelessness and indifference in the poise of her head, was looking at him with kind, laughing eyes. The other, a girl of fifteen, also in deep mourning, looked as though she were going to burst out into a fit of wild laughter; she was standing a little behind her mother, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... to quote another description, "divinely tall, with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head. Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with their ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... in "composition." She was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her head were admirably free and noble, and they were the more effective that their freedom was at moments discreetly corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonised admirably with the level gaze of her dark and quiet eye. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... Her voyage, he assured her, had done her all the good in the world. Her delicate bloom had certainly been enhanced by it, and the graceful spring of her neck and her waist seemed to have its counterpart in a freshened poise of the agreeable things she found to say. It was delightful the way she declared herself quite a different being and the pleasure with which she moved, dragging fascinating skirts behind her, about the room. She made more of an impression upon him on the aesthetic side ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years and loved her ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... sail along the skies, Or poise upon the buoyant air; And make a peasant's soul arise A ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... were pressed by a railroad commission, even though such a body had but limited powers, it would, under ordinary circumstances, be honored, provided it was meritorious; and if the commission was compelled to enforce a demand through the courts, it would have the support of the State to poise the wealth ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... if I ever touch it at all, for though all psychology is in a manner dealing with the occult, still I think I have done my duty by that side of it, as the occult is usually understood; and I am shy of its grosser instances, as things that are apt to bring one's scientific poise into question. However, you shall be the judge of what is best for you to do, when you have the whole story, and I will give it you without more ado, merely premising that I have a sort of shame for the aptness of the catastrophe. I shall respect ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... of this man, beyond his reputation—something unsavoury enough, in all conscience!— had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste More than anybody in the underworld that Lanyard had ever known this blackmailer had an air of one acquainted with his own respect. And his nonchalance, the good nature ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... pushed back now, showed a broad forehead white against crisp coal-black hair and the pleasant tan of neck and cheek. But it was not his dark, forceful face alone that lent him such distinction. Rather it was the perfect poise and balance of the man, the ease and unconscious grace of every swift and sure motion. He wore a working garb now—blue overalls and a blue rowdy. But he wore them with an air that ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... his ease and in his clement. He was clearly welcome to philander. Recovering his poise at once, he began, in his finest voice, "You need not chide me. There can be no mistake on my part now. You can entangle me without fear; and I can love without hope. Ned is an unrepealed statute ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... defence. I knew that, attacked on all sides by the infernal energies of talents set in action by vice and disorder, authority could not stand upon authority alone. It wanted some other support than the poise of its own gravity. Situations formerly supported persons. It now became necessary that personal qualities should support situations. Formerly, where authority was found, wisdom and virtue were presumed. But now the veil was torn, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... turn about being fair play, Cootes got up and gave such a representation as he was able of a pas seul. When he had done, our visitors started anew, and the gansas proving irresistible, Cootes and I joined in. The steps, poise of body, motion of the arms and hands are so marked and peculiar that a little observation and practice enabled us in a short time to produce at least a fair imitation; indeed, so successful were our efforts that we were informed we should be invited to dance on the ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... admired the height and shoulders of our first military samples. The British soldier approves of a greyhound trimness in the belt zone. He likes to look on carriage and poise. He appreciates a steady eye and stiff jaw. He is attracted by a voice that rings sharp and firm. The British soldier calls such ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... giving her throat a parting squeeze, quite as much in resentment at her indomitable efforts to sound the alarm as from any policy, he left her on her back, and moved towards the bushes, his rifle at a poise, and his head over his shoulders, like a lion ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... for this Madonna is Andrea del Sarto's abominable wife, but she looks very sweet and simple in the picture. The folds of Mary's garments are beautifully painted, so is the poise of her head, and all the details of the picture except the figure of the child. There is a line of stiffness there and it lacks the softness of many other pictures of ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of "The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!" and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressed Pedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of the father, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases in the semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absent mood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... his arms and shoulders, filled the children with envy. The wolf looked so fierce that they were afraid of him; but his brother Brutus was petted in a way to spoil any ordinary dog. Yet he kept his temper and his poise, ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... And the poise of the man! When he lay stretched out beside me on the grass while I worked—an old bivouac attitude—he kept still; no twitching of legs or stretching of arms—lay as a big hound does, whose blood ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... free himself,—but he was held in the grip of a madman! Then did the turbid current of his blood begin to leap and tingle, and strange half-thoughts darted through his mind like deformed spectres, capering as they flew! The bulwark of his will was overthrown; he could not poise himself long enough to recover his self-sway. He was sliding headlong down a steep, the velocity ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... sea-line; long rays spread out like a sheaf of splendid swords on the blue; there is, as it were, a wild dance of colour in the noble vault, where cold green and pink and crimson wind and flush and softly glide in mystic mazes; and then—the sun! The great flaming disc seems to poise for a little, and all around it—pierced here and there by the steely rays—the clouds hang ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the first frank gleam in Sophie's gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly. But he had acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed. He said to himself that he could stand the gaff now. He could face facts. And he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was worth all the pangs ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with their cream white teeth showing in smiles and their wide rolling eyes make a striking contrast to the rugged face and poise of the President.] ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... other figure visible on deck, that of the man at the helm—a long, thin, weedy-looking figure, so far as I could make out in the ghostly starlight, but one who had evidently used the sea for some time, if one might judge by the easy, floating poise of his figure on the plunging deck as he stood on the weather side of the tiller, with the tiller rope lightly grasped in his right hand, swaying rhythmically to the leaps and plunges of the little hooker. As Dominguez ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... auditor. The thought of God's displeasure is constantly dwelt upon—the idea of guilt, death and eternal torment. If the victims can be made to indulge in hysterical laughter occasionally, the control is better brought about. No chance is allowed for repose, poise or sane consideration. When the time seems ripe a general promise of joy is made and the music takes an adagio turn. The speaker's voice now tells of triumph—offers of forgiveness are tendered, and then the promise ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... altogether—a tall, stalwart man whose face was full of the serenity that comes from breadth and poise, but whose mind, as she herself knew well enough, was too habituated to the broad treatment of big matters to have any aptitude for repartee and chatter. She liked to disconcert him, and it was usually an easy thing to do. "And I wish, while you ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the chill morning air. The hard, tight, dark eyeballs still fixed themselves on the old woman almost lifelessly, and still she sat grasping the side of the car. She had the look of a creature shot through the heart and maintaining the poise and pride of its startled and arrested life. Mechanical forces rather than volition seemed to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... contente me? From whence commeth this new alteration, and desire vnaccustomed, for solitarie being alone, is the reste and argumente of my troubles? What diuersities and chaunges be these that in this sorte do poise and weigh my thought? Ah, Adelasia, what happie miserie dost thou finde in this free prison, where pleasure hath no place till the enemies haue disquieted the life, with a Million of painefull aud daungerous trauailes? What is this to say, but that againste the nature ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of this, because of giving ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... confusion of the kind spoken of is insanity; and the hypochondriac is tracked by the black dog of his own mind. Disease itself is, of course, in one sense natural, as being the result of natural causes; but if we assume health as the mean representing the normal poise of all the mental facilities, we must be content to call hypochondria subternatural, because the tone of the instrument is lowered, and to designate as supernatural only those ecstasies in which the mind, under intense but not unhealthy ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... in speaker or writer is a most effective tone for a large public. It gives them confidence in their man, and prevents tediousness—except to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of truth, and what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant in every sentence of every page, who never lapses for a line into the contingent, who marches through the intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... do not, brother, Inferr, as if I thought my sisters state Secure without all doubt, or controversie: Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear 410 Does arbitrate th'event, my nature is That I encline to hope, rather then fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine, she has a hidden ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... fatigue of the dance, and descanted on their own freedom, or otherwise, from weariness. Deleah, her face the colour of a wild rose, her loose dark hair curling crisply in the frosty air, shouted greetings to her mother as she flew past, a little erect, graceful figure keeping her elegant poise with the ease of the young and fearless. Now and again she was seen to be fleeing, laughing as she went, from the pursuit of a skater who wished to make a circuit of the flooded meadow holding Deleah's hand. The ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... oratory—strong talk, ardent, electric, manly. His eyes flashed, his teeth came together with a snap and he shook both fists under my nose. He has enthusiasm, capacity for righteous wrath, and the spirit of battle. But he doesn't lose poise ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 'occasions of some poise,' II. i. 122, is exactly like 'poise' in 'full of poise and difficult weight,' O. III. iii. 82, and not exactly like 'poise' in the three other places where ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of low waves on the beach; the other wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves. The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly ascending, and caught a dim ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she recovers her poise. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... windows. She was singing alone, a wonderful thing in itself, and in her eyes was neither fear nor maidenly shrinking; she was indeed thrillingly absorbed and self-forgetful. There was something singular and arresting in the poise of her head. Her eyes seemed to look through and beyond the prison walls, far into some finer, purer land than any earthly feet had trod, and her song had a touch of genuine poetry ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... face and locked it. I never expect to see her again; but that does not mean that I ever expect to forgive her. The next door stood open, and from within its shelter I faced about to watch for what might befall. Nothing befell except that the Germans rode slowly past me, both vigilantly keen in poise and look, both with ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... her Grandmother Latham when I first saw her, as a girl of twenty-one can be like a woman of fifty," said Miss Lavinia, from the lounge close at my elbow. "Not in colouring or feature, but in poise and gesture. The Lathams were of Massachusetts stock, and have, I imagine, a good deal of the Plymouth Rock mixture in their back-bones. Her father has the reputation, in fact, of being all rock, if not quite of the Plymouth variety. Well, I think she will need it, poor child; that is, if any of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of life, they lost its decencies. Henley attempted to poise himself against the University; Hill against the Royal Society. Rejected by these learned bodies, both these Cains of literature, amid their luxuriant ridicule of eminent men, still evince some claims to rank among them. The one prostituted his genius in his "Lectures;" the other, in ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was unfavourable, but that vanished instantly under the charm of a manner so graceful and vivacious, that in a moment I seemed to be standing in a brilliant Parisian salon rather than in the sombre drawing-room of an English country house. Every poise of her dainty head; every gesture of those small, perfect hands; every modulated tone of the voice, whether sparkling with laughter or caressing in confidential speech, reminded me of the grandes ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... was, there was nothing of the distracted or the inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... throwing is with the left foot forward, the leg perfectly straight, body well back, its weight resting on the right leg. Now extend the left arm forward, in a line with the shoulder, and over the left leg; poise the spear horizontally in the right hand, holding at the centre of gravity by the forefinger and thumb. Bring the right arm backward until the hand is ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Peyster must have heard, for she turned slowly about and gazed at Olivetta—gazed at her steadily. And gradually, as she gazed, her whole appearance changed. The consternation on her face was succeeded by calm resolution. Poise and ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled, to her own room ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Himalaya I have watched an eagle circling overhead. I have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... bring his right foot forward: this is the position which he should assume to strike; he may, however, reverse the position of his feet. When the principal removes his upper garments, the second must poise his sword: when the principal reaches out his hand to draw the tray towards him, as he leans his head forward a little, is the exact moment for the second to strike. There are all sorts of traditions about this. Some say that the principal should take the tray and raise it respectfully ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey, my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek—and swung out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like young Bawdrey and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... her purple traffic Strews the landing with opal bales; Merchantmen poise upon horizons, Dip, and vanish ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... it was a very curious experiment to poise a needle so, upon a piece of cork,—even without the magnetism. And he watched it as it slowly moved about, with a face full of interest ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... of quantity or degree.] Equality — N. equality, parity, coextension^, symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence^, equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance^; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, six of one and half a dozen of the other; tweedle dee and tweedle dum [Lat.]; identity &c 13; similarity &c 17. equalization, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... slipping out from the fluffy braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off briskly down ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... Coming of notedly powerful stock on both sides, and having been physically educated from babyhood, Dam, with clean living and constant training, was a very uncommon specimen. There may have been one or two other men in the regiment as well developed, or nearly so; but when poise, rapidity, and skill were taken into account there was no one near him. Captain Chevalier said he was infinitely the quickest heavy-weight boxer he had ever seen—and Captain Chevalier was a pillar of the National Sporting Club and always knew the current ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... a shining roseate creature. Always beautiful, always exquisite—flawless features, perfect poise, now she pulsated with life. A new brightness glowed in her eyes. Of late across her cheeks color was wont to come and go like the shadow of clouds on a hillside on a windy day. Even her voice, usually steady and controlled, now and again trembled and broke with sudden emotion. She ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... sure how long he clung there, but his white face and the poise of his strung-up figure impressed themselves indelibly on her memory. Strain was expressed in every line of his body and in his clutching hands. Then the strength and decision that was in her asserted itself, and she overcame the numbing horror that had held her powerless. Snatching ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... opportunities while they lasted. For the time and in that place there were terrorists: he made no confession of faith, avoided all snares, and served his adopted country as she was in fact with little reference to political shibboleths. He so served her then and henceforth that until he lost both his poise and his indispensable power, she laid herself at his feet and adored him. Whatever the ties which bound them at first, the ascendancy of Buonaparte over the young Robespierre was thorough in the end. His were the suggestions and the enterprises, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and were soon under his sway, watching his every gesture and thawing under his spell, as they watched the fine head thrown back with its inimitable poise, the back straight and stiff, the eyes aglow with the light of the seer, and the hands gracefully rising and falling to emphasize ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... scientist, no discoverer, no leader of expeditions have ever borne into the light. No footprints along the trail can spell out for us his majestic mien, his stolid dignity, his triumphant courage, his inscrutable self-poise, and all of these dyed with a blood-red struggle for survival such as crowns no other page of ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the desert. The madness of the night before had lifted a little, leaving Rhoda with some of her old poise. After several attempts she rose and made her staggering way ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... were as softly brown, her hair as abundant, her cheek as clear and delicately moulded as ever, but there was no one to assure her that the early bloom had not passed away, and that she had not rather gained than lost in dignity of bearing and the stately poise of the head, which the jealous damsels called Court airs. "And should he be disappointed, I shall see it in his eyes," she said to herself, "and then his promise shall not bind him, though it will break my heart, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made him company commander, without insignia or official position. In rank, he was only a "gob" like the rest of them. In influence a captain. Moran knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet. It was a matter of balance, of poise, more than ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... gray Mennonite dress and stiff black silk bonnet was, as usual, an attractive figure. Philip, grown to the dignity of long trousers, carried himself with all the poise of seventeen. He was now a student in the Lancaster High School and had he not learned to dress and act like city boys do! Uncle Amos, in his best Sunday suit of gray, his Mennonite hat in his hand, ambled along ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... his poise with one-half of his brain still given over to the hand he meant to play with Poker Face, merely sighed ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of horsemanship; but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful ease hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial fountain of sound—no man cares ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... hair. She had a long throat apparently, but although she had dropped her wrap over the back of the seat he had no more than a glimpse of a white neck and a suggestion of sloping shoulders. Rather rare those, nowadays. They reminded him, together with the haughty poise of the head, of the family portraits in the old gallery at home. Being dark himself, he admired fair women, although since they had taken to bobbing their hair they looked as much alike as magazine covers. This woman wore her hair in no particular fashion. It was soft and abundant, brushed ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Her ear is as carefully attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or phrase needed to give it poise and strength. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... school; and all the time it was maintained at the lofty level of classic grace. It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that McCullough did and said, in the forum scene—the noble severity of the poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of shattered reason ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... limits. It was here that I first observed the manner in which fishes die. As soon as the creature sickens, the head sinks lower and lower, and it stands as it were on its head; till, getting weaker, and losing all poise, the tail turns over, and at last it floats on the surface of the water with its belly uppermost. The reason why fishes, when dead, swim in that manner is very obvious; because, when the body is no longer balanced ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... which the camera has played means more and more as I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within; so that, looking thus, I look ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... shake the hands of this strange couple. The Leopard Woman carried herself with the ease and poise of one accustomed to receiving homage. She had drawn near Kingozi again, and managed to reach out and ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... quickly the trick that all trained seals know—that of balancing a ball on the nose. But for a seal that is not much of a feat after the experience of keeping themselves constantly in poise amidst the rolling breakers and surging swells. I taught him to rise on his flippers and march, also to turn to right or ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... a mental balance, but this was one of the exceptions to a rule of conduct where poise was essential. His eyes half-closed in their clash with the coldly antagonistic orbs of his host. His instinctive dislike of the man flamed into open anger and he controlled himself with ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... moment she hesitated, and then, from sheer loss of poise, reached out her hand. The dancing eyes of the cavalier lit with all the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... squatter woman. She was no longer the red-haired tatterdemalion who had romped over the rocks and quarreled with the boys of the Silent City. Her tom-boy days, amid the ceaseless struggles against the hardships of the Storm Country, gave to her slender body strength and lent to it poise and grace. Bright brown eyes lighted by loving intelligence illumined her face, tanned by sun and wind, but very sweet and winsome, especially when the curving red lips melted into a smile. A profusion of burnished red curls, falling ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... trumpet's sound, and loudest noise Of martial drums, increase their joys; Not by compulsion led, but choice, And bold to fight, Their Country's cause in mind they poise; War! ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with the front ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... which is careless of opinion. Throughout, we see in his kindly nature a longing for sympathy: if from those intellectually strong, so much the better; if from dear friends, better yet; if from casual acquaintances, still it is good and serviceable to him, and helps him to keep his poise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had tightened into a strange pent stillness like the poise of earth and sky and beast and bird just before the breaking of a great and lowering storm. The quick clatter of the ducks' wings somehow alarmed me—the staring of the children, their eyes directed past us, sharpened my senses for a new focus. And glancing, I witnessed Daniel nearing—striding ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the moon, and stars, as profane spectra:—a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... up and down the river, Sewall's nephew, Will Dow, was possibly the one who had the rarest qualities of intellect and spirit. He had a poise and a winsome lovableness that was not often found in that wild bit of country combined with such ruggedness of character. He had a droll and altogether original sense of humor, and an imagination which struck Roosevelt as extraordinary in its scope ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the one-step. There was less abandon and more art. The first dance had expressed a primitive emotion; the present slow and measured whirl a discriminating sensation. And slowly, under the spell of Stillman's calm and yet strangely glowing manner, Claire recovered her poise. All night she had been inhaling every fresh delight rapturously with the closed eyes and open senses that one brings to the enjoyment of blossoms heavy with perfume. It took Stillman's influence to rob the hours of their swooning delight ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... beautiful circumstances of Palestine travelling—by the clime, and the land, and the name of the land, with all its mighty import; by the glittering freshness of the sward, and the abounding masses of flowers that furnished my sumptuous pathway; by the bracing and fragrant air that seemed to poise me in my saddle, and to lift me along as a planet appointed ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the entrance porch, a woman came out of the house, and instantly the big, appraising eyes of the little newcomer felt that here was a type unknown to her. She was slender, not very tall, but with a poise and dignity of manner that compelled attention. Her eyes were gray; her lashes, brows and hair quite dark. There was a serenity and repose of manner about her—the Madonna expression of gentleness—but with ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... suddenly—whether she was amazed or not—whether she was at all taken by surprise or not, could not appear in any way from her action or her demeanor. In the face of so terrible a crisis, whose full meaning and import she must have felt profoundly, she stood there, calm and self-contained, with the self-poise of one who has been long prepared, and who, when the hour big with fate at last may come, is not overwhelmed, but rises with the occasion, goes forth to the encounter, and prepares ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the harbor of Havana on a mission of international courtesy and good will—a catastrophe the suspicious nature and horror of which stirred the nation's heart profoundly. It is a striking evidence of the poise and sturdy good sense distinguishing our national character that this shocking blow, falling upon a generous people already deeply touched by preceding events in Cuba, did not move them to an instant desperate resolve to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... deeply felt Than one soft motion of the slender frame, One gentle murmur from the tiny throat. The wife more bold, yet pausing oft to scan Her lord, adventurous strayed with timid steps, Unconscious all of aught to mar their joys. Just then with steady poise on outstretched wing A hungry falcon hovered over her, Resolved with one fell swoop to seize his prey, His talons bury in her tender flesh, Lift her away to some sequestered spot, There drink her blood in leisure undisturbed, And break her bones and her torn ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... Midwestern state senator. He is not of the city from which Morton College rises, but of a more country community farther in-state. FELIX FEJEVARY, now nearing the age of his father in the first act, is an American of the more sophisticated type—prosperous, having the poise of success in affairs and ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... young eagle in what nest you will, The cry and swoop of eagles overhead Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame, And make it spread its wings and poise itself For ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Vanderpole strolled into the room and, after a casual glance around, approached his chair and touched him on the shoulder. In his evening clothes the newcomer was no longer obtrusively American. He was dressed in severely English fashion, from the cut of his white waistcoat to the admirable poise of his white tie. He smiled as he patted Coulson upon ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... miniatures on ivory. One was the same sweet face that looked out at him from each of the photographs, the other was his father's. It showed a handsome young fellow with strong, clean-shaven face, with eyes like Keith's, and the same lordly poise of the fine head ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... her he had mentally tabulated her age as twenty-eight—no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes, the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, might have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturer poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he was ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... on, increasing his speed now, slowing then, and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... we should not resist the rhythmic reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for his son. But it should ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... sincerity. Life and death, not merely a name in the newspapers, are in it. Of all vehicles, on land or sea, to which man intrusts himself, the kayak is safest and unsafest. It is a very hair-bridge of Mohammed: security or destruction is in the finest poise of a moving body, the turn of a hand, the thought of a moment. Every time that the Esquimaux spears a seal at sea, he pledges his life upon his skill. With a touch, with a moment's loss of balance, the tipsy craft may go over; over, the oar, with which it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... you will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... football, when forwards heave all in a pack, With their arms round each other and their heels heeling back, And their bodies all straining, as they heave, and men fall, And the halves hover hawklike to pounce on the ball, And the runners poise ready, while the mass of hot men Heaves and slips, like rough bullocks making play in a pen, And the crowd sees the heaving, and is still, till it break, So the riders endeavoured as ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... poise of mind and remembered that she had been at the point of writing a letter to her mother (to be mailed by the first vessel bound to a port) when ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the beautiful women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... and truth always are coupled. They tell the exquisite poise that is in everything God does. Truth is the back-bone of grace. Grace is the soft cushioning of flesh upon the bony framework of truth. It is the soft warm breath of life in truth. Truth is grace holding up the one only ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... balance, v. poise, librate; equal, counterpoise, counteract, counterbalance, countervail; adjust, equalize, square. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... play, Cootes got up and gave such a representation as he was able of a pas seul. When he had done, our visitors started anew, and the gansas proving irresistible, Cootes and I joined in. The steps, poise of body, motion of the arms and hands are so marked and peculiar that a little observation and practice enabled us in a short time to produce at least a fair imitation; indeed, so successful were our efforts that we were informed we should be invited to dance on ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... settled a little. His eyes blinked as if a blow had been aimed at him nearly. Then he recovered his poise. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to Babylon, 20 And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.— Are then regalities all gilded masks? No, there are throned seats unscalable But by a patient wing, a constant spell, Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd, Can make a ladder of the eternal wind, And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents To watch the abysm-birth of elements. Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate A thousand Powers keep religious state, 30 In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne; And, silent as a consecrated urn, Hold sphery sessions for a season due. Yet few of these far majesties, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... of scientific research and astuteness, it must not be supposed that everything about the mechanics of avicular flight is understood. We may readily comprehend how a bird, without fluttering its wings, can poise in the air; but how can it move forward or in a circle, and even mount upward, without a visible movement of a pinion? And this some birds are able to do without reference to the direction of the ethereal currents. That, I venture to say, is still a mystery. It almost ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... seemed like a vanishing dream. The morning sun was blazing over the verdant landscape, filling the dewdrops on the grass with red, blue, and yellow light. An indescribable aura seemed to encircle the exquisite face of his young companion. There was a restful poise about her, a sure grasp of utterance, that soothed and thrilled him. Something new and vivifying sprang to life in his breast. The thought flashed into his consciousness that here with this embodiment of intellectual ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... making of a born cowman," said Forrest, as Dell halted before the open tent. "It's an absolute mistake to think that that boy was ever intended for a farmer. Notice his saddle poise, will you, Paul? Has a pretty foot, too, even if it is slightly sun-burned. We must get him some boots. With that red hair, he never ought to ride any other horse than a ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... precipitated a number who were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it into the ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... strange situation lasted for some minutes. I had no clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of him, made with a catlike poise as I knelt crouching at the door, showed me that he slept: had fallen to sleep with his fingers amongst the jewels—a great rough dog of a man clutching wealth in his dreaming. And he was, then, one of those ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... spoke, his voice had a curious note, as if the speaker had lost a little of his poise. It was almost a note of apology, and again in his eyes there was that pitiful ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... present good By other than unsetting lights to steer New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear, Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will; Not honored then or now because he wooed The popular voice, but that he still withstood; Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one Who was all this and ours, ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... their own freedom, or otherwise, from weariness. Deleah, her face the colour of a wild rose, her loose dark hair curling crisply in the frosty air, shouted greetings to her mother as she flew past, a little erect, graceful figure keeping her elegant poise with the ease of the young and fearless. Now and again she was seen to be fleeing, laughing as she went, from the pursuit of a skater who wished to make a circuit of the flooded meadow holding Deleah's hand. The girl was at once a romp and shy. She laughed with dancing eyes as she ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... would call her back, and that they would all come into the hall with David to see the effect of his surprise upon her. She had planned to a nicety just which stair she could reach before they got there, and where she would pause and turn and poise, and what pose she would take with her round white arm stretched to the handrail, the sleeve turned carelessly back. She had ready her countenances, a sleepy indifference, then a pleased surprise, and a climax of delight. She carried it ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... few minutes, Nancy was ushered into the room by the provost sergeant of the guard. Warren rose instantly, and escorted her to her seat, and his eyes flashed in admiration of her poise and beauty. ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of late been following the course of the struggle with the liveliest interest. Germany's dealings with Belgium had impressed them deeply. Her methods of warfare had estranged their sympathies. Her doctrine of the supremacy of force and falsehood had given an adverse poise to their ideas and leanings. Deep into their hearts had sunk the tidings of the destruction of the Lusitania, awakening feelings of loathing and abomination for its authors, to which free expression was now being given everywhere. The spirit that actuated this revolting enormity ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it out, and win ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... sound, and loudest noise Of martial drums, increase their joys; Not by compulsion led, but choice, And bold to fight, Their Country's cause in mind they poise; War! ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... The girl's small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... floral composition. It might be said that Western art, in general, and more particularly the decorative art of India, Persia and Greece—the last coming to Japan through India and with certain Hindu modifications—all aim at symmetry of poise; but that Japanese floral arrangement and decorative art in general have for their fundamental aim a symmetry by suggestion,—a balance, but a balance of inequalities. The ike-bana as conceived and practised in Japan is ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sentimentality, not merely in books and plays, but in human beings, that he understands how to avoid it. Furthermore, he is steadied by seeing so plainly the weaknesses of his characters, just as a great nervous specialist gains in poise by observing his patients. And perhaps our author feels the sorrows of the widow too deeply to talk about them ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... head slowly. The swagger of the poise was gone; he stood upright now with a positive effort, as if the realization of his position had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... in high glee at the discovery, but when he regained his mental poise, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that if he attempted to reach the outer world by means of the stream, he ran a terrible risk of losing his life. There was no vacancy between the water and the stone which shut down upon it. The outlet was like an open faucet to ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... the dome; the slight and symmetrical backward slope of the whole head; the powerful level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so fun of shadowed fire; the Arabian complexion; the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face; the light, tall, erect stature; the quick, axial poise of the movement,—all these traits reveal ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... place of the glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats that had strayed ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... averse to sigh, If Nature cross ye, so do I; My weapon there unfeather'd flies, And shakes and shuffles through the skies. But if the mutual charms I find By which she links you, mind to mind, 60 They wing my shafts, I poise the darts, And strike from ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in Medea's crimes," answered the visitor; watching the defiant poise of the small shapely head, covered with crisp, raven locks. Having less acquaintance with the classics than with the details of prison discipline, the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... no doubt, could well express Sir Plume's complete conceitedness,— Could poise a clouded cane ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... morne, which was Sanct Katherins day,[228] returned he to Edinburgh, and so did the Cardinall from Hadingtoun. But the one being eschamed of the other, the brute of thare communicatioun came nott to publict audience. The King maid inventorie of his poise, of all his juwellis and other substance;[229] and tharefter, as eschamed to look any man in the face, secreatlie departed to Fyfe, and cuming to the Hall-yardis,[230] was humanlie receaved of the Ladye[231] Grange, ane ancient and godly matron, (the Lard ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of chonta trees grew a good five miles from the windfall. Suma had covered half the distance when a sharp odor in the air caused her to stop and, standing like an exquisitely chiselled statue, with tensed muscles and alert poise, to drink deeply the scent-laden air. The vision of a peccary dinner left her instantly and her pink tongue stole out gently until it touched her moist, black nose in anticipation of a far more ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... suffered a paralyzing affront to her consciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist of thought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thought hurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise she had lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. It was a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... once a year, at least. Lately, however, many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go in pairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmly returning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jar their mental poise a minute. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... unsatisfactory for their appearance in the rector's prim study. So the berries hung in their place, left to ripen, and he went on till a great dragon-fly came sailing along the moist lane to pause in the sunny openings, and poise itself in the clear air where its wings vibrated so rapidly that they looked like a patch of ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... her to the gate and watched her go down the long flight of steps. Everything about her, from the poise of her head to the swing of her body, courted conflict and prophesied disaster. I felt as if I had snatched a bag of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... enough, in all conscience!— had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste More than anybody in the underworld that Lanyard had ever known this blackmailer had an air of one acquainted with his own respect. And his nonchalance, the good nature with which he accepted Lanyard's pardonable ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Bro: I do not, brother, Inferr, as if I thought my sisters state Secure without all doubt, or controversie: Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear 410 Does arbitrate th'event, my nature is That I encline to hope, rather then fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine, she has a hidden strength Which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... with a kindling eye. He looked him over from the soles of his riding-boots to the crown of his periwig. He noted the spare, active frame, the arrogant poise of the head, the air of authority that invested Mr. Blood, and soldier recognized soldier. The Captain's ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... who usually invaded the valleys at Easter; but they were, for the most part, young men from the cities, and this stranger's face was darkened by the sun. There was also an indefinite suggestion of strength in the poise of his lean, symmetrical figure, which could only have come from strenuous labor in the open air. She noticed that while the average Englishman would have asked permission to help her, or would have deprecated the offer, this stranger did nothing of the kind. He stood with the ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... is curiously unfamiliar to see houses from such an angle, a perspective of the roofs, with the windows and doors become unimportant; it is an aeroplane view of the world, or perhaps, more properly, a bird's view, for you may pause and poise to look down on Lynton and Lynmouth as no ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... small sailor hat made of black taffeta silk with a milliner's fold around the edge, Aunt Catherine is small, intensely black with finely cut features and thin lip. Her hand is finely molded, fingers long and slender. Her voice is soft and poise marks her personality. Sallie Martin, a ginger cake colored woman, sixty-five, has lived as a kind of caretaker with Aunt Catherine since 1934 and thereby gets her own roof and refreshment. For Aunt Catherine ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... food quickly brought Percy Darrow back to his normal poise. One inspection satisfied Dr. Trendon that all was well with him. He asked to see the captain, and that gentleman came to Ives's room, which had been assigned to the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the poor youth might be, however undecided and timid in the forest, he seemed to be a new person on the water. There was a self-reliance about him, a poise and a certain ability that he seemed to have acquired suddenly. Without a trace of hesitation he guided the boat through the winding course of the creek that ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... child, having all of Mr. Volrees' features. There were his dark chestnut hair, his large dark eyes, his nose, his lips, his poise and a dark brown stain beneath the left ear which had been a recurrence in the Volrees family for generations. The public was mystified as it was commonly understood that the marital relations had extended no farther than the marriage ceremony. The presence of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the serious Student Rise: The Eye at sev'rall angles darting rayes, Makes, and then sees, new Colours; so thy Playes To ev'ry understanding still appeare, As if thou only meant'st to take that Eare; The Phrase so terse and free of a just Poise, Where ev'ry word ha's weight and yet no Noise, The matter too so nobly fit, no lesse Then such as onely could deserve thy Dresse: Witnesse thy Comedies, Pieces of such worth, All Ages shall still like, but ne're bring forth. Other in season ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... could have given valuable advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never a seaport in Bohemia,—as if Shakspeare's world were one which Mercator could have projected; scarce one but was satisfied that his ten finger-tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise, of planetary law and cometary seeming-exception, in his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in "composition." She was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her head were admirably free and noble, and they were the more effective that their freedom was at moments discreetly corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonised admirably with the level ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... stooped forms, curved spines, and hollow chests. Furthermore, the farm child, lacking the opportunities of the city child for gaining social ease and control, needs the development that comes from physical training to give poise, ease of bearing, and grace ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... from the grate. He was a man to be admired. His frame a trifle stouter than when we last saw him, but still supple and firm; the set of the shoulders, the taper of the body to the waist, the keen but passive face, the poise of the whole figure was that of one who, tasting of the goodness of life, had not gormandized thereon. He was called a success, yet in the honesty of his own soul he feared the coin did not ring true. Conward had insisted more and more upon "weighing the coal." And Dave had concerned himself ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off briskly down ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... dressed and twirling his tawny mustache with a proper Harvard affectation of poise, entered a few moments later and found McLaughlin with his feet on the desk, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... there?" repeated the sentinel, throwing his musket to a poise, with a rattling sound that echoed along the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... going—like a ploughed field exaggerated by a terrific nightmare. It pretty nearly pulled all the legs off me, and to this hour I cannot tell you if it is best to put your foot into a footmark—a young pond, I mean—about the size of the bottom of a Madeira work arm-chair, or whether you should poise yourself on the rim of the same, and stride forward to its other bank boldly and hopefully. The footmarks and the places where the elephants had been rolling were by now filled with water, and the mud underneath was in places hard and slippery. In spite of my ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... over his shoulder a moment later and saw the book-agent studying the register. The poise of his sleek head, however, suggested a listening attitude. Putnam Jones, not four feet away, was speaking into the telephone receiver. As the receiver was restored to its hook, Barnes turned again. Jones and the book-agent were examining the register, their heads almost meeting ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... which each of these lines presents is the same and the principle governing the solution of each identical; balance by equalization of forces. Given a line which coincides with but one side of the picture it becomes necessary for the poise of the quadrilateral to cross it with an opposing line. The rectangular cross, though more positive and effective, is no more potential in securing this unity than the crossing of lines at a long angle. A series of right angles will in time arrive at the same point as the tangent, but less ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... had recovered her poise and posture, not to mention proclivities, and, taking to the better foot-hold on the clumps of grass along the bank, a little farther from the bridge, she managed to scamper after both her tormentors. Mary was also in ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... that hour. She soon regained her normal cheery poise. For ten years she and Rosemary lived in the old house happily, undisturbed by any thought of marrying or giving in marriage. Their promise sat very lightly on them. Ellen never failed to remind her sister of ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... family, to-day irradiates the tawdry surroundings of Herald Square, New York City. In the Blue Book of the elect, socially and commercially, no names could be found more indicative of select, strong-ribbed, triple-dyed respectability and elegant social poise ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... with all the wonderful skill at her command. Not only the brute that was on the point of leaping at her, but three others, turned as soon as they could poise themselves and went after her at their ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... heart of God; losing the fret and worry of money-getting and all other of Life's lower ambitions and strivings; feeling the inflow of strength,—physical, mental and spiritual; gaining calmness, serenity, poise and power;—is there any wonder that a man so blessed should speak and write with radiant and exuberant enthusiasm of that which has been so lavish to him. This is what camping-out ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... boys have the wagon to-night, and we will sleep underneath. I should love it!" cried Sylvia, clapping her hands and whirling round on the tips of her toes, bowing to an imaginary audience, then giving a sideway skip to show the lightness of her poise. ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the poise in the upturned right hand under the thumb and over the first and second fingers. The arm is extended in a slight curve just in front of the line of the shoulders. In making a thrust, the lance is darted parallel to the line of the shoulders and on a level ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing His own offence with hers in equal poise, And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, Came to a calm and witty compromise. He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, Made her his second wife; and still the first Lost few or none of her prerogatives. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Jimmie Dale remained quietly by the door, as though listening. Six feet he stood, muscular in every line of his body, like a well-trained athlete with no single ounce of superfluous fat about him—the grace and ease of power in his poise. His strong, clean-shaven face, as the light fell upon it now, was serious—a mood that became him well—the firm lips closed, the dark, reliant eyes a little narrowed, a frown on the broad ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... first wild winter of Carmack's strike taught Daylight many things. Despite the prodigality of his nature, he had poise. He watched the lavish waste of the mushroom millionaires, and failed quite to understand it. According to his nature and outlook, it was all very well to toss an ante away in a night's frolic. That was what he had done the night ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... and might easily have been made ludicrous. Denial would have hurt her. As it was, he lifted his hand, a small, exquisite hand it was, with the gentle dignity and poise of a king, and she touched her lips to it with what was certainly adoration. Then, as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to resist it. You're letting this man you hate mould your character; you're letting him burn the kindness out of your soul. He's making you bitter and hard and unjust—and you're letting him. I thought you had more will—more poise. It isn't your affair what he is, even what he does, Dick—it's your affair to keep your own judgment unwarped, your own heart gentle, your own soul untainted by the poison of hatred. We are both churchmen, as you put it—loyalty is for us both. You ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ditches, twist through vines, putting out a hand every now and then to feel whether the bunch of leaves at their back is in place. They were certainly no beauties, but there was a charm in their light, soft step, in the swaying of their hips, in the dainty poise of their slim ankles and feet, and the softness and harmony of all their movements. And the light playing on their dark, velvety, shining bodies increased this charm, until one almost forgot the many defects, the dirt, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... fancies in solitude. A great change had come over Mr. Ricardo since that morning. A whole side of him which from prudence, from necessity, from loyalty, had been kept dormant, was aroused now, colouring his thoughts and disturbing his mental poise by the vision of such staggering consequences as, for instance, the possibility of an active conflict with the governor. The appearance of the monstrous Pedro with his news drew Ricardo out of a feeling of dreaminess wrapped up in a sense ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... invited Miss Woodhull to accompany her to Roanoke and fate stepped in and did the rest. The month was spent in a lovely old home, Virginia Woodhull gained in health and strength, and recovered something in the way of nerve control and mental poise. When the month ended she decided to "do" the state whose name she bore and spent the rest of the year in going from one point to another in it until she knew its ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... spring, a noiseless tread, A playful poise of the restless head, A sleepy song of sweet content, While slyly on schemes of mischief bent— 'Tis thus the days of ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sleeping potion, although her spirit does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy—her imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she sees ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... But her poise was temporarily threatened when the walking-party passed her own house. Her mother happened to be sitting near an open window upstairs, and, after gazing forth with warm interest at Julia and her two outwalkers, Mrs. Atwater's astonished eyes fell upon Florence taking care of the ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... friend, you undervalue a little the English race. You undervalue their intelligence, their patriotism, their poise towards the serious matters of life. I know nothing of Mr. Francis Norgate save what I saw this morning. He is one of that type of Englishmen, clean-bred, well-born, full of reserve, taciturn, yet, I would swear, honourable. I know ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was the fancy that possessed him on certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing the hair, a trick of walk,—just a flash and gone again; though sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the place to record what only those acquainted ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... Hielands. 'Nough said." Elizabeth had recovered her customary jolly poise. Wise enough, through long experience, to realize that when her father failed to throttle that vocal heritage from his forebears, war impended, she gathered up her knitting and fled to ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... him. He saw that they yet knew nothing—there had been no messenger, no telephone call, and the news was his to tell. He bowed to Mrs. Grayson, and then he felt a moment of embarrassment, but his long experience and natural poise ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... talkative as he was during that luncheon hour. He regaled her with all kinds of newspaper yarns and related some of his own once semi-tragic but now humorous misadventures of his early cub days. He talked, too, on current events and world history, talked well, with the quiet poise and assurance of the reader and thinker, the man who has kept his eyes and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... early morning ride through the outskirts of the little city. Kate pulled her pony to a walk and glanced across at him. He had taken off his hat to catch the breeze, and the sun was picking out the golden lights in his curly brown hair. She found herself admiring the sure poise of the head, the flat straight back, the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the Lady Catharine in her coach was a young woman, scarce so tall and more slender. The heavy hoop concealed much of the grace of figure which was her portion, but the poise of the upper body, free from the seat-back and erect with youthful strength as yet unspared, showed easily that here, too, was but an indifferent subject for Sadler's. Dark, where her companion was fair, and with the glossy texture of her own somber locks ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... urged on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. I urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. And I urge it also on the ground of spirituality, for a salient characteristic of spirituality is calmness, and without the mental repose which ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... The curtains of the door at the back are parted, and GONERIL appears in hunting dress,—her kirtle caught up in her girdle, a light spear over her shoulder—stands there a moment, then enters noiselessly and, approaches the bed. She is a girl just turning to woman-hood, proud in her poise, swift and cold, an almost gleaming presence, a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... frowned. Apparently his eager interest had been dashed with disappointment. But only slightly, as Watson could see; the man was of such culture and intellect as to have perfect control over his emotions. In his balance and poise he was very like Avec, and he had the same ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... mental tendency as this is just as surely a definite evil to be recognized and combated as would be any epidemic of disease. To rise in the morning confronting a day that is full of exacting demands on his best energies; on his serenest and sunniest poise; that require all the exhilaration and sparkle and radiance which have vanished from his possession, and yet to be forced, someway and somehow, to go through his appointed tasks,—no one can deny that here is a very real problem, and one that certainly taxes every conceivable ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... day with his bailiff and the peasants restored Crocker's poise. He looked for the hundredth time over into Emma's valley and divined her attitude. Dreading an interview, she had left the way open to parley. She virtually pleaded for a delay. It was a new and, in a way, delightful sensation to be feared. For the first time in any human relation ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... she chose, but had been schooled by the years, and kept the trail, giving no trouble to the Virginian who came behind her. He also sat solid as a rock, yet subtly bending to the struggles of the wild horse he led, as a steel spring bends and balances and resumes its poise. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... had grown calm again. The wonted serene, balanced nature had found its habitual poise, and she looked up innocently, though with tears in her large, blue eyes, and said,—"No, mother,—I have nothing that I do not mean to tell you fully. This letter came from James Marvyn; he came here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... days in which he had seen Claudia passed in review before him. The turn of her head, the light on her hair, the poise of her body on her horse, bits of gay talk, the few long quiet ones, the look of eyes unafraid of life, light laughter, and sometimes quick frown and quicker speech, and, clearest of all, the evening in which she had told him the story, ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... no longer held in poise against the wind, commenced darting hither and thither; at each turn descending lower and lower— until by one last swoop, in which it seemed to concentrate all its failing strength, it came down towards Ossaroo like a gigantic bird of prey ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... eyes grew suddenly cold, while her head assumed its usual haughty poise; the brief spell was over, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the spit on which they stood, there were two boats. One was a light skiff, in which a girl, clad in white jersey and white flannel skirt, with a white Tam o' Shanter pinned on her head, was sculling leisurely towards the town. From the swing of her body, the poise of her head and shoulders, and the smoothness with which her sculls dropped in the water and left it, it was plain that she was a perfect mistress of the art; wherefore the two men looked ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... minutes had passed when I heard a slight noise to my right. I peered over the pipe, and saw a dark figure standing in the gateway that led to the bridge. It was a man. By the careless, graceful poise, I guessed it to be Rupert again. He held a sword in his hand, and he stood motionless for a minute or two. Wild thoughts ran through me. On what mischief was the young fiend bent now? Then he laughed ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... fluttering heart and parting lips that now permitted reassuring glimpse of pearly white teeth. For a moment she seemed on the verge of panicky retreat, but little by little regained courage and self-poise. What was there to fear in a sleeping soldier anyhow? She knew who it was at a glance. She could, if she would, whisper his name. Indeed, she had been whispering it many a time, day and night, these last two weeks until—until certain things about him had come to her ears that ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man in whom there is ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... is the prospect of future gain, not the reality of present losses, that has taken me off my poise," she said. "Whom do you suppose I ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true union of intuition ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... with ruffled dignity. "Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves." But the little man soon recovered his poise. "I was just joking," he said. "I knew you boys were listening. Ha! Ha!" He eyed Chester. "The young lady here says she has met you," he said. "You young rascal, so this is why you wanted to come on ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Concentration. (Shows the plain road to the top.) Self Mastery. (How to centralize attention.) Training the Will. (A mighty force at your disposal.) Mental Poise. (How to command conditions.) Business Success. (How to coordinate forces by concentration.) Attaining Wealth. (How to attract money bringing factors.) How Courage is Gained. (Use of concentration to drive out fear.) Memory by Concentration. (A very valuable ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... to the face of the woman. He felt with all the power of intuition that his fate rested on her decision. But she was a woman. And she was, too, a true daughter of her father. A kindred spark leaped up in her own soul, and she met Dick's gaze. She noted his fearless poise, and she saw the gallant spirit in his eye. Then she turned to ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nobility—hardening all her faults, and hammering the rivets of her strong self-will. To these little difficulties must be added the difference of religion; and though neither of them cared two pins for that, it was a matter for crossed daggers. A pound of feathers weighs as much as (and in some poise more than) a pound of lead, and the leaden-headed Squire and the feather-headed Madame swung always at opposite ends of the beam, until it broke between them. Tales of rough conflict, imprisonment, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... actual material of these figures is marble, its coolness and massiveness suiting the growing severity of Greek thought, yet they have their reminiscences of work in bronze, in a certain slimness and tenuity, a certain dainty lightness of poise in their grouping, which [264] remains in the memory as a peculiar note of their style; the possibility of such easy and graceful balancing being one of the privileges or opportunities of statuary in cast metal, of that hollow casting in which the whole weight of the work is so much less ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... very erect, her two hands tense upon the useless wheel. He noted the poise of her head and found in it something almost queenly. For a moment they were both very still, he watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... He neither tore His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing His own offence with hers in equal poise, And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, Came to a calm and witty compromise. He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, Made her his second wife; and still the first Lost few or none of her prerogatives. The ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... blinking in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean she really is a—" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said. "If you'll just come ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... day of trial, Let feuds and factions cease, Until above this howling storm We see the sign of Peace. Let Southern men, like brothers, In solid phalanx stand, And poise their spears, and lock their shields, To guard ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Tish," I tried to soothe her. But she refused all consolation, and merely called Hannah and asked for some blackberry cordial. She drank fully half a tumbler full and she recovered her poise by the time Charlie Sands stuck his head ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Nels out toward the open jungle, which thrust a narrow triangular strip in toward the town. At intervals they heard shouts, far deeper in. The Great Dane was in his highest form, after weeks of care and training by Bhanah. He could well carry his poise in a walk like this; having his full exercise night and morning. A marvel thing, like nothing else—this dignity of Nels. . . . The two neared their own magic place—not the monkey glen; that was deeper in the jungle—the place where they had really found each other ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... I haven't got no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble is that she puts me out of countenance, and I can't fit her in as an antagonist. I guess we Americans haven't got the right poise for dealing with that kind of female. We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man's game ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... flutteringly and left them alone on the porch in the soft dusk, and at once he had plunged to his doom. There was no serene confidence about him this time, no snatching her into a short-breathed embrace; he was rather pathetically humble before her new poise ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul, uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which can ever come ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... with her same perfect, set smile, displaying to the utmost the sweet curves of her lips. Her cheeks retained their lovely brilliancy of color. Harry trembled, and his face looked pale and self-conscious, but Ida displayed no such weakness. She replied with the utmost self-poise to the congratulations which she received after the ceremony. There was an informal reception in the church vestry. Cake and ice-cream and coffee were served, and Ida and Harry and Maria stood together. Ida had her arm around Maria most of the time, but Maria felt as if it were an arm of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the unrealities of their descendants' fears and hesitations. The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise and figures. Mark particularly Van Tromp's stiffened forefinger ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... so seriously that she blushed before she could recover her poise. He saw his advantage ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... halberdier. I never noticed him particularly. I remember he thought he was only a suit of armour. He had a perfect poise." ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... reasonable wits, knocked hard and again for readmission. There was little for a man of humble mind toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending rather low to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure, between an air of spying and of listening, vividly recalled his likening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open air provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that state cruelly been kissed; and no rights ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time Orde completely lost his poise and became fluently profane. He shook his fist against the menacing logs; he apostrophised the river, the high water, the jam, the deserters, Newmark and his illness, ending finally in a general anathema against any and all streams, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't understand,' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... evening of the 9th, they reach the lake. Difficulty in crossing. Send for a scow. Seize a boat at anchor. Search, and find small row boats. Only eighty-three able to cross. Day is dawning when these reach the shore. Not prudent to wait. Allen orders all who will follow him to poise their firelocks. Every man responds. Nathan Beman, a lad, guides them to the fort. Sentinel snaps his gun at A. Misses fire. Sentinel retreats. They follow. Rush upon the parade ground. Form. Loud cheer. A. climbs the stairs. Orders La Place, it is said, in the name of the great Jehovah ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... enthusiasm. "The point carrying the detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite will explode in front of your nose, with disastrous effect. I will have a second bomb ready ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... features of a girl of twenty, a good profile of rather a Southern cast, and a certain poise of the head which marked her as one with generations of equally ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. His was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. Each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Carlisle had recaptured her poise: it was not her habit to confide her troubles to anybody, least of all to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will have left ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... is what my duty bids me wish. Where a wide Empire's welfare is in poise, That welfare must be pondered, not my will. I ask of you, then, Chancellor Metternich, Straightway to beg the Emperor my father That he fulfil his duty to the realm, And quite subordinate thereto all thought Of how it ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... that impressed him most—solemnity and an air of expectation. Yet it was not mere expectation. There was a suggestion of the fundamental and the normal, as if perhaps movement and sound were, after all, no better than interruptions; as if this fixed poise of nature were something complete in itself; as if these trees hung out their leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if these motionless creatures of the woodland were looking upon something ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the beautiful Jehane de Saint-Pol. Jehane of the Fair Girdle, the beloved of Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Yea-and-Nay. Her eyes were gray green while yours are of the most wonderful blue, but there is something about your height and slenderness, your poise, the set of your head, the glory of your hair that suggests her. If Mother gives the fancy dress ball that she is threatening, please go as Jehane. I should ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... big book of photographs of school girls. Some turns of the head, some glances and a sound in the voice still puzzled her, but it was connected with something in the past. Few young girls made characteristic portraits. Ah, here was one who had just that poise, that eager ambitious expression. A Miss Mortimer who certainly possessed fine abilities, and a resonant voice. She had taken the lead in school entertainments, and then she had joined a theatrical troupe and married a third rate actor, to the ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not ceased thinking of the girl with the tambourine, of her savage, sullen grace, her magnificent poise and strange glance. He had learned at his hotel that she was called "Debora la folle," and that she was the daughter of the still crazier Baki. Was she some sort of a gypsy, or a Continental version of Salvation Army lass? No one knew. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... that his mind had ceased to possess the natural poise which would enable him to manage his affairs in accordance with some wisely matured system of expenditure. In times of depression he would demand the most rigid economy, and again he would seem careless ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the cobwebs, stooping beneath the ancient rafters, dodging crumbly bunches of pennyroyal and hyssop, hung there by hands that have been dust these fifty years, you poise and swing a forty-pound crowbar with a strong uplift against the roof-board, near where one of the old-time hand-made, hammer-pointed, wrought-iron nails enters the oak timber. The board lifts an inch and snaps back into place. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... plain gray Mennonite dress and stiff black silk bonnet was, as usual, an attractive figure. Philip, grown to the dignity of long trousers, carried himself with all the poise of seventeen. He was now a student in the Lancaster High School and had he not learned to dress and act like city boys do! Uncle Amos, in his best Sunday suit of gray, his Mennonite hat in his hand, ambled along last as the little group went down the aisle of the Millersville ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... day,[228] returned he to Edinburgh, and so did the Cardinall from Hadingtoun. But the one being eschamed of the other, the brute of thare communicatioun came nott to publict audience. The King maid inventorie of his poise, of all his juwellis and other substance;[229] and tharefter, as eschamed to look any man in the face, secreatlie departed to Fyfe, and cuming to the Hall-yardis,[230] was humanlie receaved of the Ladye[231] ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... men than she could even remember, but never one anything like this particular specimen. To add to her quickened interest, he was not only positively good-looking, but every line of his face, the poise of his well-proportioned, upstanding figure, the tilt of his head and the squareness of his chin, all spoke of strength; of elemental strength, and of a purposeful, resolute character. And, too, she told herself that he had ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... men and set going, with Mr Curtiss at the steering wheel, esconced in the little boat-shaped car under the forward part of the frame. The four-winged craft, pointed somewhat across the wind, went skimming over the waveless, then automatically headed into the wind, rose in level poise, soared gracefully for 150 feet, and landed softly on the water near the shore. Mr Curtiss asserted that he could have flown farther, but, being unused to the machine, imagined that the left wings had more resistance than the right. The truth is that the aeroplane ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... increasing his speed now, slowing then, and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with the front ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... know what to say. This was out of the ordinary, conspicuously so. There was little precedent by which to act in a case like this. So in order to appear that nothing could destroy his official poise, he let the two stand before his desk while he ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... heirloom given— Against the freedom of all lands they wield This—Neptune's trident; that—the Thund'rer's levin Gold to their scales each region must afford; And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale, The Frank casts in the iron of his sword, To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam Outstretch'd for prey—the Briton spreads his reign; And, as the Ocean were his household home, Locks up the chambers of the liberal main. On to the Pole where shines, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Blow back and forth in alternation strong, And, so to say, rallying charge again, And then repulsed retreat, on this account Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass Collapses dire. For to one side she leans, Then back she sways; and after tottering Forward, recovers then her seats of poise. Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs More than the middle stories, middle more Than lowest, and the lowest least ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... world over will enjoy the opportunity of this glimpse of Mrs. Stevenson, however the limitations imposed by black and white may prevent a full realization of the great charm of this unusual woman, whose personality is so magnetic, so serene in its poise, so richly intellectual, that those who have had the opportunity of knowing her always remember her as one of the most interesting and ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... and speak, The man must act. The Stagyrite Says thus, and says extremely right; Strict justice is the sovereign guide, That o'er our actions should preside; This queen of virtue is confess'd To regulate and bind the rest. Thrice happy, if you can but find Her equal balance poise your mind: All diff'rent graces soon will enter, Like ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... was so closely enveloped that not a lap nor an edge flew free. She stretched forward strangely aslant, leaning from the upright poise of a runner. She cleared the ground at times by long bounds, gaining an increase of speed ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... speaking rapidly, in her singularly articulate tones. A reader of voices would have pronounced hers the physical record of unbroken health and constant, joyous poise. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... cut off by a burst of fire from the base of the tower. The rope and hose parted and precipitated a number who were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... or herself unduly excited, or perhaps shocked, while reading some parts of what is here written, so that the heart beats too fast, or the hand trembles, it may be well to suspend the reading for a time, divert the mind into other channels for a while, and resume the reading after one has regained poise and mastery of one's self. That is, "keep your head" while you read these lessons, and you will be ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... an instant later he seemed in poise. He had clutched the thin, trailing branches as he fell; and as he sank a number of leaves which his motion had torn off floated out ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Libra, House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true union of intuition ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... to the last, Full in the centre stands the Bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,[92] And foes disabled in the brutal fray: And now the Matadores[93] around him play, Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand: Once more through all he bursts his thundering way— Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye—'tis past—he sinks upon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... it is a study to see three or four of these air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current; now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and merriment, even though a few miles away there was war in its grimmest aspect But if one thought of that all the while, as Captain Black said, none would have the nerve and mental poise to face the guns and finally ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... his arm. De Mersch himself hardly counted. He had a way of glowing, but he paled ineffectual fires beside her maenadic glow. There was something overpowering in the sight of her, in the fire of her eyes, in the glow of her coils of hair, in the poise of her head. She wore some kind of early nineteenth-century dress, sweeping low from the waist with a tenderness of fold that affected one with delicate pathos, that had a virgin quality of almost poignant intensity. And beneath it ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... written in two parts. The first points to the need of Poise in daily life, indicates the obstacles to be overcome, and discusses the effects of Poise on personal efficiency. The second instructs the reader how to secure that evenness of temperament which is the chief characteristic of Poise. It includes, in ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... fingers of the right hand. It was thus he must have grasped the implement when he caused it to give out the sound that caught the ear of Fred Linden and Terry Clark. But at the moment the Irish lad saw him, and for some minutes after, he held the bell in such careful poise that it gave no ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... abused Charles Francis for his judgment. Naturally they never attempted to assign values to either; that was the children's affair; but the traits were real. Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness, as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could never be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard, whether of grief or shame, her ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... floor, with his back to the chair Colonel Hampton had occupied, his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Albert was hovering over him with mother-hen solicitude. T. Barnwell Powell was finishing his whiskey and recovering a fraction of his normal poise. ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... inflexible will are required to keep the gaze unwavering, and a complete absence of self-consciousness. Thus Deveny knew he was standing in the presence of a man whose poise and self-control were marvelous; and he knew, too, that Harlan would be aware of the slightest move made by either of the three; more, he could detect any sign ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... most goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... to talk no more about her loss or her fears regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the Himalaya I have watched an eagle circling overhead. I have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the secret of it is to be looked for in the amazing poise and self-possession of these women; a self-possession which is indicated in their moments of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... York for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. Cicily was at first astounded, and then dismayed. But, in the end, she regained her poise, and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where such gross injustice could be. She surmised even that in this field she might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... found—the Cavaliere was master of such arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face—it was a frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... storm, reason reasserted itself in Joyce's mind. It brought no comfort with its restored poise; rather, it brought a realization of her true position. Her life was as utterly shattered and devastated as was the little home. Everything was gone. The future, with pitiful choice, was as densely black as the night that shut her in with her dull misery. With Jude, there could ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... her. "Oh, no, you don't!" he said kindly. "But I see plainly that you're a self-willed young person. Association with me, and the study of my poise, will do a lot for you. By the way, you have only thirty ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... any other occasion when a few callers had thrown them off their balance. But of course this was different. He was a little flustered himself—a circumstance that dawned upon him with surprise. When the Gales had been shown to rooms, Mrs. Belding gained the poise momentarily lost; but Nell came rushing back, wilder than a deer, in a state of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... was saying now with admirable poise, in answer to her question, "I haven't visited your wonderful Golden Gate, but I hope to go there some day—with you!" he added. His words were simple; the accent alone made them sound formidable; ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... long he clung there, but his white face and the poise of his strung-up figure impressed themselves indelibly on her memory. Strain was expressed in every line of his body and in his clutching hands. Then the strength and decision that was in her asserted itself, and she overcame the numbing horror that had ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... satisfied with her outlook here. The place she left need not be always desolate. There was a good maiden sister to keep the house, and Eben and the children would be but briefly sorry. They could recover their poise; he with the health of a simple mind, and they as children will. Yet he was truly stunned by the blow; and I hoped, on the day of the funeral, that he did not see what I did. When we went out to get our horse and wagon, I caught my foot in something which at once gave ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... that friend has given one thirty thousand francs a year income, one owes him some consideration. It seems to me that in Sainte-Beuve's place I should have said, "That displeases you, let us talk no more about it." He lacked manners and poise. What disgusted me a little, between ourselves, was the way he praised the emperor to me! yes, he praised Badinguet, to me!—And ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... man at the helm—a long, thin, weedy-looking figure, so far as I could make out in the ghostly starlight, but one who had evidently used the sea for some time, if one might judge by the easy, floating poise of his figure on the plunging deck as he stood on the weather side of the tiller, with the tiller rope lightly grasped in his right hand, swaying rhythmically to the leaps and plunges of the little hooker. As Dominguez followed me out on deck he stepped aft to the small, dimly ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... after an ill name, or some general imputation, though he knows it most unworthy. That opposes to reason, "thus men say;" and "thus most do;" and "thus the world goes;" and thinks this enough to poise the other. That worships men in place, and those only; and thinks all a great man speaks oracles. Much taken with my lord's jest, and repeats you it all to a syllable. One that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any opinion out of the applauded way. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the paddle into the water. Reynolds was more intent upon watching the graceful poise of her body as it swayed to the rhythmic stroke of the paddle than he was in viewing the scenery. He could hardly believe it true that she was seated there before him, and that he was privileged to watch her to his heart's ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... both, Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person Of our unowned sister. ELD. BRO. I do not, brother, Infer as if I thought my sister's state Secure without all doubt or controversy; Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, Which you remember not. SEC. BRO. What hidden strength, Unless the strength ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained her poise. There might be, probably would be, infinitely more trying ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however, that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... of public exhibitions, made ludicrous as they are by the operators, should be condemned by all intelligent men and women, not from the danger of hypnotism itself so much as from the liability of the performers to disturb the mental poise of that large mass of ill-balanced individuals which makes up no inconsiderable part of society." In conclusion he says: "Patients have been injured by the misuse of hypnotism. * * * This is true of every remedial ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to cover ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... approached Cleggett. There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there was determination ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... is painless at least, if fatal. Pursuing the conclusions drawn from his long experience, Dr. Brinkley has found that women derive more instant benefit from the glands than men with respect to their awakened enthusiasm, improved appearance, and recovery of the feeling of poise and well-being. Very noticeable is the change of figure which follows the implanting of the new ovaries in the case of a fat woman. The change is equally marked in the case of a fat man. A man of abnormal ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of all designs, of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... stupid as I seem to be. She mustn't imagine she can "vamp" my Kaikobad with impunity. It's a case of any port in a storm, I suppose, for she has to practise on somebody. But I must say she looks well on horseback and can lay claim to a poise that always exacts its toll of respect. She rides hard, though I imagine she would be unwittingly cruel to her mount. Yet she has been more offhanded and friendly, the last two or three times she has dropped over to the shack, and she is ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... may have sufficient mental poise to be able to lecture on cookery and do the trick at the same time," supplemented Doctor Churchill, his eyes also on the chafing-dish. In fact, everybody's eyes ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... his feet, but the dory was already half-way across the little patch of comparatively smooth water in the cove. As he looked he saw it enter the first line of breakers, rise amid a shower of foam, poise on the crest, and slip over. The second line of roaring waves came surging on, higher and more threatening than the first. Captain Eri glanced over his shoulder, turned the dory's bow toward them ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Holland listened, his eyes hardened, and at the conclusion, something very like an oath ground from his lips. Patty glanced at him in surprise—never before had she seen him out of poise. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... all,' said the General, folding the thin letter reverently with hands that trembled; 'but I feel surer and surer—my heart tells me that the little boy Paul Fife must be my own flesh and blood. He is Miguel Sarreco's very image: the same haughty poise of the head, and lean, sinewy body; but when he speaks, the voice is my son's, and the curve of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... to remember further having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... at her critically. She was a little over-slim, perhaps, but she was certainly wonderfully graceful. Even the poise of her head, the manner in which she leaned back in her chair, had its individuality. Her features, too, were good, though her mouth had grown a trifle hard. For the first time the dead pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a touch of color. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that ambitious age That thinks it all things knows, and all the while It nothing knows. And yet those smiles presage Some future fame, because your aim is high; As when one tries to shoot into the sky, If his rash arrow at the moon he aims, a bolder flight we see, Though vain, than if with level poise it safely reached the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... rises every morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and corner of her dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving air; in spite of the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and the miraculous poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and Church; in spite of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in spite of her admirable hygiene, which has constituted her one of the healthiest, if not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... destruction of the battle ship Maine while rightfully lying in the harbor of Havana on a mission of international courtesy and good will—a catastrophe the suspicious nature and horror of which stirred the nation's heart profoundly. It is a striking evidence of the poise and sturdy good sense distinguishing our national character that this shocking blow, falling upon a generous people already deeply touched by preceding events in Cuba, did not move them to an instant desperate resolve to tolerate no longer the existence of a condition of danger ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... houses which they build so large in Northern New England. They were all kept in scrupulous repair, though here and there the frost and thaw of many winters had heaved a fence out of plumb, and threatened the poise of the monumental urns of painted pine on the gate-posts. They had dark-green blinds, of a color harmonious with that of the funereal evergreens in their dooryards; and they themselves had taken the tone of the snowy landscape, as if by ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... speaks English like an Englishwoman, as well she may, for she is a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She is also a descendant of the Romanoffs, for one of her grandfathers was Alexander III of Russia. In her manner she is more simple and democratic than many American women that I know, her poise and simplicity being in striking contrast to the manners of two of my countrywomen who had spent the night preceding our arrival at the castle and who were manifestly much impressed by this contact with the Lord's Anointed. When luncheon was announced her second daughter, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... young friend, therefore, became a most peculiar one. He had been given an important preliminary advantage, if he chose to aspire to the love of the sweet one at his side; but he thought hard, and did not lose his self-poise or sense of honor. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... passion, it's yours to resist it. You're letting this man you hate mould your character; you're letting him burn the kindness out of your soul. He's making you bitter and hard and unjust—and you're letting him. I thought you had more will—more poise. It isn't your affair what he is, even what he does, Dick—it's your affair to keep your own judgment unwarped, your own heart gentle, your own soul untainted by the poison of hatred. We are both churchmen, as you put it—loyalty is ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... moment she leaned over the table and stretched a hand to arrange something. The perfection of her poise, the beauty of her lines, the charm of her face seized Carnac, and, with an impulse, he ran his arm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one ever knew what passed between them in the endless moments of that last sad farewell; but Lincoln left the house with inexpressible agony written upon his face. He had been to that hour a man of marvelous poise and self-control, but the pain he now struggled with grew deeper and more deep, until, when they came and told him she was dead, his heart and will, and even his brain itself gave way. He was utterly without help or the knowledge of possible help in this world or beyond it. ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... firelight a girl leaned forward, her eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously graceful poise of her body. ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... They crawled stealthily along, bowling over bushes or small trees or flattening out wire entanglements. Steep banks or deep gulleys were taken or crossed with equal ease. As a tank would creep up the side of a ridge it seemed to poise momentarily on the crest, the front part extending out into space until the center of gravity was passed, when the whole tank plunged down headlong. We instinctively held our breath until we saw it crawling ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... had so strenuously disclaimed all reasonable motives for his visit. He quailed before this man who seemed to be a dangerous crank—for Farr's attire was out of the ordinary and his eyes were flashing and his poise was that of a man sure ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... poor George for a minute, during which Sally began to giggle violently, and flirt in her rustic fashion with the three rebels in a row. At length George, recovering his poise and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... he was mounted so disturbed the fine mental poise of the Happy Family that they left him jingling richly off by himself, while they rode closely grouped and ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... just sunrise on the 10th when Allen addressed his men with "We must this morning either quit our pretensions to valor, or possess ourselves of this fortress; and inasmuch as it is a desperate attempt, I do not urge it, contrary to your will. You that will undertake voluntarily, poise your firelocks!" The response was unanimous. The wicket of the stronghold was found open; the sentry snapped his gun at Allen, missed him, and was overpowered with a rush, together with the other guards. On the parade within, a hollow square was formed, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the thing desired in a Japanese floral composition. It might be said that Western art, in general, and more particularly the decorative art of India, Persia and Greece—the last coming to Japan through India and with certain Hindu modifications—all aim at symmetry of poise; but that Japanese floral arrangement and decorative art in general have for their fundamental aim a symmetry by suggestion,—a balance, but a balance of inequalities. The ike-bana as conceived and practised in Japan is a science to which ladies, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... one who knew her, "to do any justice to her charms—the brilliance of her eyes, which dazzled and thrilled all on whom they fell; the glory of her black hair, rippling in a cascade to her knees; the classic purity of her Grecian profile, the wild-rose delicacy of her complexion, the proud, dainty poise of her head, and the exquisite modelling of the figure which ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather." Lily was rather pale, but she had the Cardew poise. "He was in the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... complexion, and the fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion mahogany, the report ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure straightened, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... set him into a glow. But by the time he had reached home and had stripped off his wet clothes and swathed himself in a rough blanket, his racked nerves reasserted themselves. He craved a drink—a number of drinks—to restore his wonted poise. Lighting the kitchen lamp, he set the whisky bottle on the table and put a thick tumbler alongside it. Chum was lying at his master's feet. In front of Ferris was a pint of good cheer. The lamplight made the kitchen bright and cozy. Link felt a sense of utter ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... clear, steady look into her eyes in place of the glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats that had ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... polite, or suavely cynical. It was a new experience to see him borne on a wave of rhetoric; yet not borne away, for he spoke with an ease, a self-command, which to older ears would have suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... all, she took out of a box a broad white straw hat, like an oyster shell, with a silver-grey ribbon, and a sweeping ostrich feather.. She looked at it a moment, blew on it, plucked at its ribbon, lifted it over her head, held it at poise there, dropped it gently on to her hair, stood back from the glass to see it, and finally tore it off and sent it skimming on ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... indifference or disloyalty is full grown, the employer has full on him acute and formidable labor diseases. The man who should stand at his shoulder faces him, instead, with a hostile poise. The mill full of people over whom he holds power, upon whom he depends for his success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies, who, while they work, grumble, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... approached. Now he was at number one—the rattle of the iron links sounded horribly. At last number sixty! Calm from despair, Ben-Hur held his oar at poise, and gave his foot to the officer. Then the tribune stirred—sat ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the heavenly sun Shining upon thy breast! My scattered passions toward thee run, And poise to awful rest. ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... had fled from him at daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he had related this, with an emphasis and poise on the word, 'assassin,' peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to render it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence that would have been absolute madness in any man of Northern origin, cried 'Behold ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Reason this Form of Churches has been rejected by modern Architects abroad who use the better and Roman Art of Architecture.... Almost all the Cathedrals of the Gothick Form are weak and defective in the Poise of the Vault of the Aile."[60] On the other hand, he reckoned the dome "a form of church-building unknown in England, but of wonderful Grace," and, moreover, the dome wasted a minimum of space, whilst a mediaeval cathedral could accommodate only a small auditory in proportion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... somewhat large, not a good shape either, and some people—who do not like me—say that they can easily detect a hard, cold expression which does not please them. But my profile is good in spite of my ill-featured mouth, and there is—generally acknowledged—a certain high-born, well-bred look about the poise of my shapely head which gains for me more than a mere passing notice. My manners are pronounced "charming," and by many—those who like me—charmingly faultless. So, after all, in spite of this lack of a positive style of beauty, I am what ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... about the poise of Rodriguez' young head which gave him an air not unlike that which the King himself sometimes wore when he went courting. It suited his noble sword and his merry plume. When la Garda saw him they were all politeness ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... to the breaking point before; but his alertness was now trebled, and, like a sensitive barometer, he felt the danger of Larry, the brute strength of Jeff, the cunning of Henry, the grave poise of Joe, to say nothing of Scottie—an unknown force. But Scottie was running on in his talk; he was telling of how he met the storekeeper in town; he was naming everything he saw; these fellows seemed ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... immediately, whether they sympathized with and were ready to help the cause of liberty, or favored a foreign rgime. He was still in Mrida when in a proclamation he spoke of avenging the victims, and threatened with war to death. But Bolvar was not only a man of genius but one of equanimity, poise, deep thought and attention. He did not want to carry out his threats immediately, but decided to think at length over the transcendent step he was considering. The night of the 14th of June was a night of torture for the Liberator. On the morning of the 15th he himself wrote the decree ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... England: there the work in hand was not the break-up of a social system, but only the mental evolution of new ideals, the struggle of an ethical revival, and the satisfaction of a livelier spirit of scruple. In face of all delirations, Emerson kept on his way of radiant sanity and perfect poise. Do not, he warned his enthusiasts, expend all energy on some accidental evil, and so lose sanity and power of benefit. 'It is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses. Society gains ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... happy in his cause, and more fortunate in the issues of his career. They are taught to see in him a soldier whose sword wrought only mercy and justice for mankind; a statesman who steadied a remarkable generation of public men by his mental poise and exalted them by his singleness of heart; and a ruler whose exercise of power established for the time on earth a righteous government ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... particular value to us, if it did not prove to us the source of disease, for when we look scientifically and psychologically at disease, we must see that it is simply disassociation between the psychic and the physical selves, and comes as the natural loss of poise, either ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... away, and despite the almost frenzied haste with which he presently fell to work, he saw always the light and gracious figure which had come to him along the red clay road. The fervour which had shone suddenly in her eyes, the quiver of her mouth as she turned away, the poise of her head, the gentle, outstretched hand he had repulsed, the delicate curve of her wrist beneath the falling sleeve, the very lace on her bosom fluttering in the still weather as if a light wind were blowing—these things ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give him a fictitious satisfaction; it is an arrest of his desire that affords him a delicate poise and repose, on tiptoe, so to speak. [Footnote: Compare Coleridge's statement that poetry is "a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order." Biographia Literaria, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise,—she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans. Especially if ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... of the character represented. The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in history, is to count ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... have you believe that I lost my intellectual poise and composure. Without, I may have appeared distraught; within, my brain continued its ordained functions. Indeed, my mind operated with a most unwonted celerity. Scarcely a minute passed that some new expedient did not flash into my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... equally violent rush succeeded; and in its way toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and dimness ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... virtue is not the monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws and the administration of government. She is the complement of man, essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family, in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government, she will be a redemptive agency for society in many ways little thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... effort of Jack to save himself from falling, and a stinging pain ran through his shoulder. His hot Kentucky blood was aflame, and the instant he could poise his body he drew his knife and rushed upon the Indian with the fury ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... was Miss Ethel Orne, a young lady who had flourished through a London season, and had refused any number of brilliant offers. She was a brunette, with most wonderful dark eyes, figure of perfect grace, and an expression of grave self-poise that awed the butterflies of fashion, but offered an irresistible attraction to people of sense, intellect, intelligence, esprit, and all that sort of thing—like you and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... yellow tendrils of hair which were always slipping out from the fluffy braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off briskly down ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... trick which the camera has played means more and more as I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within; so that, looking thus, I ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... or participation in his Bohemian tastes. They were the sort of people who have a box at the opera and are patrons of the best and most exclusive functions of the highest society. Mrs. Schuyler, after the first shock, recovered her poise, and though now and then a tremor shook her slight frame, she bore herself with ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... from n, the nares sound, to the vowel sound of o, and returning to the nares sound of m. This is perhaps the best element to begin upon, because of its definiteness, but the same principle can be applied to other elements of speech, as Most-men-want-poise-and-more- royal-margin. Form each syllable with the utmost care. Concentrate the mind upon the ideal sound. First be sure that the pronunciation is accurately conceived. Then enunciate clearly and try each time to make the form more perfect. The principle of thinking is the ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... remained ahead. They hoped, however, that the worst was behind. They now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask for his ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... absolute bitterness. That she, a mere girl, should rise and come forward with so conventional yet friendly a greeting, that neither her lip should tremble nor her cheek flush, was little short of intolerable. Nevertheless it helped to brace his own resolves yet more firmly. Such poise, after all that had been between them, could have its source only in the most ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... It was the supreme moment for Thaine Aydelot. He was only a private, but in that instant all the old dominant Cavalier blood of the Thaines, all the old fearless independence of the Huguenot Aydelots, all the calm poise and courage of the Quaker Penningtons throbbed again in his every pulse-beat. He threw aside his soldier obligation and stood up a man, guided alone by the light ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty lace-like traceries trimmed the bodice and sleeves. Her flesh was fine and smooth as polished ivory, and her poise expressed both ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... slightly Roman nose, his well-shaped head, his clear, bright eye, and his rosy cheeks flushed with excitement, rendered him an attractive figure among the bright faces and well-dressed figures. His superb physical poise lent a grace to all his movements, while he was self-possessed at the most ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... innocent, pleased wonder, as might be in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go pick violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to him and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that was yet full of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to whom generals are ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... get his impressions of it. This had happened so often that it had come to be a sort of joke between them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March had a struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise of refusal. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... during the poise in the upturned right hand under the thumb and over the first and second fingers. The arm is extended in a slight curve just in front of the line of the shoulders. In making a thrust, the lance is darted parallel to the line of the shoulders and on a level ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... girls are sent out into the industrial world, where they fight shoulder to shoulder with men. Here they find potential worth of their individualities; here they meet with the same—no greater—temptation than their brothers, but with no knowledge to guide them, no traditions to give them poise, no ameliorating factor of social tenderness or tolerance when inexperience fails to temper their emotions ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... ranked him with the unregenerate. Once a sinner, (thus he pleasantly reasoned,) and a fellow may as well be ten times a sinner: a bad job anyhow. If in his moments of reflection—these being not yet wholly crowded out from his life—there comes a shadowy hope of better things, of some moral poise that should be in keeping with the tenderer recollections of his boyhood,—all this can never come, (he bethinks himself, in view of his old teaching,) except on the heel of some terrible conviction of sin; and the conviction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... life, the unflinching comrade of her soldier husband, the passionate adherent of the Church. Through wars, insurrections, revolutions, downfalls, Spanish, Mexican, civil, ecclesiastical, her standpoint, her poise, remained the same. She simply grew more and more proudly, passionately, a Spaniard and a Moreno; more and more stanchly and fierily a Catholic, and a ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... alone and not its significances, preoccupied me. I laughed and reached my hand to the dagger. A sadistic gesture, for I desired to give my senses a taste of its reality and thus enjoy their squirming. Marvelous dagger! The point of it was sharp. Mallare can invent daggers, beautiful daggers that poise melodramatically over his heart, that move slowly in quest of his life's blood! S'death, a property ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... remains a piece of enchantment; at least unless we entangle our vanity in it, and refine it away into mere lath, giving up all its protective nobleness for pace. With those in whose eyes the perfection of a boat is swift fragility, I have no sympathy. The glory of a boat is, first its steadiness of poise—its assured standing on the clear softness of the abyss; and, after that, so much capacity of progress by oar or sail as shall be consistent with this defiance of the treachery of the sea. And, this being understood, it is very ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... and beyond all this to that absolute equilibrium of soul when passion, and when all desire, shall have been killed through self-mortification and self-abnegation and he shall have attained mental poise and repose rather than a perfect character. Thus, in its last analysis, his ideal is an intellectual, rather than a moral, one; for it is again absorption into the Divine Soul; and that he conceives ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... along the deck with a monkey-like spring that was curiously characteristic of him. There was nothing of the sailor's steady poise about him. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... and stars, as profane spectra:—a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... his peace. He peered at her covertly, as if he would discover what had so changed her since the night before. Her dignity, the haughty poise of her head as she looked straight at him, filled him with something like dismay. Would Lem be able to subdue her with brute force? The scowman also observed her stealthily, compared her to Scraggy, and wondered. They both waited for Fledra to continue; but during the rest of ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves. The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly ascending, and caught a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... undisguised curiosity. Naturally enough she had met more men than she could even remember, but never one anything like this particular specimen. To add to her quickened interest, he was not only positively good-looking, but every line of his face, the poise of his well-proportioned, upstanding figure, the tilt of his head and the squareness of his chin, all spoke of strength; of elemental strength, and of a purposeful, resolute character. And, too, she told herself that he had nice eyes. The nice eyes never ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... cautious, on its guard to defend itself against some probable tax upon its good nature. All this unconscious, instinctive reckoning of the other man's characteristics gave to the young fellow an effect of poise, of judicious balance and quiet confidence. It was one of Banneker's elements of strength, which subsequently won for him his unique place, that he was always too much interested in estimating the man to whom he was talking, to consider even what ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rose in the middle of this plain, whose walls shone with such brilliancy that mortal eyes could hardly bear the sight. Astolpho guided the winged horse towards this edifice, and made him poise himself in the air while he took a leisurely survey of this favored spot and its environs. It seemed as if nature and art had striven with one another to see which could do the most ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... state. The two parties which prevailed with so much violence when you were here, are almost wholly melted into one. At the late Presidential election I have received one hundred and sixty-two votes against fourteen only. Connecticut is still federal by a small majority; and Delaware on a poise, as she has been since 1775, and will be till Anglomany with her yields to Americanism. Connecticut will be with us in a short time. Though the people in mass have joined us, their leaders had committed themselves too far to retract. Pride keeps them hostile; they brood ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... continuous strain, than any other form of society. In Josiah Quincy we have an example of character trained and shaped, under the nearest approach to a pure democracy the world has ever seen, to a firmness, unity, and self-centred poise that recall the finer types of antiquity, in whom the public and private man was so wholly of a piece that they were truly everywhere at home, for the same sincerity of nature that dignified the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... two young men stood eyeing each other Darrin noted that the young woman's annoyer was somewhat taller than himself, broader of shoulder and deeper of chest. He had the same confidence of athletic poise that Dave himself displayed. In a resort to force, it looked as though the stranger would ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... course of the struggle with the liveliest interest. Germany's dealings with Belgium had impressed them deeply. Her methods of warfare had estranged their sympathies. Her doctrine of the supremacy of force and falsehood had given an adverse poise to their ideas and leanings. Deep into their hearts had sunk the tidings of the destruction of the Lusitania, awakening feelings of loathing and abomination for its authors, to which free expression ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... between his parents—which had always been much of a mystery to him—had forced him at a tender age to go out into the world and fight for existence. It had toughened him; it had trained his mind through experience; it had given him poise, persistence, tenacity—those rare mental qualities without which ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... this spot, it will be remembered, that the young laird had carefully levelled the gun that surmounted the great gate. Everything depended now on the skill with which he had aimed it. He gave the foe a minute or two to fix and point their weapon, and once more carefully calculated the poise of his own. Then, just as they were proceeding to load, and the horsemen were preparing to follow up the attack on the gate, he applied the match, and with a mighty roar the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... the soul needs on the nature of man. Wonderfully has Holman Hunt elaborated this truth in his picture "The Light of the World." The ideal humanity never had more beautiful expression than in that great sermon in color. The poise of the figure of Jesus indicates strength and self-control; the thorns on the brow tell their story of sorrow and pain; the hand at the door shows that one man at least is mindful of the welfare of His brother; the radiance on the face and the inspiration in the eyes are the outshining of the goodness ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... heart-throb of exultation. He had deliberately gone about to break down her poise, her only barrier of defense, and it began to look as if ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but amid their delicate green—the long thorns, straight or curved like claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects fill the world with the noise of their business—spiders, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... added Phoebe, her natural poise and good humor again restored. "Tell Mother Bab I am coming up soon ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Marion?" I whispered, as we seated ourselves on the old-fashioned settle, or rather sofa, in one corner of the room, gazing admiringly, as I spoke, on the tall, slight figure, with its air of power and poise, that stood at some distance, with ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... German. Even in Sara Coleridge's admiration and reverence for her father, Mrs. Hopkins was in full sympathy with her. She lacked, indeed, that poetic fancy which belonged to the author of "Phantasmion;" nor did she possess her mental self-poise and firmness of will; but in other respects, even in physical organization and certain features of countenance, they were singularly alike. And they both died in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... had a trying night, for her obstreperous bedfellow had a habit of flinging out her arms, and of appropriating the larger half of the clothes, leaving poor Ingred to wake shivering. Also, the bed sloped towards the middle, so that both girls had to poise themselves on a kind of hillside, and were constantly rolling down and colliding. These troubles, however, were only incidental in the Pilgrimage, and certainly might have ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... indulged in his expressive shrug and smoked in silence. He was giving the American a few minutes in which to regain his poise. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... street architecture; and as an instance of street architecture it is distinguished in its appearance rather than imposing. Not, indeed, that it is lacking in dignity. The facade on Fifth Avenue has poise, as well as distinction; character, as well as good manners. But still it does not insist upon its own peculiar importance, as every monumental building must do. It is content with a somewhat humbler role, ...
— Handbook of The New York Public Library • New York Public Library
... the way up the steps, and there in the doorway was a tenant, one who had already taken possession, and who now faced me and the trailing line of convicts with that dignity, poise, and perfect self-possession which only a toad, a giant grandmother of a toad, can exhibit. I, and all the law-breakers who followed, recognized the nine tenths involved in this instance and carefully stepped around. When the heavy things began to arrive, I approached diffidently, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, Forsakes its poise, and, with a booming crash, Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered rocks, And lies ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... personal condition, I put aside thought of any present formulation of a future. I would rest, recover poise, and win back that optimism that belongs with health and youth. This was wisdom; I was jaded beyond belief; and fatigue means dejection, and dejection spells pessimism, and pessimism is never sagacious nor excellent in any of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... experience to see him borne on a wave of rhetoric; yet not borne away, for he spoke with an ease, a self-command, which to older ears would have suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... marched steadily onward and Dane matched his pace. They might not possess a leather-lunged herald to clear their road, but they gave every indication of having the right to occupy as much of it as they wished. And that unruffled poise had its affect upon those behind. The pound of feet slowed to a walk, a walk which would keep a careful distance behind the two Terrans. It had worked—the Salariki—or these Salariki—were accepting them at their own valuation—a good omen for the day's ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... further having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... demonstrations, and sat for a good while quietly upon the edge of their nest. Then first one, and shortly after the other, flew out, and commenced sailing in circles, at the height of an hundred feet or so above the water. Nothing could be more graceful than their flight. Now they would poise themselves a moment in the air, then turn their bodies as if on a pivot, and glide ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... is frequently urged on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. I urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. And I urge it also on the ground of spirituality, for a salient characteristic of spirituality is calmness, and without the mental repose which comes of detachment we cannot import ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... prophecy had come true. As he sat among his books in Aldersgate Street, the two-handed engine at the door of the English Church was on the swing. Once, twice, thrice, it had swept its arcs to gather energy; now it was on the backmost poise, and the blow was to descend." One cannot help wishing that Mr. Masson would try his hand on the tenth horn of the beast in Revelation, or on the time and half a time of Daniel. There is something so consoling to a prophet in being told that, no matter what he meant, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... inevitably we are moving to this great Thought. It is summed up in one word: Redemption. The watchword of a century ago was gravitation. It explained the poise of the universe by a great and hitherto undiscovered law. The watchword of yesterday was evolution. It explains progressive change: the mounting-up of life "through spires of form." The forms of the universe are seen in a series which is in the main ascendant, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... forehead on which the hair grew low, the delicately arched eyebrows and the long curving lashes of the heavy lids beneath them, the rounded cheeks, smooth as a ripe fruit, the firm, shapely chin, the snake-like poise of the head, the long bending neck, and the feline smile; all of these combined made such a dream-vision as he had never seen before, and to tell the truth, notwithstanding its beauty, for that could not be doubted, never wished to see again. Somehow he felt that if Satan should happen to have ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to the mother and daughter; the latter had regained her poise. He introduced himself: "Mr. Richard Storms." The mother gave him her card: ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... woman who was the suppliant, who felt a strange misgiving about this spirited girl with resolute eyes and poise of the head like a bird who would fly the next moment. And yet it was not the entreaty of starved and waiting love, that would have clasped arms about the slim, proud figure that stood almost defiant, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... excoriate the palate, vitiate its nicer powers of discrimination, and pall the relish for the high flavour of good wine: in short, no man should venture upon them whose throat is not paved with mosaic, unless they be seasoned by a cook who can poise the pepper-box with as even a hand as a judge should ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... later days, when I knew him, the feverish ardor of the first religious impulse was past. It had given place to a faith much too deep and sacred to talk about, yet holding him always with serene, steady poise in the purest region of life and feeling. There was no franker or more sympathetic companion for young men of his own age than he; but his conversation fell from his lips as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... show'd, As if it stoop'd with its own load: For as AENEAS bore his sire Upon his shoulders thro' the fire, 290 Our Knight did bear no less a pack Of his own buttocks on his back; Which now had almost got the upper- Hand of his head, for want of crupper. To poise this equally, he bore 295 A paunch of the same bulk before; Which still he had a special care To keep well-cramm'd with thrifty fare; As white-pot, butter-milk, and curds, Such as a country-house ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... that worried us most in the whole situation was how he was ever going to get on, in the worldly sense, without her. He was to suffer not only from the loss of her counsel but from the lack of her indorsement. There are certain women who are a form of insurance to a man; and Anne gave a poise and solidity to Julian's presentation of himself which his own flibbertigibbet manner ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... open window, whence she saw—not Parisian monuments of civic glory and martial splendour—only her own past, her haunting skull and cross-bones of the Bygone. Her violet-coloured dressing-gown was unbuttoned at the throat, exposing the graceful turn of the neck, and the proud poise of the perfectly modelled head, from which the shining hair fell like Danae's shower, framing the face and figure on a back ground as golden as that of some ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... room, doubtless the "far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She was carrying a large tray full of cups. She braced herself against the weight of the earthenware and balancing herself with a free swinging motion on her high-heeled shoes walked with an accentuation of her usual vigorous poise. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Sea Islanders, surf-shooting. The native wades far out into the surf with a long narrow board and then sits astride of it upon the surface of the water. As the long billows come rolling in, he places his board upon the convex surface of an advancing wave, then, with the poise of a rope-dancer, he places his weight properly upon the plank and is shot forward with ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... the parlor a moment later she saw her caller standing with his back turned toward her as he gazed from one of the windows, but she instantly recognized those broad shoulders, and the fine poise of the shapely ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... grace, moving lightly as if she scarcely touched the ground, but like a bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full of energy and impulse. Her eyes were gray—if it is possible to call by the name of the dullest of tints those two globes of light, now dark, now golden, now liquid with dew, and now with flame. Her ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with those keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square chin, and the whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine—Nancy Olden's—lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet again ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... born cowman," said Forrest, as Dell halted before the open tent. "It's an absolute mistake to think that that boy was ever intended for a farmer. Notice his saddle poise, will you, Paul? Has a pretty foot, too, even if it is slightly sun-burned. We must get him some boots. With that red hair, he never ought to ride any other horse than a ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... recovered her poise and dignity, and thanked me, in the sweetest of voices, for my slight assistance, and I had found time to note that she was more ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of the west would be, by the spirited scene, Nell saw Bud poise himself for a leap. Then she understood what ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... and structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in "composition." She was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her head were admirably free and noble, and they were the more effective that their freedom was at moments discreetly corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonised admirably with the ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... travelling—by the clime, and the land, and the name of the land, with all its mighty import; by the glittering freshness of the sward, and the abounding masses of flowers that furnished my sumptuous pathway; by the bracing and fragrant air that seemed to poise me in my saddle, and to lift me along as a planet appointed to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... talking, Ruth's eyes rested with pleasure upon her hostess. She herself was tall, but Miss Ainslie towered above her. She was a woman of poise and magnificent bearing, and she had the composure which comes to some as a right and to others with ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... you do!" And Dorothy greeted Bartley with considerable poise for a young woman who was as interested in the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... in the power to meet them without flinching. This woman, you could see at a glance, was not born to the circus and its hardships; she came of another world. Tall and slender and proud she was, endowed with the poise of a thorough gentlewoman. Hers was a fine, brilliant face, crowned by dark hair that grew low and waved about her temples. Deep, tender brown eyes met yours steadily and with unwavering candor. There was strength and loyalty and purity in their depths. No hardness, no callousness, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... one fell in and out of love assiduously, and had upon the whole a pleasant time,—Anne Charteris had come to Lichfield. One had found that time had merely added poise and self-possession and a certain opulence to the beauty which had caused one's voice to play fantastic tricks in conference with Anne Willoughby,—ancient, unforgotten conferences, wherein one had pointed out the many respects in which she differed from all ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to note how important balance is to men. Animals fight, as a rule, just as well on their backs as they do on their feet. They can lie on their sides and bite; they can swing their claws even while they are dropping through the air. But man needs poise and balance before he can act. What is speed in a fighter? It is not so much an affair of the muscles as it is the power of the brain to adapt itself instantly to each new move and put the body in a state of balance. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... it which told of the chafing of his urgent and fiery soul. One eye was disfigured and sightless from a wound, but the other looked from my father to myself with the quickest and shrewdest of expressions. Indeed, his whole manner, with his short, sharp glance and the fine poise of the head, spoke of energy and alertness, so that he reminded me, if I may compare great things with small, of a well- bred fighting terrier, gentle and slim, but keen and ready for whatever ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was blazing over the verdant landscape, filling the dewdrops on the grass with red, blue, and yellow light. An indescribable aura seemed to encircle the exquisite face of his young companion. There was a restful poise about her, a sure grasp of utterance, that soothed and thrilled him. Something new and vivifying sprang to life in his breast. The thought flashed into his consciousness that here with this embodiment of intellectual ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... leader less wise and less fully equipped might have blundered at this stage by leaping too hastily with his cause into the arena of debate. Sumner did nothing of the kind. His self-poise and self-control for nine months was simply admirable. "Endurance is the crowning quality," says Lowell, "And patience all the passion of great hearts." Certainly during those trying months they were Sumner's, the endurance and the patience. First ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... movements which would seem to demand the contractile animal fibre. He goes up and down stairs with very tolerable ease and despatch. Only when he comes to stand upon the human limb, we begin, to find that it is not in all respects equal to the divine one. For a certain number of seconds he can poise himself upon it; but Mr. Palmer, if he indulges in verse, would hardly fill the Horatian complement of lines in that attitude. In his anteroom were unipeds in different stages of their second learning to walk as lignipeds. At first they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... drawing-room was a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, that the meeting with her ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... curves of her lips. Her cheeks retained their lovely brilliancy of color. Harry trembled, and his face looked pale and self-conscious, but Ida displayed no such weakness. She replied with the utmost self-poise to the congratulations which she received after the ceremony. There was an informal reception in the church vestry. Cake and ice-cream and coffee were served, and Ida and Harry and Maria stood together. Ida had her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... this train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of all ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and thus neglect crucially important actions in the period just ahead. The other would be to underestimate our strength. Thereby we might be tempted to become irresolute in our foreign relations, to dishearten our friends, and to lose our national poise and perspective in approaching the complex ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... beside Eunice her child, having all of Mr. Volrees' features. There were his dark chestnut hair, his large dark eyes, his nose, his lips, his poise and a dark brown stain beneath the left ear which had been a recurrence in the Volrees family for generations. The public was mystified as it was commonly understood that the marital relations had extended no farther than the marriage ceremony. The presence of this child looked therefore to be ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... all his power to poise and steady the pen, but his hand shook, his fingers loosened, and it fell upon the document, making two or three blots there and another on the bed-covering, whither it rolled. He groped faintly for it, moaned, and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... this new way, he was also able to see that she herself was changed. She figured definitely as an actor now with an odd white intensity in her face, with some mysterious purpose in her eyes, with a resolve in the whole poise of her body that seemed to ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... class grouping involves a natural competition, healthful and beneficial and wisely preparatory for future living. More emphasis than this upon rivalry may produce feverish and unhealthful conditions, far removed from the mental poise we desire for our girls. The school can give the girl few things finer than the ability to attack work quietly and yet with determination and a sense of power ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... said, pray, that you should jump to such a conclusion?" She had recovered her breath but not her poise. "No one could admire him more than I. About his private life I know little and care less. He lives on ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... accident to ruffle their perfect serenity of manner. Nor is it merely a point of etiquette to be thus self-controlled. Serious accidents sometimes happen, like the igniting of fancy lamp-shades or filmy curtains, and then the calm poise of a well-bred man becomes of practical value to himself and others. A habit of keeping cool—formed originally for good manners' sake—may save one's life in ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of the minute qualities and individualities of the character represented. The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in history, is to ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... smile was a peculiarly winning one. His face was covered with a full growth of blond beard cut moderately long. He never shaved. His wife trimmed his beard in the manner most becoming to the shape of his head, the poise of his neck and evenly formed shoulders. He wore his hair full long and it curled about his neck in a deep blond wave. He might have posed for the model of Hoffman's famous picture of Christ. His eyes, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... as he took everything, standing. And Van Emmon could see no sign that the announcement had disturbed his poise. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... tall, lithe, strong, graceful, commanding. His jaw was the jaw of courage; his chin meant purpose; his nose symboled intellect, poise and power; his brow spelled brain. He was a handsome man, and he was not wholly unaware of the fact. In him was the pride of the North American Indian, and a little of the reserve of the savage. His silence was always eloquent, and in it was neither stupidity nor vacuity. With friends he was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go in pairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmly returning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jar their mental poise a minute. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... romped over the rocks and quarreled with the boys of the Silent City. Her tom-boy days, amid the ceaseless struggles against the hardships of the Storm Country, gave to her slender body strength and lent to it poise and grace. Bright brown eyes lighted by loving intelligence illumined her face, tanned by sun and wind, but very sweet and winsome, especially when the curving red lips melted into a smile. A profusion of burnished red curls, falling about her shoulders almost ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Bureau and work in general, was all that was needed to convince the shrewd junior of Jean's true position in life. Then, too, Jean was extremely likable, although Althea stood a little in awe of her remarkable poise and a certain imperiousness that occasionally crept into the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... temperance of ornament, marked the whole array, and stamped it with the unmistakable character of Boston. Her clear tints of lip and cheek and eye were incomparable; her blond hair gave weight to the poise of her delicate head by its rich and decent masses. She had a look of independent innocence, an angelic expression of extremely nice young fellow blending with a subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surprise at seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point of her sun-umbrella ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... winds and storms are nigh, Nor trust their bodies to a faithless sky, But make small journeys with a careful wing, And fly to water at a neighbouring spring; And lest their airy bodies should be cast In restless whirls, the sport of every blast, 250 They carry stones to poise them in their flight, As ballast keeps the unsteady vessel right. But, of all customs that the bees can boast, 'Tis this may challenge admiration most; That none will Hymen's softer joys approve, Nor waste their spirits in luxurious love, But all a long virginity ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... finally gave up the quest. But this momentary glimpse produced in him a new excitement. He felt sure that he had not been mistaken: he knew the swift, graceful step, the slight form bending in the wind. He fancied that he had even recognized the poise and shape of the little head. He imagined, too, that he had not been unobserved, and that she had some reason for avoiding him. For a week or more he haunted the vicinity of the common, but without result. December was already drawing to an end ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... slant that gave a strange, oriental cast to her face, perplexing, enchanting. He remembered the Egyptian fulness of the lips, the strange balancing movement of her head upon her slender neck, the same movement that one sees in a snake at poise. Never had he seen a girl more radiantly beautiful, never a beauty so strange, so troublous, so out of all accepted standards. It was small wonder that Vanamee had loved her, and less wonder, still, that his love had been ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly, inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady. Now, don't look incredulous [noticing my surprise]. Black hair—not brown, black; clear pink and white complexion; large, deep violet eyes with a remarkable poise to them."—Here I continued the description for him: "Slight of figure; a full, honest waist, without a suggestion of that execrable death-trap, Dame Fashion's hideous cuirass; a little above middle height; deliberate, and therefore graceful, in all her movements; carries herself in a way to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... regained her adolescent poise, which was considerable. "Well, he's still in there," she said. "I just tried the ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Park in Harlem. The Viberts had taste, and their music-room was charming in its reticent scheme of decoration—a Steinway grand piano, a low crowded book-case with a Rodin cast, a superb mezzotint of Leonardo's Mona Lisa after Calmatta, revealing the admirable poise of sweetly folded hands—surely the most wonderful hands ever painted—while the polished floor, comforting couches and open fireplace proclaimed this apartment as the composition ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... them. Perhaps superstition also mingled with their emotions. Doubtless the spirits of the lake were angry with them for some cause, and the best thing they could do was to leave it as soon as they could. But one as he ran did not forget to poise his hatchet for a cast at the prisoner. The Reverend Silas Pennypacker would have seen his last sun that day had not Henry noticed the movement and quickly fired his pistol at the uplifted hand. The bullet ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault. The image of an armed knight is graven Upon it, clad in perfect panoply— Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... arrogance of mortals, in presuming to account, by their speculations, for the laws by which he was pleased to create it. It is now discovered, beyond all doubt, that the same great Being who created the universe by his fiat, by the same ordained our earth to keep a just poise, without a corresponding southern continent, and it does so. He stretches out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing, Job ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... that she seemed taller than she really was. The sweep of neck and shoulder was exquisite, and her simple dress was admirably adapted to display the lines of her supple form. As she walked down the studio, setting her feet firmly and carrying her head with fine poise, Grant Herman felt the ghost of an old passion ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... she had not been whisked back to New York by her people, it would not now be a question of Betty or of the Jasmine lady. He took out Miss Van Tromp's portrait and sat looking at it: it was admirable, the fearless poise of the head, the laughing eyes, the full pouting lips. Then Betty's face and the face of the Jasmine lady came between him and Miss ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... herself unduly excited, or perhaps shocked, while reading some parts of what is here written, so that the heart beats too fast, or the hand trembles, it may be well to suspend the reading for a time, divert the mind into other channels for a while, and resume the reading after one has regained poise and mastery of one's self. That is, "keep your head" while you read these lessons, and you will ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... the conduct of life. By such teaching, if they have the heart to heed it, men become wise, learning how to be both brave and gentle, faithful and free; how to renounce superstition and yet retain faith; how to keep a fine poise of reason between the falsehood of extremes; how to accept the joys of life with glee, and endure its ills with patient valor; how to look upon the folly of man and not forget his nobility—in short, how to live cleanly, kindly, calmly, open-eyed and unafraid in a sane world, sweet of heart ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... frailty and folly, or if he had been reading judicially a semi-sceptical work, that he might demolish the irreverent author, she would have made an onslaught whose vigor, if not logic, would have greatly disturbed his equanimity and theological poise. But when she saw his attitude of deep dejection, and when twice he sighed long and heavily, her woman's nature was disarmed, and she began to think that his doctrines were as hard upon him as upon the rest. Instinctively ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... a woman, Hedda. She was—as you are. Just having friends. And she was as handsome as you are, too. She didn't have your head, your poise. She liked beauty, as you do. But this woman looked forward, as I don't think you do. She saw herself always going down. She saw herself in the end like the helmet-maker's daughter, in some archway of the city, seeking a couple of pence.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... diversified. Never since consciousness of time began were two beings born who possessed exactly the same quality of voice, the same precise degree of nervous impressibility, or,—in brief, the same combination of those viewless force-storing molecules which shape and poise themselves in sentient substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to particularize the curious psychology of such existences: at the very utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses and perceptions of nomadism as lie within the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness, as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could never be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard, whether ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... development of society into a infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold, look that he had ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... be drunk, as the time of reaching maturity varies with climate and ancestral origin. Yet, from a theoretical standpoint, children before or during the adolescent period should be limited to the use of a rather small amount of tea and coffee as beverages, as their poise and nerve control have not reached a stage of development sufficient to warrant the stimulation incident to the consumption of an appreciable ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... affront to her consciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist of thought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thought hurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise she had lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. It was a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... become a shining roseate creature. Always beautiful, always exquisite—flawless features, perfect poise, now she pulsated with life. A new brightness glowed in her eyes. Of late across her cheeks color was wont to come and go like the shadow of clouds on a hillside on a windy day. Even her voice, usually steady and controlled, now and again trembled and broke with sudden emotion. She ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... powerful chapters, is merely persuading you that half is the whole? And if your duty as a scholar require you to peruse the book fully, instead of casting it aside, your mind at length fairly aches for the sense of poise and soundness, were it only for a single page. But no; it is always the same succession of perspicuous and vigorous sentences, all carrying flavors of important truth, and none utterly true. For the half is really half; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... emphasis of her florid hat. Her pallor that morning refined the indubious coarseness of her face, and changed vulgarity into the attractive originality of a spirited character. Many there knew her, but she recognized nobody. She yawned once, in a fair piece of acting, and in her movements and the poise of her head there was a disdain almost plain enough to be insolence. Purdy turned to her, and the strange pair conferred. I heard Hanson say to himself: "What on earth." She left Purdy, bent her head ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... flush shot into her cheeks, and the glitter of blue diamonds into her eyes, when she saw the stranger standing there. The man's red face grew redder, and he shifted his gaze. When Cummins' wife passed him, she drew her skirt close to her; and there was the poise of a queen in her head, the glory of wife and womanhood, the living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in her people's ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... glowing dusk and a half-smile upon her lips. It was like my hostess in a fashion of line and color, and yet enough unlike her so that I knew it must be the daughter. The face was a shade narrower of chin, a bit longer, and in some obscure differing of the features there was an effect of more poise, almost of a maturer dignity, so that while I divined it was the face of her daughter, it would seem to have been better planned for the face ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Sam Blaney who spoke, and as he had taken her hand and still held it, Patty suddenly recovered her poise and spirits. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Roberts had been embarrassed before Ramona Wadley that morning, but he was not in the least self-conscious now. In the course of a short and turbid life he had looked too many tough characters in the eye to let any mere man disturb his poise. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... meal Carmencita's flow of words and flow of spirits had saved the silences that fell, in spite of effort, between Van Landing and Miss Barbour, and under the quiet poise so characteristic of her he had seen her breath come unsteadily. Could he make her care for him again? With eyes no longer guarded he ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... her spirit does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy—her imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... closer in his enthusiasm. "The point carrying the detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite will explode in front of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... lost himself in wonder at this well-gowned girl living amid such surroundings. Undeniably pretty, graceful in her movements, bearing herself with certainty and poise—who was she? Where did she come from? And what in the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the cable. The nigger having reeled off all he knows of 'Californy,' a Dutchman sings lustily of 'Sally Brown.' Soon the Mate reports, "Anchor's short, Sir," and gets the order to weigh. A few more powerful heaves with the seaman-like poise between each—"Spent my mo-ney on Sa-lley Brown!"—and the shout ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... grown shy, stood silent for a moment, for the time rather at a loss to carry on the play which had been easier in the open. I heard Jimmy draw a long breath. He was first to remove his hat. But his companion was quicker to regain his poise, although for a moment he forgot his pirate speech. "Gee!" said ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... desert. The madness of the night before had lifted a little, leaving Rhoda with some of her old poise. After several attempts she rose and made her staggering way to ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... atmosphere, enervating or stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the quickness of his glance as he gazed round the compartment, verifying the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... whose voracity is incredible. I have at times caught a villain in the act, and watched with patience until from one of the veins of the hand he had drunk blood enough to blow out his little carcase to the shape of a tennis-ball, when he would poise himself upon his long legs, and, spreading his wings, make an effort to rise, but in vain; bloated and unwieldy, his wings refused to sustain him; his usual activity was gone, and there he stood disgustingly helpless, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... time. "As a young man," writes William Sharp, "he seems to have had a certain ivory delicacy of coloring ... and he appeared taller than he really was, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation.... His hair was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle personal charm, was his voice, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... his present defeat, and the fact that he was surrounded by very pressing dangers. He would have been a very much surprised lad if he had been told that any of these beautiful gowned women regarded him with any interest. But he carried himself with a simple distinction and poise, that was derived from varied and harsh experiences, that gave ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... with which he presently fell to work, he saw always the light and gracious figure which had come to him along the red clay road. The fervour which had shone suddenly in her eyes, the quiver of her mouth as she turned away, the poise of her head, the gentle, outstretched hand he had repulsed, the delicate curve of her wrist beneath the falling sleeve, the very lace on her bosom fluttering in the still weather as if a light wind ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... almost with violence, as if angered at her or himself, and he turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained her poise. There might be, probably would be, infinitely more trying ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however, that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror and knowledge ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't understand,' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... cup, and with what a grace he serves the wine?" And indeed, these royal cup-bearers are neat-handed at their task, mixing the bowl with infinite elegance, and pouring the wine into the beakers without spilling a drop, and when they hand the goblet they poise it deftly between thumb and finger for the banqueter to take. [9] "Now, grandfather," said the boy, "tell Sacas to give me the bowl, and let me pour out the wine as prettily as he if I can, and win your favour." So the king bade the butler hand him the bowl, and Cyrus ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... midnight by shouts and the glare of flames—with so dire a terror, not on her own account but on her daughter's, that she was never the same again. For weeks at a time she appeared to be as of old, save for some increase of weakness and tremulousness. But below the surface the brain was out of poise, and under the least pressure of excitement she betrayed the change in a manner so appalling—by the loud negation of those beliefs which in saner moments were most dear to her, and especially by a denial of the Providence and goodness of God—that even her child, even the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... resistless hand First seized a ship on that contested strand; The same which dead Protesilaus bore,(242) The first that touch'd the unhappy Trojan shore: For this in arms the warring nations stood, And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood. No room to poise the lance or bend the bow; But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow: Wounded, they wound; and seek each other's hearts With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten'd darts. The falchions ring, shields ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... narrow, like the hand of a woman and the paw of a chimpanzee. It is supple and boneless as the hands wrought in pigment by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering fingers bend backward. Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... in love with her, and that she was a shameless coquette she would have been the last to deny. Pilar was beautiful, and although the close long lashes of her eyes hid dreams, rather than fire, and her profile and poise of head expressed all the pride of the purest aristocracy California has had, nothing could divert attention from the beauty of her contours of cheek and figure, and of her rich soft colouring. The officers in church ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... section of a goose-egg shell, Which in two equal portions shall divide The distance from the centre to the side. Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin;— Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin Suspend the ready napkin; or like me, Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee; Just in the zenith your wise head project, Your full spoon rising in a line direct, Bold as a bucket, heed no drops that fall. The wide-mouthed bowl will surely catch ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... eye. He stayed at home a good deal, and loafed about with a melancholy and neglected air, vanished when anyone came, talked very little, and was either pathetically humble or tragically cross. He wanted to do something, but nothing seemed to appear; and while he waited to get his poise after the downfall, he was so very miserable that I 'm afraid, if it had not been for one thing, my poor Tom would have got desperate, and been a failure. But when he seemed most useless, outcast, and forlorn, he discovered ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the evening games began, Pope Joan, and Speculation— What head could keep its poise and plan, With the heart ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... the first break on the crest of heaven's slumber, Urvashi, you thrill the air with unrest. The world bathes your limbs in her tears; with colour of her heart's blood are your feet red; lightly you poise on the wave-tossed lotus of desire, Urvashi; you play forever in that limitless mind wherein labours ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... big black bow at the cape of her neck. Her vague nose had settled into the forward-raking line that made her the dark likeness of her father. Her body was slender but solid; the strong white neck carried her head high with the poise of a runner. She looked at least seventeen in her clean-cut coat and skirt. Probably she wouldn't look much older ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament. The thin lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as heighten her beauty. She would not have entered a drawing room with more self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility. There was in her manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast. A murmur of admiration ran through the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... and was hanging head downward, fast asleep, still clinging to the line. Another evening, being discomposed by somebody coming to the towel-line after he had settled himself, he fluttered off; but so sleepy that he had not discretion to poise himself again, and was found clinging, like a little bunch of green floss silk, to the ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have said, Rex Slinkard had the priceless poise of the true lyric poet, and it was the ordered system in his vision that proved him. He knew the value of his attitudes and he was certain that perfection is imperishable, and strove with a poet's calm intensity toward that. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... if you do not, and it is well for her to hear it from lips which may more successfully offer counsel afterward. A certain confidence in her own charms gives a sensibly reared young woman a poise and self-possession which is to be desired. A touch of feminine vanity renders a woman more anxious to please, and more alert to keep always at ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war, First sought to inflame the parties, then to poise: The quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor; And did not strike to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... a piece of enchantment; at least unless we entangle our vanity in it, and refine it away into mere lath, giving up all its protective nobleness for pace. With those in whose eyes the perfection of a boat is swift fragility, I have no sympathy. The glory of a boat is, first its steadiness of poise—its assured standing on the clear softness of the abyss; and, after that, so much capacity of progress by oar or sail as shall be consistent with this defiance of the treachery of the sea. And, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... saw the spectral vanguard come, Coasting along, as swallows, beating low Before a hint of rain. In buoyant air, Circling thy poise, and hardly move the wing, And rather float than fly. Then other spirits, Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the gale; As plaintive plovers came with swoop and scream To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... I a God? What other wing, If not a God's, could in the rounded sky Hang thus in solitary poise? What need, Ye proud Immortals, that my balanced plumes Should grow, like yonder eagle's, from the nest? It may be, ere my crafty father's line Sprang from Erectheus, some artificer, Who found you roaming wingless on the hills, Naked, asserting godship in the dearth Of loftier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have been a person of no importance. His virile, curling black hair had the raven's-wing sheen betraying remote Italian forebears, and for that matter there was in his entire cast of countenance and the poise of his fine head something statuesquely Roman, Southern, exotic. His large but deep-set eyes were of so dark a blue as very generally to pass for "black"; and whilst in some moods they were soft and ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... may be to attain self-control in light social converse, or about the family table, it is undeniably vital to have oneself perfectly in hand while taking part in a momentous conference. Then the hints that we have given on poise, alertness, precision of word, clearness of statement, and force of utterance, with respect to public speech, are ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... burst into a hysterical laugh as if something had broken in their throats. Everybody felt better for this touch of drollery except the captain. Yet, possibly, it may have helped him in recovering his poise. Sometimes even a pin-prick will ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the moment her poise had fled from her and she knew that he must note the high colour in her cheeks. And the colour had come not in response to his words but in quick answer to his look. A young giant of a man, he stood staring ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... upon this dried fish, mixed with sea-water. Captain Clark nearly lost his admirable poise. On the first day of ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the mockingbird are all theatrical in their manners—full of gestures of tail and wings, and their songs all imply an audience, while the serene melody of the thrushes is in keeping with the grace and poise of their behavior. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the dear mystic!' exclaimed the old creature scoffingly. 'What depths we're touching. Here's the first serious break of his lifetime, and he's gone stark staring transcendental. Ah well.' He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his curious bird-like poise of head. 'But you're not alone here?' he inquired suddenly; ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... and then, with the poise of a practised swimmer, dived—cutting the water with barely a splash. For the space of a half-minute Yorke stared apprehensively at the swirling eddy, beneath which the other had vanished. The line still remained taut. Then he gave a gasp of relief, as ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... transfixed. He had been told that he was to expect beauty, and he had expected it, yet now for the moment he found himself standing astonished, and as devoid as a raw schoolboy of his usually imperturbable poise. From this trance-like condition he was recalled by the quizzical amusement of his employer and, bowing from the hips, he found himself murmuring some ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... appraisal of her. She was perhaps thirty, fair, with golden-brown hair held in place by a large comb of wrought gold, with violet-blue eyes, wearing a low-cut gown of violet chiffon velvet and dull gold shoes. Larry's instinct told him that here was a patrician, a thoroughbred: with poise, with a knowledge of the world, with whimsical humor, with a kindly understanding of people, with steel in her, and with a smiling ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... and girlish; but there was that in the lines of her figure, so seductively defined by her clinging Chinese dress, in the poise of her small head, with the blush rose nestling amid the black hair—above all in the smile of her full red lips—which discounted the youth of her body; which whispered "Mine is a soul old in strange sins—a soul for whom dead Alexandria had no secrets, that learnt nothing of Athenean Thais ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... entirely was this, that had he not progressed, she would have retained her old poise, the old poise of which she was never again to be mistress. It is the old tale: sympathy to lift up another first steps down. And never had her sympathy gone out so quickly to any mortal. Elsa had a horror of loneliness, and this man seemed ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, Forsakes its poise, and, with a booming crash, Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered rocks, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... The dirt road would soon be worked into a loblolly of sticky yellow mud. Thereupon we would take off our shoes and socks, tie them to the barrel of our muskets a little below the muzzle and just above the end of the stock, poise the piece on the hammer on either shoulder, stock uppermost, and roll up our breeches to the knees. Then like Tam O'Shanter, we "skelpit on through dub and mire, despising wind, and rain, and fire," and singing "John Brown's Body," or whatever else ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... flickered, and then she looked up at him with a sad gravity, tears seeming just at the poise. "One reason's because I have a feeling that it's ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. Their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet balanced; full of accident and poise. It was as though these high walls of Carrara, the western boundary of the valley, had been shaped expressly for man, in order to exalt him with unexpected and fantastic shapes, and to expand his dull life with a permanent surprise. For a ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... toward the open jungle, which thrust a narrow triangular strip in toward the town. At intervals they heard shouts, far deeper in. The Great Dane was in his highest form, after weeks of care and training by Bhanah. He could well carry his poise in a walk like this; having his full exercise night and morning. A marvel thing, like nothing else—this dignity of Nels. . . . The two neared their own magic place—not the monkey glen; that was deeper in the jungle—the place where they had really ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the Fielding and the "Novelle" looked pale and hungry behind the stacks of books, and I am shamed, speaking merely as a thorough-paced buyer of second-hand books, that I paid more for the latter than she would have asked. But the blue-grey eyes, the nervous poise of the head, the pride in the sensitive nostrils, reminded me of someone.... A horrible life for a young girl, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... were days when he was as good-looking as ever, and much of the old fascination remained: but to one who knew him well, as Harding did, there was no doubt that his life had passed its meridian. The day was no longer at poise, but was quietly sinking; and though the skies were full of light, the buoyancy and blitheness that the hours bear in their ascension were missing; lassitude ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a canoe right at her side. It had stolen up silently, propelled by the noiseless stroke of a practised paddler, and went past her like a ghost. The young man kneeling in the stern had something of the perfectly balanced play of muscle, and poise of lithe figure that belonged to the Indian. For in spite of his Anglo-Saxon blood, Roderick McRae was as much a product of this land of lake and forest as the Red Skin. He had almost passed her, when he looked up and saw her for the first time. He gave a start; it seemed too good to be true. But ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... stray yellow tendrils of hair which were always slipping out from the fluffy braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... in all the universe could one be found the friend and equal of both parties? Where could one be found that could stand on equality with God, know what was just and right in regard to Him, and, at the same time know the weaknesses, the wants and the rights of man? Where was one who could poise with one hand the scales of God's justice and gather fallen humanity to his bosom with the other? The boundless dominions of God contained not such a being. Man could not thus act, for the best of men are ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... oblong eyes, the rich red lips bent like a bow, the cruel smile of the mouth, the broad forehead on which the hair grew low, the delicately arched eyebrows and the long curving lashes of the heavy lids beneath them, the rounded cheeks, smooth as a ripe fruit, the firm, shapely chin, the snake-like poise of the head, the long bending neck, and the feline smile; all of these combined made such a dream-vision as he had never seen before, and to tell the truth, notwithstanding its beauty, for that could not be doubted, never wished to see ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... him out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise—erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat—suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror. Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and he could ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... leisurely towards the tent. He paused at the door to speak to the Frenchman, a picturesque, barbaric figure, with flowing robes and great white cloak, the profile of his lean face clean cut against the evening sky, the haughty poise of his head emphasised by the attitude in which he was standing, arrogant, dominating. He moved his hands when he spoke with quick, expressive gestures, but his voice was slow and soft, pitched in a deep musical key, but with all its softness unmistakably authoritative. He pointed with outstretched, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... had just assisted. But the exceeding propriety and dignity of the teacher, the daughter of great people fallen upon evil days, had impressed her. She longed to acquire that tranquillity of deportment, that slow graceful poise of hand and arm, that low measured speech. When the teacher had gone, she began to mimic her gestures with all ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... is practised in Leaplow. There, the supposition of legitimacy is as much in favor of the youngest as of the oldest born, and the practice is in conformity. As there is no hereditary chief to poise on one of the legs of the great tripod, the people at the foot of the beam choose one from among themselves, periodically, who is called the Great Sachem. The same people choose another set, few in number, who occupy a common seat, on another leg. These they term the Riddles. ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... any knowledge as to the source of their conviction, the two girls who watched felt that the Professor was becoming dominant. And then there came a sudden queer change. The intangible triumph of the Professor's stony poise seemed to fade away. His eyes had sought the corner of the room, his lips quivered. The horror was there again, the horror they had seen before. He crouched a little back. His hands were uplifted as though to keep off ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... child had a piquant face, full of charm, and her head and chin had the poise of a princess. She had fair straight hair, almond-shaped hazel eyes under pencilled brows, and a nose "tip-tilted like a flower." Peggy Callahan, whose acquaintance you will make later, said she guessed ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... houses. The man's eyes rested on it complacently, with the enjoyment of the painter, finding it charming: the girl's, a little absently, as one who had seen it very often before. She was pretty and very young, but her gray serious eyes, the poise of her head, with its rebellious brown hair braided plainly, gave her a little air of dignity, of reserve which sat piquantly upon her youth. In one ungloved hand, that was brown from the sun, but very beautiful, she held an old parasol, the other played occasionally ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... fragile, such a charming exotic, that he felt an overpowering impulse to cherish and shelter her from every rude thing in the world. With a nice blending of reserve and complaisance she appeared to yield to his mood and yet to withhold herself. To a man of Graydon's poise and knowledge of society such skilful tactics served their purpose perfectly. They gave her an additional charm in his eyes, and furnished another proof of the fineness of her nature. She could not only feel, but manifest the nicest shades of preference. If not fully satisfied ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the utmost effort of Jack to save himself from falling, and a stinging pain ran through his shoulder. His hot Kentucky blood was aflame, and the instant he could poise his body he drew his knife and rushed upon the Indian with the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... fire from the base of the tower. The rope and hose parted and precipitated a number who were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it into the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Upone the morne, which was Sanct Katherins day,[228] returned he to Edinburgh, and so did the Cardinall from Hadingtoun. But the one being eschamed of the other, the brute of thare communicatioun came nott to publict audience. The King maid inventorie of his poise, of all his juwellis and other substance;[229] and tharefter, as eschamed to look any man in the face, secreatlie departed to Fyfe, and cuming to the Hall-yardis,[230] was humanlie receaved of the Ladye[231] Grange, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something in which the words: "La Illaha ilia Allah" transpired in a wraith of sound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly hold his poise. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... secretary and priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong; but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone. Then the guard's whistle shrilled out, and the station-master made his last bow; I turned the steam on; ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... pallor of complexion did her charm lie. Nor in the trim figure with its promising lines, nor in the poise of head nor pride of carriage, nor in the ready laughter that came to those quiet eyes. In no one particular quality of attraction did she excel. Rather was her charm the charm of the perfect agglomeration of all ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... undulating train, l. 373. The side fins of fish seem to be chiefly used to poise them; as they turn upon their backs immediately when killed, the air-bladder assists them perhaps to rise or descend by its possessing the power to condense the air in it by muscular contraction; and it is possible, that at great ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Merrihew with his cheery laugh, Kitty with her bright eyes, and O'Mally with his harmless drolleries. And no letter. It would not be true to say that he waited patiently, that he was resigned; he waited because he must wait. There had been a great shock, and she required time to recover her poise. Was there a woman in all the world like her? No. She was well worth waiting for. And so he would wait. She was free now; but would that really matter? There was no barrier; but could she love him? And might not her letter, when it did come, be ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... time had been lost that Joan was not at Blois till the middle of April. She entered the town on horseback; her head was uncovered. All men admired her skillful riding and the poise of her lance. Joan carried all before her now; she brought spirit to the troops; the armor laid down was buckled on afresh when she appeared; the hearts of the people were lifted up—they would have died for her. Charles, who had ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast-head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, 'T will be as a friendly hand Stretched out from his native land, Filling his heart ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... The poise of the head and shoulders, the sweep of the arms, and the undulations of the figure seem to take on an added charm from what might be called the "graceful crudity" of her stroke. I do not know why this is so, but it ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... no common, stupid, bumpkin-looking person. Belonging to the genus Yankee, he had yet a few peculiar traits of his own. He had a smallish, bullet-shaped head, set, with dignified poise, on a pair of wide, flat shoulders. His chest was broad and swelling, his limbs straight, muscular, and strong. His eyes were large, round, and blue. When his mind was in a state of repose and his countenance ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... at me from his poise on his trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed hill-billies from the back country—the sort which is so ignorant as to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... similarly situated though they were, they shook their heads gravely and even feared for his reason. For how could that be a remedy which merely sharpened and intensified the evil? It seemed to him, on the other hand, that their moral distress was so acute because the Jew of to-day had lost the poise which was his father's very being. They ridiculed him for this when his back was turned—many even laughed openly in his face; yet he did not allow himself to be misled by the banalities of these people whose acuteness ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... seemed, not over fourteen at the outside, and with a figure that was all flatness and unlovely angles. Certainly an exceedingly ugly duckling, yet there was promise of future swanship in the clean curves of her neck and in the firm poise of the small head. Moreover, her coloring was good, a clear brown through which a scarlet flush, born of the excitement of the moment, glowed intermittently, like the flashing of distant signal-flags. And in her eyes there ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... enthused the small band of whites who were redeeming a people from their prehistoric lethargy. He was fit to lead; the sweep of line from temple through jaw bespoke an uncompromising force of character, but was gentled by the deep cleft of chin: something in the poise of head gave him the manner best described as aristocratic but it was toned down by the mischievous gleam which flickered, often without obvious reason, in the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... striking paragraph Professor James has shown the reason why poise and efficiency of mind are incompatible with ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Queen Victoria. She is also a descendant of the Romanoffs, for one of her grandfathers was Alexander III of Russia. In her manner she is more simple and democratic than many American women that I know, her poise and simplicity being in striking contrast to the manners of two of my countrywomen who had spent the night preceding our arrival at the castle and who were manifestly much impressed by this contact with the Lord's Anointed. When luncheon was announced her second ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the events of the last few hours he was enough the soldier and the man of the world to face possible troubles without the loss of appetite, sleep, or nerve. He had cultivated a habit of deliberation which saved his digestion and preserved his mental poise; and he had a faculty for doing the right thing at the right time. From his stand-point, his late adventure in the Cafe Voisin was the right thing, serious as the results might have been or might yet be. He now promptly met the French officer's exuberance of spirits with a hearty gaiety, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... always wear a hat in summer," and Dolly tossed back her golden curls and looked at the man steadily. Her sleep had refreshed her somewhat, and she had recovered her poise. Her determination was still unshaken and she had every intention of going ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... reason was, however, scanty and confused. She averted her glance from her niece's face, and even at noontime when the girl appeared bearing a marvelously baked and yet more marvelously decorated masterpiece of culinary art, she had not regained sufficient poise to partake of the delicacy in any mood save that of furtive ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. It is so still and transcendent, the cypress trees poise like flames of forgotten darkness, that should have been blown out at the end of the summer. For as we have candles to light the darkness of night, so the cypresses are candles to keep the darkness aflame in the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the stranger, who had missed no word, leaned quickly forward, the firelight striking his firm face. With the poise of conscious power he said ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... hooligan brought into Court that, given a real chance, he might have been a better judge than the man who sends him to gaol. The Tory's job is to restore the balance of things. It isn't only to maintain the level, but to raise it and to keep on raising it.... I believe in the State of Poise, of equitable adjustment, in which every man will be able to move easily to his proper place.... There are so many obstacles now in the way of man finding his place that, even if he has the strength to get over them, he probably won't have the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... of the day, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. From the purely literary point of view the Peoria Speech is superior to the better-known debates of four years later. While it lacks the finish and poise of the two Inaugurals it is far more imaginative than the Debates. One of its most striking features is the comparatively large number of quotations, both from the Bible and from profane writings. Although ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... massive tail. Seen running on the snow at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both his pride and the traditions of his ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... condition, I put aside thought of any present formulation of a future. I would rest, recover poise, and win back that optimism that belongs with health and youth. This was wisdom; I was jaded beyond belief; and fatigue means dejection, and dejection spells pessimism, and pessimism is never sagacious nor excellent in any of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... took an optimist view of her chances. Ann Veronica listened thoughtfully, with her eyes on the turf, and now and then she asked a question or looked up to discuss a point. In the meanwhile, as he talked, he scrutinized her face, ran his eyes over her careless, gracious poise, wondered hard about her. He described her privately to himself as a splendid girl. It was clear she wanted to get away from home, that she was impatient to get away from home. Why? While the front of his mind ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... sinking toward the hills across the bay softened the brown of her skin and, as I observed by watching her closely, served partially to conceal the nervousness which was wholly unnatural in a girl of such poise. When she smiled there was a false note in it; it was forced and it was sufficiently evident to me that she was going through a mental hell of conflicting emotions that would have killed a woman of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise,—she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... met more men than she could even remember, but never one anything like this particular specimen. To add to her quickened interest, he was not only positively good-looking, but every line of his face, the poise of his well-proportioned, upstanding figure, the tilt of his head and the squareness of his chin, all spoke of strength; of elemental strength, and of a purposeful, resolute character. And, too, she told herself that he had ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... observant toil, the enemies' weight— Why, this hath not a finger's dignity. They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war: So that the ram, that batters down the wall, For the great swing and rudeness of his poise, They place before his hand that made the engine, Or those that with the fineness of their souls By reason guide ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... blusterous gallantries of this prosperous swain. She was very subdued in her acceptance of his heavy attentions;—"more so than I should—well, than I should have expected," as he himself observed. Really, she was too young for so much poise, too "temperamental," by every indication of her physiognomy, for such ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... would be for having committed any of the lesser sins. But what pleased me most in the paper lately received was to see how far the writer had outgrown the need of any encouragement of mine; that she had strengthened out of her tremulous questionings into a self-reliance and self-poise which I had hardly dared to anticipate for her. Some of my readers who are also writers have very probably had more numerous experiences of this kind than I can lay claim to; self-revelations from unknown and sometimes nameless friends, who write from strange corners ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nature, and had been wise and practical enough to see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask for his ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... after tome of powerful chapters, is merely persuading you that half is the whole? And if your duty as a scholar require you to peruse the book fully, instead of casting it aside, your mind at length fairly aches for the sense of poise and soundness, were it only for a single page. But no; it is always the same succession of perspicuous and vigorous sentences, all carrying flavors of important truth, and none utterly true. For the half is really half; but it simply is not the whole, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for she has lived. That supreme poise is only possible to one who knows. All the experiences and emotions of manifold existence have etched and molded that form and face until the body has become the perfect instrument ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... stock. We used to keep our coal in the bottom part of the cupboard, and when any was wanted we had to climb over the bed, fill a shovelful, and then crawl back. It was an exciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed. We would hold our breath, fix our eyes upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for the last move. The next instant we, and the coals, and the shovel, and the bed would ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... for their heirloom given— Against the freedom of all lands they wield This—Neptune's trident; that—the Thund'rer's levin. Gold to their scales each region must afford; And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale, The Frank casts in the iron of his sword, To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam Outstretch'd for prey—the Briton spreads his reign; And, as the Ocean were his household home, Locks up the chambers of the liberal main. Where on the Pole scarce gleams ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... with his bailiff and the peasants restored Crocker's poise. He looked for the hundredth time over into Emma's valley and divined her attitude. Dreading an interview, she had left the way open to parley. She virtually pleaded for a delay. It was a new and, in a way, delightful ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... force out of her superior refuge, and show up to her own self as just a common sinner receiving common forgiveness. But there was something about Ellen which made this impossible—something about her manner, with its cold poise, something about her face, which had indefinitely changed—it looked paler, wider, and there were secrets at the corners ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... (thus he pleasantly reasoned,) and a fellow may as well be ten times a sinner: a bad job anyhow. If in his moments of reflection—these being not yet wholly crowded out from his life—there comes a shadowy hope of better things, of some moral poise that should be in keeping with the tenderer recollections of his boyhood,—all this can never come, (he bethinks himself, in view of his old teaching,) except on the heel of some terrible conviction of sin; and the conviction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... discouragement of failure may have more serious results. The mere fact of class grouping involves a natural competition, healthful and beneficial and wisely preparatory for future living. More emphasis than this upon rivalry may produce feverish and unhealthful conditions, far removed from the mental poise we desire for our girls. The school can give the girl few things finer than the ability to attack work quietly and yet with determination and a sense of power to meet and ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... strangely akin to awe. Its indifference to human kind, its serene superiority to the obvious, struck him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so inaccessible seemed the secret purposes of its real life, so alien to the blundering honesty of other animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into his mind the opium-eater's words that "no dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious"; and he became suddenly aware that the presence of the dog in this foggy, haunted room on the top of Putney Hill ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... his professorship in Moscow, he composed a Concert Overture in C minor. To his surprise and disappointment, Rubinstein disapproved of the work in every way. This was a shock, after the lack of encouragement in St. Petersburg. But he recovered his poise, though he made up his mind to try his next work in St. Petersburg instead of Moscow. He called the new piece a Symphonic Poem, "Winter Daydreams," but it is now known as the First Symphony, Op. 13. About the end of 1866, he started out ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... her child, having all of Mr. Volrees' features. There were his dark chestnut hair, his large dark eyes, his nose, his lips, his poise and a dark brown stain beneath the left ear which had been a recurrence in the Volrees family for generations. The public was mystified as it was commonly understood that the marital relations had extended no farther than the marriage ceremony. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... if Hedda Gabler had hesitated and her father's pistol hadn't been hard by, she would have recovered her poise and deceived her husband. I believe that if Emma Bovary had escaped that snag of debt she would have continued to fool Charles. And I believe Mildred Lawson married at last and fooled herself into ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the individual, death the restoration of the individual to the whole. This doubt as to a personal future life will unquestionably increase. Let traditional teachers beware how they venture to shift the moral law from its immutable basis in the will of God to a precarious poise on the selfish hope and fear of man. The sole safety, the ultimate desideratum, is perception of law with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and Dane matched his pace. They might not possess a leather-lunged herald to clear their road, but they gave every indication of having the right to occupy as much of it as they wished. And that unruffled poise had its affect upon those behind. The pound of feet slowed to a walk, a walk which would keep a careful distance behind the two Terrans. It had worked—the Salariki—or these Salariki—were accepting them at their own valuation—a good omen for the day's business. Dane's spirits rose, ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Oh, how do you do!" And Dorothy greeted Bartley with considerable poise for a young woman who was as interested in the Easterner as ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... such music as, I deem, In God's chief court of joys, Had stayed the flow of the crystal stream And made souls in mid-flight poise; They sang of Glory to Him most High, Of Peace on Earth abidingly, And of all delights the which, men dream, Nor sin nor ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... returned the vender; and, having carefully packed the fifty small packets in the shallow basket, he helped her to poise it on her head, as he had long since taught her his own countrywomen did. This was a fine thing for the growing child and gave her a firm erectness not common to young wage-earners. She was very proud of this accomplishment, as was her teacher, Antonio, and had more than ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... rarely thrown from a mental balance, but this was one of the exceptions to a rule of conduct where poise was essential. His eyes half-closed in their clash with the coldly antagonistic orbs of his host. His instinctive dislike of the man flamed into open anger and he controlled himself with ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... families. Where formerly it had seemed an awesome miracle, like chemistry or poetry, to "close a deal" and bring thousands of dollars into the office, now Una found it quite normal. Responsibility gave her more poise and willingness to take initiative. Her salary was raised to thirty dollars a week. She banked two hundred dollars of commissions, and bought a Japanese-blue silk negligee, a wrist-watch, and the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... applying it to your daily life, you can at once set to work to acquire mental poise and practical self-mastery, the essence of ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... aside with a curved hand and gracefully separated fingers; it was a staccato movement and her body followed it after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward, eyes inquiring and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little stride and then crossed it quickly, the train ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... for a poise which he could not quite recapture. "Then will you be good enough to convey my gratitude to Mr. Higginson and say that I hope to have the opportunity of thanking him ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... all this world of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things, by cleaving unto Thee, whom all things serve, though he know not even the circles of the Great Bear, yet is it folly to doubt but he is in a better state than one who can measure the heavens, and number the stars, and poise the elements, yet neglecteth Thee who hast made all things in ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... vast and partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of Education leaps to the lips of all; such human training as will best use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing; such training as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil, and the mounting ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... drawbacks, though they are such as time is almost sure to diminish or eradicate. Notably in his earlier years he lacked judgment, the power of balancing considerations and arriving at conclusions from them which men more gifted with poise would endorse as logical and inevitable. He does not, like spare Cassius, see quite through the deeds of men, as his friendship for Count Phili Eulenburg and the malodorous "Camarilla" go to show, and his choice of Imperial Chancellors, his grand viziers, has not in every ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... frequently urged on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. I urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. And I urge it also on the ground of spirituality, for a salient characteristic of spirituality is calmness, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... beautiful women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... His speech, indeed, showed lack of sensibility, yet it could hardly be blamed, since only through acceptation of realities might any hopeful action be taken. But the harm was done and the delicate poise of the situation between Abel's parents upset. Sabina said no more, and in the momentary silence that followed she rose ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... than McVeigh's. He was leaving West Point as the young Southerner entered—a man of thirty years, possibly—five of them, the hard years of the frontier range. A smile lit up his face, changing it wonderfully. His manner was neither diffident nor overconfident—there was a certain admirable poise to it. His cool, irritating attitude towards the zealous Masterson had been drawn out by the innate antagonism of the two natures, but with McVeigh only the cordial side was appealed to, and he responded ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... friends, Emerson Mead was Texan born and bred; but a New England strain in his blood, with its potent strength and sanity, had given him such poise and force of character as had made him the leader of the three through their long and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... the evening. Tediously the moments passed; but a detective on duty, or on fancied duty, succumbs to no weariness. I had a woman before me worth studying and the time could not be thrown away. I learned to know her beauty; the poise of her head, the flush of her cheek, the curl of her lip, the glance—yes, the glance of her eye, though that was more difficult to understand, for she had a way of drooping her lids at times that, while exceedingly effective upon the poor wretch toward ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... quite understand her. While she had been cordial enough, yet there was an underlying suggestion of reserve, not at all apparent and yet unmistakably felt. It was, he felt, as though in her life and training and experience, she had acquired a poise, a knowledge of at least certain parts of the world and its affairs, which gave her confidence, made her at home, and taught her how to deal with situations which other girls less broadly endowed would have found over-powering, or, at ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... wildly flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal in such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then dropped over sheer—as if ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... early in the day she saw the father hurrying up the oleander avenue. The wind tossed his gown, and blew his hat backward and sideways, and compelled him to make undignified haste. And such little things affect the mental poise and mood! The Senora smiled at the funny figure he made; and with the smile came a feeling of resistance to his tyranny, and a stubborn determination to defend ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... saints of God! Mora! She, herself. Never could he fail to recognize her carriage, the regal poise of her head. However veiled, however shrouded, he could not be mistaken. It was Mora; and that she should be walking in this central position meant that she might with comparative safety, step ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... decision she tumbled off the gate, raced across the orchard and, having paused a moment to regain breath and poise, appeared casually at the office door. The office looked cool and empty; Bubble was not upon his official stool. Perhaps, after all, he had not heard the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come by ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Applerod, his poise nearly recovered, bounded into the office where Johnson sat stolidly working away, his sense of personal contentedness enhanced by the presence of Biff Bates, who sat idly upon the flat-top desk, dangling his legs ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Brazenly she engaged in light conversation across the net with no other than Thomas Hollins, Junior. She did not look up as the car passed the court, though he knew that she knew. Something in the poise of her ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... him mutinously, sweeping towards the orange with head thrown back over her left shoulder. Momentarily the poise of her head recalled the attitude of the portrait of Lady Hammerton, beckoning her unseen companions to that far-off mysterious mountain country, where the torrents shine so whitely through the mist and the red line of sunset speaks of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... look on one side, for the purpose of seeing what she is wearing; is more of a conversationalist than a speaker; likes chit- chat; would be at home in a conversazione or al fresco tea party, where the attendants walk about, gossip merrily, and, whilst holding a tea cup in one hand, poise with two fingers a piece of delicately- buttered toast in the other—a continental style quite aesthetic and refined in comparison with our feeding, and gormandising, and sweating exhibitions. Mr. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... abused the older Adamses for want of judgment. They abused Charles Francis for his judgment. Naturally they never attempted to assign values to either; that was the children's affair; but the traits were real. Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will have left ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... larger; forty feet long, seven broad, and three deep. To transport these enormous masses of stone from their quarry, which is several miles distant, with a deep valley and river intervening, would trouble the modern engineer; but to poise and place them on the top of the columns, seventy feet from the ground, with our mechanical means, were indeed a great feat. The columns were not of single pieces, but composed of several, and they ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... moaning, as of low waves on the beach; the other wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves. The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly ascending, and caught a dim ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... esconced in the little boat-shaped car under the forward part of the frame. The four-winged craft, pointed somewhat across the wind, went skimming over the waveless, then automatically headed into the wind, rose in level poise, soared gracefully for 150 feet, and landed softly on the water near the shore. Mr Curtiss asserted that he could have flown farther, but, being unused to the machine, imagined that the left wings had more ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... value to us, if it did not prove to us the source of disease, for when we look scientifically and psychologically at disease, we must see that it is simply disassociation between the psychic and the physical selves, and comes as the natural loss of poise, ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... child grows older he craves true stories. "Mother, did it really happen?" "Father, was that make-believe or real?" These questions are but the sign of mental and spiritual growing pains. If the child is wisely aided, that poise which is so envied by the self-conscious person will be his. The chief ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... how bewitching she was! how her rose of a face glowed and dimpled! how enchanting was the velvet darkness of her eyes! how airy the poise of her little black head, with its brilliant flower tucked in at the side of the knot of curly hair! Jovita stared at her and made a queer half-internal sound of exclamation. It was not her way to express approval at all freely, and she had no opinion of people who wasted time in telling ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her naive aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,—the more so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain enigmatic,—but by no means more powerfully than the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... aware of a polite rustling of draperies, with an ensuing well-bred murmur, which at once ignored him, deprecated intrusion upon him, and asserted a common right to the prospect on which he had been dwelling alone. He looked round with an instinctive expectation of style and poise, in which he was not disappointed. The lady, with a graceful lift of the head and a very erect carriage, almost Bernhardtesque in the backward fling of her shoulders and the strict compression of her elbows to her side, was pointing out the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... ordinary man, who had a place in the Cabinet as a reward for political deeds done, and to be done. He represented a State machine, nothing more. Quality, temperament, fitness, poise had nothing to do with his selection. His wife was his equivalent, though, superficially, she appeared to better advantage, thanks to a Parisian modiste with exquisite taste, and her fond ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... her mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled, to her own ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... laughed and reached my hand to the dagger. A sadistic gesture, for I desired to give my senses a taste of its reality and thus enjoy their squirming. Marvelous dagger! The point of it was sharp. Mallare can invent daggers, beautiful daggers that poise melodramatically over his heart, that move slowly in quest of his life's blood! S'death, a ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... tried all its tricks. It went up into the air and came down with all four legs stiff as iron posts. It shot forward in a series of quick sharp bucks. It flung itself against the wall of the arena to crush the leg of this rider who held the saddle with such perfect poise. But Jack Kilmeny was equal to the occasion and more. When the brute went over backward, in a somersault, he was out of the saddle and in again before the vicious outlaw had staggered to its feet. Even the frontier West had never seen a more daring ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... literary temperament, when poetry seems the most natural and desirable mode of self-expression. This impulse should be freely yielded to. The poetry need not be very good; I have no illusions, for instance, as to the merits of my own; but it gives one a copious vocabulary, it teaches the art of poise, of cadence, of choice in words, of picturesqueness. There comes a time when one abandons poetry, or is abandoned by it; and, after all, prose is the most real and natural form of expression. There arrives, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this with simplicity. My voice had destroyed her poise—the suicide poise of her mind. Every act of ours, the most criminal, the most mad, presupposes a balance of thought, feeling and will, like a correct attitude for an effective stroke in a game. And I had destroyed it. She was no longer ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... one-eightieth of the total load on the main cylinder. This reduction is effected through the medium of a piston and a diaphragm. The main cylinder has a diameter of 50 in., and the smaller one, a diameter of 5-9/16 in. The weighing beam is balanced by an automatically-operated poise weight, and is provided with a device for applying successive counterweights of 1,000,000 lb. each. Each division on the dial is equivalent to a 100-lb. load, and smaller subdivisions are made possible by ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... Padrone. The wind upon our quarter lies, And on before the freshening gale, That fills the snow-white lateen sail, Swiftly our light felucca flies. Around, the billows burst and foam; They lift her o'er the sunken rock, They beat her sides with many a shock, And then upon their flowing dome They poise her, like a weathercock! Between us and the western skies The hills of Corsica arise; Eastward, in yonder long, blue line, The summits of the Apennine, And southward, and still far away, Salerno, on its sunny bay. You cannot ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... when he was mounted so disturbed the fine mental poise of the Happy Family that they left him jingling richly off by himself, while they rode closely ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... are tall, vigorous, and superbly rounded. The men, often more than six feet or even six and a half feet in height, have a mien of natural majesty and bodily grace. They convey an impression of giant strength, reserve power, and unconscious poise beyond that made by any other race. American Indians I have known had much of this quality when resident far from towns, but they lacked the curving, padded muscles, the ease of movement, and, most of all, the smiling faces, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... sent down an order for the two big states to leave the matter of Uruguayan politics to his impartial adjustment. At both Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires a roar of laughter went up from the press at this notion of an obscure chieftain of a band of Indians in the tropical backwoods daring to poise the equilibrium of much more than half a continent on his insolent hand. But the merriment soon subsided, as Brazilians and Argentinos came to realize what their peril might be from a huge army of skilled and valiant soldiers, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... touch the Shining One, now motionless—and never was the thing more horrible than then, with the purely human suggestion of surprise plain in its poise—Larry had struck him aside. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman—a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of disturbance, which was the Broadway ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... contact with stern reality in order to offset the subtle drift toward a remote, theoretical, or sentimental world. In this respect commercial life is more favorable to naturalness and virility; while a fair amount of manual labor is conducive to sanity, mental poise, and sound judgment as to the facts of life. The minister must have an elemental knowledge of and respect for objective reality; and he must ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
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