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verb
Cleft  v.  Imp. & p. p. from Cleave.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books



... long period we paddle by the south bank, and pass a vertical cleft-like valley, the upper end of which seems blocked by a finely shaped mountain, almost as conical as Kangwe. The name of this mountain is Njoko, and the name of the clear small river, that apparently monopolises ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... snow, he saw his comrade do a strange and unaccountable thing. He began to eat things that he had never touched as food before. He lapped up soft pine needles, and swallowed them. He ate of the dry, pulpy substance of rotted logs. And then he went into a great cleft broken into the heart of a rocky ridge, and found at last the thing for which he had been seeking. It was a cavern—deep, and dark, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... a cleft stick"; if she said that Leonard was nothing to her, it might possibly be better for him, though it was doubtful whether Olfan would believe her. If, on the other hand, she said that he was her husband, it might be ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... they came to the point Dick had meant. It looked bad enough, in all conscience, but from the rocks there jutted halfway down a dwarf oak that had found rooting in a narrow cleft. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... sword; but if it is the point of the sword then it ought to be in front of the blade. That, too, would direct the location of the doctors and hospitals. It would also affect the character of the building unless the missionary sword is to become an immovable object, which having once cleft a rock remains fast in the breach until a God-sent hero, like King Arthur, appears to pull it out and set it to work again. We cannot state all the different aims. They are not simple and formulated; they are complex and confused. Very often the establishment of a medical mission turns upon ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... newly burgeoned, link Their hands to join the dance of Spring, Green lizards glisten from cleft and chink, And almond blossoms rosy pink Cluster and perch, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... shouts of maddened combatants, and the yells of stricken men, the fight goes on. They use no shields. Believing that the gods direct their weapons, they make no attempt to guard, but lay about them with fury. Blows do not often require to be repeated. Skulls are cleft or battered in; and hearts are pierced with one blow or thrust, and, when noted warriors fall on either side, shouts of triumph echo along the line and strike a ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee; By the water and the blood, From thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... was carved in the solid land by the force of pre-Adamite glaciers, or whether it is a Titanic cleft formed by the breaking off of Greenland from Grant Land, is a question still undetermined by geologists; but for difficulty and danger there is no place to compare with it in ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... that the effect is non-existent previously to its actual origination, moreover, leads to the conclusion that the activity of the causal agent has no object; for what does not exist cannot possibly be an object; not any more than the ether can be cleft by swords and other weapons for striking or cutting. The object can certainly not be the inherent cause; for that would lead to the erroneous conclusion that from the activity of the causal agent, which has for its object the inherent cause, there results something else (viz. the effect). And ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... himself, but took his sabre in both hands and rushed furiously on his antagonist, resolved to kill him, if he had to lose his own life. Philippe received a sabre-cut which slashed open his forehead and a part of his face, but he cleft Max's head obliquely by the terrible sweep of a "moulinet," made to break the force of the annihilating stroke Max aimed at him. These two savage blows ended the combat, at the ninth minute. Fario ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... the horse around to the cleft where he had left his mate. Miss Armitage followed. She regarded his broad back, pursing her lips a little and ruffling her brows. "It is only a bruise," he said presently over his shoulder, "and it served me right. Lighter warned me of ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... furthest gulf of the Ionian sea. For a certain island is enclosed by Ister, by name Peuee, three-cornered, its base stretching along the coast, and with a sharp angle towards the river; and round it the outfall is cleft in two. One mouth they call the mouth of Narex, and the other, at the lower end, the Fair mouth. And through this Apsyrtus and his Colchians rushed with all speed; but the heroes went upwards far ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... ascended, Rip every now and then heard long, rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thundershowers which often take place in mountain heights, he ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... all-protecting hand Led us, Thy people, to this chosen land, Through the cleft waters of a distant sea, That we might rear a temple here to Thee; Thou, who on Zion hadst Thy favorite shrine, And in Thy majesty and power divine Wast daily by our suppliant race adored As sovereign Jehovah, peerless Lord; Why hast Thou cast us off to toil and die In foreign countries' ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... glared with irrepressible fury as they fell on him'. An Indian warrior approached him from behind, while he was unguardedly pursuing his work of mercy; and Henrich saw the savage preparing to strike a deadly blow, that would have cleft the head of the stranger in twain. Could he stand and see the noble Briton thus fall by a secret and unresisted attack? No! every feeling and every instinct of his heart forbad it! One instant his ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... rocky cleft above the river, not easily accessible.... Gral found it one day because he dearly loved to climb, though all to be found here were the lizards, stringy and without substance. But this day he found more. It was warmth, a warmth immeasurably more satisfying ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... The newness of the precept is realised, if we think for a moment of the new phenomenon which obedience to it produced. When the words were spoken, the then-known civilised Western world was cleft by great, deep gulfs of separation, like the crevasses in a glacier, by the side of which our racial animosities and class differences are merely superficial cracks on the surface. Language, religion, national animosities, differences of condition, and saddest of all, difference of sex, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood From Thy riven side which flowed Be of sin the double cure, Save me ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... state became one of exaltation. He did not know to what he was going, but he knew that life lay at the end of the stag's trail, and he was willing to follow as long as need be. Nor did he ever know how long he followed, but he did notice that the cleft was growing deeper and narrower. After an unknown time he emerged into a tiny valley that was more like a well, it was set so deep in the hills and its slopes were so steep, the cliffs in truth ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... consists of a single cleft extending across the pith it is termed simple heart shake. Shake of this character in straight-grained trees affects only one or two central boards when cut into lumber, but in spiral-grained timber the damage is much ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... the Age of this our Game, it is known by several Marks, amongst which this is the most authentick: That if you take his view in the ground, and perceive he has a large Foot, a thick Heel, a deep Print, open Cleft and long space, then be assured he is Old; as the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... grace. Her skin was of such white loveliness that a contemporary compares it with the lily. Like Athene, she was gray-eyed, and, like Athene, noble-featured, the oval of her face squaring a little at the chin, in which there was a cleft. Calm was her habit, calm her slow-moving eyes, calm and deliberate her movements, and calm the mind reflected in ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... at my window, leaving bed, By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft, On those 'brave boys (Ah War! thy theft); Some marching feet Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft; Wakeful I mused, while in the street Far footfalls died away till none ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... out your store Give an alms to one that's poor, That your mickle may have more. Black I'm grown for want of meat, Give me then an ant to eat, Or the cleft ear of a mouse Over-sour'd in drink of souce; Or, sweet lady, reach to me The abdomen of a bee; Or commend a cricket's hip, Or his huckson, to my scrip; Give for bread, a little bit Of a pease that 'gins to chit, And my full thanks take for it. Flour of fuz-balls, that's too ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... she threatened to leave him, and left, "How could you deceive me, as you have deceft?" And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft!" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various

... been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox; but the most revolting thing in him was a very pronounced harelip which had never been operated on, so that his upper lip, cleft, went up in an angle to his nose, and in the opening was a huge yellow fang. It was horrible. He came in with the end of a cigarette at the corner of his mouth, and this, I do not know why, gave him a ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... fine temper made, Nor Corban's helmet, forged by magic art, Could save their owners, for Lord Dudon's blade Cleft Corban's head, and pierced Algazar's heart, And their proud souls down to the infernal shade, From Amurath and Mahomet depart; Not strong Argantes thought his life was sure, He could not safely ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... murmurs to him, day by day the vine-leaves give their shade; and, daily by the horizon's breadth so much nearer Heaven, the fore-running sun goes down for him beyond the glowing water;—there, where now the peasant woman trots homewards between her panniers, and the saw rests in the half-cleft wood, and the village spire rises grey against the farthest ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... a sound... as the riving of wood... a sound as of thunder coming up from the ground. A cleft will run like a mouse across the floor. There will be a red light, and then no light at all, and in the darkness Thek ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany

... by noon we were steaming up the Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore. The day was soft and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges, deeply cleft, rise from the water's edge, gray, deep-roofed villages cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height among dark masses ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... the body of his father with it where he lay in the bottom of the boat. Then with his numbed hands he took the oars, and pulled out into the more open sea toward Criccaeth. He skirted along the coast till he found a shadowed cleft in the dark rocks; to that point he rowed, and anchored his boat close in land. Then he mounted, staggering, half longing to fall into the dark waters and be at rest—half instinctively finding out the surest foot-rests on that precipitous ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Fleda, whose amusement seemed to be increased by the gentleman's want of understanding,—"and neither did we till we came up to him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen the supreme indignation with ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... day we followed the coast of Malekula southward. There are immense coral reefs attached to the coast, so that often the line of breakers is one or two miles away from the shore. These reefs are a solid mass of cleft coral stones constantly growing seaward. Their surface is more or less flat, about on a level with the water at low tide, so that it then lies nearly dry, and one can walk on the reefs, jumping over the wide crevices in which the sea roars ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... you quoted De Guerin, and perhaps you may recollect one of his declarations, 'I have no shelter but resignation, and I run to it in great haste, all trembling and distracted. Resignation! It is the burrow hollowed in the cleft of some rock, which gives shelter to the flying and long-hunted prey.' You will never find peace for your heart and soul until you bring your will into complete subjection to that of Him 'who doeth all things well.' Defiance ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... his seven years' wanderings in fairyland, that speed like a day upon earth, he wakens up as from a dream, and again he is laid on Huntlie bank, in sight of the cleft Eildon. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... themselves received many and mysterious reinforcements, which seemed to spring up like magic from the bosom of the earth—so suddenly and unexpectedly had they emerged from copse and cleft in that mountainous and entangled neighbourhood—were not unprepared for a fresh foe. At the command of the vigilant Muza, they drew off, fell into order, and, seizing, while yet there was time, the vantage-ground which inequalities of the soil and the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... from him, Charlie," said Hans, as they again urged their horses onward, "and in the dark we cannot take aim at him. Our only chance is to reach yonder pass or glen that looms like a black cleft in the hills, and clamber up some precipice, whence we can pelt ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... his horse, galloped round to the lowest part of the barricade, leaped over it, and, drawing his sword, charged the leader of the rebels like a thunderbolt. The man faced him, and raised his sword, to defend himself, but Will's first cut was so powerful that it broke down his guard, cleft his helmet, and tumbled him out of ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... their only salvation lay in going on. At night they rolled themselves up in their blankets and tried to encourage one another. They travelled fourteen miles between granite walls from two thousand to three thousand feet high; and for sixteen days they were almost without food. Then they came to a cleft in their prison walls which seemed to ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... without the organized antagonism between the general idea and the individual existence of man. Consequently a revolution of political souls organizes a ruling clique in society, in accordance with the limited and doubly-cleft nature of these souls, at the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... me most. There was no denying it—shorn of his overgrowth of whiskers and put into a correct setting, William was handsome; even more than that, he was interesting. He had that firm, chiselled kind of mouth which women and artists find so attractive, and a delightful cleft in his chin; his hair, which had hitherto always struck me as being so unkempt and disordered, now that it was brushed smoothly back from his brow and curled into the nape of his neck gave him a distinguished appearance. I directed one long look at ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... and gave up the ghost, the event was marked by notifications such as never announced the demise of any of this world's great potentates, for "the veil of the temple was rent in twain," and the rocks were cleft asunder, and the graves were opened, and the earth trembled. [29:1] "The centurion and they that were with him," in attendance at the execution, seem to have been Gentiles; and though, doubtless, they had heard that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews, they perhaps very ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon, and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand completely, and, as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... great river may be traced back until its fountainhead is found in a thread of water streaming from a cleft in the rocks, so a great national movement may sometimes be followed until its starting-point is found in the cell of a monk or the studies of a pair of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... some nice hotels and evidences of fashionable country places. It was getting dark as they came off the mouth of the Saguenay River, and the high rocks on either side as they moved on gave one the impression of great depth. This impression was correct, as the river flows along a cleft in the strata rather than along any bed that has been made by the action of the waters themselves. They moved into a wharf that merely jutted out from the rocky shore. Everything was confusion, for there did not seem to be any one but Frenchmen on the wharf. The boys ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... to the Bay of Santiago appears, from a distance of three or four miles, to be a narrow cleft or notch in the high, flat-topped rampart which forms the coast-line. On account of an eastward curve in the channel just beyond Morro Castle, one cannot look through the notch into the upper harbor. At ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... Him; Abe tried to believe that with all his heart, and as he struggled against his doubts and fears, faith grew stronger and bolder, then in a moment the snare broke, the dark cloud over his soul burst, and out from the cleft there came a voice, which thrilled his whole being. "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." "Glory! Glory!! Glory!!!" burst from his enraptured lips; his "light was come,"—what a light! a soul full, full of the light of ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... lights or with shadows the light on the face of it seen. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds pass through, And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of the sharp steep cleft, The portal that opens with imminent rampires to right and to left, Sublime as the sky they darken and strange as a spell-struck dream, On the world unconfined of the mountains, the reign of the sea supreme, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... spirit while they fill the mind, Unnumbered branches waving in the blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. Nor less composure waits upon the roar Of distant floods, or on the softer voice Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip Through the cleft rock, and, chiming as they fall Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length In matted grass, that with a livelier green Betrays the secret of their silent course. Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, But animated Nature sweeter still To soothe and satisfy the human ear. Ten thousand warblers ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... in a deep cleft or gorge in the mountains, the scenery of which is of the wildest and ruggedest character. For a mile or more there is barely room for the road and the creek at the bottom of the chasm. On either hand the mountains, interrupted by shelving, overhanging ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... landladies, most of whom, like Mrs. McGinniss's bell, were disordered physically or mentally. Heartsick, I decided by Saturday to take blind chances with the janitress of a Fourteenth-street lodging-house. She had a cleft palate, and all I could understand of her mutilated talk was that the room would be one dollar a week with "light-housekeeping" privileges thrown in. I had either to pay Miss Jamison another five dollars that next morning ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... of the toe-toe, the New Zealand cousin of the Pampas grass? Add to this, that more often than the passenger can count as he goes along the river, either some little rill comes dripping over the cliff, scattering the sparkling drops on moss and foliage, or the cliffs are cleft and, as from a rent in the earth, some tributary stream gushes out of a dark, leafy tunnel of branches. Sometimes, too, the cliffs are not cleft, but the stream rushes from their summit, a white waterfall ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... also called Toft (Scand.), whence Langtoft, and the name was used later for a homestead. From Cliff we have Clift, [Footnote: This may also be from Mid. Eng, clift, a cleft.] with excrescent -t, and the cognates Cleeve and Clive. Compounds of Cliff are Radcliffe (red), Sutcliffe (south), Wyclif (white). The c- sometimes disappears in compounds, e.g. Cunliffe, earlier Cunde-clive, and Topliff; but Ayliffe is for AElfgifu or AEthelgifu and Goodliffe from Godleof ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... before through this introspection and merging of material in spiritual, this giving spirit the exclusive sway; and Christianity, while it broke down the barriers of nation, race, and position, and widened the cleft between Nature and spirit, discovered at the same time the worth ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... seemed to say: "but—soothing thought! "Deep in the hearts of mortals He hath named "To do His bidding, will I thrust my darts, "And through their wounds, as His ambassadors, "The spirit bruise of Him who sent them—thus!" And then again, as though his breaking heart Were cleft with red-hot blade, the voice of Saul Is heard in mortal anguish breathing out The soul-subduing tones—"What shall I do?" Dead silence intervenes; and then again The spirit of the Prophet slowly speaks: "To-morrow thou and thine," it faintly said, "Shalt be with me; and Israel's mighty ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... mountains, in that section where head the Roaring Fork, One Horse Creek, and the Del Oro, is a vast tract of wild, untraveled country known vaguely as the Bad Lands. Somewhere among the thousand and one canyons which cleft the huddled hills lay hidden Dead Man's Cache. Here Black MacQueen retreated on those rare occasions when the pursuit grew hot on his tracks. So the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... guard me. And that was Rorik's last stroke, for even as I had parried Thormod's stroke in sport, the man's wrist lit on the keen edge of my axe, so that hand and weapon flew far beyond me with the force of his stroke. Then flashed my axe, and Rorik fell with his helm cleft in twain. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... staff, with a spear in one end, pursuing closely after them, thrust it at Mrs. Freeman with such violence that, entering her back just below the shoulder, it came out at her left breast. With his tomahawk, he cleft the upper part of her head, and carried it ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... abode of love unshaken by perils, for of the man who had been its head she found such a portrait as love alone could have painted. He was described as to the modelling of his features, the light and expression of his eyes; the way his dark hair fell over his "broade browe"—even the cleft of his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as I sat still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun, that dowager—there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae force him oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark, she shot at me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate wretch?' 'Aye,' says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey fush, an' of coorse ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey, her arm fell over ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... the dead leaves of the ivy, stood one from whose face strength, and beauty, and guile that the guileless knew not, shone sunlike upon Maya; and as she faltered and paused, he spoke a welcome to her in her own language, and held toward her the clasping hand of help. A thrill of mad joy cleft the heart of the Princess, a glow of incarnate summer dyed with rose her cheek and lip, the Spark blazed through her brimming eyes, weariness vanished. "Home! home!" sung her rapt lips; and in the delirious ecstasy of the hour she pressed toward the hearth, laid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... ledge bottom and the side against the hill was also ledge. On this side, close to the bottom, I caught that peculiar movement of little particles of silvery sand, and looking more closely I could see a cleft in the rock where the water came gushing and bubbling in. Soon the entire spring became clear as crystal, and the water finding evidently its old outlet, made its way down the little hillside. I was soon able to trace and to uncover its course as ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... d'Ochtes led his cousin to a higher point of the hill overlooking the chateau where he could show her the whole estate of Roche Craie. It was a beautiful sight. The gentle hills sloped to the Seine with here and there a sharp cleft showing a cliff of chalk, standing out very white against the green of the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... me. A cool green leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the meat of some nameless animal—monkey I feared—which had been dried in the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the doubtful ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... down this cliff, whatever happens!" decided Gabriel. And, acting on the instant, he began swinging himself down from tree to bush, from shrub to tuft of grass, clinging wherever handhold or foothold offered, digging his stout boots into every cleft and cranny of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... anchor in smooth water, you had an opportunity of examining, with the severest scrutiny, the beautiful run of the vessel, as she sat graceful as a diver, and appeared, like that aquatic bird, ready to plunge in at a moment, and disappear under the wave cleft by her sharp forefoot, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... glass on his writing-table; and when he was waging his great public controversy with Eckius he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley,—he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... her eyes. It deepened and glowed as Emma McChesney Buck bent to her task and the great jaws of the shears opened and shut on the virgin cloth. Six pairs of eyes followed the fascinating steel before which the cloth rippled and fell away, as water is cleft by the prow of a stanch little boat. Around the curves went the shears, guided by Emma's firm white hands, snipping, slashing, doubling on itself, a very swashbuckler of ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... Giant then, To the door he stoop'd down low: It was Vidrik Verlandson Cleft off his head at ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... the sun flashing from the brown glass toggles near the white lobster-buoys; or, lifting his gaze to the horizon beyond the purple deep, he would trace the low, rolling humps of the mainland hills, the cleft range of Isle au Haut, or the heights of Mount Desert. But no studies or scenery caused him to forget his daily trip ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... My muse, retire, lest thy bright eyes be reddened by the fagot's blaze! (To a cook, showing him some loaves): You have put the cleft o' th' loaves in the wrong place; know you not that the coesura should be between the hemistiches? (To another, showing him an unfinished pasty): To this palace of paste you must add the roof. . . (To a young apprentice, who, seated on the ground, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... finishing which nature has given to the picture, is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful, as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smoothe blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. . . . . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... his protecting bowlder. No motion could be ventured without its checking bullet, yet hour after hour the besieged held their ground, and with ever-ready rifles left more than one reckless brave dead among the rocks. The longed-for night came dark and early at the bottom of that narrow cleft, while hardly so much as a faint star twinkled in the little slit of sky overhead. The cunning besiegers crept closer through the enshrouding gloom, and taunted their entrapped victims with savage cries and threats of coming torture, but no warrior among them proved sufficiently bold to rush in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... gave a loud whistle, and the whole flock started away, the liveliest always ahead, and first of all light-footed Swallow, who was to meet something unexpected to-day. She sprang down from stone to stone and across many a cleft in the rocks, but all at once she could go no farther—directly in front of her suddenly stood a chamois and gazed with curiosity into her face. This had never happened to Swallow before! She stood still, ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al

... resort, Flapping slowly from their sport With the fat Atlantic shoal, Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole— Walking there, the other day, In a bight within a bay, I espied amid the rocks, Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box, That the waves had flung and left High upon an ivied cleft. Striped it was with white and red, Satin-lined and carpeted, Hung with bells, and shaped withal Like the queer, fantastical Chinese temples you'll have seen Pictured upon white Nankin, Where, assembled ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Slovak version of this story, a murderous mother sends her son to two mountains, each of which is cleft open once in every twenty-four hours—the one opening at midday and the other at midnight; the former disclosing the Water of Life, the latter the Water of Death.[310] In a similar story from the Ukraine, mention is made of two springs of healing and life-giving ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... now to Iouenn. After swimming for some time he came upon a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, and here, though beaten upon by tempests and without any manner of shelter save that afforded by a cleft in the rock, he succeeded in living for three years upon the shell-fish which he gathered on the shores of his little domain. In that time he had grown almost like a savage. His clothes had fallen off him and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... belongings, selecting the indispensable and the more valuable; we cached the remainder in a krantz cleft. I wonder if it is still where we hid it? Then, the flood having somewhat subsided, we went westward along the river bank until we found a fordable spot. Here we crossed and, feeling much chastened, tramped off in the direction of Pilgrim's Rest. As we struggled on we tried ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... or sinful pride, Each one becomes a broken bell On which the angry fiends of hell Ring out their discord, harsh and loud, As if with demon powers endowed. Colossal once through grace they were; Colossal still, though cleft ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... on a coal-black horse, seated behind the veiled figure of a man whose face she could not see, who carried her like the wind away to the ends of the earth, and there shut her up in a mountain for ages and ages, until a bright angel cleft the rock, and, clasping her in his arms, bore her up to light and liberty in the presence of the Redeemer and of all the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... not, Teacher. No doctor believes in another doctor's Spirits, since each has his own, and there are more Spirits than there are doctors. Teacher Tombool, I greet you and tell you at once that we are at war over this matter of Spirits. This tribe, Teacher, is a cleft log, yes, it is split into two. The Chief there, Kosa, sits on one half of the log with his Christians; I sit on the other half with the rest, who are as our fathers were. So if you wish to fight I shall fight with such ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... and as Julie had said, the spring that fed the boggy spot was not far back in the grove. The water gurgled down from a cleft in a huge rock, and on either side of the small pool wood violets dipped their fragrant petals ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... 'tis easy, it should seem to guess: What by the youth was tied in this distress The end of lace that by the men was left, When nature ordered them to close the cleft: With thread he fastened it so very well, That all was flat as any nun or belle; But thread or silk, you cannot find a string To hold, what soon I fear will give a spring, And get away, in spite of all you do; Bring saints or angels such a scene ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man's stomach this hot weather. And I think this word sallet was born to do me good, for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown-bill." (2 ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... cloudless, the sun unusually warm. So warm, indeed, that long clefts, caused by the unequal expansion of the ice, appeared here and there. The man from the plane had not gone more than fifty yards when he halted sharply. With a crack like thunder, a cleft had opened at his very feet—a rift ten feet deep in places, apparently bottomless in others, and very long. Not wanting to go around it, he slid down one side and, with an ice pick, started to hack a foothold in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... passivity of regard into wild activity of passion. He could do it. That tide of crimson, a vague terror and awakening in the gray eyes, as they met his gaze on re-opening to consciousness, had shown him a tiny cleft which his hand might broaden, until it should flood their two lives ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... bright Moon her zenith gains, And, rimy without speck, extend the plains: The deepest cleft the mountain's front displays [99] Scarce hides a shadow from her searching rays; 360 From the dark-blue faint silvery threads divide The hills, while gleams below the azure tide; Time softly treads; throughout the landscape breathes A peace enlivened, not disturbed, by ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... work for 1912 in the propagation of the Persian walnut consisted in top-grafting three and four year old nursery stock by several methods, as ordinary cleft, side cleft, bark cleft, prong, whip and modified forms of these. For wrapping we tried bicycle tape, waxed cord and cloth, with wax and plasticine ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... maid of his soul, and the trouble of his bosom was great. Pleasant is the hall of my love; but the storm gathers round us, Orvina. I must go to the island of Uthal, and scatter his gathering force. But like a cleft oak of the forest, I'll quickly return to my love: When the hard wedge is drawn from its side, it returns to itself again. The daughter of Lorma was silent: she turn'd her fair face from his sight. Go to the war, son of Mora; and the strength of thy fathers go with thee. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... in the city, there rang a tremulous bell, launching its vibrations upon the infinite silence as a sinner's guilty soul might trembling stand in the presence of Almighty condemnation. The melancholy howl of a dog at first cleft through every nerve and fibre of my being, thrilling with a creeping chill of horror. So regular did it come, so unvaried, I grew to count the seconds under my breath, and to note its monotonous precision. Somehow this occupation ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... dimple—on the right side of her mouth, immediately above it,—which speaks of the most frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she talks,—winks at you, so to speak, in a manner that must be simply idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... aged Neck drew forth his harp and began to play. And as he played the wind stayed, as one who pauses to hearken with cleft lips, and the lake rose and fell gently, like the bosom of a girl moved by some plaintive song, and the sun burst forth as if to see who made such sweet music. And so through this happy change the young man got safe ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... Amelia turned her face toward the Run, and lulled by the gentle murmuring of the water, and the humming of the insects, was soon quietly asleep; Susie, with an apron full of burs, was making furniture for the play-house which they were arranging in a cleft of the rock; and Tidy, who carried the books, was busily turning over the leaves and ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... Into its socket, bound it fast with cords, And drew and spread with firmly twisted ropes The shining sails on high. The steady wind Swelled out the canvas in the midst; the ship Moved on, the dark sea roaring round her keel, As swiftly through the waves she cleft her way. ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... he girdled; Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward; Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... and smote them. And once again Slid gathered his greater waves and hurled them against the cliffs; and when the waves were scattered like those before them the feet of the cliffs were no longer standing firm, and their faces were scarred and battered. Then into every cleft that stood in the rocks Slid sent his hugest wave and others followed behind it, and Slid himself seized hold of huge rocks with his claws and tore them down and stamped them under his feet. And when the tumult was ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... an ancient iron chest, called a hatch, in which the Corporation of Yarmouth kept their charters and valuable documents. Among the contents are the tallies or cleft sticks upon which the accounts were formerly kept, the stick being notched according to the amount of money advanced, one part being given to the creditor, and the other to the debtor. The same plan is used in the present day by the hop-pickers in ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... lover Until the evening breeze blows, And the shadows disappear (at sunset), Turn, my beloved! Be thou as a young hart Upon the cleft-riven hills! ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... pass, she stood up for her... and so that's how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can.... She has a room at the Kapernaumovs' the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very poor people and all with cleft palates... yes. Then I got up ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... falls over the edge of the gulf sheer into the water, a hundred fathoms down. It was the flash that Whitefire made as it circled ere it smote that Jon saw while he waited in the dell upon the mountain side. But of the Baresark he saw nothing, for he passed down into the great fire-riven cleft and was never seen more, save once only, in a strange fashion that shall be told. This was the first man ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... so cling to thee? Thou vast, profound, primeval hiding-place Of ancient secrets,—gray and ghostly gulf Cleft in the green of this high forest land, And crowded in the dark with giant forms! Art thou a grave, a ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... usual phase figured by authors, where the plasmodiocarp is simply compressed but not extravagantly thin. Both types occur in the western mountains, forms with and without calcium, fissured by wider or narrower cleft, from the same plasmodium; forms bilabiate and forms opening at first to display an inner peridium; forms globose with narrow base, but apex cleft, and forms ellipsoidal, yet compressed, opening like the gaping of some tiniest bivalve; did not ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... so beautiful before. But it was not like this, of course, where the villas were and the roads. His eyes glanced curiously now to the right, now to the left and then in front of him into the twilight of the wood. There, where the last gold of the setting sun did not cling to the cleft bark like red blood and the light did not penetrate, there was a soft mysterious dusk, in which the mossy dark-green stems gleamed nevertheless. And there was a perfume there, so moist and cool, so pungent and fresh, that the boy drew a deep breath ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... pillow,—a very king of babies, soft and round and warm, the white lids drooped and fast closed over his dark eyes, their long fringes making a faint shadow on his fair, smooth baby cheeks, the two fingers in his sweet mouth, the round, cleft chin turned up, the firm, tiny white pillar of a ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... there meet the boat. His daughter having agreed to this proposition, he set off with the lightened pannier, and in less than half an hour we saw him standing out from shore. Miss Blunt and I did not begin our walk for a long, long time. We sat and talked beneath the trees. At our feet, a wide cleft in the hills—almost a glen—stretched down to the silent beach. Beyond lay the familiar ocean-line. But, as many philosophers have observed, there is an end to all things. At last we got up. Miss Blunt said, that, as the air was freshening, she believed she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the church, I felt my hand drawn round the arm of Richard Clyde. How he had cleft the living mass so quickly I could not tell; but he had made his way where an arrow could hardly penetrate. I looked round for Edith,—but Ernest watched over her, like an earthly providence. My backward glance to her prevented my seeing the faces of those ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... their own disadvantage. When the individuals of a herd or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... doctrine—the necessity of the free remaining in degradation, for the sake of the oppressed. Let us apply, first, the lever to ourselves; and the force that elevates us to the position of manhood's considerations and honors, will cleft the manacle of ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... foot as stealthy and soft as the furred paw of the gray cat, came the gray twilight, creeping, creeping on. The hour, when the gray owl, with a whoop, from his hole in the tree; and the gray wolf, with a howl, from his cleft in the rock, come forth in quest of their prey. And woe to the fawn! And woe to the birdling! strayed from home for the first time, should the shadows of night, that tempt the famished foe abroad, find him ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men like Denis, girls like ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... imagining; Or as a captain with his courage holds The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... Hidden in a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny cataracts, till it forms a pool there, held in by the smooth rim ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... and Madame Dor's broad back at her telegraph, floated before him to Cripple Corner. On his arrival there, Wilding was closeted with Bintrey. The cellar doors happening to be open, Vendale lighted a candle in a cleft stick, and went down for a cellarous stroll. Graceful Marguerite floated before him faithfully, but Madame Dor's ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and the plain which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wide as the Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but so swift and full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so far distant, though they were hidden. On each ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... appearing, notwithstanding, beneath the artificial thought which is written down. Sometimes there comes an abrupt and painful pause, as though somebody walking absent-mindedly along the road found themselves brought up by a yawning cleft.... ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... I scanned the pool's gleaming surface and felt the cold pricking of spray from the white water that tumbled from a cleft in the rocks above. Once more I wondered if this, by chance, might prove a sad but glorious day for a long-elusive trout. Once more I looked to the fly. Once ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... in a crevice overlooking the small lake, or pool, which on the opposite side was enclosed in a gorge, opening only by a cleft to the east. Then she unburdened herself of a wallet containing the breakfast, saying, 'When I come back we'll fall to and breakfiss.' She then, as though she were following the trail, made a circuit of the pool and disappeared through ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... usual intense, and to-day they missed the shady trees that had so well protected them the day before. A couple of hours later they turned abruptly to the left, that is to say, southwards, and the Aisne disappeared in a cleft of the hills. Winding tortuously at the feet of more or less steep slopes—for the country was quite changed—progress was not as easy as it had been. At last, close on seven o'clock, a halt ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... a little space the forest had perforce to thin because of lack of footing. The slope became almost a precipice, ending in a bold comb above which once more could be glimpsed the tops of trees. Quite ingeniously the road discovered a cleft up which it laboured mightily, to land breathless after a heart-breaking pull. Just over the top Welton drew rein to breathe his horses—and to hear what Bob had to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... and amendment of life? Behold the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. But what is the cause of all this?—For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... went out to the scene of the conflict. I had never witnessed so sad and horrible a sight. The ground in the camp was strewn with dead bodies. There was one pile of slain larger than the rest. Within it was found the hilt of the broken sword of the young hero, his helmet cleft in twain, and a corpse, covered with a hundred wounds, which those who knew him best declared was his. This seemed but a disastrous commencement of an attempt to establish liberty. Many abandoned all hope of their country's ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... only halfway to the center, and he was nearly exhausted. At a dozen different spots he thought he had found a promising cleft in the rock, a place where something might have been concealed ... but exploration of the clefts ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... scarce fifteen had numbered, nobly advancing, Entered the fray, secure in his strong arm and good Angervadil. Cleft at one blow the hideous goblin, and rescued the maiden. Viking bequeathed the good weapon to Thorstein, his son, and Thorstein, To Odin ascended, bequeathed it to Fridthjof. Whenever he drew it, Light filled the hall as ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... so close to them that they could hear them very distinctly. Cautiously the Indian watched them, and then, as arranged, he signalled to Alec, who was stretched out behind a rock that had a narrow cleft in it. This break was just large enough for a lookout, and it would also serve as a good rest for the gun. As Alec cautiously peeped through this narrow opening his heart gave a great thump, for there within fifty yards of him were the ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... symbols, not dogmatic assertions; and yet in a rude age they very easily pass into the popular mind as declaring facts literally to be believed. A Talmudic writer says, "There are in hell seven abodes, in each abode seven thousand caverns, in each cavern seven thousand clefts, in each cleft seven thousand scorpions; each scorpion has seven limbs, and on each limb are seven thousand barrels of gall. There are also in hell seven rivers of rankest poison, so deadly that if one touches it he bursts." Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, have given minute descriptions of hell and its agonies, descriptions ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... and disdainful Lombard, eyes us from afar like a couchant lion. When he learns that Virgil is one of Mantua's citizens, he falls upon his neck, and when he learns that he is the singer of Rome he falls before his feet. In that valley whose grass and flowers are fairer than cleft emerald and Indian wood, and brighter than scarlet and silver, they are singing who in the world were kings; but the lips of Rudolph of Hapsburg do not move to the music of the others, and Philip of France beats his breast and Henry ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... personality was uppermost as she sought in the trunk for something to wear, and a smile curved the corners of her straight lips and brought out a faint cleft in her square chin, as she inspected ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... all, comes forward six hundred years later marshaling phrase upon phrase, clause upon clause, till a modern is forced to exclaim: "What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" Now I have dealt with these complexes in different ways; and sometimes I have cleft and hacked and wrenched them out of all semblance of their original shape, and sometimes I have hauled them almost entire, like a cable, tangled with particles, out of the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,—few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods—what the after age Knows and names a pine, a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... only knew the prodigious relief it would be," she exclaimed, with an outbreak of impatience. "It would make an incalculable difference. And yet I do not see my way. I am in a cleft stick. I dare not say Yes. And to say No——" Her sincerity was unimpeachable at that moment. Her eyes actually filled with tears. "Pah! I am ashamed of myself," she cried, "but to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... creatures had already passed a whole week with their legs caught and pressed by the cleft beams which formed these inexpressibly painful stocks. When the unfortunate victims were released, the fanatics screamed with rage at the sight of their swollen bodies and half-broken bones. None of the unhappy people were able to stand. The attack on the soldiers was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... to the other bank, above a fount that boils and pours down through a cleft that proceeds from it. The water was far darker than perse;[1] and we, in company with the dusky waves, entered down through a strange way. A marsh it makes, that is named Styx, this dismal little stream, when it has descended to the foot of the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... like Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder; Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil cleft in sunder! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the cleft hoof of a cow; while the Scotch name for a bull is Bill, a corruption, probably, of Bel. Less than two hundred years ago it was customary to sacrifice a bull on the 25th of August to the "God Mowrie" and "his devilans" on the island of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... a man who knows exactly where he is and whither he is going, the man-at-arms began to clamber up a narrow fern-lined cleft among the rocks. It was no easy ascent in the darkness, but Simon climbed on like an old dog hot upon a scent, and the panting Aylward struggled after as best he might. At last they were at the summit and the archer threw ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... small, to be very minute about them. She has built here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular semi-circle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers, called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... cloven asunder, she presents to the eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... the barley meal, first they drew back the victims' heads and slaughtered them and flayed them, and cut slices from the thighs and wrapped them in fat, making a double fold, and laid raw collops thereon, and the old man burnt them on cleft wood and made libation over them of gleaming wine; and at his side the young men in their hands held five-pronged forks. Now when the thighs were burnt and they had tasted the vitals, then sliced they all the rest and pierced it through ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... Navajo custom is to leave the body where it dies, closing up the house or hogan or covering the body with stones or brush. In case the body is removed, it is taken to a cleft in the rocks and thrown in, and stones piled over. The person touching or carrying the body first takes off all his clothes and afterwards washes his body with water before putting them on or mingling with the living. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... as Crusoe and I came down from the ridge, we met Captain Magnus ascending. I had in my hand a small metal-backed mirror, which I had found, surprisingly, lying in a mossy cleft between the rocks. It was a thing such as a man might carry in his pocket, though on the island it seemed unlikely that any one would do' so. I at once attributed the mirror to Captain Magnus, for I knew that no one else had been to the ridge for days. I was wondering ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... of the Chippendale mirror over the mantelpiece, from whence a row of pictured faces stared back, as though stolidly sitting in judgment. The clear tints of Claire's skin made Janet look sallow and faded, the dark curve of her eyebrows under the sweep of gold brown hair, the red lips and deeply cleft chin, made Janet's indeterminate features look insignificant, the brown eyes seemed the only definite feature in her face, and ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... flew like a bullet. The air cleft by our flight beat in our faces, roared, whistled in our ears, tore at us, nipped us cruelly in its anger, tried to tear our heads off our shoulders. We had hardly strength to breathe from the pressure of the wind. It seemed as though ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... I spoke without conviction. I realized that Marbran held me in a cleft stick and that he realized it, too. He wasted no further time in argument. I knew what I had to do, he said, and I would do it. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... moment the light flamed close; it seemed to be hovering about the head of the silent, seated man. Then Rawson moved, looked past, and found a true perspective for the phenomenon. One rugged cleft in the rim of the crater's cup made a peephole for seeing within. It was plainly red—the light came ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the stage, or rose through a cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors; and when they only come in as aids and assistances to the poet, they are not only to be excused, but to be applauded. Thus the sounding of the clock ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... and down the valley, from the breaks between the peaks, and from the little gullies cleft in shale and rock that crept up to the snow-lines came a soft and droning murmur. It was the music of running water. That music was always in the air, for the rivers, the creeks, and the tiny streams gushing down from the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... spacious and airy; the loggia of the sleeping room is rude, but it overhangs a lovely little river, with its hedge of willows. Opposite is a large and rich vineyard; on one side a ruined tower, on the other an old casino, with its avenues of cypress, give human interest to the scene. A cleft amid the mountains full of light leads on the eye to a soft blue peak, very distant. At night the young moon trembles in the river, and its soft murmur soothes me to sleep; it needs, for I have had ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... her open eyes Tearless and glazed, as if celestial scenes, Clear to the inner, nulled the outer vision. The man drew near, touched her upon the brow, And said, "My name is Henry Meredith." She started, and, as on an April sky A cloud is riven, and through the sudden cleft The sunshine darts, even so were Linda's eyes Flooded with conscious lustre, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent



Words linked to "Cleft" :   fault, compound, indentation, cleft palate, crack, crevasse, dissected, urogenital cleft, volcano, scissure, geological fault, fatigue crack, cleave, cleft lip, rift, split, shift, fracture, break, fissure



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