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Cleft   Listen
noun
Cleft  n.  
1.
A space or opening made by splitting; a crack; a crevice; as, the cleft of a rock.
2.
A piece made by splitting; as, a cleft of wood.
3.
(Far.) A disease in horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.
Branchial clefts. See under Branchial.
Synonyms: Crack; crevice; fissure; chink; cranny.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books



... and at last saw something dim that thrust out of the dark on the ground, and then it got brighter, and he marked low down, no higher than his knee, a blue ghost of light shooting through some cleft among the stones. It waxed until he could put down his watch and read the hands by it. And he found it was past ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... following the direction pointed out, arrived at the resting-place of 'certain Bohemians,' by whom I was received with kindness and hospitality, on the faith of no other word of recommendation than patteran. There is also another kind of patteran, which is more particularly adapted for the night; it is a cleft stick stuck at the side of the road, close by the hedge, with a little arm in the cleft pointing down the road which the band have taken, in the manner of a signpost; any stragglers who may arrive at night where cross-roads occur search for this patteran ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... the Treasure Valley, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft in the rocks above, and flowing among the heaps of dry sand. And then fresh grass sprang beside the river, flowers opened along its sides, and vines began to cover the whole valley. The Treasure Valley was becoming ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... were 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 most magnificent deer he had ever seen. There was no difficulty ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... way she looked eagerly for some slant or cleft in the mountain walls where she might hope to ascend. Here, over the accumulated soil of centuries, fastened by interwoven roots to the base of the cliff, she might have climbed a dozen feet or more. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... going for Mildred—to let her see, before it was quite dark, what had been done, and what found. When they returned, Roger was standing at some distance from the bank, apparently watching his mummy as it lay in the cleft that he had cleared. He started when he heard Mildred's gentle voice exclaiming at its being so small and so dark-coloured. She next wondered how ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze - saw it, perhaps, with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... militant state were laid on the rock of religious fanaticism, the cleft between the two sects of Omar and Ali having been finally cemented together in the new faith of the Sufis. This great work was begun by the predecessors of Schamyl, but to him is due the credit of having carried it on to perfection, until now the war of sects has ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... uprears That shadowing Pine its old romantic limbs, Which latest shall detain the enamour'd sight Seen from below, when eve the valley dims, Tinged yellow with the rich departing light; 35 And haply, bason'd in some unsunn'd cleft, A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears, Sleeps shelter'd there, scarce wrinkled by the gale! Together thus, the world's vain turmoil left, Stretch'd on the crag, and shadow'd by the pine, 40 And bending o'er the clear delicious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... On the lower side they run from the stem into the limb, forming an uninterrupted strand or tissue and a perfect union. On the upper side the fibres bend aside, are not continuous into the limb, and hence the connection is not perfect (see Fig. 18). Owing to this arrangement of the fibres, the cleft made in splitting never runs into the knot if started on the side above the limb, but is apt to enter the knot if started below, a fact well understood in woodcraft. When limbs die, decay, and break off, the remaining stubs ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... Achmet gained the entrance to the palace of his wives. The door was already shut and secured, as well as guarded by two of the insurgent janissaries. Rendered desperate and savage by the hopelessness of his case, he cleft the skulls of these men with his sword, and was about to dash himself violently against the strong door, in the vain hope of bursting it open, when he was checked by hearing an appalling shriek inside. Next moment the door was flung wide open, and his faithful ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... second course again, They forward came with might and main, Yet which had better of the twain, The seconds could not judge yet; Their shields were into pieces cleft, Their helmets from their heads were reft, And to defend them nothing left, These champions would ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... were fast asleep, and then butchered them all with a knife. Having so far succeeded without discovery, he returned to the deck, and communicated the exploit to his associate: then they suddenly attacked the master of the vessel, and cleft his head with a hatchet, which they likewise used in murdering the man that stood at the helm; a third was likewise despatched, and no Englishman remained alive but the master's son, a boy, who lamented his father's death with incessant tears and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... village planted in a cleft in the rocks, two leagues from Grandport. A fine sandy beach stretches in front of the huts lodged half-way up in the side of the cliff like shells left there by the tide. As one climbs to the heights of Grandport, on the left the yellow sheet of sand can be very clearly seen to the west like a ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola

... to the right and began to ascend a little tributary brook coming down the wide flats from a cleft in the hills. This was prettily named the Isiola, and, after the first mile or so, was not big enough to afford the luxury of a jungle of its own. Its banks were generally grassy and steep, its thickets few, and its little trees isolated in parklike spaces. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of London had been cleft open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous; insomuch ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... lead 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 ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... 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 ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... stood looking around at the huge broken slabs of granite and speculating upon the oddness of the formation, while their conversation had taken on an academic flavor as they discussed the nebular and glacial theories. They had discovered at the bottom of a great cleft in the rock, a spring of sparkling water, so cold that it was impossible to drink it without frequent pauses. They had named the place "The Saucer," had eaten their lunch there. He remembered how beautiful she had looked ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... Sir HENRY. I swept the distance with my glance. It was a sandy, arid distance, and, naturally enough, a small cloud of dust appeared. Then a strange thing happened. The cloud grew and grew. It came rolling towards us with an unearthly noise. Then it seemed to be cleft in two, as by lightning, and from its centre came marching towards us a mighty army of Amazonian warriors, in battle-array, chanting the war-song of the Mariannakookas. I must confess that my first ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... and pepper; when required for use, dust off the pepper and ginger, and wash the meat in a little lukewarm water, and dry it thoroughly. Venison, like mutton, improves with age, and this can be judged by the condition of the hoof, which in a young animal has a small, smooth cleft, while in an old one it is deeply cut and rugged. The haunch is the prime joint, its perfection depending on the greater or less depth of the fat on it. The neck and shoulder also are very good. They are used chiefly for stews ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... limits, except those of the globe itself. A tall, fair man with a large head, decided features, chilly gray eyes, and an uncompromising mouth adorned with a short, stiff mustache, his square chin was cleft by an incomprehensible dimple. His wife declared she had married him because of that cleft; it gave her an object in life to find out ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... cleft in Mount Parnassus," answered the nymph. "There thou canst dwell in peace, and men will come from all parts of the world ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... he had drawn. Knives slipped from many sashes; Von Blitz was screaming with insane laughter, pointing his finger at the discredited American. While they shouted and cursed, his gaze never left the cleft in the hills. He did not attempt to cry them down; the effort would have been in vain. Suddenly a wild, happy light came into his anxious, searching eyes. He gave a mighty shout and ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the conies, and build our nest in the cleft of ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... account of the warlike tone assumed by some of the young fiery spirits who followed, but hardly obeyed him. Thomas Francis Meagher, as their mouthpiece, proclaimed his conviction that there were political ameliorations worth many drops of blood; and adhesion to one or the other of these principles cleft in two the great Irish Repeal party, namely, into Old and Young Ireland. Of the former O'Connell was of course the leader, and William Smith O'Brien allowed himself to be placed at the head ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... apart under straight black brows, and black hair brushed straight back from a wide forehead. She saw a rugged nose, a likeable mouth, and an abrupt and aggressive chin, saved somehow from grimness by a deep cleft in the blunt end of it.... She thought he was a very stirring looking young man. Undoubtedly he was a very sudden young man—if he meant one bit of what ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... The cleft which separates two worlds is recognizable in his very parentage. Thomas Mann was born in Luebeck in 1875, the son of a merchant and senator of the ancient Hanseatic city; his mother is a Creole from South America. In his elder brother Heinrich Mann, perhaps a more ingenious, but a less finished ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... no silence ever known on earth; a darkening of the shadow, blacker than the blackest night in the thickest wood—a pause—then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then, an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow—two monsters stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light. Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... trousers fastened round the middle with a greasy leather strap. In his wool, however, were stuck several small distended bladders such as are generally worn by medicine-men and witch-doctors. With his left hand he held a long stick, cleft at one end, and in ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... to L. lagenula, contractile but tough. The contractile vacuole is terminal, the proboscis is short, slightly raised and separated from the body by a deep cleft; the buccal cilia are inserted part way up on the proboscis. Form changeable, from short, sac-like to elongate ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... and made way along the overside of it, taking to cover as much as they could. By six o'clock in the evening they were as near as they dared to be until nightfall. As they stood they could see the ridge rear its ragged head to watch over the cleft where-through the two Wans race to be free. Upon the slope of this bluff was the town itself, a walled town the colour of the bare rock, with towers and belfries. The westering sun threw the whole into warmth and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... draught of cold morning air struck her face, sweeping from the west; it had driven the fog in great gray banks upon the hills, or in shimmering swamps into the cleft hollows: a vague twilight filled the space left bare. Tiger, asleep in the hall, rushed out into the meadow, barking, wild with the freshness and cold, then back again to tear round her for a noisy good-morning. The touch of the dog ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... Then a great Angel past along the highest Crying 'the doom of England,' and at once He stood beside me, in his grasp a sword Of lightnings, wherewithal he cleft the tree From off the bearing trunk, and hurl'd it from him Three fields away, and then he dash'd and drench'd, He dyed, he soak'd the trunk with human blood, And brought the sunder'd tree again, and set it Straight on the trunk, that thus baptized in blood Grew ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... cleft asunder Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder, Nay, for the City is throned on Eternity! Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder Closeth an hour for the world ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... such thoughts came to me, like The sound of cleft-dropped waters to the ear Of the hot mower, who thereat stops the oftener To whet his glittering scythe, and, while he smiles, With the harsh, sharpening hone beats their fall's time, And dancing to it in his heart's straight chamber, Forgets that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... literary quality, and one description, in particular, has been often quoted—the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge—in which is this poetically imaginative touch: "The mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your 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 {373} tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... he hastens back! Now, O Cobold, thou shalt catch it! I will rush upon his track; Crashing on him falls my hatchet. Bravely done, indeed! See, he's cleft in twain! Now from care I'm freed, And can ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... centre of space there was, in the morning of time, a great abyss called Ginnunga-gap, the cleft of clefts, the yawning gulf, whose depths no eye could fathom, as it was enveloped in perpetual twilight. North of this abode was a space or world known as Nifl-heim, the home of mist and darkness, in the centre of which bubbled the exhaustless spring Hvergelmir, the seething cauldron, whose ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... Wherefore on a Bricke wall haue I climb'd into this Garden, to see if I can eate Grasse, or picke a Sallet another while, which is not amisse to coole a mans stomacke this hot weather: and I think this word Sallet was borne to do me good: for many a time but for a Sallet, my brain-pan had bene cleft with a brown Bill; and many a time when I haue beene dry, & brauely marching, it hath seru'd me insteede of a quart pot to drinke in: and now the word Sallet must serue me to feed on. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... used first-aid on the stranger, several men of the party started for the cleft back of the Cliffs from which one could get down in to the gulch. In fact, it was the great flood of water that ran from the back of the Cliffs that caused this deep washout, ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... feet, the path led to a cleft portion of the rocks, where the light of the sun was completely hidden. The walls of the rocks, at the entrance of the cleft portion, were fully fifty feet high, and were at least twenty feet apart, but as they went on the walls drew nearer ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... from a cleft in some distant mountains, bathed the plains with a silvery flood when horse and rider reached a point within a mile of the pueblo, and Nigger covered the remainder of the distance at a pace that made the night air drum in ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... morning, passed a butifull Prarie on the right Side which extends back, those Praries has much the appearance from the river of farms, Divided by narrow Strips of woods those Strips of timber grows along the runs which rise on the hill & pass to the river a Cleft above, one man sick (Frasure) Struck with the Sun, Saw a large rat on the Side of the bank, Killed a wolf on the Bank passed (2) a verry narrow part of the river, all confined within 200 yards, a yellow bank above, passed a Small willow Island on the S. point, (in Low water those ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand: For here, not one, but many, make their play, And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand, Flashing and cast around: of all the band, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... gas-engine from somewhere in the distance drew Denver on from point to point and at last, in the bottom of a deep-cleft canyon, he discovered the source of the sound. Huge dumps of white waste were spewed out along the hillside, there were houses, a big tent and criss-crossed trails; but the only sign of life was that chuh, chuh, of ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come here—and seen nothing but just that—I would go ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... most part, amongst steep rocks, over shadowed by magnificent trees, amongst which birds of all sizes, and of the most beautiful plumage, are perpetually glancing, while a monkey, every here and there, would sit grimacing, and chattering, and scratching himself in the cleft ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... points of interest in the region of Cooperstown, is about a mile from the village, high up on the hill that rises from the eastern side of the lake. It offers a stiff climb to the inexperienced, but not to others. It is not much of a cave, being hardly more than a deep and curiously formed cleft between the rocks. From the platform of rock over the cave a magnificent view may be had of the lake and its more distant shores, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... tour of exploration and finding what she desired in the way of a quiet corner returned for Katherine. They passed down flights of steps, through halls, and came to a large corridor that opened upon a gallery which encircled the ballroom, save where it was cleft by a great stairway. As they stood looking over the railing, 'twas like looking down upon an immense concave opal, peopled by the gorgeously apparelled. Myriad tints seeming to assimulate and focus wherever the eyes rested. Gilt bewreathed ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... 19th March, the Hassler left Sandy Point. The weather was beautiful,—a mellow autumn day with a reminiscence of summer in its genial warmth. The cleft summit of Sarmiento was clear against the sky, and the snow-fields, swept over by alternate light and shadow, seemed full of soft undulations. The evening anchorage was in the Bay of Port Famine, a name which marks the site of Sarmiento's ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... of Cairo is also fraught with the recollections of an event which startled all Europe within the memory of many of the present generation—the massacre of the Mamelukes. We were shown the broken cleft in the wall from which the only one of the devoted men who escaped urged his gallant horse; it was, indeed, a fearful leap, and we gazed upon, the spot and thought of the carnage of that dreadful hour with ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... adds not a little to their beauty, as also does the leafy involucre. The leaves are three-parted, the two lower lobes being deeply divided, so that at a first glance the leaves appear to be five-parted; each of the five lobes are three-cleft, and also dentate, downy, and veined; the leaf stalks are radical, red, long, slightly channelled, and wiry; in all respects the leaves of the involucre resemble those of the root, excepting the size, which is smaller, and the stalks are green, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... an electric torch as he spoke, and guided Myra over rocky ground to what seemed a mere cleft in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... makes the lingering Night 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 prison, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... out and, falling on one another, we stuck to the cleft, in the wooden walls of the hallway, leading to the yard. We did not have to wait long. . . . . . . . Soon Tanya passed with a quick pace, skipping over the plashes of melted snow and mud. Her face looked troubled. She disappeared behind ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... Titans. Go, go! 'tis not for thee, puny son of clay, to wield the avenging sword of sovereign justice! Thou didst fail at thy first essay. Here, then, I renounce the audacious scheme. I go to hide myself in some deep cleft of the earth, where no daylight will be witness of my shame. (He is about ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... background shot through with the crimson light from the storm-smothered sun, with the gray shadows of the old Kickapoo Corral below them, hemmed in by the silver gleaming waters of the Walnut, a picture grew up before Victor Burleigh's eyes that he was never to forget. Like the cleft of the lightning through the cloud, like the flash of the swallow's wing, the careless-hearted boy leaped to the stature of a man, into whose soul the love of a lifetime is born. Unconsciously, he drew away from her, and long afterward ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... packed road. Here he noted the shimmering veil of ice over some brooklet waterfall in a cleft of the hill side. There the precise punctures of a rabbit track dotted the level snow of the woods. Beyond a herd of cattle standing placidly around a straw-stack blew clouds of vapor from their steaming nostrils. The silent beauty of the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... was cast ashore by the whale. [This makes three places on the Syrian coast where Jonah was vomited forth.] The plain of Issus is from two to three miles long, but not more than half a mile wide, It is traversed by a little river, supposed to be the Pinarus, which comes down through a tremendous cleft in the Akma Dagh. The ground seems too small for the battle-field of such armies as were engaged on the occasion. It is bounded on the north by a low hill, separating it from the plain of Baias, and it is possible that Alexander may have made choice of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... action was renewed. Hart's and Woodgate's brigades on the right made good and extended their lodgments, capturing all the Boer trenches of their first defensive line along the edge of the plateau. To the east of 'Bastion Hill' there runs a deep re-entrant, which appeared to open a cleft between the right and centre of the Boer position. The tendency of General Hildyard's action, with five battalions and two batteries, on the British left this day was to drive a wedge of infantry into this cleft and so split the Boer position in two. But as the action developed, the great ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... struggling with his companion; but the woman instantly turned on him, as he stood with his smoking gun, and ripped open his body with a stroke of her axe. Yelling for help he sank on the threshold, and his comrades rushed to his rescue; the woman, with her bloody weapon, cleft open the skull of the first, and the others fell back, so that she was able to shut and bar the door. Then the savages moved off, but they had already killed the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... any riches. In old days war stalked over the land, and men's property must be portable or else concealed. So, on the one hand we find the practice of hiding away little hoards in some suitable place, beneath a rock, in the cleft of a tree, or a hole dug in the ground, and then, perhaps, the man died before he came back for his wealth. Or, again, another man might prefer to carry his wealth about with him. So he went and got jewels, easily ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly to ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... soon dug out of the ground; which had been particularly noted to be plain and level, and ploughed just before; but where it was now found to have made a great fissure, or cleft, an ell wide, whilst it singed the ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King

... And yet a deep cleft separates the American declarations from the English enactments that have been mentioned. The historian of the American Revolution says of the Virginia declaration that it protested against all tyranny in the name ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... the east side of the village, happily remains what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... side of this there is a great cleft from the top to the bottom, and up the sides of this cleft are the two halves of a stairway, which was carved there before some earthquake rent the stone in twain, and under this is a deep dark pool of water. At the entrance to the cleft I stopped and beckoned to the others to come round me. Then ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... by the middle of dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless man was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed out by his friend—compelled, in short, to choose between Madame Marneffe and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... then the vast veil of snow parted before the wind, as if cleft down the centre by a sword-blade, and Harley and Sylvia beheld a grand and awful sight. Before them were all the peaks and ridges, rising in white cones and pillars against the cloudy sky, and the effect was of distance and sublimity. From the clefts and ravines came ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... they sailed, and, as he was the ship, the Gille Mairtean sailed where he would, and ran himself into the cleft of a rock, high on to the land. Then, he commanded Ian Direach to go up to the king's palace, saying that he had been wrecked, that his ship was made fast in a rock, and that none had been saved but ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... Along its eastern edge these present to the lower champaign of Texas a precipitous escarpment several hundred feet sheer, in long stretches, tending with an unbroken facade, in other places showing ragged, where cleft by canons, through which rush torrents, the heads of numerous Texan streams. Its surface is, for the most part, a dead horizontal level, sterile as the Sahara itself, in places smooth and hard as a macadamised road. Towards its southern end there is ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... of Rue de Petit-Repisoir, Viguier to that of the Rue Pagevin, Versigny to that of the Rue Joigneaux; Dupont de Bussac to that of the Carre Saint Martin; Carlos Forel and Boysset to that of the Rue Rambuteau. Doutre received a sword-cut on his head, which cleft his hat; Bourzat had four balls in his overcoat; Baudin was killed; Gaston Dussoubs was ill and could not come; his brother, Denis Dussoubs, replaced him. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... tree, whose pink blossoms told us that spring had come. Its fruit in the late summer was like the pomegranate in its rich color, "blood-tinctured with a veined humanity;" and its friendly limbs held a swing in which we cleft the air like the birds. Yet even now the sight of an Indian peach brings melancholy thoughts. A yellow honeysuckle clambered over a wall. But this flower has no perfume, and a honeysuckle without perfume is a base pretender, to be cast out of the family ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... on the right, is one of the most charming places in Surrey. Box Hill (590 feet), which may easily be ascended from the well-placed Burford Bridge Hotel, is on the left. The road, river and rail run through a deep cleft in the North Downs forming the Mole valley and facing the sandstone hills of the Weald. In the shallow depression between the two ranges lies Dorking (23-1/4 m.). The town is pleasant but has nothing of much interest for the visitor. It is for its fine situation ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... he cried. But Baly tarried not to abide That mightier power. With irresistible feet He stampt and cleft the earth. It opened wide, And gave him way to his own judgment-seat. Down like a plummet to the world below He sank ... to punishment ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... weather, and we enjoy it. Yesterday we went to Pool-a-Phooka, the Leap of the Goblin Horse. What is that, do you suppose? Why, a cleft in the mountains down and through which the river Liffey (not very long born from the earth) comes leaping and roaring. Cold veal pies, champagne, etc., make up the enchantment. We dabbled in the water, splashed each other, forded the river, climbed the rocks, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... place named Beattock, for Moffat, where there are sulphur wells a girl discovered two hundred years ago, and made the fortune of the town. Then there was a lovely road along Moffat Water, with a succession of wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Cloudesly cleft the apple in two, His son he did not nee.[74] Over Gods forebode,[75] said the king, That thou ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... horse, and, giving the bridle to Ring to hold, he commenced a search for the cleft where the stream ran. He was not successful and concluded the water dropped into an underground passage. Then he returned to where he had left Wrangle, and led him down off the stone to the sage. It was a short ride ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... Bertha sat in the rocky cleft, Her bitter woes to weep; Little Roland played in the free fresh air; ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen

... monastic archives, which also contain a charter signed by Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725). Manasia (Manasiya), the still more celebrated foundation of Stephen, the son and successor of Lazar, lies 12 m. N. of Ravanitsa. Built in a cleft among the hills which line the river Resava, an affluent of the Morava, this monastery is enclosed in a fortress, whose square towers, and curtain without loopholes or battlements, remain largely intact. Within the curtain stand the monastic buildings, a large garden and a cruciform chapel, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... them was lit brightly, for they had approached it from the daylight side. Below them, they could see wide, green plains and gently rolling mountains, and in a great cleft in one of the mountain ranges was a shimmering lake ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... of lying. From species to genus, as: 'Verily ten thousand noble deeds hath Odysseus wrought'; for ten thousand is a species of large number, and is here used for a large number generally. From species to species, as: 'With blade of bronze drew away the life,' and 'Cleft the water with the vessel of unyielding bronze.' Here {alpha rho upsilon rho alpha iota}, 'to draw away,' is used for {tau alpha mu epsilon iota nu}, 'to cleave,' and {tau alpha mu epsilon iota nu} again for {alpha rho upsilon alpha iota},—each being a species of taking away. ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... made use of by the natives are not very numerous, and their general characteristics are nearly the same all over the continent. The native hatchet is made of a very hard greenish-looking stone, rubbed to an edge on either side; it is fixed in the cleft of a stick, or a branch is doubled round it, and either tied or gummed to prevent its slipping. The throwing sticks have generally a sharp piece of quartz or flint gummed on at the lower end, which is used as a knife or chisel; flints or muscle ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... but a poor idea of the excitement in Halifax during these years. In so small a community, where every one knew every one else, personal, social, and political questions became hopelessly intertwined. The fighting was bitter. 'Forced into a cleft stick, there was nothing left for us but to break it,' was Howe's pithy way of putting the case. Naturally enough, the stick objected to being broken. And as in every war, for one man killed in battle five or six die from other causes connected with the war—bad boots, bad food, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... first war-cry there was silence for the space of a minute in the forest. Then came a wild scream, mingled with another Indian yell; a moment later the leading pursuers came upon the body of the Chippewa. His skull had been cleft with a tomahawk and ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... "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 from its guilt ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... the more 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 ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... prop to the tottering throne. Under his leadership the moderate monarchists, or Feuillants, as they were later called, from the convent of that order to which they withdrew, seceded from the Jacobins, and before the Assembly had ceased its work the nation was cleft in two, divided into opponents and adherents of monarchy. As if to insure the disasters of such an antagonism, the Assembly, which numbered among its members every man in France of ripe political experience, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... tossing plumes 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 veiling the mossy rocks. Then there ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... until we reached the headquarters of the guerillas, which lay in a cleft close to the summit of the mountain. There was the beacon which had cost me so much, a square stack of wood, immediately above our heads. Below were two or three huts which had belonged, no doubt, to goatherds, and ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the rushing waters seemed to roar through his brain, his crown cleft the surface, and he drew a deep inspiration of the blessed air; but, even in that trying moment, he kept his self-possession, and the breath was taken so softly that no ear beside his own ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... 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 ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... Who had made you valiant, strong and swift And maimed you with a bullet long ago, And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, Gave back your youth to you, And packed in moments rare and few Achievements manifold And happiness untold, And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, In manhood's ripeness, power ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... a cleft in the rocks, and looked out upon the road. Blocks of stone, flung one upon another without regard to order, formed steps from which to look out ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... troops in Cairo. They're practical people, not dreamers who worry about etiquette and the fine points. Now just you take a good look at their faces. You'll note that they're bronzed, strong, with a cleft in the chin, and a jaw-bone which speaks volumes. In fact, their whole make-up suggests a sort of rude strength, which can face the rough and tumble of life. They get that from their fathers, who, like ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... combined, already changed the entire land surface of the world from what it was to what it is, and working ceaselessly through endless cycles will change it yet more. The exhalations that are steam become the water in a rock-cleft. It changes to ice with a force almost beyond measurement in the orderly arrangement of its crystals in compliance with an immutable law for such arrangement, and rends the rock. The process goes on. There is no high mountain in any land where water will not freeze. ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... it 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: ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... at home in the lonely chasm. As straight as a drawn whip-lash his trail led from one break in the rocky chaos to another. Never did he err. Once the tracks seemed to end squarely against a broad face of rock, but there the young hunter found a cleft in the granite wall scarcely wider than his body, through which he cautiously wormed his way. Where this cleft opened into the chasm again the fugitive had rested for a few moments, and had placed some burden upon the snow at his feet. A single glance disclosed ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... gap for the land, to turn away this wrath by repentance, 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 house ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the Government revealed to all the world the fact that the Liberal Party was cleft in twain. The Whig section was led by Lord Hartington, and the Radical section by Mr. Chamberlain. Gladstone did his best to mediate between the two, and so to present an unbroken front to the common foe. But the parting of the ways soon became painfully ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... see his brother so covetous, and to divert his mind he looked up at the great hills. As he looked, three creatures like sheep scoured up a cleft in one of the hills, as fleet as any deer; and when Kind turned he saw his brother coming with the bag and shears, but not a single ewe was to be seen. Clutch's first question was, what had become of them; and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... angled, with cheeks that hollowed slightly beneath the cheek-bones and a chin which would have been pointed had not old Dame Nature changed her mind at the last moment and elected to put a provoking little cleft there. Nor could even the merciless light of a wintry sun find a flaw in her skin. It was one of those rare, creamy skins, with a golden undertone and the feature of a flower petal, sometimes found in conjunction with dark hair. The faint colour in her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... particularised. He slays Herman, the craniologist, who dwelt by the linden-shadowed Elbe, and measured with his eye the skulls of all who walked through the streets of Berlin. Alas! his own skull is now cleft by the Corsican sword. Four pupils of the University of Jena advance together to encounter the Emperor; at four blows he destroys them all. Blucher rushes to arrest the devastation; Napoleon strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of killing him, but Gneisenau, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ere long appeared before us. Our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. A sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of Parnassus, stood sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. At the bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of Castaly, and fill a stone trough by the road-side. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... pursuer with bared fangs and spread claws. Carefully riding his horse so that its blind side should be towards the monster, the cavalryman swept by at a run, handling his steed with such daring skill that he just cleared the blow of the dreaded fore-paw, while with one mighty sabre stroke he cleft the bear's skull, slaying the grinning beast ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... attention was directed to a spur of the Coast Range which had been sharply silhouetted against the cloudless western sky. Something intensely white, something so small that it was scarcely larger than the silver coin in his hand, was appearing in a slight cleft of the range. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... rather in a cleft stick,' said the doctor, looking at the agitated face of the man with his shrewd little eyes. 'I don't like acting in the dark. One should always look before ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... thee, even in madness love thee; Though my distracted senses should forsake me, I'd find some intervals, when my poor heart Should 'swage itself, and be let loose to thine. Though the bare earth be all our resting-place, Its roots our food, some cleft our habitation, I'll make this arm a pillow for thine head; And, as thou sighing ly'st, and swell'd with sorrow, Creep to thy bosom, pour the balm of love Into thy soul, and kiss thee to thy rest; Then praise our God, and watch thee till ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... think of the Rev. Dr. Muir as of a thread in a piece of sugar candy, and the piety of the Dean of Faculty and Mr. Penney, joined to that of some four or five hundred respectable ladies of both sexes besides, all sticking out around him in cubes, hexagons, and prisms, like cleft almonds in a bishop-cake. Hardly inferior in the figurative is the passage which follows: 'The Doctor (Dr. Chalmers) rides on at a rickety trot,—Messrs. Cunningham, Begg, and Candlish by turns whipping up the wornout Rosenante, and making the rider believe ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... becomes divided it receives at the hands of descriptive botanists the appellations cleft, partite, or sect, according to the depth of the division; hence in considering the teratological instances of this nature, the term fission has suggested itself as an appropriate one to be applied to the subdivision of an habitually entire or undivided organ. It ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... stuck into a heap of stones, so that it had the appearance of bending forward to let the storm sweep over it. The low entrance-door opened to the land, and two small windows looked out upon the sea, and upon the boat, which was usually drawn up in a cleft above the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... Honey-peach, is remarkable from the fruit terminating in a long sharp point; its leaves are glandless and widely dentate.[676] The Emperor of Russia peach is a third singular variety, having deeply and doubly serrated leaves; the fruit is deeply cleft with one-half projecting considerably beyond the other; it originated in America, and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... 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 ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... hearing it, Indignant, slew him with his candent bolt. 150 So also, O ye Gods, ye envy me The mortal man, my comfort. Him I saved Myself, while solitary on his keel He rode, for with his sulph'rous arrow Jove Had cleft his bark amid the sable Deep. Then perish'd all his gallant friends, but him Billows and storms drove hither, whom I lov'd Sincere, and fondly destin'd to a life Immortal, unobnoxious to decay. But since no Deity may the designs 160 Elude ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... trial! Open his eyes that he may see the fiery horses and the fiery chariots of the angels who would defend him, and the dark array of spiritual foes who throng around his bed. Point a pitying finger to the yawning abyss of shame, ruin, and despair that even now perhaps is being cleft under his feet. Show him the garlands of the present and the past, withering at the touch of the Erinnys in the future. In pity, in pity, show him the canker which he is introducing into the sap of the tree of life, which shall cause its root to be hereafter as bitterness, and its blossom ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... the customary road to the railway station of Caulnes, we hired a carriage, in order to visit the fortress castle of La Hunaudaye, midway between Dinan and Lamballe. The road lay by Jugon, a town prettily situated in the cleft of two hills. On one once stood an important castle, which gave ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... 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 Contrary ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... sun burnt on the bare rocks. A huge fissure, opening in the mountain ridge, encumbered at the bottom with broken rocks, with precipitous banks, scarcely affording a foothold for the wild goats—- such is the spot where, upon a cleft on the steep precipice, still remain the foundations of the 'hold', or tower, believed to have been the David's retreat, and near at hand is the low-browed entrance of the galleried cave alternating between narrow passages and spacious halls, but ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this monster here and play the hero. Hardily I shall win that wealth, or war shall seize, cruel killing, your king and lord!" Up stood then with shield the sturdy champion, stayed by the strength of his single manhood, and hardy 'neath helmet his harness bore under cleft of the cliffs: no coward's path! Soon spied by the wall that warrior chief, survivor of many a victory-field where foemen fought with furious clashings, an arch of stone; and within, a stream that broke from the barrow. The brooklet's wave was hot with fire. The hoard that ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings, though protected from dampness ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... tried to graft several of the most promising hybrids in the older block of trees. We used the modified cleft graft method and we set the grafts on layered plants of the Barcelona filbert which were lined out in April. We grafted them in May after the layers had started to grow. Out of 200 plants grafted we have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... ever caught your observation, Pericles, that a high mountain barrier stretches like a bulwark in front of our country down towards Boeotia—cleft, moreover, by narrow and precipitous passes, the only avenues into the heart of Attica, which lies engirdled by a ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... jumble of barren rock and glacial cleft, now purpling and darkening as the sun mellowed in its decline, lay the kingdom of Jugendheit; and toward this the wayfarer gazed meditatively, absorbing little or nothing of the exquisite panorama. By and by his gaze wavered, and that particular patch ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... formed already, In the sea the rocks were planted; Pillars of the sky established, Lands and continents created; Rocks engraved as though with figures, And the hills were cleft with fissures. Still unborn was Vainamoinen; Still unborn, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. It was called Uit, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the "cleft," the gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed toward it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... There was present gain and future peril in living amongst a clever but restricted set, sheltered, supported, and restrained by friends who were united in aims and studies, who cherished their sympathies and their enmities in common, and who therefore believed that they were divided by no deep cleft or ultimate principle. Doellinger never outlived the glamour of the eloquence and ascendancy of Goerres, and spoke of him long after his death as a man of real knowledge, and of greater religious than political insight Between the imaginative rhetorician ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... well, my love! Suppose me come from the Phlegraean plains, Where gasping giants lay, cleft by my sword, And mountain tops pared off each other blow, To bury those I slew. Receive me, goddess! Let Caesar spread his subtile nets; like Vulcan, In thy embraces I would be beheld By heaven and earth at once; And make their envy what ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... is curved at the corners, and the edge instead of being straight is curved downward in the center. This type of blade in some measure prevents the bruising of the bark when splitting the branch in cleft-grafting. Such a grafting iron may be made by almost any blacksmith. However, a good stout knife may ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... the idea that he was Moses, and that he had dwelt in the palaces of the Ramessids. The grave of the prophet was never known, and Saint-Germain may have insinuated that he began a new avatar in a cleft of Mount Pisgah; he was ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... often, there was nothing to be seen but the broad back of a wave, on which, for a time, the boat tossed before sinking down once more. The roll was scarcely noticeable, for the boat kept at the same angle all the time and cleft her way through the waves. The motion was comfortable and soothing to the mind; quite unlike the violent lunging ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight, and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow light showed through this cleft. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... two next portions of the strange zigzag series of cleft were passed down easily enough, while, as he descended a couple more, Aleck felt how smoothly floor and sides were worn and carved, and began to dwell upon the time that must have elapsed and the industry bestowed upon the curious passage by the smugglers, who had by virtue ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... could scarcely, however, unpack that old box full of waxen puppets, with the one dressed in scarlet and black, with fishbone horns and a worsted tail, and a queer clumped kind of foot made of folds of leather, cleft in the middle, that used to go by the name of "El senor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... 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 ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... Did with intentive looks watch every hour For thy new light, and trembled at each shower! When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair, Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air: Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine! the sure tye Of thy Lord's hand, the object[47] of His eye! When I behold thee, though my light be dim, Distant and low, I can in thine see Him Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne, And mindes ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... cleft of the rock cowered a poor sinner, and burrowed in the earth with his lean fingers as if he would dig himself a grave in its depths. He gazed at the cave where the child was with glassy, staring eyes. A prayer for mercy surged up in his heart like a stream of blood. Those who saw him ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... Peak—to the right, the highest point, of Kinder Low, to the left, 'edge' behind 'edge,' till the central rocky mass sank and faded towards the north into milder forms of green and undulating hills. In the very centre of the great curve a white and surging mass of water cleft the mountain from top to bottom, falling straight over the edge, here some two thousand feet above the sea, and roaring downward along an almost precipitous bed into the stream—the Kinder—which swept ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to kiss it, for it covered the hole in the rock where the Cross, with our dying lord upon it, was planted. I put my arm into the hole, and touched it for a blessing. On the right hand is the hole of the good thief's cross, and on the left the bad thief's, each marked by a black marble cross. The cleft in the solid rock which opened when "Jesus, crying with a loud voice, gave up the ghost," and "the earth quaked and the rocks were rent," is still visible. You can see it again below, in the deepest part of the church, where lies Adam's ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... talisman of Caesar's name, But Caesar had, in place of empty fame. The unresting soul, the resolution high That shuts out every thought but victory. Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismay He owned, but drew the sword and cleft his way: Pressed each advantage that his fortune gave; Constrained the stars to combat for the brave; Swept from his path whate'er his rise delayed, And marched triumphant through the wreck ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... fell not more than a dozen feet or so, and my fall was broken by a friendly bed of leaves and moss. When I got to my feet again, in a moment, I found myself in a narrow cleft in the rocks, and I was surprised to see that through this cleft ran a well-worn path. All thought of the danger that I had just escaped from so narrowly was banished form my mind instantly as I made this discovery; and full ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... the patter of the gallery attendant, names of painters, prices, dates. He stood before the portrait of Daniel Kain, his father, a dark-skinned, longish face with a slightly-protruding nether lip, hollow temples, and a round chin, deeply cleft. As in all the others, the eyes, even in the dead pigment, seemed to shine with an odd, fixed luminosity of their own, and like the others from first to last of the line, it bore upon it the stamp of an imperishable youth. And ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... enough thy downward flight Has cleft with wearied wing the shades of night: Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past, And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last, Strike on the chords of joy a happier strain And be thyself, thy cheerful self, again. Hail, goodly company of generous ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... passing through a cleft between two massive rocks, some three or four hundred yards in length. Ahead of us, at the end of the passage, a ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... and flowery. The deep red cliff was hollowed here and there into fanciful grottos, draped with every varied hue and form of vegetable beauty. Here a crevice high in air was all abloom with purple gillyflower, and depending in festoons above it the golden blossoms of the broom; here a cleft seemed to be a nestling-place for a colony of gladiolus, with its crimson flowers and blade-like leaves; here the silver-frosted foliage of the miller-geranium, or of the wormwood, toned down the extravagant brightness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... the fissure, and cuts outwards, being careful to remove the whole thinner part of the lip, and to leave the edge rather concave than convex. If left convex, or even quite straight, there is a risk that, after union has taken place, an angle remain showing the position of the cleft. The same is then to be done on the other side. The bleeding is then to be controlled by twisting the larger vessels, and if oozing still continues from the smaller ones, a pad of lint should be placed in the wound, and a few minutes' delay ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... in several spare sinkers for me," resumed Rollo, "in case these should come off." So saying, he opened a small paper and showed Jennie several large-sized shot, each of which had a cleft in the side of it for putting in the line. The intention was that the lead should be closed over the line, after the line had been inserted in it, by means of a light blow with a hammer, and thus the sinker would be secured ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott



Words linked to "Cleft" :   indenture, cleft lip, pudendal cleft, geological fault, chap, indentation, branchial cleft, crevasse, cleft palate, gap, urogenital cleft, chink, fault, cleft foot, crevice, fissure, scissure, crack, compound



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