"Disport" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry in company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure, and not without disport." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth, like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to bray tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in Tvier, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and the two days of grace had passed for those doleful hostages in the Plymouth Adventure. They beheld the black flag hoisted to the rigging of the Revenge as a signal of tragic import, but the bandy-legged monster with the festooned whiskers was not to disport himself with this wanton butchery. The sky had closed darkly around the becalmed ships, in sodden clouds which were suddenly obscured by mist and rain while the wind sighed in fitful gusts. It steadied into the southward and swiftly increased in force until the sea was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... butterflies in their caps. It was a forest after the pattern of the original Bois de Boulogne, hot and dusty, a much-frequented and sadly-abused promenade, one of those spots, avaricious of shade, to which the common people flock to disport themselves at the gates of great capitals—burlesque forests, filled with corks, where you find slices of melon and skeletons ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both, To pass the time when nothing else can please, And train them to our lure with subtle oath, Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease; And then we say when we their fancy try, To play with fools, O what a fool ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Havana spectacle, the washing of the horses. This being by far the easiest and most expeditious way of cleaning the animals, they are driven daily to the sea in great numbers, those of one party being tied together; they disport themselves in the surge and their wet backs glisten in the sun. Their drivers, nearly naked, plunge in with them, and bring them safely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... not much like to think about them. Their household teaching under Mrs. Elsmere and her old servant Martha—as great an original as herself—was so irregular, their religious training so extraordinary, the clothes in which they were allowed to disport themselves so scandalous to the sober taste of the rector's wife, that Catherine involuntarily regarded the little cottage on the hill as a spot of misrule in the general order of the parish. She would go in, say, at eleven o'clock in the morning, find her mother-in-law in bed, half-dressed, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with which Leander Yerby hearkened to this criticism intimated a persuasion that there were many obedient people in this world, but few who could so disport themselves in the intricacies of the English language; and Sudley, as he plodded homeward with his rifle on his shoulder, his dog running on in advance, and Leander pattering along behind, was often moved to add the weight of his admonition ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the same,— I must reject all pleas in such a cause. Staunch comrades we have been in times of dearth; Of life's disport she asks but little share, And I'm a homely fellow, long aware God made me for the ledger and the hearth. Let others emulate the eagle's flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright. What does his Excellency Goethe say About the white and shining ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... gay abandon. The beaux were whetted to great curiosity, for 'twas whispered among them that after a short evening with the ladies, there were to appear a bevy of London-town dancing girls, who would give them a highly flavoured entertainment; and, as if Bacchus had prematurely begun to disport himself in brain and leg of each beau, he set about to ogle and sigh and wish and—pull a stray curl upon some maiden's forehead or touch her glowing cheek with cold fingers, and some began to illustrate the modus operandi ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... as it were into a womb in order to be born again, and there becoming chrysalises, aurelias, caterpillars, nymphs, and at length butterflies; and having undergone this metamorphosis, and each after its kind been decked with beautiful wings, they ascend into the air as into their heaven, and there disport themselves joyfully, form marriage unions, lay eggs, and provide for themselves a posterity, nourished meanwhile with pleasant and sweet food from flowers. Who that confirms himself in favor of the Divine from the visible things in nature can help seeing a kind of image of ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Disport yourselves bravely!" 'Twas gay beyond measure. In each breast awakens A wondrous new feeling, As though from the depths Of a bottomless gulf On the crest of a wave, 180 They've been borne to the surface To find there awaits ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... burn More brightly fed with noble deeds. For souls Obedient to divine impulse, who urge Their force in steadfastness until the rocks Be hewn of their obstruction, till the swamp's Insatiability be choked and bound A hardened road for traffic and disport, Tall giant arches stride across the flood, Till tortured earth release its mysteries Which straight become slaves pliant unto man, Till labours at the desk at length result In law: who pondering on the stars proclaim Their size and distance and pursue their course; Who work whatever ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... gentle lady-moon, With her coldly drooping beams, Be dancing in the ripple Of the ever-laughing streams, Where the little elves disport In the stilly noon of night, And lave their limbs of ether In the mellow flood ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... is because the Eternal mind loves to perceive its own content, in all its wealth and expansion—especially in its stages of preparation. Not that God is an egotist. He allows myriads upon myriads of suns to disport themselves in his shadow; he grants life and consciousness to innumerable multitudes of creatures who thus participate in being and in nature; and all these animated monads multiply, so to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ideal butterfly was here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of paradise for child-angels and the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this wonder—the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparently ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of life disport themselves round my bed of death, and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die. Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb disport themselves together. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... light. The pictures on the walls seemed to stare at the two intruders with cold displeasure. Cherry shivered slightly as the chill struck her. It seemed to her as if these stately knights and dames themselves must surely come down from their frames at such an hour as this; and silently disport themselves in this long gallery. She was glad to feel Kate's arm about her as she commenced circling round and round in her light and airy fashion. As the warm blood began tingling in their veins ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her sex, And she avenges on this prodigy The folly of too staid, ascetic youth. A noble woman's half, yes all, a man— It is their faults that make them woman-kind. And that resistance, which the oft deceived Gains through experience, the King has not; A light disport he takes for bitter earn'st. But this shall not endure, I warrant thee! The foe is at the borders, and the King Shall hie him where long since he ought to be; Myself shall lead him hence. And ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 'hairy quadrumanous ancestor' (Darwinian for the primaeval monkey, from whom we are presumably descended) used playfully to disport himself, as yet unconscious of his glorious destiny as the remote progenitor of Shakespeare, Milton, and the late Mr. Peace—in tropical woods, such acrid or pungent fruits and plants are particularly common, and correspondingly ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... diversion in the shape of a theatrical entertainment. Your friends, the Thespians, would be only too happy to disport themselves in return ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the parks and palaces of Europe, the number of tube trains and omnibuses running per hour along the rail and roadways of London, and the imitation silk stockings in which cooks and kitchenmaids disport themselves on Sundays. A New Knowledge is abroad—and that New Knowledge is a fuller realisation that the new world is for all men and all women who work and do their duty, for all humanity, and not merely for the few who get ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... and yet scarce allowed to look upon it! I was more like a prisoner gazing through the grating of his gaol upon the free world without—like a bird who sees through the wires of its cage the bright-green foliage, amidst which it would gladly disport itself. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... music coming through the open windows of the house. The hospitality was graceful, there was no profound talk but only pleasant chatter. The daughters were glad to have a chance to try their English and I was glad for the moment to slip out of the foreign bond and disport myself for their benefit in my vernacular, but the Professor needed no practice. His English was quite adequate, as, on the other hand, the German of Bancroft was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... her days were over, and Herve's day was over. Vainly did he pile parody upon parody; vainly did he seize the conductor's baton; the days of their glory had gone. Now Asnieres itself is forgotten; the modern youth has chosen another suburb to disport himself in; the ballroom has been pulled down, and never again will an orchestra play a note of these poor scores; even their names are unknown. A few bars of a chorus of pages came back to me, remembered only by me, all are gone, like Hortense and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... and really hardly anything else, except extremely correct, and always good form, without being too noticeably so, no one would have dreamed that this quiet young man, who looked like a shy subaltern, was simply dying to disport himself on the stage, and that it was the dream of his life to make an utter ass of himself as Hamlet, or a hopeless fool of himself as (say) the hero in Still Waters Run Deep—a play he had seen as a boy and had always longed to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Edmonton church, who is said to have beguiled the devell by policie for money; but the devell is deceit itselfe, and hardly deceived."—"Belike (says Weever) he was some ingenious, conceited gentleman, who did use some sleightie tricks for his own disport. He lived and died in the reign of Henry the Seventh, says the book of his merry pranks." The book Weever refers to is a pamphlet, now very scarce, called "The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton, with the Pleasant Pranks of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... immediate entertaining the revel now began—no lesser word describes it. If, before the departure of his dinner guests, Brown had experienced a slight feeling of fatigue, it disappeared with the pleasure of seeing his present company disport themselves. They were not in the least afraid of him—how should they be, when he had spent months in the winning of their confidence and affection by every clever wile known to the genuine boy lover? That they respected him was plainly shown by the fact ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... How Halima got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly know, so far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human, and play pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to disport themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the "Cafe de la Sorciere," so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear upon the high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in the outskirts of the ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... my Latin well this morning, cousin?" queried Francis. "Doth not my lady mother instruct me in the tent and cross-stitch each day? Besides doth not even the Queen's Majesty disport herself with the bow? 'Tis the fashion, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... towards the statesman who is now proudly numbered in their ranks. When he presented himself to be sworn in, it was one of the jokes of the day that Sir Walter Barttelot expected he would approach the Table making "a cart-wheel" down the floor, as ragged little boys disport themselves along the pavement when a drag or omnibus passes. Sir Walter was genuinely surprised to find in the fearsome Birmingham Radical a quietly-dressed, well-mannered, almost boyish-looking man, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... give their wedding-parties at a cafe or 'uitspanning.' This word means literally a place where the horse is taken out of the shafts, but it is also a restaurant with a garden attached to it, in which there are swings and seesaws, upon which the guests disport themselves during the afternoon, while in the evening a large hall in the building is arranged for the ball, for that is the conclusion of every 'Boeren bruiloft.' Very often the ball lasts till the cock-crowing, and then, if the 'Bruiloft houers' are Roman Catholics, it is no uncommon ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... congruous addition, a parallel life, as it were, to the vulgar one. I see no reason, in the analogies of the natural world, for supposing that the circumstances of human life are the only circumstances in which the spirit of life can disport itself. Even on this planet, there are sea-animals and air-animals, ephemeral beings and self-centred beings, as well as persons who can grow as old as Matthew Arnold, and be as fond as he was of classifying other people. And beyond this planet, and in the interstices of what our limited senses can ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... it do me harm to disport myself in the flowery mead with the butterflies? Should I feel a distaste for the bread earned by labour and pain after the honey ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... elements. The RATIONAL myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is easily to be known where all are fair,"(1) is a perfectly RATIONAL mythic representation of a divine being. We feel, even now, that the conception of a "queen and goddess, chaste and fair," the abbess, as Paul de Saint-Victor ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the poet shows, and what constitutes the glory of the poetry; since one of the noblest functions of its art is to describe the deeds and the subjects of stories, and adorned and delectable places with transparent waters in which the green recesses of their course can be seen as the waves disport themselves over meadows and fine pebbles, and the plants which are mingled with them, and the gliding fishes, and similar descriptions, which might just as well be made to a stone as to a man born blind, since he has never seen that which composes ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... consistency. He kept his eyes open upon the whole generation of girls whom he met with in society. When he went abroad during the long vacation (instead of going to Lakeside, as he was invited to do), he directed his steps rather to the fashionable resorts, where families disport themselves at the foot of the mountains, than to the Alpine heights where he had generally found a more robust amusement. And wherever he went he bent his attention on the fairer portion of the creation, the girls who fill all the hotels with the flutter of their fresh toilettes and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... with laughter; set the table in a roar, be the death of one. recreate, solace, cheer, rejoice; please &c. 829; interest; treat, regale. amuse oneself, game; play a game, play pranks, play tricks; sport, disport, toy, wanton, revel, junket, feast, carouse, banquet, make merry, drown care; drive dull care away; frolic, gambol, frisk, romp; caper; dance &c. (leap) 309; keep up the ball; run a rig, sow one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was made for something: as a horse, a vine. Why wonderest thou? The sun itself will say of itself, I was made for something; and so hath every god its proper function. What then were then made for? to disport and delight thyself? See how even common sense and reason cannot ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... me go to my own house," bellowed Mr. Buxton, "and these gentlemen can have the empty house to disport themselves in till doomsday—or till her Grace looks into the matter"; and he made a motion to run down the steps, but his heart sank. Mr. Graves put out a deprecating hand and touched his arm; and Mr. Buxton very readily turned at ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... hard fate for the pious first wife but the idea would not occur to the Moslem mind. After bearing ten children a woman becomes "Umm al-banti w'al-bann"a mother of daughters and sons, and should hold herself unfit for love-disport. The seven ages of womankind are thus described by the Arabs and I translate the lines after a well-known ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... noble ship lie there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest crags, not visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... gentlemen—those who had fascinations to disport or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such—were probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle should announce the auspicious moment ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... longest to disport thyself on a long bridge and art prepared for the dance, but that fearest the trembling legs of the bridgelet builded on re-used shavings, lest supine it may lie stretched in the hollow swamp; may a good bridge take ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... sunshine and summer as the quadrangle of an Oxford College. Not Age but Youth of centuries smiles from gray walls and aery pinnacles upon the joyous children of To-day. Youth, in a bright-haired, black-winged-butterfly swarm, streams out of every dark doorway, from the austere shade of study, to disport itself, two by two, or in larger eddying groups, upon the worn gravel, even venturously flits across the sacred green of the turf. There is an effervescence of life in the clear air, and the sun-steeped walls of stone are resonant with the cheerful noise ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... birds of variegated and rainbow colours, such as Mexico is famous for, people these tropic southern lands of Vera Cruz. Along the shores and in the woods and groves, all teeming with prolific life, which the hot sun and frequent rains induce, the giant cranes and brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents, basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... wranglings and struggles with doubt had ended—where so many are apt to end, when the world is sunny and success weaves its silken meshes for the disport of self—in a quiet disbelief that angered him no longer, because he had given over all fight with it. But the great dome, flaming with its letters, AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam, shining there for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... this moment is like a waste land to be traversed, a land without a tree, alternatively damp and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed by marshes, which leads to smiling groves clad with roses, where Love and his retinue of pleasures disport themselves on carpets of soft verdure. Often the witty man finds himself afflicted with a foolish laugh which is his only answer to everything; his wit is, as it were, suffocated beneath the icy pressure of his desires. It ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... with an innocent laugh, "I think you ought to be. I had no end of trouble to find out where you were. It wasn't exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the circumstances. If the general had caught you there making eyes at the goddess of the temple . . . oh, my word! . . . He hates to be bothered with complaints against his officers, you know. And it looked uncommonly like ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... part of Dickens too often affects some of us. The sin and the punishment of the Doctor, the thoroughly human figures of Genestas and the rest, save the situation from this and other drawbacks. We are not in the Cockaigne of perfectibility, where Marmontel and Godwin disport themselves; we are in a very practical place, where time-bargains in barley are made, and you pay the respectable, if not lavish board of ten francs per day for ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of a tempest. The chief object of the wily buffalo was to carry off Aggodagauda's daughter, who was very beautiful. To prevent this Aggodagauda had built a log cabin, and it was only on the roof of this that he permitted his daughter to take the open air and disport herself. Now her hair was so long that when she untied it the raven locks hung down to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... lose ourselves in the woods and mountains, and sit by the waterfalls on the starry and moonlit nights," she wrote from their high perch above Lucca in 1849; but their adventures in this kind were on the whole like the noon-disport of the amphibian swimmer in Fifine,—they always admitted of an easy retreat to the terra ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... sentiment on such subjects, they were both, in no ordinary degree, possessed by that dangerous spirit of ridicule, whose impulses even the pious cannot always restrain, and which draws the mind on, by a sort of irresistible fascination, to disport itself most wantonly on the brink of all that is most solemn and awful. It is not wonderful, therefore, that, in such society, the opinions of the noble poet should have been, at least, accelerated in that direction to which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... sees assembled together a variety of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape; where from a hill one passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a stream, a trench, another hill, a marsh, but knows that they are there only to enable the hippopotamus, zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport themselves in a natural or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois, equally complex, uniting a multitude of little worlds, distinct and separate—placing a stage set with red trees, American oaks, like an experimental forest in Virginia, next to a fir-wood by the edge of the lake, or to a forest ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... her, and presently after taking seat they brought out and set before the Youth their whole store of edibles and potables and the party fell to eating and drinking and converse, exchanging happy sayings blended with wit and disport and laughter, while the Princess made it her especial task to toy with her host deeming that he knew her not to be the King's daughter. He also stinted not to take his pleasure with her; and on this wise they feasted and caroused and enjoyed themselves and were cheered and the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... They be stay-at-homes and I would not affright them too sorely by the sight of mountains of water. Have no care for us save to bid some one supply us with food to take along. I know the way down to a smooth beach where we can disport ourselves." ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... and streamlet, where glisten'd Fair feet of the Naiads that skimm'd The shallows; where the Oreads listen'd, Rose-lipp'd, amber-hair'd, marble-limb'd, No lithe forms disport in the river, No sweet faces peer through the boughs, Elms and beeches wave silent for ever, Ever silent ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again—twice within these last void and idle six months—I have suddenly run, bawling ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... as such but as an enthusiasm of living; his generalized truth saturates a medium of passion and of beauty. In the Prologue to Fifine at the Fair he compares the joy of poetry to a swimmer's joy in the sea: the vigour that such disport in sun and sea communicates is the vigour of joyous play; afterwards, if we please, we can ascertain the constituents of sea-water by a chemical analysis; but the analysis will not convey to us the sensations of the sunshine and the dancing ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something gladsome and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... answers offered to this inquiry of the Democratic Sphinx are, as we all know, various enough. Some men, of ready assurance and fluent speech, go into politics; some doze in libraries; some get up trotting-matches and yacht-races; while others dodge the difficulty altogether by going to disport themselves among the arts and letters of a foreign land. Colonel Prowley, with considerable originality, was moved to find employment in letter-writing, pursuing it with the same daily relish which many people find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... certain Yanguesan carriers, whose way it is to take their midday rest with their teams in places and spots where grass and water abound; and that where Don Quixote chanced to be suited the Yanguesans' purpose very well. It so happened, then, that Rocinante took a fancy to disport himself with their ladyships the ponies, and abandoning his usual gait and demeanour as he scented them, he, without asking leave of his master, got up a briskish little trot and hastened to make known his wishes to them; they, however, it seemed, preferred their pasture ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... she was of great disport, And full pleasant and amiable of port; Of small hounds had she that she fed With roasted flesh and milk ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on went the round hoods, old hats, red cloaks, and moccasins, and away trudged the four younger Bassetts, to disport themselves in the snow, and try the ice down by the old mill, where the great wheel turned and splashed so merrily in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... that joy lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses! But this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the vessels, so stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for that time put out the fire; meanwhile all this dalliance and disport had so far consumed the morning, that it became a kind of necessity to lay breakfast and dinner ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... security of the Lady Eveline's person. Without this military attendance they could not in safety move even so far as the mills, where honest Wilkln Flammock, his warlike deeds forgotten, was occupied with his mechanical labours. But if a farther disport was intended, and the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse proposed to hunt or hawk for a few hours, her safety was not confided to a guard so feeble as the garrison of the castle might afford. It was necessary that Raoul should announce ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... whom one of the sudden downpours which seem an essential part of the opening of the Salon detained under the porch with its floor of hard-trodden gravel, like the entrance to the Circus where the lady-killers disport themselves. It was a curious, thoroughly ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... flint nor his skin steel plate: he was flesh and tender; he was a vulnerable, breathing boy, with highly developed capacities for pain which were now being taxed to their utmost. Once he had loved to run, to leap, to disport himself in the sun, to drink deep of the free air; he had loved life and one or two of his fellowmen. He had borne himself buoyantly, with jaunty self-confidence, even with some intolerance toward the weaknesses of others, not infrequently displaying merriment over their mischances; but his ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... bright blue sky is visible, save where one little opening in the foliage reveals the prospect of a grand glittering river, where leviathans of the deep and small fry of the shallows, of every shape and size, disport themselves in the blaze of ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... be afraid, Bunny," she answered. "I'm not going to use your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself." ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... works. I was standing on the Eden rock at Antibes last month, idly watching the bathers disport themselves in the water, and a girl I knew slightly pointed at a male diver and asked me if I didn't think his legs were about the silliest-looking pair of props ever issued to human being. I replied that I did, indeed, and for the space of perhaps two minutes was extraordinarily ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... garden-walk is wont to cry out in a miserable mockery of tenderness, "Oh, my darling! I'm so glad to see you!" and then smack his bill as near like a kiss as he can, and chuckle and laugh and turn somersaults, and otherwise disport himself as parrots do when they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... feeding, and covered them in the semblance of a dark-maned stallion. Twelve filly foals did they conceive and bear him, and these, as they sped over the rich plain, would go bounding on over the ripe ears of corn and not break them; or again when they would disport themselves on the broad back of Ocean they could gallop on the crest of a breaker. Erichthonius begat Tros, king of the Trojans, and Tros had three noble sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede who was comeliest of mortal men; wherefore the gods carried him off to be Jove's cupbearer, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... free. The air is scented with balsam and bey, and a pure crystal stream flows through this valley between two hills covered with giant redwood trees, and rare orchids of the most curious shape and colour toss wantonly in the breeze on the tree and hilltops. Birds and fishes and reptiles disport themselves in the sunshine, and giant butterflies of the most marvellous colours flutter so bravely among the ferns and flowers. There are no tents here in our camp, but we are covered with the fragrant branches of the spicy pines and nutmeg trees. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... that what I write for you must pass at a considerable height over its simple romantic head. It will take my books as read and my genius for granted, trusting me to put forth work of such quality as shall bear out its verdict. So we may disport ourselves on our own plane to the top of our bent; and if any gentleman points out that neither this epistle dedicatory nor the dream of Don Juan in the third act of the ensuing comedy is suitable for immediate production at a popular theatre we need not contradict him. Napoleon provided ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... there, watching Cayley into bed. After all it was only polite to return Cayley's own solicitude earlier in the night. Politeness demanded that one should not disport oneself on the pond until one's friends ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... reader's suspicions have been aroused, let me set them at rest. The marriage was genuine. It was performed in good faith by a genuine alderman. The groom and the great Mr. Cullinan even went so far as to disport genuine and generous white boutonnieres. Daisy cried a little; the words that she had to say seemed so wonderful to her, a new revelation, as it were, of the kingdom and glory of love. But when she was promising to cleave to Barstow in sickness and peril till death ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... a favorite field for cranks to disport themselves upon. Ritson's particular vanity was the past participle of verbs ending in e; e.g., perceiveed. Cf. Landor's notions of a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... fille upon hire breste. In curteisie was set ful moche hire leste. Hire overlipp wypede sche so clene, That in hire cupp was no ferthing sene Of grec, whan sche dronken hadde hire draughte. Ful semly after hir mete sche raughte, And sikerly sche was of gret disport,{26} And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port, And peynede hir to countrefet cheere Of court, and ben estatlich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence. But for to speken of hir conscience, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... said Irene, who had been helping some of the little girls to climb up and tumble down cocks of hay, and otherwise disport themselves. "I didn't know other children could be so nice; but I find poor children are much nicer than rich ones. They have no manners, which I detest, and just say what they think. They have been telling me some home-truths, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... "For in these caves I dwell not buried still From sight of Heaven. but often I resort To tops of Lebanon or Carmel hill, And there in liquid air myself disport, There Mars and Venus I behold at will! As bare as erst when Vulcan took them short, And how the rest roll, glide and move, I see, How their ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... fringed marge Full many a floweret rears its head,—or pink, Or gaudy daffodil. 'Tis here, at noon, The buskin'd wood-nymphs from the heat retire, And lave them in the fountain; here secure From Pan, or savage satyr, they disport: Or stretch'd supinely on the velvet turf, Lull'd by the laden bee, or sultry fly, Invoke the god of slumber.... * * ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos. Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government roads and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... spot where now is Quebec, must have noted the wide gap in the mountains which makes the Malbaie valley. Not far from Malbaie, he saw the so-called "porpoises," or white whales, (beluga, French, marsouin) that still disport themselves in great numbers in these waters, come puffing to the surface and writhe their whole length into view like miniature sea-serpents. They have heads, Cartier says, with no very great accuracy, "of the style of a greyhound," they are of spotless ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Disport yourselves, little folks; gossip, plump nurses, as you scold your soldiers. Embroider peaceably, young mothers, making from time to time a little game of your neighbors among yourselves; and you, reflective ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... brood, two old and four young, used to disport themselves on the quilt of an old bedridden woman on Otterbourne Hill. It is the popular belief that robins kill their fathers in October, and the widow of a woodman declared that her husband had seen deadly ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... must be on its last legs, when actors turn king's evidence, and exhibit to the public how they flirt and quarrel, and eat oysters and drink porter, and scandalise and make fun—how, in fact, they disport themselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... selected one having an eastern aspect, with a window that commanded the north-east coast of the vast bay of Massachusetts; whilst just within reach lay the snugly-sheltered cove and rocky islet about which, according to the most authentic reports, the "great sea sarpint" delights to disport him when in a merry mood. "Who knows," said I to myself, when all the advantages of my location became known to me,—"who knows but that on some morning, bright and early, I may behold the monster combing his venerable beard ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... carrying on the trade. There were plenty of purchasers, for the buccaneers were willing to buy everything which could be brought from Europe. They were fond of good wine, good groceries, good firearms, and ammunition, fine cutlasses, and very often good clothes, in which they could disport themselves when on shore. But they had peculiar customs and manners, and although they were willing to buy as much as the French traders had to sell, they could not be prevailed upon to pay their bills. A pirate is not the sort of a man who ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... "for only wet water is cleansing and refreshing. We always take our daily baths in the Lustrous Lake. But here we usually sail and disport ourselves, for it is a comfort not to get wet when you want to play ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... him a goodly tale or two, On which he may disport him at night. His high prudence hath insight very To judge if it be well made or nay. Write him nothing that soweneth to vice. Look if find thou canst any treatise Grounded on ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Africa or Asia; on the third you are informed with all solemnity that he has become director of a new bank, insurance company, or one of those vast concerns in which only Rothschilds and Barings can disport themselves. Now and again you are informed that Sir Stephen Orme has been requested to stand for an important constituency, but that he was compelled to decline because of the pressure of his numerous affairs. There may be a more famous ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... heard to imitate the hooting of the owl, and goats imitated the cries, O Bharata, of jackals. Many birds appeared, impelled by Death, that were pale of complexion but that had legs red of hue. Pigeons were seen to always disport in the houses of the Vrishnis. Asses were born of kine, and elephants of mules. Cats were born of bitches, and mouse of the mongoose. The Vrishnis, committing sinful acts, were not seen to feel any shame. They showed disregard ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a castle or a fort, eating of the fat and drinking of the strong, than to live here upon pulse and water, or even upon the charity of the keeper. At least, were I as thou, I should find myself both disport and plenty out of the king's deer. There is many a goodly herd in these forests, and a buck will never be missed that goes to the use of Saint ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... through the scrub growth of the barrens toward a spot upon the shore of the lake—the only grass plot within a radius of five hundred miles. Throwing himself down beside a low, sodded mound in the centre of the plot, he idly watched the great flocks of water fowls disport themselves upon the surface of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come among you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die among you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... how many and varied are the names of saints mentioned in these my reflections from "a Terrace in Prague." I do not profess deep knowledge of saints, and do not as a rule venture on the hallowed ground where saints disport themselves. Nevertheless, while dealing with the city of Prague in particular or the Bohemian people in general, and endeavouring to become acquainted with them, you are faced with the fact that there is in this country a strong ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... disappointing, had it not been for the two or three redeeming features left in the cold, bare structure; the beautiful screen of open brass-work, with its base of dark wood, on which brightly-painted, mystic beasts disport themselves among the coats-of-arms of divers ancient ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a little stream in which two extremely pretty girls were bathing. With the evening sun glinting on their brown bodies and their piquant, oval faces framed by the dusky torrents of their loosened hair, they looked like those bronze maidens which disport themselves in the fountain of the Piazza delle Terme in Rome, come to life. I felt certain that they would take to flight when Hawkinson unlimbered his motion-picture camera and trained it upon them, but they continued their joyous splashing without the slightest trace ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... of what is commended by all good men, disdainful of the petty certainties of pedagogues and green-grocers, not caring a damn what becomes of the Republic, or the Family, or even snivelization itself, he is at liberty to disport himself pleasantly with his nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns, arranging them with the same free hand, the same innocent joy, the same superb skill and discretion with which the late Jahveh arranged carbon, nitrogen, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... violets, anemones and lungworts. Then spring invades the earth, and cellar and stream with honey and pollen, while each day beholds the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally forth from their cells, and disport themselves on the combs; and so crowded does the too prosperous city become that hundreds of belated workers, coming back from the flowers towards evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ten her new breasts arise * And like diver's pearl with fair neck she hies: The damsel of twenty defies compare * 'Tis she whose disport we desire and prize: She of thirty hath healing on cheeks of her; * She's a pleasure, a plant whose sap never dries: If on her in the forties thou happily hap * She's best of her sex, hail to him with her lies! She ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... inspecting at close quarters the genitals of women or young girls, and a stay at the seaside when I was 12 made the latter at least feasible. When the shore was nearly deserted, between 1 and 2 P.M., the daughters of the fisherfolk used to besiege the bathing machines and disport themselves in the water, bathing and paddling in various stages of nudity. I would pretend that my whole attention was being given to the making of miniature tunnels in the sand, while all the time I slyly peeped at what I most desired to see, whether in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... might have been a society of market gardeners. We don't get so many flowers along the walk of life, we working men; so that we want to see a bit of green sward and a flower or two on Sundays. There is a capital gymnasium, and our observation of the young men who disport themselves there would lead an uninitiated observer to form the opinion that the normal condition of humanity was upside down. The way one youthful workman hung by his legs on the trapeze was positively Darwinian to behold. Swings attracted the attention of the ladies; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... pineapples from Gunter, are there called for by thoughtless thousands, who have met, not from any affection for the turfs delights or their neighbour's cash, but to sport their splendid liveries and to disport their showy selves. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... with statues and fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies and generals, and left to the pursuit ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... some parents do the studies of their children. He was very particular that we should play the old English games according to their original form; and consulted old books for precedent and authority for every 'merrie disport;' yet I assure you there never was pedantry so delightful. It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... dooms. Now burgeon, O Hybla! put forth and abound, till 50 Proserpina's field, To the foison thy lap overflowing its laurel of Sicily yield. Call, assemble the nymphs—hamadryad and dryad— the echoes who court From the rock, who the rushes inhabit, in ripples who swim and disport. "I admonish you maids—I, his mother, who suckled the scamp ere he flew— An ye trust to the Boy flying naked, some pestilent 55 prank ye shall rue." Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... own hand, she thought. They were appended to a piece of facetiousness that would not have disgraced the abilities of Mr. John Raikes; but we know that very stiff young gentlemen betray monkey-minds when sweet young ladies compel them to disport. On the whole, it was not a lazy afternoon that the Countess passed, and it was not against her wish that others should think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these coins I will buy merchandise and jewels and ottars[FN660] and gain great profit on them; till, Allah willing, I will make my capital an hundred thousand dirhams. Then I will purchase a fine house with white slaves and eunuchs and horses; and I will eat and drink and disport myself; nor will I leave a singing man or a singing woman in the city, but I will summon them to my palace and make them perform before me." All this he counted over in his mind, while the tray of glass ware,: worth an hundred dirhams, stood on the bench before him, and, after looking at it, he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... put it into his head. No doubt you would take very good care of him, but I doubt whether your father would like the Bishop to hear of him—under the circumstances—going to disport himself at the dragoon mess. Besides, I don't think he will be well enough before Lent, and then of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Brynhild, "Ill to abash folk of their mirth; prithee do not so; let us talk together for our disport of mighty kings and ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... your own. To such people there is something almost indecent in the thought that any one should deliberately wish to shed his own nationality and clothe himself in another. They form the unintelligent background against which the wild and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said to me the other day: "A man who forgets his duties to his own country and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... them, such as dwelt with him; Their ears they stopped, and willed to live at ease In all delight; and perfect in their youth, And strong, disport them in the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... despair for entertainment? Oh! rather grant me that blindness which alone can reconcile me to my barbarous lot! The insect feels itself as happy in a drop of water as though that drop was a paradise: so happy, and so contented! till some one tells it of a world of water, where navies ride and whales disport themselves! But you wish to make me happy, say you? (After a pause, she advances towards LADY MILFORD, and asks her suddenly.) Are you happy, lady? (LADY MILFORD turns from her hastily, and overpowered. LOUISA follows her, and lays ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the author of "John Gilpin" in a brilliant light; it was not even uttered by the poet—he had merely smiled at it; yet it had the effect of rekindling the vapid embers about the dear old hearthstone of Olney, and the shy, gentle creatures that used to disport there among the hares when nobody was looking became for a moment more real from the citation. Now, the question is, What is the superiority of a new piece of gossip like this, which involves no witticism and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that will be exchanged between the heroines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... made him feel somewhat embarrassed as to the carriage of his arms, he stepped into a shop on the way and purchased a light cane, which he considered would greatly add to the effect of the cap and gown. Armed with this weapon, he proceeded to disport himself in the Christ Church meadows, and promenaded up and down ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... were designed to relieve the seriousness of the programme, was interrupted by the formidable sound of the governed proletariat beyond the walls of the Town Hall. And Edwin's memory, making him feel very old, leapt suddenly back into another generation of male glee-singers that did not disport humorously and that would not have permitted themselves to be interrupted by the shouting of populations; and he recalled 'Loud Ocean's Roar,' and the figure of Florence Simcox flitted in front of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... caught Jack playing he gave him a flogging, thus proving himself both inconsistent and deficient in a knowledge of psychology and fair play. If we are going to Greenwich we shall save time by taking the longer journey by way of Hampton Court. As we disport ourselves amid the beauties and gayeties of the Court we can prolong our pleasures by anticipating Greenwich, and so make our play the anteroom of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... these matters, with her household and secretarial work, filled up her days; he knew too well that whist accounted for her evenings. He did not know if there was any margin, any dim intellectual region, out of time, out of space, where Miss Tancred's soul was permitted to disport itself in freedom; she seemed to exist merely in order to supply certain deficiencies in the Colonel's nature. Mrs. Fazakerly had once remarked that Frida was "her father's right hand." It would have been truer to have ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Bodlevski, "a propos! I expect to be a member of the Yacht Club this summer. Let me recommend to you a new field of action. They will disport themselves on the green water, and we on the green cloth! By the way, I forgot to speak of it—I bought a boat the other day, a mere rowboat. It is on the Fontauka Canal, at the Simeonovski bridge. We must come for ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... of these books remind one of "a merry disport," which formerly took place in the hall of the Inner Temple. "At the conclusion of the ceremony, a huntsman came into the hall bearing a fox, a pursenet, and a cat, both bound at the end of a staff, attended ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... the heart of a couple of care-free children. The forest was filled with oaks, beeches, walnuts and sugar-maple trees, growing close together and free from underbrush. Now and then there was an open glade called a prairie or "lick," where the wild animals came to drink and disport themselves. Game was plentiful—deer, bears, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks and birds of all kinds. This, with Tom Lincoln's passion for hunting, promised good things for the family to eat, as well as bearskin rugs for the bare earth floor, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... they be colonies, have a prehistoric time—a dark period of mist and gloom, before the keen light of history dawns upon them. This period is the favourite playground of the myth-spirits, where they disport themselves freely, or lounge heavily and listlessly, according to their different natures. The Egyptian spirits were of the heavier and duller kind—not light and frolicsome, like the Greek and the Indo-Iranian. It has been said that Egypt never produced ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... nicht Einen." Faust.] None the less it is a penitential prayer, a conference with God in the faith of the eternally good. The eye turned inwards here, too, sees the comforting phenomena it alone can perceive (Allegro 6/8), in which the longing becomes a sweet, tender, melancholy disport with itself; [FOOTNOTE: Ein Wehmuthig holdes Spiel.] the inmost hidden dream-picture awakens as the loveliest reminiscence. And now, in the short transitional Allegro moderate it is as though the Master, conscious ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... glistening foam Rode on the greenish undulating waves; And huge saurian and reptilian shapes Amphibious and pelagic, swim and crawl, Cleaving the waters with tremendous strokes, Writhing with foul contortions in disport, Splashing and laving in the thermal seas Of the remote and prehistoric past; Thou who hast seen them fail and pass away Shalt also shine when ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... let him? . . . But as you justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question fraught with danger, sir; and radicalism, sir; and subversion of the very foundations of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us disport with Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board: but with Betty and Susan who wield the playful mop, and set on the simmering kettle. Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs. Doddles about their mutual ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... serious trouble to Helen that she was not to buy and disport herself in pretty frocks and hats. The desire to dress prettily and tastefully is born in most girls—just as surely as is the desire to breathe. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the first and last extreme; Ordaining that thy small stock find no breach, Or to exceed thy tether's reach; But to live round, and close, and wisely true To thine own self, and known to few. Thus let thy rural sanctuary be Elysium to thy wife and thee; There to disport your selves with golden measure; For seldom use commends the pleasure. Live, and live blest; thrice happy pair; let breath, But lost to one, be th' other's death: And as there is one love, one faith, one troth, Be so one death, one grave to both; ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... do wrong to disport ourselves in this pleasaunce without our comrade Launfal. It is not well to slight a prince as brave as he is courteous, and of a lineage prouder than ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport? ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... gives the turn to a man's taste. From what I see and hear, I should think you can take up anything you like. You are in the deeper water with your classics than I ever got into, and if you are rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge is the place where you can go into mathematics with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand as much as you like. I floundered along like ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... sport, even though it were possible to build one big enough; what was needed was a good stanch sturdy boat of, say, twenty tons or so. And, having arrived at this point in his meditations, Escombe was naturally reminded that he had often wished that he possessed a small yacht wherein to disport himself on the lake. Why should he not have one? His will was law; he had but to speak the word and the best and most skilled workers in the valley would be at his disposal for the construction of the vessel. And as to her ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... town, but if this should be done, lay ye hands on the captive and set him free, without fear, and if any one should resist, kill him and fear not. I myself will not enter your city nor dwell therein, but I will build me a place beside the bridge of Alcantara, where I may go and disport myself at times, and repair when it is needful." When he had said these things he bade them ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... analogies; the use of far-fetched illustrations; quips and cranks and wanton wiles of the reasoning fancy in deviating self-indulgence; and an allusiveness which sets commentators into note-making effervescence. All these, and more, which belong to wit, are often quite ungoverned, allowed to disport themselves as they please. Such matters delight the unpoetic readers of Browning, and indeed they are excellent entertainment. But let us call them by their true name; let us not call them poetry, nor mistake their art for the art of poetry. Writing them in blank verse does ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... low building, with a red-tiled roof extending over a porch or whitewashed veranda, in which drunken vaqueros had been known to occasionally disport their mustangs, did not offer a very reputable appearance to the eye of young Guest as he approached it in the gathering shadows. One or two half-broken horses were securely fastened to the stout cross-beams of some heavy posts driven in the roadway before it, and a primitive trough ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... that minuets have gone out of fashion, if they involved such a test of endurance as that in which Claude Duval and his fair captive now disport themselves with an amount of bodily exertion it seems real cruelty to encore. His concluding caper shakes the mask from his partner's face, and the young lady falls, with a shriek, into his arms, leaving the audience in that happy state ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... influence upon them, since they so multiply in his society. The birds of California, it is said, were mostly silent till after its settlement, and I doubt if the Indians heard the wood thrush as we hear him. Where did the bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,—we ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... is taken as meaning that your roof is tight, that it keeps out the water, that it excels in those qualities in which it excelled equally three thousand years ago. What you ought to mean is that you have a roof that is flat and has things on it that make it livable, where you can walk, disport yourself, or sleep; a house-top view of your neighbors' affairs; an airy pleasance with a full sweep of stars; a place to listen of nights to the drone of the city; a place of observation, and if you are so inclined, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... came upon us, we should simply rise up and depart. I should never ask where you were going. If you asked me, I should not reply. Probably I should not know. On certain months of the year the house might become the exclusive property of one owner, when she might invite her own friends, and disport herself as she pleased. Again, we might devote a certain period to charity, and entertain lame dogs. There's no end to the good and the pleasure that might be got out of that house. 'Pastimes' is its name; isn't it quaint and suggestive? And on the enclosed sheet you will behold elaborate calculations ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... grotesque fancy are to be seen on the shrine, although treated outwardly with Renaissance feeling. A realistic life-sized mouse may be seen in one place, just as if it had run out to inspect the work; and the numbers of little tipsy "putti" who disport themselves in all attitudes, in perilous positions on narrow ledges, are ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... led—one went into a small kitchen and pantry; the other into the bedroom, at the side of which was a little bathroom. The windows of the bedroom opened on to a view of the street below; those of the sitting-room on to a square of garden, on the lawn of which tenants might disport themselves, more or less sadly, with tennis or ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... writing of a book of impressions and experiences. The Highlands and Islands of Scotland are, of course, visited every summer by a great host of excursionists, who go thither to fish, play golf, lounge, climb hills, and otherwise picturesquely disport themselves. A few earnest devotees of science spend their holidays botanising in the glens, scanning the geological strata, looking for fossils, measuring the outlines of brochs and prehistoric forts, or collecting relics of Culdee churches. My journeys were ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... dragged heavily. He camped with his herd on the edge of the settlement, allowing the boys to disport themselves as they saw fit a large part of the time, himself having little desire for the bad whiskey and crooked gaming ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters. Such things are not to be discoursed on either in jest or in earnest; they must not, as St. Paul saith, be so much as named among Christians. To meddle with them is not to disport, but to defile one's self and others. There is indeed no more certain sign of a mind utterly debauched from piety and virtue than by ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... fall of snow coming up out of their dens and retreats and leading a free holiday life beneath the snow, free from the danger of cats, foxes, owls, and hawks. Life then becomes a sort of picnic. They build new nests on the surface of the ground and form new runways, and disport themselves apparently in a festive mood. The snow is their protection. They bark the trees and take their time. When the snow is gone, their winter picnic is at an end, and they retreat to their dens in the ground and beneath ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... that we may play and sing and dance in honour of our master's guest." So he did her bidding and the twain went into the room, the lad playing and the lass following. Then, making a low conge, they asked leave to perform and disport and play; and Ali Baba gave permission, saying, "Dance now and do your best that this our guest may be mirthful and merry." Quoth Khwajah Hasan, "O my lord, thou dost indeed provide much pleasant entertainment." Then the slave-boy Abdullah standing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... social even during the nesting season. Their nests are built among the branches of the fir trees, and there they disport themselves gaily, climbing nimbly, and assisting their movements, as parrots do, with their beaks. They will hang downward for minutes clinging to a twig or cone, seeming to enjoy this apparently uncomfortable position. They fly rapidly, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... elapses between the cessation of the land breeze and the setting in of the sea. This happens generally between six and eight o'clock in the morning, when the thermometer is upon an average at about 72 degrees. During this interval the sea is as smooth as glass, and not a zephyr is found to disport even among the topmost boughs of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Meanwhile, we have an hour or two during which your horses can eat, for there are no fresh beasts here to give you, and it is best, to avoid doubts, that you should return as you came, only showing your powers if any should attempt to arrest you. So let us have done with these heavy matters, and disport us for a while. This servant of yours has made a common boast that he will outshoot any of our picked archers, and now we are ready to go forth and put him to the proof of the butts. Let him know, however, that, notwithstanding our words of yesterday, we shall not hold him to blame ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard |
