"Flitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Buddha smiles eternally at the night-lamps burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging to our ceiling, flutters at this hour under the very nose of the god, turning and flitting round the thin, quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall, its feelers spread out star-like, sleeps some great garden spider, which one must not kill because it is night. "Hou!" says Chrysantheme, indignantly, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the foolish ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with Pharisaical conceit. "How thankful I ought to be," said she, "that I am industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting by against the winter. Now he is dead, while I am about to make myself cosy in my warm home, and eat all the good things that ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... moments when one passionately feels that this cannot be all. On warm June mornings in green country lanes, with sweet pine-odours wafted in the breeze which sighs through the branches, and cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little birds sing their love-songs, and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild roses; or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart like voices from an unseen world; at ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes. To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a casual ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the sacrifices continued by the light of the sacred fires, that from below gave those who wrought them the appearance of devils flitting through the flames of hell, and inflicting its torments on the damned, much as they are depicted in the 'Doom' painting of the resurrection of the dead that is over the chancel arch in this church of Ditchingham. And hour by hour through the darkness, a voice called out threats ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... C. Clapp; and there are a pair of boots resting on the window-sill of an adjoining office, which probably belong to the person of the lawyer, himself. Now, we may observe Mrs. Hilson and Miss Emmeline Hubbard flitting across the street, "fascinating ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... flitting through the governor's mind, Lecoq suspiciously remarked to himself: "Who knows but what this fool of a governor confided everything to Gevrol? If he did so, the General, jealous as he is, would not have scrupled to play one ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... flame of her eloquence, flared into enthusiasm, and they fell to discussing which town or castle should be the chosen spot for their new court. Urach, Tuebingen, Wildbad, all were reviewed. They spoke no longer of whether the great flitting should take place; it was now merely a question of where and how it should be accomplished. From which it may be seen that Wilhelmine, as ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... disappearances; but I felt it need not have been so; that it was not necessary that youth and beauty, even the sexual act itself if led up to by love, should be a subject of giggling and sniggering. I always left the beach and its flitting summer dresses with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and felt. To all that was horrible and ferocious, he was blind as a child in Paradise. He did not notice the hawk sweeping upon the dove, the swallow darting upon the moth, nor the lizard lying in wait for the fly; or, if he did, he saw them only as he saw the shadows flitting across the sunny landscape. His soul was like a garden full of light, life, perfume, color and the music of singing birds and whispering leaves. Before his inward eye the familiar figures of his daily ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Looking at the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago comradeship, Comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be back on their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother's face the look that the artist had caught and perpetuated in its momentary flitting. If the projected Elaine-marriage came off, and in spite of recent maladroit behaviour on his part he still counted it an assured thing, much of the immediate cause for estrangement between himself and his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easily removable. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... to his fall Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie! That which is firme doth flit and fall away, And that is flitting doth abide ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... were like the flitting figures of a fantasy. The road was still well filled with wains and pedestrians, following after those who had gone on ahead. The wains stopped; the pedestrians halted and gaped and gasped. Women cried out shrilly. Vaniman and Britt furnished an uncanny spectacle. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... eyes were large and full of light; every line of the face was delicate, harmonious, sweet; each thought that passed through her mind reflected itself in a change of expression, produced one knew not how, one phase melting into another like flitting lights upon a stream in woodland. It was a subtly morbid physiognomy, and impressed one with a sense of vague trouble. There was none of the spontaneous pleasure in life which gave Lydia's face such wholesome brightness; no impulse of activity, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... flitting, still is sitting—still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a Demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... occasion, and if the thing was conducted with spirit, his bride flung an apron over her gown and helped him. I remember one elderly bridegroom, who, having married a blind woman, had to do double work at his penny wedding. It was a sight to see him flitting about the torch-lit barn, with a kettle of hot water in one hand and a besom to sweep up crumbs in ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... mind as I keep watch while the men are sleeping around me. Still the night continues dark; but as I peep through the obscurity, I fancy that I see against the sky some objects flitting here and there over the rocks. I step cautiously back into the boat, rouse up the men, who seize their arms, and with the oars ready to shove off, if necessary, we wait prepared. The figures approach silently in great numbers, but cautiously stealing along, as if not aware that we are awake. ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... in his arms, and tossed me high above his head. He had just come from Pavia, where, in the disastrous battle, he had twice saved my father's life. Since then I have never seen him; but I have heard of him occasionally as flitting about by sea and land, seeking adventure; a restless soul, who never seems happy unless he is in danger ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... end of our day's journey, when I caught sight of a black figure flitting among the trees in the distance. Presently another, and another appeared. They did not come near us, but were apparently moving in the same ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... raspberry and blackberry briars, beside the stone wall on the south side of this same old road, leading to the Aunt Hannah lot, we used to see, occasionally, a deep blue indigo-bird, a very active little fellow, always flitting and hopping about amongst the briars. But we never heard it sing, nor utter any note, save rarely a petulant snip, snip, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... interior of the province. Leader was still too weak to enter on a campaign; Sheehan had to look after the belongings of his comrade Taylor, and break the news of his death to his mother; and I saw plainly that it was out of the question attempting to catch up the flitting headquarters of Don Carlos without a horse. Besides, I had to complete arrangements for the transmission of letters and telegraphic messages when I had any to send, and for the reception of money; in sum, to open up communication ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... night, closed in the image of an owl, I hurried to the cliffs of Donegal, And saw, creeping on the uneasy surge, Those ships that bring the woman grain and meal; They are five days from us. I hurried east, A grey owl flitting, flitting in the dew, And saw nine hundred oxen toil through Meath, Driven on by goads of iron; they too, brother, Are full five days from us. Five days ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... face to the house. A little way farther on, Miss Oldcastle sat, with a book on her knee, but her gaze fixed on the wide-spread landscape before her, of which, however, she seemed to be as inobservant as of her book. I caught glimpses of Judy flitting hither and thither among the trees, never a ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... always religious at a crisis, and sometimes he went to her himself and prayed the crude uncouth demands of the simple. Impetuously he summoned all his relatives back to bear him company in his time of need, and Lilia saw strange faces flitting past ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... mood, Alone with Nature's solitude In some secluded sylvan dell, Her myriad voices float and swell And flitting shadows softly tell Of dear ones lost—yet loved so well! Then to the sunny home where dwelt— (Ere yet the envious tyrant dealt The blow that blighted hopes have felt)— Fond fancy wanders, and can see Once happy scenes that ne'er can be Lost in thy shades, ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... ways to compliment Florrie who chattered with a gayety which partook of excitement. In ten minutes he went his way, drawing her musing eyes after him. Until he had reached his own door and turned it at the Casa Blanca the two girls on Struve's veranda were silent. Florrie's thoughts were flitting hither and yon, bright-winged, inconsequential, fluttering about Jim Galloway, deserting him for Roderick Norton, darting off to Elmer Page, coming home to Florrie herself. As for Virginia, conscious of a sort of dread, she was oppressed with the stubbornly insistent ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... road doth wind by forests deep, Where soft the welcome shadows creep. Down the valley, up the hill, And then beside the rippling rill. The welcome flowers line the way, Throughout the livelong summer day, The birds are flitting to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... clouds were no bodies of vaporized water: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by Hermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting across the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to receive the souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the divining-wand of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The yellow-haired ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... thought we should see you before your flitting. I am sorry I stepped out for a bit, and so lost your company. Prissy, my girl, I don't want to find fault with you, but I'll not deny that it hurts me to hear you speak against Mat, poor old chap! when he is not here to answer for himself. It is woman-like, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a look at Milty. He turned out to be the maitre d'. What did he have that Malone didn't have? the agent asked himself sourly. Obviously Dorothy was captivated by his charm. Well, that showed him what city girls were like. Butterflies. Social butterflies. Flitting hither and yon with the wind, now attracted to this man, now to that. Once, Malone told himself sadly, he had known this beautiful woman. Now she ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... through the midst of their camp, and in clear westerly weather, at the right season, one may hear a score of them singing at once. When they are breeding, if I chance to pass, one of the male birds always accompanies me like a constable, flitting from post to post of the rail-fence, with a short note of reproof continually repeated, till I am fairly out of the neighborhood. Then he will swing away into the air and run down the wind, gurgling music without stint over the unheeding tussocks of meadow-grass and ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... her till she disappeared, and then went on to the niche in the rock face, settled himself down with his glass, and watched the cutter's boat, which was steadily pulling in. The birds meanwhile kept on flitting down from where they sat in rows along the inaccessible shelves, skimmed over the water, dived, and came up again with small fishes in their beaks, to return to feed the young, which often enough had been carried off by some great gull, one of ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of one who had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any one. The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid and characteristic that critics have been tempted to find in it the original of the most famous portrait in the Shandy gallery. "My father," says Sterne, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... me! how have I been betrayed By my swift-flitting years, and by the glass, Which yet tells truth to those who firmly gaze! Thus happens it when one too long delays, As I have done, nor feels time fleet and, fade:— One morn he finds himself grown old, alas! To gird my loins, repent, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... however, a change had taken place in the silent inscrutable car. The curtains had parted here and there, revealing dim flitting faces, a table spread with a snowy cloth and flowers in a vase, wild flowers they were, too, like those that grew all along the track, just weeds. Strange that one who could afford a private car cared for ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... the latter process many flitting thoughts and affections arise and deeds are half-wittingly done which are not of the soul's true character; and in entire agreement with this, we read of the alchemical process, in the highly esteemed "Canons" of D'ESPAGNET: "Besides these decretory signs ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... on your back upon the sweet-scented hay-mow, or upon clean straw thrown down on the great floor, reading books of natural history, it is very pleasant to see the flitting swallows glance in and out, or course about under the roof, with motion so lithe and rapid as to seem more like the glancing of shadows than the winging of birds. Their mud-nests are clean, if they are made of dirt; and you would never dream, from their feathers, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... and a strange flitting light, from the form which was before him, lightened the darkness of the valley, so that he could pass on quickly; the meadow, also, was smooth and even, and there was a rustling breeze, which played around him: so that he got on faster than he had ever done upon the narrow path, and thought that ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... often transmitted betrays a transient texture, and hose has ripened into holes, and breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the heart—the fixed resolution of such a man to strike a bold stroke, for the sake of his home, is worthier of attention than the flitting fancy of boy and girl, who pop upon one another, and skip through zigzag vernal ecstasy, like the weathery dalliance ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... than the fumes of the brick-kiln. It makes you think the whole round earth must be a piggery copper and that London has lifted the lid off. In the midst of this inferno the cabs crawl and the 'buses creep, and foul fiends, who turn out to be men merely, go flitting about with torches, and you grope and croak and cough, and the most innocent faces come puffing and snorting down on you like ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... failed to draw a crowd. They used to run round in an idiotic sort of way, and always at one point gravely turn head over heels and then proceed as before and repeat. In Cassell's 'Natural History' this is alluded to, only the writer says that now they are in fresh quarters, and the flitting seems to have disturbed them. He adds: "We have often watched one of them run round and round the cage in the usual purposeless manner of captive animals, but with this peculiarity: when he reached ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... took up a book. It was a book of poems written by a very young girl whom she knew. There was a great deal about sorrow in the poems, and sorrow was always alluded to as a person; now flitting through a forest in the autumn among the dying leaves, now bending over a bed, now walking by the sea at sunset watching departing ships, now standing near the altar at a wedding. The poems were not good. On the other hand, they were ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... familiarity: fruit and corn-shops with their pyramids of yellow and red and ochre, and the fat brown bunnia in the midst; shops bright with brass-work and Jaipur enamel; lattice windows, low-browed arches, glimpses into shadowed courts; flitting figures of veiled women; humbler women, unveiled, winnowing grain, or crowned with baskets of sacred ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nor any need of one. The flitting landscape, the regular pounding of the wheels were declaring tidings precious beyond price. A hundred times he wished the compartment empty save for himself, that he might have exulted openly. As it was, he was reduced to hugging himself surreptitiously, to staring upon the window and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... own life, and burned at his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire, their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the images of his past time, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his sister; "he's gotten a beard to his face, and he's taller and browner like, but his eye's the same—he's our Sammul, sure enough. You'll not be for flitting again for a-while," she said, looking at him half playfully ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... spirit of mortal be proud? Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passes from life to his rest in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sat down and told them all about it—his moonlight flitting and his adventures in Montrose. Miss Salome exclaimed with horror over the fact of his sleeping in a pile of lumber for seven nights, but Clemantiny listened in silence, never taking her eyes from the boy's pale face. When ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the jewellery with which she was bedecked from head to foot, and the unheard of splendour of the preparations for the bridal, might have turned older and wiser heads; but what moved the boy, and set wonderful joy pictures flitting before his vision, was the rapid jingle of the frequent rhymes and the swing ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... make the left side of the stream and gain an anchorage. The jetty or the millpond—that was the alternative, and it was one to put power into the arm and give staying power to the laboured breath! The moments were flying now, the banks seemed to be flitting past more quickly than ever. Darsie tried to convert the paddle into an oar, with which to steer more vigorously for the desired bank; then came a breathless second of suspense, followed by a sickening ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... carriage-wheels, and tramcars, bells of bicycles and horns of motors. The scene was as gay as any Paris boulevard, and far more picturesque because of the older, Eastern civilization in the midst of, though never part of, an imported European life—the flitting white and brown figures, like thronging ghosts outnumbering the guests ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... all true, just as the school-master had told him; the big, beautiful houses he saw now and then up avenues of blossoming locusts; the endless stone fences, the whitewashed barns, the woodlands and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised. Everything seemed ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of gracious ecstasy Rising shall fill the eastward flitting air, And with thy spirit mount the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... was like so much sunshine flitting hither and thither upon the steamer, and whose presence would be sorely missed when the hour came for her to go. But Captain Strathmore was a disciplinarian, who could never forget his duty, and he remained at his post until the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... holds a doll; the still, snow-laden trees, on the top of one of which sat a small bird spreading its tail in jerks; the red light of evening, and about us the great silences of the sky above and of the lonely forest beneath. It all comes back to me—I can see it now quite clearly; yes, even the bird flitting to another twig, and there again spreading its tail to some invisible mate. Then I made up my mind what ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... have them? It will add ever so much to the life of the post," said Mrs. Turner, with visions of hops and parties innumerable flitting through her pretty head. It was a week since the —th had broken camp and marched away. Already they were far across the Platte and up out of reach of all telegraphic communication somewhere among the breaks of the South Cheyenne, and right in among the bands ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... talking in the grove; and he went in the direction of the voices,—stealing from shadow to shadow, until he reached a good hiding-place. Then, from behind a trunk, he caught sight of the heads,—all five of them,—flitting about, and chatting as they flitted. They were eating worms and insects which they found on the ground or among the trees. Presently the head of the ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... along Fifth Avenue, enjoying the sunshine, the crowds of people, and the effect of a new hat. Every now and then she stopped to look in a shop, and more than once she smiled to herself as she remembered how she had escaped from her uncle's house by flitting out of the side entrance. For she had found herself within the last few hours a very important person indeed. From the moment the doctor's carriage had stopped before the door, a little stream of callers, reporters, business friends, and others whom ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for me. I'm so glad I saw it; and I know I shall dream about it," answered Rose steadily, though a wistful glance went toward the Island, now so near that she could smell powder and see shadowy figures flitting about. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... carnival. Others were before me. An Osmia in a black velvet bodice and a red woollen skirt, the Horned Osmia, was visiting the flowers, dipping into each pink eye in search of a honeyed tear. A very small and very modestly-dressed Halictus, much busier and in far greater numbers, was flitting silently from blossom to blossom. Official science calls her Halictus malachurus, K. The pretty little Bee's godfather strikes me as ill-inspired. What has malachurus, calling attention to the softness of the rump, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... days of Larry the Bat, the rickety, creaky stairs of the old Sanctuary had trained Jimmie Dale's step to a silence that was almost uncanny. It might have been a shadow moving there across the floor of the store, a shadow flitting through that doorway ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... death elsewhere. This mads me, that perhaps ignoble hands Have overlaid him,—for they could not conquer: Murdered by multitudes, whom I alone Had right to slay. I too would have been slain; That, catching hold upon his flitting ghost, I might have robbed him of his opening heaven, And dragged him down with me, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... who could be so cruel to me? Did I not repent over and over and over again? She has done for herself; but when I go into the danger zone, I go into it now in very truth. Perhaps when poor Hollyhock is no longer flitting about the place you 'll think more kindly of me, Leuchy. I was willing for your sake to make a final effort to be good, but the wish has died. I 'm a bad lass, and you 'll describe me as I am, when the essay on the kitchen cat is read aloud. Oh Leuchy, I would ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... east,' and they came to worship Him. The Chaldeans were always a learned people, and electricity was an advanced science with them. They at once recognized the star to be no new planet, but simply a star-shaped flame flitting through space. They knew what this meant. Observe, too, that they had no doubts upon the point; they came 'to worship him,' and provided themselves with gifts to offer to this radiant Guest, the offspring ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds' nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He mingles with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless faith in some secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his chosen dwelling and his life is April; he reclines amazed at the mysteries ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... dazzled. I used to go to the square before sunrise, leading my little boy, trying vainly to make him understand and share in some degree my own enthusiasm, but instead he only busied himself in trying to steal near enough to pounce upon one of the many little birds flitting from spray to spray with happy songs. Approaching the beautiful monument where the statues are so lifelike as to appear real companions, sentient and cognizant of one's presence, I chose always a seat where I could gaze upon the face of Patrick Henry, recalling his stirring words, trying ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... St. George, that there had been a violation of the government order against the importing of Protestant Bibles and pocket-pistols,—two things taboo in the country at that time. This, however, may have been the Yankee captain's joke. As the night deepened torches were seen flitting hither and thither, the crowds thickened, the whispers and hushed talk increased by degrees to a widespread, menacing growl, then arose to a roar. Now drums were heard in the barracks, and the light, quick tread of marching feet could be distinguished ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or twice in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed woman, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a dozen theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of so many men of genius. It is in latent caloric, if I may borrow a philosophical expression, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mountains, or in the "happy valley" of our fathers, passing before us in the gay crowded city, bringing plaintive thoughts of remembered joys, and quietude, and childish innocence. Old ballads are like April skies, all smiles and tears, sunshine and swift-flitting clouds, that serve but to heighten the loveliness they concealed for a while. They are like,—nay, we despair; none but our own Shakspeare can express what we should vainly puzzle ourselves to describe, the essence of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... flavor than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. The point of view in which this tale comes under the romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a by-gone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend, prolonging itself from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader may either disregard or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... money?" echoed Sandy, with vague terror, the whole extent of the catastrophe flitting before his mind. "Why, what on earth do ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... is he now? In Switzerland, I think. He's the most restless being; always flitting about. But as for ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... outside and, seating myself on the steps of the veranda, fell to contemplating the dull, blurred windows of the Archpriest's house on the other side of the square, and to watching how black shadows kept flitting to and fro behind their panes as the faint, lugubrious notes of a guitar made themselves heard. And a high-pitched, irritable voice kept repeating at intervals: "Allow me. Pray, permit me to speak," and being answered by a voice which intermittently shot into ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... to you this morning from my favourite place, without anything having happened since last night that is worth recording—save perhaps the thousand flitting nothings in the landscape. I got up with the sun, which now floods all the space with silver. The cold is still keen, but by piling on our woollen things we get the better of it on these nights in billets. There is only this to say: that to-morrow we go to our trenches in the second line, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... quite obscured the sky above his head. On either side, stretched green meadows, enameled with the fresh spring flowers; and beyond him, in the distance, the avenue seemed to open into the pure blue heavens, athwart which the fleecy clouds were ever and anon flitting like angels busied in doing their Master's will. The scene was rich and hallowed, and called forth the sweetest and purest emotions. "If the pathway through life was ever thus tranquil and serene," thought he, "and if the eye caught ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... across the forest aisle; now and then a giant papilio sailed high under the arched foliage on tiger-striped wings of chrome and black, or a superb butterfly in pearl white and malachite green came flitting about the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Conscience, we grant it, his guide; but conscience drugg'd and deceived; Conscience which all that his self-belief whisper'd as duty believed. And though he sought earnest for God, in life-long wrestle and prayer, Yet the sky by a veil was darken'd, a phantom flitting in air; For a cloud from that seething cavernous heart fumed out in his youth, And whatever he will'd in the strength of the soul was imaged as truth:— Grew with his growth: And now 'tis Ambition, disguised in success; ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... crew ashore, and no man lost his life at that time. And Skipper Tommy, sitting bowed in my father's house, told us in a dull, slow way—made tragic, from time to time, by the sweet light in his eye, by the flitting shadow of a smile—told us, thus, that Jagger of Wayfarer's Tickle lay at the point of death, in fear of hell, crying for the help of his enemy: and then put his arm about Jacky, and went with him to the Rat Hole, there to bury his sorrow, that it might not distress ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson Miller. The dance-director was always edgey on first nights, and during the foregoing conversation had been flitting about the stage like a white-haired moth. His deafness had kept him in complete ignorance that there was anything untoward afoot, and he now approached Mr Goble with his ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Elsie, whom they had met coming in the opposite direction, declared that they had seen nobody. Lois and Katherine had caught a glimpse of her as they chased Maudie in one of the attics, and Joan declared positively that she had seen her flitting down the stairs. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sunshine falling on the rich clumps of spring flowers and on the long hedge of laurels, and beyond, the silvery breadth of the dear old Floss, that at this distance seemed to be sleeping in a morning holiday. The sweet fresh garden-scent came through the open window, and the birds were busy flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. Yet Maggie's eyes began to fill with tears. The sight of the old scenes had made the rush of memories so painful that even yesterday she had only been able to rejoice in ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... A flitting shadow out of shadows. Nalik'ideyu pressed against Travis' legs, making a barrier of her warm body, attracting his attention to a spot at the left perhaps a hundred yards on. There was a great splotch of dark there, large enough to hide a really formidable opponent; that wordless communication ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... who, in their excitement and activity, resembled good-humoured, brown demons, there were many other figures in English dress moving about, directing and encouraging, running from point to point, flitting to and fro like wills-o'-the-wisp, for all bore lights, and plunged ever and anon out of sight in the trench. Between three and four o'clock the work was completed; tests were taken, the portion of cable was pronounced perfect, and ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... father, that my heart may know What father means, and turn its eyes to God! Sometimes I feel, when thou art clinging to me, How all unfit this heart of mine to have The guardianship of a bright thing like thee, Come to entice, allure me back to God By flitting round me, gleaming of thy home, And radiating of thy purity Into my stained heart; which unto thee Shall ever show the father, answering The divine childhood dwelling in thine eyes. O how thou teachest me with thy sweet ways, All ignorant of wherefore thou art come, And what thou art to ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... New England at the time. Lynde did not know what to think. Of course he was mistaken; he must be mistaken—and yet! There were moments when he could not look at Miss Denham without half expecting to see the man Blaisdell flitting somewhere in the background. Then there were days when it was impossible for Lynde to picture her as anything different from what she now was. But whatever conclusion he came to, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... matter when: enough that moon and stars Shone as they shine to-night; That tales of desolation and of wars, Of struggle and of blight, Like the low mutterings of a troublous dream, Flitting across the still and peaceful night, Glanced o'er my heart and thine! The music of the pine— The silver, witching stream An impress deeper, left upon our hearts. The murmuring song fell soothing on our ears; The silver stream with beauty charmed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Poll!" the parrot screamed, And "Pretty Poll," repeated I, The while I stole a merry glance Across the room all on the sly, Where some one plied her needle fast, Demurely by the window sitting; But I beheld upon her cheek A multitude of blushes flitting. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... cold in the street. There was a wind like ice. People went flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women trod like cats. And nobody knew—nobody cared. Even if she broke down, if at last, after all these years, she were to cry, she'd find herself in the lock-up ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... of a boundless Thought, Unjustly is imputed for a Fault. A Spirit, that is unconfin'd and free, Should hurry forward, like the Wind or Sea. Which laughs at Laws and Shackles, when a Vain Presuming Xerxes shall pretend to Reign, And on the flitting ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... his flight from the perch to which he is still confined, and hopes, by the keen impetuosity with which he soars, to shake off the dead weight which chains him down to earth. The day was beautiful: white fleecy clouds were flitting rapidly across the sky; and the mild breeze that fanned my cheek was scented with the perfume of the fields of clover, through which our road chiefly lay during the first stage of our journey. The sky, the air, the smells, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... however, will not go down into Lincolnshire. It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears, my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of five miles round quite merry. Not to know ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Sophist was flitting before us in the acquisitive class, in the subdivisions of hunting, contests, merchandize, ...
— Sophist • Plato
... fell with the dews at even— Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary— He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, weary, I would ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... about it," continued the little girl, "and I can see the marquee quite splendidly from here, and mother flitting about. Isn't mother pretty, isn't she quite sweet? She is going to have the most lovely dress for the bazaar, a sort of silvery white; she will look like an angel—but then she is an ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... leaving without paying our bill. We were on foot, and might easily be pursued. So we sat on our bed's edge, talking and shivering, while from across the court the laughter rang merrily, and the company slowly dispersed one by one, their lights flitting past the windows as they went upstairs and settled ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... better somewhere else and she was glad to go too. No one but Lapham in fact, felt the pang of parting in all its keenness. Whatever regret the others had was softened to them by the likeness of their flitting to many of those removals for the summer which they made in the late spring when they left Nankeen Square; they were going directly into the country instead of to the seaside first; but Lapham, who usually remained in town long after they had gone, knew all the difference. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... some small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever the former had the basket-phaeton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about so ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... there lived a "gink" who was very much wrapped up in himself. At a local social function he took the prize one day for being the most unpopular man in the community; and this caused him to sit up nights, and study himself as others saw him flitting across his unattractive and uneventful stage. The winning of this prize spoke to him with greater accent than could the exploding of a sixteen-inch German gun, and it sent a quiver through his entire avoirdupois. It was not only ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the gentleman opened. "This is your new home, Cherry," he said kindly, and Cherry found herself suddenly in the most beautiful garden you can imagine. It was full of lovely flowers and luscious fruits, while flitting about everywhere, or perching on the trees, were birds of all sizes and colours, tiny blue birds, large scarlet birds, some that flashed like silver, and gold, and beaten copper, in the sunlight. For oddly enough the sun was shining brightly in the garden, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... however, so he gathered a few of his effects and prepared for a flitting—where he hardly knew when he set out, but he chanced to alight in the domicile of some elderly friends, who were delighted to give him house and table room in ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... in astonishment at Elfie, who was flitting round the room singing merrily, as she added fresh flowers to the vases ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... fare, sat down to watch the progress of the boat. By-and-by the moon sank, and it was dark; the chilly dawn soon came, and then long rows of sparkling lights appeared; the tall spires of the town; the masts of the shipping; the flitting ferry-boats, each with its green or scarlet blaze of lantern; rows of house-tops; docks; wharves; flag-staffs; sheds. This, then, was the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... forehead, and then disappeared through a shadowy door back into shadowy depths. Directly came a sound of clattering tinware and then the faint echoes of a song, hummed, and slightly nasal. A smile flickered across Miss Susie's lips as she watched her fingers—the needles flitting swiftly ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... lit the world; Where fair-haired naiads held each silver flood, A fawn each field—a dryad every wood— The myriad gods have fled, and God alone Above their ruined fanes has reared his throne.[A] No more the augur stands in snowy shroud To watch each flitting wing and rolling cloud, Nor Superstition in dim twilight weaves Her wizard song among Dodona's leaves; Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no more The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore, And lone and still ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the water furrowed by the barge, or the hoof of the towing horse trotting along the sandy path. A journey under these conditions has something fantastic in it. One is not sure whether one still exists, still belongs to earth. It is like the manes, the shadows, flitting through the twilight of the inania regna. Existence has become fluid. From the standpoint of complete personal renunciation I watch the passage of my impressions, my dreams, thoughts, and memories.... It is a mood of fixed contemplation akin to that which we attribute to the seraphim. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... A red-eye? Listening again, however, I detected the solitary's inflection; and after a few moments the bird, in the most obliging manner, came directly towards me, and began to warble in the fashion already described. He sang and sang,—as if his song could have no ending,—and meanwhile was flitting from tree to tree, intent upon his breakfast. As far as I could discover, he was without company; and his music, too, seemed to be nothing more than an unpremeditated, half-unconscious talking to himself. Wonderfully sweet it was, and full of the happiest ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... was afraid to go near the cattle and proposed that the crow should fly down and carry off the Goala's flute, from where it was lying with his stick and wrapper at the foot of the tree. So the crow went flitting from one cow to another till it suddenly pounced on the flute and carried it off in its beak; when the Goala saw this he ran after the crow to recover his flute and the crow tempted him on by just fluttering from tree to tree and the Goala kept following; ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... blue plush frame, Persis passed through the house to the woodshed, found a trowel among the garden tools, and then made her way into the night. The sky was overcast, hiding the stars, but the flitting fire-flies outlined strange constellations against the velvety darkness. Persis groped her way through the dewy grass toward the syringa bush, guided as much by the odor of blossoms as by sight, and falling on her knees used ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... And then I was glad to divert his attention by proposing to go and inspect Mount Eaton, as soon as he had had some much-needed food, since Prometesky was out, and we at once plunged into the "flitting" affairs, glad in them to stifle some of the pain that Eustace had given, but on which we neither of us ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... toward a long, dark shadow that transformed itself into a temple wall as we drew closer, and in a moment we were once more groping our way downward amid prehistoric foundation stones, with bats flitting past us and a horrible feeling possessing me, at least, that the worst was ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... and attention thus engaged, Clo got the chance she'd waited for. Delicately, stealthily, like the "mouse" she called herself, she extracted the door key from O'Reilly's pocket. So far, so good. But the next deed would try her mettle. Lightly as a flitting shadow the small fingers moved over the man's waistcoat, from the belt line to the breast. She could feel his heart thump, and almost ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... some twenty to thirty yards before me, a low, wailing cry, resembling the hunger-cry of the young, long-eared owl. I began cautiously advancing, trying to see it, but as I advanced the cry receded, as if the bird was flitting from me. Now, just after I had begun following the sound, a fox uttered his sudden, startlingly loud scream about forty yards away on my right hand, and the next moment a second fox screamed on my left, and from that time I was ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... dazzling white, So swift and clear her radiant eyes, Within the treasure of whose light Lay undeveloped destinies,— Of thoughts repressed such hidden store Was hinted by each flitting smile, I could but wonder and adore, Far off, in ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... stars like silver lamps Hung from those purple heights, And heard the forest-depths behind Fill with disquieting noise Like frightened cries of flying girls And shouts of eager boys, And saw white shapes go flitting past Like runners in a race And caught faint murmurs, sighs and laughs From all the forest place. And oft a distant sound of shouts Came with the soft night airs, And I ... lest evil might befall Got swiftly ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... seen from the boat. A more solitary place I could not have imagined; no sign of human life, or its neighborhood, betrayed itself; overhead was a vast dome of sky, with a few white-winged sea-gulls flitting across it, and uttering their low, wailing cry. The roof of sky and the two round outlines of the little hills, and the deep, dark ravine, the end of which was unseen, formed the whole of the view ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... characteristic of his method and sensibility: 'In contemplating the origin, rise, and fall of nations, the mind is alternately filled with a mixture of sacred pain and pleasure.' Would you read further? Then you will find Fauna and Flora, twin goddesses of ineptitude, flitting across the page, unreadable as a geographical treatise. His first masterpiece was translated into French, anno VI., and the translator apologises that war with England alone prevents the compilation of a suitable ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the year upon one month. Fancy our being obliged to read all our novels, and all our poetry, and hear all our music in a segment of our year. Then there is the mixing up of all sorts of pictures—sacred and profane, gay and sombre, etc.—all huddled together, and the eye flitting from one to the other.[61] Hence the temptation to paint down to the gaudiest pictures, instead of up or into the pure intensity of nature. Why should there not be some large public hall to which artists may send their pictures at any time when they are perfected; ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... attendance, he made his way, deviating as the tombs compelled, toward the entrance. To his surprise, all was still there, and though a lamp burned in the little stone lodge, it was certainly untenanted. The gate was ajar; there was no fear of the tenants flitting out bodily ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... from Hastings. A large shawl spread between two walking-sticks stuck upright gave, at this afternoon hour, all the shade needful for two persons lying side by side, and, even in the blaze of unclouded summer, there were pleasant airs flitting about the edge of the laughing sea. "Why shouldn't life be always like this? It might be—sunshine or fireside—if men were wise. Leisure is the one thing that all desire, but they strive for it so blindly that they frustrate one another's hope. And so at length they ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... any semblance of impressive or attractive meaning, at night the effect is just the reverse. What a fairy-world is this opening out beneath our feet, with its golden glowing squares and circles and palaces, with its lamplit gardens and pagodas! and who are these gay and beautiful beings flitting hither and thither, and passing from one bright garden to another on the stream of pleasure? If this many-coloured, passionate dream be really human life, let us hasten to be down amongst it once more! And, after all, is not this flattering night aspect ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... when I can set down at length the evidents and historical witness anent the facts which I shall allege, seeing that words, when they are unsupported by proofs, are like seed sown on the naked rocks, or like an house biggit on the flitting and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... [4]with me[4] as bits of ice [5]on the miry stamping-ground[5] [6]between two dry fields[6] that a king's horses would course on. Every limb of the Ulstermen [7]would I send flying through the air[7] before and behind me this day [8]like the flitting of bees on a day of fine weather,[8] if ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see her there made it impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I lost all recollection of how she looked in a town. The memory somehow evaporated. This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of the woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London she became some one concealed by clothes, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... considerably perturbed that so many of her guests had arrived in her absence—an absence carefully planned by the Doctor—betook herself to the masquerade, and the Christmas party began with bandits and minstrels and jesters and all sorts of queer folk flitting gaily about the house. They paid gallant court to Roger in his great chair by the fire and presently began to present for his approval an impromptu ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... he saw a form, weird and ghost-like in the mist, flitting from tree to tree, but, even as he looked, it vanished among the hundreds of fantastic shapes in the gray forest. "What is it?" ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... of wandering, Blithesome, meandering, Sweet was thy flitting o'er moorland and lea; Emblem of restlessness, Blest be thy dwelling place, Oh, to abide in the ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength and substance. His Endymion is a very delightful description of the illusions of a youthful imagination, given up to airy dreams—we have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by—but there is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable—we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid forms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and character; and did not transport himself into the fabulous and heroic ages. There is a want of action, of character, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... considerable fortune. In the course of somewhere about ten years they had five children. They at length resolved on occupying the old house with the garden, for Annie's reluctance became weakened by time. It was on the occasion of the flitting that Annie had to rummage an old trunk which Menelaws, long after the marriage, had brought from the house of his father, the dealer in pelts. There at the bottom, covered over by a piece of brown paper, she found—what? The very slipper which matched the one she still secretly retained ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross, And one small tree embowers droopingly— Joying to see some wandering insect won To live in its few rushes, or some locust To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird Stoop for its freshness ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... motion, With a stately, slow surprise, From their earthward-bound devotion Lifting up your languid eyes— Would you freeze my too loud boldness, Dumbly smiling as you go, One faint frown of distant coldness Flitting fast ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the palatial mansion; so that at last he begins to conceive the mistake he has made. At this first [visit], he does not have a personal interview with the possessor of the estate; but, as the Hospitaller and himself go from room to room, he finds that the owner is preceding them, shyly flitting like a ghost, so as to avoid them. Then there is a chapter about the character of the Eldredge of the day, a Catholic, a morbid, shy man, representing all the peculiarities of an old family, and ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out, flitting in groups that now and then mingled and changed. Rowland Scudamore joined lady Margaret's people, and in a moment lady Broughton was laughing merrily. But mistress Doughty walked on with straight neck, as if there were nobody but herself in heaven or on the earth, although mortals ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Dug by his uncles underground. The warder elephant he saw Whose size and strength pass Nature's law, Who bears the world's tremendous weight, Whom God, fiend, giant venerate, Bird, serpent, and each flitting shade, To him the honour meet he paid With circling steps and greeting due, And further prayed him, if he knew, To tell him of his uncles' weal, And who had dared the horse to steal. To him in war and council tried The warder elephant replied: ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Her gowns, her shawls, her simple laces and few jewels seemed the appanage of a superior state of existence; they brought close to her the possibilities of that charmed time when she too would be a woman grown. She could not tire of gazing at the blush flitting over Lilian's face as she spoke, at the way her steady eyelid slanted toward her cheek as she read: the sound of her voice had an intimate music that acted like a charm; and when this wonderful being entertained her in her well hours and cosseted her in her ill ones, listened to her, waited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... haunting these delicate oases are! Those who know and love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet, with that pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired by the singer he most loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, content to watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie absorbent of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine, to trail up the tree-trunk and through its rustling foliage "look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird, "leaping airily ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the slothful and corrupting habits of vagabond existence. He beheld his native wilderness gradually waning as from before a slow-approaching, far-extended fire. In terror at the sight, the animals of the chase, so needful to man in the savage state, went flitting by, outstripping his people in their journey toward the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... loneliness and grim appearance, it was known as the Silent House, and formed quite a feature of the place. Murder had been done long ago in one of its empty, dusty rooms, and it was since then that the victim walked. Lights, said the ghost-seers, had been seen flitting from window to window, groans were sometimes heard, and the apparition of a little old woman in brocaded silk and high-heeled shoes appeared on occasions. Hence the Silent House ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... site of yonder stately brick one. Thus, one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides, and cartloads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle, at the corner ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... roaring of the stags and the screeching of the parrots, but this new sound was different from either, though somewhat like both. There it was again. He must go and see what it could mean. In a moment, he was flitting beneath the trees, threading his way through the leafy labyrinth, in the direction of the strange noise. As he alighted on a tall rock, which reared itself abruptly from the hurly-burly of broken ground, before him he saw two strange objects, the like of which ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... to you," resumed the anxious woman, "and never considered it a condescension. But in this I must have my own way." And Mrs. Chapman got up and walked to a window overlooking the Tappan Zee. The night was bright and starlight, and shadows were flitting and dancing over the smooth waters. The picture of the ship, with Tite waving Mattie an adieu from the forecastle, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... your meaning, Thad," Davy replied, without showing the least concern, for he was a fearless chap; "which is, that they've got the boat, and could chase after me if they thought I was going to get 'em in a peck of trouble by flitting. Never you fear, I'll keep low down, and out ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to seek Doris after her duties were over and put some leading questions to her. While the tea was still circulating and they were deep in discussing the various sorts of girls surrounding their corner, Doris came over to them with a word of regret for her early flitting. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... light fell in sheets of radiance; with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot had sprung from the deep black mould; blown to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy, pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fragrance of the wild grape; flitting to and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the sycamores, unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which like the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... to the house led through a tangle of shrubbery called by the negroes, the Haunt's Walk, and as he pushed the leafless boughs out of his way, a flitting glimpse of red caught his eye beyond a turn in the path. An instant later, Molly passed him on her way to the spring ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... sank forever,'" quoted the Dominie. "There is where his better self died; would that the young Chevalier had died with it! By the way, doctor, we must not sit here eating goodies and sipping tea until the dinner-hour, for these ladies have doubtless much to do for their flitting" (a pretty Scots ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... sitting under midnight's misty moon, Lo I see the spirits flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... his burden, Dick stood a few moments looking back at the camp. The dusk had fully come, but the fires were not yet lighted, and he saw only the shadowy forms of the wagons and flitting figures about them. But much talked reached his ears, most of it coarse and rough, with a liberal sprinkling of oaths. Dick sighed. His regret was keener than ever that Albert and he were in such company. Then he looked the other way out upon the fathomless plains, where ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts. The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled, shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too, seemed responsive to the vital ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... MARCH YE IX. We were sat this morrow all in the little chamber at work, and I somewhat marvelled what was ado with Mother, for smiles kept ever and anon flitting across her face, as though she were mighty diverted with the flax she was spinning: and I guessed her thoughts should be occupying somewhat that was of mirthful sort. At ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... his feet and rushed for the shelter of a building only a few yards away. He saw Weber's shadow flitting by his side, but when he reached cover he found that he had lost him. Doubtless in the excitement of the moment the Alsatian had found hiding elsewhere. He was sorry that they had become separated, but Weber ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... walked to and fro, breathing the fragrance of the flowers, and looking at the sun. I asked her to sing, and she did so with good grace. In the meantime, I leaned on the window sill and watched the birds flitting about the garden. A saying of Montaigne's came into my head: "I neither love nor esteem sadness although the world has invested it, at a given price, with the honor of its particular favor. They dress up in it wisdom, virtue, conscience. Stupid ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset |
