"Swooning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lady!" said Hunsdon, taking in his strong sinewy arms the fading and almost swooning form of Amy, "she is a lovely child; and tho a rough nurse, your Grace hath given her a kind one. She is safe with me as one of my ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... away, Eternity's undialled course begun; There is a trackless ocean round this life Whose tide is tremulous with unseen gales, And storms that lash it off to fury—shades Of deep chaotic darkness ever hang Above it, like the thunder crags of heaven, And sounds, as of the swooning of a blast Through time-worn caverns, flap their heavy wings On the white foam crest of the surging waves. O man! that standest on the pinnacle Of life's abysmal heights with failing heart And reeling brain, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... grew fainter. She was standing opposite to Perenna, close up against him. Pale and swooning, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... earth then sank she / ere she a word did say, And reft of all her pleasure / there the fair lady lay. Soon had Kriemhild's sorrow / all measure passed beyond: She shrieked, when past the swooning, / that did the ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Mrs. Gordon, faintly, for she seemed very deeply moved, and on the point of swooning. "Bring me a glass ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... Ann Durent, her Father Testified, That upon a Discontent of Rose Cullender, his Daughter was taken with much Illness in her Stomach and great and sore Pains, like the Pricking of Pins: and then Swooning Fits, from which Recovering, she declared, She had seen the Apparition of Rose Cullender, Threatning to Torment her. She likewise Vomited up diverse Pins. The Maid was Present at Court, but when Cullender look'd upon her, she fell into such Fits, as ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... of my own case I reflected there, but of the great swooning silences that might be tenanted ere the sun dropped behind the firs by the ghost of him I walked with. Not of my own father, but of an even older man in a strath beyond the water hearing a rap at his chamber door to-night and a voice ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... all that was said, but I could plainly see the effects of the conversation in the countenances of those present. The mate was evidently much agitated, and presently, when some one mentioned the terrific appearance of Rogers' corpse, I thought he was upon the point of swooning. Peters now asked him if he did not think it would be better to have the body thrown overboard at once as it was too horrible a sight to see it floundering about in the scuppers. At this the villain absolutely gasped for breath, and turned ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... waiting outside, but they are not all enemies. Among them are a few faithful women, and they are allowed to press close to the balcony. At the sight of her son, treated as a criminal with bound hands, the mother, Mary, falls swooning over the balustrade, ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... closing this section that the religious consciousness is tempted to take Bergson's views on Soul and Body to imply more than they really do. The belief in Immortality which Western religion upholds is not a mere swooning into the being of God, but a perfect realization of our own personalities. It is only this that is an immortality worthy of the name. To regard souls as Bergson does, as merely "rivulets" into which the great stream of Life has divided, does not do sufficient justice to human individuality. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... O this very moment, let me die! While hopes and fears in equal balance lie; While, yet possess'd of all his youthful charms, I strain him close within these aged arms; Before that fatal news my soul shall wound!" He said, and, swooning, sunk upon the ground. His servants bore him off, and softly laid His languish'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... night to every care, And shadow of despair! Good night to all things where Within is no delight!— Sleep opens her dark arms, and, swooning there, I sob: ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... donkeys. It undergoes no preparation whatever, but is sold as it comes out of the Chott, agreeable to the palate though rather yellowish in colour. Needless to say the Government runs no risk of the supply failing; there is salt, a swooning stretch of salt, as far as ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Hathorne, let Goodman Corey keep his standing. The maid looks near swooning, and albeit his manner be rude, yet his argument hath somewhat of force. In truth, he and the black man cannot occupy one place. Mercy Lewis, see you now this ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is it thou Or I, who makes me sad? The acolyte Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow, On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow, Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight, As he, in his swooning ears, the choir's Amen. Beloved, dost thou love? or did I see all The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when Too vehement light dilated my ideal, For my soul's eyes? Will that light come again, As now these tears ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... together, and stretching his hand behind him, threw them in the direction of the haunted wardrobe. His fear that, even now, he might be assassinated, grew to such dimensions that he came near to swooning. But upon no rearward ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... Flora, you are unwell!" Indeed, she was pale enough, poor child, and trembling. "Major, she will be swooning in another minute. Get her to the tea-room, quick! while I fetch Miss Gilchrist. She must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... let me glance at it myself, aunty," he said. He opened it, read a line or two, and then, with a scream, fell back swooning, while it dropped out of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... and my twelve Peers I left behind, What fate is theirs?"—What boots it? None replies.— "God," cries the King, "what grief is mine to think I stood not here the battle to begin." He tears his beard with anger; all his knights And barons weep great tears; dizzy with woe And swooning, twenty thousand fall to earth. Duke Naimes feels pity overflow ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... lost at his lips. Nick forced him slowly down until the water broke over his head. Garth was dimly conscious of hearing him laugh—no one knew; and the explanation next day would be so simple! But the wholesome chill of the water rolling over his head revived the swooning Garth. He collected his forces for a last effort; and, suddenly wrenching his shoulders from under the hands that pressed them down, he gained his feet, and his hands seized ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... speak to all ranks of persons. O noblemen, who are the high mountains of this kingdom, bow your tops, and look on the kirk of Christ, lying in the vallies, sighing, groaning, swooning and looking towards you with pitiful looks: if the Sun of Righteousness hath shined on you, let her have a shadow, as ye would have God to be a shadow to you in the day of ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Esmond gives three shrieks, and falls swooning to the ground. "Keep the door, Mick!" shouts Mr. Costigan. "Best let in no one else, madam," he says, very politely, to Madame de Bernstein. "Her ladyship has fallen in a feenting fit, and will recover here, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... left a visage dry For her, who won as win could none The people's love so well. O, welaway! the dirging lay That rung from Moy its knell; Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue, With roses wont to dwell! How can we think, nor swooning sink, To earth them in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... sinking, creeping; Hid in corners crooning; Splitting, poking, leaping, Gathering, towering, swooning. When we're lurking, Yet we're working, For our labour we must do, Shadow men, as well as you. Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Swing, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... dark. I listen to the murmurs of the "Grail," the "Spear," the "Pain," the "Love and Faith" motives—hollow murmurs, confused, floating out of the depths of lonely caves. Then I have a feeling of void and darkness, and there comes a sighing as of a soul swooning away in a trance, and a vision of waste places and wild caverns; and then through the confused dream I hear the solemn boom of mighty bells, only muffled. They keep time as to some ghastly march. I strain my eyes into the thick gloom ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary, Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable, Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness, Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated, Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out, Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... they called progress, he had said, was merely an aping of the stupid commercialism of modern Europe. Better no education for the masses than education that would turn healthy peasants into crafty putty-skinned merchants; better a Spain swooning in her age-old apathy than a Spain awakened to the brutal soulless trade-war of modern life.... I was walking with a young student of philosophy I had met by chance across the noisy board of a Spanish pension, discussing the exhibition we had just seen as ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and Carl carried the man whose face Cudjo had slashed. This was the only rebel who had fought obstinately: he had not given up until an arm was broken, and he was blinded by his own blood. Penn and Devitt brought up the rear with the swooning soldier. When half way over they were fired upon by the rebels rallying to the edge of the cliff. Grudd and his men responded sharply, covering their retreat. Penn felt a bullet graze his shoulder. It made but a slight flesh wound there; but, passing down, it ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... naught, the hidden hoard which he sought to open being not to be opened save by means of Alaeddin. So noting this attempt to run away, the Magician arose and raising his hand smote Alaeddin on the head a buffet so sore that well nigh his back-teeth were knocked out, and he fell swooning to the ground. But after a time he revived by the magic of the Magician, and cried, weeping the while, "O my uncle, what have I done that deserveth from thee such a blow as this?" Hereat the Maghrabi fell to soothing him, and said, "O my son, 'tis my intent to make thee a man; therefore, do thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Maynard had stopped suddenly in her laughing chat with two ladies, had started from her seat, wildly staring at the tall, slender subaltern who entered the gateway, and then fell back in her chair, fairly swooning ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... both my hands And offered you it kneeling: then you drank And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word; O no more thanks than might a goat have given With no more sign of reverence than a beard. And when we halted at that other well, And I was faint to swooning, and you lay Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know That Vivien bathed your feet before her own? And yet no thanks: and all through this wild wood And all this morning when I fondled you: Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow school, but massive silver, and heavy diamond-cut glass—gaudy Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... are mine,' she repeated, embracing and stroking his head. He was almost swooning, breathless at such ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... before yesterday, M. Sucre, quite upset, Madame Prune, almost swooning, and Mademoiselle Oyouki, bathed in tears, stormed my rooms. The Nipponese police agents had called and threatened them with the law for letting rooms outside of the European concession to a Frenchman morganatically married to a Japanese; and the terror of being prosecuted ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... single strand of coral. Yes, it was she! He lifted himself on his elbow. He was in bed. Surely this was the room into which she had drawn him with her eyes. Did he sink on the threshold, all his senses swooning into delicious faith? Or had he, indeed, in that last moment thrown himself on his knees by her couch? He could not remember, and he sank back ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... most intoxicating laugh, all charged with some sweet velvety charm, put out her hands, and caught his. "Oh, Lord! I wish it would choke him, Sim," said she, fervently, then lifted up her mouth and dropped a swooning eyelash ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... of breath, and almost swooning, she sank down under the shelter of a rock, and became in a moment aware that white mists were swirling and hurrying all about her, and that only just behind her, and just above her, was the path clear. Without knowing ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rapidly approaching hoof-thuds behind him and was seized with such nervousness that his sight seemed to fail him. Everything swam before his eyes as if he were on the point of swooning. He made a frightful effort to keep his spurs at his horse's sides, overcome by terror at the thought that his senses might leave him. There was a muffled roar in his ears, and through that roar he caught the hard, clear sound ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the girl's body which acted, since at the first instant of the whirlwind which had broken over her, her mind had been shocked into a swooning paralysis. Only her strong, sound body, hardened by work, fortified by outdoor exercise, was ready in its every fiber for this moment. Her body bent suddenly like a spring of fine steel, its strength momentarily more ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... moving his fingers that he might the better feel the cares that streamed over his body. Hopes of vengeance came back to him and transported him. He pressed his hand upon his mouth to check his sobs, and half-swooning with intoxication, let go the halter of his dromedary, which was proceeding with long, regular steps. Matho had relapsed into his former melancholy; his legs hung down to the ground, and the grass made a continuous rustling as ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... eyes were dimmed with bleeding, so that he knew not friend from foe; and soon, in the surge of battle, he mistook his swooning comrade for a Moslem, and dealt a fierce blow on Roland's golden crest. The stroke did naught but rouse his unconscious friend, for the arm of the dying Oliver had ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... spoke in my distress, without thinking. I threw out the first thing that came into my head, to try and stop you. But it is not that—oh, God! (Sways as if half swooning.) ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... with the laugh still upon her lips, reeled at the sight of him, and fell fainting in my arms. I knocked at the skipper's door, but he was already on his feet, and passed me to the bridge, where I laid the swooning girl on the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... into the Prato della Valle. There the three unconscious girls mingled with the concourse of those who took the air under the still trees. Ippolita, that slim, tall marvel, seemed not to be remarked by any; Alessandro, swooning on his friend's arms, could ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... thou dost not—if thou didst, it might be I should not care to be thy tutor. Come, I will teach thee this night—now, my Pretty,—now. Come, come with me." He arose and essayed to draw her toward the door that led to an inner chamber. Katherine was well nigh to swooning, and perhaps would have, had not there fell upon her ear the sound of some one entering the house. "Ah, heaven!" she thought, "if it were only Father La Fosse or Sir Julian or even—ah!" She did hear Constance' voice. "Aye, even Constance could think of some way for her ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... out-stretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her; "Silence, hush, dear mother," she cried and the widow hushed. Savagely as Pen spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say, "Go on, Arthur, go on, Arthur," was all she said, almost swooning away as ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her spoild warrior there: And the brown gipsy in the swooning air Spreads amber arms the purple glow stains red; Nor hath she seen, nor known with shuddering breath. Symbols of Doom, those Youths Divine who shed Rose-leaves ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... God! how happy I am!" She suffered it all, but spoke not a word. His hot kisses were rained upon her lips, but she gave him never a kiss in return. He pressed her with all the muscles of his body, and she simply bore the pressure, uncomplaining, uncomplying, hardly thinking, half conscious, almost swooning, hysterical, with blood rushing wildly to her heart, lost in an agony of mingled fear and love. "Oh, Linda!—oh, my own one!" But the kisses were still raining on her lips, and cheek, and brow. Had she heard her aunt's footsteps on the stairs, had she heard the creaking shoes of Peter ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... disaster, which, alas! is mine, Bids to the front in radiant defile A trooping host whose pomps incarnadine The faded trophies of the dying day, And, lest I fail before so brave array, She decks the quiet clouds where fancies dwell With sweet translucent gleam and melting hue To woo my swooning sense with softer spell Of blissful pink and ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... long chamber, crossed by row upon row of white, desperate faces. Down the middle, by the ends of the benches, ran a gangway, along which three overseers paced leisurably, each with a tall, flexible wand in his hand. The stench in the place was overpowering, and Tristram was on the point of swooning when the fellow who was chained beside him growled ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without smiling, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the sun began to droop, or the mist began to stoop, The youthful bride lay swooning in the hall; Empty saddle on his back, broken bridle hanging slack, The steed returned full gallop to ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... herself after swooning, her anger is characteristic because wholly unexpected; it is one sign more that Shakespeare had a living ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... with drier heats, on what appeared to be different levels, moved across the whole garden, or gave way at times to a breathless lull and hush of everything, in which the long rose alley seemed to be swooning in its own spices. They had reached the bottom of the garden, and had turned, facing the upper moonlit extremity and the bare stone bench. Cecily's voice faltered, her hand leaned more heavily on his arm, as if she were overcome by the strong perfume. His right ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his head without replying. But Master Gregory required little watching. He lay a helpless, half-swooning heap upon the floor, which he had smeared with the blood oozing from his wounded shoulder. Even were he untrussed, there was little to ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... tonic air put to shame the pharmacopaeia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... tree-tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere; far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... exclamation of Irene,—"My lord! my lord! your daughter is gone!" And in fact Anna Comnena had sunk into her mother's arms without either sense or motion. The father's attention was instantly called to support his swooning child, while the unhappy husband strove with the guards to be permitted to go to the assistance of his wife. "Give me but five minutes of that time which the law has abridged—let my efforts but assist in recalling her to a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... however, and it was said at last—God knows how, for my recollection of our parting moments is nothing more than that of a brief period of acute mental suffering—and then, placing my half- swooning sister upon the couch and pressing a last lingering kiss on her icy-cold lips, I rushed from the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... that the tools wanted sharpening, they ran with them and a lantern to their landlord's grindstone in a public yard, where, very naturally, they did not wish to be seen on a Sunday morning. But William was soon brought back by his brother, almost swooning with the loss ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... Tristram's and Iseult's death. "That traitor, King Mark, slew the noble knight, Sir Tristram, as he sat harping before his lady, La Beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of every knight that ever was in Arthur's days ... and La Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross of Sir Tristram, whereof was great pity."—Malory's Morte ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... There is scarce a week passes she does not set the country by the ears with some fury or frolic. One time 'tis clouting a Chaplain till his nose bleeds; next 'tis frightening some virtuous woman of fashion into hysteric swooning with her impudent flaming tongue. The women hate her, and she pays them out as she only can. Lady Maddon had fits for an hour, after an encounter with her, in their meeting by chance one day at a mercer's in the county town. She has the wit of a young ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Woe! Woe!" she vanished over the side of the vessel. Her last words were, "Remain true! Woe! Woe!" Huldbrand lay swooning on the deck, and little waves seemed to be sobbing on the surface of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... lay spread about in smoking chaos, a plateau of blazing and noisome havoc. Somewhere a gas-main burst with a roar and drove the crowd back with its choking fumes as no human hands could have done. Women frankly hysterical or swooning were roughly thrust aside. Children shrieking in uncomprehending panic were swept along with the crowd or trodden upon. Lumbering men ran and shouted and cursed and shook hairy fists at the long blot on the clouds. Some of the men leaped over iron palings like startled rabbits and ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... I was at a loss how to reply, as I could in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through affright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied, as well as he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sleep, and thou hast been Mine own true bride,—the swooning summer-queen Of my heart-throbs. I have been wed in jest! I have been taken wildly to thy breast, And then repell'd, and made to feel the ire Of eager eyes that have the strange desire To rack my soul, a-tremble in the dark, But not the will to aid ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... the convent of S. Marco (now converted into a national museum), a series of frescoes, beginning towards 1443; in the first cloister is the Crucifixion with St. Dominic kneeling; and the same treatment recurs on a wall near the dormitory; in the chapterhouse is a third Crucifixion, with the Virgin swooning, a composition of twenty life-sized figures—the red background, which has a strange and harsh effect, is the misdoing of some restorer; an "Annunciation," the figures of about three-fourths of life-size, in a dormitory; in the adjoining passage, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... Salma heard what he said, she could no longer restrain her soul, but threw herself upon him and discovered to him her case. When he knew her, he threw himself upon her swooning awhile; after which he came to himself and cried, "Lauded be the Lord, the Bountiful, the Beneficent!" Then they plained each to other of that they had suffered from the pangs of parting, whilst Salim's wife wondered at this and Salma's patience and endurance pleased her. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... heard Cordelia's death, Who died indeed for love Of her dear father, in whose cause She did this battle move; He swooning fell upon her breast, From whence he never parted: But on her bosom left his life, That was ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... was startled into animation by this amazingly nervy declaration and half rose from the chair she had been guided to and forced into by Gladwin when she seemed on the verge of swooning at Phelan's refusal to ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... and Sir Bedivere went to the King where he lay, swooning from the blow, and bore him to a little chapel on the seashore. As they laid him on the ground, Sir Lucan fell dead beside the King, and Arthur, coming to himself, found but Sir ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... hear you now a wondrous thing, I pray; As long as in that swooning fit I lay, Methought I wist right well what these birds meant, And had good knowing both of their intent, And of their speech, and all that they ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... say without fear of contradiction, that never did military hero cut so extravagant a figure before females; and as he had that scrupulous regard for their good opinion, so common with his brethren in arms, so was he only saved from swooning by the aid of a little whiskey and water. This, however, was not applied until the cause of the alarm was discovered. "Upon my life, Colonel," said the major, as the host aided him in securing his garments with a few pins, "I never was known to offer a discourtesy to ladies through the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Kendric would not come to her, caught up her gown and leaped lightly down, landing softly like a cat. She put into her eyes what she pleased, a confusion of messages, a swooning passion, a maidenly tenderness, a joy that seemed to peep forth shyly. On tiptoes, as though she would not break the hush of the room, she went to the hall door, smiling a little in her backward look. A moment she whispered to the serving man at the door; then she was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... out, but not loudly—I think I was very near to swooning. The hands were withdrawn into the shadow, and my uncle awoke and sat up. He asked, in a low voice, if I were there, and I ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Let me not say I could; I know all tricks, That sway the sharp sword cunningly; ah you, You, my Lord Clisson, in the other days Have seen me learning these, yea, call to mind, How in the trodden corn by Chartres town, When you were nearly swooning from the back Of your black horse, those three blades slid at once From off my sword's edge; pray for ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... presently his eyes shone like stars; his hair lengthened into sunbeams; the breath of his nostrils had the scent of roses; a cloud of incense rose from the hearth, and the waters began to murmur harmoniously; an abundance of bliss, a superhuman joy, filled the soul of the swooning Julian, while he who clasped him to his breast grew and grew until his head and his feet touched the opposite walls of the cabin. The roof flew up in the air, disclosing the heavens, and Julian ascended ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... oak in the door give way as though they were egg-shells. The gigantic fist of the monster crashed through and she could discern the dim outline of the enormous head, and the glaring eyes of fire looking toward her. With a shrill shriek she raised her arms above her head and fell swooning to the floor just as a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... your contempt for swooning heroines. What will you say, when you hear that your daughter fainted—fainted in public? I believe, however, that, as soon as I recovered, I had sufficient command over myself to prevent the accident from being attributed to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... our family name. Help her, Julius, if she ever wants help, and applies to you." The painful contraction passed across his face once more. Were his thoughts taking him back to the memorable summer evening at the Hampstead villa? Did he see the deserted woman swooning at his feet again? "About your election?" he asked, impatiently. "My mind is not used to be idle. Give it ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... universe, But as atmosphere and zone Of Thy loving heart alone. Man, who walketh in a show, Sees before him, to and fro, Shadow and illusion go; All things flow and fluctuate, Now contract and now dilate. In the welter of this sea, Nothing stable is but Thee; In this whirl of swooning trance, Thou alone art permanence; All without Thee only seems, All beside is choice of dreams. Never yet in darkest mood Doubted I that Thou wast good, Nor mistook my will for fate, Pain of sin for heavenly hate,— Never dreamed the gates of pearl ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... appear before 1801. Mlle. de Sombreuil obtained a pension from the Convention, but this was not included in the statement of her claims. An Englishman, who witnessed the release of Sombreuil, only relates that father and daughter were carried away swooning from the strain of emotion. I would not dwell on so well-worn an anecdote if I believed that it was false. The difficulty of disbelief is that the son of the heroine wrote a letter affirming it, in which he states that his mother was never afterwards ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... pallor spread over Christine's face, dark rings formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of swooning. Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine had overcome her passing faintness and ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... murmur besieged his ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... broke, and she sank on a seat half swooning, while Elizabeth, her eldest girl, finished the story in low, trembling tones. Tom o' the Gleam meanwhile stood rigidly upright and silent. To him the chief officer ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in her ears, passionately, triumphantly, "Rosalie! Rosalie!" She was in his arms. Those long, strong arms of his were round her; and she was caught against his heart, her face upturned to his, his face against her own; and she was swooning, falling through incredible spaces, drowning in incredible seas, sinking through incredible blackness; and in her ears his voice, coming to her in her extremity like the beat of a wing in the night, like the first pulsing roll of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... them will lend you a hymn book, and whilst none of them may be inclined to pay your regular pew rent, the bulk will have no objection to find you an occasional seat, and take care of you if there would be any swooning in your programme. Clear-headed and full of business, they believe with Binney in making the best of both worlds. They will never give up this for the next, nor the next for this. Into their curriculum there enters, as the American preacher hath it, a sensible regard for piety and pickles, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... fitful that be could never work. He tried his best; but what chef can afford to employ a youth who is always sending in doctor's certificates to excuse his absence from his desk, and breaking down with headache or swooning on the floor in office-hours? He was totally unfit to earn his living, and the little money he had would not suffice to keep him decently. Moreover, in his delicate condition he positively needed comforts which to other lads would ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... my tail,' said Snati; and in this way he pulled Ring up on the lowest shelf of the rock. The Prince began to get giddy, but up went Snati on to the second shelf. Ring was nearly swooning by this time, but Snati made a third effort and reached the top of the cliff, where the Prince fell down in a faint. After a little, however, he recovered again, and they went a short distance along a level plain, until they came to a cave. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... a step or two toward her daughter's room, and fell swooning at the threshold. Mildred opened the door, and her deep pallor showed that instead of sleeping she had heard words that would leave scars on memory until her ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret: his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I press My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear, And yet hold silence, though I call her dear, Just as of old, save for the tearfulness Of the clenched eyes, and the soul's vast distress? Has she forgotten thus the old caress That made our breath a quickened atmosphere That failed nigh unto swooning with the sheer Delight? Mine arms clutch now this earthen heap Sodden with tears that flow on ceaselessly As autumn rains the long, long, long nights weep In memory of days that used to be,— Has she forgotten these? And, in her sleep, Has she ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... a plenitude of subtle matter, Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives, Of burning blushes, or of weeping water, Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves, In either's aptness, as it best deceives, To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, Or to turn white and swoon ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... and bedaubed with their fangles[62] and toys, and that when they have been at the solemn appointments of God in the way of his worship, that I have wondered with what face such painted persons could sit in the place where they were without swooning. But certainly the holiness of God, and also the pollution of themselves by sin, must need be very far out of the minds of such people, what profession ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Madame Goesler such a blow that for a few minutes it altogether knocked her down. After reading it once she hardly knew what it contained beyond a statement that Phineas Finn was in Newgate. She sat for a while with it in her hands, almost swooning; and then with an effort she recovered herself, and read the letter again. Mr. Bonteen murdered, and Phineas Finn,—who had dined with her only yesterday evening, with whom she had been talking of all the sins of the murdered man, who was her special friend, of whom she thought more than ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... loomed before him in the darkness. As he plunged at the door a shot rang out. A bolt of fire burned into his shoulder. He flung the door open, slammed it shut behind him, locked and bolted it almost with one motion. For a moment he leaned half swooning against the jamb, sick through and through at the peril he ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... moment her composure, she sank back upon the seat from which she had risen in her fright. A deathly paleness covered her cheeks, and, almost swooning, she rested her head on ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... they could not bear to be touched. Sometimes they were perfectly well in other respects, but they could not hear; at other times they could not see. Sometimes they lost their speech for one, two, and once for eight days together. At times they had swooning fits, and, when they could speak, were taken with a fit of coughing, and vomited phlegm and crooked pins; and once a great twopenny nail, with above forty pins; which nail he, the examinant, saw vomited up, with many of the pins. The nail and pins were produced ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... them twenty years ago would have done themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time to say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has ever been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the most literal, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... old-time worships knew, The Corybantes' frenzied dance, The Pythian priestess swooning ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... is rote sarcasticul," as Artemus the Delicious says. Woman's weakness! If Solomon had planned and Samson executed, they could not have served her turn better than this most seasonable swooning did; for, lo! at her fall, the doughty combatants uttered a yell of dismay, and there was an indiscriminate rush towards the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... upon his the ardent freshness of Elodie's lips. He pressed her in his arms; with head thrown back and swooning eyes, her hair flowing loose over her relaxed form, half fainting, she escaped his hold and ran ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... not leave him alone! I will not give in to leave him swooning there and the country waiting ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... the ladders; but while it lasts the scene is all intensely solemn and graceful and sweet—too sweet for so bitter a subject. Sodoma's women are strangely sweet; an imaginative sense of morbid appealing attitude—as notably in the sentimental, the pathetic, but the none the less pleasant, "Swooning of St. Catherine," the great Sienese heroine, at San Domenico—seems to me the author's finest accomplishment. His frescoes have all the same almost appealing evasion of difficulty, and a kind of mild melancholy ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... faire chez vous, je n'en doute. Nous reglerons notre compte tout-a l'heure.... Pour le moment, adieu." She clutched the handbags of valuables, slung them somehow on her left arm, while with her other she piloted the nearly swooning Mrs. Warren ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... interrupted when a visitor is announced. That upon these occasions the mourners are inspired to give loud expression to their grief. That the women shriek, rave, and occasionally vary their proceedings by swooning and going into hysterics. I observe that the new arrival is seized and surrounded as I had been and conducted into the chamber of death, where some of the mourners give vent to their sorrow by clasping the clerical-looking clothes or embracing ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... gardens and fields and hills, rich, lush colored, radiant, redolent, gorgeous, rose-scented and pulsing with a life that made me breathless. Even the roads along the valley were bordered with flowers that the sun had wooed to the swooning point. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... from swooning or crying out in her great joy. Shaking like a leaf, yet holding firmly to a tree-trunk, she gazed into the dear face. It was paler and thinner, there were dark rings under the eyes, but the finely-curved mouth ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... up my heart for thy fervent lips To kiss, my sweet. I would lift up my soul, but she swooning slips Down at thy ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... for food. His rest was broken by fits of insomnia, during which his heart would beat so loud as to be distinctly heard by his brother in the same room. In the streets he would be suddenly attacked by swooning fits, during which he would have to support himself by leaning on gate posts and sitting on door-steps. At the earnest solicitation of his good brother he set out for Ireland with the hope of recruiting his ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... to himself. He looked round the room. Lady Janet and the housekeeper were together, in attendance on the swooning woman. The startled servants were congregated in the library doorway. One of them offered to run to the nearest doctor; another asked if he should fetch the police. Julian silenced them by a gesture, and turned to Horace. "Compose yourself," ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... swooning girl the shrieks rang nearer. Elsie came flying through the rear opening, in wild fright. Her dress was torn and her yellow hair full of dust and wooden bits. Lennon sprang up, certain that the Apache who had been wounded in the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... sound, for my ruse had succeeded; and I was just beginning to try to rouse myself from a faint, half-swooning state, when my nerves received a fillip; for there in the distance rose the deep, barking roar of a lion, followed by a pause, and then from a different direction came the horrible wailing howl of the unclean prowlers who follow the monarch ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... stood long enough to be sworn to, when her white face turned blue and she fell swooning into the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Holding her up, he steered as he could, slowing down now lest the jumping springs of the car should break. He drove away from, not toward, Mrs. Gaylor's house. He would not take Angela back to Carmen even for a moment. Yet as she was alone and swooning she could not go to his house. He caught at the idea of a quick run into Bakersfield in search of a doctor. But when he saw at last that Angela was slowly coming to herself, drawing deep, sobbing breaths, her eyelashes trembling on wet cheeks, he eased the car ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the swooning body of the captain in his arms, Bligh allowed his gaze to search in turn the face of each of the armed men who now clustered round him, and seeing nothing to justify the hope that a further appeal would meet with the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... are even more common than the death of a father. But then she meets her death because she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to his success. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make out that she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects her energies to deny it and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... as near fainting as ever lady was, without actually swooning. It was well they had stopped just by the stem of a great ash tree, against which Rachel leaned for some seconds, with darkness before her eyes, and the roar of a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... opened the door of the chapel, and there they saw their prelate swooning on the pavement, and Pablo dashing full tilt among the crowd, trying to wreak his vengeance on as many as he could possibly get ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... and great swelling and inflammation ensued. He was treated by a Syracusan physician, who let him blood below the ankle; this soon eased his pain, but then the blood could not be stopped, till the loss of it brought on fainting and swooning; at length, with much trouble, he stopped it. Agesilaus was carried home to Sparta in a very weak condition, and did not recover strength enough to appear in the field for a long ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with dry channels of ancient torrents, white and ghastly as scars on the face of nature. Shifting hills of treacherous sand were heaped like tombs along the horizon. By day, the fierce heat pressed its intolerable burden on the quivering air; and no living creature moved on the dumb, swooning earth, but tiny jerboas scuttling through the parched bushes, or lizards vanishing in the clefts of the rock. By night the jackals prowled and barked in the distance, and the lion made the black ravines echo with his hollow roaring, ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... wild confusion before him. The murmuring voices, the buzz of sound, the swell of the triumphant music, the strange words of the foreign bride, mingled and boomed like the roar of the sea in the ears of the swooning man—and so the last ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... fashions and manners differed greatly from those of to-day. Ladies wore the crinoline (successor to the hoop of earlier times), chignons and other absurdities, but had not ventured upon short skirts or cigarettes. They were much given to blushing, now a lost art; and to swooning, a thing of the past; the "vapours" of the eighteenth century had, happily, vanished for ever; but athletic exercises, such as girls enjoy to-day, were then undreamed of. Why has the pretty art of blushing gone? One now never sees a blush to mantle ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... boatswain's whistle sounds again, And the men pull on the sheets: "My name is Hanging Johnny, Away-i-oh; They call me Hanging Johnny, So hang, boys, hang." The trees of the forest are masts, tall masts; They are swinging over Her and her lover. Almost swooning Under the ballooning canvas, She lies Looking up in his eyes As he bends farther ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... was a grim and silent figure, misty and unreal when compared with those material, emotion-torn beings of the rooftop. The woman, swooning, had wilted over the rim of the bowl, and the two boys with their strange amphibious pet splashed out from the pool and came running to her, wide-eyed ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... throwing fantastic lights and shadows over the desolate landscape and the heaped-up dead. These grotesque piles of human bodies seemed like a monstrous sacrificial offering immolated on the altar of some fiendishly cruel, antique deity. I felt faint and sick at heart and near swooning away. I lay on the floor for some time unconscious of what was going on around me, in a sort of stupor, utterly crushed over the horrors about me. I do not know how long I had lain there, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps half an hour, when suddenly I heard a gruff, deep voice behind me—the brigadier, ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental collaboration of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Sir Bors would not defend himself against his brother. And anon the fiend stirred up Sir Lionel to such rage, that he rushed over him and overthrew him with his horse's hoofs, so that he lay swooning on the ground. Then would he have rent off his helm and slain him, but the hermit of that place ran out, and prayed him to forbear, and shielded Sir Bors with ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... which faces the two entrance doors that at this moment are both shut close, there stands beneath a brocaded canopy an ebony bed, supported on four twisted columns carved with symbolic figures. The king, after a struggle with a violent paroxysm, has fallen swooning in the arms of his confessor and his doctor, who each hold one of his dying hands, feeling his pulse anxiously and exchanging looks of intelligence. At the foot of the bed stands a woman about fifty years of age, her hands clasped, her eyes raised to heaven, in an attitude of resigned ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... empty technicalities would have added further indignity to crucifixion. But that body is sacredly guarded from their profane hand by unseen restraint. John with solemn simplicity points to the unmistakable physical evidence, in the separation of blood and water, that Jesus had actually died; no swooning, but death. And reverently he finds the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... He opened his leathern sack, and handed a large paper to Aunt Gredel, while Catharine stood pale as death beside her. It was the official notice of my death: I heard Catharine's heart-rending cries as she fell swooning to the ground, and Aunt Gredel's maledictions, as, with her gray hair streaming about her head, she cried that justice was no longer to be found—that it were better that we had never been born, since even God seemed ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... been a sort of restraint, an awkwardness in waiting, and in approaching Christ, and then an apathy which nothing could shake off. And this state was prolonged in a sort of cold, enveloping mist, or rather in a vacuum all round the soul, deserted and swooning on its couch. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... clouds our Lady Moon, Ah me! ah me! (Sweet Venus, mother!) Sinks swooning in a lady-swoon (Ah me! ah ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down and straight ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... love-filled, changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than other spots; and that was the something that had eaten hugely, and that now felt the inward-flung glory of it all; the swooning, half-voluptuous sense of awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt |
