"Chasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to pass only one at a time; they proceeded with caution, not knowing sometimes in the darkness if they were putting their feet on the flakes or into a chasm; for there were places where they were obliged to clear large crevices, and jump from one piece of ice to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing for ever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... where of old From Delphi's chasm the mystic vapor rose, And trembling nations heard their doom foretold By the dread spirit throned 'midst rocks and snows. Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust, And silence now the hallowed haunt possess, Still is the scene of ancient rites august, Magnificent in mountain ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... without coming to any decision. But as I fed them well every evening, the time soon came when they needed more cells in which to store their provisions. Then most likely the famous engineers, the sculptors, and the waxmakers, were summoned to show the way to fill up this useless chasm. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... natural energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet." Such is the first act of knowing, and in this first act the mind passes from idea to being without ever suspecting the depth of the chasm it has passed. It passes by means of the power which is in it, and is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by the aid ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... what a spring that fellow gave," laughed Uncle Blair. "And now listen to his song of triumph! I suppose that chasm he cleared seemed as wide and deep to him as Niagara Gorge would to us if we leaped over it. Well, the wood people are a happy folk and very well satisfied ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thou forth dost career From thy deep rocky chasm; beheld has no eye The mighty one's cradle, and heard has no ear At his ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... the opening of a tomb, on some rock-front in Petraea; there running in long colonnades, or rising into tall porticoes; yonder radiating in straight lines from some common centre, resembling huge pieces of fan-work, or bending out in bold curves over some shaded chasm, like rows of crooked oaks projecting from the steep sides of some dark ravine. The various beds of which the cliffs are composed, as courses of ashlar compose a wall, are of very different degrees of solidity: some are of hard porphyritic or basaltic trap; some of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... course, I had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the lineal descendant of this earl of Kilmarnock, and whose only brother long bore the same blood-stained and laurel-wreathed title, has often told me of the strange link that bridged the chasm of four generations from 1746 to 1829, and bound her recollections to those of a living witness of the scene. She was so young as not to have any distinct impression of other events that happened at the same time, but this lived in her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... thinking of the far cry it is from man to inorganic nature? When we get down to the lowest organism, is the gulf so impressive? Under the scrutiny of biologic science the gulf that separates the animal from the vegetable all but vanishes, and the two seem to run together. The chasm between the lowest vegetable forms and unorganized matter is evidently a slight affair. The state of unorganized protoplasm which Haeckel named the Monera, that precedes the development of that architect of life, the cell, can hardly be more than one remove from inert ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... The father as yet had only inquired after them; but upon sight of them he fell into an ecstasy, kissing one, stroking another, dandling a third, for the eldest was scarce fourteen; but not one of them knew him, for seven years makes a great chasm in young memories. The more I saw of this sport, the stronger impression Patty and my own children made upon me. My mind had been so much employed on my own distresses, that those dear ideas were almost effaced; but this moving scene ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... thought Roger, intending no disrespect. He loved his mother and appreciated her good qualities, but he saw the awful chasm between those two souls, which no ceremony of ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Ball: painfully to some of her thoughts. But Redworth kissed that distant brilliant night as freshly as if no belabouring years rolled in the chasm: which led her to conceive partly, and wonderingly, the nature of a strong man's passion; and it subjugated the woman knowing of a contrast. The smart of the blow dealt her by him who had fired the passion in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wrote a pamphlet in defence of Atheism. A copy of this pamphlet he caused to be sent to the head of each of the colleges in Oxford, with a challenge to discuss and answer.—The answer to this was the edict which expelled Shelley from Oxford, and at the same time placed a wide chasm between him and his family. This breach was still further widened in the following year by his marriage, at the age of nineteen, with a beautiful girl named Westbrook. Although Miss Westbrook was respectfully connected, Shelley's aristocratic family regarded this as ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... When the MacDonnells were retreating they had to cross a river, and those who missed the ford were either drowned or killed. A young and powerful chief of the MacDonnells in his flight made towards a spot where the burn rushed through a yawning chasm, very wide and deep, and was closely followed by one of the victorious Mackenzies; but MacDonnell, forgetting the danger of the attempt in the hurry of his flight and the agitation of the moment, and being of an athletic frame and half naked, made a ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... says little of Napoleon after his first abdication and retirement to Elba in 1814: we have endeavoured to fill up the chasm thus left by following his hero through the remaining seven years of his life, to the "last scenes of all" that ended his "strange, eventful history,"—to his deathbed and alien grave at St. Helena. A completeness will thus be given to the work which it did not before ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... sick with rage at his own impotence, but as he whipped over the dump the earth opened up before him and he slipped and stopped on the brink of a chasm. It was the caved-in stope, the old glory-hole of the Paymaster, and it cut off his last escape. A sudden sinking of the heart, a feeling of fate being against him, came over him as he slunk along the bank; and then, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it to both the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received it cordially, and who join me in the belief that it may be the first thread to bridge the chasm. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... his head, and turned away. As he went down the hall again to the front door he gave an imitation of a man walking with extended arms across a plank spanning a chasm. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... nodded around him and fell thundering across his path; and though he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most terrific glaciers and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... notoriously turbulent and warlike, is largely due to the fact that, so long as the customs of the natives are not inimical to good government or to their own well-being, they studiously refrain from interfering with them. Nor is there the same social chasm separating Europeans and natives in the Insulinde which is found in Britain's Eastern possessions. Were a British official in India to marry a native woman he would be promptly recalled in disgrace; if a Dutch official marries a native woman she is accorded the same social recognition ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... it by, pass it over, dismiss it out of history, with some poor common-place simper of sorrow or of scorn. It will not do. Mankind have not been so long on this planet altogether, that we can allow so large a chasm to be scooped out of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... give it credit for; but—" continued he, gazing at the mighty object in dispute, "it is possible that these Falls are of more recent date than the creation of the world. An earthquake may have rent the deep chasm that forms the bed of that river, and in a few seconds of time the same cause might break down that mighty barrier, and drain the upper lakes, by converting a large part of your fine province into another inland sea. But this is all theory. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of the bank and displaced stones that shot a thousand feet down into the dizzy depths of the valley! and now, one of them, the girl, had actually rolled out of the slide and was hanging over the chasm supported only by a clump of chimasal ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... or Hobara (Otis aurita), quail, partridge, curlew and sometimes hare: it gives excellent sport with crows but requires to be defended. Indian sportsmen, like ourselves, divide hawks into two orders: the "Siyah-chasm," or black-eyed birds, long-winged and noble; the "Gulabi-chasm" or yellow-eyed (like the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion of the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean rushes in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of steam is formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which it entered, an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... comfort of these accustomed surroundings that the housekeeper of the Senate Hotel opened her eyes this Tuesday morning. Opened them, and lay a moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday lingered, brackish, in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... a matter of reasoning, though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of nature,—genius, in short. Reasoning of a very high order illuminates Nelson's mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action. "Responsibility," said St. Vincent, "is the test of a man's courage." Emergency, it may be said, is the test of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... on the previous night he had drank too much. There seemed to be a chasm in his recollection which all his efforts could not fill. He might, while in a measure unconscious of his actions, have betrayed some of his momentous secrets. The overseer, of whose presence he had an indistinct remembrance, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... and sang over scattered stones at the bottom of this grim chasm, constantly twisting and curving from wall to wall, generally half concealed from view by the dense growth of overhanging bushes shadowing its banks. High up along the brown rock wall the gleam of the afternoon sun rested warm and golden, but deeper down within ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... until it resembled a blue pearl. Sometimes a metallic flash shot from its polished sides like a gleam of violet lightning. But at length it passed from view, swallowed up in the tremendous watery chasm. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... it is true, is more difficult than the problem itself. There are no facts to sustain it, and even if he were not able to see how man's mind could be developed by natural selection, it is a sort of reductio ad absurdum to call in the angels to bridge the chasm. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... affirm, to be a similar chasm near Hierapolis in Phrygia; from which a noxious vapour rose in like manner with a fetid smell which never ceased, and destroyed everything within the reach of its influence, except eunuchs; to what this was owing we leave natural philosophers ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Mr Champnell, that quite recently events have happened which threaten to bridge the chasm of twenty years, and to place me face to face with that plague spot of the past. At this moment I stand in imminent peril of becoming again the wretched thing I was when I fled from that den of all the devils. It is to guard me against this that I have come to you. I want you to unravel ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... fourteen miles there is not a single hut. The snowfield extended for five miles, from ten to seventy feet deep, much crevassed, and encumbered with avalanches. In it the Dras, truly 'snow-born,' appeared, issuing from a chasm under a blue arch of ice and snow, afterwards to rage down the valley, to be forded many times or crossed on snow bridges. After walking for some time, and getting a bad fall down an avalanche slope, I mounted Gyalpo, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... exhaust the island. One day we go to see Arch Rock, a beautiful natural bridge of rock spanning a chasm some eighty feet in height and forty in width. The summit is one hundred and fifty feet above the level. Another day we visit Sugar-loaf Rock, an isolated conical shape one hundred and forty feet high, rising from a plateau in the centre of the island. A hole half-way up its side is large enough ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... you sometimes see a Bubi wearing is said to come from this lake and be a ju-ju of Lobe's. Dr. Baumann says that the lake at Riabba from which the spirit Uapa rises is more holy, and that he is small, and resides in a chasm in a rock whose declivity can only be passed by means of bush ropes, and in the wet season he is not get-at-able at all. He will, if given suitable offerings, reveal the future to Bubis, but Bubis only. His priest is the King of all the Bubis, upon whom it is never permitted to a white ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... slept not through the live-long night, Or slept in fitful trances, with a bright, Fair dream upon their eyelids: but they rose In sorrow from the pallet of repose; For the dark thought of their sad destiny Came o'er them, like a chasm of the deep sea, That was to rend their fortunes; and at eve They met again, but, silent, took their leave, As they did yesterday: another night, And neither spake awhile—A pure delight Had chasten'd love's ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... which lay about a quarter of a mile distant, in a line with the church of All-Hallows-in-the-Wall, and he accordingly proceeded in that direction. The pit which he was about to visit was about forty feet long, twenty wide, and the like number deep. Into this tremendous chasm the dead were promiscuously thrown, without regard to sex or condition, generally stripped of their clothing, and covered with a slight layer ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sufferings I endured. Among other conceits, I thought the colour which the tar usually leaves on seamen's nails, was the sign that I had the yellow fever. This idea haunted me for days, and gave me great uneasiness. In short, I was like a man suspended over a yawning chasm, expecting, every instant, to fall and be dashed to pieces, and yet, who ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... who are stamped with less vigour, or who have heedlessly nurtured the insidious reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it sucked? Can I, conscious of my secret sins, throw off my fellow creatures, and calmly see them drop into the chasm of perdition, that yawns to receive them. No! no! The agonized heart will cry with suffocating impatience—I too am a man! and have vices, hid, perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the dust before God, and loudly tell me when all is mute, that we are formed of the same earth, and breathe the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the last, far out into that sea of blue which rolls around all the world. Behind them roared the waterfall swollen with autumn rains and hurrying to pour itself into the rocky basin that lay boiling below, there to leave its legacy of shattered trees, then to dash itself into a deeper chasm, soon to be haunted by a tragic legend and go glittering away through forest, field, and intervale to join the river rolling slowly to the sea. Won by the beauty and the grandeur of the scene, Pauline ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... renders much the same ministry to our age which the Mysteries rendered to the olden world. It is, indeed, the same stream of sweetness and light flowing in our day—like the fabled river Alpheus which, gathering the waters of a hundred rills along the hillsides of Arcadia, sank, lost to sight, in a chasm in the earth, only to reappear in the fountain of Arethusa. This at least is true: the Greater Ancient Mysteries were prophetic of Masonry whose drama is an epitome of universal initiation, and whose simple symbols are the depositaries of the noblest wisdom of mankind. As ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... thee not, then depart straightway.' And so it was. But there came a morning when St. Francis made him no answer, and, contrary to St. Francis's desire, but with the very best of intentions, dear little brother Leo crossed the bridge over the chasm, which you may see to this day, and entered into St. Francis's cell. There he found him in ecstasy, saying, 'Who art Thou, O most sweet, my God? What am I, most vile worm, and Thine unprofitable servant?' Again and again brother Leo heard him ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... would be able to distance his pursuers, and escape. Away he darted like lightning, their horrible yell still ringing in his ears; he spurred his horse, already covered with foam, entered the plain, and, to his horror and amazement, found that between him and the valley there was a horrible chasm, twenty-five feet in breadth and two hundred feet in depth, with acute angles of rocks, as numerous as the thorns upon a prickly pear. What could he do? His tired horse refused to take the leap, and he could plainly hear the voice ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... his eyes he saw Fearless Frank and Anita—perceived their position toward each other, and that it would require only a single word to bridge the chasm between them. A hard look came into his eyes as they gazed through the holes in the mask, then he gazed at Alice—sweet piquant Alice—and the hardness melted like snow ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... the arguments advanced against the other explanations will be considerably strengthened. Concerning the situation of Jerusalem, Josephus, de B. J. i. 6, c. 13, remarks as follows: "It was built on two hills fronting each other, separated by a chasm running between, down to which the houses were situated. One of the hills, on which the upper part of the city lay, was much higher and longer than the other. And, because it was fortified, it ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... them into a small jailer's lodge, with a table and some wooden chairs, in the side of which, opposite to the entrance, was a strong movable grate, between the bars of which might be seen a yawning sort of chasm leading into the heart ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a fresh start, and kept along the edge of the barranca. They chose the path that appeared to lead upward—as by so doing they believed they would the sooner reach a point where the chasm was shallower. They rode on for miles; but still the fissure, with its steep cliffs, yawned below them, and no crossing could be found. The sun went down, and the night came on as dark as pitch. They halted. They dared ride no farther. They ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... rate, was prospect of food and rest, and the poor travellers brisked up again. But alas! between them and the tents lay a formidable obstacle. Nothing less than a birch-twig bridge over a rushing stream which filled up the bottom of a wide rift or chasm in the upland. This chasm stretched right across the upland from a steep rock which blocked up the head of the little valley, and out of which the stream gushed, and there was no way of crossing it, so the shepherd explained by signs, except the ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... I am not a fool, an' I want my boy taught. But don't you men go chasm' those lads; they'll just enjoy it, an' you'll do no good. You leave Dickie to me, an' I'll have him home here in two shakes. Dickie's a high-spirited boy, an' full o' the wild fancies of boys. He's done this sort o' thing before. Run away from home once to ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... whole chasm between himself and Chaucer, as Dante between himself and Virgil. He called Chaucer master, as Milton was afterwards to call him. And, even while he chose the most artificial of all forms, his aim—that of getting ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Ravenswood and his horse vanish from the sight of Colonel Ashton, we feel how the impressiveness and beauty of the description are heightened by placing us where the latter stood,—showing us no more than he could have witnessed, and bidding our imaginations to fill up the awful doubtful chasm. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... widely sweeping curve of a beautiful bay, there is a kind of chasm or opening in one of the lofty cliffs which bound it. This produces a very romantic and striking effect. The steep descending sides of this opening in the cliff are covered with trees, bushes, wild flowers, fern, wormwood, and many other herbs, here and there ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... passion in such a light. There would have been no legal barrier to their union; there would have been no frightful menace to white supremacy in the marriage of the negro and the octoroon: the drop of dark blood bridged the chasm. But Frank knew that she did not love him, and had not hoped that she might. His was one of those rare souls that can give with small hope of return. When he had made the scar upon her arm, by the same token she had branded him her slave forever; when he had saved her from a watery grave, he had ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... metier proves to be—religion, architecture, literature—I'm sure you would be much safer anchored to the Church, but I won't risk my influence by arguing with you even though I am secretly sure that the "black chasm of Romanism" yawns beneath you. Do ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... style of Greek sculpture, now in the British Museum—were found. Occupying a ledge of rock, looking towards the sea, at the base of a [141] cliff of upheaved limestone, of singular steepness and regularity of surface, the spot presents indications of volcanic disturbance, as if a chasm in the earth had opened here. It was this character, suggesting the belief in an actual connexion with the interior of the earth (local tradition claiming it as the scene of the stealing of Persephone), which probably ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... apart, streams from the lands beyond poured over the edge of the cliff in huge cascades of foam that became raging torrents when they reached its lowest slopes. One of these rivers fed a lake which lay in a chasm on the slopes, and from either end of this lake poured two rivers which seemed to me about twenty miles apart, as we should judge. They ran through groves of cedars and large groups of forest trees not unlike to enormous oaks and pines, and yet not ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... like Sollicker; and the apprehensions of that discomfortable cousin were being fulfilled only too ruthlessly. The climate had played Old Gooseberry with the fine primordial stock. Physically, the Suffolk Punch had degenerated into the steeplechaser; psychologically, the chasm between the stolid English peasant and the saturnine, sensitive Australian had been spanned with that facilis which ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... appearance, more liberal attitude towards modern ideas of progress has raised the hopes of many in the Roman Church whose minds and consciences are troubled by the ever-widening chasm which separates traditional dogma from secular knowledge. While dogma was stationary—immobilis et irreformabilis—there seemed to be no prospect except that the progress of human knowledge would leave theology further and further behind, till the rupture between Catholicism ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... it, and was standing upon the sill outside, gazing fearfully at the void beneath, and the distance between the sill and the branch in front of him. Afterwards, he confessed that this moment was the most difficult. He was an active boy, but he had never jumped such a chasm. If ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... way," said Clinton, bringing his eyes in from a chasm some hundreds of feet below: "one day when I was beginning to recover from that attack of pneumonia, I saw a lot of the boys romping along, and I felt pretty bad because I could not romp and play, too; then I thought that if I could not be strong that way, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... consent. Every now and then the constraint and embarrassment fell off for a short time, for at bottom they loved and appreciated one another heartily; but the divergences in their thoughts and habits had become very serious, and seemed likely to increase rather than not. They felt keenly the chasm between the two generations. As they looked at one another from opposite banks, each in his secret heart blamed the other in great measure for that which was the fault of neither. Mixed with the longings which each ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... dogged way around a deeply shadowed bend, and found the chasm not only almost wholly dark, but narrower than it had been at any ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Yorkshire, is Robin Hood's penny-stone; a fountain near Nottingham, another between Doncaster and Wakefield, and one in Lancashire, are Robin Hood's wells; a cave in Nottinghamshire is his stable; a rude natural rock in Hope Dale is his chair; a chasm at Chatsworth is his leap; Blackstone Edge, in Lancashire, is his bed."[20] In fact, his name bids fair to overrun every remarkable object of the sort which has not been already appropriated to King Arthur or the Devil; with the latter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... cry seemed to hiss strangely past the lad's ears. Then there was a moment or two's silence and a horrible splash, followed by the washing of water against the sides of the black chasm down which Mark was straining his eyes to gaze, and then whisper after whisper, soft and strange, until ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... chasm in which we had passed the night. We crossed the stream, and gaining the further side of the pool I have mentioned, discovered proofs that the spot must have been visited by some one but a short time previous to our arrival. Further observation convinced us ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... later study. From Paris, in the ensuing winter, I sent it to Ruskin, the distance being made of the actual view down the valley of Chamounix; and he wrote me a bitter condemnation of it, as a disappointment; for he said that he "had expected to see the Alpine roses overhanging an awful chasm," etc. (an expectation he should have given expression to earlier), and found it very commonplace and uninteresting. So it was, and I burnt it after the fashion of the "Bed of Ferns." As Rowse said of him later, "he wanted me to hold the brush while he painted." But our ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... midday sun with the luster of satin. We are tempted to call this Rainbow Park. Away beyond these beds are the Uinta and Wasatch mountains with their pine forests and snow fields and naked peaks. Now we turn to the right and look up Whirlpool Canyon, a deep gorge with a river at the bottom—a gloomy chasm, where mad waves roar; but at this distance and altitude the river is but a rippling brook, and the chasm a narrow cleft. The top of the mountain on which we stand is a broad, grassy table, and a herd of deer are feeding in the distance. Walking over to the southeast, we look down into the valley ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... prongs at the top projected down to the German front line while the stem ran back connecting with the road through the dip which goes from Beaumont-Hamel on the north to the Ancre. At the forked or western end, projecting down to the front, there is a chasm more than thirty feet deep, with walls so precipitous that in some parts they overhang. The Germans had burrowed into the sides of the earth and established lairs far below the thirty feet level ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... one-half times as high as Niagara Falls. This means that they are over a mile in breadth and four hundred and twenty feet high. The tremendous flow has only one small outlet about 100 yards wide. The roar and turmoil of this world of water as it crashes into the chasm sets up what is well called "The Boiling Pot." From this swirling melee the Zambesi rushes with unbridled fury through a narrow and deep gorge, extending with many ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... landed at the head of Garden Island, and, as the doctor had done before, peered over the giddy heights at the further end across the chasm. The measurement of the chasm was now taken; it was found to be eighty yards opposite Garden Island, while the waterfall itself was twice the depth of that of Niagara, and the river where it went over the rock fully a mile wide. Charles Livingstone, who ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... times almost seemed to meet overhead, then widened, we crossing and re-crossing the torrent by wooden bridges which shortly are to be replaced by iron ones. The colouring was so beautiful, the chasm being generally in shade with the mountains above standing out in glorious sunshine, covered as they were in many places, even as far down as the water's edge, with pines. Nature is marvellous in its productions, but the ingenuity of man ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... clutching him by the arm. "You remember that after our fight with the Woongas and our escape from the chasm we fled to the south, and that the next day, while you were away from camp hunting for some animal that would give us fat for Mukoki's wound, you discovered a trail. You told us that you followed the sledge tracks, and that after a time the party had been met by others on snow-shoes, ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... tales of the accidents their darlings had survived, several gentlemen kindly offered their boats, and the boys, with the best intentions in life, suggested strolls of two or three miles to Rafe's Chasm and Norman's Woe, or invited her to tennis and archery, as if violent exercise was the cure for all human ills. She was very grateful, and reluctantly went away to bed, declaring, when she got upstairs, that these new friends were the dearest people she ever met, and the Willows the most ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... several familiar faces on the jury, and I rely on your intelligence. In fact, the only point of the defence is, that the United States have offered no proof that Drayton seduced and enticed these slaves to come on board the Pearl; and that the prisoner's counsel are pleased to call a gap, a chasm, which they say you can't fill up. It is the same gap which occurs in every larceny case. Where can the government produce positive testimony to the taking? That is done secretly, in the dark, and is to be presumed from circumstances. A man is found going off ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... name will always be linked with that of his great rival and contemporary, Canova. Both sculptors are equally remarkable for the way they returned to the classic traditions of Hellenic sculpture. It can be said of them that they bridged the chasm of nearly two thousand years that had elapsed between antiquity and modern times. It was reserved to their successors to introduce a modern note in sculpture. Like Canova, Thorvaldsen exerted great influence on almost all the sculptors who came to Rome in his day. Thus Rauch declared ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... whispering behind me gave me a sad stir of feeling, but it was better than being left to think. It spurred me; and the clatter of dishes and the crowd which filled the restaurant, talking all at once, yet with no distinct words audible, all helped to bridge over the chasm of the waiting. I could see Laura Burnet sitting at a near table with her thick veil raised only a little above her nose, just enough to let her drink a cup of tea. Some of father's friends and one or two of the young men I knew stopped at our table to shake hands, but very ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... A chasm here occurs in my journal, occasioned by the arrival of some dear relatives from England, with whom I was too much occupied to have time to journalise. What changes five years effect in young people! ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... valley, with the hills beyond it. It was, however, merely extensive, and not particularly beautiful or picturesque. As we followed the slope towards the crest, into the narrowing valley, the scene became bolder, until we were at the very edge of a mighty chasm, which yawned sheer at our side. Following it, we saw the gorge suddenly shallow hundreds of feet by a vast precipice of limestone rock rising from its bottom. Having passed this, we journeyed on up the canon, lessened in grandeur, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... his tongue protruding; and now his brain reeled and his sight grew dim; but not before he reached his goal and a quick hand shot out to seize the knife that now lay within reach as the two bodies tottered perilously upon the brink of the chasm. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... turning, when, above the noise of the cataract, they heard the yelping of a deer hound. Kenric was now in advance of his companion, and they were just above the point where the waterfall turned over into a deep chasm. ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... moment of frightful despair! The treacherous screen ended on the brink of a chasm. To draw ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... and raised the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was death—below, a chance ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge, or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... time, his mind was never off the rack, and his raging sense of having been made to fling himself across the chasm which divided those two, and bridge it over for their coming together, never cooled down. This horrible condition brought on other fits. He could not have said how many, or when; but he saw in the faces of his pupils that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... direction, as the branches of trees grow in all directions. Why seek further the solution of this phenomenon? Everything in nature decays. If it were not reproduced then by growth, there would be a chasm. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... example, and stood in a moment within fifty feet of a slowly widening chasm which seemed to run from east to west across the entire moraine. They had just reached the timber line when the disturbance began, and now they saw trees a hundred feet in height and from six to eight inches in diameter ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... difference between the greatest thinker and the smallest provincial burgher is often only the difference between a truth that can sometimes express itself and a truth that can never crystallise into form. The difference is considerable—a gap, but not a chasm. The higher our thoughts ascend, the vainer and the more arbitrary seems the distinction between him who is thinking always and him who thinks not yet. The little burgher is full of prejudice and of passions at which ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of revenge, its force, effects, and the chasm it leaves on the mind when once it ceases. The tranquility of being entirely devoid of all passions; and the impossibility for the soul to remain in that state of inactivity is also shewn; with some remarks on human nature in general, when left to ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... principle of the little elephants sacrificing themselves in the passage of a river, Mr. Fields and I determined to start the smallest word first, and thus to drive a gentle wedge into the close chasm of the public favor. Sensitive, however, as I am, dear Ingham, to your criticism, I will at the earliest opportunity consult with him as to a return to ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Roy looked at the dark chasm below him with hesitation, then he murmured to himself, "If I break my other leg, I must ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... of "verbal curiosity" in Milton's poetry; he is in some respects the finest craftsman who ever handled the English speech: so that this declaration is the more timely to remind us by how wide a chasm he is separated from those modern greenhouse poets who move contentedly in an atmosphere of art ideals and art theories. He had his breeding from the ancient world, where AEschylus fought at Marathon, and he could not ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... from eels to elephants. The identity reaches still further,—across a mighty gulf of being,—but bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm, in the fable of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the die of the same primitive conception, and differ only in their special adaptation ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... this dark chasm, and directly opposite Nifl-heim, the realm of mist, was another world called Muspells-heim, the home of elemental fire, where all was warmth and brightness, and whose frontiers were continually guarded by Surtr, the flame giant. This giant fiercely brandished his flashing ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... moment's pause he dictated a few words to the first amanuensis on one subject; gave his instructions on a different theme to the second; proceeded in like manner with the rest, then returning to the first, "filled up every chasm and connected the suspended thread of his argument so that nothing appeared discordant or disjointed," and, at the same instant, finished the five letters. "If he lives," concluded Poliziano, "to complete the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... canyon in the earth. There was no way to get into it, and though they tried lowering men with ropes, they couldn't find a solitary gold piece. As far as any one knows it is all at the bottom of the chasm now." ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... of the Abbey still visible. Assiduous Pedantry, and its rubbish-heaps called 'History.' Another world it was, when those black ruins first saw the sun as walls. At lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know always that it was a world. No easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries: Of all helps, a Boswell, even a small ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... "Ask the hind, when the fangs of the deerhound are stretched to gripe her, if she is strong enough to spring over a chasm. I am equal to every effort that may relieve ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Eternal Spaces, Time and decay uproot the forest trees. Even the mighty mountains leave their places, And sink their haughty heads beneath strange seas; The great earth writhes in some convulsive spasm And turns the proudest cities into plains. The level sea becomes a yawning chasm— Nothing remains. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... officer, in a more peremptory tone, demanded admission. Rousing from his stupor, and mortified at the folly of these girlish fancies, he struck the spring: in a trice, a portion of the bed's head flew open, displaying a dark chasm beyond. Swift as thought the officer darted through the aperture; but the door was immediately shut, and with great violence. A scuffle was heard within, but not a word was spoken. Holt, in doubt and consternation gazed with a wild and terrific aspect on the devoted ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Tower, Berne Peasant Woman Interlaken and the Jungfrau Grindelwald A Thousand Foot Chasm Brunig Pass Lucerne Rigi Rigi-Kulm Pilatus Simplon's Pass Zermatt and the Matterhorn Chamounix and Mont Blanc ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... That dancing upon the edge of the precipice of emotion is in the normal heart of every woman—and he? He sought it out; to the edge he had brought her, knowing the way—every step of it. She had only followed blindly where he had led. Once there, she knew well the chasm on whose edge she was balancing. Natural instinct alone would have told her that. The height was dizzy. She had known well that if ever she gazed down, it would be that. Her head swam with the giddiness of it. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly on the plate ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... terrible aspect, frightful, possessed of terrible teeth and fierce face, with arrow-like ears and high cheek-bones, with stiff hair rising upwards, awful eyes, sunken belly, blazing mouth, wide as a chasm, and diadem on his head, capable of striking every creature with fear, possessing jaws wide-open like those of the Destroyer, endued with great splendour and capable of agitating all foes, advancing towards them, thy son's host, afflicted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to hasten on. They had had a difficult place to cross in single file at the head of the gully. Now they came on, hurrying over the snow. The bear gave two or three convulsive struggles. I wished that I could have leaped across the chasm to poor Sam's help. I thought that the bear was slipping down again. If she had got any way on her, as sailors say, it was evident that the united strength of the party could not stop her. They sprang on, and just as I felt sure the bear would have slipped over the precipice, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... generally were in favour of an expedition to Hawk's Head, or to the more distant, but more accessible wonders of Clough's Chasm, where in a sudden deep division of the hills lay a clear, still lake, whose depths it was said had never yet been sounded. Others approved rather of some plan that would allow a far larger number to participate in it, than such an expedition would allow. And while this was being discussed ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... account of Zonaras and extending beyond it, even to the extent of throwing a wire of communication across the yawning time-chasm represented by Books Twenty-two to Thirty-five, are certain excerpts and epitomes found in various odd corners and strangely preserved to the present moment. These are: Excerpts Concerning Virtues and Vices; Excerpts Concerning Judgments; Excerpts Concerning Embassies. The so-called ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... men of the North and South ought to do to encourage and help this better class of negroes is, in brief phrases, this: First, to keep our faces as flint against all social intermingling that looks toward amalgamation. Then, across this chasm, which both races frankly accept, to join hands with those trying to lift and better themselves, cheering, encouraging, and helping them. We must give them full protection in their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; we must give them even handed justice in law and in politics; we must ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger as well as mere discomfort ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... front of them, where there had appeared to be solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm, splashing into a shallow ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... knitted, knotted each to each, Heels firm-planted, hands tense-clenching, till the knobby knuckles bleach. Federated Masters straggle, Federated Toilers strain, Each intent on selfish interest, each on individual gain, And a chasm yawns between them, and a gulf is close behind! What is the most likely issue of such conflict fierce and blind? Unionism 'gainst Free Labour, Capital against mere Toil! Is it better than two tigers fighting for some desert spoil? "Federate" the Libyan lions as against the elephant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise As to pierce the dome of gold ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... speechless, deep in thought. After all, was he not throwing away a certainty for what might prove an empty dream? There had been Presidents who had become Dictators, and between that and Monarchy the chasm was narrow and easily bridged. It was not for long, however, that he wavered. His plans were too carefully thought out to be changed by an impulse, however powerful. His time was ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... the brown and gray lizards darted across his path, and the mother scorpions, taking the air at the entrances of their holes, scuttled out of sight. Roy took off his hat and let the little draught of air that blew through the chasm dry the perspiration on face and hair. Presently the sunlight above gave way to a sullen, silent shadow. The air grew strangely quiet; even the lizards no longer moved. Roy gazed straight upward into the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... early history of the Sierra are now being studied. But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir |
