"Ebbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask me to do that which my strength will not permit. There are many reasons why I ought not to come here again; and, moreover, my work calls me hence, to a distant field. My physical strength seems to be ebbing fast, and my vines are not all purple with mellow fruit. Some clusters, thank God! are fragrant, ripe, and ready for the wine-press, when the Angel of the Vintage comes to gather them in; but my ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... of the wreck has been told by abler pens in the daily newspapers. How forty-seven people were saved; how the lifeboat from Cadgwith picked up some, floating insensible on the ebbing tide with lifebuoys tied securely round them; how some men proved themselves great, and some women greater; how a few proved themselves very contemptible indeed; how the quiet chief officer, Stoke, obeyed his captain's ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... feeling which Sydenham expressed two hundred years ago, using an image I have already borrowed. "He would be no honest and successful pilot who was to apply himself with less industry to avoid rocks and sands and bring his vessel safely home, than to search into the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea, which, though very well for a philosopher, is foreign to him whose business it is to secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so, though he be a person of great genius, who bestows ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... moment a very painful sensation of loneliness, although they were, in fact, surrounded with crowds, and were in the midst of a scene of the greatest excitement. Even Rollo found his courage and resolution ebbing away. He sat for a little time without speaking, and gazed upon the scene of commotion which he saw exhibited before him on the pier with a vague and bewildered feeling of anxiety and fear. Presently he turned to look at Jennie. He saw that she was ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... regular, flowing and ebbing six hours each. The flood comes from the eastward; and it is high water, at the full and change of the moon, forty-five minutes past three, apparent time. Their greatest rise is two feet seven inches; and we always observed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... really know. Every fact recedes from us, as might an ebbing wave, and leaves us stranded upon an unhorizoned beach, more despairing than before. Education does not solve the problems of life—it deepens the mystery. What, then, may the sage know? Are there no sages? And have ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but his handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy. He let them rest for some time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual swoon, whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal matters. "Oh, I 'm not ill," he said at last. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Shinnecock, In motley Hose or humbler motley Sock, The Cup of Life is ebbing Drop by Drop, Whether the Cup be filled with Scotch ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... will, it comes, Like the rain or the bow Or the nightingale's lay By the lake below: As free from restraint as the seraph that roams O'er the ebbing waves of the dying day, When the reddening west, 'twixt the sun and the sea, Seems to open ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... moving picture, the first I had seen in the West. His kindness so melted my exasperation with the press that I was at a loss to know how to begin the fighting talk I had come to make. But the film ended with a woman driving sheepmen off her claim, and with that example to fortify my ebbing courage, I asked for a new printing press. And I ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad end of reassurance, followed ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... motion. Colors bloomed and fled, Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red, Wave upon wave that broke and whirled To vanish in the grey-green gloom, Perspectiveless and shadowy. A bulging world that had no walls, A flowing world, most like the sea, Compassing all infinity Within a shapeless, ebbing room, An endless tide that swells and falls... He slept and woke and slept again. As a veil drops Time dropped away; Space grew a toy for children's play, Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense — He lay in naked impotence; Like ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... passed through; that any bloom had been shaken from the flower. Far from it. It was rather that some touch of careless joy was gone forever from her child's life; and how that may hurt a mother, only those know who have wept in secret hours over the first ebbing of youth in a ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... builds his tabernacle, and calls it life, but within the veil there lies hidden beneath a power, that can unlock other worlds,—strange, beautiful worlds, like the mazes of the firmament through which the earth pursues its way. And the tide ebbing past this islet to the sea, flowing fast outward into the deep, carried them in its silent depths out into the new, the mysterious ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... any other Persons howsoever had, made, began or contracted, or [any] Matter, Cause or Thing, Business or Injury whatsoever done or to be done as well in, upon or by the Sea or public Streams, or fresh Water, Ponds, Rivers, Creeks and Places Over flowed whatsoever within the Ebbing and flowing of the Sea or high Water Mark as upon any of the Shores or Banks adjoining to them or either of them, together with all and singular their Incidents, emergencies, Dependencies, annexed and Connexed causes whatsoever, and such Causes, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... weary, like a live thing whose strength is ebbing, who strains and pants and struggles gallantly, not losing heart but losing physical force. Surely it was going slower. She laid one hand upon the cabin roof as if in encouragement. Her heart was with the launch, as the seaman's is with his boat ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps—well, I shall die at peace. At peace, no; not——' she faltered, and the thin, semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of me when ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... ships some ten miles behind us. We had passed the Lunshan Hills, off which we spent two days, and from which I sent you my last letter. We were abreast of Plover Point, when suddenly the water shoaled so much that we had to drop anchor. Alas! the ebbing tide was too strong for us, and drove us on a bank, where we are now sticking. If we get off before morning it will not matter much; but if the 'Retribution' comes down and finds us here, we ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... so extreme that they had to lay him again on the bed, where a prostration, lasting for several hours, held him like a dead man under the eye of Dr. Ferguson. The latter could not suppress his emotion, for he felt that this life now in his charge was ebbing away. Were they then so soon to lose him whom they had snatched from an agonizing death? The doctor again washed and dressed the young martyr's frightful wounds, and had to sacrifice nearly his whole stock of water to refresh his burning limbs. He surrounded him with ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the mystic priesthood, the gorgeous barge of Cleopatra, the victorious trireme of Antony, the screaming vessels of fighting soldiers, the stealthy boats of Christian monks, the glittering, changing, flashing tumult of thousands of years of life,—ever flowing, ever ebbing, with the mystic river, on whose surface it seethed and bubbled. And the germ of all this vast varying scene lay quietly hidden in the wonderful lake at my feet. But human life is always composed of inverted cones, whose bases, upturned to the eye, present a vast area, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the Prime ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... your sickness; the weary wasted frame, and the nights of languishing, were sent by Me. Is it bereavement? I am "the Brother" born for adversity—the loved and lost were plucked away by Me. Is it death? I AM the "Abolisher of death," seated by your side to calm the waves of ebbing life; it is I, about to fetch My pilgrims home—It is My voice that speaks, "The Master is come, and ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... all these noises, I heard a voice which sent the blood ebbing and flowing in my heart and caused the back of my neck to quiver ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... sun, Day's journey done, Sheds its last ebbing light On fields in leagues of beauty spread ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... tranced summer-night, Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words and went; the while in tears She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground, 80 Just where her falling hair might be outspread A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. One moon, with alteration slow, had shed Her silver ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... faced, and I could feel the strength ebbing fast from me, but I could see that Rodolph's face was pale, even through his swarthy skin. "One, two, three, Fire," came again the fateful words; but I had nerved myself for the final effort, and glancing down the polished barrel, I fired, at the same moment that Rodolph's pistol ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... he had no strength left except to curse the fate which had imposed so cruel a trial upon him. He had quitted his place of concealment, and in utter despair, his arms hanging by his side, and with a haggard gaze, he was on the point of returning, with life ebbing fast, to his apartment in the chateau, when suddenly the hangings behind which he had seen Diana and the prince disappear were thrown aside, and Diana herself rushed into the supper-room, and seized hold of Remy, who, standing motionless and erect, seemed only ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... turned from the litter of rock about the formless mass on the ground. He stared around the village, the fury slowly ebbing within him. ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... An ebbing tide and a freshening breeze quickly carried the periagua past the smaller islands of the bay and brought the cruiser called the Coquette more distinctly into view. This vessel, a ship of twenty guns, lay abreast of the hamlet on the shores of Staten Island, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... heart. Yet he set his teeth, controlled himself, and went on toward the house of Lebrun. He had come within an eyelash of running amuck, and the quivering hunger for action was still swelling and ebbing in him when he reached the ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... violently and cowered beneath his blankets. But his fear grew so strong that he could not bear it any longer. He got up and said in a strained voice, trying to appear calm, "I'm goin' to 'ave a look at 'em." He ran out of the marquee and disappeared. I found my powers of resistance ebbing. I was unable to control my imagination. I saw my comrades and myself blown to pieces. I saw the clerk in the office of the C.C.S. write out the death-intimations on a buff slip and filling in a form. I saw a telegraph ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... to the ground. Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in stumbling had lost his sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, Osmund atop. But Camoys was the younger man, and Osmund's strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of his wound. Now Camoys' tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled his master's flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up this helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... severed artery. But, strive as they would, they were only partially successful, and Jess began to think that he would die in her arms from loss of blood. It was agonising to wait there minute after minute and see his life ebbing away. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... off his hat elaborately as he passed the open door. She became conscious of her use of the roses, and abandoned them. Presently she sat down on a bentwood rocking-chair, and swayed to and fro, aware of an ebbing of confidence. Half an hour later she was still sitting there. Her face had changed, something had faded in it; her gaze at the floor was profoundly speculative, and when she glanced at the empty door it ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Son of Joy nor the Son of Sorrow, but seven white doves were in the cedar beyond the pool, cooing in low ecstasy of peace and awaiting through sleep and dreams the rose-red pathways of the dawn. Down the long grey reaches of the ebbing day He saw seven birds rising and falling on the wind, black as black water in caves, black as the darkness of night ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... have the cat every morning at five o'clock, and every hour of the day after, until they abstain from meddling with what they know nothing about! And as for Plimsoll, I would tie one end of a rope round his neck, and attach the other to a fire bar, and chuck him in there," pointing to the ebbing stream of ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... of her brave words, however, Ella felt her courage ebbing away as Mrs. Mobberly disappeared in the distance, and she had to summon up all her resolution and give her orders at once, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... were ebbing slowly away. Letty did not know that her husband was watching by her bedside. The street was quiet now. So was the house. Most of its people had been up throughout the night, but now they had all gone to bed except the strange nurse and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... cannot walk with him in mine—I cannot, oh, I do not wish, to walk with him at all!" Eleanor sat face to face with this blank consciousness, staring at it, and feeling as if the life was gradually ebbing out of her. What was she to do? The different life and temper and character, and even the face, of Mr. Rhys, came up to her as so much nobler, so much better, so much more what a man should be, so much more worthy of being liked. But Eleanor strove to put that image away, as having very truly, she ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mustering swarms of ghosts. When they stood lowering, in corners of rooms, and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. When they had full possession of unoccupied apartments. When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers, while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebbing waters when it sprang into a blaze. When they fantastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared and half-amused, a stranger to itself,—the ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... sent off, cleared, and laden a second time, before noon; by which time also the launch had got a full supply of water, and the botanical and shooting parties had all come in, except the surgeon, for whom we could not wait, as the tide was ebbing fast out of the cove; consequently he was left behind. As there is no getting into the cove with a boat, from between half-ebb to half-flood, we could get off no water in the afternoon. However, there is a very good landing-place, without ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the sword. Not far did she search the death-field ere she found her king and lord On the heap that his glaive had fashioned: not yet was his spirit past, Though his hurts were many and grievous, and his life-blood ebbing fast; And glad were his eyes and open as her wan face over him hung, And he spake: "Thou art sick with sorrow, and I would thou wert not so young; Yet as my days passed shall thine pass; and a short while now it seems ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... are sae guid yoursel, Sae pious and sae holy, Ye've nought to do but mark and tell Your neebour's fauts and folly! Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi' store o' water, The heapet happer's ebbing still, And still the clap ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... for them the solacing tide returns To quench their thirst of longing. Ah, not so Works the stern law oar tides of life obey! Ebbing in the night-watches swift away, Scarce known ere fled forever is the flow; And in parched channel still the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be, little one, The dark night follow the day, And the ebbing tide to the seaward glide ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... soon. Captain Beaudoin, whose strength was ebbing rapidly, relapsed into his comatose condition, and a cold sweat broke out and stood in beads upon his neck and forehead. He opened his eyes again, and began to feebly grope about him with his stiffening fingers, as if feeling for a covering that was not there, pulling at it with a gentle, continuous ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... it to last? He himself began to wonder, for he had long felt his life as if ebbing away. At length he became languid, weary, and unfit for work; even the writing of a letter cost him a painful effort, and. he felt "as if to lie down and sleep were the only things worth doing." Yet shortly after, to help a Sunday-school, he wrote ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... enthusiasm, especially ebullient in the years following the Great Armada, is justly to be regarded as an important condition of the flourishing of these plays on English history; and it is natural to suppose that the ebbing of this spirit in the closing years of Elizabeth's reign is not unconnected with the decline of this dramatic type. There are, however, other causes clearly perceptible. The material was nearly exhausted. Almost every prominent national ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... time the tide was ebbing fast, and the men took a pull on the ropes secured to the ships' masts, with the result that the vessels soon began to heel over perceptibly on their sides. As the tide continued to drop, the ropes were hauled upon, and soon the vessels ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... that my life is fast ebbing away," she began in a subdued and thrilling voice. "A few short hours will pass by, and this body will be a soulless mass. But I do not fear to die; for me, death has no terror, nor the grave a victory. I am standing upon its very brink, and look down into its blackness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... ta'en Where dances, songs, and theatres invite. EXPIRING SWEETNESS! with indignant pain I see him in the scenes where laughing glide Pleasure's light Forms;—see his eyes gaily glow, Regardless of thy life's fast ebbing tide; I hear him, who shou'd droop in silent woe, Declaim on Actors, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Amsterdam, two hundred years ago, that a round and bulky ship flying Dutch colors from her lofty quarter was careering up the harbor in the teeth of a north wind, through the swift waters of an ebbing tide, and making for the Hudson. A signal from the Battery to heave to and account for herself being disregarded, a cannon was trained upon her, and a ball went whistling through her cloudy and imponderable ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... as entered into their thoughts. They have a particular sagacity, founded upon much observation, in judging of the weather, by which they know when they may look for rain, wind, or other alterations in the air; but as to the philosophy of these things, the causes of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing, and of the original and nature both of the heavens and the earth; they dispute of them, partly as our ancient philosophers have done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ from them, so they do not in all things ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... lady is still here," said the rector. "I fear her life is fast ebbing, but it is reassuring to know she has made peace with her Maker, and will pass happily away ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... looked as if he were surprised at such unwonted tenderness. There was even a slight smile on his lips for a few moments, but it quickly passed away with the fast ebbing ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... and, with the assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom. When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside, trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in agony at his ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... bells were still clanging, but with abated enthusiasm; from the dimly lighted platform, grayish-white in the ghostly flicker of the oil lamps, the crowd of hungry passengers was ebbing swiftly in its quest of food and drink; a last half-hearted bawling of the virtue to be found in the "hot steak an' liver'n onions at the Royal Alexandry" gave way to a comforting silence—a silence broken only by a growing clatter of dishes, the subdued wheezing of the engines, and the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... demonstrative through the first two races. It had watched the third in tense silence—except that moiety of it ebbing and flowing through the clubhouse. It was the silence of edged patience. Albeit the early races were fair betting propositions, the most of those who watched them had come to lay wagers on some Far and Near candidate—and the Far and Near candidates ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... not chide him, though I knew That he was false to me. Chide the exhaling of the dew, The ebbing of the sea, The fading of a ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... kept rising. I had no means to ease the mare, even by pulling off my heavy jack-boots, with one arm (and that my right) dangling useless. Once she flung up her head and I caught sight of her nostril, red as fire, and her poor eyes starting. I felt her strength ebbing between my knees. Here and there she blundered in her stride. And somewhere, over the ridge yonder, lay the Army of the West, and we alone ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity, (as, I suppose, few in looking at the Cephalus and Procris of Turner, note the sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the nymph; unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked by Shelley in the Alastor;) but the imagination is not shown in any such modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... you to poison Hortense? Who is Hortense?" I demanded; for his life was ebbing and the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... breasts lifted and shaken towards the cattle, her throat exposed as in some voluptuous ecstasy towards them, whilst she drifted imperceptibly nearer, an uncanny white figure, towards them, carried away in its own rapt trance, ebbing in strange fluctuations upon the cattle, that waited, and ducked their heads a little in sudden contraction from her, watching all the time as if hypnotised, their bare horns branching in the clear light, as the white figure ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... husband at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as a panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered. Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,— Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the same pay as Bombay, and then tried to buy some beads from the Arabs, as I saw it was absolutely necessary I should increase my fast-ebbing store if I ever hoped to reach Gondokoro. The attempt failed, as the Arabs would not sell at a rate under 2000 per cent.; and I wrote a letter to Colonel Rigby, ordering up fifty armed men laden with beads and pretty cloths—which would, I knew, cost me L1000 at the least—and ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... ribbons of her night-dress clinging to a branch, and slipping from her feeble hold. Tired as he was, and wild and dangerous as the attempt might be, he did not dare to leave her to perish. Choosing his time in a lull, he struck out to the bush, and reached it just as her ebbing strength gave way. He took her in his sturdy arms, and, clinging with tooth and nail, stayed them both to their strange anchorage. Faint, half conscious, disrobed as she was, in the sweet, delicate features, the curve of the lip, and the raven tresses clothed in seaweed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... only his woes," writes Charlotte. They buried him in the same vault that had been opened twenty-three years ago to receive the childish, wasted corpses of Elizabeth and Maria. Sunday came round, recalling minute by minute the ebbing of his life, and Emily Bronte, pallid and dressed in black, can scarcely have heard her brother's funeral sermon for looking at the stone which hid so many memories, such useless compassion. She took her brother's death very much to heart, growing thin ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... right rate is often not discovered for some time. It requires several 'moves,' as the phrase goes, several augmentations of the rate of discount by the Bank, before the really effectual rate is reached, and in the mean time bullion is ebbing away and the 'reserve' is diminishing. Unless, therefore, in times without precaution the actual reserve exceed the 'apprehension minimum' by at least the amount which may be taken away in the inevitable interval, and before the available precautions begin ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... long time an immense and prosperous empire; but the existence of both these countries was concentrated in themselves, so that the rest of the world felt no result from their internal agitations. Life was gradually ebbing away in the great Mongolian family, and the silent beatings of the pulse that indicated the slow freezing of their blood could neither be heard nor felt beyond their own territorial limits. Nothing new in literature and the arts is visible among them after ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the bed. She sighed; then smiled. A slight flush showed on her cheek under the light of the candle which Mr. Prince was holding aloft. Mysterious creature, with the mysterious forces of life flowing and ebbing incomprehensibly within her! To George she was marvellous, she was beautiful, as she lay ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 165 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... because neither the Drumtochty houses nor his manners were on that large scale. He was accustomed to deliver himself in the yard, and to conclude his directions with one foot in the stirrup; but when he left the room where the life of Annie Mitchell was ebbing slowly away, our doctor said not one word, and at the sight of his face her husband's ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... The ebbing tide that leaves bare the shore swells the heaps of the central sea. The tide of life ebbs from this body of mine, soon to lie on the shore of life like a stranded wreck; but the murmur of the waters that break upon no strand is in my ears; to join ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Throughout the small hours of the new-born day the wife sat by that couch, and with her sat kind friends. Everything known to science was done to save the life that fleeting breath told was fast ebbing away. There was not a continued loss of blood, but with a perforated frame, the creature of nature could not exist, and it was evident he was fast nearing the end. The dawn of early morning found the faithful watchers yet at the bedside, and ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and my voice was full of despair, for my strength was fast ebbing. I must soon lose my hold, and be dashed to pieces at the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... bid thee hail! Grant me one boon—a swift and mortal stroke, That all unwrung by pain, with ebbing blood Shed forth in quiet death, I ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... The ebbing tide carries afar the ships freighted with aching, anguished hearts; when borne upon the swell of the flowing sea, come the swift sails of Argosies richly laden ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... is a glorious city in the sea; The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed Clings to the marble of her palaces. No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea, Invisible: and from the land we went, As to a floating city—steering in, And gliding up her streets, as in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the girl, as they went, an hour later, up the ebbing tide towards Westminster, in a boat rowed by a waterman and one of their own servants. About them was a scene, of which the very thought, a month ago, would have absorbed and fascinated her. They had scarcely ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the low pervading breeze That softly sings In the trembling leaves of twilight trees, As if the wind were dreaming on its wings? And have you marked their still degrees Of ebbing melody, like the strings Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand In some strange glimmering land, 'Mid gushing springs, And glistenings Of waters and of planets, wild and grand! And have you marked in that still time The chariots of those shining ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sat by his bed, Gottlieb sat stupefied at the foot, with Jonas by his side, and Wilhelmina was crying in a still fashion in one corner of the room. August lay breathing feebly, and with his life evidently ebbing. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... was desired to cross, although broader than that about a mile distant; preoccupied by Mr. Telford's suspension bridge—was of course one of the narrowest that could be selected, in consequence of which the ebbing and flowing torrent rushes through it with such violence, that, except where there is back water, it is often impossible for a small boat to pull against it; besides which, the gusts of wind which come over the tops, down the ravines, and round the sides of the neighboring mountains, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... two strokes with the oars, when the ebbing and flowing of the waves tore them from the hands of the rowers, and the boat was overset; the waves parted us, and cast us all on the shore, except the Sieur Devoise, brother of the Consul of Tripoli, in Syria. I plunged again into the sea, and was lucky enough, at that instant, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... bell had rung deep within the primitive, subcortical levels of his brain. It had rung—but not loudly nor insistently enough. It had failed to cut through the eddying fog that was rising slowly into his ebbing consciousness. ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... look with a searching gaze, and spoke with a ring of defiance in her tone. "I do not believe it!" she said. "I do not believe it! You who save Angers will not destroy him!" And then her woman's mood changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh no, you will not! You will not!" she wailed. And she dropped on her knees before him, and holding up her clasped hands, "God will put it in your heart to spare ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... again. And the dull ache, deep in the bones, possessed his nerves. In his breast there began a vibrating, as if thousands of tiny bubbles were being pricked to bursting in his lungs. And the itch to cough came back to his throat. And all his flesh seemed in contention with a slowly ebbing force. Sleep might come perhaps after pain had lulled. His heart beat unsteadily and weakly, sometimes with a strange little flutter. How many weary interminable hours had he endured! But to-night ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... and acquaintances, held up by distant acquaintances and even by persons hardly known to me by sight, who congratulated me on the Emperor's public championing of me against my powerful Sabine neighbors, I felt my strength ebbing and sometimes saw a gray blur between my eyes and what I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and so I was able to watch the fall of the sun, and measure by its shortening distance from the horizon the ebbing of my poor life. At last the nether rim of that round, fiery orb was on the point of touching the line of distant hills, and it was casting a crimson glow along the white, snow-sheeted landscape that was singularly suggestive of a tide of blood—a very fitting tide to flow and ebb about the walls ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... leaves the wise man the great scholar that he was in the old tale, a scholar whose teaching had taken away the faith of a countryside, but he changes the child who saved the scholar into Teig the Fool, and infuses into the record of the frantic hour, in which the wise man knows his life ebbing away as the sand falls, a spirit that is as reverent as the spirit of the old ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the tears from his eyes. In his silent, dog-like fashion, he had loved their young General with a great and ardent love, and it cut him to the heart to see him lying there white and pulseless, his life ebbing slowly away, without hope ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Wave rowling after Wave, where way they found, If steep, with Torrent rapture, if through plain Soft Ebbing.— ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... was in great distress, and remained constantly either in the sick-room or in the apartment next to it, where the doctors tried still to speak words of hope to her, but could no longer conceal that the life which was as her life was ebbing away. In the course of the afternoon, when the Queen went up to the Prince, after he had been wheeled into the middle of the room, he said the last loving words, "Gutes frauchen," [Footnote: "Good little wife."] kissed her, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... father-in-law hurried back to Hull, it was to find that life was slowly ebbing. Towards the end her mind cleared of delirium, and she ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... midnight when the boats began to move, and slowly they ranged down the stream, silently steered and carried by the ebbing tide. No paddle, no creaking oarlock broke the stillness; but ever and anon the booming of a thirty-two pounder from the Point Levi battery echoed ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the night-wind that rustled the leaves? Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing? It looked like a rifle: "Ha! Mary, good-by!" And his life-blood is ebbing ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... homestead, where, in the dark hours of the chill December morning, the life of a strong man, of a gallant comrade, of an accomplished gentleman, and of an unselfish patriot—for Gregg was all these—was slowly ebbing, made a deeper impression on those who witnessed it than the accumulated horrors of the battle-field. Sadly and silently the general and his staff officer rode back through the forest, where the troops were already stirring round the smouldering camp-fires. Their ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... he was very young, and of no judgment. And if God had not sent us another help, we might have wandered a whole year in that labyrinth of rivers, ere we had found any way, either out or in, especially after we were past ebbing and flowing, which was in four days. For I know all the earth doth not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one to ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... longer than he expected, for Bonbright had left on his desk several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... o'clock in the morning of Aug. 23rd the seven men embarked, taking advantage of the ebbing tide, and made their way down the Savannah River. It was very dark, the Moravians were unaccustomed to rowing, and Mr. Johnson, who steered, went to sleep time after time, so when they accidentally came ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... loudly, as if all the pale puritan corners of the room flung it back with a shudder at the speaker. In the silence that ensued Margaret felt the blood ebbing back to her heart; then she said, in a distinct and level voice: "I know nothing of the history ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... reflux of the ebbing tide, this is set afloat and carried away seaward. Driven then upon the coral reef, it bilges, is broken to pieces, when the fragments, as waifs, dance about, and drift far ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... driven, in open day, The kitchen he invaded, Convulsed upon the hearth he lay, With anguish sorely jaded; The poisoner laugh'd; Ha! ha! quoth she, His life is ebbing fast, I see, As ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... dangerously uncontrolled—rose until it seemed to have the whole of his body in his grasp, swaying it, ebbing and flowing with swift powerful current through his heart into his brain. Now he could only see the flushed, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man, of animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not merely a symbol, but a cause of exuberance, of prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weakness, and of death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover sown when the tide is coming in will grow well, but that if the plant be sown at low water or when the tide ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... high priests. Comte thought it all out in detail, and arranged a complete scheme of life, and actually wished to form a political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on the ruins. His ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... healing is to-day the acme of "well done;" a healing that is not guesswork,—chronic recovery ebbing and flowing,—but instantaneous cure. This absolute demonstration of Science must be revived. To consummate this desideratum, mortal mind must pass [10] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him—why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... channel?" he asked. "Yes," replied Spilett. "All right!" said the seaman; "wait a bit; Neb is well able to carry help to his master. If we venture into the channel, we risk being carried into the open sea by the current, which is running very strong; but, if I'm not wrong, it is ebbing. See, the tide is going down over the sand. Let us have patience, and at low water it is possible we may find a fordable passage." "You are right," replied the reporter, "we will not separate more than ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... auxiliaries are occasionally used as mere expletives, being quite unnecessary to the sense: as, 1. DO and DID: "And it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth."—Psalms, civ, 20. "And ye, that on the sands with printless foot do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him when he comes back."—Shak. "And if a man did need a poison now."—Id. This needless use of do and did is now avoided by good writers. 2. SHALL, SHOULD, and COULD: "'Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes, which after-hours give leisure to repent of.' I should ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... attracted the fire of the American sharpshooters, and he fell, pierced through the breast by a mortal bullet. As he fell upon his face, a devoted follower rushed to his assistance. "Don't mind me," he said. "Push on the York volunteers," and with his ebbing life sending a love-message to his sister in the far-off Isle of Guernsey, the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... seene the Sonne his loue possesse, Or greater cares, that greatest comforts kill, Had crowned with griefe, the worlds wet wildernesse, Such was the still-foot Thetis silent paine, Whose flowing teares, ebbing fell backe againe. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... of the nights of watching, waiting in helplessness, well-nigh in despair, for the coming of the next "cable!" the consciousness of utter impotence to help or to do! the realization that a priceless life is ebbing away, while they who gave it—they to whom it is so infinitely precious—are at the very opposite ends of the earth! Oh, the tremulous opening of those fateful messages, the breathless reading of the cipher, the awful ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... gory field of Murfreesboro, upon the ushering in of the new year, many a noble life was ebbing away. It was a rainy, dismal night; and, on traversing that field, I saw many a spot sacred to the memory of my loved companions of the glorious 6th Ohio. I incidentally heard of the death of a nephew in that fight. I thought ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... scarce breathing, while Gregson bent over the typewritten pages. He noted the slow tightening of the other's fingers as he turned from the first sheet to the second; he watched Gregson's face, the slow ebbing of color, the gray white that followed it, the stiffening of his arms and shoulders as he finished. Then ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... reception night at the Palace Hotel. As usual the floating population of San Francisco had drifted into the huge court of that luxurious caravansary, and was ebbing and eddying among the multitudes of white and shining columns that support the six galleries under the crystal roof. The band reveled in the last popular waltz, the hum of the spectators was hushed, but among the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... wonder why she had spent a matter of eight pounds in making some people ill and others angry. Now that the wave of excitement was ebbing, and had left her, Mr. Bast, and Mrs. Bast stranded for the night in a Shropshire hotel, she asked herself what forces had made the wave flow. At all events, no harm was done. Margaret would play the game properly now, and though Helen disapproved ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... ago last autumn, we walked on the sea beach together, and with a strange and prophetic kind of poetry, he likened the scene to his own failing health, the falling leaves, the withered sea-weed, the dying grass upon the shore, and the ebbing tide that was fast receding from us. He told me that he felt prepared to go, for he had forgiven his enemies, and could even rejoice in their happiness. Surely this was a grand condition in which to step from this world across the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... destroy it, sedulously stifling its powers through the vapor of this subtle poison. His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting of his last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak of it, would he not always have thought of it? He seemed to inhale the poison ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... and clear, the autumn stars were shining in a cloudless sky, and the tide of life which had surged through the busy streets all day was ebbing like the waters from the bays and estuaries along ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... plan, a new hope, was developed, and became the inspiration of effort. She listened unweariedly as Mrs. Wayland related how she had turned the tide of her ebbing vitality. Thus Madge gained the benefit of another's experience. Little by little she sought to increase her slender resources of strength. The superb climate enabled her to live almost in the open ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Ralston sits beside him. And Clarence Vaughan watches the slowly ebbing life tide. Once he seems struggling to say something, and his wife bends down to catch what may be ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... any person in mischief or malice to have played the hoax, but no locality in the wide world would have seemed more unlikely to be the scene of such a game; for who performs theatricals to amuse the lonely shore, or the ebbing tide, or the sea-birds that poise in the air or pounce upon the fish when the sea is gray at dawn? And certainly the deception of the old man could not have been the object of the play, for it was but by chance that he saw it, and it could matter ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... world by the sun must have been strikingly apparent to the ancient Egyptians, dwelling in a land exposed to the sun's vertical rays, and clothed with almost tropical beauty and luxuriance. When they watched the ebbing of the overflowing waters of the Nile, and saw the moist earth on which the sun's rays fell, quickened at once into a marvellous profusion of plant and animal life, they naturally regarded the sun as the Creator, and so deified ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the gathering and the strewing I shall be soon: Beyond the ebbing and the flowing, Beyond the coming and the going, I shall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various |
