"Fantastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colour: which rising from the horizon extended itself to nearly twenty degrees above it. After glittering for some time its colours would be overcast, and almost obscured, but again it would burst out with renewed beauty; the uniform colour was pale light, but its shapes were various and fantastic: at times the sky was lined with light coloured streaks rising perpendicularly from the horizon, and gradually expanding into a body of light in which we could trace the floating columns sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating and shaping into infinite forms, the space in which they ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... rational way of following the river would be to keep sometimes on the hills and sometimes in the gorge, as the unforeseen might determine. Hitherto, I had not troubled to inquire where I should pass the night, and this consideration alone would have compelled me to depart from my fantastic scheme. After La Bourboule there is not a village or hamlet in the valley of the Dordogne for a distance of at least thirty miles, allowing for the winding ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... to see the other attractions at the little park near the big hotel. Somehow or other, Bunny wandered away from Uncle Tad and Sue while Sue and the old soldier were looking at a man blowing colored glass into birds, feathers, balloons and other fantastic shapes. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... pretence for representing them as unworthy of liberty, and the natural rights of mankind. But these sophisters turn the argument full upon themselves, when they instigate the poor creatures to such shocking impiety, by every means that fantastic subtilty can suggest; thereby shewing in their own conduct, a more glaring proof of the same depravity, and, if there was any reason in the argument, a greater unfitness for the same precious enjoyment: ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... he commonly acted the part of a broad, rampant jester and buffoon, full of mad pranks and mischief-making, liberally dashed with a sort of tumultuous, swaggering fun. He was arrayed in fantastic garb, with something of drollery in its appearance, so as to aid the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... moss girdles the trunks of trees with innumerable parallel inch-wide bands a foot or so apart, in the manner of old-fashioned striped stockings. It covers entirely sundry twigless branches. Always in appearance is it fantastic, decorative, almost Japanese, as though consciously laid in with its vivid yellow-green as an intentional note of a tone scheme. The somberest shadows, the most neutral twilights, the most austere recesses are lighted ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... contempt—had been false to her honour as the sworn friend of France, and that it was her business to go back to Germany and eat humble pie. Whatever the audience may have felt about these reflections on the conduct of England, they must at least have been irritated by the fantastic improbability of the girl's motive. Very fortunately at this juncture the voice of the paper-boy is heard in the street conveying the thrilling news of our tardy entry into the quarrel; and a glad Margaret, having recovered her respect for her native ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... the rains to spring into verdure. Here and there were clumps of trees—the towering palmyra with its fan-shaped foliage, the bamboo with its feathery branches, the plantain, throwing its immense leaves of vivid green into every fantastic form. There was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... one who could speak of his own knowledge concerning Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sardians were left to their own conjectures in her regard; and their conjectures, it must be confessed, were fantastic and altogether fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia, thanks to the veils which shrouded her, became a sort of myth, a canvas, a poem to which each one added ornamentation ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... New Testament has no scruple in calling men 'saints' who had many sins, and none in calling men perfect who had many imperfections; and it does so, not because it has any fantastic theory about religious emotions being the measure of moral purity, but partly for the reasons already referred to, and partly because it wisely considers the main thing about a character to be not the degree to which it has attained completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The distance ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... over these scraps, building up the fantastic fairy tale of Paragot's antecedents, and should have gone on reading them for an indefinite time had not Paragot one day discovered me. It was then that I learned the sacrosanctity of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the charm of her frank, easily flowing talk, her inexhaustible spirits, her good-humored, gracious sociability of manner? Where is the modern hermit who is not familiarly acquainted, by hearsay at least, with the fantastic novelty and humor of her opinions; with her generous encouragement of rising merit of any sort, in all ranks, high or low; with her charities, which know no distinction between abroad and at home; with her large indulgence, which no ingratitude can discourage, and no servility pervert? ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... manicured hands had nothing of the workman about them; and his easy air, prominent belly, and flabby muscles readily betrayed the actor. With an absurd hammer he struck—as no one else would ever strike—a fantastic-looking sword-blade. One guessed he was a dwarf, because when he walked he bent his legs at the knees. He cried out a great deal, and opened his mouth in a queer fashion. The orchestra also emitted peculiar noises like several beginnings that had nothing to do with one another. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Ned knew, no other human being was anywhere near. The loneliness in the presence of those tremendous ruins was overpowering. He longed for human companionship. A peon, despite the danger otherwise, would have been welcome. The whole land took on fantastic aspects. It was not normal and healthy like the regions from which he came north of the Rio ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the right, a solitary rock, steep, conical-shaped, and about 300 feet high. On the side of it a Buddhist temple, perched like a nest. The hills on the left were crowned by walls and fortifications built some time ago by the Rebels, and running over them in all manner of zigzag and fantastic directions. I have seldom seen a more striking bit of scenery. When we had passed through we found more hills, with intervals of plains, in one of which lay the district city of Tongtze, enclosed by walls which run along the top of the hills surrounding it. The inhabitants ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... in the first place, how undefined is the Hindu's religious position. From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. There ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Insanity is quite common among savages; just how common is difficult to say, on account of their peculiar methods of treating it. The stupid and the dangerous forms are very apt to be simply knocked on the head, while the more harmless and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... in these human mites, these fantastic Brownies, which, in that crowd of Rowenas and their children, made them seem like beings not only of another race, but of another species? How came they alone to be distinguished among so many by that irresponsible gaiety, as of the most volatile of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... that, four hours before we could hope to disembark, ladies in mantles and shore hats (seeming fantastic and enormous after the sobriety of ship attire), and gentlemen in shore hats and dark overcoats, were standing in attitudes of expectancy in the saloon-hall, holding wraps and small bags: some of their faces had never been seen till then in the public resorts of the ship. Excitement ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... I have done my duty in calling attention to that light, and whether it's the bull's-eye of a burglar—perhaps you don't know that there are rare treasures on the book shelves of the great library—or whether it is the fantastic illumination which frightens fool-folks and some fool-dogs, I'm done with it and done with ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... and bison, and a long thick horn projected from each corner of the forehead. The face, which glared out from this unsightly dress, was covered with daubs, rings and splashes of red, white and black paint, applied in the most fantastic fashion. The black eyes, encircled by yellow rings, suggested a resemblance to some serpent or reptilian monster. The figure held a kind of rattle made of hollow horn in either hand, and was watching the countenance ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... formed in modern times. Every year some of them are broken and shattered by earthquakes, or melted by volcanic fire; and when they cool down slowly from a state of fusion, they assume a new and more crystalline form, no longer exhibiting that stratified disposition and those curious impressions and fantastic markings, by which they were previously characterised. This process cannot have been carried on for an indefinite time, for in that case all the stratified rocks would long ere this have been fused and crystallised. It is therefore ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... into the cave, and found that it increased in grandeur and beauty. The walls glittered with the light of the torches, the ceiling rose higher, and became a great vaulted dome. From the roof hung fantastic stalactites and from the floor stalagmites equally fantastic shot up to meet them. Slow water fell drop by drop from the point of the stalactite upon the ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... heath-like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the water-lilies, and you have them in the origin of the loveliest forms of ornamental design, and the most powerful floral myths ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges;—thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles—beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos, and "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep" callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... them forth to brave the daring glance, The public ball, the midnight wanton dance? There many a blooming nymph, by fashion led, Has felt her health, her peace, her honour fled; Truss'd her fine form to strange fantastic shapes, To be admir'd, and twirl'd about by apes; Or, mingling in the motley masquerade, Found ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Nymphidia, gentle Fay, Which, meeting me upon the way, These secrets didst to me bewray, Which now I am in telling; My pretty, light, fantastic maid, I here invoke thee to my aid, That I may speak what thou hast said, In ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... like a strange vision, out from the undulating ripples rose slowly a creature more fantastic than the boy's wildest dreams. The head was green, with large unwinking, glittering eyes. In slow contortions, the body, of a transparency that showed the light through, writhed like a tremendous ribbon-snake, and a sharp row of serrated fins surmounted all its length, from ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and hurriedly walked away towards Bayswater Hill. Issuing from the Gardens she stood hesitating for some time, and finally, as if unable to resist the strange impulse that was drawing her, she turned into St. Petersburg Place, looking long at each familiar building—the fantastic, mosque-like red-brick synagogue; and just beyond it St. Sophia, the ugly Greek cathedral, yellow, squat, and ponderous; and midway between these two—a thing of beauty—St. Matthew's Church, grey and Gothic, with its slender soaring spire. In Pembridge Square she paused ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... excavations in search of minerals, the workmen have come upon some singular hollows or openings in the rock, caused by convulsions of the earth or earthquakes, or caverns through which torrents have flowed in former ages, and have left them for nature to ornament in the most beautiful and fantastic manner. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... light-hearted world enough—not so hurried as it is to-day, though railways were well established, and the electric telegraph had been hit upon in this same 1837. Young blood continued hot, and play was apt to be riotous. Witness the fantastic frolics of the Marquis of Waterford—public property in those years. He had inherited the eccentricities of the whole Delaval race, and not content with tickling his peers in England, carried his whims and pranks into Scotland and Ireland and across the Channel. Various ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... late November afternoon was in the air of New York, and the fast-falling snowflakes so thickened it that the people hurrying this way and that seemed twisted figures of fantastic shapes, wind-blown and bent, and with a shiver Laine came back and again ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... fiction, the novel cannot bear inspection. It is a succession of fantastic, sometimes incoherent events, an artificial complex of personages appearing on the scene at the will of the author, and acting like puppets on wires. The miraculous abounds, and the characters are in part exaggerated, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... the weather and prevented from over-tiring themselves. Many of them come from poor cramped homes, and to spend the whole summer in the forest more at play than at work makes them most happy. I met Germans who did not approve of the Waldschule who considered it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too heavy for the rate-payers to bear. This is a side of the question that the rate-payers must settle for themselves; but there is no doubt about the results of the venture on the children ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... mine, and together we stumbled on. The undergrowth grew denser and more fantastic; the murmur filled out, increased and resolved itself into a sound of falling water that ever took shape, and volume, and depth, till its crash shook the ground at our feet. Then in a moment a white blaze of sky came at us through the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... news given of your wife in the papers to-night is false," was his quiet retort. "It professes to give a distinct, if somewhat fantastic, reason for her flight. A reason totally different from the one ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... these were armed with terrible thorns, and as they had no hatchets to chop their way through them they were often obliged to make detours to escape these obstacles. Orchids of brilliant colours and fantastic shapes grew thickly on the trees, ants in countless numbers swarmed up and down the trunks, and many an angry exclamation was wrung from the seamen as a bite as sharp as the sting of a wasp told that some of these insects had crawled up the legs of their trousers ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... last from Vacancy; And this worn feeling peoples many a page, And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye: Yet there are things whose strong reality Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky, And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Eastern provinces, and obtaining satisfaction about the conduct of the Egyptian queen during the recent contest. On his passage through Cilicia, in 41, he was visited by Cleopatra, who came to answer the charges in person. She sailed up the Cydnus in a gorgeous bark, with a fantastic and brilliant equipage, and brought all her allurements to bear on the heart of the voluptuous Roman. Her success was complete; and he who was to have been her judge, was led captive to Alexandria as her slave. All was forgotten in the fascination and delight of the passing hour; and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Congress decided to recommend that the representation of the South should be greater or less according to the extent to which the Negro population were admitted to the franchise or excluded from it. This clause was re-cast more than once in order to satisfy a fantastic scruple of Sumner's concerning the indecency of mentioning the fact that some people were black and others white, a scruple which he continued to enforce with his customary appeals to the Declaration of Independence, until even his ally Stevens lost all patience ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of interest to finally mention here Raecke's fantastic form of degenerative psychosis, which is nothing more nor less than another attempt at describing the original Ganser twilight state in ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... hadn't run off (puff); 'would like to have had a little more talk with her' (whiff, puff). 'Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting' (puff). He then sank silently back in the easy-chair and whiffed and puffed all sorts of fantastic clouds and columns and corkscrews at his leisure. The cigar being finished, and the water in the foot-bath beginning to get cool, he emptied the remainder of the hot into it, and lighting a fresh cigar, began speculating on how the match ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... as evening fell the column of 1500 men and two pieces of artillery clattered into Warrenton. The troopers dismounted in the streets. The horses were fed and watered, and while the officers amused themselves by registering their names, embellished with fantastic titles, at the hotel, Stuart's staff, questioning the throng of women and old men, elicited important information. None of the enemy's cavalry had been seen in the vicinity for some days, and Pope's supply trains were parked at Catlett's Station, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... had a refreshing night's sleep from which he did not awake till the sun had fairly risen, and its rays colored by the medium through which they were reflected, streamed in at the windows and rested in many fantastic lines on the richly carved pulpit ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... down the steps, leaving Mr. Magee staring wonderingly after him. Like a wraith he merged with the shadows below. Magee turned slowly, and entered number seven. A fantastic film of frost was on the windows; the inner room was drear and chill. Partially undressing, he lay down on the brass bed and ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... to be called Freshmen Beer Nights and in those days the possibility of friendship at first sight was not fantastic. We feel sure that it cannot be done on ginger ale. The urge for democracy does not dwell in any soft drink. The speeches will be terrible, for there will be no pleasant interruptions of "Aw, sit ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... girl; I'll knit it up in silken strings With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots: To be fantastic may become a youth Of greater time than ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... country of strange-looking mountains, whose tops shot heavenward in fantastic forms and groupings. At one time we saw semi-globular shapes like the domes of churches; at another, Gothic turrets rose before us; and the next opening brought in view sharp needle-pointed peaks, shooting upward ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Fisher are freely employed. Thus in Buddhist monasteries we find drums and gongs in the shape of a fish, but the true meaning of the symbol, while still regarded as sacred, has been lost, and the explanations, like the explanations of the Grail romances, are often fantastic afterthoughts. ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... gone with the mysterious principle of life. As if in mockery of the meagre show of verdure that the spot exhibited, it remained a noble and solemn monument of former fertility. The larger, ragged, and fantastic branches still obtruded themselves abroad, while the white and hoary trunk stood naked and tempest-riven. Not a leaf, nor a sign of vegetation, was to be seen about it. In all things it proclaimed the frailty of existence, and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... death was a majestic angel, named Sammael, standing in the court of heaven, and flying thence over the earth, armed with a sword, to obey the behests of God. The Talmudists developed and dressed up the thought with many details, half sublime, half fantastic. He strides through the world at a step. From the soles of his feet to his shoulders he is full of eyes. Every person in the moment of dying sees him; and at the sight the soul retreats, running through all the limbs, as ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and forgotten, on the seashore by the deserted fortress; at almost any time still their bones, washed down by the waves, may be picked up on the beach. There were sullen mutterings of discontent at Louisbourg. Soldiers grumbled over grievances which were sometimes fantastic. Rumor had been persistent in creating a legend that vast wealth, the accumulated plunder brought in by French privateers, was stored in the town. From this source a rich reward in booty was expected by the soldiers. In fact, when Louisbourg ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Joss-house, the last devotee had departed. The hanging lights had been dimmed and now the fantastic shapes with which the place was decorated, seen in the subdued light, stood out ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... crowd, and shot under the bridge on to the Serpentine, and commenced quadrilles, polkas, and divers figures; in a few minutes their erratic motions were illuminated by red, blue, crimson, and green fires, lighted on the banks, and by rockets and other lights. This fantastic and beautiful exhibition was repeated on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... declared not to be registered in it, made them swear that they in future voyages would compel their fellow-seamen to perform the same ceremonies in which they were about to engage. Behind him appeared a band of veteran seamen dressed up in a variety of fantastic costumes, with a drum and other musical instruments. These forthwith seized on all whose names were not registered as having before passed through the straits, and dragging them forward, thrust them into tubs, and soused them thoroughly with water. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the crowd that now pressed upon her went like wine to her head; her cheeks flamed, her eyes brightened, and she lifted her small hands in fantastic gesture and danced, crying, "We are cast down, but not destroyed, because God Almighty has given to us a prophet, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... masters or false hopes to the slaves. These latter, shared largely in the festivities of the white people, and were free for many years to come to conduct their religious services in any way that seemed best to their wild and fantastic notions. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... merry by this time, and it wasn't long before old Colin limbered considerable. There it was, nice bright moonlight, nobody around to pass remarks; nothing to trouble. So bime-by we pasted her hide, wide and fantastic, with the bagpipes screechin' like a tom-cat fight in a cellar. I was tickled to death lookin' at our shadows flyin' around—one of the times I was easily pleased; I must say ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Hanway looked again at the frayed cuffs and elbows of the red smoking-jacket. In his infrequent visits to Colbury, he had noted the variance of the men's costumes with the mountain standard of dress. He saw naught like this, but he knew that if ever the sober burghers lent themselves to this sort of fantastic ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... "Something so fantastic it frightens me," said Orne. "Remember that the women who ruled Heleb bred female or male children by controlling the sex of their offspring at conception. The method was unique. In fact, our medics thought ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... similar honours which had been lavished upon himself when HIS star was in the zenith? Was he muttering to himself the usual consolation of the 'have- beens' - VANITAS VANITATUM? Or what new fiction, what old love, was flitting through that versatile and fantastic brain? Poor Bulwer! He had written the best novel, the best play, and had made the most eloquent parliamentary oration of any man of his day. But, like another celebrated statesman who has lately passed away, he strutted his hour and will soon be forgotten - 'Quand on broute sa gloire en ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... excited and exhilarated, as if this meteor had come charged with latent aurorae of the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery. Behold the frost-work on the pane,—the wild, fantastic limnings and etchings! can there be any doubt but this subtle agent has been here? Where is it not? It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. When ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Logically, the "Social Contract" is full of gaping flaws. Like its author's other books (see vol. vii, p. 176), it is an outpouring of the heart very imperfectly regulated by a brilliant but eccentric brain. As a political essay it is a tissue of fantastic arguments, based on unreal hypotheses. But it set men's minds on fire; it was the literary inspiration of one of the most tremendous events in history, and those who would comprehend the French Revolution can unravel ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... her second glass, and to the evident relief of all three, rose to go. How we laughed together, as we sped away in our taxicab. "It's as well to live up to one's reputation with such people," she said, that dear, fantastic Luccia. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... and shadowful. Long reaches of violet and vermilion clouds pressed thickly on the western line of hills. The mists began to rise, changing from opal to sapphire. The fantastic melodies of wandering gypsy songs went throbbing through the room; rollicking gavots, Hungarian dances, low and slumbrous nocturnes. As the music grew sadder and dreamier, the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... burying-grounds, and the broken walls of deserted churches—that its memory still lives freshly in my mind, as one of the happiest of my life. I passed whole hours among the ruins of Craighouse—a grey fantastic rag of a castle, consisting of four heavily-arched stories of time-eaten stone, piled over each other, and still bearing a-top its stone roof and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... walls of the chasm drew back to form a little valley a mile long by half a mile wide. The walls did not drop vertically to the floor there but sloped out at the base into a fantastic formation of natural roofs and arches that reached almost to the center of the valley from each side. Green things grew in the shade under the arches and sparkling waterfalls cascaded down over many of them. A small ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of contradiction you can arouse in him. It is the odium theologicum in a new form. There are men, for instance, who would gladly burn Professor Ray Lankester at Smithfield for his treatment of the Mollusca in the Encyclopaedia. That fantastic extension of the Cephalopods to cover the Pteropods ... But I wander from Hapley ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... guilty, was, curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than the deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true things he ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... G.C.B. play this trick on him? It happened in this way. Having nothing better to do during Watson's absence and at a critical moment of the War, these idle elderly well-fed lawyers solemnly deliberated upon the following fantastic problem:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... pyramidal stands, gorgeous or fragrant plants ran at their own wild will, while over all the wall and along the woodwork of the roof trailed passion-flowers, roses, honeysuckles, fragrant clematis, ivy, and those tropic vines whose long dead names belie their fervid luxuriance and fantastic growth; great trees of lemon and orange interspaced the vines in shallow niches of their own, and the languid drooping tresses of a golden acacia flung themselves over and across the deep glittering mass of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of the cementing effect of a foreign war was no secret at Washington. As early as January 26 he had unfolded to Schleiden this fantastic plan. "If the Lord would only give the United States an excuse for a war with England, France, or Spain," he said "that would be the best means of re-establishing internal peace[206]." Again, on February ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... attitude of his mind was still distinctly skeptical—the immutable pride of what he considered his own firmly rooted convictions was only very slightly shaken—and he now even viewed the prospect of his journey to the "field of Ardath" as a mere fantastic whim—a caprice of his own fancy which he chose to gratify just for the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to our favoured isle, Already partial to thy name and style; Long may thy fountain of invention run In streams as rapid as it first begun; While skill for each fantastic whim provides, And certain science ev'ry current guides! Oh, may thy days, from human sufferings free, Be blest with glory and felicity, With full fruition, to a distant hour, Of all thy magic and creative power! Blest in thyself, with rectitude of mind, And blessing, with ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... interpreted with this fact in mind. To find in these words of Paul the guarantee of the inspiration and infallibility of the books of the collection which are translated from the Hebrew, and not those which are written in Greek, is a freak of exegesis not more violent than fantastic. We know that Paul read and used some of these apocryphal books, and there are several of the books in our Hebrew Bible that he never quotes or refers to in the remotest way. The attempt which is ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... and Schiller are most free from either influence, and most impressed with the duties which a poet owes, before all, to the nation to which he belongs. Klopstock's national enthusiasm borders sometimes on the fantastic; for, as his own times could not inspire him, he borrowed the themes of his national panegyrics from the distant past of Arminius and the German bards. Lessing looked more to his own age, but he looked in vain for national heroes. "Pity the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... a formidable rival to the novelist, insomuch that in a period of dramatic activity the novel, as our author remarks, can hardly maintain itself. But from the middle of the seventeenth century the stage had fallen low, while the formal and fantastic romance, the long-winded involved story, was losing its vogue. So the heroic romances, we are told, 'availed themselves skilfully of the opportunity to foster a new taste in the reading public—a delight, namely, born of the fashionable leisure of a self-conscious society, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of the Shetland Islands, "on Christmas Eve, the fourth of January,—for the old style is still observed—the children go a guizing, that is to say, they disguising themselves in the most fantastic and gaudy costumes, parade the streets, and infest the houses and shops, begging for the wherewithal to carry on their Christmas amusements. One o'clock on Yule morning having struck, the young men turn out in large numbers, dressed in the coarsest of garments, and, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... part was to convince Voorhis to surrender his dream of fantastic profits; but sometime before Mayne got hoarse, the captain was made to see that he could not have his cake and ...
— A Transmutation of Muddles • Horace Brown Fyfe
... the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now in fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Within this green fantastic grot Bright-coloured balls are danced and spun On jets ("'Ere, lovey, 'ave a shot"); A gipsy lady tends a gun, A very rose of gipsy girls, With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... final finish of the rooms. Glazed bricks or tiles built into the walls, or secured to them after they are built, are vastly more satisfactory than a fragile and incongruous patchwork of wood, leather, metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short lives in collecting. I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should lie awake all night in a fever of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... of the masses. Whether the masses will think certain things wrong, cruel, base, unjust, and disgusting; whether they will think certain pleas and demands reasonable; whether they will regard certain projects as sensible, ridiculous, or fantastic, and will give attention to certain topics, depends on the convictions and feelings which at the time are dominant in the mores. No one can predict with confidence what the response will be to any ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... roaring crowd, with a fantastic dream-sense of a night-sky and a great stone building, dark with age and solemnity, and unreal figures perched on railings and points of vantage, and hurrahing hordes that fused themselves with the procession and became part of its marching. She yearned ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... these great facts carefully in mind, a new light will dawn on him and the urgency of the Chinese question will be disclosed. The Japanese Demands of 1915, instead of being fantastic and far-fetched, as many have supposed, are shown to be very intelligently drawn-up, the entire Treaty position in China having been most exhaustively studied, and every loophole into the vast region left untouched by the exterritorialized Powers marked down for invasion. For Western ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... but for the most part covered with purple heath and short furze, through which Ranger coursed, barking joyously. The view was splendid, on one side the moors rising one behind the other, till they faded in grey distance, each crowned with a fantastic pile of rocks, one in the form of a castle, another of a cathedral, another of a huge crouching lion, all known to the two cousins by name, and owned as familiar friends. On the other side, between two hills, each surmounted by its own rocky crest, lay nestled in woods the grey Church tower ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the leaves of the silvery poplar tremble and reflect their shadows on the fresh waters; and the flitting gas-lights mingle their gleams, play and sport over the rippled surface, coquet with the tripping star-beams, then throw fantastic lights over the swaying foliage; and from beneath the massive branches of trees, there shines out, in bold relief, the marble porticoes and lintels of stately—looking mansions. Such is the calm grandeur of the scene, that one could imagine ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... bona fide individual should be described or imagined, but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal world,—the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or new comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the judgment for the probability of the scenes ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... bribery, of which mention has been made, his removal as state printer, and his defalcation as postmaster, prostrated him financially and politically. In the hope of retrieving his fortunes he embarked in real estate speculation, thus completing his ruin and making him still more visionary and fantastic. Nevertheless, he struggled on with industry and courage for more than twenty years, occasionally coming into public or political notice as a writer of caustic letters, or as a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... countenance and demeanour, communicated a tone of anxiety to Sir Bale; and they stood still, side by side, in total silence for a time, looking toward the forest glades; between themselves and which, on the level sward of the valley, stood many a noble tree and fantastic group of forked birch and thorn, in the irregular formations into which Nature ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the waiting weeks became at last a single day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing, that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and bright, and welcome. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... an interchange of this sort with Sir W. ROBERTSON NICOLL; the Editor of The British Weekly devoting himself to the composition of poems, while the poet assumed editorial control of the famous newspaper. If the theory thus crudely stated sounds somewhat fantastic the arguments on which it is based are extraordinarily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... upon me, and like the prince in Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts." There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and we two joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed that they were the shadows—impalpable fantastic shadows—that divided for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said during the course of that weird interview I cannot—indeed, I dare not—tell. Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... thought. The very vagaries—which, as we have seen, and shall see again, rendered some of his ideas amusing and vain-glorious—were but the disorderly and ill-regulated whims of a sincere patriotism. Americanism in literature and language may become fantastic, but in politics there is pretty sure to be room for the most ardent love of country to expand itself without becoming a bubble, and it is certain that Webster's political writings were marked by a largeness of conception and a clear understanding ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... decent evening work, and how easily she can earn all the money she needs for her mother if she is willing to be paid by men. At first she refuses with pathos, but under the suggestive pressure of luring arguments she slowly weakens, and finally consents to exchange her street gown for a fantastic costume of half-nakedness. The feelings of the audience are saved by the detective who breaks in at the decisive moment, but the arguments of the advocates of sexual education cannot possibly be saved after that voluntary ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Where is my BERTHO in this mountain hidden?— Shaping fantastic dreams of heartless OENE, With aching hands into a tangible beauty. How can'st thou keep two yearning souls apart? If thou could'st feel what love is, mighty master Of loveless War, then ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... admiration of all the statesmen of Europe. She caused to be erected on the south side of her palace of Whitehall, a vast banqueting-house framed of timber and covered with painted canvass, which was decorated internally in a style of the most fantastic gaudiness. Pendants of fruits of various kinds (amongst which cucumbers and carrots are enumerated) were hung from festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and different flowers, the whole lavishly sprinkled with gold spangles: the ceiling was painted like a sky, with stars, sunbeams, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... at the chasm in the cliff which formed the waterfall. The outlook here was wild and picturesque in the extreme, and fully justified the many praises, paintings, and photographic views to which the spot had given birth. What in summer was charmingly green and gray, was now rendered weird and fantastic ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... attired in his robes and with its arms extended in the attitude which was habitual with him in prayer, was placed upon the scaffold among the living victims, and then cast into the flames, that bigotry might enjoy a fantastic triumph over ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for some botanic purpose or in preparation for a festival, there have been embedded among the trees of commoner growth, which have not yet been uprooted and transplanted elsewhere, a few rare specimens, with fantastic foliage, which seem to be clearing all round themselves an empty space, making room, giving air, diffusing light. Thus it was the time of year at which the Bois de Boulogne displays more separate characteristics, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... room, making sure that it was empty. Again his eyes came back to the glowing jewel supported by the thin crystal stem. Now he was conscious of a sweet heavy perfume filling the room, a fragrance new to him and subtly exotic. Everything about him was fantastic, extravagant, absurd, he told himself bluntly, as was everything connected with an absurd woman who did mad things. He looked at the bank notes in his hand. What more insane act than to send an amount of money of this size to ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... sucked into the bowels of the earth, leaving in its whirling eddies the debris of submarine mountains heaped up in rugged confusion or scattered over its sandy bottom. Porphyry and black granite bowlders, in every conceivable form and size, lay strewn over the plain. Sometimes so fantastic did their shapes become that the least imaginative of our party could picture the gigantic ruins of some mighty citadel, with its ramparts, bastions and towering castle. For many hours we were traversing this weird and desolate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... terror, we succeeded in relighting our torches, and found ourselves in a wizard-like cave. The bats, for such were our assailants, fled away like lost spirits, grotesque shapes were seen formed from the rocks by dripping waters during long ages, fantastic icicles like the stalactites and stalagmites of the famous Mammoth Cave hung suspended from the arching roof, but a resistless longing to reach the air of heaven urged us on, and we crawled to the opening through which we ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... of space travelers visiting earth to learn a new dance was no more fantastic than the idea of them being ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... and the wet mast and the guy ropes were often wreathed in faint, bluish flames. The Loseis forward, with her irregularly piled cargo, and the crouching forms under the sail-cloths, presented a thousand shifting, fantastic shapes in the playing flashes; and Garth had a score of false alarms. In the end, his enemy crept almost ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber, the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... now! More cruel than you know!" exclaimed Miriam, with another gleam of that fantastic, fitful gayety, which had more than once marked her manner during this interview. "Spare your ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... less than the inability to respect it: moments so propitious that a woman's very mistakes and indiscretions may help to establish her dominion. The sense of power she had been aware of in talking to Darrow came back with ten-fold force. She felt like testing him by the most fantastic exactions, and at the same moment she longed to humble herself before him, to make herself the shadow and echo of his mood. She wanted to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to walk at his side in the world of fact. She wanted him to feel her power and yet to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... lives of such adventurers as these, shall ridicule the wildest extravagance in all the romances of chivalry? Wonderland grew real around these men. They achieved impossibilities. The maddest imaginings of the poets, the most fantastic tales of knightly wanderings and successes, seem slight beside the exploits of these daring, dauntless, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fast as they turned, but now their way lay towards home, via sundry other places. The long sunbeams were passing lovely as they lay upon the snow, and the fantastic shadows of Jerry and the sleigh and all it held, were in odd harmony and contrast. The poverty-stricken house to which the two had walked that memorable night, had been already visited and passed, and several others with sick or poor inhabitants. Then Mr. Linden turned off down one ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... awake and all abroad; for the procession lasted some hours. Not a door but was open; not a threshold but was crowded, and not a window of the many-windowed gothic modern, frightful, handsome, quaint, disfigured, fantastic, or lofty mansions that diversify the large' market-place of Brussels, but was occupied by lookers on. Placidly, indeed, they saw the warriors pass : no kind greeting welcomed their arrival; no warm wishes ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... in exploration. Many other phases of exploration work may be picked up empirically by any one familiar with the local conditions; but when the man without sound geologic training attempts to go into this particular field, his lack of background and perspective often leads to fantastic hypotheses which may vitiate the inferences on ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... of wandering been passed, and had they all been given even to an imaginary and fantastic service of God? Was his father dead? If he were alive, what could keep him from writing? Nothing but a very strong reason, or a very wrong one, so his son thought, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Susan's big box from Virginia City was not for her alone, and from the other packages at least a dozen came to her. Betts, a wonderful embroidered kimono slipped on over her house dress, looked like a lovely, fantastic picture; and Susan must button her big, woolly field-coat up to her chin and down to her knees. "For ONCE you thought of a DANDY present, Billy!" said she. This must be shown to Mother; that must be shown to Mother; Mother must try on her black ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... thickly that the distance is lost in the forest of spires. Some are whitened and some blackened by decay and fire; many rise to a hundred feet or more above the lake. The branches are all gone, save in a few more gigantic forms, whose fantastic remnants of the old forest arches add to the illusion of monumental ruin which forces itself on the mind. The singularity of the general effect is quite matched by the wonder ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... strained. My fame had become annoying for my enemies, and a little trying, I confess, for my friends. But at that time all this stir and noise amused me vastly. I did nothing to attract attention. My somewhat fantastic tastes, my paleness and thinness, my peculiar way of dressing, my scorn of fashion, my general freedom in all respects, made me a being quite apart from all others. I ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... forest, thick and black, spread away, he knew, for hundreds of miles, and neither city nor town broke it. A fervent imagination leaped up and peopled it with weird beings. Nor would imagination go down before will and knowledge. Boughs twisted themselves into fantastic, hideous shapes, and the moan of the wind was certainly like the cry of a soul ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about or sitting at tables; and the wild strain of the Tsigane musicians, as they swayed to and fro in their red coats on the bandstand, floated towards the dome through the heavy summer air. In the near distance the fantastic shapes of chimney-cowls raised themselves against the starry but moonless sky, and miles away the grandiose contours of a dome far greater than Hugo's—the dome of St. Paul's—finished the prospect in solemn majesty. It was a scene well calculated to intensify a man's ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... he had seen from Lihou; could he then succeed in landing unperceived, and in concealing himself in one of the many clefts of the rocks, he felt sure that if the well-known form were there he would descry it; what would follow afterwards was a question which had taken many fantastic shapes in his imagination, none of which ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... fine hammock, the best the two squixes had ever wove. But they didn't sleep well that night. They twisted and turned and tossed, and they dreamed the most fantastic dreams— ...
— Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... in this benighted world! Now how like demons on the ascending smoke, Making grimaces, leaps the laughing flame, Filling the room with a mysterious haze, Which rolls and writhes along the shadowy air, Taking a thousand strange, fantastic forms; And every form is lit with burning eyes, Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... morning, of the mediaeval cities that flash into view on their ancient hills, of the vast stretch of beautiful and varied French land, of Limoges, the last outpost of the Northern French, whom it is sad to leave even when one is bound for Spain, of Rocamadour (and I think of that fantastic old-world shrine, with the legendary blade of Roland's Durandel still struck into its walls, and of the long delicious day on the solitary brooding height over the exquisite ravine), the night at Toulouse at the Hotel Bayard, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... a long time since I have thought on those times. The good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She always had a few twigs or green shoots in water—let the winter rage without as it might. The violets exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I pressed against the windowpanes covered with fantastic frost-work the copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made peep-holes. What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change—what magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted by their whole crews, with a screaming ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... proud man, Dress'd in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... palazzo a corner of this studio-salon was dedicated to a peculiar member of their family. From that corner she seldom moved save as she swept away in some such elegant costume as the others wore only upon gala-occasions, or in some picturesque or wildly-fantastic garb that would have lodged her in a policeman's care had she ever been suffered to escape thus from the palace. All day long, day after day, she tarried in her corner mute and motionless, eying all comers and goers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... A fantastic bridge spanning the brief marshland, frozen by the moonlight, appealed to them. They crossed. A coachman driving an open carriage hailed confidentially. Alixe entered and with a dexterous play of draperies usurped the back seat. Rentgen made no sign. He had her in full view, the moon ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... lack of enemies—he knew that. Had one of them chosen this fantastic method of declaring war on him? In that case he could certainly afford to ignore the letter as coming from a source unworthy of serious consideration. A worth-while enemy does not give a warning; he strikes. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... us truly if there's any news come newly; Not the old fantastic rumours we have often heard before:— Desolate yet all undaunted! Is the town by Boers still haunted? This is all the news that's wanted—tell us truly we implore— Is there, is there a relief force? Tell us, tell us, we implore! Only this and ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... fancy that I should fare well today. But my whole thoughts were bent upon you. "Surely," thought I, "we mortals who dwell in pain and sorrow might with reason envy the birds of heaven which know not either!" And my other thoughts were similar to these. In short, I gave myself up to fantastic comparisons. A little book which I have says the same kind of thing in a variety of ways. For instance, it says that one may have many, many fancies, my Barbara—that as soon as the spring comes on, one's thoughts become uniformly pleasant and sportive and witty, for the reason ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... our talk its topic changed, And, desultory as our way, Ranged, unconfined, from grave to gay. Even when it flagged, as oft will chance, No effort made to break its trance, We could right pleasantly pursue Our sports in social silence too; Thou gravely labouring to portray The blighted oak's fantastic spray; I spelling o'er, with much delight, The legend of that antique knight, Tirante by name, ycleped the White. At either's feet a trusty squire, Pandour and Camp, with eyes of fire, Jealous, each other's motions viewed, And scarce suppressed their ancient ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... fragrance of the dew-drenched grass and the scarlet balsams; to walk with hushed step through the wide forests, communing with the powerful sylvan spirits that labor there, watching with what miraculous delicacy of touch their unseen fingers weave the rich fantastic shrouds of fern and moss that deck the dead and fallen trees or anon give to the living their faint and mottled tints of green and gray;—to live thus through the summer hours, and through autumn, winter, spring watch the unrolling of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various |
