"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hiss new master, was in every respect a great contrast with Mr. Gordon. He was not so brilliant in his acquirements, nor so vigorous in his teaching, and therefore clever boys did not catch fire from him so much as from the fourth-form master. But he was a far truer and deeper Christian; ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... of the green wave whitely doth hiss Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream. Surely reality cannot be this! Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem! The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel, Is not something, but something interposed. Only what in this is not this is ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... gentlemen whom nothing can convince of their total unfitness for the stage. You may hiss them night after night, you may present them with bouquets of carrots, and wreaths of cabbage leaves and onions, and leather medals, and services of tin plate; and if you find them "insensible to kindness," you may try brickbats—but in vain. They will cling to the stage for life—living, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... The other two were Eurydice, a profane and pointless farce, afterwards printed by its author (in anticipation of Beaumarchais) "as it was d—mned at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane;" and a few detached scenes in which, under the title of Eurydice Hiss'd; or, a Word to the Wise, its untoward fate was attributed to the "frail Promise of uncertain Friends." But even in these careless and half-considered productions there are happy strokes; and one scarcely looks to find such nervous and sensible ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... at the gates of hell, inflamed and furious; they may not help us! This woeful house is filled with torment. In this deep darkness there is yet no place to shelter us, that we may hide therein. Here is the adder's hiss; here serpents dwell. Firmly the bonds of torment are fastened upon us. Fierce are the fiends, swarthy and black. Here never gleameth day in the gloom of hell-shadows, nor the ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... whilst we were faring, lo and behold! up started an ostrich and we gave her chase, but she escaped our pursuit and spreading wings ceased not to fly before us (and we following by sight) till she lost us in a desert wherein there was neither grass nor water, nor heard we aught therein save hiss of snake and wail of Jinn and howl of Ghul; and when we reached that place the ostrich disappeared nor could we tell whether she had flown up into the sky or into the ground had gone down. Then we turned our horses' heads and thought to return; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... dark, I missed the third, the bells in my cap jangling at the shock. I brought my teeth together and stood breathless in apprehension, fearing that the noise might awaken him, and cursing myself for a careless fool to have forgotten those infernal bells. Above me I heard a warning hiss from old Mariani, which, if anything, increased my dread. But Ramiro snored ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... disturbed him; for he reared into the air a column of serpent's flesh that looked as thick as the maintopmast of a seventy-four, opened a mouth that looked capacious enough to swallow the largest buoy anchor in the ship, and, with a strange grating noise between a bark and a hiss, dived, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... had lifted itself from the box, to glare at several of the boys. Then its cold, beady eyes were fixed on Dick and it uttered a vicious hiss. This was more than the eldest Rover could stand and he let box and snake drop in a hurry. The snake glided out of ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... as the car was ever rising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself had been equally careless, and the flying machine, now ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must remember how, when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hill-side, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no more than hell To souls cast forth who hear all hell-fire hiss All round them, and who feel the red worm's kiss Shoot mortal poison through the heart that rests Immortal: serpents suckled at her breasts, Fire feeding on her limbs, less pain should be Than sense of ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pleasure out of that encounter. Then ensued some cudgel-playing; but the heads broken were of so little note, and the wounds given so trifling and unsatisfactory, that no wonder the company began to hiss, grumble, and show other signs of discontent. "The masters, the masters!" shouted the people, whereupon those famous champions at length ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ye hear the hiss and scream Of that hot steam? It's the Essex that's struck,— She never had any luck: Ah, 'twas a wicked shot, And, whether they know it or not, It doesn't give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... to thee. The roaring artillery's clouds thicken round me, The hiss and the glare of the loud bolts confound me. Ruler of battles, I call on thee O Father, lead ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... immediately bid hoist the sail and have out the oars. While this was doing the creature appeared again with a glowing mass of fused metal (massam igneam de scoria) in pincers, which he hurled at them. Where it struck the water about a furlong from them, it made the sea boil and hiss. They had only escaped about a mile when they saw beings swarming out upon the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges and set them blazing, until the whole island seemed one mass of fire. The sea boiled like a boiling ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... are so ugly that we like you very well. Will you come with us and be a bird of passage? On another moor, not far from this, are some dear, sweet Wild Geese, as lovely creatures as have ever said 'Hiss, hiss.' You are truly in the way to make your fortune, ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... a whisper; yet, had any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like the hiss of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... blood would start With old King Hake; Not sneak in dark caves of the heart, Where curls the snake, And secret Murder's hiss is heard Ere the deed be done: He wove no web of wile and word; He bore with none. When sharp within its sheath asleep Lay his good sword, He held it royal work to keep His kingly word. A man of valour, bloody and wild, In Viking need; And yet of ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... overtaken us? Simply enough: During the night I had in some way—a way still unknown to me—opened a porthole below the water-line; and those in charge of the vessel seemed powerless to close it. Every now and then I could hear parts of the ship give way under the strain. I could hear the air hiss and whistle spitefully under the resistless impact of the invading waters; I could hear the crashing of timbers as partitions were wrecked; and as the water rushed in at one place I could see, at another, scores of helpless passengers swept overboard into the sea—my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... sat silent. Suddenly he said, "Hiss!" and rose to his feet. Taking a long rifle from the ground he adjusted its sight. Exactly seven miles away on the slope of the mountain the figure of a man was seen walking. The Boy Chief raised the rifle to his unerring eye and fired. The ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... him the bitter word And serpent hiss of scorning; Nor let the storms of yesterday Disturb his quiet morning. Breathe over him forgetfulness Of all save deeds of kindness, And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, Press down his lids ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... peals the trumpet. From the port they dash With cheers. The waves hiss, as the strong arms keep In time, drawn up to finish with a flash; And three-toothed prow and oars, with measured sweep, Tear up the yawning furrows of the deep, Less swiftly, to the chariot yoked ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... everything, Morris expected only what came of it under its self-assumed title of a 'National Assembly.' 'It is impossible,' he wrote to Robert Morris in America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to take back ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... theatres have got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... whistling in the pit; they cough, they hiss; those in the gallery laugh; the king gets up, arranges his cloak and sits down majestically with his sceptre. It is all in vain; the noise continues to increase, all the actors forget their parts, a terrible pause on the stage. HINZE ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... as squibs on triumphs wait, Proclaim the glory, and augment the state; Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, stink, and die. Rail on, my friends! what more my verse can crown Than Compton's smile, and ...
— English Satires • Various
... her glances, pretending that I have another love. To hear this makes her jealous of me, by Paean, and she wastes with pain, and springs madly from the sea, gazing at my caves and at my herds. And I hiss on my dog to bark at her, for when I loved Galatea he would whine with joy, and lay his muzzle on her lap. Perchance when she marks how I use her she will send me many a messenger, but on her envoys I will shut my door till she promises that ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... danger not only of spoiling her beautiful new blue dress but of being burned into a wretched little cinder. Horribly frightened at her danger, the Kingfisher turned once more, but this time toward the rolling waters which covered the earth. Down, down she swooped, until with the hiss of burning feathers she splashed into the cold wetness, putting out the fire which threatened to consume her. Once, twice, thrice, she dipped into the grateful coolness, flirting the drops from her blue plumage, now ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a long knife blade, coated black, and thin and sharp as a half-length rapier. Gutierrez had one of similar fashion. No electronic weapons were in evidence, probably because the hiss of one fired would have been too loud for our barrage, and its flash too bright. But a knife ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as long and as much as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rest of the water. The heat of the water should be not less than 160 deg.F. as it will cool while the lime is being prepared. Slake the lime in a separate vessel by pouring about 5 oz. of water over it. When it begins to hiss and break, add more water little by little. When all the lumps have cracked up stir till a thick even cream is made. Add this to the other ingredients in the stock vat. Stir well. The stock vat should have ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... influenced many votes. And presently attendance for that purpose became a trade; some of the most violent deputies hiring a regularly appointed troop to take their station in the galleries, and paying them daily wages to applaud or hiss in accordance with the signs which they themselves made from the body of the hall.[1] And if the populace was thus the master of the Assembly while at Versailles, this was far more the case after its removal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... glory in the name: Though now by Slavery's minions hiss'd And covered o'er with shame, It is a spell of light and power— The watchword of the free:— Who spurns it in the trial-hour, A craven ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... plunged, but Muller on the one side and the smooth-faced Boer on the other lashed them without mercy, and at last they went into the river with a rush. The gust had passed now, and for a few moments the heavy quiet was renewed, except for the whirl of the water and the snake-like hiss of the coming rain. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... confronted by a bloated toad. The amphibian surveyed him solemnly, but never moved. A low hiss whistled through the grass. He crouched in terror while four feet of grass-snake undulated by. A shrewmouse broke cover in front of him, followed by its mate. The air resounded with shrill defiant squeaks ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... up the furnace with dry wood, then stoked it full of coal. After an hour and a half his heart thrilled with mingled fear and exultation at sight of the steam, first white, then blue and thin, that began to hiss from the leaks ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... greets our ears from a dozen mountain-slopes round about us, as we put our shoulders to the wheel, and gradually approach the summit. Tortoises are occasionally surprised basking in the sunbeams in the middle of the road; when molested they hiss quite audibly in protest, but if passed peacefully by they are seen shuffling off into the bushes, as though thankful to escape. Unhappy oxen are toiling patiently upward, literally inch by inch, dragging heavy, creaking wagons, loaded with miscellaneous importations, prominent among which ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... slowly scarlet, while the girl's keen eyes pierced him like a knife, and narrowed as, with pale face and heaving breast, she rose suddenly from her chair and faced him—amazed, bewildered, burning with sudden hatred. "And you're another!" The girl's voice was like a hiss. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... midnight it disappeared, or to use a more appropriate expression, "it went out," like a huge glowworm. Had it fled from us? We were duty bound to fear so rather than hope so. But at 12:53 in the morning, a deafening hiss became audible, resembling the sound made by a waterspout expelled ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... house was, sunk in silence, but rising from the dining-room below, through the opening made by the stairs, came the voices of Prothero and Pearsall. And mixed with their voices came also the sharp hiss of water issuing from a siphon. The sound was reassuring. Apparently, over their whiskey-and-soda the two men were still lingering at the dinner-table. For the moment, then—so far, at least, as they were concerned—the coast ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... them bravely too. Idle young actors are fond of applause, but, take my word for it, a clap is a mighty silly, empty thing, and does no more good than a hiss; and, therefore, if any man loves hissing, he may have his three shillings worth at ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... bodices, with folded handkerchiefs on their heads and long earrings in their ears, carrying baskets of fruit on their arms. They passed peasant men driving donkeys or oxen, who smiled at them from under hats decorated with pompons of colored paper and tinsel. Geese ran out to hiss at them as they flew by, and hens and chickens fluttered out of their way; but Rafael had eyes ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... A general warning hiss went up from the pirate cats who stood nearest to the children. "Be quiet," muttered Growler, "unless you want your ears bitten off? Don't you see the Chief ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... air is here! How unpremeditated it all seems! How carelessly he knots each new thought, as it comes, to the one before it with an and, like a girl making lace! And what a slidingly musical use he makes of the sibilants with which our language is unjustly taxed by those who can only make them hiss, not sing! There are twelve of them in the first twenty words, fifteen of which are monsyllables. We notice the structure of Dryden's periods, but this grows up as we read. It gushes, like the song of the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... one unanimous hiss they hunted the poor little gentle boy into a corner; and having pent him up with benches, Fisher opened his books for him, which he thought the greatest mortification, and set up a candle beside him—"There, now he looks like a Greybeard ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Skeaton promenade, and worried and lashed and soaked that hideous structure to within an inch of its unnatural life. Behind the town the woods had swayed and creaked, funeral black against the grey thick sky. Across the folds the rain fell in slanting sheets with the sibilant hiss of relentless power ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... elated, forthwith started off again at the double. They began to traverse the rear of MacDonald's brigade, dimly conscious of rapid movements by its battalions, and to the sound of tremendous independent firing, which did not, however, prevent them from hearing the venomous hiss ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Faux's night, dost know, we chaps, A-putten on our woldest traps, Went up the highest o' the knaps, An' meaede up such a vier! An' thou an' Tom wer all we miss'd, Vor if a sarpent had a-hiss'd Among the rest in thy sprack vist, Our fun ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the Adriatic, then, Dressed in her flames, will shine! Devouring flames! Such as shall burn her to the watery bottom, And hiss in her foundation! ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... bulbs to bloom and saw the roses bud; This year I'm ankle deep in mire, and most of it is blood. Last year the mother in the door was glad as she could be; To-day her heart is full of pain, and mine is hurting me. But it's shoot, shoot, shoot, And when the bullets hiss, Don't let the tears fill up your eyes, For weeping ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... us like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss like serpents." ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a game of chequers: and without disturbing them I stepped amidships where Mr. Fett ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... are more or less protected; to hiss a pleader at the bar would, perhaps, be deemed illegal and punishable, but to hiss a dramatick writer is justifiable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good- humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... despair seized her, and a wild thought prompted her to make a sudden dash for freedom. Death might come, but such a death was preferable to the fate which must await her at the end of this journey. Her fingers had tightened on the reins, when the silence was suddenly broken, and, with a swift hiss, a streak of light cut through the darkness skyward, paused a moment, and then, with a muffled detonation, burst into globes of light which floated downward. The foremost of the troop reined in their horses sharply at the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... nature, and not reach'd by art. His never-blushing head he turn'd aside, (Not half so pleased when Goodman prophesied) And look'd, and saw a sable Sorcerer rise, Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies: All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare, And ten-horn'd fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Hinderance malhelpo. Hindermost lasta. Hindoo Hindo. Hindrance malhelpo. Hindu Hindo. Hinge cxarniro. Hint proponeti. Hip kokso. Hippodrome hipodromo. Hippopotamus hipopotamo. Hire dungi. Hire, cost of salajro. Hireling salajrulo. His lia, sia. Hiss sibli. Historian historiskribanto. History historio. History, natural naturscienco. Hit frapi. Hit against ektusxegi. Hitch malhelpajxo. Hive abelujo. Ho! ho! Hoard amaso. Hoarfrost ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and straw under every slate; the Serin-finch, whose downy nest is no bigger than half an apricot, came and chirped in the plane-tree tops; the Scops made a habit of uttering his monotonous, piping note here, of an evening; the bird of Pallas Athene, the Owl, came hurrying along to hoot and hiss. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... to shoot tiny white, five-pointed flames through the purple sky. The fireflies were beginning to cut long arcs of gold in the sooty dusk. The waves were coming up the low-tide beach with a long roar and retreating with a faint hiss. Afterwards floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand. Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Miss Sampson as he stepped out. He uttered a little sound like a hiss or a gasp or an intake of breath, I did not know what; and then the incomprehensible fellow bestowed a kick upon me that I thought about broke my leg. But I understood and gamely endured the pain. Then we were looking at Diane Sampson. She was white and wonderful. She stepped ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... historian would thus deal with the heroes, why, such "small deer" as Bardolph and Master Slender would of course be puffed out of existence with one hiss of lordly contempt. Yet Macaulay has a more vivid historical imagination, more power of placing himself in the age about which he writes, than historians like Hume and Hallam, whose judgments of men are summaries of qualities, and imply no inwardness of vision, no discerning of spirits. In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... With a sharp hiss the compressed gas rushed from the containing cylinder into the deflated balloon. The silken sides puffed out, losing their wrinkles. The balloon gradually ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... was so spent, I could not climb the wall; and when I saw Turkey turn and face the bull, I turned too. We were now in the shadow of the hill, but I could just see Turkey lift his arm. A short sharp hiss, and a roar followed. The bull tossed his head as in pain, left Turkey, and came towards me. He could not charge at any great speed, for the ground was steep and uneven. I, too, had kept hold of my weapon; and although I was dreadfully frightened, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... desires, and this is what they say: "You cannot have enough: what you possess, That makes your value, be it more or less." What answer would you make to such as these? Why, let them hug their misery if they please, Like the Athenian miser, who was wont To meet men's curses with a hero's front: "Folks hiss me," said he, "but myself I clap When I tell o'er my treasures on my lap." So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly His thirsty palate—Laughing, are you? why? Change but the name, of you the tale is told: You ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... loose so monstrously resounding that one feels himself annihilated by the mere sound of the downpoured thunder of these great constellations of destruction that form in the sky. One sees and one feels the fragments passing close to one's head with their hiss of red-hot iron plunged in water. The blast of one explosion so burns my hands that I let my rifle fall. I pick it up again, reeling, and set off in the tawny-gleaming tempest with lowered head, lashed by spirits of dust and soot in a crushing downpour like volcanic lava. The stridor ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... said to his comrade, who had come across from his own company to have a chat with him, "that this is more unpleasant than I had expected. This lying here listening to the angry hiss of the bullets is certainly trying; at least I own that I ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... life—certainly into my writings, and shaped and color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of interminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at times for years. Sometimes I wake at night and can hear ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with the alien hiss in his English that Coffin hated, for it was like the Serpent ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... all right now, my lady!" fell with a chuckle from her lips. "A vampire, ha!" The chuckle was changed for a kind of hiss. "Well, have it so. There is rich blood in your veins, and it will be no fault of mine if I do not fatten upon it. As for pity, you shall have as much of it as you gave to that helpless baby. Saints don't work in this kind of business, and I'm ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally gives some warning hiss, or a rattle. Indeed, almost every animal gives warning of its foul intent. The shark turns over before seizing its prey. But the false friend (I am obliged to couple these words) takes you in without ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... me two hundred pounds I'll tell you where it is," said a voice out of the darkness; and a groan and a hiss arose from the prisoners. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... now," remarked Ted, uncloaking the gander and setting it on its legs on Margaret's immaculate table. "Whoa, steady theer," as the bird began to struggle in his grasp, flapping uneasy wings, and making a sickly attempt at a hiss. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... within two feet of the hideous reptile. All of a sudden the beast whirled itself into a coil, its eyes fastened with hideous malignity on poor Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the most awful hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth of ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... All through the night we scoured between the hills: The moon went down behind us, and the stars Dropped after her; but long before I saw A planet blazing straight against our eyes, The road had softened, and the shadowy hills Had flattened out, and I could hear the hiss Of sand spurned backward by the flying mares.— Glory to God! I was at home again! The sun rose on us; far and near I saw The level Desert; sky met sand all round. We paused at midday by a palm-crowned well, And ate and slumbered. Somewhat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the matter?" your Aunt Amy asked, as the geese continued to hiss angrily without giving any heed to her, and Mrs. Gray Goose ceased her scolding sufficiently ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... Hear how the rain pours, and murder—such a flash! Why, in Jamaica, we don't startle greatly at lightning, but absolutely I heard it hiss—there, again"—the noise of the thunder stopped further colloquy, and the wind now burst down the valley ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... superintendent finished speaking when a sharp hiss sounded from an open window. Then another and more ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... made a strange little noise that was something between a grunt and a hiss: and she repeated this many times. At last Dot saw what looked like a bit of black stick, just above the surface of the pool, coming towards their side, and, as it moved forward, leaving two little silvery ripples that widened out behind it on the ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... that man Kennedy," he exclaimed, in a tone that was almost a hiss. "But I tell you, Elaine, he is all bluff. Why, he has been after that Clutching Hand now for three months—and what ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... off the top of the stove and put the pot on the fire, much to its delight, for it began to hiss like the rocket sent off from the market-place the day before in honor of the election of a new mayor. Then Nelle wetted her finger and snuffed the candles, and the flame which had been flickering unsteadily at the end of the black wick burned ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... on such a text as this "We sadly miss old CHARLEY's line;" But were we mute, Neptune would hiss His sons degenerate off the brine. Old "CHARLEY" spins his yarns no more! He's dead, as Scrooge declared old Marley. What then? Wake up, from shore to shore, And—send ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... say that we part for the last time, and therefore I make a request to you. It is as to one who is dead to me. Macumazahn, I believe that Umbelazi the thief"—these words broke from his lips with a hiss—"has given her many cattle and hidden her away either in the kloof of Zikali the Wise, or near to it, under his care. Now, if the war should go against Umbelazi and I should be killed in it, I think evil will fall upon that woman's head, I who have grown sure that it was she ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... pith balls the size of peas that weighed from a tenth of a gram up. She was either so absorbed in what she was doing, or pretended to be, that she gave no sign of hearing me come up behind her. One of the balls before her struggled off the table top, and I could hear her breath hiss with the effort. Cheating a little, I felt for her lifts and gave her some help. One after another the balls floated up and sank back. She was ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... deformity) their Rebellion, Murders, Massacres and Villanies, from forty upwards, should be represented for the better undeceiving and informing of the World, flock in a full Assembly with a pious design to Hiss and Rail it as much out of countenance as they would Monarchy, Religion, Laws, and Honesty; throwing the Act of Oblivion in our Teeths, as if that (whose mercy cannot make them forget their old Rebellion) cou'd hinder honest Truths from breaking ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... so," insisted Frau Knapf, coming a step nearer, and sinking her, voice one hiss lower. "You shouldn't say I said it, but Frau Nirlanger likes she should look young for her husband. He is much younger as she is—aber much. Anyhow ten years. Frau Nirlanger does not tell me this, but from other people I have found out." Frau Knapf shook her head mysteriously ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... bullet knocked a villainous-looking tatterdemalion clean into the happy hunting grounds. Then came a lance thrust; he parried it with his sabre and plunged within range of the point; there was a sharp, snake-like hiss of the light, curved blade; down went Apache number two. At this rate, providing there were no interruptions, he could finish the whole twenty. He went at his job with a handy adroitness which was almost scientific, it was so much like surgery, like dissection. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the back part of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... tinge. From my position on the floor I could not see what made the light. It streamed from a crevice that extended clear around the cave parallel with the floor and about twelve feet above it. From this groove, along with the light, came the soft roaring hiss. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... emitting a hiss which must have cost him a heartrending effort, relegated the greatly relieved Dolly to the ranks, and smoothed over the situation by "choosing" my daughter, to that young ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... him through, and it was well that before the end he did not see her eyes. Then she moved her other hand which held the half-burnt cigarette and dropped the smoking end (so that it made a little hiss) into her teacup on the glass-topped table, and brought her hand back, and caressed his hair as he lay bent forward there. "Dear old Peter," she said tenderly, "how he thinks things! And when you saw this—this love, Peter, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... into it the precious bit of blue steel he had recovered from the crack beneath the French window; he smoothed down the carpet with a quick sideways flirt of his foot, thrust the envelope into his coat, and had barely time to hiss one further admonition ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the Greeks did not, like the moderns, think only of the number of feet an athlete could leap, or the space of time he would take to run a distance. They thought also of his form, of the rhythmic and harmonious character of his action. If an athlete showed ugly form, they would hiss him, as they would an incompetent actor. Most of their exercises were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In all the statues of athletes which have come down to us, not one shows an inharmonious development, powerful chest and weak legs, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... indifferent skins, took up the paper and sat down. Once more her clear, fresh voice, this time with a little quiver in it, fitted in to the regular tick of the querulous clock, the near-by chatter of birds' tongues and the hiss of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the tree-felling. He saw slaughtered trees, trees that tottered, trees that staggered in each other's branches. He heard the scream and the shriek of wounded boughs, the creaking and crashing of the trunk, and the long hiss of branches falling, trailing through branches to the ground. He smelt the raw juice of broken leaves and the sharp tree dust in the saw pits. The trees died horrible deaths, in the forests under the axes of the woodmen, and in the schools under the tongues of the Professors, and in Michael's ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... never saw but two, that I remember. They are like the Rattle-Snake in Colour, but rather lighter. They hiss exactly like a Goose, when any thing approaches them. They strike at their Enemy with their Tail, and kill whatsoever they wound with it, which is arm'd at the End with a horny Substance, like a Cock's Spur. This is their Weapon. I have heard it credibly reported, by those who said ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... gathered in Pandemonium to hear the news of his success, which he related, overjoyed at having wrought the ruin of mankind and revenged himself on God by so small a thing as the eating of an apple. As he concluded and stood waiting their applause, he heard a universal hiss, and saw himself surrounded by serpents, and himself changing into an enormous dragon. The great hall was filled with the monsters, scorpions, asps, hydras, and those who stood waiting without with applause for their leader were ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... fair estimate of the lady's features (singularly plain ones) as the sedan swings by. Towards midday business is suspended for a while, and the alleys of the bazaar empty as if by magic. For nearly a whole hour silence, unbroken save by the snarling of some pariah dog, the hiss of the samovar, and gurgle of the kalyan, falls over the place, till 2 p.m., when the noise recommences as suddenly as it ceased, and continues ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... to see it if you hiss like a serpent," said the hermit. "Get out your binoculars, follow me, and hold your tongue, all of you—that will be the safest plan. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... not been for his lifebelt and the plank, he must have been beaten down and have perished. As it was, now he was driven into the depths, and now he emerged upon their surface to hear their seething hiss around him, and above it all a continuous boom as of great guns—the boom of ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... night the fitful gale Doth carry past the bittern's boom, The dingo's yell, the plover's wail, While lumbering shadows start, and loom, And hiss through gloom. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... f'm tip to tip, the white ones—use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back—for its height—aboard the Votaress, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... does it here alone it's Magick show, But works in Hell, and binds the Fiends below. So powerful is the Muse! When David plaid, The Frantick Daemon heard him, and obey'd. No Noise, no Hiss: the dumb Apostate lay Sunk in soft silence, and dissolv'd away. Nor was this Miracle of Verse confin'd To Jews alone: For in a Heathen mind Some strokes appear: Thus Orpheus was inspir'd, Inchanting Syrens at his Song retir'd. To Rocks and Seas he the ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... rosemary, Basil, tansy, centaury,— Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumor cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... rolling together in huge opaque masses, which presently began to close in and become denser as the night advanced. By and by a wild wind awoke, as it were, from the very cavities of ocean, and the waves began to hiss warnings all along the coast, and to rise higher and higher over each other's shoulders as the gale steadily increased. Rene Ronsard, sitting in his cottage, feeble and somewhat ailing, heard the beginnings of the tempest with long-accustomed ears. He was depressed in spirit, yet not ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... powerful men shrank under his glance. As the nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon |
