"Recreant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of idols in public, his subjects knew how to deceive him. Josiah sent out his pious sympathizers to inspect the houses of the people, and he was satisfied with their report, that they had found no idols, not suspecting that the recreant people has fastened half an image on each wing of the doors, so that the inmates faced their household idols as they closed the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the silver candle-sticks lay a horse-pistol. As the fingers approached it, their trembling increased. Twice they hesitated, craven flesh rebelling against a recreant will. They shook so frightfully upon encountering the butt that it seemed as if to grasp it were beyond their power. Once they had seized it, however, the trembling left them ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... first. The petition was not an ebullition of vindictiveness. It had a practical purpose. On the scaffold he could say nothing for Cobham; Cobham might say much for him. It was possible that, when nothing more was to be gained by falsehoods, his recreant friend would clear his fame once for all. Then he quitted the hall, accompanying Sir Benjamin Tichborne, the High Sheriff, to the prison, according to Sir Thomas Overbury, 'with admirable erection, yet in such sort as a ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... when Arthur had found his uncle and had stated his case, Mr. Shrimplin instantly summoned to his aid all his redoubtable powers of speech and fell to cursing the recreant husband and father. Having eased himself in this manner, and not wishing Arthur to be entirely unmindful of his vast superiority, he called the boy's attention to the undeniable fact that he, Shrimplin, could ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... might he brag of his courage in an honourable cause, when he knew that he could never be put to the test. But what palliation shall you find for a rogue with so little pride in his art, that he exercised it 'half loth, half consenting'? It is not in this recreant spirit that masterpieces are achieved, and Maclaine had better have stayed in the far Highland parish, which bred him, than have attempted to cut a figure in the larger world of London. His famous encounter with Walpole should have covered him with disgrace, for it was ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... without that fiery blaze, Which makes it boil along the throbbing veins.— Albion, displeas'd, her own lov'd Spring surveys Passing, with volant step, o'er russet plains; Sees her to Summer's fierce embraces speed, Pale, and unrobed.—Faithless! thou well may'st hide Close in his sultry breast thy recreant head, That did'st, neglecting thy distinguish'd Isle, In Winter's icy arms so long abide, While Britain vainly ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... in good time, if you do not turn recreant," answered the fairy, with a significant smile. "But away, away, my prince. Mount and away. Follow the course of the river, and once more, never turn aside let what will be before you, remembering that nothing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... of government which, by the grace of God, I hope to be able to give to the American people. My life is consecrated to our cause, and, hateful as is the thought of assuming supreme power, I can see no other way clearly, and I would be recreant to my trust if I faltered in my duty. Therefore, with the aid I know each one of you will give me, there shall, in God's good time, be wrought 'a government of the people, by the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... and sincerity. On the present occasion there was a fierceness, almost a ferocity, in his very countenance, to the fire of which friends and enemies were equally anxious to add fuel,—the friends in order that so might these recreant Tories be more thoroughly annihilated, and the enemies, that their enemy's indiscretion might act back upon himself to his confusion. For, indeed, it never could be denied that as a Prime Minister Mr. Gresham ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... fight before the king; 410 And then the knight, whom fate or happy chance Shall with his friends to victory advance, And grace his arms so far in equal fight, From out the bars to force his opposite, Or kill, or make him recreant on the plain, The prize of valour and of love shall gain; The vanquish'd party shall their claim release, And the long jars conclude in lasting peace. The charge be mine to adorn the chosen ground, The theatre of war, for champions so renown'd; 420 And take the patron's ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... he married Margaret Aitken—a serving-woman. She bore nine children. Thomas was the eldest and the only one who proved recreant to the religious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Majesty's person nor her Government, but against Colonial mis-government.... We remonstrated; we were derided.... We were goaded on to madness, and were compelled to show that we had the spirit of resistance to repel injuries, or to be deemed a captive, degraded and recreant people. We took up arms, not to attack others, but to defend ourselves."—Letter to Lord Durham from Dr. Wolfred Nelson and others, confined at ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... had hardly known in his own home. If he were cheated or otherwise imposed upon anywhere in Dresden—and this did not often happen—the Buchers were violently up in arms about it and never ceased pursuit of the recreant ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... convention. In contrast with this, Fillmore had no support from New York. The Whigs of that State had sent a delegation to impeach him before the nation for faithlessness to principle, and to demand that votes of other States should not impose on New York a recreant son to confound and destroy ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... No recreant I to a noble cause, Nor traitor base to a leader bold; 'Twas a fight where he won most applause Who captured most ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the details of the 2nd of December have in this wise passed before his eyes; he has recorded them all, weighed them all—not one has escaped him. History will be able to complete this narration, but not to weaken it. The magistrates were recreant to their trust, he has performed their functions. When direct, spoken testimony has failed him, he has sent to the spot what one might call genuine investigating commissions. He might cite many a fact for which he has prepared genuine interrogatories ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... rapture yield, The stern Atrides rages round the field: So some fell lion whom the woods obey, Roars through the desert, and demands his prey. Paris he seeks, impatient to destroy, But seeks in vain along the troops of Troy; Even those had yielded to a foe so brave The recreant warrior, hateful as the grave. Then speaking thus, the king of kings arose, "Ye Trojans, Dardans, all our generous foes! Hear and attest! from Heaven with conquest crown'd, Our brother's arms the just success have found: Be therefore now the Spartan wealth ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... enfranchisement more than twenty years ago, when it was first launched in the United States, and having labored so long and so earnestly for the enfranchisement of the male citizens of our country, irrespective of color or race, it would have been grossly inconsistent in me, not to say recreant and mean, to shrink from the duties for which you compliment me when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... but purge The living fire upon it, when the name Is brutish and discolour'd.—When kings fail, Let's bastardize the craven to his breed, And hurl him recreant down! ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... religious difficulties, and in proposing his own doubts drew forth her latent scepticism as to the orthodox beliefs. "It was in answering Robert Browning;" she wrote, "that my mind refused to bring forward argument, turned recreant, and sided with the enemy." Something of this period of Browning's Sturm und Drang can be divined through the ideas ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... bones, Madness and panic fears that haunt by night; Then banishment from human intercourse; From the libation, from the loving cup, And from the altar, whence a father's wrath Unseen should drive the recreant; at the last Death without honour and without a friend.— Think ye that I such oracles could slight? And if I did, the deed must still be done; For many motives join to set me on: The gods command, my murdered father calls For vengeance, and my desperate need impels; ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... mistress who engages a maid without such credentials is regarded as recreant to her order. In England, too, the former mistress is held partly responsible for the mischief done, if she turn loose upon other households a ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... became aware of this formidable disaffection, he boldly determined to strike a blow at the English power that should restore the military character of France among the savages, and deprive the recreant Indians of their expected succor. He therefore organized three expeditions to invade the British settlements by different avenues. The first, consisting of 110 men, marched from Montreal, destined for New York, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... my mask the progress he made! If he proved successful, I could feel that part of the creating power was mine; for had I not trusted him? Let a man realize that there is some one who has faith in him, and the battle is half won. Even suppose he were to prove the recreant and the impostor predicted, the world would not be able to jeer at me; I could hug my wretched secret, and none would be the wiser. Decidedly, I was to be envied in the acquisition of this new interest. It would be almost like having a double ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... title. But we disbelieve this story utterly,—we intend to offer no evidence to show that the first wife,—for there was such a wife,—was living when the second marriage was contracted. We have no such evidence, and believe that none such can be found. Then that recreant nobleman, in whose breast there was no touch of nobility, in whose heart was no spark of mercy, made a second statement,—to this effect—that his first wife had not died at all. His reason for this it is ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... two sat holding each other's eyes, the face of the older man changed and softened. Into it came a smile of high and spiritual beauty, of nobility and unworldliness, of tenderness most touching. All that was most winning in the character of the man was embodied in the look which he fixed upon his recreant disciple, a look pleading and wistful, yet full of dignity and strength. He leaned forward, laying the tips of his thin fingers almost caressingly on the arm of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... had grievously transgressed the laws of chivalry and knightly honor, and for this cause had he been condemned to suffer death. Great sorrow reigned among all the lords and dames, and Queen Guinevere, on bent knees, had sued the king's pardon for the recreant knight. At length, after many entreaties, Arthur's generous heart relented, and he gave the doomed life into the queen's hands to do with ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... Azzo him That dwelt with you; Tignoso and his troop, With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's, (Each race disherited) and beside these, The ladies and the knights, the toils and ease, That witch'd us into love and courtesy; Where now such malice reigns in recreant hearts. O Brettinoro! wherefore tarriest still, Since forth of thee thy family hath gone, And many, hating evil, join'd their steps? Well doeth he, that bids his lineage cease, Bagnacavallo; Castracaro ill, And Conio ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... satisfied him of his inability to escape when pursued so closely by numbers. On the contrary, all his energies were aroused in order to meet his expected fate, with a calmness that should do credit to his colour and his manhood; one equally removed from recreant ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... I rejoined. "Or possibly he has returned home. I no longer take account of his existence. Felix, I shall never leave my wife. I had rather prove recreant to the oath I took before I realized the worth of the woman whose happiness I vowed to destroy. This is what I have come to tell you. Make it easy for me, Felix. You are a man who has loved and suffered. Let us bury the past; ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... ever its best foundation on the sense of the power which wrong cannot provoke unchastised. Grant that we lose; a loss can be made gain by a king's brave death. Why should not our example rouse and unite all who survive us? Which the nobler example—the one best fitted to protect our country—the recreant backs of living chiefs, or the glorious dead with their fronts to the foe? Come what may, life or death, at least we will thin the Norman numbers, and heap the barriers of our corpses on the Norman march. At ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the organization, in this connection, is to interdict to the recreant member the use of all caste servants. For instance, the caste barber and washerman are commanded to serve him and his no longer. The severity of this interdiction cannot possibly be realized by westerners, who are not always dependent upon ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... could not doubt her sincerity. But with the injustice of a passionate, jealous love she did not so much blame her recreant lover. Some charm, some art, must have been used, perhaps by a third person, and the girl be guiltless. And if she could send her away and remain ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to see you on the part of others I should be a recreant to my charge if I allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my fulfilling it. That must ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... faith! I wander round in your villages. Your tenants have gone the way of their lord. Roman Catholicism is a dying power. Hideous chapels have sprung up in all your districts! The true faith is neglected! And who is to blame for it all? Your recreant family. You, who should have been the most zealous upholders of religion, have drifted down the stream of fashion, nerveless and indifferent. Oh! it is heresy, rank heresy, to think of a De Vaux, such as you, dwelling ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reaching the hallway just in time to see the little man deposit his burden on the couch. And both of them cried-out in astonishment. For the stripling who had reduced Rodney Hade to numb paralysis was Sato, their own recreant Japanese butler. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... They hold that you are wanting in loyalty to our father's memory in espousing the cause of men who were his enemies—men who strove to ruin his political life. It is in being a soldier of the Union that they look upon you as recreant to the traditions of your ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not. It came now to Herrick, with the authority of a revelation. There was no escape possible. The open door was closed in his recreant face. He must go back into the world and amongst men without illusion. He must stagger on to the end with the pack of his responsibility and his disgrace, until a cold, a blow, a merciful chance ball, or the more merciful hangman, should dismiss ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... and the carriage rolled on. But I knew my doom as well that minute as I did an hour later. My husband was alive and he was here. He had escaped the perils of the Klondike and wandered east to reclaim his recreant wife. There had been time for him to do this since the rescue party left home in search of him; time for him to recover, time for him to reach home, time for him to reach the east. He had heard of my wedding; it ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... hall door looking for a moment after his friend—the friend he had tried to cast out of his heart as a recreant. The mist had cleared—the stars glittered countless in the frosty heaven; a golden crescent moon hung low; the lights and shadows lay almost poetically upon the little street. A rush of tender thoughts whelmed the musician's soul. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... forward to be the lord of a first-rate embassy; and a poor novelist, when he attempts to rival Dickens or rise above Fitzjeames, commits no fault, though he may be foolish. Sydney Smith truly said that in these recreant days we cannot expect to find the majesty of St. Paul beneath the cassock of a curate. If we look to our clergymen to be more than men, we shall probably teach ourselves to think that they are less, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... out the folds. "Madame Angot. There is a letter for you in the mail-department of this office." It was so droll. It was unlike anything she had ever heard of. A personal inquiry column, where Cupids and Psyches billed and cooed, and anxious Junos searched for recreant Jupiters! The merest chance had thrown the original inquiry under her notice. Her answer was an impulse to which she had given no second thought till too late. She ought to have ignored it. But since she had taken the first step she might as well take the second. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... vain does she strive to charm him by the delights of her garden; the songs and dances of her maidens; her sweetest caresses. He turns from her with loathing, he curses her. At last Kirke's love turns to fierce hatred; she changes her garden into a desert; she calls upon Helios to come and slay her recreant lover. The sun god appears indeed, but says Zeus has forbidden him to injure Odysseus. In mad {410} frenzy Kirke tears his bow and arrow from Helios; she will kill her false lover herself; but her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... seizes a dropped carbine and thrusts it into Burleigh's shaking hands. "Up with you, man!" he cries. "It's your scalp you're fighting for. Here, take a drink of this," and his filled canteen is glued to Burleigh's ashen lips. A long pull, a gasp, and hardly knowing what he does, the recreant officer kneels at the nearmost rock, aims at a painted savage leaping to the aid of a fallen brother, and the chance shot, for a marvel, finds its mark, and with a howl the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... feeling, too, moves them. They feel the obligation that exists to extend to the Venetians that freedom which is now enjoyed by all Italians except the Venetians and a small portion of the Pope's subjects. They would be recreant to the dictates of duty, and disregardful of those of honor, were they to leave Venetia in the hands of Austria. What their feelings on this momentous subject are may be gathered from Garibaldi's address to his companions-in-arms, when, having completed his immediate work, he withdrew from ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... that this wretch was a Swiss will be a matter of no surprise. The despicable valor of these republicans has everywhere formed the best defense of tyrants, and their fidelity has always been at the service of the highest bidder. The recreant was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard of the Duke; and when he had led the Germans into Mantua, and received the reward of his infamy, two German soldiers, placed over him for his protection, killed him and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... From time to time In children's children recurrent appears The ancestral crime. When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed And the Fury burns with wrathful fires, A demon unholy, with ire unabated, Lies like black night on the halls of the fated; And the recreant Son plunges guiltily on To perfect ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... perceived the approach of Mr Croft, a fear had seized her that this might be the recreant husband, but the gentlemanly appearance of the stranger soon dispelled this idea from her prejudiced mind. Apart from the fact that she had no business at the house with her nephew's visitor, she had positive business in the garden with old Uncle Isham, and there she ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... it was, in the upper room where Louise sat all day looking out over the prairie, and on the prairie where business carried Orlando from ranch to ranch on this perfect day, no recreant thought or feeling existed. Each was a simple soul, as yet unspoiled and in one sense unsophisticated—the girl, however, with an instinctive caution, such as an animal possesses in the presence of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mine is interwoven with his. And do you think me so spiritless as to believe that I can be yours by compulsion? Tempt me not again, for the next time shall be the last, and the fish of the nearest river shall commute the flesh of a recreant knight into the fast-day dinner of an uncarnivorous friar. I spare you now, not in pity but in scorn. Yet shall you swear to a convention never more to pursue or molest my lord or me, and on this condition ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... save the innocent and bring penalty to the guilty. Only be careful. Remember the evidence against Ranelagh. You will have to forge an exceedingly strong chain to hold your own against the facts which have brought this recreant lover to book. You see—O, I wish that poor girl could get ease!" he impetuously cried, as "Lila! Lila!" rang again ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a title to favor, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians, who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with them some errors and some superfluities, is rather more than any man, who has not become recreant and apostate from his baptism, will, I believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given from a spirit of controversy to that negative religion may by degrees encourage light and unthinking people to a total indifference to everything positive in matters of doctrine, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Besides, unless I deceive myself, Ariadne has not been slow in seeking a consoling divinity! Samoreau is at hand, it appears. He played the part of Plutus before; now he will assume that of Bacchus," thought the recreant lover, in order to ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... is the first of the series of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Our interest in this play turns upon the purely romantic characters; two friends, one true, the other recreant; the true friend exiled to an outlaw's life in a forest, the false in favor at court; two loving girls, one fair and radiant, the other dark and slighted, and following her lover in boy's dress; two clowns, Speed and Lance, one a mere word tosser, the other of rare humor. The plot is of slighter ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... story quite honourable to both parties. It was for the sake of her rouge friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Rollanz! I'll slay him clean with my good trenchant lance, If Mahumet will be my sure warrant; Spain I'll set free, deliver all her land From Pass of Aspre even unto Durestant. Charles will grow faint, and recreant the Franks; There'll be no war while you're a living man." Marsilie gives the glove into his ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... improve and educate, or get rid of, if possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk; insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise in the scale of society one of the leaders of its worship: as, at present, these stagnant, recreant, ignorant clerks are sad stumbling-blocks; no help to the congregation, and a nuisance to its minister. In reading—suffer this foolishness, my masters—fight against the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull formality; we take you for earnest living ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to observe that care for the poor Indians is the argument given for the course to be pursued in dealing with a recreant member! They had come to preach the Gospel to the Indians, and did not propose that evil should be learned through fault ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... Resolution is proved recreant; the Countenance hath changed his copy; and the passionate knight is shedding funeral ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... law is that a trust shall not fail for lack of a person to execute it. It might, therefore, in such a case as the one supposed, be competent for the United States to designate persons who should take charge of the State Government, and administer it in trust for the children of its former recreant inhabitants, and as their legal and political successors. Reverting to the settled principles of the law, we find that the essential idea of a corporation is its immortality, or individuality, or the perpetual succession ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... strange to say, the character of the blithe Adele, notwithstanding the terrible nature of her early associations, seems to fuse more readily into agreement with the moral atmosphere about her than does that of the recreant boy. There may not be, indeed, perfect accord; but there are at least no sharp and fatal antagonisms to overcome. If the lithe spirit of the girl bends under the grave teachings of the Doctor, it bends with a charming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... laughing. "Well, perhaps a jilted bride and her father do not always want to speak a good word for a recreant lover, but that is not the case this time, and who knows but we may be able to persuade the mother to see as we do. Toni and I have both remarked that Will never was a man until now, and that—forgive me, Regine, but I must say it—he owes his ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... him away from the actual brink of the precipice. "But how about the dragon," said she, "or rather about the dragon's brother, at whom you were bound to go and tilt on my behalf? Have you tilted, or are you a recreant knight?" ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... and future position to their suffrages, more closely identified with them in interest, and partaking more nearly of their modes of thought, and who from the shortness of his term might easily be displaced if he should prove recreant to his trust, thus having every inducement to correctly represent the sentiments and protect the rights of his constituents, might act as a check upon that other house, which, further removed in every respect from the people, elected ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... recreant has joined our enemies, And with the peace-pipe sits beside their fire, And ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by the recreant ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... firmly and decidedly—"never will I abandon my religion and prove recreant to my faith, to which my family and my tribe have faithfully adhered for thousands of years. The curse of my parents and ancestors would pursue the renegade daughter of our tribe and cling like a ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... though allowing that, from disappointment or disgust, he might have been led to withdraw all personal participation in such a cause, in no case would he have shown himself a recreant to its principles; and though too proud to have ever descended, like Egalite, into the ranks of the people, he would have been far too consistent to pass, like Alfieri, into ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... as tenderly as I could, "I would not be worthily your husband if I went not to meet those who are fighting to save us all this night. They have come from far to deliver us. I were false and recreant if I ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of silver, in a moment the light boat was at the foot of the accommodation-ladder. Ghita now descended; and as soon as her uncle and she were seated, the skiff, for it was little more, whirled away from the ship's side, though two or three more, who had also been left by recreant boatmen for better fares, called out to him to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was a commotion, as the ladies flocked with the children into the hall, with many exclamations of astonishment and reproach, surrounding the recreant young men. Mr. Errol, the Captain, the veteran, and even Mr. Perrowne, came to learn what was the matter. When they heard the intentions of the pair, Mr. Thomas and the parson were prepared to make the most abject apologies ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the Catholic Church spares no pains and stops at no sacrifice in order to induce mankind to embrace her faith. Otherwise she would be recreant to her sacred mission. But she scorns to exercise any undue influence in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... is not possyble ... ... ... ... ... The smoothe face of the wanton lovelye Richard Should promise more true fortytude in love Then tourne a recreant ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... the fourteenth century. By way of further rehabilitating the Order, von Hundt declared that all the accusations brought against it by Philippe le Bel and the Pope were based on false charges manufactured by two recreant Knights named Noffodei and Florian as a revenge for having been deprived of their commands by the Order in consequence of certain crimes they had committed.[403] According to Lecouteulx de Canteleu, von Hundt eventually succeeded—after the defeat of Culloden—in persuading Prince Charles ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Lord Dalgarno, "or what are these fellows fit for, but to play the intellectual gladiators before us? He of them who declares himself recreant, should, d—n him, be restricted to muddy ale, and the patronage of the Waterman's Company. I promise you, that many a pretty fellow has been mortally wounded with a quibble or a carwitchet at the Mermaid, and sent from thence, in a pitiable estate, to Wit's hospital in the Vintry, where they ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... The spirit of Temple was laid prostrate. He walked, and eat, and slept, in base and dastard fear. Locks and bolts could not secure him from dismal apprehensions. A sound shook him, as the unseen wind makes the tall poplar shudder—a voice struck terror in his ear, and sickness to recreant heart. He could not be alone—for alarm was heightened by the speaking conscience that pronounced it just. He journeyed from place to place, his brother ever at his side, and the shadow of the avenger ever stalking in the rear, and impelling the weary wanderer still onward. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and shouted a few words to them in the native tongue. In a moment more—almost before I could realize my good fortune, every Indian had melted away into the forest. I heard Mackenzie cry out with baffled rage and furiously curse his recreant allies. Then a silence fell, broken only by the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... more forcibly to Fielding's readers the cruel results of the pleasures (or speculations) of the needy gambler,—the 'Destruction of Familys,' thereby incurred, no less than the breeding of highwaymen. Who does not remember "that famous scene when Amelia is spreading, for the recreant who is losing his money at the Kings Arms, the historic little supper of hashed mutton, which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, 'while her Husband was paying a Debt of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... called cordial; though not wanting in the technical respect and ceremony due to him as a gentleman of wealth and influence, he could perceive a half concealed suspense and misgiving, due unmistakably to his attitude as a recreant clergyman. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... acknowledge yourselves a couple of recreant knights: Sir Timorous is mine: I have won him in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... this reflection entered his mind than he became bitterly angry with himself for having indulged in it. How recreant, how base an idea! ... how incompatible with the adoring homage he felt for his friend! What!—Sah-luma,—a Poet, whose songs of Love were so perfect, so wildly sweet and soul- entrancing—HE, to be ignorant of Love's true meaning? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... name and certain suspicious circumstances came to light. But Ann, though she loved the young legislator, still clung to her promise and the man who had proved false to her. As time went on, though she was supposed to be betrothed to Mr. Lincoln, the treatment she had received from the recreant lover preyed upon her mind so that she fell into a decline in the summer of 1835, about a year after her true ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... These things are well enough,—but thou wert made For more august creation! frenzied Lear Should at thy bidding wander on the heath With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear Pluck Richard's recreant dagger from its sheath— Thou trumpet set ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... useful, therefore, only as it is a means through which one may protect his rights, guard his interests and promote the public welfare. The best service that a man can render his party is to raise its ideals. He basely betrays his party's hopes and is recreant to his duty to his party associates who seeks to barter away a noble party purpose for temporary advantages or for the spoils of office. It would be a reflection upon the intelligence and patriotism ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... were scarcely heard above the vociferation of the throng, and he was fain to tear his beard and curse the day of his birth. But as neither lamentation nor rage could restore the treasure, cooler heads dispatched a party of horsemen with falcons and lures to decoy the recreant. ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... up your impious purpose, and resign the body of the recreant lost one. Let it rot in its earthy prison, till the last trumpet rouse it in resurged life ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... blowes their Armours are vnbras'd, And as the French before the English fled, With their browne Bills their recreant backs they baste, And from their shoulders their faint Armes doe shred, One with a gleaue neere cut off by the waste, Another runnes to ground with halfe a head: Another stumbling falleth in his flight, Wanting a legge, and on his face ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... This combination of sounds naturally led him to expect that some accident had occurred, especially as some of the yells indicated that somebody had come to grief. This caused him a very laborious run, and he arrived thoroughly blown, and with a natural desire to kick the recreant villager who bad caused ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the clamorous crew, The good grey recreant quakes and weeps To think that crime no longer creeps Safe toward its end: that murderers too ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... they bribed the son, To sell the priest and rob the sire; Their dogs were taught alike to run Upon the scent of wolf and friar. Among the poor, Or on the moor, Were hid the pious and the true— While traitor knave, And recreant slave, Had riches, rank, and retinue; And, exiled in those penal days, Our banners over ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... him, if so it must be, at the expence of my life. Yet I dreaded to witness the anguish which my resolve might excite in Idris. I had vowed to my own heart never to shadow her countenance even with transient grief, and should I prove recreant at the hour of greatest need? I had begun my journey with anxious haste; now I desired to draw it out through the course of days and months. I longed to avoid the necessity of action; I strove to escape from thought—vainly—futurity, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... De Clifford will never a recreant turn, While the knightly badge on his arm is borne; And long, beneath the Syrian sun, He fasted ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... affliction, 'they are awa'.' The night was so dark that I could not see Sirrah, but the faithful animal heard my words—words such as of all others were sure to set him most on the alert; and without much ado he silently set off in search of the recreant flock. Meanwhile I and my companion did not fail to do all in our power to recover our lost charge. We spent the whole night in scouring the hills for miles around, but of neither the lambs nor Sirrah could we obtain the slightest trace. It was the most extraordinary ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... descended, and it was a year ere he appeared in the moon again. The young wife meanwhile had gone to the bowl of knowledge, a wooden vessel enclosed in wicker, decorated with feathers and with birds carved in wood along the rim. Looking in and uttering the command, "Laukapalili!" a vision of her recreant husband appeared. The father and mother of the prince were joint witnesses with the wife of his faithlessness. As the picture vanished the air grew dark; faint, grisly shapes arose, and wailing voices sounded, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... and he at once scented the favourite device for two to take the travelling allowance, and then, by some amicable arrangement, for only one to go. So messengers were sent in haste to look up the recreant, who finally joined us with cheerful face at the West Gate, which we reached by a rough path outside ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... there before him, looking like an angry queen about to condemn a recreant vassal to death. And Esterhazy, with the mien and gait of a culprit, carne into her presence with a bow ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to itself. It is strange to think that, perhaps, at that moment the only human being who thoroughly believed in Christ was that dying robber. The disciples are all gone. The most faithful of them are recreant, denying, fleeing. A handful of women are standing there, not knowing what to think about it, stunned but loving; and alone (as I suppose), alone of all the sons of men, the crucified malefactor was in the sunshine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Pennsylvania could sustain a distinction so odious, the very shades of their ancestors would rise from the battlefields of the Revolution, from Paoli and Germantown, and call their children bondmen of Carolina, vassals and recreant slaves! I speak not now of the whiskey insurrection, when, at the order of Washington, the militia of Virginia and of other States moved against the people of Western Pennsylvania, under the command of the Governor of Virginia and Carolina, and the nation approved the deed; but I speak of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... loftiest honor. To repay them with treachery and desertion was foreign to his nature and, drawing a long breath, he sprang to his feet with the conviction that he had chosen aright. A fair woman and the weak yearning of a loving heart should not make him a recreant to grave duties and the loftiest purposes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not have their pens publicly broke over their heads, as the swords of recreant knights in old times were, and an oath administered to them that they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... ere the Colonel joined me. He had been to the jobbing-tailor's to be sewn up in several places, and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate he had said to her in a loud voice, "Die, recreant!" but had found her no more open to reason on that point ...
— The Trial of William Tinkling - Written by Himself at the Age of 8 Years • Charles Dickens
... of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ye use These words to little end: for know, I may Better call back that time was Yesterday, Or stay the coming Night, than bring my Love Home to my self again, or recreant prove. I will no longer hold you with delays, This present night I have appointed been To meet that chaste Fair (that enjoys my Soul) In yonder Grove, there to make up our Loves. Be not deceiv'd no longer, chuse again, These neighbouring ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the most untoward situation ever yet known in the valley of Heart's Desire. Dan Andersen was proving recreant to our creed. And yet, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... In single conflict doing valiantly Last die upon their spears? Nay, for by this I might perchance make Atreus' offspring glad. That may not be imagined. I must find Some act to let my grey-haired father feel No heartless recreant once called him sire. Shame on the wight who when beset with ill Cares to live on in misery unrelieved. Can hour outlasting hour make less or more Of death? Whereby then can it furnish joy? That mortal weighs for nothing-worth with me, Whom Hope can comfort with her fruitless fire. Honour in ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... but a strong heart, and when she saw that Amy Holbrook was preferred, with steady hand and unflinching nerve, she wrote to her recreant lover that he was free. And now Amy, to whom the false knight turned, took it into her capricious head that she would not marry a farmer—she had always fancied a physician; and if young B—— would win her, he must first secure the title of M.D. He complied with her ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... silent; he was especially anxious not to say anything which might offend the burgomaster by openly differing from him; but his remarks encouraged others connected with certain persons, their relations or friends, recreant Hollanders, who had sided with the Spaniards and professed to have returned to the Faith of Rome. These men were familiarly called Glippers; their object was to induce their countrymen to follow their example. A few holding their opinions remained ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... cousin; I but put in a good word for the poor ladies at Whitehall. I fear that you are but a recreant wooer." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... speeches made on that evening. Mr. Gresham delivered an oration of which men said that it would be known in England as long as there were any words remaining of English eloquence. In it he taunted Mr. Turnbull with being a recreant to the people, of whom he called himself so often the champion. But Mr. Turnbull was not in the least moved. Mr. Gresham knew well enough that Mr. Turnbull was not to be moved by any words;—but the words were not the less telling to the House and to the country. Men, who heard ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... By the solemn tramp of mourners, By the fun'ral march of soldiers. We are rearing brilliant guide-posts, To the brave men of this era; We are pointing to their actions, With indelible mementos. Thus may generations rescue Sleeping heroes from oblivion; May no recreant prove wanting, In a sacred trust of homage. Let the archives of the city, The proud city of Lancaster, Still perpetuate her warriors, Still preserve her men of valor. They are resting on their laurels, In an everlasting quiet; They have ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Yet beware! The threshold passed, Fixed the bond, the ball is cast. Failing heart or faltering feet Find nor pardon nor retreat. Loyal faith hath guerdon given Boundless as the star-sown Heaven; Horror fathomless and gloom Rayless veil the recreant's doom. Warned betimes, in time beware—Freely turn, or ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... their track Comes our glorious "Stonewall" Jackson, with ten thousand at his back; And Longstreet, too, and gallant Hill, and Rhodes, and brave Huger,[1] And he whose name is worth a host, our bold, devoted Lee; And back to where the lordly James his scornful billow rolls, The recreant foe is fleeing fast—those men ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... support. And in such case the quarrel with him would be more internecine than with other foes, such as English members, Scotch members, Conservative Irish members, and Liberal Irish members, not sworn to follow certain leaders. A recreant one out of twenty friends would be regarded with more bitter hatred than perhaps six hundred and thirty ordinary enemies. It might be, therefore, that a time of tribulation was in store for Mr. O'Mahony, but he did not consider these matters very deeply when the cheers rang loud in the hall of ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... command, were perhaps a little too much inclined to keep themselves in practice at home. But at half-past seven punctually Mrs. Proudie was there, and so was the domestic chaplain; so was Mr. Robarts, and so were the household servants—all excepting one lazy recreant. "Where is Thomas?" said she of the Argus eyes, standing up with her book of family prayers in her hand. "So please you, ma'am, Tummas be bad with the tooth-ache." "Tooth-ache!" exclaimed Mrs. Proudie; but her eyes ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... brilliant heathenism. No wonder that Amos of the text, having heard these two anthems of the stars, put down the stout rough staff of the herdsman and took into his brown hand and cut and knotted fingers the pen of a prophet, and advised the recreant people of his time to return to God, saying: "Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion." This command, which Amos gave 785 years B.C., is just as appropriate for us, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Sir John. Time hastens, and I reply. Your knight of the silver mantle I proclaim a recreant, as treacherous as he is base. Sir John, for my—no, for your ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... demands of the nation. His opponent for a generation was Benjamin Disraeli, the young Jewish novelist, who had first won a following in the House of Commons by voicing the venom of the old-line protectionist Tories against the recreant Peel. Versatile, shifty, brilliant, this adventurous politician made himself indispensable to the Conservatives, and overcame by political moves which were little short of genius, the leadership of the opposition. Indeed, he may be said to have transformed Conservatism, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the wench to beseech her to grant me, the next time she saw her—not uncivilly, however, denies— coming-to by degrees! Nothing but the last offence, the honest wench tells me, in the language of her principals below, will do with her. The last offence is meditating. Yet this vile recreant heart of mine plays ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... stagnation at home; but, whenever they get to running things their way, it—it is just the reverse." (Shame! No! Wretch!) He vainly strives to rally under the fire of imprecation, but it is too late. The groomsmen are denouncing him, as he deserves to be, as a slanderer and recreant. Mr. Ferris and Mr. Waring spring to their feet to implore the assembly to reject any and all such statements as the emanations of an embittered, oft-rejected, and "subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man;" and poor Blake, who really wanted to wind up with an ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... was—the dreaded moment. Deveny saw the men around him stiffen rigidly; he heard their slow-drawn breaths. The thought to draw his gun was strong in him, and he fought hard to force his recreant muscles to do the will of his mind. For an instant he stood, his right hand poised above the holster of his pistol, the elbow crooked, ready ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer |
