"Shimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quickly, then at longer intervals. At last the members of the chorus dropped away one by one to occupations of their own. The girl still sat at the piano, her head thrown back idly, her hands wandering softly in and out of melodies and modulations. Watching her, Orde finally saw only the shimmer of her white figure, and the white outline of her head and throat. All the rest of the room was gray from the concentration of his gaze. At last her hands fell in her lap. She sat looking straight ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... out of bed in a tingle of excitement. Impossible to lie still when things were happening at such a rapid rate. The sun was shining, and, looking at a belt of trees in the distance, I could catch a faint shimmer of green. It is perhaps the most intoxicating moment of the year, when that first gleam of spring greets the eye, and this special year it held an added exhilaration, for it seemed to speak of the budding of ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... subconscious instinct suddenly leaped into warning life. Without any actual perception of what it might mean, he felt the thrill of imminent danger, connected it with that soft footfall behind him, and swung round in time to seize a deadly uplifted hand which seemed to end in a shimmer of dull steel. His assailant flung himself upon Lutchester with the lithe ferocity of a cat, clinging to his body, twisting and turning his arm to wrest it free. It was a matter of seconds only before his intended victim, with a fierce backward twist, broke the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are drinking deep of the delights of this mellow afternoon. On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through scrub we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till we suddenly push out from the scrub, and before us lie the Marshes. There they sweep for miles away, with their different grasses waving and whispering under the steady blowing ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... cherish, savage while so tender, Do the lilies perish mourning their lost splendor? Does the diamond shimmer brightlier that eternal Time makes nothing dimmer ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... swiftly with a lapwing's flight, Backward she hurried to the little spring, Led by a power that knoweth not the night, But flies through darkness with unerring wing; And so e'er morning shimmer'd in the East, She clasp'd her dead babe to her ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Cove lay a-shimmer under the slanting rays of the sun. A wealth of racing white cloud filled the dome of the summer sky, speeding under the pressure of a strong top wind. Even the harsh world of Labrador was smiling under the beneficence ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... bodilessness for ourselves, into treating and expecting everybody else to treat The People, the will, the vision, the glory, the destiny of The People as a Ghost—unholy, cowardly, voiceless, helpless—just a light in its eyes—just a vast national shimmer at a world, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Our table was set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond, the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... round a point, I heard a rustle and a rush of something coming, and the bowsprit of a large sloop glided into view close by me. She was painted in stripes of all colors above her green bottom. The shimmer of the water shook the reflection of her hull, and made the edges of the stripes blend together. It was as if a rainbow had suddenly flung itself down for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... mercury shimmer of glass Over these daguerreotypes The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges With its little figure of flowers. And the enameled glair of parted hair Lies over the oval brow, From under which eyes ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... on the mantel, dropped his forehead upon it and stood so, the wonderful glowing colors of the painting seeming to shimmer on his bronze hair. At last, at the sound of Jonas's footstep in the hall, he lifted his head, turned off the light above the painting, crossed to his desk and, dropping the still unopened envelope into a secret drawer, locked it and put the key ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... gleam, glow, shimmer, flame, gleaming, illumination, shine, flare, glimmer, incandescence, shining, flash, glistening, luster, sparkle, flicker, glistering, scintillation, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... my pans of golden cream, Set in a silver shining row, Swam in my eyes like the shimmer and sheen Of arms ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... atmosphere he brings not only the shimmer of ideas and wit, but—a Heine of action—the fantasy of personal adventure, and—when audacity has been crowned by empery—of dramatic surprises of policy. A successful Lassalle, he flutters the stagnant castes of aristocracy by the supremacy of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... after uttering these words in a tone of perfect respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that separate servitor and employer. He caught the shimmer of a wink upon Harry's eye, and he had the audacity to ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... brighter than the gems piled round gilded seat; Thy cheeks are softer than the silks that shimmer at my feet, And purer heart than thine in woman's breast hath ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and the corner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juice bottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, and smoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolness wearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses. That's the kind of town we like to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... recalled the faint odors she had inhaled in Farnham's house; they seemed to her a concrete idea of luxury. Her mind was crowded and warmed with every detail of her visit: the dim, wide hall; the white cravat of Budsey; the glimpse she caught of the dining-room through the open door; the shimmer of cut glass and porcelain; the rich softness of the carpets and rugs, the firelight dancing on the polished brass, the tender glow of light and repose of shadow on the painted walls and ceilings; the walk in the trim garden, amid the light and fragrance of the spring; the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass. Behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills. The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! The brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,—he has painted them all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric Procession of Being betwixt ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... noticed Judith as she came forward to speak to her old friends. Her dress, a shimmer of white and gold, might have been wished on her by a fairy godmother, a thing of ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... completed; and when they passed out from the coppice into the whiter air, behold! the wild March skies had parted somewhat, and there was a shimmer of silver sunlight along the broad highway between the hedges. It was an auspicious omen—or, at least, their full hearts may have thought so; and then, again, there was a wedding chorus all around them from the birds—from the bright-eyed robin perched on the crimson ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... gliding around all the time, till our arms got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours—three hours—just gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't stand it to look around ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the starlight of the East, with white flocks scattered on the down. The breath of winds that come and go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and then a tinkling bell, and now and then the voice of an awakened shepherd, is all that breaks the deep repose. Overhead shimmer the bright stars, and low to west lies the moon, not pale and sickly (he dreams) as in our North, but golden, full, and bathing distant towers and tall aerial palms with floods of light. Such is a child's vision, begotten by the music of the symphony; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... desire to see him, she yet had an instinct to postpone the encounter. She was almost minded to return. But she went on. The town was really very near. The illuminated clock of the Town Hall had dominion over it; the golden shimmer above the roofs to the left indicated the electrical splendour of the new Cinema in Moorthorne Road next to the new Primitive Methodist Chapel. He had told her about that, too. In two minutes, in ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... panels. Nothing had been moved or changed: the inlaid cylinder fall desk with its garlands of painted flowers on the light waxed wood stood at the left, the pole screen with the embroidered bouquet was before the fire blind, the girandoles, scrolled in ormolu and hung with crystal lusters, held the shimmer of golden reflections ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... eight miles wide. He was still on the Home ranch. A few miles to the south he could just make out the line of wire fence that separated it from the third division; and to the north, seen faint and blue through the haze and shimmer of the noon sun, a long file of telegraph poles showed the line of the railroad and marked Derrick's northeast boundary. The road over which Presley was travelling ran almost diametrically straight. In front of him, but at ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... he repeated harshly. "We'll go under the engine." The sudden jarring of the Gar's engine sounded muffled in a shut space like the flushed heart of a shell. The yacht moved forward, with a wake like folded gauze, into a shimmer of formless ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... porch she paused and looked behind her. High overhead sailed the moon, a day or two past the first half. There was a tremulous movement in the leaves of the maples along the sidewalk, producing an indistinct, vibratory shimmer and shadow. By contrast the patches of darkness were jet black; the overhanging portico of the house was as yawning as a cavern. She listened, stood, her head bent slightly forward, listening. Not a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... village or solitary farm, is, to the dreamer and poet, sufficiently entrancing in itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century, spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green leaves,—between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin" sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy star-wort and wild strawberry,—the hedges lean close together, as though accustomed to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when, later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... flush, halo, glory, nimbus, aureola. spark, scintilla; facula; sparkling &c v.; emication^, scintillation, flash, blaze, coruscation, fulguration^; flame &c (fire) 382; lightning, levin^, ignis fatuus [Lat.], &c (luminary) 423. luster, sheen, shimmer, reflexion [Brit.], reflection; gloss, tinsel, spangle, brightness, brilliancy, splendor; effulgence, refulgence; fulgor^, fulgidity^; dazzlement^, resplendence, transplendency^; luminousness &c adj.; luminosity; lucidity; renitency^, nitency^; radiance, radiation; irradiation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Most merrily had the easterly wind and a following sea brought us down. Now we drew near the rocks, where at high tide the land drops sheer to the water. In the dry sunshine, such a sparkle was on the waves, such a shimmer on the high red cliffs, that it was hard to follow Uncle Jake when he said, as if he revered the place, "'Tis an ironbound show! 'Tis a shop! Poor devils, what gets throwed up here! But I know where ther's some fine copper bolts ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... of Toledo had charge of the ceremony. Never was there a simpler royal wedding in all the annals of Spanish history: there was no throng of gay nobles, there were none of the customary feasts or tournaments, there was no military display, no glitter of jewels, no shimmer of silks and satins, but all was quiet and serious, and the few guests at this solemn consecration seemed impressed with the dignity of the occasion. The pathway of the young princess was not all strewn with roses, however, as her marriage ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... wilderness was floral, The sea a bath of wine to the laughing swimmer; Dawn was a flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; the lights ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... the object itself. An engraving or photograph after such a picture as the Louvre "Pastoral Symphony" fails utterly to convey the sense of exhilaration one feels in presence of the actual painting, simply because the tonic effect of the colour is wholly wanting. The golden shimmer of light, the vibration of the air, the saturation of atmosphere with pure colour are not only ingredients in, but are of the very essence of the creation. It has been well said that almost literally the chief colour on Giorgione's ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... More I learned from her diary. This I found in it, from Fiona Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering voice, that twilight-whisper, that breath so dewy-sweet, that flame-winged lute-player whom none sees but for a moment, in a rainbow-shimmer of joy, or a sudden lightning-flare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe viol of public music, but as one wrought by ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... blood-red upon the lagoon and upon a flight of flamingoes winnowing above the mirror-like surface, and, as though the situation were not deadly and desperate enough, the shimmer of light and water has, even in that brief glance, brought a spot in front of his eyes, at the moment when, if ever, his sight should be at its clearest and quickest. The odds against him are indeed terrible. He can hardly ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... sitting with the moonlight waking her dark hair into a somber luster and a gossamer shimmer on the white of her evening gown. Her hands lay unmoving in her lap and she slowly ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the Kuntsevo park—one half of its brilliant disc obscured with grey, subluminous cloud, and the other half sending forth spokes of flaming light which threw the old trees into striking relief as they stood there with their dense crowns of green showing against a blue patch of sky. The light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the parti-coloured roofs of the Kuntsevo mansion could be seen projecting above a ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... alone, the Milky Way is one of the most delicately beautiful phenomena in the entire realm of nature — a shimmer of silvery gauze stretched across the sky; but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the most stupendous object presented to human ken. Let us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision. ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... I not, there, a white shimmer? Something with pale silken shrine? No; it is the column's glimmer, 'Gainst the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... pretty actresses have drunken, worthless husbands, paid comfortable salaries to shut their eyes and keep out of the way," added Mrs. Laurance, lengthening the range of her opera glass, and levelling it at a group where the shimmer of jewels ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... interest. It seemed, however, as if Lord Darcy were accustomed to be overlooked, for he showed no signs of annoyance; on the contrary, his face brightened, and he looked at the pretty scene with sparkling eyes. The room was full of a soft rosy glow, the shimmer of silver and crystal was reflected in the sheet of mirror, and beneath the garlands of flowers the young faces of the guests glowed with pleasure and excitement. He looked from one to the other—handsome Max, dandy Oswald, Robert with his look of strength and decision; then to the girls—Esther, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... The headland outside Havre is composed of ochreish rock which appears in patches where the grass will not grow. The heights are occupied by no less than three lighthouses only one of which is now in use. As the ship gets closer, a great spire appears round the cliff in the silvery shimmer of the morning haze and then a thousand roofs reflect ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... looked so much the boy, so much the culprit caught stealing apples and up for sentence, that Norma Pelton's gratitude took courage. She came across to him and held out both hands, the shimmer of tears still in the ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... of the picnic was a glorious one. Peggy called it a "blue day" because the sky was so blue. It was a deep blue, and there were great fleecy clouds floating about. The blueberries were the most wonderful blue, two shades, dark and light, with a shimmer to them, and Peggy's blue frock seemed a part of all the brightness of the day. Alice had on her yellow frock, and Diana was in green, and Clara in pink. It was almost too beautiful a day for them to stop and pick berries, Peggy thought; but ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... herself, swaying and bending with much grace and dignity. It was the strangest thing for Anthony to find himself here, a raven among all these peacocks, and birds of paradise; and he wondered at himself and at the strange humour of Providence, as he watched the shimmer of the dresses and the sparkle of the shoes and jewels, and the soft clouds of muslin and lace that shivered and rustled as the ladies stepped; the firelight shone through the wide doorway on this glowing movement, and groups ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... homeward through the Gates. The little breeze that had danced all day out on the larger lake had gone to sleep here in the shelter of the islands, and Algonquin lay as still as a golden mirror. A faint shimmer of colour was spread over it like a shining veil. It was scarcely discernible where the crystal water lay motionless, but as the Inverness sailed across the delicate web it broke into waves of amber and lilac and rose. The little islands did not seem to touch the water ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... satisfied, he fell back into his old shimmer of content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as one of the morning sounds ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... gain the freedom of a Singing Prisoner, and enable a Scheherazade to postpone from night to night her hour of death, are one and all pervaded by the same eternal magic. Pain, grief, terror, care, and bondage are all forgotten for a time when lakes of gems and enchanted waterfalls shimmer in the sunlight, when Rakshas's palaces rise, full-built, before our very eyes, or when Caballero's Knights of the Fish prance away on their magic chargers. "I wonder when!" "I wonder how!" "I wonder where!" we say ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, a sense ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... movement of warning, she threw her entire weight upon the sash in a last endeavour to close the window, but the man's upraised arm held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,—saw the light shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated spectator. She was wondering ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Titan Goblet, like the visioned future which glows before the sight of happy youth, and then vanished. The gold rim vanished also; still there appeared to be no disposition among the party to leave the scene. Twilight began to shimmer, and now the stars trembled forth from the dusky sky. At last night settled on the landscape, and the girls expressed a wish to see the hollow lighted up with torchlight. Scattering ourselves amongst the trees of the bank, some ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... him something for short," Marny retorted. "Feudels-Shimmer was what they called him in Rosengarten—Wilhelm Feudels-Shimmer. I tried all of it at first, then I bit off the Shimmer, and then the Wilhelm, and ran him along on Feudels for a while, then it got down to Fuddles, and at last to Fiddles, and there it stuck. Just fitted him, too. All he wanted ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Or, Seymour again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of a scheme from his own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed, after all, scant communication between the two, and this was even less when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with an incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... these lines, Here on my knees, with feeble, fumbling hand. Look! in yon mountain cleft a radiance shines, Gleam of a primrose — see it thrill, expand, Grow glorious. Dear God be praised! it streams Into the cabin in a gush of gold. Look! there she stands, the angel of my dreams, All in the radiant shimmer aureoled; First as I saw her from my bed of pain; First as I loved her when the darkness passed. Now do I know that Life is not in vain; Now do I know God cares, at last, at last! Light outlives dark, joy grief, and Love's the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... say these things, my friend, when you know that they are useless?" she replied, with a look which grew in the end so soft that Wilfrid ceased to behold her eyes, but saw in their place a fluid light, the shimmer of which was like the last ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... seemed as if it were part of her; I do not mean so much in the fit of it, as in the complete suitableness of it and her. Her head was bent down over a book, and I could not see her face at first—only her hair, which was neither light nor dark, but had a kind of golden shimmer. Her hat lay beside her on the seat. Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of "Annas!" and then she stood up, and ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... they came, and what were the thoughts behind the bright eyes which waked from sleep and stared for an instant, as his lamps pried under the great quaking canopies: and more than all he enjoyed arriving at his own gate, seeing the pale shimmer of his marble statues against backgrounds of ivy and ilex, and drawing in the sweetness of his orange blossoms and roses. Because he never tired of these things the two months at Stellamare, often spent alone except for servants, were the best months of his year. Through ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... friends. She knew that people were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... And Summerlee, too, there he was with his short briar between his thin moustache and his gray goat's-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger's propositions. Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them. Such is the last picture of them that I ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eyes again. A vision of Solomon in all his glory swept across her. Even to Walton had spread rumors of the immense fortunes acquired in the China and India trade, and the gold of Cathay seemed to shimmer over the form before her, so strong, so able to contend with, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... she wore the lovely black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white embroidered silk one, and always the delicate coral and silver jewelry. Yet she couldn't possibly have known from the pale image that stared back at her from the dim shimmer of the drawing-room mirrors, how exquisitely lovely she was, not even when the Major bent over her hand and said, as he had said so often to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... his eye would light on the grim black pile of L'Etat, lying out there in the silvery shimmer like some great monumental cairn, a rough and rugged heap of loneliness and mystery—the grimmer and lonelier by reason of the twinkling brightness of its setting. And then his thoughts would play about the lonely ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and in the fond and vain superstition, which was but a spirit called from the deeps of an unfathomable and mighty love. And afar was heard the breaking of the lake in upon the shore—no other sound! And now, among the unwaving pines, there was a silver shimmer as the moon rose into her empire, and deepened at once, along the universal scene, the loveliness ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it. Looking across the fields in our rear (rather longingly) I had the happy distinction of a discoverer. What I saw was the shimmer of sunlight on metal: lines of troops were coming in behind us! The distance was too great, the atmosphere too hazy to distinguish the color of their uniform, even with a glass. Reporting my momentous "find" I was directed by the general to go and see who they were. Galloping ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the long soft curves of budding womanhood. Her face was sweet rather than beautiful, but an artist would have revelled in the delicate strength of the softly rounded chin, and the quick bright play of her expression. Her hair, of a deep rich brown, with a bronze shimmer where a sunbeam lay athwart it, swept back in those thick luxuriant coils which are the unfailing index of a strong womanly nature. Her deep blue eyes danced with life and light, while her slightly retrousse nose and her sensitive ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the ball to-night, All in a shimmer and silken sheen. She glides down the stairs like a thing of light, The ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bright points, with larger lights in constellations outside, while masts and funnels ran up, faintly indicated, into the gloom above. She scarcely moved to the lift of the languid swell, but as the undulations passed there was a pale-green shimmer about her waterline that magnified the height to her topmost deck. She looked unsubstantial, rather like a floating fairy palace than a ship, and as the noisy launch drew nearer Jake gave his ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... veritable hanging gardens, brilliant as tulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the contour of faces and figures—indeed, any effect of line whatever-and there was only the color of bodices past counting, the shimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, ecru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and there the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... plains, for their long southward journey preparing. In croaking flocks gather the cranes, and choose with loud clamor their leaders. The breath of the evening is cold, and lurid along the horizon The flames of the prairies are rolled, on the somber skies flashing their torches. At noontide a shimmer of gold through the haze pours the sun from his pathway. The wild-rice is gathered and ripe, von the moors, lie the scarlet po-pan-ka,[BF] Michabo[85] is smoking his pipe,— 'tis the soft, dreamy Indian Summer, When the god of the South[3] as he flies from Waziya, the god of the Winter, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... line of stately shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... unquestionably many would follow his example. But the urbanite has taught himself to doze upright. You may see many of us, standing dreamily before Chestnut Street show windows in the lunch hour, to all intents and purposes in a state of slumber. Yesterday, in that lucid shimmer of warmth and light, a group stood in front of a doughnut window near Ninth Street: not one of them was more than half awake. Similarly a gathering watched the three small birds who have become a traditional window ornament on Chestnut Street (they have recently moved from ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the plumed black top and along the swelling branches decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass. It was very witch-like, of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a bit of a bride! Such a marvel of grace! In a shimmer of rainbows and gossamer lace; No wonder the groom dropped his diamond-dust ring, Which a little elf-usher just caught with ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-shimmer that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge of the cliff, as if poised in air, a woman whose face and form were as sharply cut in profile on the azure sea and sky as white cameo features on black ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... there rose the terraces of the amir, all glowing in the sunlight, with all its countless houses and cavern-openings and arching trees and pointing pyramids. Above was the canopy of heaven, no longer black, no longer studded with stars or glistening with the fitful shimmer of the aurora, but all radiant with the glorious sunlight, and disclosing all the splendors of the infinite blue. At that sight a thrill of joy passed through me. The long, long night at last was over; the darkness had passed away like some hideous dream; the day was here—the long day ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... unanimous silence as the great globe slipped into the sea—down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceased to shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till the first mate held his hand ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... how the battle turned. Toward night of that memorable day, the clouds of smoke lifting, revealed the French army in full and disastrous retreat. Rothschild took in the situation at once. True to his instincts, he saw in that awful carnage only the shimmer of his gold. Chance had overcome the most heroic valor, the most stubborn resistance, the best laid plans, and once more declared in the Hebrew's favor. He dashed into Brussels, whence a carriage in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... screen, there was something like heat shimmer at the far end of the passage. Then she saw ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... pale amethyst haze that thickened to purple at the far-off edge of the world, lay the bad lands resplendent under the hot glare of the sun in vivid red and black and pink colouring of the lava rock. Everywhere the eye met the flash and shimmer of mica fragments that sparkled like the facets of a million diamonds, while to the northward the Bear Paws reared cool and green, with the grass of the higher levels reaching almost to the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... is!" Madeline strained her gaze on the dark blot, and it seemed to float in the atmosphere, to have no clearly defined margins, to waver and shimmer, and ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... my excuse: "Even bubbles have their use. They are perfect while they live, And their short career may give, As they shimmer, and are flown, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... shimmer! Let the wind blow! All is a notion—What do we know? Let the moon glimmer! Let the stream flow! All is but ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... break off their conversation. When they reached the 'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the Trianon Avenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind its iron gates, the gleaming facade of the Petit Trianon; woods all about them, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhile the dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them in a soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human in their planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties' ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and close beside it pale light spread out upon the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... then to the wonderful Yo Semite Valley,—itself a stupendous miracle of nature, with its Dome, its Capitan, its walls of three thousand feet of perpendicular height,—but a valley of streams, of waterfalls from the torrent to the mere shimmer of a bridal veil, only enough to reflect a rainbow, with their plunges of twenty-five hundred feet, or their smaller falls of eight hundred, with nothing at the base but thick mists, which form and trickle, and then run and at last plunge into the blue Merced that ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls! "Come," she seems to say, "come nearer! Come up to the heights! Come close to the running waters! Come." And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Muerren go those who love the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... glimmer Like a butterfly; In golden light, or dimmer, Your triolet should glimmer, Tremble, turn, and shimmer, Flash, and flutter by; Your triolet ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... resting upon her left hand, the pen in her right fingers sketching idle figures at the bottom of the sheet which she had just written. She was wearing a dress of strange-colored muslin, a shade between gray and silver, but from underneath came a shimmer of blue, and there were turquoises about her neck. Her large, soft eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his. There was a sort of question in them which he seemed to have surprised there more than once during the last few days. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trespassers; among the copses below anyone might freely wander. In places it was scarcely possible to make a way for fern, bramble, and underwood, but elsewhere mossy tracks led one among hazels or under arches of foliage which made of the mid-day sky a cool, golden shimmer. One such track, abruptly turning round a great rock over the face of which drooped the boughs of an ash, came upon a little sloping lawn, which started from a high hazel-covered bank. The bank itself was so shaped as to afford an easy seat, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... days of April had passed and there was still no sign of spring, we began to grow impatient. How often I watched the hedges around the Michailoffsky Palace, knowing that the buds would there first swell! How we longed for a shimmer of green under the brown grass, an alder tassel, a flush of yellow on the willow wands, a sight of rushing green water! One day, a week or so later, we were engaged to dine on Vassili Ostrow. I had been busily occupied until late in the afternoon, and when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... along the ground, and sighed long and strangely in the dry clusters of heather. The moon was full, but so densely beclouded that only a pale hazy shimmer hovered over ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Sometimes the stream flows silently, though it may be with power; at other times it finds a voice by which the air is possessed and thrilled. The old stained walls, the rugged ladders by which the folk descend to their boats, are washed by the clear, pure waters; the shimmer of water enters the dwelling-rooms and is reflected on the ceilings, a fluctuating quiver of light, moved by every breeze that ruffles the surface of the stream. The small gardens are green to the edge of the walls that drop sheer to ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... see you standing before me. You yourself—the folds of your sash, the sharp narrow print of your slippers on the pavement or the matting or the rug, the ruffles about your hands. I have the feeling of you near me with your breathing disturbing the delicacy of your breast. There is the odor and shimmer of your hair ... your lips move ... but without ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... idea, and we walked toward the village which then—they were early days!—looked a peaceful spot, with a shimmer of sunshine above its gray thatch and ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... rigging and loosened the sails. Then the captain from his bridge called out, "Hoist the anchor!" Then the great iron hooks that held the ship fast were lifted up, a cannon sounded a final farewell. Robinson stood on the deck. He saw the great city shimmer in the sunshine before him. Very fast now the land was being left behind. It was not long until all that could be seen of his native city was the tops of the highest towers. Then all faded from sight. Behind, in front, right and left, he saw nothing ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... now nearly five miles long, and composed of great masses of men joined together by thinner lines. Behind and near to the flanks were large reserves. From the ridge they looked dark blurs and streaks, relieved and diversified with an odd-looking shimmer of light from the spear-points. At about ten minutes to six it was evident that the masses were in motion and advancing swiftly. Their Emirs galloped about and before their ranks. Scouts and patrols scattered themselves all over the front. Then they began to cheer. They were ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Shimmer of rose and pearl, Sheen on an opal sky; Day's crimson banners unfurl, Purple-pleached shadow-gleams die; Dawn flowers bourgeoning fair, Meads with the dawn-dews wet; Rare is the morn—ah, rare! But in the heart, ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... terraces and gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his reassurances without question—she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am so happy," she murmured, slipping ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... and there a tower or tall building, that stood up for an instant against the sky and then swam slowly out of sight, of the creaking of my sculls in the ungreased rowlocks, and, above all, the white shimmer of the moon following my boat as ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... revestir clothe, robe. revuelto, -a agitated, restless, disordered, topsy-turvy, winding, wrapped, clad. rey m. king, monarch. rezar pray, recite. rezo m. prayer, devotions. rico, -a rich, abundant, plentiful, fine. ridculo, -a ridiculous, strange, absurd. rielar shimmer, glisten. rienda f. rein; a —— suelta at full gallop. riesgo m. danger. rifar raffle, bid. rigidez f. rigidity. rgido, -a rigid, severe, rigorous. ro m. river, stream. riqueza f. richness, riches, wealth. risa ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... grew, and slowly from the ground rose a frost-covered woman, her glittering icy hair flowing to her waist, the blue light about her causing her garments of frost to glance and shimmer and radiate sparkles ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... up with Jacky Hart that night, getting to the Cove at dark, when the sea was a shimmer of fairy tints and the boats were coming in from the fishing grounds. Jacky greeted her with a wonderful smile, and later on she found herself watching alone by his bed. The tiny lamp on the table burned dim, and outside, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and mamma was generally glad of her assistance in all such matters. However, perhaps it was only under-clothing and house-linen, and such things that she was buying. All that was the prosy part of shopping. It was the poetry of it that Hilda loved,—the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace. So the girl went on her usual way, finding life a little dull, a little tiresome, and most people rather stupid, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... their saws in the tops of the trees and the promise of one of the hottest days of the season danced in the shimmer of haze over ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... other day, when I walked a long way out of the Edgware Road, and stopped for tea at the Welsh Harp, on the banks of the Brent Reservoir, I found, beyond the modern frontage of this inn, an old garden adorned with sham ruins and statues, and full of autumn flowers and the shimmer of clear water. Sitting there and drinking my tea—alone as I thought at first, in the twilight—I became aware that the garden had another occupant; that at another table, not far from me, a vague and not very prosperous-looking woman in a shabby bonnet was sitting, with ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... in the day, and the township had lain drowsing in its dust under the shimmer of a great yellow sun till this astonishing invasion struck it, and startled it from its accustomed lethargy. There was a rush to windows and doors, men fell over each other struggling from Harvey's bar, a sudden ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, through which they sailed into the pleasant land where summer reigned supreme. To Sylvia it seemed as if the inhabitants ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... he saw a beauty so glorious that he closed his eyes involuntarily and still he saw the vision in the dull-green gown, with the scarf of old gold about her dazzling white shoulders. And there were two lights, the barbaric red of the jewels in her hair, and the black shimmer of her eyes. He drew back a step more. It was a picture to be looked ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... sitting alone in the moonlight, and heard some one rustling in the distant foliage of the orange-groves, and from them came a young man dressed in white of a dazzling clearness like sunlight; large pearly wings fell from his shoulders and seemed to shimmer with a phosphoric radiance; his forehead was broad and grave, and above it floated a thin, tremulous tongue of flame; his eyes had that deep, mysterious gravity which is so well expressed in all the Florentine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... this garden of flowers. There was a strange simplicity, too, about her dress—a plain, tight-fitting, tight-sleeved dress of unrelieved black, her only adornment being some bands of big blue beads worn loosely round the neck. The black figure, in this shimmer of rose-pink and gold and flowers, was effective enough; but even the finest of pictures or the finest of statues has not the subtle attraction of a graceful carriage. Macleod had never seen any woman walk as this woman walked, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... was almost as joyless and as solitary as his own, he would wait with her till the long line of canoes passed by, so that she could see the bronzed, half-naked figures of the paddlers, and the bright gleam and shimmer of the fish as they were swept up by the deadly net, and hear the warning cry from the torch-bearers, as in the depths beneath they saw the black shadow of a prowling shark rushing to seize the net, or perchance ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... with shimmer and shade, Now high, now low, that firelight played, On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, On ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... leisure which is part of the mission of a good cigar. The pleasantness of the wide, cool piazza, with its flowers and vines and gay awnings; the charm of the summer morning, not yet dulled by wear and tear of the day; the steady, deliberate dash of the waves on the beach below; the play and shimmer of the big, quiet water, stretching out to the edge of the world; all this filled their minds, rested their souls. There was no need for words. The Bishop sighed comfortably as he pushed his great shoulders back against the cool wicker of the chair and swung one long ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... The mystery consists solely in how these elements can be so combined as to acquire the transcendent properties of life. Moreover, to the investigator it is not a question of by what means matter dead—without the shimmer of a vital quality—became either slowly or suddenly possessed of the properties of life. Enough for us to know that whatever the power that wrought the change, that power was competent, as the issue ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... Assyrian pursuing a course still devious, and now alone; the destroyers had turned back during the night. The western boundary of the barred zone lay astern. Ahead, at the end of a brief interval of time, the ivory towers of New York loomed, a-shimmer with endless sunlight, glorious in golden promise. Accordingly, the spirits of the passengers were exalted. The very ship seemed to grin in self-complacence; she had won ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... was frosting the water, blending moonshine and star shimmer; the ocean lay like a lake, yet the nearest mainland was perhaps ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole |
