"Swoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party of hostile Lipans made a swoop around and skirting the garrison, killing a herder—a discharged drummer-boy—in sight of the flag-staff. Of course great excitement followed. Captain J. G. Walker, of the Mounted Rifles, immediately ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... said Hollanden, glaring through the smoke. "Under the circumstances, you are privileged to rave and ramp around like a wounded lunatic, but for heaven's sake don't swoop down on me like that! Especially when I'm—when I'm doing all I ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... struggle between Britain and Germany. The involvement of other nations is merely accidental. It is ourselves whom Germany is making this huge effort to crush, and but for one small circumstance she would have come within a measurable prospect of success. To swoop down on France through Belgium, to crush her in three weeks, to seize her fleet, and with the combined fleets of France and Germany to attack ours—that was the proposition, and who can say that it might not have succeeded? The small circumstance which Germany overlooked was Belgium, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... lit on the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth. Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then another; then another. In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... one moment Mr Bickersdyke's memory poised motionless, like a hawk about to swoop. Then it darted at the mark. Everything came to him in a flash. The hands of the clock whizzed back. He was no longer Mr John Bickersdyke, manager of the London branch of the New Asiatic Bank, lying on a sofa in the Cumberland Street Turkish Baths. He was Jack Bickersdyke, clerk in the employ ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... thought was his great world, and a trial of hawks an event to be talked of for a week; but all France is the household of the King, and beyond the borders the eagles of Europe are poised to harry us. But while he lives they are afraid to swoop. While he lives, yes, while ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... storm and rack, You shall see our galley pass, As a serpent, lithe and black, Glides through the waving grass. As the vulture swift and dark, Down on the ring-dove flies, You shall see the Rovers bark Swoop down upon his prize. Hurrah! For ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out joyfully. The snake had flopped from its hollow, plunged at full length aside; had started to crawl, writhing, dragging its hinder parts. But with a swoop the pony arrived before we were noting; the recruit plumped into the hollow; and bending over in his swift circle the courier snatched the snake from the ground; sped back ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... wild swoop all the plates, glasses, and cutlery on the saloon tables crashed to starboard. Were it not for the restraint of the fiddles everything must have been swept to the floor. There were one or two minor accidents. A steward, taken unawares, was thrown headlong on top of his laden tray. Others ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the spot where the power boat was secured, with his two companions aboard, he did not mean to go far. Night would soon swoop down on the wilderness; and from former unpleasant experiences the young hunter knew what it was ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at a swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young lady's jerking the draught-board and pieces off the table: which her sister went down on ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches. Rouletabille laughed, but the good ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... abrupt as from a rippleless ocean, towards which you march all day and get no nearer; the gorgeous momentary blaze of sunset colours in the west; the rustle of the wind through the short twilight when the west is a pure pale green and the east the darkest blue; and the downward swoop of the planets out of nothing to the earth. The inheritor of the other places dreamed himself back into his inheritance as he tramped to and fro, forgetful of his blindness and parched with desire as with a fever—until unexpectedly he heard the blackbirds and the swallows bustling ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... that Mabel is trying cubebs for her catarrh; and that the cashier of the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in the suburbs and is the superintendent of a Sunday-school in the city; and that Dan has put Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the Czar hasn't done a blame thing except to become the father of another ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... long swoop downward at the rapids' head when those watching him from the high bank below the Chippewa River's mouth saw him put his boat stern with the current and cease rowing entirely, facing fairly the up-rushing ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... on either side with those sly and stealthy eyes of his for a possible intruder, suggests to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native forest. One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of his hereditary foe: one sees the canny parrot ever prepared for his rapid attack, and ever eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his impertinent interference with an unoffending fellow-citizen ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... eyes, he watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentle scratching ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... disagreeable idea caused him to hurry, and no doubt he became less cautious in navigating some of the various narrow paths, for before he realized that he had started a small avalanche, he was caught up in its gathering swoop, and found himself being carried swiftly down a rather steep declivity, ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... and that he did not dare to look at the earth lest he should be seized with giddiness. So that, Sancho, it will not do for us to uncover ourselves, for he who has us in charge will be responsible for us; and perhaps we are gaining an altitude and mounting up to enable us to descend at one swoop on the Kingdom of Kandy, as the saker or falcon does on the heron, so as to seize it however high it may soar; and though it seems to us not half an hour since we left the garden, believe me we must ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thing for you if you do catch two," exclaimed the boatswain. "We want good luck for the ship, for little enough of it we have had as yet." But before Hulk could get out his line the albatross was seen to swoop downwards, and immediately afterwards it rose with a huge fish in its talons, into which it plunged its powerful beak with a force which must have speedily put an end to its prey. Powerful, however, as were its wings, it could not rise with so great a weight, but commenced tearing ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... family of France, of whose post she had the reversion. Never did a just chastisement produce a greater effect. The outcry against me was louder than ever, it seemed as tho' the whole nobility of France was immolated at "one fell swoop." To have heard the universal clamor, it would have been thought that the princess had been sent to the most obscure prison in the kingdom. This proof of the king's regard for me did much mischief, no doubt, as it furnished my enemies with a pretext to accuse me of a vindictive ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... to select on whom to pour, in unmeasured portion, the vials of her wrath, and whom she bathes even to the lips in misery. Such a one was the ill-starred Juliet. She had lost her indulgent parents, her brothers and sisters, companions of her youth; in one fell swoop they had been carried off from her. Yet she had again dared to call herself happy; united to her admirer, to him who possessed and filled her whole heart, she yielded to the lethean powers of love, and knew and felt only ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... arms over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but at the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those careless ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... their undoubted project of acquiring the dominion of the whole country, and gradually destroying the red men; and would call forth all their supernatural powers, and blast them with fire and plague, unless they were taken by surprise, and annihilated at one fell swoop. All the superstitious fears of the ignorant natives were thus aroused, and if there were any in the assembly who were too well acquainted with the white men to credit all that Coubitant asserted, they thought it either unsafe or unwise to express ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... when being towed, behaved after the manner of her kind. She hung heavily on the tow rope for a minute; then rushed forward as if she wished to bump the stern of Jimmy's boat At the last moment she used to change her mind and swoop off to the right or left, only to be brought up short by the rope at which she tugged with angry jerks until, finding that it really could not be broken, she dropped sulkily astern. These manoeuvres, though repeated with every ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... assist the widow to alight, but she nervously poised herself on the edge of the vehicle and seemed to be afraid to venture. The wind fluttered her scanty draperies, causing her to appear like a bird of prey about to swoop down upon the unprotected man. "I'm afraid to ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... as underrates, the kind of research to which psychologists are addicted. As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole class of Parisian savans, added something to the piquancy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... out the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth—abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... development of the germs of good, there must be constant effort and tenacious resolution. So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in our hearts—what with the flying flocks of light-winged fugitive thoughts ever ready to swoop down as soon as the sower's back is turned and snatch it away, what with the hardness of the rock which the roots soon encounter, what with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns—that if we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect careful husbandry, we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... but not as before was poor harassed Miss Bailey's swoop down the aisle, her sudden taking of Morris's troubled little face between her soft hands, the quick near meeting with her kind eyes, the note of pleading in ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... on the double group, Facing each other on opposite shores, Where years ago with a mighty swoop The waters parted the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... a ride, lieutenant,"—the colonel had given me that rank,—"and every yard will take us further from the Spaniards. I hear that La Hera is getting ready to swoop." ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... practical use of the forests that are left, to so husband them as to take regular harvests from them as the farmer regularly harvests his fields or selects the fatlings from his flocks. He does not gather in all these at one fell swoop, taking the fat and the lean and the young and the old, as the fisherman gathers all into his nets, and as the lumberman has felled the woods, but he selects those that are ripe and carefully rears the rest until they are ready. Had the timber been ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... them, the more they will fear us," said the doctor. "I am going to make a swift downward swoop now, as if we would crash through the midst of them. Then perhaps they will let us alone till we are ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... them. He was prompt to take up any poor devil's quarrel and risk his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear, and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. He used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop down from his high castle on the hills of the Neckar and capture passing cargoes of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver of all Good for remembering him in his needs and delivering ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a few moments, for the thought occurred to him that the bird might make a swoop at him, as he had read of eagles acting under similar circumstances; but the next moment he had thought of what power there would be in the blow of a fist striking a bird in full career, and knowing full well that it must be fatal to the raven, he continued to descend, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended was instantly extinguished; and we awoke to a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of great strength and bravery, confederated to achieve this feat. It was a point of honor to be effected at every hazard. Disregarding all the other perils of the battle, they watched their opportunity, and then in a united swoop, on their steel-clad chargers, fell upon the emperor. His feeble guard was instantly cut down. Rhodolph was a man of herculean power, and he fought like a lion at bay. One after another of his assailants he struck from his horse, when a Thuringian knight, of almost fabulous stature ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... you and the other operators on the Row have worked out, Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use illegal equipment illegally, the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and that does away at once with so many qualities with one fell swoop, that one can hardly tell what is left. It puts amiability out of the question, and unselfishness and cheerfulness, and—and tact, and everything which makes us care for a person or not. When they are gone, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing me to forge ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... he had been successful. "The falcon, after many airy circlings, had made its swoop at last," and its polished talons had done their work not unsuccessfully. The stricken quarry might flutter for a while, but the end ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... time the warriors hurled their spears—and they, too, fell harmless from the monster's armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster to the edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feet obliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head it seized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, high into the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the same instant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly an arrow which pierced full half its length into the center ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... gates Electran styled: A giant he, more huge than Tydeus' self, And more than human in his arrogance— May fate forefend his threat against our walls! God willing, or unwilling—such his vaunt— I will lay waste this city; Pallas' self, Zeus' warrior maid, although she swoop to earth And plant her in my path, shall stay me not. And, for the flashes of the levin-bolt, He holds them harmless as the noontide rays. Mark, too, the symbol on his shield—a man Scornfully weaponless but torch in hand, And the flame glows within his grasp, prepared For ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... at the mouth of the River and behold! There was a great eagle hovering over the waves of the sea and ready to swoop down on fishes. He turned back in the River. He made a leap that took him over the net that the Gods were dragging. But Thor was behind the net and he caught the salmon in his powerful hands and he held him for all the struggle that ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... ship stooped lower, just skimming the tops of strange trees, the most horrible vegetable forms that I have ever beheld. And then, without warning, we were seized and pushed overboard, while the vessel, making a broad swoop, quickly disappeared. Henry alone uttered a loud cry ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... up, my child, the sirens whoop Shrill invitations to the Fair, The yellow swing-boats soar and swoop, The Gavioli organs blare; Bull-throated show-men, bracken-brown, Compete ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... sea-gulls' screaming As they swoop so bold and free! Oh! for the fragrant commons, And ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Roy, his eyes shining. "Now there'll be something doing." Then he struck a tragic attitude and declaimed, "Little do the treacherous hawks in yonder nest realize that the eagles of the law are about to swoop down ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... her prayers from morn, The noon is safely tided,—then A gleam of faint, faint hope is born, But the heart fluttered like a wren That sees the shadow of the hawk Sail on,—and trembles in affright, Lest a down-rushing swoop should mock Its fortune, and o'erwhelm it quite. The afternoon has come and gone And brought no change;—should she rejoice? The gentle evening's shades come on, When hark!—She hears ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... he would scud away with one wave of the tail into deeper water. Nothing fears the little brown boy. The yellow-bird slants his wings, almost touches the deep water before him, and then escapes away under the bridge to the east with a glint of sunshine on his back; the fish-hawk comes down with a swoop, dips one wing, and, his prey having darted under a stone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring on even-poised pinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle which is sweeping the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from the heart of the Fire; knows much of their dark magic and mischievous enchantments. He knows something, also, of the good Fire Fairies and their bright spells. Safe in his home amid the ash of the Borderland, he sees the Wind in the Chimney swoop down upon the Borderland and even out across the broad Hearthstone in his boldness, but he knows no fear of him. He sees the giant, Curling Smoke, rise stealthily from his lurking places, sees him grow vaster, and vaster, until, when ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... column is sent in search of us, we can vanish away long before they can catch us. Nunez does not use the direct road over the brow for his attack, but follows the Santona or Vittoria road for a while, and then makes a swoop round. He does not want to bring the French up to this village, for his family and the families of many of ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the bay Call to the distant flight Of ducks, that swoop from out the realms of space, Seeking a ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I might possibly bring them ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... knowledge of the enemy's movements, that I persuaded the chief to send another in my place. De Wet was extremely annoyed, but I was foolish enough to insist. Judge of my regret when, a week or so later, we heard of the magnificent blow delivered at Roodewal. After this sudden swoop De Wet returned to the vicinity of Heilbron. The chief and I drove out to his camp. It was interesting to see his entire band clad in complete khaki, with only the flapping, loose-hanging felt hats to show their nationality. Wristlets, ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... around the moon, the nip in the air, the little wind that came so gently, yet with such sinister stealth, all portended one thing,—that the great northern winter was lurking just beyond the mountains, ready to swoop forth. Of course there would be likely time in plenty for a dash into Clearwater; yet the little breath of fall was almost gone. Far away, rising and falling faint as a cobweb in the air, a coyote sang to the rising moon,—a strange, sobbing song of pain and sadness ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... elsewhere may record stupid traditions. [109:2] If the narrative of foolish stories and fabulous traditions is to exclude belief in everything else stated by those who relate them, the whole of the Fathers are disposed of at one fell swoop, for they all do so. Dr. Lightfoot also assert that the theory of the cause of the martyrdom advanced by Volkmar "receives no countenance from the story of Malalas, who gives a wholly different reason—the irritating language used to the Emperor." [109:3] On the other hand, it in no way contradicts ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... anchor, or had been drawn up on the beach. A long duration of bad weather had driven them from the high seas into the shelter of the port; and the great trooping of black clouds, and the cold squalls that followed one another, now with a sprinkling of dry snow, now in a mere swoop of wind, promised no improvement, but rather threatened a more serious storm in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through the rain-drops, Back ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... know if I have ever seen such swarms of bees and butterflies as I saw at that place. They seemed to swoop down upon us in myriads from all sides. Taking the solar observations with the sextant and artificial horizon, I endured positive torture with the hundreds of bees which settled on my forehead, nose and ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... set out for the German territory as though to make observations or take photographs. It was the belief of the French airmen that the Huns would swarm out to attack these planes, or else to give battle to the machine in which Tom and Jack rode. And, in such an event, the swift Spads would swoop down out of a great height and ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... not what to do or say, so advanced to speak with her, whereon with a swoop like that of a swallow she pounced upon his sword that lay in the sand and, leaping back to Morella, shook it on ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... is not feasible is to demolish at one swoop everything that has been created and preserved in the course of a whole century. A change of policy, if it is not to provoke tumults and disorganization, must be carried out gradually and with extreme circumspection. The assimilation of Finland can never be efficacious if achieved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... with them. How their several schemes and ambitions were finally reconciled I never could tell, but at last the starter's flag swept down and they were really off. Everybody could have seen perfectly well as they sat, but everybody rose and watched the swift swoop of the horses, bunched together in the distance, and scarcely distinguishable by the colours of their riders. The supreme moment came for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite illusion—for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one more revolution, whether by one fell swoop or by a slow process of getting us used to here a little and there a little more—we do not know yet. What we do know is that he proposes to govern this country by a huge economic group that used to go to Ottawa as delegations; that in his opinion ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... them on to a race or a battle. Yet it is easier to travel in England, and to gain a commanding view of the river-system of the country, than it was three thousand years ago to travel over India, even over that part of India which the poet of our hymn commands. He takes in at one swoop three great river-systems, or, as he calls them, three great armies of rivers—those flowing from the north-west into the Indus, those joining it from the north-east, and, in the distance, the Ganges and the Jumnah with their tributaries. Look on the map and you will see how well these three armies ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... we haven't any horses, we won't follow them; they will, therefore, take their time and travel so slow, that we'll have the chance to swoop down on them when they are ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... sorry that Farmer Green didn't keep his boy at work from dawn till dark. They didn't like to have to watch out for fear that horrid net might swoop down upon them and catch them. They wanted to have a good time among the flowers without being in constant terror of capture at the hands ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... deep-piled dais, Wrought in hallowed looms of Sais, O'er the impetuous torrent's swoop, Stands the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... his new centre of action when the troops of Morillo were turned westward for the purpose of curbing the rebellious spirits in the neighboring Vice-Royalty,—when, quicker than thought, Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops, it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the vast basin ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the blanched face to the field of battle, towards the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the noble head And drooping neck ere yet was fled the life: Then placed upon the bench; and with his blade Slow at its hideous task, and blows unskilled Hacked through the flesh and brake the knotted bone: For yet man had not learned by swoop of sword Deftly to lop the neck. Achillas claimed The gory head dissevered. What! shalt thou A Roman soldier, while thy blade yet reeks From Magnus' slaughter, play the second part To this base ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of the canyon. I see the shadow slowly creep up, driving the gold before it, until at last the canyon rim and pines are turned to golden fire. I watch the sailing eagles as they streak across the gold, and swoop up into the blue, and pass out of sight. I watch the golden flush fade to gray, and then, the canyon slowly fills with purple shadows. This hour of twilight is the silent and melancholy one. Seldom is there any sound save the soft rush of the water over the stones, and that seems to die away. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... part of the price? When this was shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'etat Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... chair, the girl watched the riders swoop toward the ranchhouse; Sanderson, lounging against the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... There was a swoop through the air, a scream from Barbara, a crash— two crashes, a momentary glimpse of a brindle cat with a mackerel crosswise in its mouth and the ends dragging on the ground, a rattle of claws on the fence. Then Jed and his visitor were left to gaze upon a broken plate on the floor, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the gray ones are the father and mother gulls. But if that is so, it is funny that the white ones are the best fliers and seem able to take things away from the gray ones. How would you like to fly like that? They swoop around and go just where they want to. Perhaps that is the way the angels fly; only of course the angels are much larger, and very much more particular about what they eat. Isn't it queer that all the gulls have eyes just alike—black and shiny and round, just like little shoe-buttons? ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... and they took me up, And made a slave of me,—of me, a prince! All was fulfilled at last. I fled from them, In rags and sorrow. Nothing but my heart, Like a strong swimmer, bore me up against The howling sea of my adversity. At length o'er Sana, in the act to swoop, I stood like a young eagle on a crag. The traveller passed me with suspicious fear: I asked for nothing; I was not a thief. The lean dogs snuffed around me: my lank bones, Fed on the berries and the crusted pools, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... they see a funeral cortege of black men in spotless white robes; they bear a black corpse in a white shroud. The body is hastily deposited within the area on its bed of stone and mattress of charcoal. The vultures swoop down to the feast. In a short while, satiated, they rise on heavy wing and lazily resettle upon ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... his taunts of cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... which men so often have been and still are impleaded in Court Christian—these particulars, I say, being recapitulated and set forth in terrible array, by the rector, excited in the whole parish so much dread of the rapacious vulture, who was coming with such a swoop upon them, that high and low, young and old, rich and poor, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and transitions. Any thing like a fair examination of this particular development scatters their doctrines to the four winds. Because the salient traits to the next higher development, could not part with their own identity, or send these distinguishing characteristics, in one fell swoop, through many stages, only to reappear at last in the upper type, and only between infancy and manhood, and only in one sex. This argument is overwhelming, and the present purpose is to elucidate ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... silent, and white comes across the hedge almost in our eyes, and settles in that oak without a sound. It is a barn-owl. After him a wood-pigeon, the whistling swoop of whose wings you can hear half a mile. The owl is just going to bed. The pigeon is only just astir. He is going to have the first turn at Farmer Macmillan's green corn, which is now getting nicely sweet and milky. The owl has still ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... News of Jackson's swoop began to filter through to both Richmond and Washington. In Richmond they wondered and rejoiced. In Washington they wondered, but did not rejoice. They had not expected there any blow to be struck in the dead of winter, and Lincoln demanded of his generals why they could not do as ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Tanya felt that love and happiness had taken her unawares, though she had, since she was fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry her and no one else. She was bewildered, could not grasp it, could not believe herself. . . . At one minute such joy would swoop down upon her that she longed to fly away to the clouds and there pray to God, at another moment she would remember that in August she would have to part from her home and leave her father; or, goodness knows ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nashville, was occupied by a small Federal force and seemed to Morgan to offer a fair field for one of his characteristic raids. His men were ready,—they always were for an enterprise promising danger and loot,—and they fell on the town with a swoop that quickly made them its masters ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... west coast of Hispaniola. Here in their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning, would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic, but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... When operating against balloons, such a fighting-machine will rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. Down, down, down, through a vast alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite certainly those flying ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... throats of their enemies, as under cover of darkness they snatch nervous mouthfuls of grain in the fields,—and hence their gray colour and their large, watchful eyes; but on the other hand, the baby owls in their hollow tree would starve if the parents were never able to swoop down in the darkness and surprise a mouse now and then,—hence the gray plumage and great ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips's workshop, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable contre-temps to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... forget, he will have ample opportunity, amidst the crash of armies and the crumbling of an empire, to erase from his memory Elvas, and its "episode in winter quarters." From the heights of Traz os Montes, Wellington was now to make an eagle's swoop upon the north of Spain, and a lion's spring upon the herd, driven into the basin of Vittoria. The march now begun was to lead thence to the blood-stained passes of the Pyrennees, to Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse, and later, to Paris, from the field of Waterloo. But who shall measure, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... confidently expected him to "yank first place" for the honor of his ranch. These expectations were backed with all the available Bar-20 money, and, if they were not realized, something in the nature of a calamity would swoop down upon and wrap that ranch in gloom. Since the O-Bar-O was aggressively optimistic the betting was at even money, hats and guns, and the losers would begin life anew so far as earthly possessions were concerned. No other competitors ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... five bands. Some kept beside the wood; others came along the river; the third placed themselves in the plain; and the fourth were in a valley; and the fifth battalion spurs along the moat that surrounded a rock, for they thought to swoop down impetuously among the tents. But they have not found a road that they could follow, or a way that was not barred; for the king's men block their way as they very proudly defy them and reproach them with treason. ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Alps—his hearers saw him and his steel clad warriors threading the snows of Mount St. Bernard, and having gained the dizzy height, Prentiss represented "the man of destiny" looking down upon the sunny plains of Italy, and then with a mighty swoop, descending from the clouds and making the grasp of Empire secondary to that ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... agreed. "Let's see it." She gave the wire at the small end the slightest of twists. "There, it ought to swoop." ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... and cheer on cheer, as first one, then another of the enemy was overturned or dodged. The more he achieved, the less his enemies ventured against him, and he dashed through their "forwards" and between their "quarter-backs." Next moment, with a mighty swoop, their ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the top of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... heathen women were eager to obtain a glance from his eyes. She knew how devoid of all morality were the lives of the nobles at Rome, and Antinous appeared to her as a splendid falcon that wheels above a dove to swoop down upon it at a favorable moment and to tear it in its beak and talons. Hannah also knew that Selene was acquainted with Antinous, that it was he who had formerly rescued her from the big dog and afterward saved her from the water; but that Selene, who was now recovering, did ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on Felix, in an I-told-you-so tone of voice, "and I suppose the pater thinks we're watching and measuring his progress like so many hungry hawks, just ready to swoop down and devour him—ach!" He threw out his hands with a gesture of disgust that somehow made us all feel ashamed, though we weren't ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... came to pay their appointed toll sometimes squandered much of their money in useless tribute. Karl is said to have freed them afterwards from the burden of this tax. After Gotrik had crossed Friesland, and Karl had now come back from Rome, Gotrik determined to swoop down upon the further districts of Germany, but was treacherously attacked by one of his own servants, and perished at home by the sword of a traitor. When Karl heard this, he leapt up overjoyed, declaring that nothing ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... albatrosses accompanied us all across the South Pacific. These birds never seem to tire and but rarely rest on the water, except when they swoop down and settle a moment to pick up something that has been thrown overboard; this is quickly devoured, and they are again in pursuit. The albatrosses, some white, some grey, and some almost black, are huge birds; some that we shot, and for which the boat was sent, measured nine feet ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... men, either then or later. By what I cannot help thinking was a most fortuitous circumstance for the League, at a moment when its existence was not known outside three or four parishes, Mr Gerald Balfour determined to swoop down upon it and to crush it with the whole might of the Crown forces. Two Resident Magistrates and the Assistant Inspector-General of Constabulary, with a small army corps of special police, were sent to Westport. Result—the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the conveniences I asked for put at my disposal. Thus, then, I fed upon this trifling mark of favour, which, in fact, proved the salvation of my life; for having been overwhelmed by so many evils and such great annoyances all at one fell swoop, I felt my forces failing; but this little gleam of encouragement inspired me ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... begin to leap along the lines, Leap up and hang and swoop and sputter out; A bullet hits a wiring-post and whines; I wish to Heaven that I was not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... over the lake, watching for the glint of fish near the surface, when the cry came, and they darted away for the nest. Pushing out into the lake, I saw them sweeping above the tree-tops in swift circles, uttering short, sharp cries of anger. Presently they began to swoop fiercely at some animal—a fisher, probably—that was climbing the tree below. I stole up to see what it was; but ere I reached the place they had driven the intruder away. I heard one of the jays far off in the woods, following ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... a horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... her plate a wing-bone from his own, and Aunt Abigail, with one deft swoop, contributed the neck from the platter. As fast as she could, Elizabeth Ann fed these to Shep, who woofed them down at top speed, the bones crunching loudly under his strong, white teeth. How he did enjoy it! It did your heart good to ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... and capable of mischief that in exploring a cave where bats are likely to have congregated the natives will speak in the most respectful terms of this deity, for he would be sure to hear them if they spoke flippantly of him, and might swoop from the cave roof and whip their eyes out with his leathern wings or tear them with his claws. Hence they bow their heads and speak with reverence of the Lord Calapnitan's cave, the Lord Calapnitan's stalactite, even recognizing his temporary ownership of their clothing, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... loosen her bridle bit, and follow into the meeting-house—a lofty building unplastered at the roof, whose open eaves and shingles give place in summer to nests of wasps, and in the winter to audacious birds, some of which swoop screaming to the pulpit, and beat the window panes in futile flight. Two uncarpeted aisles lead respectively to the men's side and the women's side—for, far be it from us, primitive Methodists, to improve upon the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... spheres, and discoursed of astrology and other occult sciences. 'For hours and hours this wonderful white woman poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred and profane mysteries.' From time to time she would swoop down to worldly topics, 'and then,' as her auditor frankly observes, 'I was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high esteem in the desert, and partly to a brusque, downright ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... been, since Ellen was such a dear, young, loving thing. She found consolation in this frost-polished morning: the pale, bright sky in which the light stood naked, her abandoned veil of clouds floating above the horizon; the swoop and dance over the marshes of the dazzling specks that were seagulls; the fur of rime that the dead leaves on the hedgerow wore, and the fine jewellery-work of the glistening grass tufts in its shadow. The world had neglected nothing in its ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a swoop and a soar, he was carried up and away, through the sweet summer air, to a cloud ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... her sides rapidly with her tail, she runs hither and thither, snuffing eagerly in the grass. Now Sancho comes up and catches the cold trail, for a covey has certainly been in that place to-day. Most probably they rose from the spot, frightened by the swoop of a hawk, and made for the nearest cover, for the dogs can do nothing with the scent. But that little whiff of the exciting effluvia has brought them down to their work, and a beautiful sight it is as they quarter the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... midnight on October 19, Kock, a Free Stater who commanded a force chiefly composed of foreign auxiliaries and who was working southwards from Newcastle, sent on an advanced party to swoop down upon the railway between Ladysmith and Glencoe, and Elandslaagte station was seized. Early next morning Kock came in with his main body. White at first made no serious attempt to clear the line beyond sending out a reconnoitring force which he soon recalled, as he was reluctant ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... out in the small boats to penetrate every trace of water passage. Instead of leading northeast, the tangled maze of forest-hidden channels meandered southward. Savages swarmed over the water, paddling round and round the white men, for all the world like birds of prey circling for a chance to swoop at the first unguarded moment. Tying trinkets to pieces of wood, Puget let the gifts float back as peace-offerings to woo good will. The effect was what softness always is to an Indian spoiling for a fight, an incentive to boldness. When Puget landed for noon meal, a ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Bernstine and Sime said nothing because they suspect nothing. And, as I have said, this is fortunate, because, suspecting nothing, they will continue," with a smile, "to say nothing. If the police or reporters got this, they'd swoop down on the trail ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... is. Just short of the roofs the taut wings flash a reverse, there is a lightning swoop, a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing bird is beating skyward again, hawking deliberately as before, and uttering again his ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... evening frolic over and in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocund downward dip, splashing the spray in jets of diamonds—and then off they swoop, with slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly see their dark-gray feather-bodies ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... peoples of the Euphrates valley. Assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of Babylon, Shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of Syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the Badanu or the Zabs. He now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the Armenian Alps or on the banks of the Orontes, leaving ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... favour of Henker Rothhals. Now general commotion shuttled them, and the stranger's keen hazel eyes read their intentions rightly when he lifted his redoubtable staff in preparation for another mighty swoop, this time defensive. Rothhals, and half a dozen others, with a war-cry of curses, spurred their steeds at once to ride him down. They had not reckoned the length and good-will of their antagonist's weapon. Scarce were they in motion, when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... death,— Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, 300 Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust In the unfailing energy of Good, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,—that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... vision-like, of such short duration, that, with the closed oaks of the tradesmen, and the woe-begone faces of the starving scouts and bed-makers, a stranger might have imagined some ruthless plague had swept away, "at one fell swoop," two-thirds of the population of Rhedycina. It was at this dull period of time, that a poor student, having passed successfully the Scylla and Charybdis of an Oxonian's fears, the great go and little go, and exhausted by long and persevering efforts to obtain his degree, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle |
