"Couchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There stands his suit of armour, too, newly blackleaded, whose coat of arms is a couchant typewriter ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of—Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield, or strengthened constitutionally to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium have practically no sense at all; for the initial fascination is for these effectually defeated by the sickness which Nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class whose nervous sensibilities ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... be asleep when we are sinking; for then we are as if all things were careless of us; but it is but as a lion couchant, it will awake in time for ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... beautiful. Yet the mind could dwell contentedly on this new and curious estate of nature, this substance that was neither earth nor water, this place that was neither land nor sea. It had its own colours: in the shadow of the great couchant cloud whose mane was brassy with sunshine that had lodged in the upper air it was purple; otherwise it was brown; and where the light lay it was as bright as polished steel, yet giving in its brightness some indication of its sucking softness. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... children's needs. The desert lands had blossomed, and the earth Was large enough for all. Her voice came up, A softly-rounded murmur of content, Like bees that labour gladly on the comb. The reign of Peace,—and yet an army lay Couchant and watchful, ready for the strife If strife need be,—the strife of quelling strife,— An army culled in part from all the lands. Owning no master but the public weal, And prompt to quench the first red spark of war. Even as ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... rendoit bien la pareille: Car se couchant sur l'oreille, Finement il aguignoit Quand quelqu'une le poingnoit: Lors d'une habile soupplesse Happant la mouche traistresse, La serroit bien fort ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... adjouste rien de sien. Brochard, de son cote, proteste de son exactitude. Non seulement il a demeure vingt-quatre ans dans le pays, mais il l'a traverse dans son double diametre du nord au sud, depuis le pied de Liban jusqu'a Bersabee; et du couchant au levant, depuis la Mediterranee jusqu'a la mer Morte. Enfin il ne decrit rien qu'il n'ait, pour me servir des termes de son traducteur, veu corporellement, lui, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Caesar's character, and that, from the complexion of his conduct in this one instance, he drew that famous prophecy of his future destiny; bidding his friends beware of that slipshod boy, "for that in him lay couchant many a Marius." A grander testimony to the awe which Caesar inspired, or from one who knew better the qualities of that Cyclopean man by whose scale he measured the patrician boy, cannot ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... faded; the peculiar almost intellectually delicate atmosphere of Greece was gone; and he saw for a moment the umber mystery of Stamboul, lifted under tinted clouds of the evening beyond the waters of the Golden Horn; the great rounded domes and tapering speary minarets of the mosques, couchant amid the shadows and the trailing and gauzy smoke-wreaths, a suggestion of dense masses of cypresses, those trees of the night which only in the night can be truly themselves, guarding the innumerable graves of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... detached columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the mandorlato of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions, inserting polished slabs on their facades, and building huge sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took the name of mandorlato, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to prepare it for the reception of the ladies. It was a cumbrous vehicle, whose faded linings and tarnished hammer-cloth, together with its panels of changing color, denoted the want of that art which had once given it luster and beauty. The "lion couchant" of the Wharton arms was reposing on the reviving splendor of a blazonry that told the armorial bearings of a prince of the church; and the miter, that began to shine through its American mask, was a symbol of the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, etc., etc. We thought we had got into fairyland. But ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... ourselves, thy path to know, By words of love and blame); Friend! who beside the cottage door, Or in the rich man's hall, With steadfast faith still answerest The one familiar call; Well by poor hearth and lordly home Thy couchant form may rest, And Prince and Peasant trust thee still, To guard what they ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... fled, her cause of flight Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne, Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this He chilled the popular praises of the King With silent smiles of slow disparagement; And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse, Heathen, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... lawns and terraces, a lake with spouting fountains, statues of twisty nymphs, glaring, many-antlered stags and couchant lions, all among cedar-trees and flower-beds whose perfumes saluted the Presidential nostril ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... galley, Mahommed thought of the tales in the East not less common than in the West, and believed in them faithfully, for chivalry was merely on the wane—tales of beauteous damsels shut up in caves or adamantine castles, with guardian lions couchant at the gates, and of well-sworded heroes who marched boldly up to the brutes, and slew them, and delivered the captives always with reward. Of course, in making the application, the Princess was the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... cypher of my destiny [Looking at his signet. Stands here inscribed: it is the seal of fate! Ha!—Had ever monster fitting lair, 'tis yonder! 170 Thou yawning den, I well remember thee! Mine eyes deceived me not. Heaven leads me on! Now for a blast, loud as a king's defiance, To rouse the monster couchant o'er his ravine! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally been a winevault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the building. The ceiling was so low that a tall man ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Sur la droite ou au couchant de ces rochers, on voit une montagne calcaire etonnante dans ce genre par la hardiesse avec laquelle elle eleve contre le ciel ses cimes aigues et tranchantes, taillees a angles vifs dans le costume des hautes cimes de granit. Elle est pourtant bien ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... high seas, Adam (being both captain and magistrate) married us forthwith, and because I had no other, I wed my Damaris with my signet ring whereon was graven the motto of my house, viz: a couchant leopard and the words, "Rouse me not." And who so sweet and grave as my dear lady as she made the responses and hearkened to Adam, and he mighty impressive. For witnesses we had Master Penruddock the surgeon and Godby, and now, my lady retiring, we must crack a bottle, all four, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... so recently left Saxonland, where public opinion is opposed to everything that has the faintest shade of Magyarism, that I felt in the state of Victor Hugo's hero, of whom he said, "Son orientation etait changee, ce qui avait ete le couchant etait le levant. Il s'etait retourne." The transition was certainly curious, but I confess to getting rather tired of the mutual recriminations of political parties; respecting each other's good qualities, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... be afraid to wager that this is but another version of the fable of the statue of the man rampant and the lion couchant," thought Mr. Aylett, following with his wife in the funeral train down the grass-grown alley leading through the garden to the family burying-ground. "It would be an entertaining study of human veracity if I could hear Chilton's story, and compare the two. He is either an audacious rascal, or ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant, from his waist up, leaning his cheek upon his arm; a great cross with a burlesque figure, as of a friar, kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a white plume curled; the shadowy conformation of a huge couchant beast, with a hundred other such unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in the west I dare say I should have witnessed a score more such things, for the snow was like white paper, on which the clear black shadows of the ice-rocks could ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... were no female sphinxes in Egypt. The sphinx was called Neb, i. e., the lord. The lion-couchant had either a man's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... exhilarating of all natural phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the result is a framed and final work of Art. For there, between two high lines of plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones of the innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their million moods of light and colour, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Couchant Leopard continued to fix his eyes attentively on the yet distant cluster of palm trees, it seemed to him as if some object was moving among them. The distant form separated itself from the trees, which partly hid its motions, and advanced towards the knight ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of—Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for them effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the Hrad[vs]any conveys an impression of sheer strength, much as does Gibraltar; it also suggests a lion couchant but watchful and strong to protect the city at its feet; this effect is particularly noticeable from the Fuerstenberg garden. The beauty of this massive pile grows upon you gradually as you see it under the ever-varying atmospheric conditions of Prague. By all the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Likewise, rats! Like most of New York's aristocracy, she is of even nobler lineage than Lady Vere de Vere, daughter of a hundred earls, having been sired by a duly registered American sovereign early in the present century. His coat-of-arms was a cooper's adz rampant, a beer-barrel couchant and the motto, "Two heads are better than one." By wearing his neighbors' cast-off clothes and feeding his family on cornbread and "sow-belly," he was able to lay the foundation of that fortune which has made his daughter facile princeps of New York's patricians. John Jacob Astor, who ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... palaces ranged upon dusky alleys; the handsomest and most impressive form a splendid series on each side of a couple of very proper streets, in which there is plenty of room for a coach-and-four to approach the big doorways. Many of these doorways are open, revealing great marble staircases with couchant lions for balustrades and ceremonious courts surrounded by walls of sun-softened yellow. One of the great piles in the array is coloured a goodly red and contains in particular the grand people I just now spoke of. They live indeed on the third ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... itself? In this strange existence, with its great and rapid transitions, happy events are always imminent. One may be performing her own menialities to-day, and to-morrow, in an ambassador's carriage, be folded in a fur robe with couchant lions upon it; to-day be quartered in a single attic, to-morrow be treading the tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to revolve with it, that there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... trangre. Je suis la Pit, cette fille si chre, 20 Qui t'offre de ce roi les plus tendres soupirs. Du feu de ton amour j'allume ses desirs. Du zle qui pour toi l'enflamme et le dvore La chaleur se rpand du couchant l'aurore. Tu le vois tous les jours, devant toi prostern, 25 Humilier ce front de splendeur couronn, Et confondant l'orgueil par d'augustes exemples, Baiser avec respect le pav de tes temples. De ta gloire anim, lui seul de tant de rois S'arme pour ta querelle, et combat pour tes droits. 30 ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... a little canoe with a cat couchant in the bow, a young invalid comfortably reclining amidships and a husky youth in the stern started down the river and into the salt-water lakes. The first day's run was a short one and the camp was made on a bit of high ground covered with thin grass ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... the fifth good shield A couchant hawk, on a wall; That's borne by Master Hildebrand; He tries, with ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... cayuse rampant; a longhorn steer regardant; two sad-eyed, unbranded calves couchant—one in each corner of the shield to kind of balance her up; gules, several clumps of something representing sagebrush; and possibly a rattlesnake coiled beneath the sagebrush and described as "repellent" and holding in his open jaws a streaming ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... thoroughly British settlement, and it is a noteworthy fact that the only well-to-do man in the place was an American. It was he who lived in the square, red brick house with white blinds always pulled down, even in soft welcome spring days, and with plaster casts of lions and deer couchant on futile little wooden pedestals in the garden. It was he who owned the new and prosperous mill which had superseded the worn-out one lower down the stream, the old mill that the artists loved, and that reminded the Mr. Foxley's of home. It was he who owned the only family ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... him through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... something about—about the mortgage?" asked Rose Mary in the gently hushed tone that she always used in speaking of this ever couchant enemy ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... roi d'Yvetot Pen connu dans l'histoire, Se levant tard, se couchant tot, Dormant fort ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the principal edifice, and their presence proves with certainty how predominant was Egyptian influence even at this considerable distance from the banks of the Nile. They are not the ordinary sphinxes, with a human head surmounting the body of a lion couchant on its stone pedestal; but, like the Assyrian bulls, they are standing, and, to judge from the Hathorian locks which fall on each side of their countenances, they must have been intended to represent a protecting goddess ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and to a large extent reproducible, effects of mere architectural rule on a gigantic scale. The [29] somewhat Gothic soul of Gaston relished there something strange, or even bizarre, in the very manner in which the building set itself, so broadly couchant, upon the earth; in the natural richness of tone on the masonry within; in its vast echoing roof of timber, the "forest," as it was called; in the mysterious maze traced upon its pavement; its maze-like crypt, centering in the shrine of the sibylline Notre-Dame, itself a natural or very primitive ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Sphinx is really unexpected, because it is found suddenly in a hollow, and unnaturally near. Its face is turned away; and the effect is as creepy as coming into a room apparently empty, and finding somebody as still as the furniture. Or it is as if one found a lion couchant in that hole in the sand; as indeed the buried part of the monster is in the form of a couchant lion. If it was a real lion it would hardly be less arresting merely because it was near; nor could ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white. The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? If through long fret and irk Thine eyes within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair; Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... COUCHANT. The French word for lying down with the breast towards the earth, and the head raised. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... couchant vous jurates vos yeux D'etre plus tot que moi ce matin eveillee: Mais le dormir de l'aube, aux ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... pleasure, and the ruddy strife Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in a ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... stand off at one side. Villa Trotti gleams from among its bowers farther south; on the slope Villa Trivulzio, formerly Poldi, shows bravely, and Villa Giulia has cut for itself a wide prospect over both arms of the lake. At the back of this lion couchant, in the middle ground, sheer mountain walls tower ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... he dares,—the man to do the deed, if it must be done, and with the martyr's temper and purpose. Nature obviously was deeply intent in the making of him. He is of imposing appearance personally,—tall, with square shoulders and standing; eyes of deep gray, and couchant, as if ready to spring at the least rustling, dauntless yet kindly; his hair shooting backward from low down on his forehead; nose trenchant and Romanesque; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic, suggesting deep reserves; decided mouth; the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... work: they are idle, and keep taking the train down to London, or making a foray over the Border—especially are they prone to perpetrate that last excursion; and who, indeed, that has once seen Edinburgh, with its couchant crag-lion, but must see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping? My dear sir, do riot think I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as compared to Dun-Edin, 'mine own romantic town,' is as prose compared to poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... too, lifted up his head as if he snuffed from afar off the living waters which marked the place of repose and refreshment. But a distant form separated itself from the trees, and advanced towards the knight at a speed which soon showed a Saracen cavalier. The Crusader, whose arms were a couchant leopard, disengaged his lance, and well acquainted with the customs of Eastern warriors, made a dead halt, confident that his own weight would give him the advantage if the enemy advanced to the actual shock; but the Saracen, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Venner outbreak to point a moral in one or two of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto Who shall rouse him up?; and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one called A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the Beast and the False Prophet. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the lads walked steadily on, and began to ascend the long, low eminence, which formed, as it were, the large body of the couchant lion, but which from where they were, seemed like the most ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... saw the whole party free from the walls of the city, and entering upon the open ground. Arthur's Seat, like a couchant lion of immense size—Salisbury Crags, like a huge belt or girdle of granite, were dimly visible. Holding their path along the southern side of the Canongate, they gained the Abbey of Holyrood House, and from thence found their way by step and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sandy hollow. The clear, cool air at once restored his exultation, and his mother's words became a buzz of flies which he had left behind. The sky was dreamy blue; the sandhills rose against it shapely like the backs and flanks of couchant lions. The red roof of the Mission on its ridge seemed placed there by some childish whim—a thing incongruous. As Iskender fixed his gaze on it, he saw a figure coming thence with speed—a figure in dark Frankish clothes beneath the red tarbush, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... no one has depicted man's sense of guilt and fear more eloquently than Dean Stanley when speaking of the Egyptian Sphinx. Proceeding upon the theory that that time-worn and mysterious relic is a couchant lion whose projecting paws were long since buried in the desert sands, and following the tradition that an altar once stood before that mighty embodiment of power, he graphically pictures the transient generations of men, in all the sin and weakness ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... "bowling green," but swung to the right toward Pier I, and took the path between old Castle Garden and the sea wall at the point where one of the fire patrol boats was resting, steam up and hose nozzles pointed, lance couchant wise. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... loved a work of dreams that bloomed from Art; A town and her turrets rose As from the red heart Of the couchant suns where the west wind blows And worlds lie apart. Calm slept the sea-flats; beneath the blue dome Copper and gold and alabaster gleamed, And sea-birds came home. But I woke in a sorrowful day; The vision was ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed. The house-dog on his paws outspread, Laid to the fire his drowsy head; The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall, And for the winter fireside meet Between the andiron's straddling feet The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And close at hand the basket stood With ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... handsome addition to the garden, irrespective of its historical associations. The chalet is of dark wood varnished, and has in the centre a large carving of Dickens's crest, which in heraldic terms is described as: "a lion couchant 'or,' holding in the gamb a cross ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the sun from the armour, which they would otherwise have rendered intolerable to the wearer. The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant leopard, with the motto, "I sleep; wake me not." An outline of the same device might be traced on his shield, though many a blow had almost effaced the painting. The flat top of his cumbrous cylindrical helmet was unadorned with any crest. In retaining their own unwieldy defensive armour, the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... favourite show-place, winning perhaps more attention than it deserves in comparison with other places near it; but the rocky and turf-clad headland, with its traces of a far-distant past, is really very beautiful, reaching like a couchant beast into the waves that are sometimes of the purest blue, sometimes white with seething foam. There was an old chapel on the neck of the promontory, and near are remains of some rude granite huts. The popularity of the place has ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with lofty jet, and proud swans in the reservoirs. I would like to have you walking in that thick forest growth; there is no underbrush; I can see from one side to the other. After a long walk, you come to the noble portals, guarded by lions couchant, and just beyond is the spot where Louis XVI. was guillotined. I do not believe there is a nobler view in Europe than now opens to the spectator. There before me is the Obelisk of Luxor, which was brought from Egypt, and now stands in the Place de la Concorde, its history, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... From a rock in the strait the central tower rises to a height of two hundred and thirty feet, and other towers are built on each shore at a distance of four hundred and sixty feet from the central one. Couchant lions carved in stone guard the bridge-portals at each end, and this famous viaduct cost over $2,500,000. A short distance below the Anglesea Column towers above a dark rock on the northern shore of the strait. It was erected in honor of the first Marquis of Anglesea, the gallant ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a cup with a lamb. The outer arch is adorned with knobs, and within both is a small slit or loop. At the bottom of the outer arch are two beasts couchant. If one of them by his proboscis was not evidently an elephant, I should suppose them the supporters of the Scotch arms. Parallel with the Crucifix are two plain stones, which do not appear to have had anything upon them. Here is not the least trace of a door in these arches, nor anywhere else, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... He sat within a vineyard full of grapes, With Ariadne kneeling at his side; His arm was thrown around her slender waist, His head lay in her bosom, and she held A cup, a little distance from his lips, And teased him with it, for he wanted it. A pair of spotted pards where sleeping near, Couchant in shade, their heads upon their paws; And revellers were dancing in the woods, Snapping their jolly fingers evermore! But all is vanished, lost, for ever lost, For I have broken my divinest cup, And trod its fragments in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... he said,—the room was glowing with light, the boys in a knot about the fire; some sitting, some standing, one or two couchant upon the rug. Sam was the spokesman just then—the rest listening, interrupting, applauding; the flashing firelight shewing such different faces! such varied indications!—they looked like a little ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... any article but this I should say Quaker—and was quiet and gentlemanly, as members of that Church—in any article but this I should, from mere habit, say sect—usually are. This is due to his memory; for, by all I heard, when he changed his religion he ceased to be Lucas couchant, and became Lucas rampant, fanged and langued gules. (I looked into Guillim[58] to see if my terms were right: I could not find them; but to prove I have been there, I notice that he calls a violin a violent. How comes the word to take this form?) I ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... limits,—a monotonous, reiterate, indestructible chord in the creature's mystic existence, that, once struck by some mighty, shrouded Hand of Power, still reverberated, and trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the top of it, to the eastward, is placed a golden sphere; and on the upper battlements, the figures of two soldiers as sentinels: beneath, in a large square, King James I. is represented standing in gilt armour, at whose feet are a lion and unicorn, both couchant, the first the supporter of England, and the other for Scotland. On the west side of the gate is the figure of Fortune, finely gilded and carved, with a prosperous sail over her head, standing on a globe, overlooking ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... society may do so without fear of publicity, as the names will not be given out. The only means of distinguishing a fellow-member will be a tiny gold emblem, to be worn in the lapel, representing the figure (couchant) of Spain's most touted animal. The motto will be "Nimmermehr," which is a German translation of the Spanish phrase "Not even ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... a man that can't get fun out of anything except a three-ring circus," said his friend, severely. "I'm contented with one elephant these days. It's all the responsibility I want." His eyes dwelt fondly on the placid Imogene, couchant amidships. Then he lighted a cigar, using his plug hat for a wind-break, and resumed his labors ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the Duke, as he stood leaning against the wall, behind Zuleika's table. He saw it as a monster couchant and enchanted, a monster that was to die; and its death was in part his own doing. But remorse in him gave place to hostility. Zuleika had begun her performance. She was producing the Barber's Pole from her mouth. And it was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of granite steps, weedy in the interstices of the old stone, and terminating in a pair of couchant lions at the base, led down to the middle terrace, which was called the upper garden. This was split in twain by a very gallery of gigantic box trees running down towards the lower terrace, and bearing eloquent witness to the age of that old garden. Into this gallery no sun ever penetrated ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... south-east. I was now drawing nigh to the mountainous district of Eryri; a noble hill called Mount Eilio appeared before me to the north; an immense mountain called Pen Drws Coed lay over against it on the south, just like a couchant elephant with its head lower than the top of its back. After a time I entered a most beautiful sunny valley, and presently came to a bridge over a pleasant stream running in the direction of the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant leopard, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... sullenly taken seats, with guns threateningly at the ready, they glared at me like tigers ready to spring. Soon a man, I had, on my way, sent to the store, arrived with a box of good Florida cigars, and I quietly passed them around to my "lions couchant," took a seat on the platform facing them, lit up, and commenced the enjoyment of a ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... these mountains alone, Have you felt your identity shrink and contract At the sound of the distant and dim cataract, In the presence of nature's immensities? Say, Have you hung o'er the torrent, bedew'd with its spray, And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll'd, Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold, Track'd the summits from which every step that you tread Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed Of invisible waters, whose mistical sound Fills with awful suggestions ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of the Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the Parish Church guarded under its ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... begun To rumble o'er his heraldry; which done, Told him he was a gentleman of note, And that he had a very glorious coat. "Prithee, what is 't?" quoth he, "and take your fees." "Sir," says the herald, "'tis two rampant trees, One couchant; and, to give it further scope, A ladder passant, and a pendent rope. And, for a grace unto your blue-coat sleeves, There is a bird i' th' crest that ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... home, escorted valiantly by three stout boys, who guided her by a most circuitous route across Bruntsfield Links, that she might gain a moonlight view of the couchant lion of Arthur's Seat. They amused her the whole way home with tales of High-school warfare. On reaching the garden-gate she was half surprised to hear the unwonted cheerfulness of her own laugh. The sunshine she daily strove to cast ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... even, plane; flat &c. 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent[obs3]; lying &c. v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent[obs3], prostrate, recubant[obs3]. Adv. horizontally &c. adj.; on one's back, on all fours, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... possessed no true knowledge of the old man's mind and temperament. Exultant though he often felt in his new office, and the preposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himself constantly that he trod on unsure ground. Once or twice he had been conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose, even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable, less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... serve your purpose, perhaps.' He set up a large, rather coarse print of Fortitude, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The figure stands erect, armed with a helmet and plume, one hand on her hip, the other touching just the tip of one finger to a broken column by her side. At her feet a couchant lion. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... great boulders as with houses, and encircled with a girdle of green woods and an outer girdle of blue sea. I know of nothing more wild than that gray waste of boulders; it is a natural Salisbury Plain, of which icebergs and ocean-currents were the Druidic builders; in that multitude of couchant monsters there seems a sense of suspended life; you feel as if they must speak and answer to each other in the silent nights, but by day only the wandering sea-birds seek them, on their way across the Cape, and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... action markt: about them round A Lion now he stalkes with fierie glare, Then as a Tiger, who by chance hath spi'd In some Purlieu two gentle Fawnes at play, Strait couches close, then rising changes oft His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground Whence rushing he might surest seise them both Grip't in each paw: when Adam first of men To first of women Eve thus moving speech, Turnd him all eare to heare new utterance flow. 410 Sole partner and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hushed War's couchant tigers in their lair The tranquil time to one brings not repose— A voice was whispering to his soul—"Despair! The gods will give the triumph to thy foes." Can sleep, with leaden hand, our eyelids close When throng distempered fancies, and depart, And thought a shadow on the future throws? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... The church was erected in the year 996, at which time it is said this remarkable pulpit was put up; and notwithstanding its great age, which appears to be 832 years, it is still in good condition. At the foot of the steps is a large figure, intended to represent a lion couchant, but carved after so grotesque a fashion, as to puzzle the naturalist in his attempts to determine its proper classification. In other respects the ornamental sculpture about the pulpit is neat and appropriate, and presents a curious specimen of the taste ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... the desert. Two or three palms arose near a well, and there two horsemen faced each other warily. One was a Christian knight in a coat of linked mail, over which he wore a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and bearing more than once the arms of the wearer—a couchant leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was circling swiftly about the knight of the leopard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a strong hand and unerring aim sent it crashing against the head of his foe, who raised his buckler ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... was martial Marmion found, His feet upon a couchant hound, His hands to Heaven upraised: And all around on scutcheon rich, And tablet carved, and fretted niche, His arms and feats were blazed. And yet, though all was carved so fair, And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer, The last Lord Marmion lay not there. From Ettrick woods a peasant ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... of a couchant dog gnawing the thigh bone of a man is graven the weird inscription, cut deeply in the stone, as if for all future generations to read and ponder over ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... therewith a pleasing story which reaches its climax in the petrifaction of the hero. A mountain's crest shaped like a swooping eagle will from some one have received the name of 'Eagle Mountain,' whilst by its side another shaped like a couchant lion will have a name to match. There is no lack of poetry among the people, and most striking objects claim a poetic name, and not a few of them are associated with curious legends. It is, however, to their ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... errant, downright beggars. Ay, Without equivocation, statute beggars, Couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars; Current and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 7 Couchant upon these precious cushionets Were thousand beauties, and as many smiles, Chaste blandishments, and modest cooling heats, Harmless temptations, and honest guiles. For heaven, though up betimes the maid to deck, Ne'er made Aurora's ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Qu'effleurait l'hirondelle agile; Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile, Et du soleil couchant ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... to grapple somewhat jejune facts to the infant mind by means of fanciful comparison: thus, Italy was likened to a boot, France to a coffee-pot, and the European domain of the Sultan to a ruffling turkey. In this pleasant scheme the state of New York was made to figure as a couchant lion, his massy head thrust high in the North Country, his forepaws dabbled in the confluence of the Hudson and the Sound, his middle and hinder parts stretched lazily westward to Lake Erie and the Niagara. Roughly speaking, in this noble ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... been trained to night slaughter and savageness alone, and that it was a case of atavism, a recurrence of hereditary instinct. It interested me vastly, and I resolved to make him the most perfect of watchdogs. I trained him to lie couchant, and to spring upon and tear a stuffed figure I would bring into the basement. I noticed he always sprang at the throat. 'Hard lines,' thought I, 'for the burglar who ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... stars; the open air was dense with the perfume of the wood, the saline indication of the sea-ware. On the rocky edge of the islet at one part showed the white fringe of the waves now more peaceful; to the north brooded enormous hills, seen dimly by the stars, couchant terrors, vague, vast shapes of dolours and alarms. Doom stood long looking at them with the flame of the candle blowing inward and held above his head—a mysterious man beyond Montaiglon's comprehension. He stood behind him a pace or two, shivering ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... presented him with an exquisite and curious little thing,—a paper-weight in likeness of a couchant lion, wrought from a jade-stone yellow as that created by a rainbow in honor of Kong-fu-tze. Tenderly the boy kissed the gift and the beautiful hand that gave it. "May the Spirits punish me," he vowed, "if ever I knowingly give ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... some angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... rapid current. They were the same; the movement and music were the same; God was still with him; was he so base as to withhold the thanksgiving that had been checked half uttered in his heart by the spring of that couchant sorrow? Then in the sum of life's blessings he had numbered that hope of his, and now he had seen the perfect fruition of that hope in joy. It was not his own,—but was it not much to know that God had made such joy, had given it to man? ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... monotonous line of beach, trending northward ten miles from end to end, forming a great curve from the sandspit on the north side of the treacherous bar to the blue loom of a headland in shape like the figure of a couchant lion. Back from the shore-line, a narrow littoral of dense scrub, impervious to the rays of the sun, and unbroken in its solitude except by the cries of birds, or the heavy footfall of wild cattle upon the thick carpet of fallen leaves; and then, far to the west, the dimmed, shadowy outline ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... droite hors du port, ou, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuye contre un petit rocher qui empechait qu'on ne put me voir du cote de la terre, je n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensites qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en revant des heures delicieuses; et la, je serais devenu poete, si j'avais su ecrire ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ever dreamed In lavishness to waste—for dwellers in the streets Of cities, whether Troy, or Tyre, or Ispahan, Consume, in point of cost, food at a single meal Much less than what is spread before this crowned man—- Who rules his couchant nation with a rod of steel, And whose servitors' chiefest arts it was to squeeze The world's full teats into his royal helpless mouth. Each hard-sought dainty that never failed to please, All delicacies, wines, from east, west, north or south, Are plenty ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... air Are golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) Shines like an angel-market. High aloft Over his couchant Lions, in a haze Shimmering and bland and soft, A dust of chrysoprase, Our Sailor takes the golden gaze Of the saluting sun, and flames superb, As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... my place of rest, Two figures faced each other, large, austere; A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, An angel standing in the moonlight clear; 10 So mighty by magnificence of form, They were not dwarfed beneath ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... They had splendours of double doors and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Bay State. So huge was he, his realm so small, He could not exercise at all, Except by taking to the sea. [For which he had a ticket free, Granted by Neptune, with the seal, A salient clam, and couchant eel]. His pipe was many a mile in length, His lungs proportionable in strength; And his rich moccasins,—with the pair, The seven-league boots would not compare. Whene'er siestas he would take, Cape Cod must help his couch to make; And, being lowly, it was meet He should prefer ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Kizil Irmak River, called Jas-chi-khan. On the west bank of the stream are some ancient ruins of quite massive architecture, and standing on the opposite side of the road, evidently having some time been removed from the ruins with a view to being transported elsewhere, is a couchant lion of heroic proportions, carved out of a solid block of white marble; the head is gone, as though its would-be possessors, having found it beyond their power to transport the whole animal, have made off with what they could. An old ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "About Day-light Gate."] Day-light Gate, i.e. Evening, the down gate of daylight. See Promptuarium Parvulorum, (edited by Way for the Camden Society,) page 188, "Gate down, or downe gate of the Sunne or any other planet."—Occasus. Palgrave gives, "At the sonne gate downe; sur le soleil couchant." ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... greens, and browns, and the whole atmosphere of the scene, were unlike anything we had ever before seen. And Diamond Head, what a feature it was! Had it only had a head, one could easily have seen in it a suggestion of a couchant lion, bony, huge, and tawny, looking seaward, and guarding the harbor of Honolulu which lies just behind it. Into this harbor, in the soft morning air, our ship soon found its way, and the monotony of the vast, unpeopled sea was quickly succeeded by ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... change. The scow no longer leaped and crashed, and the roar of the rapids grew faint. No longer the form of Vermilion appeared couchant, tense; and, among the scowmen, one laughed. Chloe drew a deep breath, and a slight shudder shook her frame. She glanced about her in bewilderment, and, reaching swiftly down, raised the inert form of Harriet Penny and rested ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... admired himself, he went to the door. It opened, and two valets, who stood outside, presented him, one with a jewelled snuff-box, the other with an embroidered handkerchief. A large brown dog, that lay couchant in the hall, rose and followed him, and the last act of the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... subject. But the chance was too good to be lost; he sacrificed his oratorical longings on the altar of party purpose, and limited his speech to a mere statement of his motion. Off flew on the wings of Hansom a youthful member, more trusty than the trusted Undy, to the abode of the now couchant Treasury Argus. Morpheus had claimed him all for his own. He was lying in true enjoyment, with his tired limbs stretched between the unaccustomed sheets, and snoring with free and sonorous nose, restrained ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... new tales Of English wrongs received from the red hands Of that gigantic Empire, insolent Spain, spurred fiercer resentments up like steeds Revolting, on the curb, foaming for battle, In all men's minds, against whatever odds. On one side of the throne great Walsingham, A lion of England, couchant, watchful, calm, Was now the master of opinion: all Drew to him. Even the hunchback Burleigh smiled With half-ironic admiration now, As in the presence of the Queen they met Amid the sweeping splendours ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... be traced to a fact of a fortnight's sojourn on the western shore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain form which the earlier French pioneers had named "Le Lion Couchant," but which their plainer-minded Yankee successors preferred to call "The Camel's Hump." It really looked like a sleeping lion; the head was especially definite; and when, in the course of some ten years, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Next, he took note of her pointed finger, which she waved in a sort of comprehensive curve embracing the table-cloth with its appetising display of eatables; and then, as if he had made a mental list of all left in his charge, he laid down in a couchant position at the head of the table, if such it could be called, with his nose between his paws, along which his eyes were ready to take aim at any intruder, saying, in their fixed basilisk stare, "Now, you just touch anything, if you ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... de Sevigne. Whenever we come across it, and, strangely enough, it is rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and do not easily forget it. Humanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins, not to a priest, but to the world, and the couchant nymphs that Cellini wrought in bronze for the castle of King Francis, the green and gold Perseus, even, that in the open Loggia at Florence shows the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter to tinier animal life—its special fairy. Huge beasts couchant in majestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rage inherited from the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... roof, surmounted with the ruins of a cupola, erected upon it by Mr. Perry, who married the heiress of the family, but who does not seem to have brought much taste into it. On the point of each gable is an old stone figure—the one a tortoise, the other a lion couchant—and upon the back of each of these old figures, so completely accordant with the building itself, which exhibits under its eaves and at the corners of its windows numbers of those grotesque corbels which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... part of it—consists of several figures, in procession, which are about to enter an opened door, at the base of a pyramid of gray marble. Over the door is a medallion, in profile, of the deceased... supported by an angel. To the right of the door is a huge lion couchant, asleep. You look into the entrance ... and see nothing ... but darkness: neither boundary nor termination being visible. To the right, a young man—resting his arm upon the lion's mane, is looking upwards, with ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... certainly beautiful and he had never seen anything like them before. They were of a wonderful blue, each one, and had a coat of arms in gold with raised figures on it; a scroll above with a Latin motto, and beneath the representation of a wild animal couchant. The Senor Valdez was quick to see Jim's interest and respond to it. "That is the coat of arms of my family," ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... not introduced in English heraldry previous to the reign of Richard II. The shield of this luxurious monarch is supported on each side by an angel habited, and beneath the shield by a white hart couchant, gorged and chained or, beneath a tree. The shield of Henry IV., the founder of the Lancastrian dynasty, was supported on the dexter side by a swan, on the sinister side by an antelope, both gorged and lined or. The shield of the gallant Henry V. was supported on the dexter side by a lion rampant ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... aloud, and rose and wandered about rather aimlessly among the statues until she found herself in another gallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, and her emotion took another turn. She began to picture herself traveling with Ralph in a land where these monsters were couchant in the sand. "For," she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at some information printed behind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thing about you is that you're ready for anything; you're not in the least conventional, like most ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... occurrence on these lakes at night. On turning the point of red sandstone rock, which the Indians call Pug-ge-do-wau (Portage), the Porcupine Mountains rose to our view, directly west, presenting an azure outline of very striking lineaments—an animal couchant. As night drew on, the water became constantly smoother; it was nine before daylight could be said to leave us. We passed, in rapid succession, the Mauzhe-ma-gwoos or Trout, Graverod's, Unnebish, or Elm, and Pug-ge-do-wa, or Misery River, in Fishing Bay. Here we overtook ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... day was spent in skirting the foot of a very long mountain, crowned at its southern extremity with a huge, rocky mass resembling the head of a stone sphinx above its long, couchant body, and at its highest part about a thousand feet above the surrounding level. It was late in the day, raining fast again, yet the old man still toiled on, contrary to his usual practice, which was to spend the last daylight hours in gathering firewood and in constructing ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... desert which separates Croisic from the village of Batz. Imagine, my dear uncle, a barren track of miles covered with the glittering sand of the seashore. Here and there a few rocks lifted their heads; you might have thought them gigantic animals couchant on the dunes. Along the coast were reefs, around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance of great white roses, floating on the liquid surface or resting on the shore. Seeing this barren tract with the ocean on ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... farther end of the village appeared an iron gate, of considerable size, dividing a lofty stone wall. And upon the top of that one of the stone pillars supporting the gate which I could see, stood a creature of stone, whether natant, volant, passant, couchant, or rampant, I could not tell, only it looked like something terrible enough for ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... erected a handsome monument to his father's memory. The monument is an elevated tomb, with the Earl's arms and those of his lady in the front in the angles, and with an inscription in the centre. It has his effigy in armour, with an ermined mantle, his feet leaning against a lion couchant. On his left is his lady in black, with an ermined mantle and a coronet. Both have their hands held up as in prayer. On a projecting plinth in front is the figure of his second son, the Earl of Northampton, in armour, with a mantle of ermine, kneeling in prayer. Behind, in a similar ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Saint Julian's pillar, while the rising sun came peeping through the low eastern window of the vaulted Church of Saint Faith, Master Headley on his knees gave thanks for his preservation, and then put forward his little daughter, holding on her joined hands the figure of poor Spring, couchant, and beautifully modelled in bronze with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shudders chill as aconite, The couchant chewer of the cud Will start at times in pussy fright Before the dogs, when reads her sprite The streaks predicting streams ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... falling, wakened them all simultaneously. The night was so dark they could see nothing, and terror-struck, they sat gazing into the impenetrable darkness of their cave, not even daring to speak to each other, hardly even to breathe. Wolfe gave a low grumbling bark, and resumed his couchant posture as if nothing worthy of his attention was near to cause the disturbance. Catharine trembled and wept, and prayed for safety against the Indians and beasts of prey, and Hector and Louis listened, till ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... though I had seen it several times before, filled my mind with admiration and interest. Viewed from this situation, it certainly, if it resembles any animate object in nature, has something of the appearance of a terrible couchant lion, whose stupendous head menaces Spain. Had I been dreaming, I should almost have concluded it to be the genius of Africa, in the shape of its most puissant monster, who had bounded over the sea from the clime of sand and sun, bent on the destruction ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... double portion of depth and majesty to the high yet gloomy arch under which it opened. The, carved stone escutcheon of the ancient family, bearing for their arms three wolves' heads, was hung diagonally beneath the helmet and crest, the latter being a wolf couchant pierced with an arrow. On either side stood as supporters, in full human size, or larger, a salvage man proper, to use the language of heraldry, wreathed and cinctured, and holding in his hand an oak-tree eradicated, that is, torn up ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stairs brings me up from the depths of the closet where I am burrowing. I remember seeing Petronius disappear a moment ago with my lovely and beloved marble Hebe in his arms. I rush rampant to the upper landing in time to see him couchant on the lower. "I have broken my leg," roars Petronius, as if I cared for his leg. A fractured leg is easily mended; but who shall restore me the nose of my nymph, marred into irremediable deformity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fresher, but the design not so elaborate. There is a similar paling to that on the other side, the 'Park' being dotted about with several plants, ferns, and tufts of grass. Near each corner is a deer, one feeding, one 'couchant,' one 'tripping,' and one 'courant,' and one 'lodged' in the centre. There are also two snakes worked in silver thread with ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... brillant du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire, Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire; Le nuage eclatant qui le cache a nos yeux Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux, Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'etendue. Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur suspendue, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... o'er the Stygian strait "Panurge" and "Bito," "Tramp" and "Mike," In couchant conclave watch the gate, Till comes the last successive tyke, Acknowledged with the countersign: "Your master was ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... gauntlets, wearing his casque, which rests on a bull's or buffalo's head, a collar round his neck studded with gems, and on the breast a shield with the arms of Neville. The female figure has a high crowned bonnet, and the mantle is drawn close over the feet, which rest on two dogs couchant. The tomb is ornamented with small figures of ecclesiastics at prayer, but is without inscription. Leland ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... maids or magpies, who have inhabited the mansion for a century, have contrived to accumulate. With what admiration of the ingenuity of the fair artist have I sometimes pried into these miscellaneous groups of pseudo-bijouterie, and seen the great grandsire's thumb-ring couchant with the coral and bells of the first-born—and the boatswain's whistle of some old naval uncle, or his silver tobacco-box, redolent of Oroonoko, happily grouped with the mother's ivory comb-case, still odorous of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... my brother, I tremble with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves, and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. When comes it? To-night? To-morrow? A ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... came to the high, lonely ridge, the dwarf forest, the huge, couchant bulk of Spy Rock. There, on the back of it, with his right arm hanging over the edge, was the outline of Edward Keene's form. It was as if some monster had seized him and flung him over its ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock—so are the Salisbury Craigs noble craigs—and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of cards. Who, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark Scotch hills like couchant lions far ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... etait un roi d'Yvetot, Peu connu dans l'histoire; Se levant tard, se couchant tot, Dormant fort bien sans gloire, Et couronne par Jeanneton D'un simple bonnet de coton, Dit-on. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... golden St. Andrews," he muttered, "if I could make out the scutcheon. It looks most like a black dragon couchant on a red field, which is not a Scottish bearing. The lady is French, doubtless, and passes through from Ireland to visit ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; everything about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must have been when ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... hand and sinking undulously away towards the bay where, like a magic city of ivory and nacre, Palermo lies guarded by the twin mountains, Monte Pellegrino and Capo Zafferano, arid rocks like dull amethysts, rose in sunlight, violet in shadow: lions couchant, ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... dull, peering eyes, and impotently snarl! But you,"—and here his gazed rested doubtfully, yet questioningly, on his companion's open, serene countenance—'you, if rumor speaks truly, should have been able to tame YOUR bears and turn them into dogs, humble and couchant! Your ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... states their modern arms to be thus emblazoned, viz.—Azure, three clouds radiated proper, each adorned with a triple crown or. Supporters—two lions or, pelletted. Crest—on a wreath, a ram couchant or, armed sables, on a mount vert. Motto—"Unto God only be honour ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... within our reach, 65 Here, where the grass is smooth and warm, Between the holly and the beech, Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold |
