"Raven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the raven, When his young ones cry unto God? It hovereth around nor groweth weary, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian, It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan, And tyrannizing was the lady's look, 510 As over them a gnarled staff she shook. Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out, And from a basket emptied to the rout Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick And roar'd for more; with many a hungry lick About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow, Anon she took a branch of mistletoe, And emptied on't a black dull-gurgling phial: Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial Was sharpening ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... returns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tears make her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another consoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and corrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine youth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her own youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him the story of her life, she teaches him to ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... "Only a raven," said Vince quickly. "Why, I say, Mike, this must be where that pair we have seen build every year! We must find the nest, and get a young one ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... deemed the sight of them good, for there must be men anigh who owned them. For the rest, the whimbrel laughed across the mires; high up in heaven a great eagle was hanging; once and again a grey fox leapt up before them, and the heath-fowl whirred up from under Face-of-god's feet. A raven who was sitting croaking on a rock in that first dale stirred uneasily on his perch as he saw them, and when they were passed flapped his wings and flew after ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... weakens, though his eyes grow dim, That rest which comes to all, comes not to him. 160 E'en at that hour, Care, tyrant Care, forbids The dew of sleep to fall upon his lids; From night to night she watches at his bed; Now, as one moped, sits brooding o'er his head; Anon she starts, and, borne on raven's wings, Croaks forth aloud—'Sleep was not made for kings!' Thrice hath the moon, who governs this vast ball, Who rules most absolute o'er me and all; To whom, by full conviction taught to bow, At new, at full, I pay the duteous vow; 170 Thrice hath the moon her wonted course pursued, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... raven's croaking," says Molly, laying her hand upon his lips. "I will not listen to it. Whatever the Fates may be, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... yet men have spoken Just as bravely long ago, When the hair had raven blackness Which is now as white ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... eyes on Immada. Fairhaired and white she asserted herself before the girl of olive face and raven locks with the maturity of perfection, with the superiority of the flower over the leaf, of the phrase that contains a thought over the cry that can only express an emotion. Immense spaces and countless centuries stretched between them: and she looked at her as ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... as if he had seen a spectre, at the appearance of the blooming, sparkling Tamar, who came forward without hat or other head dress, her raven tresses ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... is how it was. You know the waterfall at the head of Raven's Nook? Well, I have long wanted to take that, so I went up with father and Mr Mabberly. We found the captain and McGregor sitting there smoking their pipes, and when I was arranging the camera, the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the brow of the older woman smoothed, but it contracted again as she exclaimed inquiringly: "Important business at so unusual an hour! Ah, I have expected nothing good since early morning! On my way to my brother's a raven flew up before me and fluttered towards the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this, when he was coming in from a trip alone on part of the line, when his ear caught some strange sounds in the woods ahead; deep, sonorous, semi-human they were. Strange and weird wood-notes in winter are nearly sure to be those of a raven or a jay; if deep, they are likely ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... me a lot. I couldn't think what it meant. Several times I had gone through the names of all the 'dusky birds' I could think of—blackbird, rook, crow, raven, and so on, but nothing struck me, nothing seemed to make sense. Then the next day—yesterday—an advertisement in the same code appeared which startled me a lot because your name and Mr. Osborne's were in it, and it didn't take me long then to get at ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Breeches,' and giving it with due pathos. I am bound to say that a sort of balcony which hung out at the end was well filled by the unwashed takers, or at least donees, of sixpenny tickets. There was a purpose in this, as will be seen. After being taken through 'The Raven,' and 'The Dying Burglar,' the competition began. This was certainly the most diverting portion of the entertainment, from its genuineness, the eagerness of the competitors, and their ill-disguised ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... day.' It is less strongly marked among the winged races, because they prefer to fly in search of fresh supplies when the old fail, and seldom provide cupboards or larders at home. Yet there are birds that make stores. After a full meal many of the crow tribe, including the raven, rook, and jackdaw, will put away and hoard what is left. A magpie once paid me a visit, perching on an ash-tree, the boughs of which almost brushed against my bedroom window. Very early one morning he awoke me by calling out his own name, together ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... exultant light gleamed in her dark eyes, and her bosom rose and fell as though swept with tumultuous passion. Ever womanly and beautiful, she was never more a queen than now, as the wind tossed the raven tresses of her crown of hair, and wrapped her dress around the well-proportioned limbs until she looked the draped statue of a classic age. There was that, too, within her breast which filled her with lofty and pardonable pride, for she awaited her husband's return to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... I cou'd ride the Clouds and Skies, Or on the Raven's Pinions rise: Ye Storks, ye Swans, a moment stay, And waft ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... possession of the world. It also might be a type of the opening the law and testimony, that light might by that come into the church; for we find not that this window had any other use, but to be a conveyance of light into the ark, and as a passage for the raven and the dove, as may be further showed after. Now much like this, is that of John: "The temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament" (Rev 11:19). And again, "I looked, and, behold, the temple of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... clenched teeth and doubled fists suddenly enraged him, and the old lust of vengeance flamed from his eyes. Hat and disguising coat were cast aside. For a moment his form, rigid and erect, gleamed like a statue of copper cut in stern relentless lines, and the single crimson feather in his raven locks matched, in gold, the silver brightness of ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... is flying, There a wounded Cossack's lying; On a bush his head he's leaning, And his eyes with grass is screening, Meadow-grass so greenly shiny, And with cloth the make of China; Croaks the raven hoarsely o'er him, Neighs his courser sad before him: "Either, master, give me pay, Or dismiss me on my way." "Break thy bridle, O my courser, Down the path amain be speeding, Through the verdant forest leading; Drink of two lakes on thy way, Eat of mowings two the hay; Rush the castle-portal under, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence. How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... pity sake, hasten to the rescue, ere it be too late. Fly! gentlemen, and stay the bloody work of those miscreants, those fiends in human form. Oh! waste not a moment, or your aid may come too late." The supplicant was a handsome three-quarter cast. Her luxuriant hair, dark as a raven's wing, hung in wild confusion about her neck and shoulders. Her well-fitting dress, of fine Madras muslin, hung in shreds around her finely moulded form, and blood was issuing from rents in her light kid slippers, caused, doubtless, by the thorns ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... host; or like Soma swallowed up by Rahu; or like the ocean reft of water. The mighty car-warriors of thy army beholding Abhimanyu whose face had the splendour of the full moon, and whose eyes were rendered beautiful in consequence of lashes black as the feathers of the raven, lying prostrate on the bare earth, were filled with great joy. And they repeatedly uttered leonine shouts. Indeed, O monarch, thy troops were in transports of joy, while tears fell fast from the eyes of the Pandava heroes. Beholding the heroic ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fifteen of the figs from the basket and hung them on the eagle's neck; and Baruch blessed it, saying, "I say unto thee, O king of the birds, go in peace, and bring back an answer to me. Be not like the raven, which Noah sent out, and it returned no more to the ark; but be like the dove, which returned the third day with an answer of peace. And if the birds of the air come against thee, fight with them, and the power of God be with thee. Turn neither ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... superstition prevails that if the eggs are taken from a raven's nest, boiled, and replaced, the old raven will bring a root or stone to the nest, which he fetches from the sea. This "raven stone" confers great fortune on its owner, and has the power of rendering ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... under it on the upper part of the living animal is a black, which shining through the grey, produces a sort of raven-blue tint. It is the epidermis only and not the mucous tissue which has this black color, otherwise the hair would have it; and it fades when the animal is dead, as is the case with a highly-colored ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... with her manoeuvres. He betrayed, indeed, a period of comic doubt, cast one or two rapid glances from the child to the mother, indulged in an interval of self- consultation, but finally resigned himself with a good grace to play his part in the farce. Desiree eat like a raven, gambolled day and night in her bed, pitched tents with the sheets and blankets, lounged like a Turk amidst pillows and bolsters, diverted herself with throwing her shoes at her bonne and grimacing at her sisters—over- flowed, in short, with unmerited health and evil ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... extraordinary tour. I could not resist the impulse of writing to you from this place. The situation of the old castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we were there to-day, it happened oddly, that a raven perched upon one of the chimney-tops, and croaked. Then I ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... graven But grows, if you gaze on it, bright; A lark's note rings from the raven, And tragedy's robe turns white; And shipwrecks drift into haven; And darkness laughs, and ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... approached on the landward side by a thin forest of firs, that with their never-changing vesture of gloom despise the bright garniture of Spring, and where, instead of the joyous carolling of little birds awakened anew to gladness, nothing is heard but the ominous croak of the raven and the whirring scream of the storm-boding sea-gull. A quarter of a mile distant Nature suddenly changes. As if by the wave of a magician's wand you are transported into the midst of thriving fields, fertile arable land, and meadows. You see, too, the large and prosperous village, with the land-steward's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... out a mare that was as poor as a raven—though she's a good enough stamp if she was in condition—and tells me to buy her. 'What price will I give, sir?' says I. 'Ye'll give what they're askin',' says he, 'and that's sixty sovereigns!' I'm thirty years buying horses, and such a disgrace was never put on me, to be made a fool ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a waiter of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence needs must be had before I could steer Bill ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong, The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand upon the strong. Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour! Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... roar, the howl of midnight wolves, The scaly serpent's hiss, the raven's croak, The burst of fighting winds that vex the main, The widowed owl and turtle's plaintive moan, With all the din of hell's infernal crew, From my grieved soul forth issue in one sound— Leaving my senses all ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the voice of the raven every morning since you went from me, that your fall was sure and certain; that you would never come back ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... not help touching softly the arms of the young girl as he looked with sad admiration at her beautiful hair and her supple figure. She was a true Spaniard, having the Spanish complexion, the Spanish eyes with their curved lashes, and their large pupils blacker than a raven's wing. ...
— El Verdugo • Honore de Balzac
... dangerous than this fond affiance! Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrow'd, For he's disposed as the hateful raven; Is he a lamb? his skin is surely lent him, For he's inclin'd as is the ravenous wolf. Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit? Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all Hangs on the cutting short ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... tell Lumley Limpiter of her own former triumphs, and to sing him "Tink-a-tink," which we have previously heard, and to state how in former days she had been called the Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a poem, in which he compared Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to that of the canary; by which two names the ladies began soon to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she found his dead body lying in a ditch. She ruffled up her feathers and began to cry. "Who can have killed him?" she said; "my poor kind husband, who never did harm to any one." Then a Raven flew down from a tree, where he had been sitting, and told her how a cruel boy had thrown a stone at him and killed him for sport. He saw it, said the Raven, as he was sitting ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... uttered the words, than the child was indeed changed into a raven, and fluttered from her arms out of the window. And she flew into a dark wood and stayed there a long time, and her parents knew nothing of her. Once a man was passing through the wood, and he heard the raven cry, and he followed the voice; and when ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... attracted by the quaint mural paintings, in the Prior's room, of domestic animals uttering speech. "Christus natus est," crows the cock. "Quando? Quando?" the duck inquires. "In hac nocte," says the raven. "Ubi? Ubi?" asks the cow, and the lamb satisfies her: ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Bruno in his Spaccio de la Bestia trionfante; which Book, tho' very scarce, yet a certain Gentleman, who has it in his Possession, has been so obliging as to let every Body know where to meet with it. After this, you find him carried off by a Raven, and swallow'd by a Giant; and 'tis almost the same Story as that of Ganimede, and the Eagle ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... followed the directing of no hand except the "stoker's;" but it certainly is always much liker a raven than a dove. "Eagles and vigils" is not admissible as a rhyme; neither is "branch and grange." Miss Barrett says of the Lady Geraldine that she had "such a gracious coldness" that her lovers "could not press their futures on the present of her courtesy." Is that human speech? One other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... on her little mossy bed and watched the light of the first stars tremble in the pale sky; then her eyes half closed, and yet it seemed to her as if overhead she saw a little dwarf mounted on a raven. It was not fancy. For having reined in the black bird who was gnawing at the bridle, the dwarf stopped just above the young girl and stared down at her with his round eyes. Whereupon he disappeared at full gallop. All this Honey-Bee saw vaguely and then ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... weddin', an' four manes death; an' didn't I see four o' thim the day o' the fair in Ennis whin O'Dougherty was laid out? An' whin O'Riley cut his arrum wid a bill-hook, an' the blood was runnin', didn't she tie a shtring on the arrum an' dip a raven's feather into the blood av a black cat's tail, an' shtop the bleedin'? An' didn't she bid me take care o' meself the day I met a red-headed woman afore dinner, an' it wasn't six months till I met the woman in the mornin', it a-rainin' an' ivery dhrop the full o' yer hat, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... of our absence, I sent home communication after communication to the "Linnean Society,"[12] with the same result as that obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal Society.[13] This was my dove, if I ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... instinct is produced by a spiritual cause, namely, either by God, as may be seen in the dove that descended upon Christ, the raven that fed Elias, and the whale that swallowed and vomited Jonas, or by demons, who make use of these actions of dumb animals in order to entangle our minds with vain opinions. This seems to be true of all such like things; except omens, because human words ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... season of the year, they are driven every day during that season to those rivers to drink, and the result is that, however white they may be, they beget in some places whity-brown lambs, in other places gray, and in others black as a raven. Thus, the peculiar character of the liquid, entering their body, produces in each case the quality with which it is imbued. Hence, it is said that the people of Ilium gave the river Xanthus its name because reddish cattle and ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... from Time's sad wasting flown, Of those beings pure and gentle, like the passing glow of even, Sent to teach us of a better, higher heritage in Heaven! Sweet they were as first wild flowers that herald coming spring, Or a mellow gleam of sunset through the storm-cloud's raven wing. Fragile as that opening flower, fleeting as that golden ray, Like the snow-wreath of the morning, full soon they fled away! And fit it is it should be so; their mission here was brief 'Mid the blighting and the bitterness of Earth's unquiet grief; So their ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... attitudinizing, she had made herself thoroughly comfortable; and as the light streamed full upon her, all the marvellous beauty of the delicate face and the perfect modelling of the small hands and feet were clearly revealed. The glossy raven hair clung in waving masses around her white full forehead, and the long silky lashes lay like jet fringe on her exquisitely moulded cheeks; while the remarkably fine pencilling of her arched brows, which had attracted her guardian's notice when he first saw her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... when he had done, he began to scrape with his Claws till he had digg'd a Pit, in which he Buried the Carcass of his Adversary. Our Philosopher observing this, said to himself, How well has this Raven done in Burying the Body of his Companion, tho' he did ill in Killing him? How much greater reason was there for me to have been forward in performing this Office to my Mother? Upon this he makes a Grave, and lays his Mother into it, and Buries ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... would be taken to the Sacred Grove. Torch-bearers and heralds would lead them by the tufts of yellow iris down the winding path to the cave, outside which an altar stood, and the great Saronia waited, with head thrown back and hands outspread towards the ground; her raven hair flowed down and lay in waves on folds of costly yellow silk bestudded with stars; her face was calm as death, rigid as a marble statue; emotion showed no ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... image of Charles, just as Modeste was the reproduction of her mother. Both parents continued their love for each other in their children. Bettina, a daughter of Provence, inherited from her father the beautiful hair, black as a raven's wing, which distinguishes the women of the South, the brown eye, almond-shaped and brilliant as a star, the olive tint, the velvet skin as of some golden fruit, the arched instep, and the Spanish waist from which the short basque skirt fell crisply. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... forward with a yell. "Yet a little patience, my masters!" said Paradise in a raised voice and with genuine amusement in his eyes. "It is true that that Kirby with whom I and our friend there on the ground sailed was somewhat short and as swart as a raven, besides having a cut across his face that had taken away part of his lip and the top of his ear, and that this gentleman who announces himself as Kirby hath none of Kirby's marks. But we are fair and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the halo and the fiery shame That fashion thus a crown and curse of love? Have roted words such power to bless and blame? Ay, men have stained a raven from many a dove, And all the grace and all the grief hereof Are the two words which bore one's lips apart And which the ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... old Jack up; sometimes hard swearin', straight goin' Bob; sometimes little Raven, as true a pair of hands and light and tight a seat as hunter ever had; sometimes Lory Ling, as reckless as the old Roscommon sire of him I used to carry when I was a five-year-old, with a ring in his swears, a stab in his ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to give the remainder of the title and the date:—"Together with the Lord Falkland's Speech in Parliament, 1640, relating to that subject: London, printed for Ben. Bragg, at the Black Raven in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... down, and killed his birds, of which there was an extraordinary attendance, for Manabozho is master of the fowls of the air, and this was the appointed morning for them to call and pay their court to him. Among the number was a raven, accounted the meanest of birds, which Grasshopper killed and hung up by the neck, to ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... the species had been supported by subsequent additions; that it was a standing receptacle for all vagabonds and beggars: "but there is something in the true gipsey," said he, "which I cannot but consider as characteristic of a certain definite origin. They are all tall, raw-boned, and with raven locks; and though like the Jews of different countries they may have national traits, these traits are never sufficient to merge a certain essential character; they seem chiefly only minor differences added to ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... there not beauty in other lands, And locks of raven hue, That thou must pine for a maiden cold, Whose ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... upon the earth, and the highest archangel which ministers to God above, are equally safe beneath the divine protection. The Being who holds the universe, who keeps worlds in their places, is also employed to count the feathers of the young raven's wing, and number the hairs which ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... Swift found his old playmate grown from a sickly child into a girl of fifteen, in perfect health. She came, he says, to be "looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... land, fell upon the rocks like a monster, and tore them to pieces. The next morning thousands of sea fowls' nests were wrecked, and where green fields had been there were black sands. Now there was sore need of wise counsel. A shrewd old raven said that the fire should be roused. All the birds agreed that the raven had spoken well, but none dared do the deed. The raven was made judge, and decided that the spider should undertake the ticklish task, and that the eagle should carry her ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... With a sad smile he turned to the child who called to him by his name. They were a strange pair, for the boy was dark, and foreign-looking, and there was something of cunning in his restless black eyes. The man's large hand rested softly on the raven curls of the youngster as he ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... winter weather, None to guide them, Walk'd at night on the misty heather; Night, as black as a raven's feather; Both were lost and ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a great English poet had rushed down on Venice like a raven on a corpse, to croak out in lyric poetry—the first and last utterance of social man—the burden of a de profundis. English poetry! Flung in the face of the city that had given birth to Italian ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... HADDA PADDA (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down near ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... music, and the wine, The garlands, the rose odours, and the flowers, The sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments, The white arms, and the raven hair—the braids And bracelets—swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, An India in itself, yet dazzling not the eye ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... than a hermitage for religious exiles from the world. Four years later (in 864) Gardar the Swede reached this new Ultima Thule, and re-named it from himself "Gardar's Holm." Yet another Viking, Raven Floke, followed the track of the first explorer in 867, before Iceland got its final name and earliest colonisation from the Norsemen Ingolf and Leif and the sheep-farmers of the Faeroes in 874, the third year of Alfred's ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... A raven sat upon a tree, And not a word he spoke, for His beak contained a piece of Brie, Or, maybe, it was Roquefort: We'll make it any kind you please— At all events, it ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... Their raven hair was loosely twisted and threaded with pearls, while pendants of the latter hung from their ears. The garb which covered their forms was made of similar skins to those which the men wore, but more elaborately ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Mother of Ayo, Mother of Ibor. Singing of Wendel men, Ambri and Assi; How to the Winilfolk Went they with war-words,— 'Few are ye, strangers, And many are we: Pay us now toll and fee, Cloth-yarn, and rings, and beeves: Else at the raven's meal Bide the sharp bill's doom.' Clutching the dwarfs work then, Clutching the bullock's shell, Girding gray iron on, Forth fared the Winils all, Fared the Alruna's sons, Ayo and Ibor. Mad at heart stalked they: Loud wept the women all, Loud the Alruna ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... possessions. Only his boat he kept; and that he made ready for a voyage, till there was not so much as a nail wanting to make it better. Then he took on board his wife and his three sons, Robert the Red, William Wendat, and Hugh Raven, and his two fair daughters, Gunnild and Levive, and Havelok; and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... thy screech, lying raven!" exclaimed Gryffyth, his eyes darting fire and, his slight form dilating. "Once, priest and monk went before us to inspire, not to daunt; and our cry, Alleluia! was taught us by the saints of the Church, on the day when Saxons, fierce and many as ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the door in my face. I knocked at the next door, and after waiting for a minute it was opened by a short, middle-aged woman, with black eyes and a flattened nose, who stared at me, and then said, "A Quaker, by the looks o' ye." She had the strident voice of a raven, and she smelt, I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... love again Where meet the river banks and glen. The moonlight vaults beyond the trees To gain the river side, and sees A dusky maiden sitting there, Who twines her lovely raven hair, And frequent lifts her melting eyes To where the flashing ripple flies Across the bosom of that glass Where dancing stars nocturnal pass. A princess of the wildwood she, And graceful as the deer that flee Till stricken by the light-winged shaft So deadly from ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... such branches stuck in the ground, and slanting over their procumbent forms. The Bhotanese were rude and boisterous in their pursuits, constantly complaining to the Sirdars, and wrangling over their meals. The Ghorkas were sprightly, combing their raven hair, telling interminably long stories, of which money was the burthen, or singing Hindoo songs through their noses in chorus; and being neater and better dressed, and having a servant to cook their food, they seemed quite the gentlemen ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... call him so; and his aunts, by way of adding to the aviary, made him Ralph the Raven, so I mean it to stick by him; I believe papa has forgotten the other dreadful fact, for I caught him giving his name as Ralph Cavendish Dusautoy. How the dear vicar of Bayford will devour him! and what work I shall have to keep ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ox-hide, and drawn above the knee. In his girdle was thrust a large hunting-knife; a horn with a silver mouthpiece depended from his shoulder, and he wore a long bow and a quiver full of arrows at his back. A flat bonnet, made of fox-skin and ornamented with a raven's wing, covered his hair, which was as white ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... beautiful Star. No one else can be taken for her, With her beauty no girl can compare. Both the sun and the moon seem to shine, Resplendent they shine from a height, Their rays to her beauty resign Their brilliant light with delight. Her hair is a soft raven black, Her tresses are bound with gold thread, They fall in long folds down her back, And add charm to her beautiful head. Her eyelashes brighten her face, Two rainbows less brilliant and fair, Her eyes full of mercy and grace, With nought but two, suns can compare. The eyelids with ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... strenuous in opposing the immortality of the soul: for he has written three books, which are entitled Lesbiacs, because the discourse was held at Mitylene, in which he seeks to prove that souls are mortal. The Stoics, on the other hand, allow us as long a time for enjoyment as the life of a raven; they allow the soul to exist a great while, but are ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... ten months the tops of the mountains were seen, and Noah sent out a raven and a dove. The raven flew to and fro, but the dove came back into the ark, because she found no place to ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... sleep in my place of watching, when I heard a rapping at my Chamber door. "Only this and nothing more." Poe—The Raven. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of martial dignity, however, soon began to be seen in the best drawing-rooms in Moscow. His bald head with its tufts of dyed hair, and the soiled ribbon of the Order of St. Anne which he wore over a cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, began to be familiar to all the pale and listless young men who hang morosely about the card-tables while dancing is going on. Pavel Petrovitch knew how to gain a footing in society; he spoke little, but from ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... were no birds except little stone-chats, that hopped and chirped among the large round stones. Far below, he could see the tops of the trees, and here and there a stream glittering under the sunbeams. Nothing disturbed the silence but the hoarse croak of the raven, or the wild cry of a kite or eagle, that, like a speck, wheeled far up in the sky. But suddenly, Eric heard a roar like thunder coming from the direction towards which the thread was leading him. He stopped for a moment, but the thread was firm in his hand, and ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod
... more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... woman, with hair as black as a raven's wing, walked through the depot, where a dozen or more bodies were awaiting burial. Passing from one to another, she finally lifted the paper covering from the face of a woman, young and with traces of beauty showing through the stains of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... wily witch, With sweet white face and raven hair? Who by her art bewitched his heart And held ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... gaily forth to die for his lady love. But in order to be really loved and respected there was one hard and fast condition laid down, to which all women must conform—they must be beautiful, no getting out of that. They simply had to have starry eyes and golden hair, or else black as a raven's wing; they had to have pale, white, and haughty brow, and a laugh like a ripple of magic. Then they were all right and armored knights would die for them quick ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... that vied with each other, Hilda took the hood, and drew it partially over her brow. Leaning lightly on a long staff, the head of which formed a raven, carved from some wood stained black, she passed into the hall, and thence through the desecrated tablinum, into the mighty court formed by the shattered peristyle; there she stopped, mused a moment, and called on Edith. The girl was soon ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was delighted with the energy of his attendant. Having scraped his head as clean as he could with an indifferent razor, Yussuf then soaped and lathered, scrubbed and sponged the skin of the pilgrim, until it was as smooth and glossy as the back of a raven. He then wiped him dry, and taking his seat upon the backbone of his customer, he pinched and squeezed all his flesh, thumped his limbs, twisted every joint till they cracked like faggots in a blaze, till the poor hadji was almost reduced ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Masque of the Magi The Balled of Hampstead Heath Litany to Satan The Translator and the Children Opportunity Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities War Song of the Saracens Joseph and Mary No Coward's Song A Western Voyage Fountains The Welsh Sea Oxford Canal Hialmar speaks to the Raven The Ballad of the Student in the South The Queen's song Lord Arnaldos We that were friends My Friend Ideal Mary Magdalen I rose from dreamless hours Prayer A Miracle of Bethlehem Gravis Dulcis Immutabilis Pillage The Ballad of Zacho Pavlovna ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... bidden to assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. The order was issued by the head-chief, Oconostota, a very old man, renowned for the prowess he had shown in former years when warring against the English. On the 17th of March, Oconostota and two other chiefs, the Raven and the Carpenter, signed the Treaty of the Sycamore Shoals, in the presence and with the assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe, half of them warriors; for all who could had come to the treaty grounds. Henderson thus obtained a grant ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... girls. "By golly," he exclaimed, "that's right!" He put a hand on his heart. "One with hair filled with captured sunlight, the other with hair like the raven's wing, filled with the ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... befallen thus. One day, as a caravan of pilgrims was slowly climbing the mountain gorges threaded by the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, or halted for a moment in the noontide heat, they were startled by the appearance of a gaunt and sinewy man, with flowing raven locks, and a voice which must have been as sonorous and penetrating as a clarion, who cried, "Repent! the Kingdom of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... wisdom is eager to harm that man who, with single heart, accepted the exalted promise. There is no end to the infinity of the ocean of birth and death for those men who raven to destroy the doctrine that is mighty to save them if they would ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... Swan and desired to secure for himself the same beautiful plumage. Supposing that the Swan's splendid white color arose from his washing in the water in which he swam, the Raven left the altars in the neighborhood where he picked up his living, and took up residence in the lakes and pools. But cleansing his feathers as often as he would, he could not change their color, while through want ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated? Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering? Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable, Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton, Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it, Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated. Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Camulodune! There ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... Thackeray The King of Brentford William Makepeace Thackeray Kaiser & Co A. Macgregor Rose Nongtongpaw Charles Dibdin The Lion and the Cub John Gay The Hare with Many Friends John Gay The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven Guy Wetmore Carryl The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder George Canning Villon's Straight Tip to all Cross Coves William Ernest Henley Villon's Ballade Andrew Lang A Little Brother of the Rich Edward ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... her request, watching her curiously, as she laid both hands in the warm sunshine, which bathed her fair, round arms and shone upon her raven hair. She felt what she could not see, and Louis Kennedy ne'er forgot the agonized expression of the white, beautiful face which turned toward him as the wretched Maude moaned piteously, "Yes, brother, 'tis morning to you, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... about his own locks whitened by the cares of railroading, and the raven hair of the reporters—where do they ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... with them, and Hagen. These knights, they say, wore clothes of raven-black, and their shields were mickle, broad and goodly. Stones from India shone on their apparel. They left the vessel unguarded on the beach, and rode up to the castle. There they saw eighty and six towers, three great palaces, and a ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... who had been scanning her critically where she stood before them, drinking, gave a pitying grunt. "By the crooked horn, boy, you must have had naught but ill luck since the time of Scoerstan! No more meat is on you than a raven could eat; and the night I was in the Englishman's hall, you had the appearance of having been under a lash. Your guardian spirit must have ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... in rather a childish way, with blue eyes and fair hair. She is not my ideal among women, but no man ever marries his ideal. The man who has sworn by eyes as black as a stormy midnight and raven hair generally unites himself to the most insipid thing in blondes, and the idolater of golden locks takes to wife some frizzy-haired West Indian with an unmistakable dip of the tar-brush. When will you go ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... sir, if you are alive, awake." Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and, the love-charm beginning to work, immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant love and admiration, telling her she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven, and that be would run through fire for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like speeches. Helena, knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia's lover, and that he was solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not whether he who stilled the raven's hunger Should of me be praised as of the living or the dead, Since of a truth his men tell either tale (Bootless of himself to question) though wounded ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... be argued. The journals venturing such an opinion were childish drivelers, putting forth views long since exploded before the whole world. He was still loud in this opinion when his little book of epigrams, The Raven of Zurich and Other Rhymes, came out, and being bright and saucy was reprinted in America. The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign soil his own ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much for his mental balance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... man, being a rice-farmer, went daily with hoe or spade into the fields, working hard from the first croak of the raven until O Tento Sama (as the sun is called) had gone down behind the hills. Every day the dog followed him to work, and kept near by, never once harming the white heron that walked in the footsteps of the old man to ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was asleep him befell a vision, that there came to him two birds, the one as white as a swan, and the other was marvellous black; but it was not so great as the other, but in the likeness of a Raven. Then the white bird came to him, and said: An thou wouldst give me meat and serve me I should give thee all the riches of the world, and I shall make thee as fair and as white as I am. So the white bird departed, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... from the glacier several years hence and a few miles nearer peace. In that they resemble men. 'Pon my word, Miss Wynton, you have caused me to evolve a rather poetic explanation of certain gray hairs I have noticed of late among my own raven locks." ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... ascending from below him on the west, and forming a strange contrast to the merry notes he had been singing. It was like the noonday song of the joyous lark, as he soars into the blue sky, answered by the midnight croak of the raven as he sits on the old abbey's ivy-covered wall. He listened. It seemed rather like a continued shriek than a song, or the fearful cry of the fabled Banshee as she flits by the family mansion in Ireland, to warn the inmates, as is ignorantly supposed, that one of their number ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... or nothing. And if you speak to him he tells you of how the young ravens were fed. But he always forgets that he's not a young raven himself." ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... with him a splendid young woman, with big, lustrous eyes, and hair that shone with the gloss of a raven's wing in the sun. She laughed at him proudly as he danced and leaped beside her, replying softly in Cree, which is the most beautiful language in the world, to everything that ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... with which his imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to him a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair—threw it on the table—and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks, which but a few hours before had been as black as the raven's wing, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... in black armor. Moreover, this knight rode upon a black horse and his shield was black and his spear was black and the furniture of his horse was black, so that everything appertaining to that knight was as black as any raven. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... repeated shots." The common lark is drawn down from the sky, and is caught in large numbers, by a small mirror made to move and glitter in the sun. Is it admiration or curiosity which leads the magpie, raven, and some other birds to steal and secrete bright objects, such as ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... into her sympathizing ear the confidences which his mother, alas! could not receive. With tearful eyes and sorrowing heart this new-found friend watched by him to the last—then closed the heavy eyes, and smoothed the raven locks, and sent the quiet form, lovely even in death, to her who waited its arrival ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... been taking the measure of the tall, handsome man before him, with his raven-black hair and grave features. "You must give us a chance to try your mettle," he said; and then, as others approached to meet him, and he was forced to pass on, he laid a caressing hand on Montague's arm, whispering, with a sly ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... ends of halters in his hand. Barefooted servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda—her own camerista—bearing high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch of starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... grant me then permission, or I will put myself to death." "If so," exclaimed the affrighted sultan, "there is no refuge or help but from the omnipotent Allah: well has the proverb remarked, that the nestling would not be restrained from the air, when suddenly the raven pounced upon it and bore it away. Heaven guard my son from the consequences of his imprudence." Having said thus, the sultan commanded preparations for the requisites of travel, and ordered a force to accompany the headstrong prince; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... been remarked by former voyagers, that, both among the Society and Friendly Islanders, an adoration is paid to particular birds; and I am led to believe that the same custom prevails here; and that, probably, the raven is the object of it, from seeing two of these birds tame at the village of Kakooa, which they told me were Eatooas; and, refusing every thing I offered for them, cautioned me, at the same time, not to hurt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Eventually her proud spirit will be tamed, probably by a storm, or a ship-wreck, or by ten days in an open boat. I shall then secure your love, my peerless ARAMINTA, and you will marry me and turn out as soft and gentle as the moss-rose which now nestles in your raven tresses. The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... the faintest soupcon of rouge. I rubbed on her sweet lips just the suspicion of pink, liked by an elderly grande dame francaise, who has not yet "abdicated." I then made myself up more seriously: a blue shadow on the lids, a raven touch on the lashes; a flick of the hare's-foot under my eyes and on my ear-tips: an extra coat of pink and a brilliant (most injurious!) varnish on the nails. Then, with a dash of Rose Ambree for my companion's blouse and Nuits d'Orient for mine, we sallied forth ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Freydisa?" I asked. "Is it just because you love to croak like a raven on a rock, ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... foure white bulles in the trace. Instead of coat-armour on his harness, With yellow nails, and bright as any gold, He had a beare's skin, coal-black for old*. *age His long hair was y-kempt behind his back, As any raven's feather it shone for black. A wreath of gold *arm-great*, of huge weight, *thick as a man's arm* Upon his head sate, full of stones bright, Of fine rubies and clear diamants. About his car there wente white alauns*, *greyhounds Twenty and more, as great as any steer, To hunt the lion ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... discussed these things; "and grandmamma couldn't bear his ways or his language, and used to shut herself up in her own room more and more, and they never agreed, and at last she went quite mad, so the saying came true. Did you never hear the saying? Why, you know her father's crest was a raven, and grandpapa's crest was a bee, and for generations the families had lived near each other and never been friends; and it was said, if the blood of the bees and the ravens were ever put in the same bowl it wouldn't mingle. Do you ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... dear bargain at half the price to any woman, Colin. And you never saw Isabel. She was here when you were in Glasgow. She has the bonniest black e'en in Scotland, and hair like a raven's wing." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... decided on a journey north, to the uttermost end of the world, where it touches the sky. He imagined that he could only reach this point by sea, and thought at first of travelling on the wings of an eagle. Meantime, a raven directed him, when he came to a broad expanse of blue water, to look for a place where rushes grew on the bank, and to stamp on the ground with his right foot, when the mouth of the earth and the strongly guarded doors would fly ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... bustling tide, found so much to ask and to hear, that she forgot the state of anxious uncertainty in which she had left her young mistress. Having no pigeon to dismiss in pursuit of information when her raven messenger had failed to return with it, Edith was compelled to venture in quest of it out of the ark of her own chamber into the deluge of confusion which overflowed the rest of the Castle. Six voices speaking at once, informed her, in reply to her first enquiry, that ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott |
