"Reft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peoples each in turn awake From virtue, as a man from his brief love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the air. It asks no attention beyond its daily bath. From the day I tied it on that block last year—reft from home and all its pleasures, bought with paltry silver at Stevens' Auction Rooms—I have not touched it save to dip and to replace it on its hook. When the flowers fade, thither it will return, and ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... we, of the Gar-Danes in distant days, The folk-kings' fame have found. How deeds of daring the aethelings did. Oft Scyld-Scefing from hosts of schathers, From many men the mead seats [reft]. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... companion of distress, Plague to myself, consumed by my thought, How may my voice or pipe in tune be brought, Since I am reft of solace and delight? ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... drink— Stop, friends, and think How, reft of spirits weak or strong, My Nation will be purified Of all corruptions vile. The lamb and lion, side by side, Will smile and smile and smile. The workman when his day is o'er Will hurry to his cottage door To kiss his loving wife; He'll lay his wages in her ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... live and linger forth my time In longer life to double my distress? O me, most woeful wight, whom no mishap Long ere this day could have bereaved hence. Might not these hands, by fortune or by fate, Have pierc'd this breast, and life with iron reft? Or in this palace here where I so long Have spent my days, could not that happy hour Once, once have happ'd in which these hugy frames With death by fall might have oppressed me? Or should not this most hard and cruel soil, So oft where I have press'd my wretched ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... loved and fair, The whelmed beneath the tide,— The broken harps around whose strings The dull sea-monsters glide! Mother and nursling sweet, Reft from the household throng; There's bitter weeping in the nest Where breathed their soul ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... there hath chanced A sharper harm to England and to Rome, Than Calais taken. Julius the Third Was ever just, and mild, and father-like; But this new Pope Caraffa, Paul the Fourth, Not only reft me of that legateship Which Julius gave me, and the legateship Annex'd to Canterbury—nay, but worse— And yet I must obey the Holy Father, And so must you, good cousin;—worse than all, A passing bell toll'd in a dying ear— He hath cited me to ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... materialism, whose dogmatic intolerance, put them on a level with the bigoted mediaeval ecclesiasticism which they denounce. Yet our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and our civilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which most highly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of science during the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never has philanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... been the fellest strife, There lay in the moonlight clear The good Earl Douglas, reft of life ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... knew has gone. They pulled it down in the forties—that unhappy decade for anything ancient and quiet in Surrey villages; all they left was the tower, a mighty mass of stone and ivy that stands with its nave reft from it, the forlornest and most meaningless of ruins. If the tower might stand, why not the nave? They pulled the nave down, and left the tower standing, so Mr. C.J. Swete, one of Epsom's historians, tells you, in order that it "should remain to beautify the landscape." They acted, he observes, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... action of the most swift and singular kind. Mr. Strelley saw two porters scramble after his portmanteaux, had his valise reft from his hand, and that hand firmly grasped before he could frame his reply. The vehemence of this large perspiring sage caused the struggle between pride and civility to be short; such faint protests as he ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... slow! heave-a-ho!— Lower him to the mould below; With the well-known sailor ballad, Lest he grow more cold and pallid At the thought that Ocean's child, From his mother's arms beguiled. Must repose for countless years, Reft of all her briny tears, All the rights he owned by birth, In the dusty lap ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... mother dead! Her one true guide and friend! Her heart seemed reft in twain. Would she had died! A year at least it meant ere yet again, She needs must list to suits to be denied. O death, or Harold, come and let there be ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... Reft of a carriage, life is poor: A well-conducted set Needs ready money to procure Their butler and Debrett. The country totters to its fall, Disgraced to all intents, Unless you instantly recall Our ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... it—and with it all Th' allegiance that I owe to France; ay take it; And with it, take the hope I breathe o'er it: That so, before Colonna's host, your arms Lie crush'd and sullied with dishonour's stain; So, reft in sunder by contending factions, Be your Italian provinces; so torn By discord and dissension this vast empire; So broken and disjoin'd your subjects' loves; So fallen your son's ambition, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... heaven! beneath thy dread expanse, One hopeless, dark idolater of chance, Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined, The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind; Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust, In joyless union wedded to the dust, Could all his parting energy dismiss, And call this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... had I learnt the names of all that press Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight Nigh reft ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... not rest content Till he had found that old Astronomer; Therefore at midnight to his house he went And prayed him be his tale's interpreter. And yet upon the heaven his eyes he bent, Hearing the marvel; yet he sought for her That was a wanting, in the hope her face Once more might fill its reft abiding-place. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Criseyde, allas! What subtiltee. What newe lust, what beautee, what science, 1255 What wratthe of iuste cause have ye to me? What gilt of me, what fel experience Hath fro me raft, allas! Thyn advertence? O trust, O feyth, O depe aseuraunce, Who hath me reft ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... memory Of that which is no more, or painting's woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 710 And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 715 Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... doubtful business. Funds had to be collected to buy instruments. Musicians who could play the instruments had to be picked out from among the men, and nobody knew how to find them. Hardly anybody stayed long in these base camps, and a good musician might at any moment be reft away and sent up ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... raised. They reached the same point. He was still before them, but his race was nearly run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The rock was sheer—the pool deep—yet still he hurried on. He reached the muddy ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length. I knew Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth, White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth, God, immortal and dead! Therefore I go; never to rest, or win Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the girl, who was kneeling, consoling the dog, who, reft 'tween pride and pain, showed a lamentable countenance. Suddenly she looked up and ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Voice which did thy sounds approve, Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above, What art thou ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... falls in with the 'elfin grey' who might have been an 'earthly knight'; and he tells her how, as a youth, he had been reft ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... from side to side. No, no! The ground was rising, falling! It seemed no longer solid. Like a wave it rose and fell. The foot-hills below us separated, reft into awful chasms. I looked toward our ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... has reft us But the brave and kindly clay ('Tis but dust where Lander left us, And but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... months to add by his honest labor to the comfort of his fellow men, and to the aggregate wealth of the nation, he finds himself suddenly in the clutches of the law for trespassing on the public domain. The proceeds of his long winter's work are reft from him, and exposed to public sale for the benefit of his paternal government . . . and the object of this oppression and wrong is further harassed by ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... allowed successive waves to pass over their bodies, whilst others, driven wild by the blows, returned them with their hunting-crops and walking-canes. And then, as half the crowd strained to the left and half to the right to avoid the pressure from behind, the vast mass was suddenly reft in twain, and through the gap surged the rough fellows from behind, all armed with loaded sticks and yelling for "Fair play and Gloucester!" Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, the inner ropes snapped like threads, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lady heard this cruel sentence, 'Reft of sense she stood, and rack'd with anguish: In the court she heard the horses stamping, And in fear that it was Asan coming, Fled towards the tower, to leap ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... very true, my sovereign King, My skill may weel be doubted; But facts are chiels that winna ding, An' downa be disputed: Your royal nest, beneath your wing, Is e'en right reft and clouted, And now the third part o' the string, An' less, will gang aboot it Than ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... that decrease; So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease: And through the trumpet of a child of Rome Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece. As though some northern hand Reft from the Latin land A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece To clothe with golden sound Of old joy newly found And rapture as of penetrating peace The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime, And give its darkness light of ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... happy day! Underneath a leafy spray With her sister stands my may. O sweet love! He who now is reft of ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... of arms where blue swords gleam, The battle-shout, the eagle's scream, The Joy of war, no more can please: Matilda is far o'er the seas. My sword may break, my shield be cleft, Of land or life I may be reft; Yet I could sleep, but for one care,— One, o'er ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark object—the form ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that thought ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... authors of sweet peace and unity, But pleasing to th' infernal empery, Under whose ensigns Wars and Discords fight, Since an even number you may disunite In two parts equal, naught in middle left To reunite each part from other reft; And five they hold in most especial prize, Since 'tis the first odd number that doth rise From the two foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of number. Next, did go A noble ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things more, but the coming of those verdoemte soldiers of the Engelsch Commandant ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... on the lads an' the land I hae left, An' how love has been lifted, an' friendship been reft; How the hinnie o' hope has been jumbled wi' ga', Then I sigh for the lads an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... reverend Sire, went footing slow, His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, 110 (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Anow of such as for ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... dust. His head the trenchant blade cleaves to the teeth, And dead the Kalif falls.—"Pagan accursed," He cries, "not here shalt thou say Carle lost aught; To wife nor lady shalt thou ever boast In thine own land, that thou hast reft from Carle One denier's worth, or me or others harmed!" And then he called Rolland unto ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... rue, A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only flower neglected left, Cast down and trodden under ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... And this reft house is that, the which he built, Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled, Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak'd so wild, Squeak, not unconscious of their fathers' guilt. Did ye not see her gleaming through ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... No word of thine can touch my soul Or win me to thy love, who by deceit Hast reft my life away. And then thou com'st To school me,—of noblest father, basest son! Perish, the Atridae first of all, and then Laertes' ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... unweeting reft; There as thou sleptst in tender swadling band, And her base elfin brood there for thee left: Such men do changelings call, so chang'd by Fairies theft. Book ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... lad was call'd awa for to cross the stormy main, An' to face the battle's bray in the cause of injured Spain; But in my love's departure hard fate has injured me, That has reft him frae my arms, an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... shall be to thee a token Of a fond heart reft and broken; And the month of joy and gladness Shall but fill thy soul with sadness— And thou wilt sigh for ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... dreaded some ill!— Isolda! mistress! Heart of mine! What secret dost thou hide? Without a tear thou'st quitted thy father and mother, and scarce a word of farewell to friends thou gavest; leaving home thou stood'st, how cold and still! pale and speechless on the way, food rejecting, reft of sleep, stern and wretched, wild, disturbed; how it pains me so to see thee! Friends no more we seem, being thus estranged. Make me partner in thy pain! Tell me freely all thy fears! Lady, thou hearest, sweetest and dearest; if for true friend ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and grown rusty at climbing" has clothed himself so long that as he beholds himself in the delusive mirrors he has for centuries held up to nature he believes he is somehow of cosmic importance. Poor and naked as this aspiring ape must seem to the eye of reason, asks Mr. Cabell, ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the stars on their Libyan passage, had slipped from the stern and fallen amid the waves. To him, when he first knew the melancholy form in that depth of shade, he thus opens speech: 'What god, O Palinurus, reft thee from us and sank thee amid the seas? forth and tell. For in this single answer Apollo deceived me, never found false before, when he prophesied thee safety on ocean and arrival on the Ausonian coasts. See, is this ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive, headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to an unknown, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... our cherished ones there, Our wives and our children, now reft of our care: Farewell, everloved of our souls—nevermore, Shall we look on your faces—our lifetime ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... they saw visions, and they spoke of strange ill: "A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof: A bed, a bed empty, that was once pressed in love: And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still, Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!" For she whom he desireth is beyond the deep sea, And a ghost in his ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... same moment he Is as softly moved—"no rose Would he pluck before the storm Reft ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... being untouched by his disaster; but there was no limit to the flood of damage; not one of his possessions was safe now. Katharine had deceived him; she had mixed herself with every thought of his, and reft of her they seemed false thoughts which he would blush to think again. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... The sculptor to make Beauty by. Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, That babe, or mother, one must die; So in mercy left the stock, And cut the branch; to save the shock Of young years widow'd; and the pain, When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "varium et mutabile semper foemina." Passion on the other hand is the mainspring of modern poetry, and it is difficult for us to realize the superior beauty of the calmer and vaster ideal of the poets of old. The figure of Dido, whirled hither and thither by the storms of warring emotions, reft even of her queenly dignity by the despair of her love, degraded by jealousy and disappointment to a very scold, is to the calm, serene figure of AEneas as modern sculpture, the sculpture of emotion, is to the sculpture of classic art. Each, no doubt, has its own peculiar beauty, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... is me—I would that I had ne'er to Susa gone, To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son. Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes! All desolate—my native land, reft of her children, lies!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... by virtue and by birth, Of Heaven lov'd, and honour'd on the earth; His country's hope, his kindred's chief delight, My husband dear, more than this world's light, Death hath me reft. But I from death will take His memory, to whom this tomb I make. John was his name (ah, was! wretch must I say), Lord Russell once, now my ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... sustain me, None to compare in the land, and not one that had worth is remaining! Mentor the gallant and goodly, and Troeilus prompt with the war-team; Hector, a god among men—he, too, who in nothing resembled Death-doom'd man's generation, but imaged the seed of Immortals— Battle hath reft me of these:—but the shames of my house are in safety; Jesters and singers enow, and enow that can dance on the feast-day; Scourges and pests of the realm; bold spoilers of kids and of lambkins! Will ye bestir ye at ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... with the Crown. In seizing on the control of the Church through his organized prelacy James held himself to have seized the control of the forces which acted through the Church, and to have won back that mastery of his realm which the Reformation had reft from the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Scotland, and in Edinburgh principallie, thought that thei could do no wrong to no Scottishe man; for a certane French man delivred a coulvering to George Tod, Scottisman, to be stocked, who bringing it throwght the streat, ane other French man clamed it, and wold have reft it from the said George; but he resisted, alledgeing that the Frenche man did wronge. And so begane parties to assemble, asweall to the Scottishman, as to the French; so that two of the French men war stryckin doune, and the rest chassed from ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... little just The wives of Troy with scattered hair, bearing the gown refused, 480 Sad they and suppliant, whose own hands their very bosoms bruised, While fixed, averse, the Goddess kept her eyes upon the ground. Thrice had Achilles Hector dragged the walls of Troy around, And o'er his body, reft of soul, was chaffering now for gold. Deep groaned AEneas from his heart in such wise to behold The car, the spoils, the very corpse of him, his fellow dead, To see the hands of Priam there all weaponless outspread. ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... gaping cleft, Even of half mere daylight reft, Rueful he peered to right and left, Muttering in his altered mood: 160 'The fate is hard that weaves my weft, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... his sword, and gone forth to the war; now he was returning from the field laden with the spoils of the foe. The cob, the cameos, the violoncello and the pianoforte, were all as it were trophies reft from the tent ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and, casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... reft of hope or friend, If such a thing should be, One day we take the downward bend, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... web is reft, The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers, And hapless innocence is left With no assets save sighs ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the damage to repair? Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, But in my hands the wheat and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... away. Shall future ages tell this tale Of inconsistence faint and frail? And art thou He of Lodi's bridge, Marengo's field, and Wagram's ridge! Or is thy soul like mountain-tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... chastisements, the foremost of ages called the Kirta is said to set in" (ibid., p. 228). "The King must be skilful in smiting" (ibid., p. 174). "Fierceness and ambition are the qualities of the King" (ibid., p. 59). "The King who is mild is regarded as the worst of his kind, like an elephant that is reft of fierceness" (ibid., p. 171). Indeed, failure to treat subjects with rigour is visited with penalties as tremendous as failure to protect them. "They forget their own position and most truly transcend ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... charred and reeling prow Reft of hope, they gather now, Finding, one by one, a grave In the vexed and sullen wave. Here the child, as if in sleep, Floats on waters dark and deep; There the mother sinks below, Shrieking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... went with me, pouring still with patient spirit Balm upon my wounded feelings, peace upon my burning soul; So that though man's love was reft me, 'twas the better to inherit That which far transcends man's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... through the spray of your glittering tears. Is your song a song of gladness? a paean of joyous might? Or a wail of discordant sadness for the wrongs you never can right? For the empty seat by the ingle? for children 'reft of their sire? For the bride sitting sad, and single, and pale, by the flickering fire? For your ravenous pools of suction? for your shattering billow swell? For your ceaseless work of destruction? for ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... all—and I had ceased even to wonder at the strangeness and variety of these visions or dream-episodes full of colour and sound which succeeded each other so swiftly. Therefore it hardly seemed remarkable to me when I saw the heavy curtain of mist which hung in front of my eyes suddenly reft asunder in many places and broken into a semblance of ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... then thy leader stood beside! Dazzles the cloud when shines the sun, Reft of his radiance, see it glide A shapeless mass of vapours dun; So of thy courage,—or if not, The matter is far darker dyed, What makes thee loth to leave this spot? Is there a motive thou ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... blood of this Black Knight. And for this carried they off the body piecemeal and the head, for that they well knew you were wounded; and of the head shall I have right sore need, for thereby shall a castle be yielded up to me that was reft from me by treason, so I may find the knight that I go seek, through whom it ought to be yielded ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... Reft away and wholly gone: O the spiritual confusion Of the pained progressive Don! If the facts are quite correct As regards the Architect, Comes the question, plain and ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... to celestial love! O reft from me and from my clinging grasp, And circled straightway by the close, warm clasp Of seraph bosoms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... threatened him, and to hug the rock that had torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had driven him upon it was past; but then again the rock drove back that wave so furiously, that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return, and the sharp rock (his cruel friend) to which he clinged for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting, that he fell off, and could sustain no longer: quite under water he fell, and past the help of fate, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and one of the men in it reminded me of this man. But the dancing was the least part of it. It was neither sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell, but something far more potent. In an instant I found myself reft away from the present with its dull dangers, and looking at a world all young and fresh and beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had vanished. It was a window I was looking from, and I was gazing at the finest landscape on earth, lit by the pure clean ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. Accordingly, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, looking in the face all the threatened evils to property, held that nothing but absolute law could ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... that he imagined her an injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or make any ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remained only the question as to how and when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she dare ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the crouching ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... think that the holding of this stone, reft from our crown, had something to do with the hold of these English upon our fair ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... them alone it hopes to prove. Ye verses, weep!—ye rhymes, your woes renew! For Cino, master of the love-fraught lay, E'en now is from our fond embraces torn! Pistoia, weep, and all your thankless crew! Your sweetest inmate now is reft away— But, heaven, rejoice, and hail ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... I been reft of sense, By gazing on their excellence, But meeting Mopsa in my way, And looking on her face of clay, Been healed, and cured, and made as sound, As though I ne'er had had a wound? And when in tables of my heart, Love wrought such things as bred my smart, Mopsa would come, with face of ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... wit, to flatter, left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There reft of health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... we could at other times go by sea; but now that the Spaniards are seeking to win back the rock of Gibraltar, which we have lately reft from them, and which Marlborough says must never be yielded up again, we cannot safely try that way; for we might well fall into the hands of some Spanish vessel, and languish, unknown and uncared for, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that price rises and falls. I am not going to take you to the green fields in which the creature which yielded the Veal was fed, or to discourse of the blossoming hawthorn hedges from whose midst it was reft away. Neither shall I speak of the rustic life, the toils, cares, and fancies of the farm-house near which it spent its brief lifetime. The Veal of which I intend to speak is Moral Veal, or (to speak with entire accuracy) Veal Intellectual, Moral, and Aesthetical. By Veal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... ambrosia—what the throne Of high Olympus—what the power I own, The golden sceptre of the starry skies— What the omnipotence that never dies, What might eternal, immortality— What e'en a god, oh love, if reft of thee? The shepherd who, beside the murmuring brooks, Leans on his true love's breast, nor cares to look After his straying lambs, in that sweet hour Envies me not my thunderbolt of power! She comes—she hastens nigh! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Sun, Knowing that thou art God I do not fear,— Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean of the Vast, Nor see ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... lilies, when the moon is hidden, Have naught but memories of beauty left. Hard, hard to bear! Her lot whom heaven has bidden To live alone, of love and lover reft. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... high the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray, Lance to lance, and horse to horse? Long years of havoc urge their ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... when Richard III. offered L1000 reward to any one who would deliver up the duke, Banastar betrayed him to John Mitton, sheriff of Shropshire, and he was conveyed to Salisbury, where he was beheaded. The ghost of the duke prayed that Banastar's eldest son, "reft of his wits might end his life in a pigstye;" that his second son might "be drowned in a dyke" containing less than "half a foot of water;" that his only daughter might be a leper; and that Banastar himself might "live in death and die in life."—Thomas Sackville, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Helen's face so mild, And in her bashful mien, The winning softness of the child, The blushes of fifteen. The witching smile, when prone to go, Arrests me, bids me stay; Nor joy, nor comfort can I know, When 'reft of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... shall the implacable sea vex me, Lysis hidden beneath a lonely rock, ever sounding harshly by my ear and alongside of my deaf tomb. Why, O fellow-men, have you made my dwelling by this that reft me of breath, me whom not trading in my merchant-ship but sailing in a little rowing-boat, it brought to shipwreck? and I who sought my living out of the sea, out of the sea ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... fled. Proud harbinger of day, Who scar'dst the vision with thy clarion shrill, Fell chanticleer; who oft hath reft away My fancied good, and brought substantial ill! Oh, to thy cursed scream, discordant still, Let harmony aye shut her gentle ear: Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill, Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the Derbian Nimphes were dumbe, Or of those Muses, what should be become, That of all those, the mountaines there among, Not one this while thy Epicediumsung; 10 But so it is, when they of thee were reft, They all those hills, and all those Riuers left, And sullen growne, their former seates remoue, Both from cleare Darwin, and from siluer Doue, And for thy losse, they greeued are so sore, That they haue vow'd they will come there no more; But leaue thy losse to me, that I should rue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... tell you, the goddess who glitters With gold on the perch of the falcon, The bride that I trusted, by beauty, From the bield of my hand has been taken. On the boat she makes glad in its gliding She is gone from me, reft from me, ravished! O shame, that we linger to save her, Too sweet for the ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could hear the crackling of the pile on high within the iron grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm; the collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The black cloud and the red flame fought, serpent against serpent; live ashes, reft by the wind, flew from the fire, and the sudden assaults of the sparks seemed to drive the snowflakes before them. The breakers, blurred at first in outline, now stood out in bold relief, a medley of rocks with peaks, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!" To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!" And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Extended in succession gay, Deep waving fields and pastures green, 140 With gentle slopes and groves between; These fertile plains, that softened vale, Were once the birthright of the Gael; The stranger came with iron hand, And from our fathers reft the land. 145 Where dwell we now! See, rudely swell Crag over crag, and fell o'er fell. Ask we this savage hill we tread For fattened steer or household bread; Ask we for flocks these shingles dry, 150 And well the mountain might reply, 'To you, as to your sires ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... it like your honour, I'll tell you the very words; it's no worth making a lie for the matter—'Pate,' said I, 'what ado had the lords and lairds and gentles at Lunnun wi' the carle and his walise?—When we had a Scotch Parliament, Pate,' says I (and deil rax their thrapples that reft us o't!) 'they sate dousely down and made laws for a haill country and kinrick, and never fashed their beards about things that were competent to the judge ordinar o' the bounds; but I think,' said I, 'that if ae kailwife pou'd aff her neighbour's mutch they wad hae the twasome o' them into the Parliament ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... woddis wend In obscure licht, quhen moyn may nocht be kenned; As Jupiter the kyng etheryall, With erdis skug hydis the hevynnys all And the myrk nycht, with her vissage gray, From every thing hes reft ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the spear, but left the shield! Valour and skill 'twas thine to try, And, tried in vain, 'twas thine to die. Ill had it seemed thy silver hair The last, the bitterest pang to share, For princedom reft, and scutcheons riven, And birthrights to usurpers given; Thy land's, thy children's wrongs to feel, And witness woes thou couldst not heal! On thee relenting Heaven bestows For honoured life an honoured close; And ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... in silence. Her physical strength was coming back to her, but yet she could not move, and she had no words to speak. He seemed to have reft from her every faculty of thought and feeling save a burning sense of shame. By his violence he had broken down all her defences. She seemed to have lost both the power and the will to resist. She remained speechless while the dreadful seconds ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... to desert places Shadowless, reft of rain and dew, Where stars stare down with sharpened faces From heavens ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... had to Asturias march'd Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge His quarrel, twice that number left their bones, Slain in unnatural battle, on the field Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths By righteous Heaven was reft." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... my sov'reign king, My skill may weel be doubted: But facts are chiels that winna ding, An' downa be disputed: Your royal nest beneath your wing, Is e'en right reft an' clouted, And now the third part of the string, An' less, will gang about it Than ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... days!—but they are past, And winter with his harsh and biting blast Remind me and my fellow-sparrows bold Of coming snow-storms, ice and sleet and cold; Reminds us, too, of those far-off abodes, Whence we were rudely reft by Col. R——s, On his acclimatizing purpose bent, And moved by scientific sentiment, My heart is anxious, Sir, from what I know Of last years sufferings from cold and snow, Another winter's hardships, will, I fear, Cause us poor colonists to disappear. What shall we ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... marvel where the spoil could have appeared. Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? Alas! developed, opens the decay, When the colossal fabric's form is neared: It will not bear the brightness of the day, Which streams too much on all—years—man—have reft away. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... And this reft house is that the which he built, Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled. Cautious in vain! these rats that squeak so wild, Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt. Did he not see her gleaming through the glade! Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... tell you of my death. I will come myself, and you shall see me die, and feast your eyes on the spectacle. Yet, Oh, ye gods, who look down on mortal woes, observe my fate! I ask but this! Let me be remembered in coming ages, and add those years to my name which you have reft from my life.' Thus he said, and, turning his pale face and weeping eyes towards her mansion, he fastened a rope to the gate-post, on which he had hung garlands, and putting his head into the noose, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... go alive," cried William at that, seeing himself reft of his arms. "It were great villainy to do to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... her; if they wrong her honour, The proudest of them shall well hear of it. Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, Nor age so eat up my invention, Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, But they shall find, awak'd in such a kind, Both strength of limb, and policy of mind, Ability in means, and choice of friends, To ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... the time, woe worth the day, That reft us of thee, Tabitha! For we have lost, with thee, the meal, The bits, the morsels, and the deal Of gentle paste and yielding dough, That thou on widows did bestow. CHOR. All's gone, and death hath taken Away from us Our maundy; ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... fierce servant, full of kingly awe And high disdaine, whenas his soveraine Dame So rudely handled by her foe he sawe, With gaping jawes full greedy at him came, And ramping on his shield, did weene the same 365 Have reft away with his sharpe rending clawes: But he was stout, and lust did now inflame His corage more, that from his griping pawes He hath his shield redeem'd, and foorth his ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the fresh ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which reveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher, thinking to ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... pass that way; but he does not come, because his kind kinsman, Ottocar, must have time to consult the god-fathers and god-mothers of the piece, or "Witches of the Rhine;" which he does in the "storm-reft hut of Zabaren." This Zabaren is a hospitable gentleman, who sings a good song, sees much company, and is played by that convivial genius Paul Bedford. Ottocar is introduced amongst other friends to a "speaking spirit," who, being personated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various |
