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Gleam   Listen
noun
Gleam  n.  
1.
A shoot of light; a small stream of light; a beam; a ray; a glimpse. "Transient unexpected gleams of joi." "At last a gleam Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste His (Satan's) traveled steps." "A glimmer, and then a gleam of light."
2.
Brightness; splendor. "In the clear azure gleam the flocks are seen."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gleam" Quotes from Famous Books



... great, warm, yellow gold of the sunshine. The sea lay before us a mound of blue closing up the end of the valley, as if overpowered into quietness by the lordliness of the sun overhead; and the hills between which we went lay like great sheep, with green wool, basking in the blissful heat. The gleam from the waters came up the pass; the grand castle crowned the left-hand steep, seeming to warm its old bones, like the ruins of some awful megatherium in the lighted air; one white sail sped like a glad thought ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... a corner of the room, fearing she would not live through the last confession of her blameless life. A dim lamp, from which she was carefully screened, shed a sickly gleam around the apartment; and, even in the deep silence of that awful hour, the low and labored whispers of her voice scarcely reached my ear. Suddenly I was startled by a suppressed, but fervent exclamation from the monk, instantly followed by a faint cry from your mother's lips. ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... Nobody is great enough to know him. If people knew him they would fall down and kiss the ground he walks on.' It is certain she deemed him the wisest, the noblest, the handsomest, the most gifted, of human kind. That little gleam of mockery in her eye died out instantly when she looked at him, when she spoke of him or listened to him; instead, there came a tender light of love, and her face grew pale with the fervour of her affection. Yet, when he jested, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... the light had broken on that morn,[B] Before the sun had shed his rays around, While blackest darkness heralded the dawn, The little fleet had left its anchor-ground; With not a lantern showing light or gleam, It floated silently adown ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... old. A candle standing near him threw a gleam upon his soldierly face, lit up his brow, and brought out admirably his clear skin, his ardent eyes, his black and slightly curling hair, which had the brilliancy of jet. The hair grew vigorously upward from the forehead and temples, sharply defining ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... it, all chance of seeing how the appearance of the man who had so nearly met his death last night affected him, was gone. He came up again still the same, quiet, dignified Borkins of yore. Not a gleam of anything but the most obsequious interest in the task before him marred the tranquillity of his features. If the man knew anything, then he was a fine actor. But—did he? That was the question that interested Cleek during the remainder ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... wouldn't,' said the darky, a pleasurable gleam passing through his eyes; 'dat sort don't run; dey ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... intimates that more than once, when he was floating paper-boats in his bath or climbing a tree in the garden to look out for icebergs from the crow's-nest, he felt in his child's heart that water was the ultimate quest, the adventure, the gleam. And yet for many a long year railways entranced and enslaved him. Often he would sit for hours, forgetful of the griddle cakes rapidly being burnt to a cinder, and gaze at the puffs of steam coming from the spout of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various

... thing that the men of Porcupine City had seen was that cold, quiet smile of Jan Larose, the gleam of his teeth, the something in his eyes that is more to be feared among men than bluster and brute strength. They laid it to confidence. None guessed that this race held for Jan no thought of the gold at the end. None guessed that he was following out the working of a code as old as the name of ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... her work and was standing erect, with her hands, loosely clasped, hanging down before her. Her eyes, with the same hopeless look in them, were turned toward the window, through which the relenting sun was sending one bright gleam before he went away, after a ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... Jimmy with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. She resented the patronising tone that he was adopting. How dare he be cheerful when she was so unhappy—and because of him, too? She determined that his self-complacency ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... came and began lighting the oil lamps that stood in brackets along the wall; but before their gleam reached his face the old engineer slid down and hurried away home with never ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... endeavor, no clean inlet opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which from that vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful does not send its fructifying tides. There is no height in history but is illuminated by its gleam. Only through the beautiful can truth attain its full stature; only through the beautiful can the heart be perfectly purified; only with vision purged by the beautiful can anything be seen in its totality. All other faculties it makes prolific; it is the mental generator. It helps to unveil, and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... snowstorm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly for an instant, but anon, with the dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my finger-ends! The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the merest phosphoric glimmer, like that which exudes, rather than ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... part of the very inveteracy of his straw hat and his white waistcoat, of the trick of his hands in his pockets, of the detachment of the attention he fixed on his slow steps from behind his secure pince-nez. The thing that never failed now as an item in the picture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife's immaterial tether, so marked to Maggie's sense during her last month in the country. Mrs. Verver's straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord—oh, quite conveniently long!—disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... through the room. The hot sun behind her is lighting the splendid masses of her red hair, and the disdainful gleam that dwells ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... the Pope, Pius the Ninth. All is dead silence, and a musical voice, sweet and penetrating, is heard chanting from the balcony;—the people bend and kneel; with a cold, gray flash, all the bayonets gleam as the soldiers drop to their knees, and rise to salute as the voice dies away, and the two white wings are again waved;—then thunder the cannon,—the bells dash and peal,—a few white papers, like huge snowflakes, drop wavering from the balcony;—these are Indulgences, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... one, given to me by my husband; we had felt at the time that it might be the means of tracing us, but we were penniless and starving, and what else could we do? She had seen that this Frenchman had recognised her at the same instant that she did him, and she thought at the same time that there was a gleam of more than common intelligence on his face as he did so. This idea had been confirmed by his following her for some way on the other side of the street; but she had evaded him with her better knowledge of the town, and the increasing darkness of the night. Still it was well ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... you do not feel an unwonted clearness on the point. Only, if you decide for the i, keep it to yourself till your fortune is made, for the e hath the stronger following in Florence. Ah! I think I see a gleam of still quicker wit in your eye. I have it on the authority of our young Niccolo Macchiavelli, himself keen enough to discern il pelo nell' uovo, as we say, and a great lover of delicate shaving, though his beard is hardly of two years' date, that no ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... and granted away her lands, yet half blessing him for the "good frith" that he made against the murderer, the robber, and the ravisher. But the land that he had won was neither to see his end nor to shelter his dust. One last gleam of success was, after so many reverses, to crown his arms; but it was success which was indeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered Exeter and Le Mans in peaceful triumph. And the death-blow was now to come to him who, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the first time ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... other a room which had had for her since her babyhood a mingled fascination and awe. It was hung with tapestry, very old, and in some parts faded, but still distinct. As Jeanne passed by the door of this room, she noticed that it was open, and the gleam of the faint moonlight on the ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... not be executed upon them. By the clear manifestation of their guilt, and the impartial justice of God, they will be constrained to acknowledge the perfect fairness and equity, yea, the moral necessity of the sentence by which the last gleam of ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... almond tree was in blossom. The dark cypresses of Hadrian's Villa stood like spires of thunder clouds against the wonderful azures of this uplifting sky. Before us were the mountains, pine-clad, vineyard-clad; and far up the gleam of a cascade shone like a ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... light!" said the doctor as he came up. "I have no need to ask, 'Where is Miss Derrick?' Your Quercus rubra there is brilliant at any distance, with a red gleam. You have Mars on your breast, and Hesperus in your eye! It is ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... of England How beautiful they stand, Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land! The deer across their greensward bound Through shade and sunny gleam, And the swan glides past them with the ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul

... moved in the gloom. Before she could cry any warning to Copley an arm was put firmly about her and Ruth was almost lifted to one side. She saw the gleam of a weapon in the other hand of her neighbor, and the point of this weapon was dug suddenly into the broad back of the gruff boatman who ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... Tibetan inscriptions. The Lamas drew the curtain aside. Out of the dim light from the flickering lamps gradually appeared the great gilded statue of Buddha seated in the Golden Lotus. The face of the god was indifferent and calm with only a soft gleam of light animating it. On either side he was guarded by many thousands of lesser Buddhas brought by the faithful as offerings in prayer. The Baron struck the gong to attract Great Buddha's attention ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... of kindred have no fatherland. They 'stand above the battle' as well as share in it, and they share in it without ceasing to stand above it. The German is the enemy, they never falter in that; and even death does not convert him into a friend. But for this enemy there is chivalry, and pity, and a gleam, now and then, ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... road. Ours was an important journey, and many of the neighbors came out as we passed along and cried words of encouragement. On a hill-top we heard the gallop of a horse, and out of a lane dashed a girl—Millie. She smiled at us, nodded as her horse jumped, and gave us a gleam of her white hand as she sped ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... of playful wavelets, the sea moves in shifting harmonies. In sudden climax the motion of the waves fills all the brass in triumphant paean, in the gleam of high noon. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... of the tide, The golden birds still sing and gleam, The Atlanteans have not died, Immortal things ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... to Mr. Ross from prison are extremely good. They begin sombrely, but after a time the wit lightens, and towards the end it is playing continually. The first gleam of it is this: "I am going to take up the study of German. Indeed prison seems to be the proper place for such a study." On the subject of the natural life, he says a thing which is exquisitely wise: "Stevenson's ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... entered his cell, but it was too late even for that angel visitant to bring a gleam of joy. His friends were all dead. His name was forgotten on earth. He knew nothing of the world or of its ways. His mind was enfeebled, and even the slender stock of knowledge which he had possessed as a child, had vanished away. They broke off ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... e'en less welcome to him, mammie, than at the laird's; but the hungry blood cries loud against us both,—him and me,—and we must suffer together. Take care you look not after me till I have passed the knowe." She glided away, as she spoke, in a gleam of light; and when the old woman had withdrawn her hand from her eyes, dazzled by the sudden brightness, she saw only a large black gray-hound crossing the moor. And the green lady was never afterwards seen in Scotland. The little hoard of gold pieces, however, stored in a ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... little ears cocked forward and a new gleam of understanding in his eyes, Muskwa now looked upon his first lesson in game-stalking. Crouched so low that he seemed to be travelling on his belly, Thor moved slowly and noiselessly toward the creek, the huge ruff just forward of his shoulders ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... Mr. Ferrers, a gleam of intelligence coming into his eyes. "No, thank you, Colonel. Strikers never work. I've heard my guv'nor talk ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... by a mountain's edge, It was September calm and bright, Nature had decked its rocky ledge With flowers of varied hue and height. It seemed a miracle that they Should flourish in that meager soil, As noble spirits oftenest may Gleam forth ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... the third day of the tempest, the cry was raised of "Breakers ahead!" Will, with his comrades of the watch below, sprang from their berths and hurried on deck. Far ahead, as the vessel lifted on the waves, could be seen a gleam of white water. ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... the few shops which still kept open lanterns hung, throwing streaks of yellow light on the uneven causeway, a gleam into the eyes of wayfarers and prowling dogs. Many of the people in the streets, too, carried lanterns whose swing made objects in their circle seem to leap and fall. I came at length into an open place where there was concourse—a kind of square which might be called ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... have they kept their promise? Turned they the vessel's prow Unto Acre, Alexandria, as they have sworn e'en now? Not so: from Oran northwards the white sails gleam and glance, And the wild hawk of the desert is ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... chance, to pull it all up by the roots, and fling it into large tanks that were everywhere to be found. They did so, and no 'alsi' was intentionally left in the district, for, like drowning men catching at a straw, they caught everywhere at the little gleam of hope that my suggestion seemed to offer. Not a field of wheat was that season injured in the district of Jubbulpore; but I was soon satisfied that my suggestion had had nothing whatever to do with their escape, for not a single stalk of the wheat was, I believe, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... and when they were lined up before him, he surveyed the evil-looking band with a cunning gleam ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... last summer visitor has gone, and the little craft that sail over the shallow bay have been hauled up high and dry, the pavilions deserted and the bathing-houses boarded up, the beaches take on a new aspect. The sun shines with a cold gleam, and the surf has an angry snarl to it as it surges up the sandy slopes and then recedes, dragging the pebbles after it with a rattling sound. The outer line of sand-bars, which in summer breaks the blue sea into sunny ripples and ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... scarcely showed its imperfection; but in the other burned a deep, steady glow, showing the presence with him of thought that never slept. And in conversation he had the habit of listening with eyes shaded by the lids, then suddenly shooting forth at the speaker a gleam from the stone-gray pupil which seemed ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... end of a merry day, O fosterer! Wilt thou not drink a draught, O Redesman, and then stand up and set thy fiddle-bow a-dancing, and cause it draw some fair words after it? For my cousin's face hath grown sadder than a young maid's should be, and my son's eyes gleam with thoughts that are far away from us and abroad in the wild-wood ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... thou broad-breasted, golden-green stream; Ye cities and churches and castles that gleam; Ye grain-fields of gold in the valley so blue; Ye vineyards that glow in the sun-shimmered dew; Ye forests and caverns and cliffs that were mine! Wherever I wander my ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... very long one. The tracks of the tyre began to curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick gorse bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tyred, one pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly smeared and slobbered with blood. On the other side of the bushes a shoe was projecting. We ran round, and there ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thou high and holy feeling, Shine o'er mountain, flit o'er wave, Gleam like light ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... tell you now, sir," she answered with a gleam of her old fearless brightness. "It's one end of a grand idea, I believe, that I just touched on. I must think it out, if I can, and see if it all ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... thy friend," she answered; "but never hast thou been so much of a master as in the denial that thou art." The first gleam of girlish mischief danced in her blue eyes. The young sculptor noted it with gladness. He took the free hand and pressed it, and when she turned toward the roadway through the wheat he turned with her and hand in hand they went. As they neared ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... instruments were even thought of. Their religious festivals were regulated by the movements of these bodies; but with their knowledge was mingled so vast a mass of superstition, that it is difficult to discern a gleam of light through the thick darkness." "The Botocudos of Brazil held the moon in high veneration, and attributed to her influence the chief phenomena in nature." [236] The Indian of the Coroados tribe in Brazil, "chained ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... said these words, she lifted the sleeve a little on her left arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary movement. The glimmering gold of Judith Pride's bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so many souls since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... just in time to prevent a murder, but not to disappoint the robber. As I appeared he hastily rose, releasing the throat of the unfortunate citizen. I saw a watch gleam in his hand; he bestowed a violent kick on his prostrate victim;—then he disappeared running, and was in an instant lost ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... benumbs and paralyzes you! If you can't put her haunting face from you now, God can hardly help you. How grand she was, in her rage and scorn! Let me always see her thus!" and he turned back into the old road. Along this he sauntered until his eye met the dull gleam of his rifle-barrel against the old stump where he left it. With a great start, he exclaimed, "Oh, if I could only go back to the moment when I stood here with power to choose, and dream!" It was a momentary weakness, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... extend the plains, and dominate all with the only perfect mountain in the world—a mountain that catches at your breath like a masterpiece of art. Make the copses woods, and the woods forests. For our fields with their hedgerows substitute the vivid green of rice, shining across the gleam of flooded plains. Everywhere let water flow; and at every waterfall and cave erect a little shrine to hallow the spot. Over the whole pour a flood of pure white light, and you have a faint image of Japan. Perhaps it is not, naturally, more beautiful than the British Isles—few countries ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... imagination of oriental luxuriance, whose incessant play in tropes, metaphors, and analogies, frequently causes his speeches to gleam on the intellectual eye, as Aeschylus says the ocean does, when the Sun irradiates its bosom with the "anerithmon gelasma" of countless beams. 5. His positive acquirements in all the varied realms of art, science, and literature, endowed him with ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... "The Habitation of the Dead." On entering, you find yourself in a dark wide hall, supported by broad stone pillars, with a low arched roof, the further end of which is hid in complete obscurity; but the walls of which, (as they are illuminated by the livid and feeble gleam of the torches), are discovered to be completely formed of human bones. All this, as far as I have yet described,—- the subterranean streets which you traverse,—the dark gate of the great hall, over which you read the simple but solemn inscription,—and the gloom ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand, Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam, We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.... Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with venturous glee, From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... her eyes tight, tight; but Abner's were wide open. There was a sudden gleam of cutlasses in the air; there was one short, plaintive groan, and the body of the young pirate fell into the hole. Instantly all the other goods, furs, rugs, or whatever they were, were tumbled in upon him. Then the men began to shovel in the earth and ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... fixes here one of its shy camping-places, or there are whole skies of lupine on the sloping banks;—the catbird builds its nest beside us, the yellow-bird above, the wood-thrush sings late and the whippoorwill later, and sometimes the scarlet tanager and his golden-haired bride send a gleam of the tropics ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... him before Blucher could send a single battalion to his support. Hence it was that he repeated his attacks with heavy columns of infantry, with a numerous and brilliant cavalry, and with his formidable artillery. But from every charge his columns returned shattered and thinned. Scarcely a gleam of success dawned upon Napoleon during the whole day. In one of their attacks, indeed, the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte was carried by the French; but it was not till the German legion which defended it had perished to a man. Thus affairs stood when Napoleon ordered his cavalry to charge ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... saw a hand which was a claw, a strong, shriveled thing with long, dirty nails and a vulturous suggestion. It was not a pleasant sight. On the third finger of the left hand, though, was a slight gleam amid the carnivorous dullness. There was a slender band of gold there, a ring worn down to narrowness and thinness. I turned to Harlson, but ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... not all merriment unlearned. Of suns and worlds I've nothing to be quoted; How men torment themselves, is all I've noted. The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on Creation's day. Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him: He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... ground with its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room, and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly. One of these was Lisbeth Bede, and Seth went with her—not from filial attention only, for his conscience ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... to the years to come, he saw no gleam of brightness in them unless they were spent with the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... Cynthia's gleam Discern'd, the statue of distress; Weeping beside the willow'd stream ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... nature herself, it would almost seem, does not direct but looks on, as her world emerges in painful toil from chaos. We do not find her with precipitate zeal intervening to arrest at a given point the ferment of creation; stretching her hand when she sees the gleam of the halcyon or the rose to bid the process cease that would destroy them; and sacrificing to the completeness of those lower forms the nobler imperfection of man and of what may lie beyond him. She ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... are caused by insanity. Men lose their property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart—the light fading from their lives—seek the refuge of death. Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways—who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... that, so soon as the epaulet was on my shoulder, I should hazard a confession to the colonel. The prospect of a termination to our cruel state of suspense, and the possibility, faint though it indeed was, of a result favourable to our wishes, brought a joyful gleam over Bertha's lovely features, which have lately grown pale with anxiety. On my part, I did my utmost to inspire her with hopes I myself scarce dared to entertain; when, as she stood beside me, her hand clasped in mine, a smile of affection upon her countenance, the door suddenly ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... is gone to Belfast!" repeated Ermine, with an irresistible gleam of mirth about her lips and eyes, and at that moment Alison made her appearance. The looks of the sisters met, and read one another so far as to know that the meeting was over, and for the rest they endured, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... an' clear, thou bonnie stream, For on thy banks aft hae I met her; Fair may the bonnie wild-flowers gleam, That busk the banks of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... him into the backyard. There stood Carrie, still a moth-eaten-looking white goat. But now she had a new gleam in her amber eyes, and at her feet a tiny, curly kid, ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... that your Doncaster Belles sounded very captivating. I think I could have shown you at one glance a better show on the Pantiles yesterday—the beauties who turned out with a bright gleam after a horrid morning. To begin with the greatest, Miss Eden looked magnificent, and is pronounced very agreeable. With her was Lord Auckland's sister, extremely pretty and elegant, quite a Lucile, then Miss Bruce, smart, with well made boots, and Miss Anstruther ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... up again, it darted, till it came to the very top, pausing to look sharply at a gleam of light under a door of some student ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... that woman on the hip at last!" and there had been a gleam of satisfaction in Samuel's eye as he uttered the words which had convinced his wife that it was not an idle threat. She knew nothing of what the box had contained; and now, even if it had not been kept safe from her under Samuel's private ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... a bit of a cottage or two, two or three boats drawn up on a strip of yellow sand, a crumbling smithie, and above these things, on a shelf of rock, a low-roofed, long-fronted inn, by the gable of which rose a mast, wherefrom floated a battered flag. At the sight of this I saw a gleam come into my companion's eye, and I was ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... last. To encourage me in the aim still to deserve that esteem, I shall look on this gift of those numbers of my townsmen whose regards have just found such cordial expression. I shall cherish it as a memorial of earliest hopes that gleam out from the depth of years; as a memorial of a thousand incentives to virtuous endeavor, of sacred trusts, of delighted solaces; as a memorial of affections which have invested a being, frail, sensitive, and weak, with strength not its own, and under God, have ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... he would have been just a little more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, stunned, flabbergasted. In a swift gleam of insight she saw that she had been in danger of forgetting her role of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... hung upon a chance. Oh, if she would come to relieve them! oh, if they could pass once more those rude barriers of ice, and cut through those interminable waves again! But she might pass on, and leave them to a fate rendered still more miserable by the fallacious gleam of hope. With trembling haste they ran hither and thither, and almost flew to light the signal-fires of distress along the hills, and now to the beach, to wave the rude flag, formed of a reindeer's skin fastened ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at the present moment one instance of that sort, which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis for ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... lately suspected a nest? Yes, there they go, straight up the wall, all putting their shoulders to the wheel, and resting now and then in the chinks of the crumbling adobes. Up the bud moves to the gutters,—I can see it gleam as it is pulled over the edge,—they are out of sight,—the task is done! How easy any undertaking, I think, when people are willing ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... the Star with steadiest ray; Ever quail the fiercest hunters when Kargynda turns at bay. Close, Children of the Starlight! close, for the Emerald Throne! Close round the life that closeth your life within the zone! Rests the Golden Circle's glory, rests the silver gleam on her Who shall rein Kargynda's fury with a thread of gossamer. He metes not mortal measure, He pays not human price, Who crowns that life's devotion with the death of sacrifice! Woe worth the moment's panic; woe worth the victory won! But the Night is near the breaking ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... talking of the Virgin Mary," said the king, who by chance had come to watch them, disturbed by a gleam of jealousy, cast into his heart by a Sicilian courtier, who was furious at the sudden favour which the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... nestled closer to the mother, who, looking up at my decreasing disc, thought of the bitter want at home, and spoke of the heavy taxes they had not been able to raise. The whole caravan thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... upon their poetic credibility, and are idealised by distance of time and space, with those that rest upon the evidence of the hour, and have about them the thorny points of actual life. I am interrupted by a stranger, and a gleam of fine weather reminds me also of taking advantage of it the moment I am at liberty, for we have had a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... gold, with the rowers' silken bajus gleaming gold and yellow in the sunshine, a large dragon-boat glided by, so close to the lads' hiding-place that the rowers' blades on their side nearly swept against the leaves, and they could see the gleam of the eyes and glint of spears, for the boat was crowded with armed men, and beneath the palm shelter in the stern they could note the gaily plaided silken sarongs of the principal leaders of ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... to labour, instructing them in the knowledge of their duty, and preserving them from bad impressions, were sure to meet with his encouragement and commendations. Those that had been ill he assisted with such little necessaries as tended to alleviate their pains, and diffuse a gleam of cheerfulness over their sufferings. "How hard," he would say, "is the lot of the poor when they are afflicted with sickness! How intolerable do we find the least bodily disorder, even though we possess every convenience that can mitigate its violence! ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... had settled one evening, that the very next night we would make the attempt. The following day we expected to receive our usual supply of provisions, which we intended to carry with us. Early next morning, as the first gleam of light stole into the room, I climbed up as usual to have a look out, and ascertain whether anything was occurring in the village, when, what was my surprise to see a white man with a gun on his shoulder, and holding by a chain in his left hand a bull dog. Another glance at the ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... she-wolf. Above the crash of the hurricane that uprooted and splintered the century-old monarchs of the woods the words rang out like the notes of an angel's trumpet, and in the watches of the night, under the star-gleam or in the fleecy moonlight, while stillness brooded over a sleeping world, the music swung back and forth like a censer through the corridors of the soul, with a sweetness that told him the strings of the harp throbbed under the touch of the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... intended to perform more than once in its life; it would, in short, have to make into a double act that which by nature is a single one; and the insect cannot do this, for the sole reason that it has not the wish to. The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of intelligence. And this is the singular intellect in which it is the fashion nowadays to see a germ of human reason! The fashion will pass and the facts remain, bringing us back to the good old notions of the soul and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... She was as one in a trance, insensible to outward vision. Once and again her lips moved, but we heard no word proceed from them, only the rapt look upon her face increased in intensity, and once I thought (for I could not turn my gaze away) that I saw the gleam of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the Swallow, and dips to the wind-ruffled stream, "Grain is all garnered—the Summer is over and done; Bleak to the eastward the icy battalions gleam, Summer is over—and I must make haste ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... A gleam of joy flashed in the doctor's dark eyes as he looked toward the speaker, but he said nothing. Then another and another rose and made a like confession, until some six in all had thus acknowledged their fault. There was no mistaking the pleasure ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... good looks, and Faith's had long since been washed away in tears; but Edith Louvaine had been extremely beautiful, and yet was so notwithstanding her forty years. Her hair was dark brown, with a golden gleam when the sun caught it, and her eyes a deep blue, almost violet. Her voice was sweet and quiet—of that type of quietness which hides behind it a reserve of power and feeling. "At eighteen, Lettice, we ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... imagined it—the God-fearing man breaking the divine laws, the man full of years who was so near the grave and yet could not wait till it received him naturally, the poor feeble old creature taxing all his remnant of strength to knock out the small spark of life that already had begun to gleam so dimly. How long did he take to drag and raise the ladder, pausing to recover breath, holding his side and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... reflections, they were at once dispersed at the sight of the dark frowning ruins of the stupendous Colosseum, through the various openings of which the pale moonlight played and flickered like the unearthly gleam from the eyes of the wandering dead. The carriage stopped near the Meta Sudans; the door was opened, and the young men, eagerly alighting, found themselves opposite a cicerone, who appeared to have sprung up from the ground, so unexpected ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was not to say naked, her raiment was but scanty, for she had nought to cover her save one short and strait little coat of linen, and shoes on her feet. Yet Ralph deemed her to be of some degree, whereas he caught the gleam of gold and gems on her hands, and there was a golden chaplet on her head. She stood now by the horse's head with her hands folded, looking on, as if what was tiding and to betide, were but a play ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... Spain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was heavy with the scent of flowers. A band of Nautch girls, round-limbed and luscious-lipped, danced with voluptuous grace to the music of brazen and stringed instruments. Looking up to the latticed galleries, one caught a gleam now and then from the eye of some beauty of the royal harem, looking down upon the assembled flower of Moorish chivalry. Louder and louder clashed the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew the strain, till the blood of the desert race could no longer resist the martial delirium, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... wife of Mazin heard this, she said, "Good heavens! your words, my dear nurse, recall a gleam of comfort that last night struck across my mind from a voice, which said, 'Be comforted, O wife of Mazin, for thy deliverance is near.'" Upon this the old woman replied, "Thou shalt indeed be comforted, for thy husband is at my abode, and will speedily release thee." The unfortunate ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... campaign—sentries, cesspools, and generals. They were all sources of special danger, as everyone who has been at the front can testify. Over and over again on my rambles in the dark, nothing has saved me from being stuck by a sentry but the white gleam of my clerical (p. 038) collar, which on this account I had frequently thought of painting with luminous paint. One night I stepped into a cesspool and had to sit on a chair while my batman pumped water over me ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... upon us an exalted retrospection. Through him Napoleon's sun of Austerlitz rises, for us, with a more brilliant menace upon arms and the plain; through him Fielding's "most melancholy sun" lights the dying man to the setting-forth on that last voyage of his with such an immortal gleam, denying hope, as would not have lighted, for us, the memory of that seaward morning, had our poetry not undergone the illumination, the transcendent vision, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... Of his books he thought much—each one was a masterpiece, more glorious than the last; but he never imagined that people would be in the least interested in his doings, and he did not care about their opinion of him. Nevertheless there was occasionally a gleam of joy, when some one unexpectedly showed a spontaneous admiration for his work. For instance, in a Viennese concert-room, where the whole audience had risen to do honour to the great author, a young man seized his hand and put it to his lips, saying, "I kiss ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... suddenly plunged into total darkness while a crowd of men was clamouring for food and drink at the counter. A supply of candles was kept ready to hand. They were placed in mugs (candlesticks were lacking of course) and set on the counter. By the aid of their feeble gleam the ladies groped their way into the kitchen for tea, filled cups, and counted out change. The scene always reminded me of Gideon's attack on the Midianites when his soldiers carried lamps in pitchers. Occasionally some one knocked over a mug. There was a ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... months later, and now fair May has come to us on young and eager feet. On young feet barely born, and with a smile so slight that one dare hardly call it sunshine. At this moment a little gleam of it, just strong enough to make one dream of summer, but not enough to warm one, is stealing timidly though the windows of Margaret's smaller drawing-room in ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... glade took on a look of home, of individuality. A big dark rug, woven of strong cord in green and brown, came out and went down on the rough floor, leather runners were flung on the two tables, a student lamp of nickel, a pair of old candlesticks in hammered brass, added their touch of gleam and shine to table and shelf-above-the-hearth, college pennants, in all the colours of the rainbow, were hung about the walls between four fine prints in sepia, gay cushions, much the worse for wear, landed ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... region of the Sahara. Is there not enchantment for the eyes of the metaphysician in this play of light, these nameless interfulgent colours which appear flimsy as the play of thought? For the glowing floating haze is made of nothing—of lines, of gleam, of unregulated splendour. And all this triumph of fluctuating light and elusive colour is quenched with the sun, smoulders into darkness, even as ideas in the obscure depths of the intelligence ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... gleam alight with windows. Theah shall be no da'k spot in it. Windowless houses ah fo' creatuahs of a clay less fine than hers," repeating tenderly, "of less fine clay. She is a bein' created to bask in the sunshine. She shall bask in it. These windows shall be thrown wide open to the sun, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... all the animals of the parish;—but yet living through his griefs, and bearing them patiently, 'for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;'—and even seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of sunshine, or a wisp of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcase, some comfort in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... throwing our deck-load overboard, in order to leave us a better chance to secure ourselves to the rigging, and thus save our lives when the vessel should strike, which he judged would be in about half an hour. Not a gleam of hope appeared, and here our distress was increased by observing that the captain seemed under the influence of liquor, to which he had probably resorted in order to stifle his fears of ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... she went to the sledge and stood facing him. For a moment there was a glow of defiance in her eyes, as though she feared him and was ready to fight for herself and her dead. The dogs slunk in at her feet, and MacVeigh saw the gleam of their naked fangs ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... she, "how are you feeling?" She sat down on the foot of the bed, hands on hips, and fixed her eyes lovingly upon the patient; but what a glitter of metal there was in them, a terrible, tiger-like gleam if any one had ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... you would already have congratulated her), of how he and she bought curios at Port Said, of her arrival, of her sister's children and their quaint sayings, of Singapore and its sights, of Malaya and how she was taken to see the tapping on a rubber plantation—here I picture a gleam of revived interest, possibly financial in origin, appearing in your face—of the club, of dinner parties and a thousand other details, all highly entertaining to herself and involving a sufficiency of native words to impress the stay-at-home. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... but a single antagonist for the fugitive, and Charlotte's sympathies deserted her convictions for the moment. But while she was biting her lip to keep from crying out, the fugitive stepped back and held out his hands; and she saw the gleam of polished metal reflecting the glare of the arc-light when the officer snapped ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... Likewise by the relation of my own understanding to the light of reason, and (the most important of all the truths that have been vouchsafed to me!) to the will which is the reason,—will in the form of reason—I can form a sufficient gleam of the possibility of the subsistence of the human soul in Jesus to the Eternal Word, and how it might perfect itself so as to merit glorification and abiding union with the Divinity; and how this gave a humanity to ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and roll, (Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal,) Till two dark hills, with darker yet behind, Confront them,—purple mountains almost black, Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn, Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack.— That orange-gleam! 't is dawn! Onward! the swan's flight with the eagle's blending, On, winged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... the ocean. Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood with Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming floor of her chamber! Little she dreamed that below, among the trees of the orchard, Waited her lover and watched for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow. Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times a feeling of sadness Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the moonlight Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment. And, ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... his troubled brethren, away across the unruffled lake where purple wave and purple cloud in peace commingle,—so long have we waited for the mind of the Jewish youth to be youthful, for the moist gleam in the eye of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... we weighed and proceeded under steam. The views of the mountains, between the snowstorms, were lovely, with the fresh-fallen snow shining in an occasional gleam of sunshine. We soon passed the Isaki light, with wind and tide in our favour, and at sunset found ourselves in the open waters of the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... their masters, the broad red Cross of St. George waving proudly in the midst, and beside it the royal Lions and Castles of the two Spanish monarchies. To the south, the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees began to gleam white like clouds against the sky, and the gray sea-line to the west closed the horizon. Eustace drew his rein, and gazed in silent admiration, and Gaston, riding by his side, pointed out the several bearings and devices which, to the warrior of that day, spoke as plainly (often more ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flood reclining, Ruined arch and wall and broken spire, Down beneath the watery mirror shining, Gleam and flash ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller



Words linked to "Gleam" :   gleaming, appear, refulgence, seem, glint, flash, glisten, come along, shimmer, shine, glimmer, radiate, refulgency, glitter, lambency, radiancy, radiance, effulgence, look, glow, spangle



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