"Riven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nothing more. In puzzled fury he went back to the hotel. Yes, Madame Fridolin and the young lady were now at home. He went to the second landing and without knocking pushed open the door. It was a house storm-riven. Trunks bulged, though only half-packed, their contents straggling over the sides. The beds were not made, and a strong odor of valerian and camphor flooded the air. On a couch lay Mrs. Fridolin, her face covered with a handkerchief, while near hovered Miss Bredd in her most brilliant and oracular ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... wickedness; that had graced thee once, when thou gavest away thy crown. Behold the faith and hand of him! who, they say, carries his household's ancestral gods about with him! who stooped his shoulders to a father outworn with age! Could I not have riven his body in sunder and strewn it on the waves? and slain with the sword his comrades and his dear Ascanius, and served him for the banquet at his father's table? But the chance of battle had been dubious. If it had! whom did I ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... fearful storm. Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, the very earth shook and trembled. There was not a town in all the land but the walls of it were cracked and riven. The sky grew black at midday, rain and hail in torrents swept the land. "It is the end of the world," the people whispered in ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... declare that it is pugasah, or pukkus-asa, I do not know. {23} As little can I conjecture the meaning of the prefix mod, or mode, which I learned on the road near Weymouth from a very ancient tinker, a man so battered, tattered, seamed, riven, and wrinkled that he looked like a petrifaction. He had so bad a barrow, or wheel, that I wondered what he could do with it, and regarded him as the very poorest man I had ever seen in England, until his mate came up, an alter ego, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and licks his face all over with her tongue, and then thrusts her tongue into the mouth of him. No fear he had thereof, but caught the she-wolf's tongue betwixt his teeth, and so hard she started back thereat, and pulled herself away so mightily, setting her feet against the stocks, that all was riven asunder; but he ever held so fast that the tongue came away by the roots, and thereof ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... got back to Cranberry Lodge, all doubts of an impending tempest had disappeared. The eastern sky, cloudless an hour before, was now overhung with a livid bank of ash-gray clouds, which were incessantly riven by broad and terrible flashes of silent lightning. A slight westerly breeze was blowing, and evidently impeded the progress of the storm, which was beating up from seaward against the wind. Plunging through prickly thickets and dashing through the turbid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... could restore to this wasted exhausted heart one ray of the passion that once welled up at the glance at the touch of a lover! It's you who would scream then, young man. Do you see this face, once fresh and rosy like your own, now scarred and riven ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... allowed to follow my own inclination. In the forest, a couple of miles from the house, several tough old giants—chiefly oak, chestnut, elm, and beech—had been marked out for destruction: in some cases because they had been scorched and riven by lightnings, and were an eyesore; in others, because time had robbed them of their glory, withering their long, desolate arms, and bestowing on their crowns that lusterless, scanty foliage which has a mournful meaning, like the thin white hairs on the bowed head of a very old ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... light galleys bore the fierce crew to the shore, And naught good did their coming forebode, And a wail rose on high to the storm-riven sky As ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... repair; the riven lute shall sound once more; But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... To whom can we commend her who thus mourns the riven tie of a mother's love? Where is the solace for the dependent, affectionate female, who weeps over the ashes of a departed parent? A sister is at her brother's grave. Pleasant was their love, and who can assuage these bitter tears? The husband,—deepest of all life's bereavements,—perhaps ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Sayang, he clasped the kouras-tree. The branches broke, the tree fell, and his head struck against a huge rock. His head was not injured, but the rock was split in two. This stone is still seen to-day on the river Sayang, and it bears the name of Balou- blah, which means the "Riven Rock." His pole and boat have also been preserved to the present day. The day following his exploit Badang started back for Singapore, with his pilang completely laden with sugar-cane, bananas, and keladion, or edible lily, root. ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... again, so shall they live also. Men looked at the graves of them that slept, listened to the song of triumph that was making the midnight glorious, remembered the risen Christ who was the theme of the song, thought of that other midnight, the riven tomb, the broken power of Death a conquered conqueror, and seemed to hear the Victor's proclamation as the apostle of the Apocalypse heard it, pealing like a trumpet voice over all the earth, 'I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,—a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred fathoms deep and broken into ravines,—flows a torrent coming from some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has formed a pool, ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... through the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again the spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... morning that flows out of heaven; Give! as the waves when their channel is riven; Give! as the free air and sunshine are given; Lavishly, utterly, joyfully give! Not the waste drops of thy cup overflowing; Not the faint sparks of thy hearth ever glowing; Not a pale bud from the June roses blowing: Give as He gave thee ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... come—I stand with your head on my breast— I have fought as I might—I have gained you, beloved ... to God's mercy the rest! Tho' the heavens darken above me and the sky be shrunk as a scroll, In the wreck and ruin of riven worlds, should I falter, O Soul of my soul? Tho' the demon Despair, where he vanquished lies, still utter his shibboleth— I fling my glove in the face of Fate and smile in ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... no joints in them, on which the colossus stalked like a moving stone tower—a body resembling an enormous boulder carved by an amateurish hand to portray the trunk of a human being—a craggy sphere of rock for a head, set directly atop the deeply riven shoulders—a face like the horrible mask of an embryonic gargoyle—a mouth that was simply a lipless chasm that opened and closed with the sound of rocks grinding together in a slow-moving glacier—the whole veiled thinly by trailing ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... the threshold of the gate (Which the soul's ill affection doth disuse, Making the crooked seem the straighter path), I heard its closing sound. Had mine eyes turn'd, For that offence what plea might have avail'd? We mounted up the riven rock, that wound On either side alternate, as the wave Flies and advances. "Here some little art Behooves us," said my leader, "that our steps Observe the varying flexure of the path." Thus we so slowly sped, that with cleft orb The moon once ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... cycle of ruin." As for the war itself, "As colored men realized the significance of it all, they looked into each other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes. The white world was tearing itself to pieces. White solidarity was riven and shattered. And—fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper: 'The East will see the West to bed.'" At last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... the mountain-riven, It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day, Before its rush the crags are driven— The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away— Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning, The startled wanderer halts below; He hears the rock-born waters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... her friendly relations with several of the South American States were much developed during the period to which this chapter refers, although with other portions of that vast region it was impossible to hold any intercourse, so riven were they by faction, oppression, and civil war. With Brazil the commercial connections of England were important, and the amity of the two states assured. Chili, Peru, and Panama dealt largely with the European western nations, and should the liberal party in those countries succeed in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the consciousness of the unseen Love which everywhere appeals to him in the visible power of the Creator. Suddenly a mighty spectacle unfolds itself. The rain and wind have ceased. The barricade of cloud which veiled the moon's passage up the western sky has sunk riven at her feet. She herself shines forth in unbroken radiance, and a double lunar rainbow, in all its spectral grandeur, spans the vault of heaven. There is a sense as of a heavenly presence about ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... effect their fire was having. Nor, indeed, could they tell how far they were suffering themselves, for, standing at a gun, one could but hazily see that upon the right and the left. But above the roar of the cannon came the sharper sound of the piping shot, the crashing of riven planks, and the occasional heavy thud as spar or block came hurtling on to the deck. The lieutenants paced up and down the line of guns, while Captain Johnson fanned the smoke away with his cocked-hat and peered ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... followed the thunder-shower was one of warm, serene beauty. The artillery of heaven had done no apparent injury. A rock may have been riven in the mountains, a lonely tree splintered, but homes were safe, the warm earth was watered, and the air purified. With the dawn Amy's bees were out at work, gleaning the last sweets from the white clover, that was on the wane, from the flowers of the garden, field, and forest. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... tempest-driven In crazy barks, our canvas riven! Such is the lot to mortals given Where sins resort: But he whose anchor's fixed in heaven Shall gain ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... Deep in the loamy bank. Uptorn by strength Resistless in so bad a cause, but lame To better deeds, he bundles up the spoil— An ass's burden,—and when laden most And heaviest, light of foot steals fast away. Nor does the boarded hovel better guard The well-stacked pile of riven logs and roots From his pernicious force. Nor will he leave Unwrenched the door, however well secured, Where chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps In unsuspecting pomp; twitched from the perch He gives the princely bird ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Ellangowan! ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths—see if your own fire burn the blither for that. Ye have riven the roof off seven cottar houses—look if your own roof-tree stand the faster. Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! what do ye glower after our folk for? There's thirty hearts there that would have spent their life-blood ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Skidegate River, a few miles up, we reached the company's quarters, consisting of several wooden buildings for residence, stores, shops, etc. At the mouth and along the river were several Indian settlements, comprising huts, the sides of which were of rough riven planks, with roof of leaves of a tough, fibrous nature. At the crest was an opening for the escape of smoke from fires built on the ground in the center of the enclosure. As the ship passed slowly up the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... iambics well enough, but he preferred exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He like history, but he loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain deserted by the legions, the rare pavements riven by frost, Celtic magic still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest, the rosy marbles stained with rain, and the walls growing grey. The masters did not encourage these researches; a pure enthusiasm, they ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... exhibit those celestial weapons in order. And as those celestial weapons had been set, the Earth being oppressed with the feet (of Arjuna), began to tremble with (its) trees; and the rivers and the mighty main became vexed; and the rocks were riven; and the air was hushed. And the sun did not shine; and fire did not flame; and by no means did the Vedas of the twice-born once shine. And, O Janamejaya, the creatures peopling the interior of the earth, on being ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... watch I keep, Dear heart that wak'st though senses sleep To thee my heart turns gratefully. All it can give to thee is given. From all besides, its heartstrings riven. Could ne'er ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... once ejected), that they testified plainly their dislike of the same, and wished that those churches wherein they lived, might have some blessed opportunity to be rid of all such rotten relics, riven rags and rotten remainders of Popery. All which, since they were once purged away from the church of Scotland and cast forth as things accursed into the jakes of eternal detestation, how vile and abominable may we now call the resuming of them? Or what a piacular prevarication ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... chain presented the appearance of a scabbard. It was swaddled like a child and long like a man. There was a round thing at its summit, about which the end of the chain was rolled. The scabbard was riven asunder at the lower end, and shreds of flesh ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... stream flowing into the Arctic Ocean. The greater part of the day was consumed in calling at two settlements of three houses each, and receiving and delivering mails of one letter, or less. The shores of this fjord are steep hills of bare rock, covered with patches of snow to the water's edge. The riven walls of cliff, with their wonderful configuration and marvellous colouring, were left behind us, and there was nothing of the grand or picturesque to redeem the savage desolation of the scenery. The chill ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the afternoon sun. The soft gray hue of the rocks shone clearly against the cloudless sky, fretted all over with the shadows thrown by their innumerable spires and jutting points, and by the natural arches scooped out under the cliffs. After travelling less than an hour, we passed the riven walls of the mighty gateway, and rode again under the shade of pine forests. The height of the mountains now gradually diminished, and their sides, covered with pine and cedar, became less broken and abrupt. The summits, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... in marriage to Alice Liston, and it was on the occasion of her mentioning this to her aunt that the conversation just riven occurred. It had, however, no effect upon the mind of Alice. She loved Edward Lee tenderly, end, therefore, had every confidence in him. They were, consequently, married, and commenced life with prospects ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... his voluptuous paradise; his robes of silk, his palaces of marble, his riven, and shades, his groves and couches, his wines, his dainties; and, above all, his seventy-two virgins assigned to each of the faithful, of resplendent beauty and eternal youth—intoxicated the imaginations, and seized the passions of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... dykes; and the bonny broomy knowe, where he liked sae weel to sit at e'en, wi' his plaid about him, and look at the kye as they cam down the loaning, ill wad he hae liked to hae seen that braw sunny knowe a' riven out wi' the pleugh in the fashion it is at ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... not Eros, who on rosy pinion Hung in the willow's shadow—did not feel His subtle searching steel Piercing her very soul, though his dominion Her breast had grown: and what to her was heaven If from Endymion riven? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... e'en like the sleeper's honors sered And prows of galleys, like his bosom riven, The melancholy pile of death was reared Aloft to heaven, And on its pillared height the corpse ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Robin and I, who were leaning against it, sprang out into the open. The next instant a loud report was heard; a branch came crashing down, and the stout tree appeared riven to the very roots! Happily the branch fell on ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths, the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... thunder-riven, And up from the rocky steep, There rose a cry to the gates of heaven, 'Rejoice! I have found my sheep!' And the angels echoed around the throne, 'Rejoice, for the ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... plains riven by shot and shell Are strewn with her undaunted sons who stayed the jaws of hell. In every sunny vale of France death is the countersign. The purest blood in Britain's veins is being poured ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... philosophy. I do not know if I have been quite wise in allowing this last motive to weigh with me. They say that the most dangerous thing one can do in a thunderstorm is to shelter oneself under a great tree, and the history of Descartes' life shows how narrowly he escaped being riven by the lightnings, which were more destructive in ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that light-handed warrior was futile, falling upon the bodies of men, elephants, and steeds, in consequence of the numbers (opposed to him). With a single straight shaft shot in that battle, he despatched a single elephant like hill riven by the thunderbolt. Two or three elephant-riders at a time, cased in mail and standing together, thy sire pierced with one shaft of sharp point. Whoever approached Bhishma, that tiger among men, in battle, seen for a moment, was next beheld to fall down ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wall, above the timber-line I hear the riven slide-rock fall toward the stunted pine. Upon the paths I tread secure no foot dares follow me, For I am master of the crags, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... evening desert. The reflected light, strong and clear, drew abrupt, keen-edged contrasts between the black, triangular shadows of the peaks and the gray of the range. Something elusive, awesome, unreal was in the air about them. The rugged mountain-side with its chaos of riven boulders, its forest of splintered rocky spires, silver cold in the twilight, its impassive bulk looming so large, yet a mere segment in the circling range, was as a day-dream of some ancient Valhalla, clothed ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... all Thorpe's martial spirit. Now at last the mystery surrounding Morrison & Daly's unnatural complaisance was riven. It had come to grapples again. He was glad of it. Meet those notes? Well I guess so! He'd show them what sort of a proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels! taking advantage of a ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... should have seen that long hill-range With gaps of brightness riven,— How through each pass and hollow streamed The purpling ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... honour to be gained on Austria, and so let him pass. I will have him perjure himself, however; I will insist on the ordeal. How I shall laugh to hear his clumsy fingers hiss, as he grasps the red-hot globe of iron! Ay, or his huge mouth riven, and his gullet swelling to suffocation, as he endeavours to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... as quick as his flickering tongue, had caught that panic-born thought. "You are of the blood of this space wanderer. Men from the riven colonies must have escaped to safety. Look at this man, is he not like the men of Memphir—as they were in the olden days of ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... herself on a wooden trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been riven through the mountain by lightning strokes and then blasted with ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... name), With lurching step around me prowl, And stop, against the moon to howl; The mountain-boar, on battle set, His tusks upon my stem would whet; While doe, and roe, and red-deer good, Have bounded by, through gay greenwood. Then oft, from Newark's riven tower, Sallied a Scottish monarch's power: A thousand vassals mustered round, With horse, and hawk, and horn, and hound; And I might see the youth intent, Guard every pass with crossbow bent; And through the brake the rangers stalk, And falc'ners ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... hast broken the sweet yoke That my high beauty held above All priests and clerks and merchant-folk; There was not one but for my love Would give me gold and gold enough, Though sorrow his very heart had riven, To win from me such wage thereof As now no ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Honoured hamlet! thus to be alone mentioned in connexion with the closing scene in this mighty drama! He selected not Bethlehem, where angel hosts had chanted His praise; nor Tabor, where celestial beings had hovered around Him in homage; nor Calvary, where riven rocks and bursting grave-stones had proclaimed His deity; nor the Temple-court, in all its sumptuous glory, where for ages His own Shekinah had blazed in mystic splendour; but He hallows afresh the name of a lowly Village; ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... took us to his quarters and showed us much kindness. I told him many things of the old fort which were never recorded, pointed out to him where the stones in the front wall of headquarters had been riven by lightning when I was a little girl, and our pleasant visit rounded up with a ride in his carriage to call on General Terry and other officers, who all seemed interested to see us; relics, as it were, of the times before ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, though he regained ground towards the end by means of champagne and liqueurs. The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who were apparently in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the social fabric had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everything was gay except Mr. Prohack—the sole living being in the place who conformed in face and heart to the historical conception ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Colman! thy father weeps not o'er thy grave; Thy heart riven mother ne'er sighs o'er thy dust; But the long Indian grass o'er thy far tomb shall wave, And the drops of the evening descend on the just. Cold, silent and dark is thy narrow abode— But not long wilt thou sleep in that dwelling of gloom, For soon shall ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... and before the eyes of Christendom. It was on this famous spot that the ancient demigod had torn asunder by main strength the continents of Europe and Africa. There stood the opposite fragments of the riven mountain-chain, Calpe and Abyla, gazing at each other, in eternal separation, across the gulf, emblems of those two antagonistic races which the terrible hand of Destiny has so ominously disjoined. Nine centuries before, the African king, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and slim in that gathering gloom riven by the lightning, her beautiful head thrown back, her lips parted, and her eyes glowing with an almost eager anticipation—a sculptured goddess welcoming with bated breath the onrushing forces of the heavens. ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... went on very madly. Grettir took a sweep along over the field, and when he came alongside of the bearserk's horse, sent up his foot under the tail of the shield so hard, that the shield went up into the mouth of him, and his throat was riven asunder, and his jaws fell down on his breast. Then he wrought so that, all in one rush, he caught hold of the helmet with his left hand, and swept the viking off his horse; and with the other hand drew the short-sword that he was girt withal, and drave it at his neck, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... bombers to attack. I could see the flash of hundreds of bombs, each one possibly tearing the life out of some of our brave boys. Nothing in the world could have withstood such a concentrated artillery fire as the Germans put upon that five hundred yards of ground. It was torn and torn again, riven to shreds. It was like the vomiting of a volcano, a mass of earth soddened with the blood of the heroes who had ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Sophocles, as compared to AEschylus,—a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have AEschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... seemed well acquainted, stopped not until he laid her in safety by the side of a plentiful and pellucid fountain, which had been once covered in, screened and decorated with architectural ornaments of a Gothic character. But now the vault which had covered it being broken down and riven, and the Gothic font ruined and demolished, the stream burst forth from the recess of the earth in open day, and winded its way among the broken sculpture and moss-grown stones which lay in confusion ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the heavier thud of bombs and grenades. Walls were down, doors blasted open while confused soldiers rushed in panic through the clouds of dust. One of them tried to stop Jason who kept on going, carrying the man's club with him. Sunlight shone ahead and he dived through a riven wall and landed, rolling in the open ground next to the dock. A spaceship's lifeboat stood there, still glowing hot from the speed of descent, and next to it stood Meta keeping up a continuous fire with her gun, happily juggling micro-grenades ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... well that Anne Ashton was suffering from the shock caused by his conduct. The love of these quiet, sensitive, refined natures, once awakened, is not given for a day, but for all time; it becomes a part of existence; and cannot be riven except by an effort that brings destruction to even future hope of happiness. Not even Mr. Hillary, not even Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, could discern the utter misery that was Anne's daily portion. She strove to conceal it all. She went about the house cheerfully, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fragments and the blazing sun. From beneath the drills came occasional subterranean explosions; then geysers of muddy water rose in the air. Under the snouts of the steam shovels "dobe" shots went off as bowlders were riven into smaller fragments. Now and then an excited tooting of whistles gave warning of a bigger blast as the flagmen checked the flow of traffic, indicating with arms upraised that the ground was "coming up." Thereupon a brief ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... sullen, fearing nothing, ready to fight, but asking only to be let alone—quite alone. He had but one keen pleasure in his sombre life—the lasting glory in his matchless strength—the small but never failing thrill of joy as the foe fell crushed and limp, or the riven boulders grit and heaved when he turned on them the measure ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and Mr. Billings found himself standing on the edge of a broad shelf of the mountain,—a shelf covered with huge boulders of rock tumbled there by storm and tempest, riven by lightning-stroke or the slow disintegration of nature from the bare, glaring, precipitous ledge he had marked from below. East and west it seemed to stretch, forbidding and inaccessible. Turning to the sergeant, Mr. Billings ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... grief vividly back to her. The pain, as acute and sharp as the knife which had ended the life of Frederick, entered her already riven soul. The instant before a mingled sensation of shame and embarrassment had swept over her because of the appearance of the hut, and her own bare legs and feet; but the helpless dead ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... not, but dismounted, hung his bridle to a branch of a scathed and riven elm, and advanced alone into the middle of the space. "Dread and prophetic power that art within me!" said the Hebrew, aloud,—"this, then, is the spot that, by dream and vision, thou hast foretold me wherein to consummate and record the vow that shall sever ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his nature hushed. Thus back from men was Freedom's genius driven, And Slavery's chains in ten-fold strength were riven. In gazing o'er the past, 't ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Himself the terror of the startled deer, And an embodied hindrance to our rites. The hedge of creepers clinging to his feet, Feeble obstruction to his mad career, Is dragged behind him in a tangled chain; And with terrific shock one tusk he drives Into the riven body of a tree, Sweeping before ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... like the burst from death to life; From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven; From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife, To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven; Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven, And mortal puts on immortality, When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key, And Mercy's voice hath said: "Rejoice, thy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... storm-king hurled a mighty thunderbolt at the oak-tree, and the brave, strong monarch of the greenwood was riven. Then, with a shout of triumph, ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... undistinguished weep; Behold yon ruined building's shattered walls, Where drifting snow through many a crevice falls; Whose smokeless vent no blazing fuel knows, But drear and cold the widow's mansion shows; Her fragile form, by sickness deeply riven, Too weak to face the driving blasts of heaven, Her voice too faint to reach some pitying ear, Her shivering babes command her anguished tear: Their feeble cries in vain assistance crave, And expectation 'points but to the grave.' "But lo, with hasty step a female ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty song, the Song of the West. That was what he dreamed, while things without names—thoughts for which no man had yet invented words, terrible formless shapes, vague figures, colossal, monstrous, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... hill. This hill, which is geologically a fragment of the plateau behind which some gigantic landslip was sent sliding in the direction of the river, leaving the picturesque gorge and cliffs of Der el-Bahari to mark the place from which it was riven, was evidently the seat of the oldest Theban necropolis. Here were the tombs of the Theban chiefs in the period of the Old Kingdom, two of which have been found by Mr. Newberry. In later times, it would seem, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... fence was an aged, gnarled and riven tree, foolishly decked in blossoms, like some faded, wrinkled dame, fatuously reluctant to leave off girlish finery. Under its frivolous branches on the grassy sward would be the place for his first night's halt—for the magic wood just this side ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... stone, which thrills the heart with a deep feeling at once of love, sorrow and reverence; that stone which recalls the desolate night which, in darkness and ruin, amid torn banners, and scutcheons riven, saw the Martyr king go white to his grave. Marian entered into all these things, in spite of her anxiety, for her mind was free enough to be open to external objects, now that her brother was in Edmund's hands, and she was relieved ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... War's deep waters o'er him rolled As he beheld Young England giving Life prodigally, while the old Lived on without the cause for living; And yet he never heaved a sigh Although his heart was inly riven; He only craved one boon—to die In harness, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... is rough! Give thou the thought, The golden ore, the gems that few forget; In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought.... Stand thou alone and fixed as destiny; An imaged god that lifts above all hate, Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate. Stand thou as stands that lightning-riven tree That lords the cloven clouds ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... a while that charge did Theseus faithfully cherish. Last, it melted away, as a cloud which riven in ether Breaks to the blast, high peak and spire snow-silvery leaving. 240 But from a rock's wall'd eyrie the father wistfully gazing, Father whose eyes, care-dimm'd, wore hourly for ever a-weeping, Scarcely the wind-puff'd ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... cheek o' that king o' men, Kirsty Barclay? Lord, haud me ohn killt her! Little hauds me frae riven ye to ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! oh, save ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... starry land, Into a thousand fragments riven; Upon our own free hills we'll stand, And pour upon the breeze of heaven, A curse so loud, so stern, so deep, Shall start ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... clouds and struck the earth with an appalling roar. Trees were snapped, rocks were splintered, and a whirlwind passed. Acantow was nearly insensible for a time—then he felt the touch of the Rosebud's hand on his cheek, and together they arose and looked about them. A huge block of riven granite lay in the canon, dripping blood. Their enemies were ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... it, then ten yards horizontally, and dividing there into two streams it went up an anthill; the withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next day (31st), on the banks of the Mabula, we saw a dry tree which had been struck; large splinters had been riven off and thrown a distance of sixty yards in one direction and thirty yards in another: only a stump was left, and patches of withered grass where it ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... waterlogged condition might have proceeded from the starting of some of her timbers; and, indeed, the shocks and buffets she had received from the angry waves, with the straining and pitching, made us, inexperienced mariners as were, wonder, more than once, that she was not riven into a thousand pieces. Many were the fond words and endearing epithets bestowed on the brave La Luna by the good captain while he apostrophized her, as if endued with life and consciousness, beseeching her to hold on yet awhile, by all the good angels in heaven, by the ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... ever she flashed those electric sparks which it was her business to scatter broadcast over the land. The hamlet, near which the cottage stood, nestled under the shelter of a cliff as if in expectation and dread of being riven from its foundations by the howling winds, or whelmed in the surging waves. The cottage itself was on the outskirts of the hamlet, farther to the south. The mind of May entered through its closed door,—for mind, like electricity, laughs at ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... pattering down upon the leaves—soon to fall thick and continuous! I heeded not these indications. At that moment, what where the elements to me? What cared I for the clouds or rain—lightning, thunder, or the riven forest? There was a cloud on my own heart—an electric rush through my veins—of far more potent spell than the shadows of the sky, or the coruscations of the ethereal fire. "The wolf has slept in the lair of the forest deer: the yellow fawn will be his victim. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... monarch like a thunder-riven rock, Severed from the parent mountain by the bolt's ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... in the tamer parts, where instead of mountains there are only low hills, or "kopjes" (as they are called in South Africa), the slightly more friable rock found in these hills decomposes under the influence of the weather into curiously picturesque and fantastic forms, with crags riven to their base, and detached pillars supporting loose blocks and tabular masses, among or upon which the timid Mashonas have built their huts in the hope of escaping the raids of their ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Wise-one: "Thus shalt thou do when thou wendest hence alone: Thou shalt find a path in the desert, and a road in the world of stone; It is smooth and deep and hollow, but the rain hath riven it not, And the wild wind hath not worn it, for it is but Fafnir's slot, Whereby he wends to the water and the fathomless pool of old, When his heart in the dawn is weary, and he loathes the ancient ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... light— The lamp is quench'd— Vapours are rising— Quiv'ring round my head Flash the red beams— Down from the vaulted roof A shuddering horror floats, And seizes me! I feel it, spirit, prayer-compell'd, 'tis thou Art hovering near! Unveil thyself! Ha! How my heart is riven now! Each sense, with eager palpitation, Is strain'd to catch some new sensation! I feel my heart surrender'd unto thee! Thou must! Thou must! Though life should be the fee! (He seizes the book, and pronounces mysteriously the sign of the spirit. A ruddy flame flashes ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Britain: "Ride your ways. Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram—this day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths. See if the fire in your ain parlour burns the blyther for that. Ye have riven the thack of seven cottar houses. Look if your ain roof-tree stands the faster for that. Ye may stable your stirks in the sheilings of Dern-cleugh. See that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane of Ellangowan. Ride your ways, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... most peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the fair Margaret, accompanied by the others, and talking rapidly, had passed through the wide doorway into its spacious vestibule. Inez looked after them, and perceived, standing like a guard at the foot of the open stair, that scarred suit of white armour and riven shield blazoned with the golden falcon, Isabella's gift, in which Peter had fought and conquered the Marquis of Morella. Then she stepped back and contemplated ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... they yawn, the cloudy jaws of heaven, As by a tongue, by forked lightning riven; And to the sky great Indra's fiery bow In lieu of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... times. Above, more snow-laden forest, and above that the steel of the glacier which rose till its awful limits plunged into the grey world of cloud. The dugout was not yet in view; there was a scored and riven crag, black and barren, impervious to the soft caresses of velvety snow, to be passed ere the home which was theirs would be sighted. Besides, as yet neither of the men had turned their eyes from the trailing footprints ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... silence on us after that. Silently we went on up the riverside track, for I was leading with Erling, and that strange belief that by the river we should find what we sought would not leave me; and when we came below the place where the cart was, I saw marks where its wheels had riven the soft earth close to the water. Without a word I signed my companions to spread abroad and search, and I dismounted, and with the bridle of my horse over my arm, I went scanning each foot of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... of most unmusical music, such as Bartholomew Fair in its loudest days could hardly have known. At such a diapason one would have thought that the tender ears of May Fair and Belgravia would have been crushed and cracked and riven asunder; that female voices would have shrieked, and the intensity of fashionable female agony would have displayed itself in all its best recognised forms. But the crash of brass was borne by them as though ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... got up and placed the two rifles upon the table close beside him, and returned to his chair where he sat, straining his ears to catch the faintest night sounds. He started violently at the report of a frost-riven tree, and the persistent rubbing of a branch against the edge of the roof set his nerves a-jangle. And so it was that while the captive slept, the captor worried and fretted the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... like the sky, a part of Heaven, But changes night and day, too, like the sky; Now o'er it clouds and thunder must be driven, And Darkness and Destruction as on high: But when it hath been scorched, and pierced, and riven, Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye Pours forth at last the Heart's blood turned to tears, Which make the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fanatics came out in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each fanatic turned upon himself, and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... for the usufruct. Have I not seen her rain kisses upon the tomb of St. Antony more passionately than I could have dared upon her hand? Had she ever risen from the outpouring of prayer without the dew of happy tears to bear witness in her eyes to her riven heart? Her piety was, indeed, her great indulgence, so eager, so luxurious, pursued with such appetite as I have never seen in England or France, nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much decorum, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... look backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe of the words He has said, When so long He has, listening, leaned out of Heaven To hear the old Bible my grandfather read? The old-fashioned Bible— The dust-covered Bible— The leathern-bound ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... and the rhythmic beating of the oars to soothe his spirit, fierce and mandatory even in youth, he went, the time divided between views fair enough for the most rapturous dreams, and the Greek, of whom, with all their brightness, they were but dim suggestions. Past the stream-riven gorge of Balta-Liman he went; past Emirghian; past the haven of Stenia, and the long shore-town of Yenikeui; then, half turning the Keuibachi bend, lo! Therapia, draggling down the stony steep, like a heap of bangles on a brown-red cheek. And there, in the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... oaks struck, only one beech, or birch, or maple or alder is struck. Elms are fairly dangerous, being forty to the beech's one, and pines are less so, their ratio being fifteen. Not only this, boys, but a good deal depends on the way in which a tree is struck. An oak-tree may be riven into splinters, showing the terrible resistance that it gives to the stroke. A beech-tree, usually, is killed outright, yet shows but little outward injury. The oak has resisted the current, it is a bad conductor; the beech has ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hope sapped, name blighted, Life's life ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... thought-processes of this distracted youth and thus provide the way of escape from impending destruction? Can it be Thy will that this fair mind shall be utterly crushed? Do the agonized words of appeal which rise to Thee from his riven soul fall ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of my God, How do thy towers in ruin lie, How art thou riven and strewn abroad, Under the rude and wasteful sky!" 'Twas thus upon his fasting-day The "Man of Loves" was fain to pray, His lattice open toward his darling west, Mourning the ruined home he ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... rejected all elements of Jewish culture, while the broad masses, following blindly the mandates of their Tzaddiks, rejected fanatically even the most indispensable elements of European civilization. Riven between such monstrous extremes, Polish Jewry was unable to attain even to a semblance of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... valleys of delight, and, behold! it is very good. Storms have swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We have heard in its thunders the Voice that woke once the echoes of the Garden. Its lightnings have riven a path for ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the crash of battle, as line on line, with flashing swords held high, the ranks of war closed. Blades rose again, stained red, fierce strangled cries came from men in the death-grips, helms were cracked, shields riven, dirks sank home, and men who once had drunk and jested with laughing looks over the same mead-board, now met fierce eye to eye, and never parted until one or both fell in the swaths of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... Murano's cottage—it dips to the tules and that's the end of it. To be sure, a trail—a horse path—breaks away and makes a detour round the head of the marshes, but this is seldom used, a bog in winter and in summer riven with dried water-courses and overgrown with brambles. To get around the tules comfortably you have to strike farther in and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... ancient brow is raised to heaven: The snow streams always, tempest-driven, Like hoary locks, o'er chasms riven ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... past so close that his moccasoned foot planted itself fairly between my outstretched arms. Instantly he faded away within the enveloping gloom, and with hardly the hesitation of a moment I was on hands and knees creeping toward my goal. With groping fingers I touched the riven trunk that formed the threshold, and, reaching upward, noted with a thrill of delight that merely a heavy curtain of woven straw guarded the interior. There was no time for hesitancy; at any instant the savage guard might return to his deserted post. Pushing the slight barrier noiselessly ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... near the town the sun was setting. In the west, tempestuous clouds were massed upon one another, and the sun shone blood-red above them; but as it sank they were riven asunder, and I saw a great furnace that lit up the whole sky. The mountains were purple, unreal as the painted mountains of a picture. The light was gone from the east, and there everything was chill and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given. The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... gold upon the feet; And with plucked ears of wheat. The first man's hair was wound upon his head: His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad; All his gold garment had Pale stains of dust and rust. A riven hood was pulled across his eyes; The token of him being upon this wise Made for a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... of jagged flame, a loud roar, a heave and crash of riven timbers—and the old hull had passed from decay ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... coach, while the fussy, self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the foothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into a bleak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two bad hemorrhages on the way, but ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... dark his fate, And devious his career, The music of that gentle voice Will tremble in his ear; And breathing o'er his troubled soul, Storm-tost and tempest riven, Will still fierce passion's wild control, And win ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the walls in ward Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven While we flash from the gate like a single sword, True steel to the hilt, ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... occur before the grasp of the pirates on the great financial interests of this country can be shaken off. David slew Goliath with one pebble from his sling, but the giant "System," intrenched in the stoutest citadel ever constructed, and armored in gold and riven steel, will yield to no mere call for surrender. My own part I have cheerfully taken with no delusions as to the difficulties of the contest. He who interferes between the lamb and the wolf is likely to provoke the wrath of the wolf, and I have done worse, for have I not ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... In number far surpassing The sand upon the coast, I thus the cause have given, That Thou with grief art riven, And the ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... threw herself forward on the arm of the couch and sobbed—sobbed with the passion she had only known on the day long ago when she had crawled into the shrubs and groveled in the earth. It was the same kind of passion—the shaken and heart-riven woe of a creature who has trusted and hoped joyously and has been forever betrayed. The face and eyes had been so kind. The voice so friendly! Oh, how could even the wickedest girl in the world have doubted their sincerity. Unfortunately—or fortunately—she knew nothing ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... patches, and beyond it there appeared another gorge in the cliffs within which rose a tall column of rock, so straight and cylindrical that it seemed to be a production of art. The whole of the back country was one great rolling distance of glacier, and, wherever a crevice or gorge in the riven cliffs afforded an opportunity, this ocean of land-ice sent down spurs into the sea, the extremities of which were constantly shedding off huge bergs into ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... watched Ludar clamber, losing him now and again in the shooting foam, and now and again, as the spray cleared off, seeing him safe, and ever a foot higher than before. How I followed him 'twould be hard to say. Yet the rock seemed riven into cracks which gave us a tolerable foothold, the better as we got higher up; and had it not been for the constant dash of the water, and the darkness, it might have been accounted passable enough. As it was, but for Ludar's strong arm above me, I should have lost my ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... TWENTY-NINE, who represents Omniscience and Oldham, in drawling voice, hesitating for a word, but having no hesitation in keeping the House waiting for it, settles the question that for two years has riven ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... us unite; and you, too, forces within me, Which clash one upon another in my riven heart! Join hands ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... copy of a paper we had managed to keep that long against continual importunity, a big Belgian dog, with a dragging tail and a sharp jackal nose, loped round from behind an undamaged cow barn which stood back of the riven shell of a house where the soldiers were quartered. He had the air about him of ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... off great strips of bark, and leaving long, gaping wounds, dripping with the white blood of trees. The lesser of the two oaks had felt the greater blow, and would have toppled to the ground had it not fallen across its mate; and its mate, though grievously riven, held it up, with branches interlocking ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... often been taken by assault during the last thirty years as to be considered untenable. The harbor appears like a nest scooped out of the mountains, into and out of which the tide ebbs and flows through a double channel riven by an earthquake in the solid rock. Tradition says it once had another entrance, but that an earthquake closed it up and opened the present channel. There is still another opening in the sharp mountain ridge that incloses it from the sea, but this opening, dug by the labor of man, at a point ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... great man on the other side of the river, but the great man he remained, until he bowed before the mandate which none may disobey. "Three times," said Bouillaud, "did the apoplectic thunderbolt fall on that robust brain,"—it yielded at last as the old bald cliff that is riven and crashes down into the valley. I saw him before the first thunderbolt had descended: a square, solid man, with a high and full-domed head, oracular in his utterances, indifferent to those around him, sometimes, it was said, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thickened and evidently was to become a fury. Wind began to whistle, trees to bend, lightnings to play, thunder to sound. It grew. We stood in blazing light, thunder almost burst our ears, a tree was riven a bow-shot away. Great warm rain began to fall. We could hardly stand against the wind. We were going under mountainside with a splashing stream below us. Diego Colon shouted, as he must to get ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the sterner aspects of that revelation, which cannot be denied, and ought not to be minimised or softened. Here, on the right hand, are the flowery slopes of the Mount of Blessing; there, on the left, the barren, stern, thunder-riven, lightning-splintered pinnacles of the Mount of Cursing. Every clear note of benediction hath its low minor of imprecation from the other side. Between the two, overhung by the hopes of the one, and frowned upon and dominated by the threatenings of the other, is pitched the little camp of our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size that I had never seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian, except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating bare ground ending in a timbered slope ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... flood and heavy the shock When sea meets sea in the riven rock: But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea To the prisoned tide of doom set free In the breaking ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the wold And choked him till his gums were blue, And till, beneath her iron hold, His tongue hung out a yard or two, And with his hair the riven ground Was strewn ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... cleft of the rock—the riven side of our Lord. There is comfort and security there. It is also in the secret places of the stairs. It loves to build its nest in the high towers to which men mount the winding stairs for hundreds of feet above the ground. What a glorious vision is there obtained of the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... these phantoms that gird thee round No limbs dissevered may strew the ground; No blood may flow, and no mortal ear The groans of the wounded heart may hear, As it struggles and writhes in their dread control, As the iron enters the riven soul. But the youthful form grows wasted and weak, And sunken and wan is the rounded cheek, The brow is furrowed, but not with years, The eye is dimmed with its secret tears, And streaked with white is the raven hair; These are the tokens of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... far when they were overtaken by a thunderstorm, which drove them to the shelter of a cave at the base of a cliff forming one side of a broad ravine. The rain fell in torrents, mingled with hail, the thunder rolled and reverberated among the hills, and the skies were riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Within the cave, however, they were ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... of the parties who were summoned, appeared. The jury returned a verdict finding the indictment proved, and the Court adjudged Captain Fraser and the other persons accused, to be executed as traitors; "their name, fame, memory, and honours, to be extinct, and their arms to be riven forth and deleted out of the books of arms; so that their posterity may never have place, nor be able hereafter to bruite or enjoy any honours, offices, titles, or dignities; and to have forfeited all their lands, heritages, and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... shadow of the houses and reached his destination unhurt. The tall house in the alley leading from the Calle Preciados to the Plazuela Santa Maria was dark, as indeed were most of the streets of Madrid this night. A small moon struggled, however, through the riven clouds at times, and cast streaks of light down the narrow streets. Concha caught sight of the form of a man in the alley before him. The priest carried no weapon, but he did not pause. At this moment a gleam of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... valley of the Arno stream there towers above the pines and giant beeches of the hills a great basalt rock, Alvernia, which looks over Italy, east and west, to the two seas. That rock is accessible by but a single foot-track, and it is gashed and riven by grim chasms, yet withal great oaks and beech-trees flourish atop among the boulders, and there are drifts of fragrant wild flowers, and legions of birds and other wild creatures dwell there; and the lights and colours of heaven play about the rock, and the winds of heaven ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... between Shanklin and Ventnor is a favourite resort to the inhabitants and visitors of both places. The catastrophe that wrought this magic transformation has resulted in producing scenery of entrancing beauty. The efforts of Nature to cover and hide the deformities of riven rocks and yawning chasms have produced trees of fantastic shape and remarkable diversity. The broken rocks afford sustenance for many plants, the chloritic marl liberated making the ground wonderfully fertile. This stone seat forms a natural throne on which many parties have found a trysting-place. ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... looked round him for a moment, and then said faintly, in his broad northern language—"What sort of usage ca' ye this, gentlemen, to a stranger a sojourner in your town? Ye hae broken my head—ye hae riven my cloak, and now ye are for restraining my personal liberty! They were wiser than me," he said, after a moment's pause, "that counselled me to wear my warst claithing in the streets of London; and, if I could ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
