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Harbinger   /hˈɑrbɪndʒər/   Listen
Harbinger

noun
1.
Something that precedes and indicates the approach of something or someone.  Synonyms: forerunner, herald, precursor, predecessor.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books



... thought that death did seem to her Of long-lost joy the harbinger— Like an old household servant, come To take the willing scholar home; The school-house, it was very dear, But then the holidays were near; And why should she be lingering here? Softly the servant bore the child Who at ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... better than his own life. Suddenly she drew her arm out of his, and with an exclamation of delight, sprang to a little bank by the road-side, where she had spied a tiny violet, peeping out from amid the dead leaves that had lain there all the winter through—the first harbinger of spring, smiling up at her a friendly greeting, despite the wintry cold of February. She knelt down and gently cleared away the dry leaves and grass about it, carefully broke the frail little stem, and returned to de Sigognac's ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... diplomatic triumph, that at Leoben. He it was, too, who had brought the first offers of an armistice after Austerlitz. These recollections touched the superstitious chords in the great Corsican's being; for in times of stress the strongest nature harks back to early instincts. This harbinger of good fortune the Emperor now summoned and talked long and earnestly with him.[380] First, he complimented him on his efforts of the previous day to turn the French left at Doelitz; next, he offered to free him on parole in order to return to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... think at last that it must be near dawn, and turned our eyes eastward, in the expectation of seeing the pale red and yellow streaks which usher in the rich glow, the harbinger of the rising sun. That was my idea, not friend Obed's. He remarked, "Daylight will soon be on, I guess, and it is time we were back at camp to get some breakfast, before we begin our trudge over the mountains, for I'm mighty hungry, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... went an inspiration lifting its votaries to a self-reliance founded on God, a harbinger of hope ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... tangled hair, A silver seamed with sable, Dim harbinger from dreamland fair Of reverie ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various

... Charles II. . . . For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The King's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted them with its name' (Hallam: Const. Hist. ch. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... sons of men b'ar witness!" sings this gent, as he goes skatin' stiff-laig about in a ring like I relates, arms bent, an' back arched; "let all the sons of men b'ar witness; an' speshully let a cowerin' varmint, named Sam Enright, size me up an' shudder! I'm the maker of deserts an' the wall-eyed harbinger of desolation! I'm kin to rattlesnakes on my mother's side; I'm king of all the eagles an' full brother to the b'ars! I'm the bloo-eyed lynx of Whiskey Crossin', an' I weighs four thousand pounds! I'm a he- steamboat; I've put a crimp in a cat-a-mount with nothin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... free hearted mood they were in "enabled the judgment." I wish one knew always by what musical spell to produce the right mood for receiving and reflecting a matter as it really is. Every true poem carries this spell with it in its own music, which it sends out before it as a harbinger, or properly a HERBERGER, to prepare a harbour or lodging for it. But then it needs a quiet mood first of all, to let ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... — N. precursor, antecedent, precedent, predecessor; forerunner, vancourier[obs3], avant-coureur[Fr], pioneer, prodrome|, prodromos[obs3], prodromus[obs3], outrider; leader, bellwether; herald, harbinger; foreboding; dawn; avant-courier, avant-garde, bellmare[obs3], forelooper[obs3], foreloper[obs3], stalking-horse, voorlooper[Afrikaans], voortrekker[Afrikaans]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Empire of Brazil, and the subject is commended to your consideration. It is an obvious duty to provide the means of postal communication which our commerce requires, and with prudent forecast of results the wise extension of it may lead to stimulating intercourse and become the harbinger of a profitable traffic which will open new avenues for the disposition of the products of our industry. The circumstances of the countries at the far south of our continent are such as to invite our enterprise and afford the promise ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... embarked on the trackless wave, no longer my delight; and as the shore receded, I watched the humble edifice which I had raised over the remains of my Rosina: it appeared to me as if a star had settled over the spot, and I hailed it as an harbinger of grace. When I landed, I repaired to the convent to which I now belong; and, taking the vows of abstinence and mortification, have passed the remainder of my days in masses for the soul of my Rosina, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name, but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being there as a guarantee ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the stables at Walladmor Castle. You may trust him safely; for he is entirely attached to my interests: but now good night; for there is every appearance of snow coming on: it has been threatening for the last twenty-four hours: cold so severe as this is always the harbinger of snow: and, from the appearance of the sky at this moment, I doubt there will be a heavy fall before ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... liest, lo, Thou harbinger of pain and woe! Away—am I thine only friend? Thy lovers pale, they have no end! Thou vile one, may the devil take thee! Begone and no more visits make me! For—Yiddish writers not to mention— Men hold ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld

... how the noise increases! through the gloom 115 Of the still evening—harbinger of death, Rings the tocsin! the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... members of nearly all of the synods represented on this territory, there was organized a "Conference of the Lutheran pastors of the Metropolitan District for the discussion of all questions of doctrine and practice to the end of effecting unity." This, too, is a harbinger of an approaching era ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... Burgoyne thrilled the whole land, for all felt it to be the harbinger of final triumph. The people went wild with joy; salvos of artillery, toasts, bonfires, illuminations, everywhere testified to the general exultation. The name of France was hailed with acclamations. At once a sense of national dignity and solidity took the place of uncertainty and isolation. Now ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... tempest-tossed, but such a being as Saronia could not long sustain it. Her soul was a spirit in chase, pursuing something undefinable which she longed to obtain, that she might be for ever satisfied and her measure of happiness complete. A calm to her was like a summer day in winter-time, the harbinger of coming storm. ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... waters that washed the rock, and his ear listen to the murmurings of his own element. The Tramontana, as usual, had driven all perceptible vapor from the atmosphere, and the vault of heaven, in its cerulean blue, and spangled with thousands of stars, stretched itself above him, a glorious harbinger for the future to one who died in hope. The care of Ghita and the attendants had collected around the spot so many little comforts, as to give it the air of a room suddenly divested of sides and ceiling, but habitable and useful. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... eventually prostrated ourselves, find the same regard for self pervades the rest, and that there is no voluntary attendance—then the sight of the expiring wretch, in his last effort, turning his head over the side of his hammock, and throwing off the dreadful black vomit, harbinger of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... carriage is easily recognized; and, besides, I was following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as soon as I ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... a fashion as Tristram-esque as Mina could desire, for all that the harbinger of it was frightened little Mr Gainsborough, more frightened still. He came up the hill one evening about six, praying Mina's immediate presence at Blent. Something had happened, he explained, as they walked down. Cecily ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... outside the house, once the dairy, at present occupied by the groom and his wife; and to bring them into the house as soon as it was manifest that there was no danger from infection. But all this was to be matter for deliberation. Fanny wanted her to send over a note, in reply to Lady Lufton's, as harbinger of her coming; but Lucy marched ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... and down; and further down Descending still, and dashing: Now a rush, And now a roar, and now a fainter fall, And still remoter, and yet finding still, For the white anguish of their boiling whirl, No resting-place. Over my head appear'd, Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen, Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky, Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star Magnificent; that, with a holy light, Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood, Drinking the beauty of that gem serene, How long I wist not; but, when back ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... amongst us because we know your history; we know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand unanimity that ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... unhappy race might have been raised to the solitary spire that sprang up in the midst of them, the bearer of present consolation, the harbinger of future equality; but Holy Church at Marney had forgotten her sacred mission. We have introduced the reader to the vicar, an orderly man who deemed he did his duty if he preached each week two sermons, and enforced humility on his congregation and gratitude ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Letter of Protest (Chapter X) against the revival of Imperialism written by Liang Ch'i-chao—the most brilliant scholar living—we have a Chinese of the New or Liberal China, who in spite of a complete ignorance of foreign languages shows a marvellous grasp of political absolutes, and is a harbinger of the great days which must come again to Cathay. In other chapters dealing with the monarchist plot we see the official mind at work, the telegraphic despatches exchanged between Peking and the provinces being of the highest ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... replied the dweller of the desert; "and well hast thou merited death, for singing thy blasphemous hymns, not only to the praise of thy false prophet, who is the foul fiend's harbinger, but to that of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... more. When he passes a shop-window in which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not only to envelop her, but to caress her. She thought neither of past nor future; she lived only in the present. She lay wide ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... are a number of pieces of egg-shell lying in a line, as at k, this is an evil prognostic, the line of shell fragments indicating the road to the funeral pyre. Such a line of shell fragments is called ki'leng rah thang. This sign is a harbinger ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... tackle that case of the missing pendants to-morrow," he continued, flicking the ash from his cigar and gazing up at the ceiling with that strange twist in his eye which I had learned to regard as the harbinger of a dawning idea in his mind. "There's ten thousand dollars for somebody in that job, and you and I might as well have it as ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... display'd: Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... evening rises on the traveler from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Pontine marshes—a country at once fertile and pestilential,—where, with all the fecundity of nature, a single habitation is not to be found. Some sickly men change your horses, recommending to you not to sleep in passing the marshes; for sleep there is really the harbinger of death. The plough which some imprudent cultivators will still sometimes guide over this fatal land, is drawn by buffaloes, in appearance at once mean and ferocious, whilst the most brilliant sun sheds its lustre on this melancholy spectacle. The marshy and unwholesome parts in the north ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... wealth's sake use her with more kindness: Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth; Muffle your false love with some show of blindness: Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; 10 Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15 What simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy looks at board: Shame hath ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... you an opportunity of laying before them facts relative to the condition of the Indians, which eventuated in so much good. We do indeed rejoice in the formation of the 'Algic Society,' which is, I trust, the harbinger of great and extensive blessings to this poor ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... content himself with looking on. Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice. Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after. During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which had been infected, and from which she was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... prodigies foretold it: A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking states. When public villany, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... I should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... human race, except perhaps those irruptions which preceded the fall of the Roman Empire. Then, as well as now, generations of men were impelled forward in the same direction to meet and struggle on the same spot; but the designs of Providence were not the same; then, every new comer was the harbinger of destruction and of death; now, every adventurer brings with him the elements of prosperity and of life. The future still conceals from us the ulterior consequences of this emigration of the American toward the west; but we can hardly apprehend its more immediate results. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... one of the farmers newly arrived, the notice was a harbinger of good. It stood for progress, markets and a higher price for land; albeit he wondered "hoo he wad be keepit up." But his hard-wrought, quick-spoken little wife at his elbow "hooted" his scruples and, thinking ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... powerful monarchs, who reign over the Grecian youth, phlattothrattophlattothrat, are sending the Sphinx, that terrible harbinger of death, phlattothrattophlattothrat. With his avenging arm bearing a spear, phlattothrattophlattothrat, the impetuous bird delivers those who lean to the side of Ajax, phlattothrattophlattothrat, to the dogs who ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... growing lighter. Dawn was approaching. Yonder, in the dark night sky a dull golden streak appeared, the harbinger of day. The sun was rising, bringing to the world and all its creatures, life; but to him, ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... alders in one swampy place and willows just blushing into life along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening, and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by were turkey peas, which she had ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... the days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... shuddered. Medusa's snake-enwoven head exhaling poisonous vapour from the livid lips; Leda, swanlike beside her swan lover; Chimaera, in whom many natures mingled and made one; the conflict of a dragon and a lion; S. John conceived not as a prophet but as a vine-crowned Faun, the harbinger of joy:—over pictorial motives of this kind, attractive by reason of their complexity or mystery, he loved to brood; and to this fascination of a sphinx-like charm we owe some of his most exquisite drawings. Lionardo more than any other artist who has ever lived (except perhaps his great predecessor ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed from ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced:[306] he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger[307] of a greater friend. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... east came a keen, cold breeze, the harbinger of sunrise; the gray gloaming began by degrees to pierce and part the tops of the tall trees, which, in the darkness, had seemed a compact black roof. The crowing of cocks rang out from the court-yard of the temple, and, as the Corinthian rose with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... as to the exchequer was still pending, Scott was visited, for the first time since his childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years. Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when in Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. They at all times did so to a great extent; but he had ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... us, and taking me aside, informed me that, as he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of death, and that Don Diego was no more. I broke the news as gently as I could to Isora: but her grief was far more violent than I could have anticipated; and nothing seemed to cut her so deeply to the heart as the thought that his last wish had been ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The artists and the magistracy vied with each other in preparing happy days for the visitors—an emulation which was crowned with the most delightful results. The artists' festival, however, was but the harbinger to the the city of the great seventh centennial birthday festival of the Bavarian capital, which had been so long in preparation, and was waited for with such impatience. Concerts and theatres opened the festal series. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of course, known her before, in the way that all people in the theater seem to know each other, and I had seen her act; but on this day, when she came to me as a kind of messenger of Fate, the harbinger of the true dawn of my success, she should have had for me some special and extraordinary significance. I could invest that interview now with many dramatic features, but my memory, either because it is bad or because it is good, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... Yaspard to encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers from ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... sires; the offshoot of the vine serves the parent stem: shall man war against him who gave him being? It is for our little ones that we lay up wealth. Shall we not earn the love of those for whom we would willingly incur death itself? The young stork, that harbinger of spring, gives a signal example of filial piety, warming and feeding its aged parents in the moulting season till they have recovered their strength, and thus repaying the good offices received in its earlier years. So too, when the partridge, which is wont to hatch the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Rossetti to William Allingham," edited by George Birkbeck Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as "The Germ. Thoughts towards ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... now came on: when, like many of his respectable brethren, he hailed it at first as the harbinger of national reformation and prosperity. But he had soon reason to find that he had been deceived. However, in the fervour of the moment, and upon the suppression of the monastic and other public libraries, he received a very wide and unqualified commission to search all the libraries ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... hearing now a robin sing, I wonder if his English mate May not be hopping near your gate, A harbinger, with ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... she stood in the grass-grown walk, her skirt half-filled with blossoms, her white hands lifting the thin folds above her ruffled petticoat, she appeared to be the vital apparition of the place—a harbinger of the vivid sunlight and the dark shadows of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... of King Island had been found by the skipper of a sealing brig, named Reid, in 1799, but the name it bears was given to it by John Black, commander of the brig Harbinger, who discovered the northern part in January, 1801. Flinders was occupied for three days at King Island. On the 24th, the wind having moderated, he made for Cape Otway. But it was still considered imprudent to follow the shore too closely ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... a blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and was posing as a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... learned the art of its cultivation and the adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in his ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger—whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute—was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... about dark Arthur came in, he found her asleep with Edith at her side, while upon her face and about her nose there was a sharp, pitched look he had never seen before. Intuitively, however, he knew that look was the harbinger of death, and when Edith told him what Nina had said, he felt that ere the morning came his broken lily ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... superior to their Christian kinsmen by the weight of numbers and the possession of arms, which under the Ottoman regime were the monopoly of the Moslem. At last, however, the yoke of oppression was broken and the Greek occupation seemed a harbinger of security for the future. Unluckily, however, Epirus was of interest to others besides its own inhabitants. It occupies an important geographical position facing the extreme heel of Italy, just below the narrowest point in the neck of the Adriatic, and the Italian Government ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... Remon, Lord of Savoy, with the power of the King of France, gathered together twenty thousand knights and came beyond Tolosa, to hold the road against King Don Ferrando. And he met with his harbinger the Cid, who went before him to prepare lodgings, and they had a hard battle; and the men of the Count were discomfited, and he himself made prisoner and many with him, and many were slain. And the Count besought ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin. As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... the ditches by the roadside, the early morning air bit sharp and chilly, having a touch of frost in it—the harbinger of colder weather to come—but still retaining a dampness ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... account she had bought this one, never questioning that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a ready colour of her own, which now mounted high ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... then, among the rocks, behind which thou vanishest!... Whatever thou mayst be, delusion or truth, victory or ruin, I trust in thee, herald of fame, harbinger ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... than that complete and cordial co-operation which is existing between your fleet and ours. They work as one. I always think to myself and hope that the co-operation of our fleets, of our navies, is the harbinger of what is to come in the future when the war is over, of that which will still continue then. Magnificent is their work, and I glory always in the thought that an American admiral has taken charge of the British Fleet and the British policy, and that when the plans are ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... during the whole of the hot summer of 1811, hung threatening in the heavens, appeared as the harbinger of great and important vicissitudes to the enslaved inhabitants of the earth, and it was in truth by an act of Divine providence that a dispute arose between the two giant powers intent ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... that crime, disease, and unhappiness step in." "The abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin more than a century ago (Political Justice, second edition, 1796, vol. i, p. 248), "will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." And Professor Lester Ward, in insisting on the strength of the monogamic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... present state than I could have been as a man. I shall always be the friend of men, and keep near their dwellings. I shall ever be happy and contented; and although I could not gratify your wishes as a warrior, it will be my daily aim to make you amends for it as a harbinger of peace and joy. I will cheer you by my songs, and strive to inspire in others the joy and lightsomeness of heart I feel in my present state. This will be some compensation to you for the loss of glory you expected. I am now free from the cares and pains ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... or kokila (Cuculus Indicus) as the harbinger of spring and love is a universal favourite with Indian poets. His voice when first heard in a glorious spring morning is not unpleasant, but becomes in the hot season intolerably wearisome to ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... huge, fat, religious gentleman ... big enough to be a pope. His gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock's. His big belly walks in state before him, like a harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it. Never was such a tun of devotion seen.—Dryden, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing in ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... system, and is perhaps not habitable at all, except by Salamanders. He cannot be one of the stars with which I have established familiar acquaintance, associated with fancies and dreams and hopes, as most of us do, for instance, with Hesperus, the moon's harbinger and comrade. But amid all those stars there is one—not Hesperus—which has always had from my childhood a mysterious fascination for me. Knowing as little of astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I become ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for the one received from Beverly, he could not imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought a sister to an early grave, oppressed him, and the hectic glowed upon his pale cheeks. The marshal approached him, and laid his ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... mighty bow. She was a great, lifeless thing. Waves lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... 'Tis royal Blood, we count it as our own. [Exeunt WARRIORS in haste. This Scene is dark, and doubtful the Event; Some great Decree of Fate depends upon it, And mighty Good or Ill awaits Mankind. The Blood of Princes cannot flow in vain, The Gods must be in Council to permit it: It is the Harbinger of their Designs, To change, new-mould, and alter Things on Earth: And much I fear, 'tis ominous of Ill, To me and mine; it happen'd in my Kingdom. Their Father's Rage will swell into a Torrent— They were my Guests—His ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... and yellow frill, Arcturus, like a daffodil, Now dances in the field of gray Upon the East at close of day; A joyous harbinger to bring The ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... old man's lips, with smiles apart, Bespoke the gladness of his heart. And in his arms he took the boy The harbinger of future joy; Delighted that indulgent Heaven To his fond hopes this pledge had given, It seemed as if, to bless his reign, Irij had ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... countries when it declared war on Austria-Hungary August 27th. A sudden descent by a Roumanian army into Transylvania on August 30th was hailed as the harbinger of further successes. These hopes were turned to ashes when von Mackensen headed an irresistible German and Austrian rush which fairly inundated Roumania. The retreat from Transylvania by the Roumanians was turned into a rout. Bulgarian forces invaded the Dobrudja region ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... representations of the benign monster on garments, banners and metal tablets.[161] "The ancient texts ... are short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings, and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings on earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is based upon this ancient conception" (op. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... multitude of perils, one of which was occasioned by the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, that had the quality of closing upon every vessel which attempted to make its way between them and crushing it to pieces, a danger that could only be avoided by sending a dove before as their harbinger, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... useless Henry was as an ally in my matrimonial plans for Marion. But I was doggedly determined that she should make some man happy. At last, indeed, it seemed as though my efforts were to be crowned with success when George Harbinger ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... of a heavy cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put the two "straws" ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... Cuckfield Place, Sussex, is not only interesting as a fine Elizabethan mansion, but as having suggested to Ainsworth the "Rookwood Hall" of his striking romance. "The supernatural occurrence," he says, "forming the groundwork of one of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident in Sussex, upon whose estate the fatal tree—a gigantic lime, with mighty arms and huge girth of trunk—is still carefully preserved." ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... moon thy lamp, the flaming sun Thy harbinger; take thou my soul, Now bounding forth thy race to run, To thy ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he commanded the reinforcements sent to Spain in 1367), had scarcely begun to play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill. But his day was at hand, and the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... receding figure. His eyes were perplexed, his mind full of anxious foreboding. He hardly knew what he feared. He had only a vague sense of mischief in the air, as slight but as unmistakable as the harbinger of storm ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... instead of those cellars in which they resided when we passed them. there was great joy with the natives last night in consequence of the arrival of the salmon; one of those fish was caught; this was the harbinger of good news to them. they informed us that these fish would arrive in great quantities in the course of about 5 days. this fish was dressed and being divided into small peices was given to each child in the village. this custom is founded in a supersticious ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... bedecked, ornate and gay, Comes this way sailing, like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on and tackle trim, Sails filled, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold their play, An amber scent of odorous perfume Her harbinger!" ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... naturalness, strength and fulness of expression. The virtue of the greatest poets, such as Homer, Shakspere and Ossian, lay—so he said—in the fulness and fidelity with which they had felt and expressed the life of their nation and their epoch. Thus he became the founder of historical criticism and the harbinger of the coming romantic movement. It was he, more than any one else, who ushered in the 'storm and stress' era, with its watchwords of nature, power, genius, originality, and its general spirit of ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... joker up, Jack," he said then. "To me the mere mention of South America is like Mother Gary's chickens to a sailor, a harbinger of storm." ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... praying herself now, and Morris' broad chest heaved as he glanced at her kneeling figure, and then at the death-like face upon the pillow, with the pinched look about the nose and lips, which to his practiced eye was a harbinger of death. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... caught the rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... youths of his own age. A flood of light streamed from the windows of the reception hall of the "King of kings." There was still time to seek him and make him understand what was at stake. Ah! if she could but succeed in awaking his father's spirit! If that culpable attack should prove the harbinger of future ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... take it altogether! But what, thinkest thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into the state ought to have a triple proportion of courage. And [couldst thou have imagined that these priestly fellows, in so ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... whose chief seat appears to have been at Shirgulla (Lagash), became the sun-god of the springtime and of the morning, bringing joy and new life to the earth, while Nergal of Kutha was regarded as the sun of the summer solstice and of the noonday heat—the harbinger of suffering and death. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free; To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle stroke; And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war— The harbinger of victory! ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... cock-house at last" (deafening cheers) "and we must make our concert a stunner. It must go with a bang from start to finish. It must lick every other fag's concert that ever was, and 'be the bright harbinger of—' What is the rest of the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a slowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last. When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant more than an eighth of the heavenly circle. The moon could not put her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... being this difference, however, that the art of the latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretations of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scientific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory; and the picture-charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The chariot of progress, ...
— Progress and History • Various

... the righteousness of his mission as harbinger of peace, met Loring returning from one of the camps with gracious indifference to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour which soon effaced the stigma, and achieved glorious successes. Lord North, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were laid—in what narrow, dark dwellings—never ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... expect to be intelligible again. When the 'heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that passion which is at once the torment and delight of life'—when 'his lip, the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage of a mang—' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and mysterious, as a matter ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... pleased to know that Prof. Buchanan at his age of life has taken upon himself such a broad, deep, beneficent task as publishing the JOURNAL OF MAN. We welcome it as a harbinger of knowledge that will send its light away down the corridors of time as a beacon of the nineteenth century....We believe that its future pages are destined to contain the vortex of questions, socially and morally, which are whirling through the human mind, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... cherish the enfeebled fire Till Magnus' body mingled with its flames. But now the harbinger of coming dawn Had paled the constellations: he in fear Seeks for his hiding place. Whom dost thou dread, Madman, what punishment for such a crime, For which thy fame by rumour trumpet-tongued Has been sent down to ages? Praise is thine For this thy work, at impious ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... from one German state to another without the payment of duties at each boundary line. This yielded some of the advantages of a political union. This economic union, of which Prussia was the head, and from which Austria was excluded, was a harbinger of the future ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... lower sky was spread with those colours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled his eyes. There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch of pensiveness— the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indian summer soon to come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn to the past and forget that to-morrow was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them been ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... adage 'It is always darkest just before dawn,' is beautifully applicable to the present state of the world. So I take courage and launch my book out upon the tempestuous sea of humanity, trusting that it may be welcomed as the harbinger of a better and happier era. I am sure that it bears to the world the olive ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... but played her cards now with the least discretion, she might have been allowed to remain in Belgrade in peace. But Natalie seems fated to have been the harbinger of storm. For a time, it is true, she was content to lie perdue, entertaining her friends at her house in Prince Michael Street, driving through the streets of her capital behind her pair of white ponies, or walking with her pet goat for companion, greeted everywhere ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... in proportion to its circumference. As philanthropists in many different countries are labouring simultaneously to promote this great end, we are justified in considering the present age as the harbinger of a better; and we may rejoice in the anticipation. The progressive improvement of the human family is a delightful subject for meditation, giving us, perhaps, a prelibation of the joys of futurity, and animating us to contribute our aid, trifling as it may ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... Le. Blenheim. Blonde, La. Brunswick. Buffalo. Caesar. Cape Chatham. Captivity. See also Bellerophon. Casuarina. Cerberus. Circe, frigate. Cygnet. Defence. Dictator. Duyfhen [Duyfken], yacht. Eendragt. Eliza, sloop. Elligood. Endeavour. Eole. Esperance. Ganges. Glatton. Glory. Greyhound, frigate. Harbinger, brig. Harriet, cartel. Heemskirk. Heir Apparent. Hercules. Hunter. Java. Latona. Leviathan. Lowestoft, frigate. Marengo, French frigate. Marlborough. Matilda, whaler. Minerva, frigate. Nautilus. Niger. Olympia. Orient, L'. Orion. Otter. Pandora. Phaeton. Phoenix. Piemontaise, La, privateer. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... again in our children," he said, as they sallied forth just as the east was growing rosy with the harbinger of dawn. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their blandishments—tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are—are you a harbinger?" ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... which might otherwise multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the patient ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous

... himself, will for himself, and aspire incessantly for the realisation of his ideals and dreams. Yes, we are to-day at a terrible and glorious turning point, and it depends upon us whether that one star in the vague and dusky sky of modern life, shall be the harbinger ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth of immortal being; but divine Science wipes away ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through small, To greater liberty, until at last ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... sickness and death, longed for these lovely flowers. The time of the Mayflower's blossoming has long been past, but in fancy our thoughts go back to that early spring when the first bluebird winged his way to Burial Hill, calling up memories of the English robin, which this harbinger of spring resembles. It was the Pilgrims who ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... him a crown of gold, the spirit of divination, and in conclusion made him a demigod. O vis superba formae, a goddess beauty is, whom the very gods adore, nam pulchros dii amant; she is Amoris domina, love's harbinger, love's loadstone, a witch, a charm, &c. Beauty is a dower of itself, a sufficient patrimony, an ample commendation, an accurate epistle, as [4829]Lucian, [4830]Apuleius, Tiraquellus, and some others conclude. Imperio digna forma, beauty deserves ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior



Words linked to "Harbinger" :   tell, indicant, precursor, indication



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