"Portent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into soft clay and catching branches with both hands, I clambered up the cliff and found myself in a thicket not a stone's throw from the door. The house was in darkness. My heart sank at a possibility which hardly framed itself to a thought. Was the apparition in the Mandane lodge some portent? Had I not read, or heard, of departed spirits hovering near loved ones? I had ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... from their propriety, and all but scared the Second George beyond seas. This terror in time subsided, but the interest in the northern savages still survived, and was further stimulated when, about fifteen years after, the portent of Macpherson's Ossian burst on the astonished world of literature. Then about eleven years later, in 1773, the burly and bigoted English Lexicographer buttoned his great-coat up to the throat and set out on a Highland sheltie from ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... high ground with a thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell 'em that your pore friend's mind was deranged by cuttin' too many palo verdes." He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ever ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound of Hermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is such an alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout all Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses. [73] Sometimes the whole ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... intellectual pursuits his mind was enlarged beyond the sphere of vulgar superstition, and emancipated from that timorous interpretation of nature which caused even some of the leading men of those days to behold a portent in the most ordinary phenomenon. A still rarer accomplishment for a Theban was that of eloquence, which he possessed in no ordinary degree. These intellectual qualities were matched with moral ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... came the strange return of Ugh-lomi, a wonderful animal seen galloping far across the river, that suddenly changed into two animals, a horse and a man. Following this portent, the vision of Ugh-lomi on the farther bank of the river.... Yes, it was all plain to her. Uya was punishing them, because they had not hunted ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... High Street of Edinburgh resounded in the dead of night with trumpet note and herald's call from the grim Hades of mediaeval imagination, summoning by name a long list of the Scottish nobility, of whom one man defied the portent and refused the call and was saved. James paid no heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that extraordinary ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... civilized man found a precarious harborage at three points only,—at Quebec, at Montreal, and at Three Rivers. Here and in the scattered missions was the whole of New France,—a population of some three hundred souls in all. And now, over these miserable settlements, rose a war-cloud of frightful portent. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... ominous. She bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king hesitated. She had menaced ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... keep astride your politics, and never mount your prophecy; politics is the better horse," said Nello. "But if you talk of portents, what portent can be greater than a pious notary? Balaam's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... nodded. Smith swung the aeroplane round, and descended until it was circling immediately over the junk and its assailants. Cries of amazement broke from some of the Malays as they caught sight of this strange portent from the sky, but the greater number were climbing up the sides of the junk, heedless of all else than the work in hand. There was something fascinating to Smith in the spectacle: the almost naked Malays, armed with their terrible krises, swarming on every part of the vessel; the Chinamen ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... uncanny had the entire occurrence been that there was not a one of them who could find a ray of comfort penetrating the dead blackness of its ominous portent. What had happened to one of their number each conceived as being a wholly possible fate for himself—in fact quite his probable fate. If such a thing could happen in broad daylight what frightful thing might not fall to their ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prove that the operator understood the portent of the message but I know the fellow—his name is Wicks, and I think ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... him, for, in truth, I only asked with a half hope that he might have some other interpretation of this portent than that of violent death, which seemed the plain meaning of it—that is, if he saw aught, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I tried to think that his glance had met the sun for a moment before he looked on the king; but I could not think it, for in the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... another Thirty Years' War, and asserted that no intelligent man ever entertained the wish that Germany should attain world-domination. There was a time when this frank reflection on the Hohenzollern intelligence would have constituted lese-majeste. Coming from a Minister it amounts to a portent. Now he has gone, but the growing belief that military operations cannot end the war has not been scotched by his fall, and Herr Erzberger vigorously carries on the campaign against Chancellor Hertling and the generals. Austria has been at last goaded ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death. Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in the third week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evil entering the house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled. Toward nightfall comes the chariot of a physician and deposits its big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... off, turning over in his mind this prophetic remark, which seemed to him full of sinister portent. For the first time in his life the prince of travellers did not dine jovially. The whole town of Vouvray was put in a ferment about the "affair" between Monsieur Vernier and the apostle of Saint-Simonism. Never before had the tragic event ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... new interest Mr. Wingate was taking, by fits and starts, in the deposed family who were his relatives and—enemies. In Marshall's opinion the breech between these kinsfolk ought not to be healed. Amy's presence in the house was a disastrous portent. She must be gotten out of it as soon as possible, and in such a way that she would not care ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... cigar from the box upon the table. The wine, of which I drank nearly a tumblerful, put new courage of a sort into me; and so, troubled and amazed, I began to ask myself what the proceeding meant, or what the portent of it ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... deep solemnity of the vast woods and plains amid which their savage lives were passed; nor could one fail to feel the deep gravity with which they gathered in this council of life or death. To them it was evident that the meeting was of most serious portent. ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... know what I think," said Ruth exasperated at the little prattler. It seemed so awful for a girl with brains—or hadn't she brains?—to chatter on interminably in that inane fashion about a matter of such awful portent. And yet perhaps the child was only trying to cover up her fears, for she all too evidently ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... of which the second change was only a portent, all remained fairly peaceful in the big burrow under the whins and brambles. Occasionally, in the brief winter days, Brock was awakened from his comfortable sleep by the music of the hounds, as they ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Highlanders, and the corps de ballet, draymen too, have legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But what are they? not the modulated instrument we mean—simply legs for leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a leg with brains in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... keenly discussed in various papers, but by none with more enthusiasm than The Daily News. In a special article from the luminous pen of "A.G.G.," in the issue of April 12th, the true inwardness of the portent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... all clean has the sharp metal clipped off Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent; Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart- strings, Rage-wrung, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Stuart faced (he not only faced, but he refused) the authority of his judges. I know not by what delicate mechanism of the soul that record may seem at one moment a sort of tourist thing, to be neglected or despised, and at another moment a portent. But I will confess that all of a sudden, pointing out this very well-known record upon the brass let into the stone in Westminster Hall, I suddenly felt the presence of the thing. Here all that business was done: they were alive; ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... Brook's dolorous drop that yet presented the news as a portent so great that he was moved again to mirth. "Ah that's where she is? Then I confess she has scored. He has never taken ME to the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint L' anme del cunte portent en pareis. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... have, a Younger Son, [Friedrich Josias: 1737-1815.] who in some sixty years hence will become dreadfully celebrated in the streets of Paris, as "Austrian Coburg." The Austrian Coburg of Robes-Pierre and Company. An immeasurable terror and portent,—not much harm in him, either, when he actually comes, with nothing but the Duke of York and Dunkirk for accompaniment,—to those revolutionary French of 1792-1794. This is point FIRST. Point SECOND is perhaps ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the Koran, and the Compassionate hath described my complexion and its excellence over all other hues in His manifest Book, where Allah saith, 'A yellow, pure yellow, whose colour gladdeneth the beholders.'[FN377] Wherefore my colour is a sign and portent and my grace is supreme and my beauty a term extreme; for that my tint is the tint of a ducat and the colour of the planets and moons and the hue of ripe apples. My fashion is the fashion of the fair, and the dye of saffron ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... and following hard upon them crept a tingling apprehension. The reappearance of this rattish youth, casual as was the air with which he strove to invest it, began to assume, for me, the character of a theatrical entrance of unpleasant portent—a suggestion just now enhanced by an absurdly obvious notion of his own that he was enacting a part. This was written all over him, most legibly in his attitude of the knowing amateur, as he surveyed Miss Elliott's painting patronisingly, his head ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... on the roof! What a revel there was of brave scout doings, of gentlemanly conduct!—all witnessed by a large, fat moon. He wigwagged messages of great portent to phantom scouts who were in dire need. He helped blind men across streets that ran down the whole length of the roof. He held back pressing crowds while the police were rendered speechless with admiration. He swept off his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... singulierement constitues doivent necessairement s'exprimer autrement que les hommes ordinaires. Il est impossible qu'avec des ames si differemment modifies ils ne portent pas dans l'expression de leurs sentiments et de leurs idees l'empreinte de ces modifications. Si cette empreinte echappe a ceux qui n'ont aucune notion de cette maniere d'etre, elle ne peut echapper a ceux qui la connoissent, et qui en sont affectes eux-memes. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... his "dear constituents," whom he did all his wit could do to make ridiculous, that the Senate laughed, and even Roscoe Conkling, who never condescends to sneer at a woman in public, turned and listened and smiled his most sardonic smile. Then Thurman blew his loudest regulation blast—sure portent of approaching battle—and rose and moved that the petition be referred to the committee on public lands, of which Oglesby is chairman. At this proposition—intended to be equally humorous and contemptuous—the whole ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... grossieres contre les regles fondamentales de la prononciation portent les noms de Cuir, de ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... the Eskimo, of the way he had received us and its portent. There could be only one explanation. I had no heart now for the competition as to who should first sight the post. Yet how we hope even when there is nothing left to us but the absence of certainty! I could not quite give up yet. Suddenly George exclaimed, "There ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... he, the simple fool, Who says that wars are over? What bloody portent flashes there, Across the Straits of Dover? Nine hundred thousand slaves in arms May seek to bring us under But England lives and still will live, For we'll crush the despot yonder. Are we ready, Britons all, To answer foes with thunder? Arm, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... wondered at therefore that this was in the main a century of religious depression, a time when the fear of the gods filled every man's heart and when every trifling apparent irregularity in the course of nature was exaggerated into a portent declaring the wrath of the gods and needing some immediate and extraordinary propitiation. It is in just such a moment as this in the middle of the century (B.C. 249) that the next recorded instance of new gods ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... at least to Tresler, was full of portent. True, the rustlers had been quiet, but the effect of their recent doings was very apparent. The sheriff was now in constant communication with the ranch. Fyles visited Julian Marbolt frequently, holding long consultations ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... manifest the same reverence to the Almighty, but being informed that her crown was fastened to her hair, he did not press the subject. On the return of the procession, an incident occurred, which, had it happened among the nations of antiquity, would have been considered an omen of evil portent, which could only have been averted by a whole hecatomb of sacrifices. The most valuable diamond in his majesty's diadem fell from it, and was for some time lost, but it was afterwards found, and restored ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pauper vagabond who writes sonnets, though either of these roles may be part of his disguise. He is not merely something negligible or accidental or ornamental, he is something real and true, the product of his time, at once a phenomenon and a portent. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Increase Mather, in his Discourse concerning Comets, printed at Boston in 1683, says of this one: "Its appearance was very terrible, the Blaze ascended above 60 Degrees almost to its Zenith." Mather thought it fraught with terrific portent to the nations ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... knew that omen, and the Queen Gandhari knew, Bhishma muttered "svasti! svasti!" at this portent strange and new, ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... evidences of the pressure sustained by the slender boom piles were not wanting. Above the steady gurgle of the water and the intermittent puffing and other noises of the work, they could hear a creaking and groaning of timbers full of portent to those ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... mockery? You ask omniscient HUXLEY, cocksure oracle On all from protoplasm to Home Rule, From Scripture to Sea Serpents; go consult Belligerent, brave, beloved BILLY RUSSELL! Verisimilitude incarnate, I Scorn your vain sceptic mirth! Besides, behold The portent riding me, as Thetis rode The lolloping, wolloping sea-horse of old! Is it less likely that I should remain Than she return?" Then, horror-thrilled, I gazed At her, the Abominable, the Ogreish Thing; The soul-revolting, sense-degrading She, Who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?—a great red letter in the sky,—the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well do I understand the dream's portent and monition: my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... imagination. As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order. She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an abstract" of that science ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Mrs. Hammond, it meant to the wearied mariner boundless cheer, the latest London papers, pipes and soothing rum punch mixed by a comely and cheerful bar-maid, to the unsophisticated Canadian peasant, attracted to the Lower Town on market days, it was of evil portent. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... into the fourth century of the empire.[652] We read with astonishment in the code of the Christian emperor Theodosius, that if the imperial palace or other public buildings are struck by lightning the haruspices are to be consulted, according to ancient custom, as to the meaning of the portent.[653] Thirteen years after the death of Theodosius, in 408, Etruscan experts offered their services to Pompeianus, prefect of Rome, to save the city from the Goths. Pompeianus was tempted, but consulted Innocent, the Bishop of Rome, who "did not see fit to oppose his own opinion ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the smart he drops the fatal prey, In airy circles wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heavens with cries: Amid the hosts the fallen serpent lies; They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, And Jove's portent with beating ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... pitiless night—a night the superstitious might well associate with the portent of the downfall of the house around which the storm seemed to rage. The rain beat upon the windows, and the wind with its invisible arms clasped the old farmstead as if to wrench it from its foundations ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... act, although he yielded automatically to his gentler instincts and withheld the knife-hack. To him, human life had dwarfed to microscopic proportions before this colossal portent of higher life from within the distances of the sidereal universe. As had she been a dog, he kicked the ugly little bushwoman to her feet and compelled her to start with him on an encirclement of the base. Part way around, he encountered horrors. Even, among ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... like wild-fire. It was regarded—for reasons which will presently appear—as a portent of gravest significance. The clergy met in unofficial but well-attended conclave to deliberate as to what attitude should be adopted towards the phenomenon, and what measures taken to allay ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of an army's strength. The barriers offered by the River Tagliamento and the many commanding heights of the Carnic and the Noric Alps were as nothing to the triumphant republicans; and from the heights that guard the province of Styria, the genius of Napoleon flashed as a terrifying portent to the Court of Vienna and the potentates of Central Europe. When the tricolour standards were nearing the town of Leoben, the Emperor Francis sent envoys to sue for peace;[72] and the preliminaries signed there, within one hundred miles of the Austrian capital, closed the campaign ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Staff College. The possibilities of aviation very early took possession of his mind. In 1909, from the cliffs of Dover, he saw M. Bleriot arrive in a monoplane, and was so impressed by the sight that he went straight to the War Office to draw attention to the military significance of this portent, and its threat to our insular security. From this time forward his mind was set on aeronautics. He applied for military aviation service before the Flying Corps was formed, and in May 1912 repeated his application. 'A ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... went away. When this perfectly insignificant fact was published in the papers the next morning, the South burst into a storm of indignation and abuse. Some of the Southern journals saw, in what was a mere routine incident, a terrible portent, foreboding that Roosevelt planned to put the negroes back to control the Southern whites. Others alleged the milder motive that he was fishing for negro votes. The common type of fire-eaters saw in it one of Roosevelt's unpleasant ways of having ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... seemed to draw us to it as to a promised land. We sat upon our horses, spellbound, gazing upon what seemed at once too grand and too beautiful to be real. Had we been superstitious like soldiers of an ancient time, we might have seen a miraculous portent in it; and even as it was, such sentiment as may be permitted in the sceptical spirit of our own day could find a happy omen in the scene. We were entering upon a new chapter in our military lives, and it was cheering to us, in entering East Tennessee, through the great gate that opened before us, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... child Deirdre, daughter of the chief poet of Ulla, was attended with a great portent, for the child shrieked from the mother's womb. Cathvah and the Druids were consulted concerning that omen. They addressed themselves to their art of divination, and having consulted their oracles and gods and familiar spirits, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Parker family returned to the ranch. Conversation languished during the trip; a disturbed conscience on the part of the father, and on the part of Kay and her mother an intuition, peculiar to their sex and aroused by the doctor's comments, that events of more than ordinary portent had occurred that ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... dressed carefully. His mind was full of Lakely and of the possibilities the night might hold; for more than once before, the weight of the 'St. George's Gazette', with Lakely at its back, had turned the political scales. To be marked by him as a coming man was at any time a favorable portent; to be singled out by him at the present juncture was momentous. A thrill of expectancy, almost of excitement, passed through him as he surveyed his appearance preparatory ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... a yellowish-brown, bespeaking Indian blood. I knew at once that it must be John Randolph. As he uttered the words, 'Mr. Speaker!' every member turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some portent had suddenly appeared before them. 'Mr. Speaker,' said he, in a shrill voice, which, however, pierced every nook and corner of the hall, 'I have but one word to say,—one word, sir, and that is to state a fact. The measure to which the gentleman has just alluded originated ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... scrawny, reddish-haired youngster, freckled almost as profusely as Billy. Three times had they met in noble battle, and three times had Billy been the conqueror, but somehow the spirit of young McMasters did not seem particularly broken, nor did he become a serf. Billy felt that the air was full of portent, and he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon—a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... quantities of firewood, which they burnt in order that the poisonous vapour might be dispelled. The fire, being the male influence, would assimilate with and act as an antidote upon the mephitic smoke, which was a female influence.[36] Besides this, as a further charm to exorcise the portent, the dance called Sambaso, which is still performed as a prelude to theatrical exhibitions by an actor dressed up as a venerable old man, emblematic of long life and felicity, was danced on a plot of turf in front of the Temple Kofukuji. By these means the smoke ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Staircase. I had turned sharply the angle of the hall and placed my foot upon the bottom step and then I saw her. She was motionless; her back I saw, and O! the grace of her neck and the glory of her arrested attitude. I feared to move, but some portent, silent, inflexibly eloquent, haled me to the staircase. That was years ago. I called to her, strange calls, beautiful sounding names; I besought her to bend her head, to make some sign to my signals of urgency; but her glance was aloft, where, illumined by the scarlet music of a setting sun, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... he was so thoroughly convinced of a divine manifestation against him, that he despised any exceptional scepticism as utterly beneath his notice or attention—thoroughly engrossed, as he appeared to be, with the terrible sanction of a portent of some coming retribution. His silence in some degree distressed me, as I thought he resented my levity in commenting upon his convictions; so it was with some relief that Dr. Rogers came in and sat down at the table, apparently to wait ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... flashed forth from the jewel encrusted handle the noble armourial bearings, charged upon a gold escutcheon, of Lord Cedric's house. Wonderingly, she examined it and swept her brow with the back of her slender hand. Slowly she spoke, and in a voice vibrant with portent, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... by a vision. Thus doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, comes Arthur: "from the great deep" he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, "to the great deep he goes"—a king to be accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his ideal are objects of belief. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... but as she entered the dining-room the parlour-maid told her that Mr. Peyton had overslept himself, and had rung to have his breakfast sent upstairs. Was it a pretext to avoid her? She was vexed at her own readiness to see a portent in the simplest incident; but while she blushed at her doubts she let them govern her. She left the dining-room door open, determined not to miss him if he came downstairs while she was at breakfast; then she ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... been for him, if he were lying beneath the earth, enveloped in his shroud, still unconscious of bitter toils. Would that the dark wave, when the maiden Helle perished, had overwhelmed Phrixus too with the ram; but the dire portent even sent forth a human voice, that it might cause to Alcimede sorrows ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... premises by an unfamiliar side door. She preceded him along a passage and then, taking a door on the left, found herself surprisingly in the shop, behind a counter. The shop was lighted only by a few diamond-shaped holes in the central shutters, and it had a troubling aspect of portent, with its merchandise mysteriously enveloped in pale sheets, and its chairs wrong side up, and its deep-shadowed corners. Destiny might have been lurking in one of those baffling corners. From above, through the ceiling, came the vibration ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Whigamores, standing round some object on the ground. It was at the two-mile cross, and within that distance from their homes. At last, to their horror, they discovered that the recumbent figure was a livid corpse, swathed in a blood-stained winding-sheet. {5a} Many thought that this apparition was a portent of the deaths connected with the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... incubation? Or is the new age born? Is it a new slope that we are on, or are we merely part of a surprisingly vigorous premonitory flutter? These are queries to ponder. Is Cezanne the beginning of a slope, a portent, or merely the crest of a movement? The oracles are dumb. This alone seems to me sure: since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna no artist in Europe has created forms of greater ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... lashes hung above her dreamy eyes, Like twin clouds of stormy portent balanced over limpid deeps; Like the wings of birds of passage seen against the hazy skies; Like the petal o'er the pollen of the flow'ret when ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... M. Bayle has well put this in his account of Aesop. "Il n'y a point d'apparence que les fables qui portent aujourd'hui son nom soient les memes qu'il avait faites; elles viennent bien de lui pour la plupart, quant a la matiere et la pensee; mais les paroles sont d'un autre." And again, "C'est donc a Hesiode, que j'aimerais mieux attribuer la gloire de l'invention; ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... portent; where the ridge of lofty Tenedos filled the sea, there breaks a swelling surge, and the broken waves rebound and threaten the calm: as when in the silent night the sound of oars is borne afar, when navies burden the main and the smitten deep groans beneath its freight of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Attentiveness—I found that the Arch thereof looked shaky and insecure; moreover, that a Great and Irregular-shaped Cleft or Crack ran, after the fashion of a Lightning-flash in a Painted Sea-scape, athwart the structure thereof from Keystone to Coping. As I was regarding this unpleasing Portent, the Genius told me that this Bridge was at first of sound and scientific construction, but that the flight of Years, Wear and Tear, vehement Molecular Vibration, and, above all, Negligent Supervision, had resulted in its ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... market. A great multitude of rats crossed the river. The fires of heaven burned all the royal palaces. A gale blew down the five towers. There were, also, in the heavens two suns, one swallowing the other—an occurrence, certainly, of dire portent. Another very extraordinary thing beside these occurred. We saw that man called Chanchain enter the palace to kill the prince, in which event the mandarin [illegible in MS.] wishing to speak to you, my king, in a rather loud voice, in order ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... fortifications, the segment of a circle, with the triangle penetrating through from the north. These shapes were distinctly defined. Could the operations beneath have produced this phenomenon? was it accidental? or a portent of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Samans. A celestial shower of flowers belonging to every season fell on that spot where he of Vrishni's race, with Ganga's son and the son of Pandu were. Celestial instruments of every kind played in the welkin and the tribes of Apsaras began to sing. Nothing of evil and no portent of any evil kind were seen there. An auspicious, pleasant, and pure breeze, bearing every kind of fragrance, began to blow. All the points of the compass became clear and quiet, and all the animals and birds began to rove in peace. Soon after, like a fire at the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... battery was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming 'dropper.' About the time the 'dropper' reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens. That's the little plan which Bailey's presence threatened to wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hand they hold worth two in the bush; and though your birds may be winged on strong desire, and your bush the burning portent of Moses, they will have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a moment; then, as I listened, that strange apathy once more began to creep over me. Was it really the truth he had told me? Was it? Well—and then? What meaning had it to me?... Of what help was it?... of what portent?... of what use?... What door did it unlock? Surely not the door I had closed upon myself so ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... line in the Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was a literary portent, [372] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grandsons—the first-born of Gianni—a comely youth, not two weeks wedded, who made no reply. "My little Pietro here," continued the Baron, speaking to his comrades, "is so new a bridegroom, that last night he dreamed of his bride; and deems it, poor lad, a portent." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Gonds and Baigas placate or drive away a tiger who has killed a man in order to prevent him from obtaining further victims. Some similar idea apparently underlay the omen of the dog running away with food. Perhaps the portent of hearing the kite scream on a tree also meant that he looked on them with a prescient eye as a future meal. On the other hand, meeting a corpse and seeing a snake are commonly considered to be lucky omens, and their inclusion in this list is curious. [615] The passage ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the act or event it is applied to, as producing wonder or amazement in the beholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament (s{e}meion, a sign; dunamis, power; less frequently teras, a portent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of the occurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or as the product of a ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... they talked, Paul noticed that Peter's eyes often rested with a troubled look upon his sister. In fact, it seemed to Paul that a black shadow of direful portent hung over them ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... another minute, another sixty seconds, he had set his petard. That set and exploded, Geneva had lain open to its enemies. As it was, so small was the margin, so fatally accurate the closing, that when the day rose, it disclosed a portent. When the victors came to examine the spot they found beneath the portcullis the mangled form of one of the engineers, and beside ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... out on the steps, and breathed the cool night air. A slender taint of drugs hung everywhere about the building, and the almost imperceptible permeation sickened him; it was deadly, he thought, and imbued with a hideous portent of suffering. That John Harkless, of all men, should lie stifled with ether, and bandaged and splintered, and smeared with horrible unguents, while they stabbed and slashed and tortured him, and made an outrage and a sin of that grand, big, dexterous ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... while, however, his thoughts took a different turn. From the material wreck they passed on to the dire significance which such portent might indicate. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... mine image came the maiden's face, And when he saw her, straight the warrior said Turning about unto an earthly maid, 'O, lady Venus, thou art kind to me After so much of wandering on the sea To show thy very body to me here,' But when this impious saying I did hear, I sent them a great portent, for straightway I quenched the fire, and no priest on that day Could light it any more for all his prayer. "So must she fall, so must her golden hair Flash no more through the city, or her feet Be seen ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... war-god, Huitzilopocahtli. Lights appeared here and there in the town, the clashing of arms was heard here and there on the broad avenues. Under the lights farther up the streets could be seen files of troops moving. The hour was full of portent. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... attitude toward life—to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even might have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she somehow had the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... benefit on all men and return one to him; seeing that for such characters death is the only remedy, and that he who never will return to himself, had best leave himself. However, such wickedness as this is uncommon, and is always regarded as a portent, as when the earth opens, or when fires break forth from caves under the sea; so let us leave it, and speak of those vices which we can hate without shuddering at them. As for the ordinary bad man, whom I ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... land of dreams was carefully mapped and bounded. Each dream had some special significance, or was at least susceptible of classification under some significant head. Dreams, as a general rule, went by contraries; but a dream three times repeated was a certain portent of the thing defined. Rena's few years of schooling at Patesville and her months at Charleston had scarcely disturbed these hoary superstitions which lurk in the dim corners of the brain. No lady in Clarence, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... That first within thy halls Imperial TRUTH and MERCY met, And in that hallow'd hour Gave earth the hope that Peace shall yet Be dear to Kings as Power. When France clasp'd England's hand of old There memory marks the wane Of iron times, the bad and bold;[45] Oh, may our SECOND FIELD of GOLD A portent still more fair unfold Of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... certain waste lands near Sardis, met with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Mr. Goodchild's temper, which was sweet before. Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr. Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments but broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in the Innkeeper's house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions for the month, and a frightful ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... words I shall omit, and I will proceed to the termination itself of thine aberrations. For after that thou hadst come to the Molossian plains, and about the lofty ridge of Dodona, where is the oracular seat of Thesprotian Jove, and a portent passing belief, the speaking oaks, by which thou wast clearly and without any ambiguity saluted illustrious spouse of Jove that art to be; if aught of this hath any charms for thee.[64] Thence madly ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... their portent, the effect was startling. Steele's bulky assailant paused, remained stock-still, his purpose arrested, all his anger gone ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... entire poem, where Satan alone is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all possible pains to prevent his gaining ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... one evening when the kitchen had been swept, and the door locked, Jean-Pierre, looking at the cot, asked his wife: "What's the matter with those children?" And, as if these words, spoken calmly, had been the portent of misfortune, she answered with a loud wail that must have been heard across the yard in the pig-sty; for the pigs (the Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred and grunted complainingly in the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... now that the weather is fine again. We had a whole day's rain (which Herodotus says is a portent here) and a hurricane from the south worthy of the Cape. I thought we should have been buried under the drifting sand. To-day is again heavenly. I saw Abd-el-Azeez, the chemist in Cairo; he seemed a very good fellow, and was a pupil of my old friend M. Chrevreul, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... quoted from his master who had studied in Athens. They had escaped from his burdened soul when he heard of another portent, of which a ship from Ostia had brought tidings. The flourishing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any news, but it might contain an explanation. His face grew pale as ashes as he read, and he put his hand to his heart, as though he had received a blow there. Twice he read it through, and at the last reading he seemed to realize its dread portent. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask |
