"Rift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A rift had come in the smoke, and a column of boats, moving with well-timed oars, could for a moment be seen as ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Then came an unexpected rift in the clouds, the receipt of a very friendly letter from Mr. Zenas Crane, the great paper manufacturer, of Massachusetts, who had contributed to a previous expedition, but whom I had never met. Mr. Crane wrote ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... main street of tiny Les Echelles, whence, in the good old days, fair Princess Beatrice of Savoie went away to wed with the famed Raymond of Provence. We whisked through the village, and down the valley to St. Laurens du Pont, and the entrance to that great rift between mountains which leads to the monastery ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... are a little prepared to go ahead. The guide-book work is finished for good and all. There is the steaming hot low coast belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt, and the varied immense plains, and the high mountain belt of the forests, and again the variegated wide country of the Rift Valley and the high plateau. To attempt to tell you seriatim and in detail just what they are like is the task of an encyclopaedist. Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the picture of the country, the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... up, flung himself from his panting steed, and, with his drawn sword in hand, forced himself through a rift in its side into the tree. There was a hollow within it large enough to allow a man to stand upright, and two funnel-like holes ran upwards into the branches. Finding nothing, Bouchier called for a hunting-spear, and thrust it as far as he could into ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Guicciardini, the first statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his defence, and was ready to support him by advice and countenance in the conduct of his government. Within the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one little rift. For some months past he had closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo Pater Patriae. This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... rift in the smoke I caught a glimpse of Mohun's opponent. He was a man of low stature, but broad, heavy, and powerful. He came to meet his adversary with the bridle of his horse resting on the animal's neck, while both hands clutched a heavy broad-sword, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the loveliness of this river. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs—they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of an eye ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... The rift in the heavy clouds, through which the sun had gleamed for a moment, now closed, and a deeper gloom seemed to gather round them. In sudden revulsion Edith ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... two phrases that seemed to open a rift down into the mirk of his experience, so that I thought I looked for a moment into the very ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... to enter his mind even before, in shifting his position, he caught sight of a rift in the deep gloom, some fifteen feet above his head. Then he realized that at the moment of the flash of lightning, unmindful of his footing, he had strayed aside from the path, stumbled, fallen, and, as it chanced, was received into one of those unsuspected apertures in the ground which are common ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... clerk that the box presented by the district attorney had not come from their store, was the only rift in the otherwise dense cloud of incriminating evidence for the State, and the prosecution closed its case with perceptible gloom hanging over every person connected with the defense, and the jury was grave of face, as men well may be who have the life of ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little wind was running in from the sea behind. It seemed to be running to the pale rift of the dawn. And she and he darkly, on an outpost of the darkness, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... on rapidly, until he reached the knoll from which the house was visible not far away. It had ceased snowing by this time, and the moon, which was nearly at its full, was struggling to show itself through a rift in the gray clouds. The wind, however, was still blowing in wild gusts, and as it swept past him he, too, fancied it had in ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... bravado or contempt was moving him to such flamboyant dawdling. Or was he merely trying to persuade himself that he had nothing to fear in any case? He stepped out into a shower of noonday sunshine flooding through a rift in the high fog of a July morning in San Francisco. A delicious thrill from open spaces communicated itself to him. No, he would not go back to the office—it was Saturday, anyway, and, besides, he felt a vague desire for freedom and the tang ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... scarlet; he felt he had blundered. It was the first real shadow on his courtship—perhaps the little rift within the lute. He turned back to Becky for sympathy. There was no Becky. She had taken advantage of the conversation to slip away. He found her again in a moment though, at the other end of the room. She was seated ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Japanese fans and bead curtains. They think the bead curtains—instead of folding-doors—quite smart and Oriental—rather wicked. Oh and we have musical evenings on Sundays; sometimes we play dumb crambo. Now, tell me about the little rift ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... all signs fail in Holland with regard to weather, for we hardly passed the Delftsche Poort, the great Renaissance gateway through which one passes to Delft, Schiedam, The Hague, and all the well-worn place names of Dutch history, before a rift of sunlight streaked through the clouds and framed a typical Holland landscape in as golden and yellow a light as one might see in Venice. It was remarkable, in every sense of the word, and we had good weather throughout a week of days when storm ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... it the same contradiction as absolute scepticism has,—in fact, it is only its practical counterpart; for both scepticism and pessimism involve the assumption that it is possible to reach a position outside the realm of being, from which it may be condemned as a whole. But the rift between actual and ideal must fall within the real or intelligible world, do what the pessimists will; and a condemnation of man which is not based on a principle realized by humanity, is a fiction of abstract thought, which lays stress on the actuality of the imperfect and treats ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in east, highland area in west; Great Rift Valley separates East and West Banks of the ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... waves from storm-vexed prow; And darkly flashed his eyes of jet Beneath the brows which almost met. Stern was his face; but war and crime, —For he had sinn'd in many a clime— Had plough'd it deeper far than time. He was their chief: will he draw rein? Will he the yawning rift refrain? And with his halting band remain? He rais'd up in his stirrups, high, Better the chasm to descry, And measure with his hawk-like eye, While his dark steed begrim'd with toil, Tried madly, vainly, to recoil! A mutter'd curse—a sabre goad— Full at the leap the robber rode: Great God! ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... the treacherous sandy bottom, and from the other side came the more distant gleam of alkali plains; to the right arose the bluffs, here both steep and rugged, completely shutting off the view, barren of vegetation except for a few scattered patches of grass. Suddenly a man rode out of a rift in the bank, directly in front, and held up his hand. Surprised, startled, the driver instantaneously clamped on his brake, and brought his horses to a quick stop; the conductor, nearly flung from his seat, yanked ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... once established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the chest with a blow which made the little room echo. He was a powerful man, and the axe was imbedded to its haft. He worked it out of the tough wood and planted another blow, which widened the rift and made the stout old chest creak like a falling tree. The mutilated wood acted upon Dartmouth like the smell of blood upon a wolf: the spirit of destruction leaped up and blazed within him, a devouring flame, and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water? A hope I have nursed, That the waterless cup will quench my thirst.' —Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam. And here, is there water or ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the Charles Bridge. One day, to the beating of drums, a bevy of priests came from afar; they made for the market-place and there sold indulgences. The Pragers, distracted by the dissensions that rent the country, took to arms repeatedly. Now and then a rift in the clouds would hold out promise of a serener atmosphere; after two Habsburgs, Albert and his posthumous son, Ladislaus, came a King of their own choosing, of their own race and faith, George Podiebrad. But much as the Pragers venerated this native King of theirs, he was able to ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... a size where it seemed desirable again to stop growing the valley resembled a narrow canon—hardly more than a deep rift in the ground. They were still standing on its floor; above them, the parallel edges of the rift marked the surface of the ring. The side walls of the canon were smooth, but there were still many places where they could climb out ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... itself an instant later, and just as they entered the door—through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few instants before—her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and, without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that are simultaneous—however foreign in essence these scenes may be—as chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that time ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... with his foot as he came to this decision. The fog was clearing off the river. It was no more than a mere scum on the water. There was a rift above, straight ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... tropical luxuriance; but this was a mile or so farther down, and to reach that spot from above, Alessandro had had to let himself down a sheer wall of stone. The canon at its head was little more than a rift in the rocks, and the stream which had its rise in it was only a trickling spring at the beginning. It was this precious water, as well as the inaccessibility of the spot, which had decided Alessandro to gain the place at all hazards and costs. But a wall of granite would not have seemed ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... through the crannies in the rocks and leaped joyously into the tree-shaded pool. Below and to the right were the famed Basins of Venus, shimmering in the sunlight, flanked by trees and banks of the softest green. On their surface swam the great black swans he had heard so much about. Through a wide rift in the trees he could see the great, grey Castle, half a mile away, towering against the dense greens of the nearby mountain. The picture took his breath away. He forgot Hobbs. He forgot that he was; trespassing. Here, at last, was the Graustark he had ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... traverse it on foot or on horseback, there is ever some minor novelty. And on the swift train, if you draw down the curtain against the glare, or turn to your book, you are sure to miss something of interest—a deep canon rift in the plain, a turn that gives a wide view glowing in a hundred hues in the sun, a savage gorge with beetling rocks, a solitary butte or red truncated pyramid thrust up into the blue sky, a horizontal ledge cutting the horizon line as straight as a ruler for miles, a pointed ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... separated from the rest. The other three — Mounts Oscar Wisting, Sverre Hassel, and Olav Bjaaland — lay closer together. Behind this group the air had been heavy and black the whole time, showing that more land must be concealed there. Suddenly, in one of the brightest intervals, there came a rift in this curtain, and the summits of a colossal mountain mass appeared. Our first impression was that this mountain — Mount Thorvald Nilsen — must be something over 20,000 feet high; it positively took our breath away, so formidable did it appear. But it was only a ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... time of year was about the approach of the rainy season, and the tepid, tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was curiously silent and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... word about this first part of my text: the result of that direct action is complete—'the God of hope fill you' with no shrunken stream, no painful trickle out of a narrow rift in the rock, but a great exuberance which will pass into a man's nature in the measure of his capacity, which is the measure of his trust and desire. There are two limits to God's gifts to men: the one is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... combining taste and elegance and refinement in their furnishing, still impress one with the feeling that somewhere within the lute there is a rift which destroys its perfect harmony, and that rift is not far to seek—it lies in the pictures. Cheap chromos, lithographs, and woodcuts have small excuse for being in these days of fine reproductions in ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Administrative Line; possible claim by Somalia based on unification of ethnic Somalis; territorial dispute with Somalia over the Ogaden Climate: tropical monsoon with wide topographic-induced variation; some areas prone to extended droughts Terrain: high plateau with central mountain range divided by Great Rift Valley Natural resources: small reserves of gold, platinum, copper, potash Land use: arable land: 12% permanent crops: 1% meadows and pastures: 41% forest and woodland: 24% other: 22% Irrigated land: 1,620 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with a single mountain peak. The Admiral, who knew more of sea and air than any two men upon those ships, cried "Cloud—cloud!" but for a time none believed him. There sprang great commotion, the Pinta too signaling. Then before our eyes came a rift in the mountain and the ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... rise, and on the other side of the embankment, at the brink of the river, she sat on a log, and impatiently pulled off the little cap she wore. The skies were gray, heavy, overcast, with an occasional wind-rift in the clouds that only revealed new depths of grayness behind; the tideless waters murmured a faint ripple against the logs and jutting beams of the breakwater, and were answered by the crescendo wail of the dried reeds on ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... she is lying, and no one knows; And the summer shines, and the winter snows; For many a day the flowers have spread A pall of petals over her head; And the little grey hawk hangs aloft in the air, And the sly coyote trots here and there, And the black snake glides and glitters and slides Into the rift of a cottonwood tree; And the buzzard sails on, And comes and is gone, Stately and still, like a ship at sea. And I wonder why I do not care For the things that are, like the things that were. Does half my heart lie buried there In Texas, down by ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... remaining three, unwilling to brave any longer the terrors of the unknown Canon, abandoned the expedition and tried to return through the desert, but were massacred by Indians. It is only when one stands beside a portion of this lonely river, and sees it shooting stealthily and swiftly from a rift in the Titanic cliffs and disappearing mysteriously between dark gates of granite, that he realizes what a heroic exploit the first navigation of this river was; for nothing had been known of its imprisoned course through this entanglement of chasms, or could be known, save ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... of the rift between them made her more precious because of its affectionate human quality. She had been kinder to Graham, more mysterious about him, to draw Bobby back. Yet ever since his arrival at the Cedars, Graham had assumed toward Katherine an attitude scarcely to be limited by friendship. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... once more, the terror and delight of that last glimpse is upon me. In that strange yellow rift at midnight, backing the world of dark chaos, that star of palest green, I feel a thrill of the superhuman sense which renders Turner inexplicable to Balham, and stabs the soul with demoniac joy in ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the rift A kind ray shot from a holy star. Then my dream did waver and break and lift — Through it, O ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... construction, Harmouth High Street acts as a funnel for the off-shore breezes; they rush through it as they rush through Windy Gap, that rift in the coast before which the wary fisherman slackens sail. Just such an air was careering seawards when Mr. Pilkington was about to perform the difficult feat of folding his paper backwards. It smote one side of the broadsheet and tore ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... such a man was inevitably understood as applying at least to free trade and the conduct of foreign affairs. Both Huskisson and the duke in parliamentary speeches disclaimed the imputation of any bargain; still the rift was not closed, and it was speedily widened by events on which harmony between tories and friends of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... rocks, or drown him, for the water was four feet deep at the edge of the cliffs and the waves would wash over his head. For two miles, I have said, there was a line of cliffs on this coast, for two miles save just where I stood, the only break, a narrow rift which, coinciding with a section line, was the end of a road coming down to the water. They could not see this rift in the dusk, perhaps were ignorant of its existence and so ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... final loss of all companions save a gorilla-like half-breed, whose animal instinct of love and fidelity fell about the poor boy like a protecting garment. Then comes this bright spot in his life away in Hili-liland, like a momentary rift in the clouds of a stormy day. For Pym the sun shone with a heavenly effulgence, whilst the obstructions of a dire destiny were for a time removed; but when again the clouds closed between him and the ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... during which I lay as close as I could, there was a rift in the cloud. I looked out again. I stood alone on the point of the peak with the snow up ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him—a pall without one rift of light. His fingers, moving slowly, explored the limits of the couch ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... disappoints because it leaves nothing for the imagination to desire. The heavens and the earth were both on fire. Silence added its awful and desolate majesty. Infinitude, immensity pressed down upon the soul on every side; not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a rift on the breast of the sand, which was ruffled only with little ridges scarcely rising above its surface. Far as the eye could reach the horizon fell away into space, marked by a slender line, slim as the edge of a sabre,—like as in summer seas a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... at your very feet," she said with a bright look into his eyes. For some unaccountable reason, Genevra resented that look and speech. Perhaps it was because she felt the rift of an undercurrent. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... been left to herself, she would have kept him. She went out again late in the evening. The clouds had passed away to the south and east, but the lightning still fired the distant horizon far beyond Eastthorpe and towards Abchurch. The sky was clearing in the west, and suddenly in a rift Arcturus, about to set, broke through and looked at her, and in a moment was again eclipsed. What strange confusion! What inexplicable contrasts! Terror and divinest beauty; the calm of the infinite interstellar space and her own anguish; each ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... represent the human emotions evoked in the characters at significant moments of the plot. When the hero was suffering with sadness, the sky was hung with heavy clouds; and when his mind grew illumined with a glimmering of hope, the sun broke through a cloud-rift, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... spermatozoa and embryos not only of all human races but of all things that live, whether animal or vegetable, think little, but that little almost identically on every subject. That "almost" is the little rift within the lute which by and by will give such different character to ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... what, something good, no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the good order that prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp above him, on the hillside. The setting sun peeped out from a rift in the clouds and his rays were reflected from the burnished guns, from which the men had cleansed the coat of mud that they had picked up along ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise, remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he —or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again through the parted ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gentleman seldom allowed us more than a peep at his personality. His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as were his modes of thought, he would bewilder you with an excursion into latter-day literature, and like a rift of light in a fogbank you then caught a gleam of an entirely different mentality. One day I found him reading a book by the French writer Huysmans, dealing with new art. And he confessed to me that he admired Hauptmann's Hannele, though he despised the same dramatist's ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... one great valley (occupied by Lake Nyasa), the southern part of which is less distinctly due to rifting and subsidence than the rest of the system. Farther north the western depression, sometimes known as the Central African trough or Albertine rift-valley, is occupied for more than half its length by water, forming the four lakes of Tanganyika, Kivu, Albert Edward and Albert, the first-named over 400 m. long and the longest freshwater lake in the world. Associated with these great valleys are a number ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... climbed high, even I, Following a light through a rift in the blue, Following a silence that pierced like a cry, ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... streams which empty into the Merced River. When once started on its downward course, the water seems all spray. At the bottom of the first six-hundred-foot descent it made a mighty shower of mist like escaping steam from a giant rift in some titanic boiler, and soon reached the floor of the valley. The road from El Portal comes up on the north side of the river. We passed El Capitan, which rears its massive head three thousand three hundred feet in the distance, perpendicularly above the river. We were shown the pine tree, ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... first time there was a rift between the two friends. Paul did not tell Stanley what had happened at the meeting, but left him to find out. He heard all about it from Waterman—the easy-going, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... as he spoke the light mist swept past him, blotting out everything but the boulder he stood on and a rift of the dashing water ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... address was like this: "Monsieur Benevent, Corporal of Infantry 18th Company, 5th Battalion, 299th Regiment of Infantry, Postal Sector No. 121." by which you will know the rural free delivery methods along the French front. This address is the one rift in the blank wall of anonymity which hides the individuality of the millions under Joffre. Only the army knows the sector and the numbers of the regiment in that sector. By the same kind of a card-index system Joffre might lay his hand on any one of his millions, each a human being with ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... evenly grown. One day I had asked Jondo the reason for this, and had learned that it was because of the level ground on the farther side of the valley. I began then to love the level places of the earth. I love them still. And, always excepting that one titanic rift, where the world stands edgewise, with the sublimity of the Almighty shimmering through its far depths, I love them more than any other thing that nature has yet ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... gave signs of having spent its worst fury, and just before supper a rift appeared in the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... saw all the leaves, finely drawn, gleaming against the shadows that lay below. Here they stood in close hedges on either side of the road, trunk after trunk, making a dark wall with a dense roof of leafage, which presently opened out in a rift at the turn of the road, where four tree-trunks stood out against the sky; and then the trees turned away to the left and were drawn up in two new rows, which stretched out beside the road right across the plain. Here and there a few other trees stood lonely in the fields, gathered ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... would make no impression, and the body must be buried deeply, or it would be rooted up by the dingoes, whose howl we could plainly hear around us, as they bayed at the moon. We spread ourselves out in different directions, in the hope of finding some rift or recess that would answer the purpose, but in the imperfect light, we failed to discover anything, so were compelled to wait for dawn. I do not think any of us slept much. One of our little party suddenly snatched away in so unforeseen a manner, gave us all ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... rift which widened and widened and at last opened a great chasm between Roosevelt and the people on one side and the Machine dominators of the Republican Party on the other. For although Roosevelt was the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... friendship, the astute Redell discovered a rift in Cappy's armor—two rifts, in fact. The first was that Cappy feared and loathed old age and fiercely resented even the most shadowy intimation that with age he was, to employ a sporting phrase, "losing his punch." The second weakness that lay exposed to Redell was Cappy's ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings—not born from above—may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart about some trifling point of manner, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... upon the craggy clift Bewrayed this herb unto the mountain goat, That when her sides a cruel shaft hath rift, With it she shakes the reed out of her coat; This in a moment fetched the angel swift, And brought from Ida hill, though far remote, The juice whereof in a prepared bath Unseen the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... first slowly, extinguishing color; afterwards more rapidly as the sun approached the horizon. The sunlight disappeared. A moment's gray intervened, and then the wonderful golden afterglow laid on the peaks its enchantment. Little by little that too faded, until at last, far away, through a rift in the ranks of the giants, but one remained gilded by the glory of a dream that continued with it after the others. Heretofore it had seemed to us an insignificant peak, apparently overtopped by many, but by this token we knew it to be ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... master. It is understood that the Rodneys are to be the guests of the Odell-Carneys while in London. It won't be the season, of course, so there won't be much of a commotion in the smart set. It is our dear Edith's desire to slip into the charmed circle through the rift that the Rodneys make. Do ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... had watched the whole scene through the rift in the door with bated breath and great amazement. When he rose to his feet, he remained for a long time, rapt in a brown study, leaning against the wall and staring blankly before him, lost in wonder ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... out magnificently. Their huge sides tower up nearly a thousand feet from the river, until they are within reach of the lowering clouds that every moment threaten to envelop them in their indigo embrace. There is a curious rift in the dark cumulus revealing a thin line of dull carmine that frequently changes its shape and becomes nearly obliterated, but its presence in no way weakens the awesomeness of the picture. The dale appears to become huger and steeper ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... accustomed to the dim light of candles in passages where absolute darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great Auditorium appeared before us softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... of my head by people coming here. And then I had a sort of unreasonable notion that I should see you at the Linnean Council to-day and hear that all was right again. God knows, I feel for you and your poor wife. Knowing what a great rift the loss of a mere undeveloped child will leave in one's life, I can faintly picture to myself the great and irreparable vacuity in a family circle caused by the vanishing out of it of such a man as Henslow, with great acquirements, and that great calm catholic ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... ravine which I should have descended had I crossed the Nufenen. I thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills I was half tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road also held me, and so ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... abate. The vault of clouds seemed to rise and heighten and suddenly, through a rift, a long ray of sunshine fell upon the fields, and presently the clouds separated, showing the blue firmament, and then, like the tearing of a veil, the opening grew larger and the beautiful azure sky, clear and fathomless, spread over the world. A fresh and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... every opportunity of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... things, Tunis Latham had allowed his better sense to be throttled and his purpose balked in the thing which meant more to him than the schooner, his business success, or anything else in life. The broader the rift grew between Sheila and himself, the clearer he saw that without her he was a ship without a rudder and that nothing could come of his life ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... the moment when, through a rift in the clouds, I saw the daring captain clinging to one of the animal's fins, fighting the monster at close quarters, belaboring his enemy's belly with stabs of the dagger yet unable to deliver the deciding thrust, in other words, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... evening there had been a brief but violent thunderstorm, with a tropical downpour of rain, and now clouds were scudding across the blue of the sky. Through a temporary rift in the veiling the crescent of the moon looked down upon us. It had a greenish tint, and it set me thinking of the filmed, green eyes ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... was deserted, a dry wind swept the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this man who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as though in his ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... door, not one outrage, she fell on her face and wept—wept, though it was the sweetest moment of her life, prayed though she sought nothing but to thank God—prayed and wept with childish cries of gratitude, until the light at her side went out and left her in darkness, and through a rift in the masonry a single star peered in ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... within was rude and strong, Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, And with rich metal loaded every rift. That heavy ruin they did seem to threat: And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, Enwrapped in foul smoke, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in answer loth to render up My precontract, and loth by brainless war To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet; Till one of those two brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about his lip, To prick us on to combat 'Like to like! The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow! For fiery-short was Cyril's ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... thou come unto her, from her palms she will not lift The dark face hidden deep within them like the moon in cloudy rift. ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... for some earthly reason smiled in church was in danger of being banished as a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike him through a rift in the clouds. The next day he was brought into court and fined for "his ungodly conduct." With persons accused of witchcraft the Puritans were still more ruthless. When a mania of persecution swept over Massachusetts in 1692, eighteen ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... something trying. The hunger of my heart for one word from him or of him, grew sometimes rapacious; it was a perpetual fast day with me, and nature cried out for relief. That cloud cast a shadow always over me now; only except when now and then a ray from the eternal sunshine found a rift in the cloud, or shot below it, and for a moment my feet stood in light. I had letters from the Sandfords; I had even one from Miss Cardigan; it did me a great deal of good, but it broke my ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... up a position behind a sand-rift, and commenced to shriek and scream like a woman; and a moment later he became aware that his ruse was successful; two men came running toward the place where he lay concealed and as they approached the detective leaped to his feet. He had the men ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... though from a great distance, Vaillant's voice saying irritatedly, "Let Paula take care of him, Webber. Look at this—we're going to cross another rift—" ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification; famine natural hazards: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions; frequent droughts international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but not ratified - ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... of the "Little Yankee" was situated out of doors, a small rift in the face of the bluff forming a natural fireplace, while a narrow crevice between rocks acted as chimney, and carried away the smoke. The preparation of an ordinary meal under such primitive conditions was speedily accomplished, the menu not ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... was in narrow, rift-sawed planks. The walls and ceilings were covered with wallboard, properly paneled and carefully and tastefully decorated. There was a big fireplace in the east room. The west room was heated by a stove that found vent in ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... no mistaking the hollow place where the fresh water was. The light of the lantern fell on many a narrow rift in the walls of rock on either side, all sharp cracks and fissures, with rough-toothed edges, as though the solid granite had been split with mighty hammer-strokes. The seams were all awry, and the lines ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... resumed everyday aspects. The sun concentrated its rays on my head through a rift in the jungle, and the stone, stained dull red, lay in its cell, while rootlets fringed with tawny ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... figures which were doubtless Emperor penguins. During the whole day nimbus clouds had hung heavily from the sky, and snow had fallen in grains and star-like crystals. Gradually the nimbus lightened, a rift appeared overhead, and,the edges of the billowy cumulus were burnished in the light of the low sun. The sea-horizon came sharply into sight through fading mist. Bergs and islands, from being ghostly images, rose into sharp-featured reality. The ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... room to dress at five o'clock, but finding that all my windows looked out upon the water, I had forgotten everything else in watching the sea, which took hue after hue as the sun sank, growing black and turbid as it settled into a bank of gray cloud, then, when the last beams reddened every rift, lighting up into a brief splendor of crimson and gold, absorbing all the glory of the firmament. I felt rather homesick and dreary. I knew that in the dusky streets of Belfield the boys were walking up and down beneath the russet elms, wondering about me while they talked. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... as he cautiously made his way toward the light, he began to realise that he was in a rough rift or chasm in the rock, whose floor descended at about the same rate as the hill-slope; and five minutes after, he forced his passage out through the bushes which choked the entrance, to hear, away on his left, a ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... on the profile of a rock, but nothing so vast, so awful, so large as this. The word "majesty" suggests a kingly presence, a large man of dignified mien, or a sequoia standing supreme over all other trees in the forest. But a thousand men of majesty could be placed unseen in one tiny rift in this gorge, and all the sequoias of the world could be planted in one stretch of this Canyon, and never be noticed by the most careful watcher ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of the Emperor Go-Murakami differed radically in their counsels, but it was finally decided that every effort should be made to widen the rift in the Ashikaga lute, and the Court commissioned Tadayoshi to attack Takauji and recover Kyoto. Thus was presented the spectacle of a father (Takauji) fighting against his son (Tadafuyu), and a brother (Tadayoshi) fighting against a brother (Takauji). Tadayoshi ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... "Insurgente," and American cruisers and privateers had the satisfaction of retaliating for the numerous captures of American vessels by preying on French commerce. Measures were taken to raise land forces; but here again the rift in the Federal party appeared. Washington was made titular commander-in-chief. It was expected that operations would be directed by the second in command, and Hamilton's friends insisted that he should receive that appointment. ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... bonds of commerce and travel, the sense of a common country and destiny began to take root in the hearts of men, and on occasion disclosed itself with the strength and nobility of a heroic passion. True, a new rift was appearing, in the doctrine of nullification and the question of slavery, but this evoked at times a more militant and again a more appealing aspect in the sentiment of union. Jackson seemed to rise from the rough frontiersman to the guardian of the nation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... it had been put there by hand. It could not have rolled there, on account of its shape, nor could it have fallen from the bed, because the pillow was closely joined to the head of the bed, round which ran a raised edge with no rift therein. Cardan concludes: "I know that much may be said over this matter, but nothing, forsooth, which will convince a man, ever so little inclined to superstition, that there was no boding sign manifested thereby, foretelling the ruin of my position ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... is the old guitar And moldering into decay; Fretted with many a rift and scar That the dull dust hides away, While the spider spins a silver star In its silent ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... but flickering lights that lure him to destruction. Vultures croak on the rocks. The fountains flow with ink. Danger lurks in the desert. The name of the river is Death." And when they came to the shore of the river they saw no rift in the clouds above it, for their eyes ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... He opened the great doors gently, and came out into the soft spring night air. All was silent now. The narrow side-canal had a glimmer of moonlight, the opposite palace was black, with one spot of light where a window shone: overhead in the narrow rift of dark-blue sky a flock of stars flew like bright birds through the soft velvet gloom. The water lapped mournfully against the marble steps, and a gondola lay moored to the posts, gently nodding to its black shadow in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
