"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... settled, where the grazing of stock, by diminishing the quantity of grass, renders the annual fires less destructive to the growth of wood. The prairie (i. e., land destitute of wood) is covered with grass, much of which is of suitable length for the scythe." ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the former is a pretty little mark, executed with a considerable amount of vigour, of Robert De Gourmont, Paris; alarge and vigorous Mark—one of several—employed by Simon De Colines, Paris, in which it is interesting to note that the scythe is not invariably denticulated; two very crude but very distinct examples employed by Michel Hillenius or Hooghstrate, Antwerp, 1514; and two, one large and the other small, of Guillaume Chaudire, Paris, 1564; whilst Jean Temporal, of Lyons, 1550, used it as an evident play on his name. The ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... blossoms blithe Must fall beneath his deadly scythe: Roses and lilies pure, Your end is all too sure! Imperial lilies rare He will not ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... to concentrate his brain on anything for a long time; he was happily dreaming, let us hope, of carbon bisulphate, when the roar, "How's that?" woke him up. He had to give the man "not out"; there was nothing else to do. Twenty minutes later, with a scandalous scythe-stroke, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... with the comely names, Mattock and scythe and spade, Couth and bitter as flames, Clean, and bowed in the blade,— A man and his tools make a man ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... of these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... cottage, that she experienced the full weight of her heavy burden. Even when death comes slowly, when sickness, pain, and long suspense have made the issue certain, it is hard for the bereaved to realize the dread event; but when the scythe of the destroyer has passed so quickly over, when the home is made so speedily desolate, and the place vacant, is it wonderful that to the stricken mourner all seems dark, discerning no light behind the overshadowing cloud? But none, dear reader, are afflicted ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... that he should find her still in the churchyard, and he was right. She was standing near one of those dreary monuments which affectionate relatives loved to raise to their departed friends in the early Victorian era. There was old Time with his beard and scythe, a broken column, veiled mourners and a dejected-looking cherub, and the stiff funereal urn; but Elizabeth was looking at a cluster of grassy mounds under a yew tree, with simple headstones, and here and there a cross. She looked up at ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mahogany wardrobe was discharged at his morion, which would have felled an ox, and would have done for the King had not Ivanhoe warded it off skilfully. Still they advanced, the warriors falling around them like grass beneath the scythe of the mower. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... favorite dissipations were painfully inadequate in the rural districts, and besides he was a city man born and bred, and while he knew how to take hold of a shovel, he would probably have stood askance and aghast before a scythe. So he hung on, hoping against hope for something—almost anything—to happen. To be sure his own comparative incompetence was to blame for the company's underwriting record, but that was a ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Rabbit was told that a railroad must be level, he thought a man would come with a big scythe and slice off the top of the hill like a loaf of bread and lay the ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... parapet of Rodriguez Canal and looked out across the field—smoke-hung under the cloudless morning sky. The British dead, in their scarlet uniforms, were lying row on row, one behind the other, like grain cut down by the mower's scythe. The boy's heart sickened. But a prolonged cheer came ringing along ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the enchantment of animation? For worlds I would not see a form I loved—embalmed in my heart—thus sacrilegiously handled? Pugh! my stomach turns. Is this all the distinction of the rich in the grave? They had better quietly allow the scythe of equality to mow them down with the common mass, than struggle to become a monument of the instability of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... say—encouraged, I stumbled through my story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pretexts put off this division, and it was only on the marriage of Francoise to Jean Macquart that it was carried out. An entire estrangement between the two families followed, and constant quarrels took place. After a shameful assault by Buteau upon Francoise, his wife threw her upon a scythe which lay upon the ground near by, and the unfortunate girl received injuries from which she died a few hours later. A sense of loyalty to her family induced her to conceal the cause of these injuries, which were attributed ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private men whom ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the impact of a club, the blow caught the ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... wither, and the stream of Corrie was diminished between its banks to the size of an ordinary rill. The shepherds drove their flocks to moorlands, and marsh and tarn had their reeds invaded by the scythe to supply the cattle with food. The sheep of his sister were Elphin's constant care; he drove them to the moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched them at midnight, when flocks, tempted by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse eagerly, that he might ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... a 'cradle,' in American farming, signifies a machine for cutting down corn wholesale. It is a scythe, longer and wider than that used in mowing hay, combined with an apparatus of 'standard,' 'snaith,' and 'fingers,' by means of which a single workman may level two acres and a half of wheat or ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... parting with their fields as if they were parting with their flesh; the Buteaus in their eager greed committing parricide, to hasten the inheritance of a field of lucern; the stubborn Francoise dying from the stroke of a scythe, without speaking, rather than that a sod should go out of the family—all this drama of simple natures governed by instinct, scarcely emerged from primitive barbarism—all this human filth on the great earth, which alone remains immortal, the mother from whom ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... to vast age no illness knew, Till Time's scythe, waiting for him, rusty grew. He lived and wrought; his labors were immense, But ne'er declined ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... valley; along its westward face ran a line of kopjes, ending in a detached rocky hill; and it was supported by fire from Railway Hill. The nearer kopjes were carried without much difficulty, but a sweeping movement to clear the plateau as with the swing of a scythe, was checked by heavy fire from the east, and failed to gather in the rocky hill which commanded the outlying kopjes, and which the enemy succeeded in reinforcing during the fight, and in holding for ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Death, all bones and scythe, had come stalking along it before their eyes at that moment, they would have shrieked, no doubt, and fallen flat, but he would have no more than answered to their feelings ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... carpentry business, having, as he said, practised the art when he made up his mind to become a settler. He had also learned to mow, and he and Rupert spent some hours, scythe in hand, cutting down the tall grass for the purpose of securing fodder for the horses through the winter months, as also to prevent the necessity of burning close round the homestead, as it is necessary to do, in case one of the fires, which are constantly occurring, should spread in that direction. ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with his scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... to each other in accents of fear, "Oh, when will the time of fulfilment appear?" High over them boundless eternity quivers, And the scythe of Saturnus ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... girls in the neighborhood, Father Anthony declared that no more children of his should go away to boarding-school. The fact that young Daniel was skilled in mechanics and mathematics, able to superintend intelligently all the work on the farm and to make a finer scythe than any man in the shop, did not modify the father's opinion. When John, the next boy, was old enough and the mother began to urge that he be sent to school, the father offered him his choice to go or to stay at home ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... aisy job bein' a candydate, an' 'twud be no easy job if th' game iv photygraphs was th' on'y wan th' candydates had to play. Willum Jennings Bryan is photygraphed smilin' back at his smilin' corn fields, in a pair iv blue overalls with a scythe in his hand borrid fr'm th' company that's playin' 'Th' Ol' Homestead,' at th' Lincoln Gran' Opry House. Th' nex' day Mack is seen mendin' a rustic chair with a monkey wrinch, Bryan has a pitcher took in th' act iv puttin' on a shirt marked with th' union label, an' they'se another photygraph ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... him.' Soon some kind friend or relative will close our eyelids, and shut up our glassy eyes for ever; tie up the fallen jaw, and prepare the corrupting body for its long, but not final resting-place. Our hour-glass is fast ebbing out; time stands ready with his scythe to cut us down; the grave yawns to receive us. 'Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he' (Job 14:10). The answer is ready, sure, certain—he goes to the judgment of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little Hay-maker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... 'The scythe-chariot, O my friend Loeg!' said Cuchulainn; 'can you yoke it? and is its equipment here? If you can yoke it, and if you have its equipment, yoke it; and if you have not its equipment, do not yoke it ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... and even so soon he felt his earlier manhood coming back as he rode along that pleasant afternoon, past the fields where the newly-mown hay, fresh from a recent shower, sent forth its fragrance upon the summer air, while the song of the mowers mingled with the click of the whetting scythe, made sweet, homelike sounds which he loved to hear. Why did he lean so constantly from the carriage, and why when Victor exclaimed, "The old ruin is there yet," referring to Grassy Spring did he, too, look across ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... weapon. One day it was a rude spear which he had forged while he waited for the blacksmith to finish a job, another time it was a wooden club, and another a tomahawk. Once he fastened the blade of a scythe to a pole, and when he reached home began cutting down weeds with it, crying, "Oh, if only I were a man, how I'd cut down ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... a list of tools and implements for the homestead: an axe, adze, bill, awl, plane, saw, spokeshave, tie hook, auger, mattock, lever, share, coulter, goad-iron, scythe, sickle, weed-hook, spade, shovel, woad dibble, barrow, besom, beetle, rake, fork, ladder, horse comb, shears, fire tongs, weighing scales, and a long list of spinning implements necessary when farmers made their own clothes. The author wisely remarks that one ought to have coverings for wains, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling the temper of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... scenes in life, for the scythe of death stops not to ask if they be sweet and precious to some fond wife, or mother, or brother, who knows? whom their heart chose. On! on! he pursues his desolating work, amid their sighs, their cries, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered. The Germans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... here." In saying this, he opened his horrible jaws, and advanced to devour her; but she, being on her guard, jumped back, and had just time to pluck out a hair; and pronouncing two or three words, she changed it into a sharp scythe, with which she immediately cut the lion in two ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, nor the pleasure of feeling himself each day a better man than he was the day before; he is like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Knowledge crowns man's nature with power. It even gives fortune to particular persons; and it is hard to say whether arms or learning have advanced greater numbers. As for the pleasure and delight thereof, in knowledge there is no satiety. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... danger.—Weather signs: Swallows fly low, aquatic birds dive, sheep graze eagerly, dogs paw up the earth, fish leap from the water. 'The gray governor of the valley (Thalvogt) is coming'; when this or that mountain puts on a cap, then drop the scythe and take the rake.—Peculiarity of a certain lake that it draws to itself ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... I govern all: the second, a bishop in pontificals; motto, I pray for all: third, a lawyer in his gown; motto, I plead for all: fourth: a soldier in his regimentals, fully accoutred; motto, I fight for all: fifth, a poor countryman with his scythe and rake; motto, I pay ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... my part, I could never bear Your tender flesh to hack and tear, Forgetting that poor worms endure As much as I should, to be sure, If any giant should come and jump On to my back, and kill me plump, Or run my heart through with a scythe, And think it ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... any we are likely to see in them, and to make merry over their weaknesses shows our own weakness and our own malice too. Wit should be a shield for defense, and not a sword for offense. A mocking word cuts worse than a scythe, and the wound is harder to heal. A blow is much sooner forgotten than a jeer. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of all her self-possession, Pani Korytzka grew confused, and I gained one of those tiny victories which are comprised in the proverb, "The scythe hit upon a stone," or in plain English, "The ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Continent but a scanty supply of pikes and muskets. Many of his followers had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. It was impossible, however, even with the help of these contrivances, to supply the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... M. and Mme. Noguies had been broken into, the furniture destroyed, the owners killed in their beds, and an old man of seventy who lived with them cut to pieces with a scythe. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... highest ridge, Where oft the stormy winter gale Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds It sweeps from vale to vale; Not five yards from the mountain-path, This thorn you on your left espy; And to the left, three yards beyond, You see a little muddy pond Of water, never dry; ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... something: How the two young Sons of the Burggraf once riding out with their Tutor, a big hound of theirs in one of the streets of Nurnberg accidentally tore a child; and there arose wild mother's-wail; and "all the Scythe-smiths turned out," fire-breathing, deaf to a poor Tutor's pleadings and explainings; and how the Tutor, who had ridden forth in calm humor with two Princes, came galloping home with only one,—the Smiths having ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... to the lot of Angus Dhu. It was as well so, Shenac said to herself with a sigh, for they could not manage much hay by themselves, and paying wages would never do for them. Indeed, they would need some help even with the little they had; for Dan had never handled a scythe except in play, and Hamish, even if he had the skill, had ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... and clapping his hand to the wound, ran staggering back to the pavilion.... But at the very same instant when Fabio stabbed him, Valeria screamed just as shrilly, and fell to the earth like grass before the scythe. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... a few hours since her "Conny" had stood by my side on ground that was literally blood-soaked. Since the previous night we had both seen Death in his most terrible guise; Death swinging his dripping scythe through scores of lives at a stroke. We had been in England's riven heart throughout the day of England's bitterest humiliation; and Mrs. Van Homrey had bed and bath waiting, with "something hot" for Constance to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Falmouth by his coat-collar and the seat of his breeches and flung him inside. Then we too backed and, ducking indoors under the arms of the little man in black—who stood on the step swinging the borough mace as though to scythe off the head of any one who approached within five feet of it—seized him by the coat-tails, dragged him inside and, slamming to the door (which shut with two flaps), locked and bolted it and leant against ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... former,—and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised,—so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod,—taking it in like honey and butter,—with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... balsam logs into a fierce blaze, starting a myriad of sparks in their flight up the chimney. Dorothy was looking above, and Paul, following the direction of her eyes, observed a model of Father Time reclining upon a shelf near the ceiling. The figure's scythe was broken; his limbs were in shackles, and his body covered with chains. It was an original conception, and Henley could not help asking if Time had really been checked in his onward march at ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... and gradual decline of the native population; the frightful climatic changes which swept the country like a mower's scythe; the rapid conversion of a vast continent, alive with millions of pleasure-loving people, into a silent wilderness, where the sun and moon look down in turn upon hundreds of weed-grown cities,—all this is told by Noz-yt-ahl with force ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... in the thigh. Then, seeing a party of the foot bravely fighting near him, who had no officer to head them, he rode up to them and cried aloud, 'Fire on, my lads, and fear nothing!' Just then he was cut down by a man with a scythe, and fell. He was dragged off his horse, and received a mortal blow on the back of his head; and yet he managed to wave his hat as a signal to a faithful servant to retreat, crying out at the same time, 'Take ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... Eagle dressed his bravery With his share of arms and his clothes, He had the sword that was the sharpest Could be got anywhere. I and my scythe with me, And nothing on but my shirt, We went at each other ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... there by four o'clock in the morning, and to start from home as the clock struck three. As it would take an hour to walk three miles and a half with the scythes on their backs, it was agreed that they should carry my scythe, and that I should bring the bottles and bag upon ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow— the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps— is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate households, and it ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a dead ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Karlych," said a lean old man with a pointed nose. "You ask, Who let the horse feed in the field? But who did it? Day in and day out—and every day is as long as a year—I worked with the scythe, and as I fell asleep the horse went among the oats. And now you ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northing hurricane, ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... MEADOW FOX-TAIL-GRASS.—One of our most productive plants of this tribe: it grows best in a moist soil, is very early, being often fit for the scythe by the middle of May. About two bushels of seed will sow an acre, with a proportionate quantity ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... of Quilipeak rose up in the soft distance, shining in the morning sun: over meadow and hillside and Indian-named river the summer light fell in all its beauty. Dewdrops glittered on waving grain and mown grass; labourers in their shirt-sleeves made another gleaming line of scythe blades, or followed the teams of red and brindled oxen that bowed their heads to the heavy yoke. Through all this, past all this, the Pequot train flew on towards Pattaquasset; sending whole lines of white ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... rocks, luxuriant brambles, grasses, and flowering shrubs. There were no trees. The want of shelter on that exposed spot rendered their growth impossible. The few that had been planted had been cut down by the nor'-west wind as with a scythe. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... reveille to rally his faltering impudence. "No, Ma'am;—it is too bad, it is too bad, it is too"——Here her utterance became choked, her cheeks pallid as death, and her form wilted and fell like a flower before the mower's scythe. Millicent prevented the fall, while Sterling rang for water, and Chip, peering about with more agitation than any one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... news is it likely an old man like me should bring? You ask me so eager-like that I misdoubt me but it's some colleen that's caught your eye!" Patrick's eyes twinkled merrily as he made his little joke. Dermot's face saddened, and he turned to his scythe once more. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! what power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity? On, still on He presses and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... fiction is its inhumanity. An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only human in so far as it is governed by the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was his, earth and sky being his bankers, Bills drawn on them, endorsed by toil were never protested. Bathed in vernal dews was his glistening plough-share, Birds, newly-returned, the merry nest-builders, bade him good morrow, Keenly wrought his scythe in summer, where fell the odorous clover, Clear was his song at autumn-husking, amid piles of golden corn. Winter saw him battling the drifted snows, with his oxen, Bearing to the neighboring town, fuel that gladden'd the hearth-stone. Deep in ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... sword flashed out. Prosper vaulted over the gallery, dropped down into the thick of them, and began to kill. Kill indeed he did. Right and left, like a man with a scythe, he sliced a way for himself. There were soldiers, pikemen, and guards in the press: there was none there so tall as he, nor with such a reach, above all, there was none whose rage made him cold and his anger merry. However ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... or, in Europe, even on the roofs of old buildings. Rooting freely from the joints, our plant forms thrifty tufts where there is little apparent nourishment; yet its endurance through prolonged drought is remarkable. Long after the farmer's scythe, sweeping over the roadside, has laid it low, it thrives on the juices stored up in fleshy leaves and stem until it proves its title to the most ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ceiling her own face looked down at her in two bas-reliefs. In one the face was smiling with half-open, voluptuous lips, and the eyes, a little drooping, told of some delicious thrill of passion. Opposite this was the figure of Time, winged and frowning, with huge scythe-blades in his mighty hands. She shuddered; those relentless blades had indeed mown down the little day of her love's triumph. What devil had prompted the Italian Frisoni to illustrate this terrible truth upon the very palace built ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... mighty scythe strokes which change sweeps across the meadows of time, naught is exempt. The petals fall from the fairest flower; the bluest sky becomes overcast; the greatest feats of history are surpassed; and the social machinery, adequate for the needs of one age, sinks into the insignificance ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... fight at Brandywine, Black Samson, a giant negro armed with a scythe, sweeps his way through the red ranks...." C. M. Skinner's "Myths and Legends ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the sunny heights, Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites, Singing a song of the work that requites, In the ripening summer weather; The soul in his body as light as the sigh Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky, While he bears an answering soul reply, His soul ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... hail upon the advancing men, reaping the ranks down as if with a scythe, while bursting shells cleared open spaces in their midst in a manner that was appalling; still, those in the rear pressed on to fill the places of the fallen, with a fierce roar of revenge, and the needle-gun answered the chassepot as quickly as the combatants could put the cartridges into the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had seen the Pretender, with his court and his wild followers, in the Palace of Holyrood. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. A few had sense not to feel degraded by being happy at home. The Old Town was not quite deserted. Many of our principal people ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... stood out against the frozen clouds, still and hard; the slopes of leafless larches seemed withered and brown; the distant plain far down gloomy with the same dull yellowish blackness. At a height of seven hundred feet the air was sharp as a scythe—a rude barbarian giant wind knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... twenty crowns out of them, I'll sell them the value of it.' But then I had other things in my heart, which I'll tell you about now. I came across one of your cavalrymen smoking his pipe near my dike, just behind my barn. I went and took my scythe off the hook, and I came back with short steps from behind, while he lay there without hearing anything. And I cut off his head with one stroke, like a feather, while he only said 'Oof!' You have only to look at the bottom of the pond; you'll find him there in a coal bag ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... are you about? The spade and scythe will be your sceptre and crown, and your bride will wear a garland of rosemary, and a gown of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... went by clad in a dark blue cloak and carrying a wanderer's staff in his hand. One of the thralls spoke to the Wanderer: "Tell them in the house of Baugi up yonder that I can mow no more until a whetstone to sharpen my scythe is sent to me." "Here is a whetstone," said the Wanderer, and he took one from his belt. The thrall who had spoken whetted his scythe with it and began to mow. The grass went down before his scythe as if the wind had ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... other days and years When health was on my cheek, and hope and love O'er all the future wove one iris bright. Ah, little prophets, do you then predict A rainy morrow? By yon crimson west I doubt your warnings; so in truth it seems Does yonder farmer who, with shouldered scythe From meadows fragrant with the new-mown hay, Goes whistling homeward, glad to seek repose Until another sun shall call him forth, To gather into barns the winter's store Of food provided for the gentle king That faintly lowing from the pastures come Scented with herbage, giving promise fair ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... at the season of the spring floods are overflowed by the river and abundantly manured with its mud. In this way there is formed here a fertile tract of meadow covered partly with a grassy turf untouched by the scythe, partly with a very peculiar bush vegetation, rising to a height of eight metres, among which there are to be found a number of families of plants well known by us in Sweden, as Impatiens, Urtica, Sonchus, Heracleum, &c., but in gigantic ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... often he had been close to death; he knew that during the greater part of the next two years he should see the glimmer of the scythe oftener yet. For a moment it seemed to him that he felt the dark waters rise in his soul, heard the jeers of the gods at the vanity of mortal will. But the blood ran strong and warm in his veins. He shook off the obsession, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... by envious time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable writer of light verse,—all these are commended to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every possible attention to them so long as ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and playing cards, as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Newton was sitting where I had left her, talking ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... places where the mowers had tried their new scythes as they came home, a little warm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two of grass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of the scythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With the first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced—the two usually coincide—and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the mowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... giant flail swept down upon the soldiers. It swept through them like a scythe through ripe grain. It threw them, broken and torn, far toward the valley's sloping sides. It left only fragments that bore no semblance ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Hill hurled shots at the Americans. Nearer and nearer marched the British. They were almost close enough for the final charge, when suddenly at the word "Fire!"—up sprang 1500 Americans and poured a storm of bullets into the advancing enemy. Down went the British platoons as before the scythe of death. Whole companies were swept away. The survivors could not stand before the deadly hail, and back they fell to the shore. Some shots had been fired at the British from houses in Charlestown, and General Gage gave orders ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and the wheat ripened, and was harvested in truly primeval fashion. Adam cut the wheat with a scythe, and Robin followed him, binding it as best she could. They shocked it together, and then began hauling it to the barn with the horses and bob-sleds, their only vehicle. The stacking was weary work and progressed slowly. Adam watched his ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... is ripe like grain, When the scythe is stoned again, When the lawn is shaven clear, Then my hole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blown in it, and very narrowly escaped ramming the Angamos. The latter had by this time approached to within half a mile of the Union, and now got her machine-guns to work, mowing down the Peruvians who were not under cover as with a scythe, for the deck of the corvette ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... on behalf of a better future for the whole human race; to blithesome Thomas who will never grow up, making words dance a tune, quoting Horace in order to forget the shells, all himself with his coat off and swinging a peasant's scythe; to Philips the urbane, not saying much but coming to the essential point, our scout and cartographer, who knew all the places on the map between the Somme and the Rhine and heard the call of Pittsburgh; to Russell, that pragmatic, upstanding expert in squadrons and barrages, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feelings, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruin'd battlement For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... at once a volume and a picture. Every philosophy, religion, and moral code differing so greatly in every latitude, every government, every great achievement of the human intellect, fell before a scythe as long as Time's own; and you might have found it hard to decide whether it was wielded by Gravity intoxicated, or by Inebriation grown sober and clear-sighted. Borne away by a kind of tempest, their minds, like the sea raging ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... hotel, and found our viands and companions just the same as at dinner. It is impossible to give an idea of the "western men" to any one who has not seen one at least as a specimen. They are the men before whom the Indians melt away as grass before the scythe. They shoot them down on the smallest provocation, and speak of "head of Indian," as we do in England of head of game. Their bearing is bold, reckless, and independent in the extreme; they are as ready to fight a foe ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... ranks of society, life was marked by a sort of patriarchal simplicity. Manual labor was not yet thought to be degrading. Ulysses constructs his own house and raft, and boasts of his skill in swinging the scythe and guiding the plow. Spinning and weaving were the chief occupations of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... by and passed his forefinger across his forehead, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook—he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... time: so don't worry that poor old man in the garden about it. He hasn't a scythe, or a bald head, or a dismal forelock: so he can't know ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... issuing from each meeting cone. I have no doubt the contemplation of this ancient, solemn instrument, which old Father Time is always represented as grasping in one unclenching hand, while he brandishes in the other the merciless scythe, had a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Time is the fiercest. If I were upon the high road to fame, if I had honestly determined to win immortality or perish in the attempt, I should look upon the gentleman with no clothing except a scanty forelock, and with no personal property save his scythe and hour-glass, as my greatest enemy,—and I should behold the perpetual efforts made to kill him with perfect complacency. This, I know, is not regarded as a strictly moral act; for this murderer of murderers is very much caressed by those who, in the name of Moses, would send a poor devil to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the festival of St. Michael broke up the short summer weather of the north. A wet and tempestuous month set in, and the harvest, in all but the very best places, lay flat on the ground, without scythe or sickle. The men of the Riding were not disturbed by this, as farmers would have been in Suffolk; for these were quite used to walk over their crops, without much occasion to lift their feet. They always expected their corn to be laid, and would have been afraid of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... "ELIPHAS LEVI," describes yet another system of talismans. He says: "The Pentagram must be always engraved on one side of the talisman, with a circle for the Sun, a crescent for the Moon, a winged caduceus for Mercury, a sword for Mars, a G for Venus, a crown for Jupiter, and a scythe for Saturn. The other side of the talisman should bear the sign of Solomon, that is, the six-pointed star formed by two interlaced triangles; in the centre there should be placed a human figure for the sun talismans, a cup ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... new-born like the day! Ah, many's the morn the birds ha' waked me and I as merry as any grig—Lord love their beaks and wings! There's hay-time o' the evening full o' soft, sweet smells—aye, sweet as lad's first kiss; there's wheat-time at noon wi' the ears a-rustle and the whitt-whitt o' scythe and whetstone; there's night, Martin, and the long, black road dipping and a-winding, but wi' the beam o' light beyond, lad—the good light as tells o' journey done, of companionship and welcomes and belike—eyes o' ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... above this protection were in a trice shorn of their tops, as though a gigantic scythe had swept across them. The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile, and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground, struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain was shaken to ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the same proportion. I remember when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of curiosity, to see some of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of those enormous knives and forks were lifted ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their homes ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... it is our duty to 'weep with those that weep." I could but weep to see the remains of this interesting little girl laid in the cold and silent grave. I think it was the ancient Romans who personified DEATH in the form of a walking skeleton, scythe in hand, cutting down whatever the whim of his fancy might suggest. This representation may accord with the relentless strokes his scythe is sometimes seen to make; but the light of heaven reveals a Hand that ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... morning," he began, when they were all seated around the table, the smoking dishes before them. He smiled at his wife and the subtle understanding went around the board that it was ridiculous for father, the great man, to waste his time selling a scythe to close old Farmer Hawkes; also the perfect belief that Farmer Hawkes was highly favored in being able to make a purchase through such ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle and the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how in happy manhood that strong hand had fondled and sheltered and led the little children that now had grown up and were gone!—Strength and activity, ay, and the fruits of them, were passed away;—his ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... ring out in that meeting—McGregor on his native heath—"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to meet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Smooth as that airy nymph so subtly born With inoffensive feet o'er standing corn;[3] Which bow'd by evening breeze with bending stalks, Salutes the weary traveller as he walks; But o'er the afflicted with a heavy pace Sweeps the broad scythe, and tramples on his face. Down falls the summer's pride, and sadly shows Nature's bare visage furrow'd as he mows: See, Muse, what havoc in these looks appear, These are the tyrant's trophies of a year; Since ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... face, as dismay in his heart; The brawl and the scuffle he deem'd a disgrace, But the hand to the brand was as ready to start. Who could grapple with him in firmness of limb And sureness of sinew? and—for the stout blow— 'Twas the scythe to the swathe in the meadows of death, Where numbers were levell'd as ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 2. Vo'cal, having a voice. 3. I-den'ti-fied, united. Cu-pid'i-ty, eager desire to possess something. 4. Tus'sock, a tuft of grass or twigs. 5. Cra'dler, one who uses a cradle, which is an instrument attached to a scythe in cutting grain. 6. U-surp'ing, seizing and holding in possession by force. 7. Af-fect', to pretend. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... They could almost see the whole thing—the grey dots crawling over the crest of the hill, the shots that announced their detection, the uprising of them in a solid mass, sweeping towards the trenches; the withering fire, reaping in its victims like a scythe. They were wondering every second of the time, "How far have the Germans got? Have they pushed us out?" But no order came to advance to re-capture the trenches, so they ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... sunburn kindly; our chests gained in compass, and our shoulders in breadth and squareness; our great brown fists looked as if they had never been capable of kid gloves. The plow, the hoe, the scythe, and the hay-fork grew familiar to our grasp. The oxen responded to our voices. We could do almost as fair a day's work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly after it, and awake at daybreak with only a little stiffness of the joints, which was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... bright. In the early spring we fertilized it again, using five hundred pounds to the acre, though it seemed like a conspicuous waste. The warm rains and days of April and May brought a fine crop of weeds; and about the middle of May I turned Anderson loose in the fields with a scythe, and he mowed down everything ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages through the old-fashioned school-books. The interesting ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is inscribed ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... charity to a sick member of Neville's flock, and were now returning through the after-glow of a golden sunset. The breath of the peach and apple blossoms filled the air with fragrance, and their pink and white bloom clothed the orchard trees with beauty. Swift swallows clove with their scythe-like wings the sky, and skimmed the surface of the dimpling wave, and the whip-poor-will's plaint of tender melancholy was borne faintly on the breeze. At a point of vantage commanding a broad view of the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Arezzo, in a figure represented as holding his nose with his hand in order not to smell the odour of the dead kings. In the middle of this scene is Death, flying through the air and clothed in black, while he raises his scythe to take the life of many who are on the earth, of every state and condition, poor, rich, lame, whole, young, old, men, women, and, in short, a multitude of every age and sex. And because Orcagna knew that the invention of Buffalmacco had pleased ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... saw him once asleep Down by the dark ponds Where alligators creep. He had been fishing with a willow withe, And by him lay his hourglass and scythe, Resting upon the grass; They lay there in the sun, And through the glass the sands had ceased ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... regulator find. Still o'er the gay and o'er the young unfelt steps you flit along,— As Virgil's nymph o'er ripen'd corn, With such ethereal haste was borne, That every stock, with upright head, Denied the pressure of her tread. But o'er the wretched, oh, how slow And heavy sweeps thy scythe of woe! Oppress'd beneath each stroke they bow, Thy course engraven on their brow: A day of absence shall consume The glow of youth and manhood's bloom, And one short night of anxious fear Shall leave the wrinkles of a year. For me who, when I'm happy, owe No thanks to fortune ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... worst features of such a state of society as Amos saw is that men are afraid to speak out in condemnation of it, and the ill weeds grow apace for want of a scythe. Amos puts a certain sad emphasis on 'prudent,' as if he was feeling how little he could be called so, and yet there is a touch of scorn in him too. The man who is over-careful of his skin or his reputation will hold his tongue; even good men may become so accustomed to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them; in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair; The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the heavy swaths his ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... year after the death, the mangan or caste beggar visits the relatives of the deceased, and receives what they call one limb (ang), or half his belongings; the ang consists of a loin-cloth, a brass vessel and dish, an axe, a scythe and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... come at him—now let me come at him.— [Viewing his wound.] Oops I what a gash is here! why, sir, a man may drive a coach and six horses into your body. Lord Fop. Oh! Probe. Why, what the devil have you run the gentleman through with—a scythe?—[Aside.] A little scratch between the skin and the ribs, that's all. Love. Let me see his wound. Probe. Then you shall dress it, sir; for if anybody looks upon it I won't. Love. Why, thou art the veriest coxcomb I ever saw! Probe. Sir, ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... footsteps of man, and multiply with the progress of agriculture. He is not a frequenter of the woods; he seems to have no taste for solitude. He loves the orchard and the mowing-field, and many are the nests which are exposed by the scythe of the haymaker, if the mowing be done early in the season. Previously to the settlement of America, these birds must have been comparatively rare in the New England States, and were probably confined to the open prairies and savannas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... accompaniments. These are four in number: the first representing a heart, whereon {70} a fanciful picture of Charity supported by angels; second, a view of Highgate Charity Schools (Dorchester House); third, Time with his scythe and hour-glass[2]; and the fourth, in three compartments, the centre containing butterflies; the smaller at top and bottom, sententious allusions to the value of time—"Time drops pearles from his golden wings," &c. These are respectable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... with fine transverse wrinkles; yellowish striations, or bold knobs or brown; sub-triangular in front; blackish; in male in male, spreading outward more compressed or angular, and forward with a sweeping backward circular sweep, points with a scythe-like curve or turned outward and forward spirally, points ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... and county fairs was to excite competition in the size, excellence and abundance of these purely animal or agricultural productions. Formerly the tools and implements of husbandry were few, simple and plain, the chief of which were the plow, the scythe, the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... we stand on its awful brink, such our leaden bias to the world, we turn our faces the wrong way; we are still looking on our old acquaintance, Time; though now so wasted and reduced, that we can see little more of him than his wings and his scythe: our age enlarges his wings to our imagination; and our fear of death, his scythe; as Time himself grows less. His consumption is deep; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... were not afraid to die. They fought desperately; they tried again and again to cross that ditch and climb the bank, but they could not do it. The fire of our guns cut them down just as a mower cuts down the tall grain with his scythe.[12] In less than half an hour the great battle was over; Jackson had won the victory and saved New Orleans. We lost only eight killed; the enemy lost over two thousand.[13] We have never had a battle since with England; it is to be ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... superstition or the slightest vestige of the badly extinguished infidelity, and to fly to its destruction with all his power. Amid continual risks of losing his life, he exercised his gigantic charity for many years in directing the souls of those islands to God, without any fear of death whose scythe he saw upon him many times. The Moros with their stealthy attacks, the infidels or apostates with open malice, and the evil Christians with their subterfuges and deceits made him almost continually suffer for justice. But he worked on manfully as one who had the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... as Butcher William, knife in hand and attired in the orthodox slaughter-house costume; whilst in yet another design the same monarch was shown urging poor Death, who had fallen exhausted in the snow, with his scythe lying broken beside him, to continue on the march until the last of the French nation should be exterminated. Of caricatures representing cooks in connexion with cats there was no end, the lapin de gouttiere being in great demand ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... adapting them for transepts, the towers being supported on great pointed arches. In the large east window the stained glass commemorates St. Sidwell, a lady murdered in the eighth century at a well near Exeter by a blow from a scythe at the instigation of her stepmother, who coveted her property. The cathedral is rich in monumental relics, and it has recently been thoroughly restored. Little remains of the ancient convent-buildings beyond the chapter-house, which ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... —Chain'd at his root two scion-demons dwell, Breathe the faint hiss, or try the shriller yell; Rise, fluttering in the air on callow wings, And aim at insect-prey their little stings. 255 So Time's strong arms with sweeping scythe erase Art's cumberous works, and empires, from their base; While each young Hour its sickle fine employs, And crops the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... of many counsels answered him and said: 'Eurymachus, would that there might be a trial of labour between us twain, in the season of spring, when the long days begin! In the deep grass might it be, and I should have a crooked scythe, and thou another like it, that we might try each the other in the matter of labour, fasting till late eventide, and grass there should be in plenty. Or would again, that there were oxen to drive, the best there may be, large and tawny, both ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... the papers about tornadoes in America, and how houses were sometimes bodily lifted with their contents and carried long distances, and how everything above the surface was swept away as if a scythe had passed over it. He had heard these accounts discussed by the fishermen, and the general opinion in Leigh was that there was mighty little truth in them. The Leigh men thought they knew what a gale was, and what it could do. They knew that chimney-pots and tiles could ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... grandly beautiful Macmonie's Fountain at the other, its Goddess of Liberty seated aloft in her chair on the deck of her bark, erect and beautiful, with her eight maiden gondoliers plying the oars at the sides, while old Father Time steered the vessel, his scythe fastened to the tiller, Fame as a trumpet-herald stood on the prow with her trumpet in her hand, while in the gushing waters below sported the tritons with their plunging horses, the terraced fountain still lower with its clouds of spray showing all ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... immediate shore of the lake, and across the shoulder of what is known as Minnesota Point,—a long scythe-shaped sand-bar, six miles in length, caused by the action of the waves, separating the waters of Duluth Bay from those of the lake,—and extending along the shore of ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... annihilated them? Were they drowned by purges or martyred by pipes? Who administered them to the posteriors of ———-. But that it may no longer be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the author of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... a strange old superstition that even Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of the ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... tail-piece to his works, which he prepared a few months before his death, and which he called The Bathos, or Manner of Sinking in Sublime Paintings, the end of everything is represented. Time himself, supported against a broken column, is expiring, his scythe falling from his grasp and a long clay pipe breaking in two as it falls from his lips. This was issued in 1764—Hogarth's last published work. In the plate which shows the execution of Thomas Idle, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... thou didst see her?" muttered the astounded Alexyei Sergyeitch, who now heard a coherent speech from him for the first time.—"What is she like? Has she a scythe?" ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev |
