"Shimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was coming up out of Lake Simcoe when the Inverness sailed homeward through the Gates. The little breeze that had danced all day out on the larger lake had gone to sleep here in the shelter of the islands, and Algonquin lay as still as a golden mirror. A faint shimmer of colour was spread over it like a shining veil. It was scarcely discernible where the crystal water lay motionless, but as the Inverness sailed across the delicate web it broke into waves of amber and lilac and rose. The little islands did not seem to touch ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... this? I saw—much. More I learned from her diary. This I found in it, from Fiona Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering voice, that twilight-whisper, that breath so dewy-sweet, that flame-winged lute-player whom none sees but for a moment, in a rainbow-shimmer of joy, or a sudden lightning-flare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe viol of public music, but as one wrought ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... air was great, the light was almost blinding, while the shimmer upon the baked surface, added to the swaying of one's feet in soft places, gave rise to the idea that the mighty beast was still breathing, and that its many-acred ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... small, American, French and English, shops for gowns and hats and shoes, and furs and gloves and corsets. At numberless counters they studied and counselled, and lunching at Sherry's they shopped on. And the shimmer and sheen of pretty things made life a glamourous mirage, in which Ethel could feel herself rapidly becoming a New Yorker, gaining assurance day by day, feeling "her type" emerge in the glass where she ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... down into some unknown depth. In spite of his good fur, the visitor felt extremely cold. After a walk of some ten minutes through the dense obscurity, the ground becoming more and more soft, a vague shimmer of light became observable. "We are in the mine!" said the guide, pointing with a significant gesture to the high iron cross-bars which closed ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... possible pursuit of police; and to the need of fighting or of fleeing. But all his preparations had not taken into account this newest emergency. He had not steeled himself to watch unmoved the gliding away of a treasure-satchel, apparently moving of its own will; nor the shimmer of two greenish sparks in the air just above it. And, for an instant, the man had to battle against ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... white,—dazzling, radiant, solemn. White, the robes of the women clustered together at the points of the wide crescent; white, the glittering byrnies of the warriors standing in close ranks; white, the fur mantles of the aged men who held the central place in the circle; white, with the shimmer of silver ornaments and the purity of lamb's-wool, the raiment of a little group of children who stood close by the fire; white, with awe and fear, the faces of all who looked at them; and over all the flickering, dancing radiance of the flames played and glimmered ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... moments—with the waters of the Bay beneath him, and beyond the beautiful view of the distant islands like shapeless sea monsters guarding the approach, with the mountains capped by Vesuvius, and the towns gleaming white under the shimmer of the lazy smoke wreaths—he felt the reality of life. But it was not his own life spent in a vain chase after glory, a struggle for something he could not have defined, now that he knew it was to end in nothing; no, it was the power of a life such as was designed ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Grace were strolling the deck. He was happy, she in deep despair. Down at the other end of the deck-house, leaning over the rail, smoking viciously, was Hugh, alone, angry, sulky. It was a beautiful night, cool and crisp, calm and soft. A rich full moon threw its glorious shimmer across the waves, flashing a million silvery blades along the watery pavement that seemed to lead to the end of the world. Scores of passengers were walking the deck, and all were ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... time Dr. Warren entered the chamber where Pollyanna lay watching the dancing shimmer of color on the ceiling, a tall, broad-shouldered man followed ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... was gay! the wilderness was floral, The sea a bath of wine to the laughing swimmer; Dawn was a flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; the ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,—a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... boy observed was that the sun unrolled itself in the heavens. Instantly, the mirror-glass under the holes and tears in the carpet began to shimmer in red and gold. It looked very gorgeous, and the boy was delighted with the pretty colour-scheme, although he didn't exactly understand what it was that he saw. But now the crows descended, and he saw at once that the big carpet under him was the earth, which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the sun was shining. There was a smooth white boulder standing quite alone, on which the girls seated themselves. The tide was still going out; and the low wash of waves sounded pleasantly in their ears as they advanced and then receded. A shimmer of silvery light played upon the water, and a rosy tinge began to tint ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... bullets in the stomach, and I do not believe he can stand much longer. They have let up for the last few moments, but are still riding around us, their guns at 'ready.' Every now and then one of us fires, but the heat shimmer has come up over the ground since noon and the range is ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... door on his right, through which we peered into a long, lovely room, gleaming with iridescent hues and sparkling with touches of gold and crystal. The bed was draped with cloudy lace through which a shimmer of pale rose-colour made itself visible, and the carpet of dark moss-green formed a perfect setting for the quaintly shaped furniture, which was all of sandal-wood inlaid with ivory. On a small table of carved ivory in the centre of the room lay a bunch of ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... for admittance. The man on watch at the gate, before unharring, looked from the bastion over the stockades, to see who might be the three men who sought an entrance. It was bright moonlight, and he noticed the shimmer of a gun-barrel under the blanket of Tahakooch. The Sircies were provided with some dried meat, and the party went away. The Sircies marched first in single file, then followed Tahakooch close behind them; the three formed one line. Suddenly, Tahakooch drew from ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... looked behind her—rarely to right or left. Once the ride down which she passed was carpeted not with green, but with the silvery, sheeny leaves of some creeping plant that in the distance had a shimmer like that of water at evening. As she trod this, with her face to the low sun, her tall grey figure had a pure air that for the moment startled me—she looked unearthly. Then I swore in scorn of myself, and at the next corner I had my reward. She was no longer ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of the Sun by Firebrace, Heaton, and Flashman; and on behalf of the Moon by Nightwell, Monday, and Shimmer. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the sash in a last endeavour to close the window, but the man's upraised arm held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,—saw the light shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was happening to another and that she herself ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the first ten days of April had passed and there was still no sign of spring, we began to grow impatient. How often I watched the hedges around the Michailoffsky Palace, knowing that the buds would there first swell! How we longed for a shimmer of green under the brown grass, an alder tassel, a flush of yellow on the willow wands, a sight of rushing green water! One day, a week or so later, we were engaged to dine on Vassili Ostrow. I had been busily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... did they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... into the saddle and shading his eyes with his hand scanned the plain, but only the warm shimmer of sun-heated earth appeared. Nothing living could be seen. What ought he to do about it? Was there any way he might find out the owner and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... of thee when golden sunbeams glimmer Across the sea; And when the waves reflect the moon's pale shimmer I think of thee. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... with its white-washed turret and the tiny house in which the heroic light-house keeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years. Beyond it lay the flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bay spreading northward in a shimmer of gold to Prudence Island with its low growth of oaks, and the shores of Conanicut faint ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... captors in brief sentences strange to my ears, once pointing directly at us, once with sweeping gesture up the valley. A moment longer she remained motionless, bending slightly forward, permitting the rich, reddish gold of her hair to flash and shimmer in the sunshine; then she stepped swiftly back from the dizzy summit, vanishing instantly, as if ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... acreage. Half of this wandering patchwork of squares was earth, brown and gray, curried and disked, and rolled and combed and harrowed, with not a tiny leaf of green in all the miles. The other half had only a faint golden promise of mellow harvest; and at long distance it seemed to shimmer and retreat under the hot sun. A singularly beautiful effect of harmony lay in the long, slowly rising slopes, in the rounded hills, in the endless curving lines on all sides. The scene was heroic because ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... saw the shimmer of water lying white and still under the moon's rays, tipped by the silvery light of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... bright lines on September 2, confirmed on the 9th;[1476] and Copeland succeeded, on September 30, in measuring three bright bands with an acute-angled prism specially constructed for the purpose.[1477] A shimmer of F was suspected, and had also been perceived by Mr. O. T. Sherman of Yale College. Still, the effect was widely different from that of the characteristic blazing spectrum of a temporary star, and prompted the surmise that here, too, a variable might be under scrutiny. The star, however, was ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the faint creaking of the stairs under Mr. Bunting's tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... stands upon a high hill; the ocean lies at its feet. From Moyne House one can see the shimmer of the great Atlantic as it dances beneath the sunbeams or lashes itself into furious foam under the touch of the north wind. The coastguard station, too, stands out, brilliant in its whitewash, a gleaming spot upon ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... from gleaming eyes, warm graspings from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever launched flitteth by the dark doors, intent only on the brilliant chateaux, that shimmer above in the gorgeous sunlight of a brave Espagne. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder them, no returning voice ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... between the figures, a circular convex mirror sparkles on the wall reflecting the backs of the figures. Thin lines delicately repeat the red in the mirror frame, which has a black and red inner moulding. A string of amber beads hangs on the wall, and repeats the shimmer of the bright brass candelabra which hangs aloft, and which is drawn carefully enough for ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... bold frigate Ocean Pride was skimming across the Atlantic like a veritable sea-bird. She was bound for the lone Bermudas, and the night was a heavenly one. So no wonder that, as the two young sailors leaned over the bulwarks and gazed at the moonlit water that seemed all a-shimmer with gold, their thoughts went back to their homes in ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... fern in Hilo is a friend. I would not even wish the straggling Pride of India, and over- abundant lantana, away from this fairest of the island Edens. I wish I could transport you here this moment from our sour easterly skies to this endless summer and endless sunshine, and shimmer of a peaceful sea, and an atmosphere whose influences are all cheering. Though from 13 to 16 feet of rain fall here in the year the air is not damp. Wet clothes hung up in the verandah even during rain, dry rapidly, and a substance so sensitive to damp as botanical paper ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... ditch, past a stretch of willow thicket, around a jutting knob of rock, into an arching avenue of trees. It was like dropping into a cool, shadowy bowl, the first shoots and sproutings of baby leaves from the branches casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the golden-green shimmer of the grass. Through an open gate they shot, he close behind, out upon a hard metallic roadway of macadam. Here Mary Louise reined in her horse and Joe ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... brilliant disc obscured with grey, subluminous cloud, and the other half sending forth spokes of flaming light which threw the old trees into striking relief as they stood there with their dense crowns of green showing against a blue patch of sky. The light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the parti-coloured roofs of the Kuntsevo mansion could be seen projecting above a belt of ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... uttering these words in a tone of perfect respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that separate servitor and employer. He caught the shimmer of a wink upon Harry's eye, and he had the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... waved unmown in the soft summer air, which, though sparing no breath for the hot and dusty traveler, was yet strong enough to sweep over the tall grasses in long, undulating waves that made them shimmer in the sunlight. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... it contains a great many light threads of symbolism, which shimmer in the texture of the tale, but which are apt to break and remain in our fingers if we attempt to handle them. These things are part of Hawthorne's very manner—almost, as one might say, of his vocabulary; they belong ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and some lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf, or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... are visible, precisely as our own moon is, by reason of the shimmer of sunlight which they reflect. But as they revolve round their great planet they plunge into his shadow at one part of their course, and so become eclipsed from sunshine and invisible to us. The moment of disappearance can ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... thickened to purple at the far-off edge of the world, lay the bad lands resplendent under the hot glare of the sun in vivid red and black and pink colouring of the lava rock. Everywhere the eye met the flash and shimmer of mica fragments that sparkled like the facets of a million diamonds, while to the northward the Bear Paws reared cool and green, with the grass of the higher levels reaching almost to the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... vegetation, among some rocks; and in a depression of the sharp slope, like a small platform, they turned about and looked from on high over the sea, lonely, its colour effaced by sunshine, its horizon a heat mist, a mere unsubstantial shimmer in the pale and blinding infinity overhung by the darker blaze of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... it and under its clipped trees, by its fountains and ghostly lawns, still, still can one catch in the twilight the shimmer of the dancing feet of the Phantom-Pierrot, and the despair in his smile! For him, too—for Gilles the Mummer—as for Antoine Watteau and Walter Pater, the wistfulness of such places is not inconsistent with their levity. Soon the music ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the amir, all glowing in the sunlight, with all its countless houses and cavern-openings and arching trees and pointing pyramids. Above was the canopy of heaven, no longer black, no longer studded with stars or glistening with the fitful shimmer of the aurora, but all radiant with the glorious sunlight, and disclosing all the splendors of the infinite blue. At that sight a thrill of joy passed through me. The long, long night at last was over; the darkness ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe, or sometimes even Sid Hahn himself, she unlocked and opened one of these doors, what treasures hung revealed! What shimmer and sparkle and perfume—and moth balls! The long-tailed electric light bulb held high in one hand, Josie would stand at the door like ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... humours of Falstaff, presenting them with an easy and leisurely restraint; and Mr. BASIL GILL both in form and manner made a quite good King. The minor parts upheld the standard of His Majesty's; and a pleasant rattling of steel and shimmer of mail ran through the scenes of active service. Mr. PERCY MACQUOID had seen to it that the period was there, and Mr. JOSEPH HARKER had taken good care that the jewelry of SHAKSPEARE'S verse should have the right setting, though I could easily have mistaken his Gadshill ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... under vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, through which they sailed into the pleasant land where summer reigned supreme. To Sylvia it seemed as if ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Captain Marsh—to see from afar the landing, first as a glimmering shadow under the reflection of the elms; then as a vague ill-defined form above the River's glassy surface; finally as a wide, low, T-shaped platform wharf, reaching its twenty feet from the grassy banks to shimmer in the heat ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... melancholy singing. The singing and the recurrent splash grew louder, filled the silence of the river, grew softer; and presently the receding oars flashed again, below the island. But not until the last glint was lost in the shimmer of the water, the last sound had died out of the summer night, did the Brazilian begin ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... has been again and again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten years,"—a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic signs. Your ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... o'er Gustav's days a golden shimmer, Fantastic, foreign, frivolous, if you please; But why complain when sunshine caused the glamour? Where stood we now if it were not for these? All culture on an unfree ground is builded, And barbarous once the base of patriotism true; But wit was planted, iron-hard language welded, The song was ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... it was little else, bore sharply out between two huge bowlders that might well have fallen from the mighty pile of Grand-pere itself. Pointed and angular they were, and set like a gateway to an abode of giants. Beyond, there was a shimmer of swift-moving water, with a silver mist on the surface, though from a height of a few feet it would have been easy to distinguish the bold contours of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... watching people Pearl seemed truly the incarnation of May in all its glory and shimmer, and Hughie's music was like the silver, fluting notes of her insistent heralds proclaiming the south wind, and bird calls and murmuring rivulets of melting snow. And when she ceased and they finally permitted her to withdraw before ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... baize door stood temptingly half open; no creature was to be seen—no sound to be heard. Rose's heart throbbed fast; the mysterious stillness of the night, the ghostly shimmer of the moonlight, the mystery and romance of her adventure, set every pulse tingling, but she did not hesitate. Her slippered feet crossed the hall lightly; she was beside the green door. Then there was another pause—a moment's breathless listening, but the dead ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing things, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and fuse itself in ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... background of mossy tree-trunks and rocks. After an hour's walking, made laborious by the spongy character of the ground,—a mixture of loose soil and decaying vegetation, in which one sank knee-deep,—the gleam of the ice began to shimmer through the trees; and issuing from the wood, the party found themselves in front of a glacier wall, stretching across the whole valley and broken into deep rifts, caves, and crevasses of dark blue ice. The glacier was actually about a mile wide; but as the central portion was ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... And Summerlee, too, there he was with his short briar between his thin moustache and his gray goat's-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger's propositions. Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them. Such is the last picture of them that I have ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Life we sat together, Hand in hand, in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise, When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, And trees ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... this Nicholas's experience was like that of a desert traveller who should see a mirage of palms and pools grow swiftly before his delighted eyes into a substantial oasis, and then anon, or ever he could approach it, shimmer back, with all its sheen and shade, into mocking illusion again. For thus did it fare with his hopes as his grandfather talked of renouncing Mr. Polymathers's bequest. Moreover, the grounds which the old man alleged forbade his grandson, lothfully though he listened, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... divine were shot with light Like flashes in a northern night, Magnetic gleam that wrought a spell On whom its star-like shimmer fell— A spell ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... southward journey preparing. In croaking flocks gather the cranes, and choose with loud clamor their leaders. The breath of the evening is cold, and lurid along the horizon The flames of the prairies are rolled, on the somber skies flashing their torches. At noontide a shimmer of gold through the haze pours the sun from his pathway. The wild-rice is gathered and ripe, von the moors, lie the scarlet po-pan-ka,[BF] Michabo[85] is smoking his pipe,— 'tis the soft, dreamy Indian Summer, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a lapwing's flight, Backward she hurried to the little spring, Led by a power that knoweth not the night, But flies through darkness with unerring wing; And so e'er morning shimmer'd in the East, She clasp'd her dead babe ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... flowers and the vivid shining green of their background. Presently it slid beyond to a tiny fountain, before invisible, and wrought a blinding miracle out of its flashing and leaping spray. Yet even as he gazed the fountain seemed to vanish slowly, the sunbeam slipped on, and beyond it moved the shimmer of white and yellow dresses. It was Yerba and Milly returning to the house. Well, he would not interrupt his reflections by idly watching them; he would, probably, see a great deal of Yerba that evening, and by that time he would ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... and on. There was powdered gold in the sky till the moon rose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earth and stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard them whisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. The mountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of a river through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silent thoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted him from the forest ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the cries torches moving swiftly hither and thither; so that he looked to hear of new tidings, and stayed his feet and looked keenly about him on every side; and just then, between his rough path and the shimmer of the dancing moonlit water, he saw the moon smite on something gleaming; so, as quietly as he could, he got his target on his arm, and shortened his spear in his right hand, and then turned sharply toward that gleam. Even therewith up sprang a man on his right hand, and then another ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... of light crossed the grass from window and door of the Turrentine house; Judith's play-party was in full swing. They were dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those altitudes, had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its illumination became necessary, for all the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... silent hills and the talking of upland waters, The high still stars and the lonely moon in her quarters, I fly to the city, the streets, the faces, the towers; And I leave behind me the hush and the dews and the flowers, The mink that steals by the stream a-shimmer among the rocks, The hawk o'er the barn-yard sailing, the little cub-bear and the fox, The woodchuck and his burrow, and the little snake at noon, And the house of the yellow-jacket, and the cricket's ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... shimmer and sheen that dance on the leaf of the lily, Causing the bud to explode, and gilding the poodle's chinchilla, Gladys cavorts with the rake, and hitches the string to the lattice, While with the trowel she digs, and gladdens the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long stems, numerous edible sea urchins ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... The train winds and doubles on itself up the gentle slopes and across the imperceptibly rising plains. But the interest is not in these wide prospects, beautiful and smiling as they may be, but in the game. It is everywhere. Far in the distance the herds twinkle, half guessed in the shimmer of the bottom lands or dotting the sides of the hills. Nearer at hand it stares as the train rumbles and sways laboriously past. Occasionally it even becomes necessary to whistle aside some impertinent kongoni that has placed himself between the metals! The ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... drinking deep of the delights of this mellow afternoon. On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through scrub we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till we suddenly push out from the scrub, and before us lie the Marshes. There they sweep for miles away, with their different grasses waving and whispering under the steady blowing ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... that ever made a button-hole or rolled a pie-crust, despite a gray shimmer at her temples and a significant tracery at the corners of her eyes, has a chamber in her heart marked "private" where she keeps enshrined some tender memory. At the core, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... why I told you all this," said Lloyd at last, once more lifting the string to watch the light shimmer along its lustrous length. "But now you see why I prize this little rosary so highly. It was what lifted me out of my dungeon ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... clear, innocent blue eyes, he would scarcely have known, so complete was the transformation. For a moment Neil felt as if he preferred the old linen, with its puffed sleeves and antiquated appearance, to the shimmer of the fawn-colored satin, with its facings of delicate blue, and the flush of the solitaires; but, as he watched her moving about the elegant rooms and discharging her duties as hostess just as kindly and thoughtfully ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the neighborhood of the central building, the tallest of the group. They went in a compact wedge formation and shot swiftly down along the wall of the invisible cone until they were directly over the low building nearest the Ancient Mariner. There was a sudden shimmer in the air. In an instant, the ships were through and heading toward the Ancient Mariner ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday's lilies encumber the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping house-roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape of last night, as though an envious man had taken a water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a sponge. We go out a-walking ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cry across the tree-tops, and was answered. Frogs added the booming of their tireless throats. A young moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue -gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint folklore cadence ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... her rosy cheeks fade and her hair grows gray! Now, that sweet old lady over there is just a picture of goodness; and her dear old eyes have a look of love in them that is more beautiful than any shimmer or shine you could show me in those of ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... and the three girls were the last in the dining-room. The sun was slanting brightly in over the table and fell across the pile of letters with a prophetic shimmer, making the little red and green patches of the stamps flame ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... wide. He was still on the Home ranch. A few miles to the south he could just make out the line of wire fence that separated it from the third division; and to the north, seen faint and blue through the haze and shimmer of the noon sun, a long file of telegraph poles showed the line of the railroad and marked Derrick's northeast boundary. The road over which Presley was travelling ran almost diametrically straight. In front of him, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... vulnerable spot in the ship. In a very few moments a big hole was torn in the side of the "Crown of Castille" and with a gurgling sound the waters rushed in. At the same time long, yellow threads of the finest oats floated far out on the sea and, glistening with a golden shimmer, gave proof long after the steamer had sunk of the precious cargo which had lain within its flanks. You poor French army horses, I fear your rations were cut short ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... in Russia. Everything was so new to me. Our table was set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond, the flat plain, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... of Farewell Cove lay a-shimmer under the slanting rays of the sun. A wealth of racing white cloud filled the dome of the summer sky, speeding under the pressure of a strong top wind. Even the harsh world of Labrador was smiling under the beneficence of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... wish, see you standing before me. You yourself—the folds of your sash, the sharp narrow print of your slippers on the pavement or the matting or the rug, the ruffles about your hands. I have the feeling of you near me with your breathing disturbing the delicacy of your breast. There is the odor and shimmer of your hair ... your lips move ... but without ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... picnic was a glorious one. Peggy called it a "blue day" because the sky was so blue. It was a deep blue, and there were great fleecy clouds floating about. The blueberries were the most wonderful blue, two shades, dark and light, with a shimmer to them, and Peggy's blue frock seemed a part of all the brightness of the day. Alice had on her yellow frock, and Diana was in green, and Clara in pink. It was almost too beautiful a day for them to stop and pick berries, Peggy thought; but that was what they had come for. Mrs. ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... low exclamation; the water, which had fled from us as we moved, seeming glad to pass us by and rush again on its race undisturbed, stood still. From the swill came quiet, out of the shimmer a mirror disentangled itself, and lay there on the sea, smooth and bright. But it grew dull in an instant; I heard the sails flap, but saw them no more. A dense white vapour settled on us, the length of my arm bounded ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... pricked my feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers' midst before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... was almost as joyless and as solitary as his own, he would wait with her till the long line of canoes passed by, so that she could see the bronzed, half-naked figures of the paddlers, and the bright gleam and shimmer of the fish as they were swept up by the deadly net, and hear the warning cry from the torch-bearers, as in the depths beneath they saw the black shadow of a prowling shark rushing to seize the net, or perchance the outrigger of the canoe, in ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... composed of great masses of men joined together by thinner lines. Behind and near to the flanks were large reserves. From the ridge they looked dark blurs and streaks, relieved and diversified with an odd-looking shimmer of light from the spear-points. At about ten minutes to six it was evident that the masses were in motion and advancing swiftly. Their Emirs galloped about and before their ranks. Scouts and patrols scattered themselves all over the front. Then they ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... a musing boy, I stood beside Thy starlit shimmer, and asked my restless heart What secrets Nature to the herd denied, But might to earnest hierophant impart; When lo! beside me, around and o'er, Thought whispered, 'Arise, O seeker, and ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... those Indians twisted the canoe into a new course ten feet before we reached one of the obstructions, whose existence our dazzled vision could not attest until they were actually below us. They saw those rocks, through the shimmer ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... a sublimity in her loneliness and her years, and in the fond and vain superstition, which was but a spirit called from the deeps of an unfathomable and mighty love. And afar was heard the breaking of the lake in upon the shore—no other sound! And now, among the unwaving pines, there was a silver shimmer as the moon rose into her empire, and deepened at once, along the universal scene, the loveliness and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which was so narrow that in a few moments the moon had crossed it. A gap in a hedge made by a bull that morning, had removed the last screen. — Lady Euphrasia's window was so neglected and dusty, that it could reflect nothing more than a dim bluish shimmer. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... clay. Miriam and Donatello may seem at first glance like visions; but I have always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... is the carnival of human life, darkness fallen upon the plains, and through the darkness the Druidic stones gleaming—all these are essentially parts of the texture of the poem, yet each has a lustre or a shimmer or ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... evening had fairly merged into the darkness of night, and the illimitable vault above us had become spangled and powdered with stars innumerable of every magnitude, a delicate sheen appeared on the eastern horizon, glowing faintly and softly at first as the tremulous shimmer of summer lightning, but brightening by imperceptible degrees until it revealed a hitherto invisible bank of fleecy vapour lying low along the horizon's margin, the rounded edges of which it daintily touched here and there with glowing silver. Rapidly, yet ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... mountains whose sides were clothed with shattered pine trees, heavy with snow, and I went down once more by that astounding mountain road from Granezza to Marostica, with the Venetian Plain and all its cities spread out beneath my feet, and Venice herself on the far horizon, amid the shimmer of sunshine on the distant sea. I stood again on the bridge at Bassano, looking up the Val Brenta, with Monte Grappa towering above me on my right hand, and then turning south-eastward across the level plain I ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... nothing to surpass it. On every hand the eye is arrested with charming landscapes, and looking across the several points of the township you have dwellings, grain fields, herds of cattle, and wood. Beyond you catch the shimmer of the water. Again you have clumps of trees and cultivated fields, and behind them another stretch of water, and so on as far as the eye can reach. The whole course of the bay, in fact, is a panorama of ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... racing up a sky smooth and clear as gray glass. It dropped on the torn green sea a shimmer that was almost dazzling; but ere was something incongruous about that—as though Nature had covered her victim with a spangled scarf. It brought out millions of sparkles in the white sand; and there seemed something calculating ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... sand and slopes of fairest green, and in the middle of the island the Blue Flower was growing, wondrous tall and dazzling, brighter than the sapphire of the sea. Then the call of the distant trumpet came floating across the water, and while it was sounding a shimmer of fog swept over the island and I could see ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... light, the darkness broken, In the dawn of things to be. Power crowned— Earth around Like a sun-song rolled the sound. Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending— Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending Speech to thought. But lo! quick blending, All things speak! They sound and shimmer, Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer, Tint and tone combining, nearer, Meet as one-with all their thinking In one beauty, higher, clearer,— Heaven itself to earth ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... hand, the pen in her right fingers sketching idle figures at the bottom of the sheet which she had just written. She was wearing a dress of strange-colored muslin, a shade between gray and silver, but from underneath came a shimmer of blue, and there were turquoises about her neck. Her large, soft eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his. There was a sort of question in them which he seemed to have surprised there more than once during the last few days. A sudden uneasiness ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... incommode him, inasmuch as the study of English institutions was no part of his mission. On the other hand the day was charming; the blue sea, in Southampton Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement but that of its infinite shimmer. Moreover he was by no means sure that he should be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an important question and ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... over the side again, and the yacht moved onward lazily in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great promise to my thoughts ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... it, Salome. Isn't it foolish? The Di down there is the Diaphanous, too. Some pioneer poet named it for its shimmer, but what good did it do? Missouri promptly called it the 'Di.' No more good is it to name a child Salome in the backwoods of Missouri. She's bound to grow up Sally. I've always been Sally, except at school. I'll always be Sally down here with ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Great White Way—you couldn't miss it! Just look at the shimmer of the moon on the sands! ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... memorable day, the clouds of smoke lifting, revealed the French army in full and disastrous retreat. Rothschild took in the situation at once. True to his instincts, he saw in that awful carnage only the shimmer of his gold. Chance had overcome the most heroic valor, the most stubborn resistance, the best laid plans, and once more declared in the Hebrew's favor. He dashed into Brussels, whence a carriage in waiting whirled him into Ostend. At dawn he stood on the Belgian coast, against which the sea was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the air in his sharp, whistling flight. The last white shimmer of daylight faded from the surface of the lake. The lovers floated on, gently, joyously, into their ocean of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... stared silently at each other. MacVeigh turned slowly toward the child. She had fallen asleep, and he could see the dull shimmer of her golden curls as they lay scattered over ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... with the long soft curves of budding womanhood. Her face was sweet rather than beautiful, but an artist would have revelled in the delicate strength of the softly rounded chin, and the quick bright play of her expression. Her hair, of a deep rich brown, with a bronze shimmer where a sunbeam lay athwart it, swept back in those thick luxuriant coils which are the unfailing index of a strong womanly nature. Her deep blue eyes danced with life and light, while her slightly retrousse nose ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thinking that it was one of the family ill perhaps, who needed some attention. She could tell afterwards the very pattern of the lace on the fine nightgown, and describe how the fair curls clustered on the lady's neck. It was only when the lady disappeared before her, a white shimmer down the darkness of the underground corridor, that the poor thing realized she had seen a ghost, and fell fainting, with a clatter of her dustpan and brush ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... no graceful displeasure. She thanked him, but coldly, and the two climbed the ridge above the lake, whence the whole glen may be seen winding beneath. It was still, hot July weather, and the far hills seemed to blink and shimmer in the haze; but at their feet was always coolness in the blue depth of the loch, the heath-fringed shores, the dark pines, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... circled in one great curve. The Cardinal mounted to the tip-top limb of the ash and looked around him. There was never a fairer sight for the eye of man or bird. The mist and shimmer of early spring were in the air. The Wabash rounded Horseshoe Bend in a silver circle, rimmed by a tangle of foliage bordering both its banks; and inside lay a low open space covered with waving marsh grass and the blue bloom of sweet calamus. Scattered around were mighty trees, ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... was not poetic, yet as his eyes followed Evelyn, he was aware that this was an atmosphere which belonged to her. Her beauty was opulent, needing richness to set it off, needing the shine of jewels, the shimmer of silk—— ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... stillness, and calling shrilly, "Cor-r-ECK, cor-r-eck!"—which, I take it, is simply their opinion of world and weather given tersely in plain English. You should see the high prairies then, when all the world is a-shimmer with green velvet brocaded brightly in blue and pink and yellow flower-patterns; when the heat waves go quivering up to meet the sun, so that the far horizons wave like painted drop-scenes stirred by a breeze; when a hypnotic ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... lines, Here on my knees, with feeble, fumbling hand. Look! in yon mountain cleft a radiance shines, Gleam of a primrose — see it thrill, expand, Grow glorious. Dear God be praised! it streams Into the cabin in a gush of gold. Look! there she stands, the angel of my dreams, All in the radiant shimmer aureoled; First as I saw her from my bed of pain; First as I loved her when the darkness passed. Now do I know that Life is not in vain; Now do I know God cares, at last, at last! Light outlives dark, joy grief, and Love's the sum: Heart of my ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... patches of soft green turf, delightfully suggestive of rest, beneath the broad shadow of some great tree with buttressed roots; but more often the broken rays of sunlight gleam in ten thousand reflected lights, dancing and glancing as they shimmer on glossy leaves of every form and shade—from the huge silky leaves of the wild plantain or the giant arum to the waving palm-fronds, which are so rarely at rest, but flash and gleam like polished swords as they bend and twist with ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... day the sun shone gloriously over a beautiful winter's day, and as its bright rays lighted up the ice-laden trees in the little wood, causing their branches to shimmer with the brilliant hues of a rainbow's magnificence, no one would have imagined that in the gloom of the night before, a human cry for help had gone up through the quiet air or that a human life had been beaten out ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Cecil, who flies out, beautiful as a fairy, in a shimmer of white and pale blue, her waving hair like ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... her own rightful throne was occupied by a stranger—what cared she for the blinding shimmer of a crown? Ah, it troubled her not that she was poor, and possessed not even the means of bestowing presents upon her favorites and friends. But she felt happy in her poverty, for she was free ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... noticed Judith as she came forward to speak to her old friends. Her dress, a shimmer of white and gold, might have been wished on her by a fairy godmother, a thing of gossamer ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... things, my friend, when you know that they are useless?" she replied, with a look which grew in the end so soft that Wilfrid ceased to behold her eyes, but saw in their place a fluid light, the shimmer of which was like the last ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... Tol-de-rol of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fete Champetre. What were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin gleamed with the shimmer of the ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... The launch split her way swiftly toward the north. By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys—that of bending others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... share. The artist has done nothing more felicitous and interesting than this view of a rich dim, rather generalized French interior (the perspective of a hall with a shining floor, where screens and tall Japanese vases shimmer and loom), which encloses the life and seems to form the happy play-world of a family of charming children. The treatment is eminently unconventional, and there is none of the usual symmetrical balancing of the figures ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the fertile meadow land along the Connecticut River. We stop a few moments near a picturesque little church of gray unpainted wood, and look off over the verdant fields to the point where a distant shimmer of water catches the eye, and the hills bound the picture. Near at hand, on the right, the trunk of an aged apple tree, "planted by the French", shows one green shoot; and about the church are Lombardy poplars, which, though good sized trees, are perhaps only ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase |
