"Sunbeam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but such was her self-control, gained in long experience as a beauty and popular favourite, that she seemed not to see any one. Hers was not a morose remoteness, however. That might have offended admirers and kept money out of the theatre. It was the radiant unawareness of a passing sunbeam. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sphinx of granite in the arid sands of Egypt, you would have more chance of melting her. The winged words might fly uninterruptedly from your lips for a whole Olympiad; you could not move my resolution in the slightest. A heart of brass dwells in this marble breast of mine. Die or kill! When the sunbeam which has passed through the curtains shall touch the foot of this table let your choice have been made. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... into a large room, the largest room he had ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the loveliest carpet ever woven—just like a bed of flowers to walk over; only nobody walked over it, the room being perfectly ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... a labyrinthine thicket Is this place that I have entered! Nature here takes little trouble, Letting it be seen how perfect Is the beauty that arises Even from nature's careless efforts: Deep within this darksome grotto Which no sunbeam's light can enter, I shall penetrate: it seemeth As if until now it never Had been trod by human footsteps. There where yonder marge impendeth O'er a streamlet that swift-flying Carries with it the white freshness Of the snows ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... spite of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand holding their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He can pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous summons of the obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place, saying: "Yes, I was in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe 'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... jumped up beside him. Over the cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which came through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong; the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this I grew surly and having made an end of my rough surgery, I went and cast myself upon my bed of straw and, lying there, watching the sunbeam creep upon the wall, I fell to pondering this problem, viz: How came I thus striving to soothe the woes of this man I had hunted all these years to his destruction; why must I pity his hurts and compassionate ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the woman call it then," snapped back my aunt. "Does she reckon I've been a sunbeam in the house? I've been a trial to everybody. That's what I was born ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... for them. To tell people to look, not at prodigies, comets, earthquakes, and the seeming exceptions of God's rule: but at the common, regular, simple, peaceful work of God, which is going on around us all day long in every blade of grass, and flower, and singing bird, and sunbeam, and shower. To consider the lilies of the field how they grow: which toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.—And the birds ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... for some time, and as again the wild chant went up from those harsh strained voices, a stray sunbeam, like a gleam of good promise, shot across the floor. But what was this little figure stealing in through a side-door and joining the circling throng?—a figure in lilac gown, with the stiff muslin cap and folded neckerchief. She entered at the farthest corner of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... shaft of sunlight striking from south to north, across the church, and just touching the chapel of the Holy Sacrament—the Pope emerges. The white figure, high above the crowd, sways from side to side; the hand upraised gives the benediction. Fragile, spiritual as is the apparition, the sunbeam refines, subtilises, spiritualises it still more. It hovers like a dream above the vast multitudes—surely no living man!—but thought, history, faith, taking shape; the passion of many hearts revealed. Up rushes the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... away, and crossed in the direction of the staircase. A sunbeam sought out a lock of hair that strayed across her brow, and kissed it to a sudden glow like that which lurks in the heart of a ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... she did," said the laird, fervently; "for she is like a sunbeam in the house. No, we have only got the loan of her, on very strict conditions too, from her mother, who is a somewhat timid lady of an anxious temperament. I've done my best to fulfil the conditions, but ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... fondly, mistaking the nature of her emotion, and seeking to pursue the advantage he imagined he had gained, "look at yonder sunbeam, struggling through the loophole of thy cell. Is it not a messenger from the happy world? does it not plead for me? does it not whisper to thee of the green fields and the laughing vineyards, and all the beautiful prodigality of that earth ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he may speak no word. Where can we find a circle that is not shadowed, as by a cloud, if one countenance appears within it darkened by sullenness, ill-humor, or discontent? Where one that is not warmed and cheered, as by a sunbeam, if one enters it whose features glow with good-humor, contentment, and satisfaction? Then does not the command to love our neighbor make us even responsible for the expressions our faces wear? In relation to the plea for recreation and amusement, it can readily be shown how these may be ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Like a sunbeam softly falling As if on an errand of love, Cheering up some lonely hour, Pointing to a world above; Or, the lily rich with fragrance, Shedding forth its sweet perfume, So the life of our dear mother Cheers and brightens up ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... windows, the sun lies there nearly all day long; see what a capital corner there is for a lounging-chair; fancy us, Chris, with our books or our paper, spread out loose and easy, and Sophie gliding in and out like a sunbeam. I'm getting poetical, you see. Then, did you ever see a better, wider, airier dining-room? What capital suppers and things we'll have there! the nicest times,—everything free and easy, you know,—just what I've always ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that imagined as the pillar joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres revolve, (see page 153)—is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east, whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their gods. That is one ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lense effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam—or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch thro' which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, Whilst the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... perfume of flowers, might contain some relics of the beauties of Eden that escaped with Eve, when she wandered into the lonely world? They glowed and breathed for her, and she lived and was beautiful in them! They were united to one another, as the sunbeam is united to the earth that it warms; and could the sword of the cherubim have sundered them at once? When Eve went forth, did the closed gates shut back in the empty Paradise, all the beauty that had clung, and grown, and shone round her? Did no ray of her native light steal ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... for May presents us with a highly interesting account of Robert Louis Stevenson's career as an amateur journalist, together with a facsimile reproduction of the cover of "The Sunbeam Magazine", Stevenson's hand-written periodical. The column of reminiscences, containing letters from various old-time amateurs, is extremely inspiring to the younger members, showing how persistently the amateur spirit adheres to all who have truly acquired it. "Nita at ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... her a swift approving smile, and Polly's heart was so warm that a little sunbeam seemed suddenly to have hopped right down there. And the little play went on from first to last perfectly splendidly, and Mrs. Pepper, feeling very strange indeed to be sitting there in the middle of the afternoon with nothing in her hands to work over, clapped them together and applauded ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... a table-spoon filled with marmalade to catch the light from a stray sunbeam that filtered in through the drawn blinds, and wore a rapt look, a "caught up" look, as Mrs. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... cows stood knee- deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnut trees, with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleek coats. Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milch- cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam, and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the walls of its Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly, methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful and acceptable picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees, and as he ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... is!" little Emily called suddenly, as if answering her own thoughts aloud. "There's a sunbeam over there—right where ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 15, April 12, 1914 • Various
... according to his wish to send a sunbeam to the pool of eternal water in the House of Light, to bring up more of that pure water to him, and he was happy when he conceived the idea that came to him. And ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... sudden sunbeam in the old house. Her merry laugh rippled everywhere. As of old, every animal on the place made friends with her. And though Uncle James looked stern and sour at times, she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ranting politician, What prating lawyer, what ambitious clerk, But is an ass that gallops for a hat? For what do Princes strive, but golden hats? For diadems, whose bare and scanty brims Will hardly keep the sunbeam from their eyes. For what do Poets strive? A leafy hat, Without or crown or brim, which hardly screens The empty noddle from the fist of scorn, Much less repels the critic's thund'ring arm. And here and there intoxication too Concludes the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... that of the Ludovician Juno or the Venus of Medici. There is the Saxon blonde with the deep blue eye, whose glances return love for love, whose silken tresses rest upon her shoulders like a wealth of golden fleece, each thread of which looks like a ray of the morning sunbeam. There is the Latin brunette with the deep, black, piercing eye, whose jetty lashes rest like silken fringe upon the pearly texture of her dainty cheek, looking like raven's wings spread ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in this dark hour of love Thy faith and trust in God is like the pole star's glow To some benighted sailor; yes, e'en now a thought Has come to me like light from dawning sunbeam brought. My father, Ethel, was a Mason; ere he died He called me to him, and kneeling at his side, Gave me a jewel, charged me with his dying breath Never to give it up except for life or death, For when at last ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... first sunbeam the Clown stretched his great arms above his head, whistled a lively jig tune, reached for a fry pan, and soon had a mess of pork hissing over the fire. Later on, from a bent sapling a smoke-begrimed coffee pail bubbled, boiled over, and ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... was movin' inside, lads," said Fuller, glancing up at the church clock. Ruth inclined her head to Ferdinand, gave a nod and a smile to Reuben (who nodded back rather gloomily), and passed like a sunbeam into the shadow of the porch. Fuller took up his 'cello in a big armful, and followed, with the brethren in his rear. Ferdinand, feeling Reuben's company to be distasteful, lingered in it with a perverse hope that the young man might address him, and Reuben stood rather sullenly ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... diagram originally drawn by Newton, to explain the experiment by which he first learned the composition of light. A sunbeam is admitted into a darkened room through an opening, H, in a shutter. This beam when not interfered with will travel in a straight line to the screen, and there reproduce a bright spot of the same shape as the hole in the shutter. If, however, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... their coffee, and were smoking; their voices were lowered to a polite monotone; the rush of the waiters had ceased, and the previous chatter had sunk to a subdued murmur. Into this, the quivering sigh of Edouard's violin penetrated like a sunbeam feeling its way into a darkened room, and, at the sound, the voices, one by one, detached themselves from the general chorus, until, lacking support, it ceased altogether. Some were silent, that they might hear the better, others, who preferred ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... and laud the prospering skies! The kernel bursts its husks—behold From the dull clay the metal rise, Pure-shining, as a star of gold! Neck and lip, but as one beam, It laughs like a sunbeam. And even the scutcheon, clear-graven, shall tell That the art of a master has fashioned the Bell! Come in—come in, My merry men—we'll form a ring The new-born labor christening; And "CONCORD" we will name her! To union may her heart-felt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to look like a Ministering Child or a Little Willie, the Sunbeam of the Home, when you go to a public school, you must take the consequences. As Thomas sat by the window of the junior day-room reading a magazine, and deeply interested in it, there fell upon his face such a rapt, angelic ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... possible that it might come down stairs, and so into my room. Had such a thing happened, I think I should have died from sheer terror. Happily for me nothing of the kind took place; and, still listening, I fell asleep at last from utter weariness, and knew nothing more till I was awoke by a stray sunbeam smiting me across ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Argonautica, the half-hearted epic of Apollonius Rhodius, is the only attempt that need concern us. It is not a poem that can be read straight through; it is only enjoyable in moments—moments of charming, minute observation, like the description of a sunbeam thrown quivering on the wall from a basin of water "which has just been poured out," lines not only charming in themselves, but finely used as a simile for Medea's agitated heart; or moments of romantic fantasy, as when the Argonauts see the eagle flying towards Prometheus, ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, the authoress of the "Essay on Mind," was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Canongate! Edinboro'! Edinboro'! Music built the towers of Troy, but thy grey walls are built of sorrow! Wind-swept hills, and sorrowful glens, of thrifty sowing and iron reaping, What if her foot were fair as a sunbeam, how should it touch or melt your snows? What if her hair were a silken mesh? Hands of steel can deal hard blows, Iron breast-plates bruise fair flesh! Carry her southward, palled in purple, Weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper purposes, when the proper time comes for their employment; but I can't flame up at every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the contemplation of Bill Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's hedgerow. A turnip-patch never yet could waken my enthusiasm, and I do believe, sir—I confess it with some shame and a slight misgiving, lest ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... damsel, who, intent to charm, Declares she thinks the weather fine and warm, Such words as these address her trembling ear— "I really think we shall have rain, my dear; Pray do not go, my love," cries soft mama; "You shall not go, that's flat," cries stern papa. A lucky sunbeam shines on the discourse, The parents soften, and Miss mounts her horse. Each tickled with some laugh-inspiring notion, Behold the jocund party all in motion: Some by a rattling buggy are befriended, Some mount the cart—but not to ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... bugle rung, In the mid-path aside she sprung: "List Allan-bane! From mainland cast 455 I hear my father's signal blast. Be ours," she cried, "the skiff to guide, And waft him from the mountain side." Then, like a sunbeam, swift and bright, She darted to her shallop light, 460 And, eagerly while Roderick scanned, For her dear form, his mother's band, The islet far behind her lay, And she had ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... simple fact—an ancient woman in a hospital at New Orleans arresting the coffin-lid they were placing over a young fever-patient from the North with the natural impulse, "Stop! let me kiss him for his mother!" That little sunbeam of pure feeling, sent straight from the affections of the people, is the real poet in the affair, though Mr. MacKellar has succeeded in investing himself with its simplicity, supporting his subject with tenderness and directness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... stay while Drury went to fetch an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke. When Drury drove up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted off across the moor. Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel? She put her feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on the road, in a happy reliance on ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... forests there was a rumour, and among the rocks where I lay I caught a flutter of wings. The east grew rosy; out of the mysterious sea rose a golden ghost hidden in glory, till suddenly across the world a sunbeam fell. It touched the mountains one by one; higher and higher crept the tremulous joy of light, confident and ever more confident, opening like a flower, filling the world with gladness and light. It was the dawn: out of the east once more had crept the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... distinct tremor, and your eyes follow the sound down the river until the two walls of the canon meet in the perspective. In a small way you know how it would feel to hear the rumble of an approaching seismic shock. Only there was no terror in this. It was the laughter of the sunbeam fairies as they loosened the architecture of "the elfin ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... thing to be done is to get some way of splitting up a beam of light, so as to discover the components of which it is made. You might have a skein of silks of different hues tangled together, and this would be like the sunbeam as we receive it in its unsorted condition. How shall we untangle the light from the sun or a star? I will show you by a simple experiment. Here is a beam from the electric light; beautifully white ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... black hair was wellnigh shaggy in its thickness; and his dark gray eyes looked out from under eyebrows which were like projecting eaves, and threw shadows on his cheeks below. Hetty's fair, rosy face, and golden-brown curls, were thrown out into relief by all this dark coloring so near, as a sunbeam is when it plays on a dark cloud. The rooms were full of the delicate fragrance of apple blossoms. The corners were filled with them; the walls were waving with them. Sally had begged permission to have, for once, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Dumoulin's friends who never failed to be present at these dinners was Josephine de Beauharnais, of whom Madame Dumoulin said she was the sunbeam of her drawing-room, for she warmed and vitalized all hearts. But this sunbeam had not the power to bring forth out of the unfruitful soil of the fatherland a few ears of wheat to turn its flour into white bread. As every one was allowed to buy bread only according ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment, part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam, through a lofty and narrow window, fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with something of an Eastern ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... larger scope of being, with his unleaping recognition of her inspiring greatness. It seemed to him that he had never looked upon a woman before. Lily, of course, had been an angel. "I thought I should just strike lunch," she said, as she came like a sunbeam into the dim, low-ceiled, threadbare, comfortable room where the meal was ready. "I'm as hungry as ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... known in connection with the voyages of the "Sunbeam" and "Wanderer," and it is believed that the illustrations, which have been chosen and verified with the utmost care and pains, will greatly add to the value and interest of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... country on one of her uncle's horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might furnish arms to her husband to carry out an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clambered over a large tree trunk that had fallen across the path and the little pappoose was jolted wide awake, he did not cry. His beady black eyes followed every stray sunbeam and every bounding rabbit, or chance bird with wonder and delight. When his mother went to work she placed his rude cradle beside a tree where he could look on, out of harm's way. He was very little trouble, and she always took him ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... sell, but belonging to the surface, knowing only that. The medal turns, and lo! here is this 'cute Yankee a thinker, a mystic, fellow of the antique, Oriental in his subtilest contemplations, a rider of the sunbeam, dwelling upon Truth's sweetness with such pure devotion and delight that vigorous Mr. Kingsley must shriek, "Windrush!" "Intellectual Epicurism!" and disturb himself in a somewhat diverting manner. Pollok declaimed against the attempt to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... plunged in for a bath, and we can only suppose the intense cold had caused an attack of cramp, so that he could not get out again, and thus was drowned. Many tears were shed for the loss of the cheery little bird, who seemed like a bright ubiquitous sunbeam about the house, and our only consolation was the thought that, as far as we knew, he had never had a sorrow in his life, and we can only hope that if there are "happy hunting-grounds" for birds our Dick may be there, bright and ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... noble, springing from the first, is ours through that faculty by means of which the beauty and harmony of the visible world become transmuted in the soul, which is like a pencil of glass receiving the white sunbeam into itself, and changing it to red, green, and violet-colored light: thus nature transmutes itself in our minds, and is expressed in art. But in you this second faculty is wanting, else you would not willingly ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... aircraft: torpedo attack. This is likely to develop in the future into one of the most important uses of aircraft in naval operations, but during the war it was never given an objective by the German fleet. In May, 1915, two Sunbeam Short machines were embarked in the "Ben-my-Chree" for operations at Gallipoli, and it was in this theatre that for the first time in history ships were sunk by torpedoes released from aircraft. I shall never forget the night when we steamed ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... the little of the blessed sunlight that found its way down there could not get in at all. So Polly got the broom, and carefully swept away the dust and the spider-webs, and then she washed and polished the four panes until they shone again, and the very next afternoon a sunbeam came to visit the geranium, and a tiny new leaf peeped out to greet it. When the window was cleaned, the shelf (holding a few old tin pans) that hung below it looked so dingy that Polly could not rest until she had scrubbed it well. Nor did she stop there, but also scoured the ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... clouds from his bowed shoulders. What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every close of day? Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the evening sky! Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the waters. And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... broadcloth suit which hat he wants. She knits and sews in a very creditable style, and manifests a desire to learn to do other kinds of work. She is neat and orderly in her habits, and ever acts in a ladylike manner, while in disposition she is cheerful as a sunbeam, and as playful as a kitten. For about one year, at irregular intervals, a young minister of the name of J. B. Howell, devoted one hour each week to her instruction, and she made some advancement, novel as his method was; but in June last he went to Brazil as a missionary, since ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... purpose or restraint. Periodically an explosion was heard. The idol stood in the steady fire of the torrent of sparks that shot from between its teeth. The iron screamed. Pale and unreal the day looked in through the high windows. Where a sunbeam struck, it was felt as a burning torture. Through the middle aisle three older workingmen came down with measured steps. Behind every machine heads bobbed up to look after them. Then the engineers approached and the heads ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sat at the window expecting every moment to hear her aunt's heavy tread upon the stair. Finally, from sheer exhaustion, the little dusky head drooped on the sill, and when the last fading sunbeam stole into the room it found ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... motionless on the sand, with her eyes open and her neck stretched out. And she seemed to look for something on the far-off border of the desert that never came. And I wondered if she were awake or asleep. And as I looked her body quivered, and a light came into her eyes, like when a sunbeam breaks ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... and it trickled through the ice and snow down into the ground. And presently a sunbeam, pointed and slender, pierced down through the earth, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Path of Light. If a mirror or any other polished surface is held in the path of a sunbeam, some of the light is reflected, and by rotating the mirror the reflected sunbeam may be made to take any path. School children amuse themselves by reflecting sunbeams from a mirror into their companions' faces. If the companion ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... their numbers still unknown, Unmeasured still their progress round her throne; For none of all her firstborn sons, endow'd With heavenly sapience and pretensions proud, No seraph bright, whose keen considering eye And sunbeam speed ascend from sky to sky, Has yet explored or counted all their spheres, Or fixt or found their past record of years. Nor can a ray from her remotest sun, Shot forth when first their splendid morn begun, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Another keen observer, Mr. Arthur Helps, has in the same spirit exclaimed, "What portrait can do justice to the frankness, kindness, and power of his eyes?" None certainly that ever was painted by the pencil of the sunbeam, or by the brush of a Royal Academician. Fully to realise the capacity for indicating emotion latent in them, and informing his whole frame—his hands for example, in their every movement, being ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... was a very chatty girl and I was a talkative person myself. When she was about eighteen years of age I got so used to her that if her mother came with the food I would be worried for the rest of the day. Her face was as bright as a sunbeam, and her lazy, careless ways, big, free movements, and girlish chatter were pleasant to a man whose loneliness was only beginning to be apparent to him through her company. I've thought of it often since, and I suppose that's ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... produce such, after so many ages of research is no ordinary accomplishment. But too many resplendent pigments, fruits of the fecundity of modern chemistry, have been found deficient. The yellow and orange chromates of lead, for instance, withstanding as they do the action of the sunbeam, become by time, foul air, and the influence of other pigments, inferior to the ochres. So the dazzling scarlet of iodine and mercury must yield the palm of excellence to the more sober vermilion, being ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... King with slow reluctant tread, ascended into the room of death. Sergius Thord stood there,—but his brooding face and bulky form might have been but a mote of dust in a sunbeam for the little heed the stricken monarch took of him. His whole sight, his whole soul were concentrated on the white recumbent statue with the autumn-gold hair, which was couched in front of him, strewn with flowers. That was Lotys—or rather, that had been Lotys! It was now a very beautiful, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in fact going to war, a war for which nature has been training woman since the first fig-tree grew. She carried a bow strong as the one of Ulysses, which no man could draw, and an arrow sharp as the sunbeam and armed with a barb; for a helmet, beside her treasure of golden hair, she wore one rose, set there with the art that conceals art, so that it was no longer a red rose, but one more bright perfection that had come to ripeness about the glowing maiden. Her dress was of the same color, a color ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... was, the warriors were quicker, and the darkened slit became light with the noiseless speed of a twinkling sunbeam. The Indians needed no second intimation of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... at me! It is my quarrel." He threw himself from his saddle, and his blade flashed forth like a sunbeam. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... avenues of sensation and feeling. We are satisfied with the matter of fact, and look not for the spirit of fact, which is above it. If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower. We want more loving knowledge to enable us to enjoy life, and we require to cultivate the art of making the most of the common means and appliances for enjoyment, which lie ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... back,—yes! . . . but one day she will go never to come back." He dropped his voice to a mysterious whisper. "Last night I saw a little spirit come out of a rose,—he carried a tiny golden hammer and nail, and a ball of cord like a rolled-up sunbeam. He flew away so quickly I could not follow him; but I know where he went! He fastened the nail in the heart of Thelma, deeply, so that the little drops of blood flowed,—but she felt no pain; and then he tied the golden cord to the nail ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... up to his favorite roost in the top of a tall pine-tree, leaving the egg on the ground. But from where he sat on his favorite roost in the tall pine-tree he could see that provoking egg, a little spot of shining white. When a Jolly Little Sunbeam found it and rested on it, it was so very bright and shiny that Blacky couldn't keep his eyes ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... if I misapprehended the matter, but this appears to me the only imperfect passage in the poem. The comparison of the sunbeam is fine. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... loving care To men, however mean or vile; E'en base Chandalas'[12] dwellings share Th' impartial sunbeam's silver smile. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... treacherous radiance lingered. He unclenched one fist, and wound four tiny fingers round a grass-stem. On the fourth day he half-opened his eyes (even half-opened they were beautiful), and sat up, dazed and blinking. The sunbeam had reached ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... itself with and explore the various forms of finite existence all the more intimately, just because of that sense of one lively spirit circulating through all things—a tiny particle of the one soul, in the sunbeam, or the leaf. Sebastian van Storck, on the contrary, was determined, perhaps by some inherited satiety or fatigue in his nature, to the opposite issue of the practical dilemma. For him, that one abstract being was as the pallid ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... tears. But she did stop them, and looked up at him then with such a face so glowing through smiles and tears it was like a very rainbow of hope upon the cloud of their prospects. Mr. Rossitur felt the power of the sunbeam wand; it reached his heart; it was even with a smile that he said, as he looked ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 'Immediately the fever left her.' And so it goes on through the whole story, a picture of a constant succession of rapid acts of mercy and love. The story seems, as it were, to pant with haste to keep up with Him as He moves among men, swift as a sunbeam, and continuous in the outflow of His love as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... fitting that you should present yourself to Madonna Romola with a rusty chin and a tangled zazzera. Nothing that is not dainty ought to approach the Florentine lily; though I see her constantly going about like a sunbeam amongst the rags that line our corners—if indeed she is not more like a moonbeam now, for I thought yesterday, when I met her, that she looked as pale and worn as that fainting Madonna of Fra Giovanni's. You must see to it, my bel erudito: she keeps too many ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sad smile she wore All wrong to shame, all souls to win,— A heavenly sunbeam sent before Her footsteps through a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... motes in the sunbeam for a moment, and then are illumined no more. Legend takes some of them, and they become pictures; and the rest, it would ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... swallow o'er the heath, Swifter than skims the cloud-rack of the skies; As swiftly flies its shadow underneath, And on his wing the twittering sunbeam lies, As bright as water glitters in the eyes Of those it passes; 'tis a pretty thing, The ornament of meadows and clear skies: With dingy breast and narrow pointed wing, Its daily twittering is a song ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on that sandy shore even to the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam:—it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... A sunbeam, as it were, illuminated Amelia's countenance; her eyes shone, and her cheeks were glowing with joy. Quickly putting her hands on Blucher's shoulders, she looked up to him with a smile. "You made him win the money, Gebhard," ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... revolutions of the Earth on its axis. I felt as Columbus must have felt when he was moving over strange waters. Then occurred the most notable event of my life. In the twinkling of an eye I was caught away from the Earth and, without any effort of my own, I was darting through space faster than a sunbeam. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... this unspeakable greatness, Earth swings like one of the motes which a passing sunbeam illumines. Upon this mote, one fifth of the inhabitants have assumed supreme knowledge and understanding, given them, doubtless, because of their innate superiority. This preferment, also, is theirs by the grace of an infinitely just ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... the morning's first ray saw the mighty in arms, And the tyrant's proud banners insultingly wave, And the slogan of battle from beauty's fond arms Roused the war-crested chieftain, his country to save; The sunbeam that rose on our mountain-clad warriors, And reflected their shields in the green rippling wave, In its course saw the slain on the fields of their fathers, And shed its last ray on ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wisdom and understanding. Baal is not my shepherd, but he who sits upon the throne of the heavens, whose face is as the lightning and whose words are as the rolling thunders, whose love is more tender than a mother's, whose touch is as soft as the kiss of a sunbeam, whose eye is tender with pity, and whose heart is a fount of compassion—this is ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of this reasoning Faith grew more helpless than ever. It was like trying to melt an iceberg with a sunbeam to thaw that callous nature. Only Lou's violent temper and intense hatred of her enemies kept the woman from being adamant in matters moral ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... set those lights "for signs and for seasons and for days and for years." He might easily have given us a being that would have flowed on evenly from its beginning to its close without anything to mark it off into stages. We may almost watch a sunbeam starting from the sun and racing all the way to our world, passing over it, far on beyond it, till our eye and even our thought cannot follow it, and never anything to check or ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... well and so cheerful. She is a sunbeam in the family, but the failure of the Confederacy and the triumph of the 'Yankees' is hard to bear,—the wrong having crushed ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... legions of rats and mice infested this retired spot; at night they ran over Francis's bed with an infernal uproar, so that he could find no repose from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith and courage. "A single sunbeam," he used to say, "is enough ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... relieved; but he could not sleep. Three years of night, and through the darkness a sunbeam at last! At sea adrift and lost, and now land! Dead so long, and, lo! the thrill and stir of resurrection. Sleep was not for such an hour. Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... to Olympus is known only to herself. I believe she first climbed some rocks, then a cloud, then sprang over a rainbow bridge, and at last scaled a long sunbeam, which led her straight to the marble steps ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... the side of the brook and listened for the sound of her footsteps. The brilliant light of day fell through the irregular opening in the high branches of the trees and streamed down, softened, amongst the shadows of big trunks. Here and there a narrow sunbeam touched the rugged bark of a tree with a golden splash, sparkled on the leaping water of the brook, or rested on a leaf that stood out, shimmering and distinct, on the monotonous background of sombre ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... animals, birds, insects, and flowers which are, apparently without rhyme or reason, placed in one great disarray in the Stuart pictures is said to have been heraldic and symbolic. The sunbeam coming from a cloud, the white falchion, and the chained hart are heraldic devices ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... sunbeam which now and then would light up even the sombre apartments of the Temple. With the happy carelessness of infancy, he had forgotten the past, and did not think of the future; he lived only in the present, sought to be happy, and found his happiness when ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the nerve! I'm just yellow." That—from Ginny Cox, the invincible forward! Breathless, the girls paused where they were on the grassy slope near the entrance of Highacres. A great elm spread over them and through its shimmering green a sunbeam shot across Ginny Cox's face, adding to ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... only showed Dr. Franklin's invention, but his courage. It was as follows: "Once upon a time an eagle, scaling round a farmer's barn and espying a hare, darted down upon him like a sunbeam, seized him in his claws, and remounted with him to the air. He soon found that he had a creature of more courage and strength than a hare, for which, notwithstanding the keenness of his eyesight, he ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... good," said Morten and the others when they tried to rouse him, "for you can't hate." No, the cold in his mind was like the night- frost; it melted at the first sunbeam. When he looked back there were redeeming ties that held the whole together in spite of all the evil; and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again and refused to be roused by the others' ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and more benevolent. She no longer spoke of retiring from business. The discouragement which had seized her left her as if by magic. The house which had been so dull for some months became noisy and gay. The child, like a sunbeam, had scattered ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a regular sunbeam; and yet she had known sorrow and trouble enough, for, as I told you, she was a widow; but she looked forward to a better home than any this world can furnish, and so she bore her trials just as one would the little wearinesses and discomforts of a journey, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails into the lid of a soap box that was partly filled with straw. Something else was there; as he ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... said, after her mother had kissed her, "Why has papa don away? I 'ove my papa ever so much, and I asked him, before he went away, if he 'oved oo and Eddie and Allie, and he taid he did, and that he 'oved me, his 'ittle sunbeam, too, and ett he has don and left us all. I am so sorry papa ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... passage considerably prolonged by contrary winds, we arrived at Vao, a small island north-east of Malekula. When one has sailed along the lifeless, greyish-green shores of Malekula, Vao is like a sunbeam breaking through the mist. This change of mood comes gradually, as one notices the warm air of spring, and dry souls, weather-beaten captains and old pirates may hardly be aware of anything beyond a better appetite and greater thirst. And it is not easy to define what lends ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... feet. Then he backed sideways among the straw, like a crab. Then he tried to rub one eye with one of his mushroom-like fore-feet, and, failing abjectly in that, fell plump on his nose. Staggering to his feet again, Finn turned his face once toward the broad sunbeam that divided the coach-house in two parts from the side window; and then, as though tried beyond endurance, opened wide his jaws and bleated forth his fright and distress to the world, so that the patient little foster-mother was obliged to cut her ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the comet-star in August, and shone every morning, during three months, like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead, Bosa over the Deirians, and Eata over the Bernicians. About the same time also Eadhed was consecrated bishop over the people ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... himself with that manly straightforward vigour which had characterised him during the earlier part of the festivities, though he faltered a little and almost broke down when, in a speech, he referred to Flora as a bright sunbeam whom God in His love had permitted to shine upon his path for many years, who in prosperity had doubled his joys, and who in adversity had taught him that the Hearer and Answerer of prayer not only can, but ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... character—one of the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... 'tween the summit and the base did move Lights, scintillating, as they met and pass'd. Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, The atomies of bodies, long or short, To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line Checkers the shadow, interpos'd by art Against the noontide heat. And as the chime Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help With many strings, a pleasant dining makes To him, who heareth not distinct the note; ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... green; and Hortense went through the woods, hard as her Irish hunter could gallop, followed by the blackamoor, churning up and down on a blowing nag. Once I had the good luck to restore a dropped gauntlet before the blackamoor could come. With eyes alight she threw me a flashing thanks and was off, a sunbeam through the forest shades; and something was thumping under a velvet waistcoat faster than the greyhound's pace. A moment later, back came the hound in springy stretches, with the riders ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... your note and its inclosure. There goes a gleam of sunshine into a dark house, which is always pleasant to think of. I have not yet got the senator's sunbeam to add to it; but as soon as I do, both shall go ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... here take Notice under the Head of the Machines, that Uriel's gliding down to the Earth upon a Sunbeam, with the Poets Device to make him descend, as well in his return to the Sun, as in his coming from it, is a Prettiness that might have been admired in a little fanciful Poet, but seems below the Genius of Milton. The ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the mother became acquainted with the arrangement, and found that her son was to quit his paternal dwelling at the early age of twelve, and reside wholly with Perugino, she could not restrain her tears. With hers the young Raphael's mingled, though ever and anon a bright smile darted like a sunbeam across his face. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... old man hastily, "many of them are kindly folk, and many have slain in anger without thought. 'Tis a sad place, though, and thy young face is like a sunbeam on a winter's day. Come, I will ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... of the clearing he could see Danny Stern and his crew, tiny beneath the cavernous sunbeam-shot overhang of giant leaves. Danny was standing up at the controls of the 'dozer, waving his arms. His crew was struggling to get a log set so he could shove it into place with the 'dozer. They were repairing a break in the barricade—the place where one of New Earth's giant ...
— Where There's Hope • Jerome Bixby
... neglected state of the lateral towers, and enter through the large and completely opened center doors, the nave of the abbey. It was toward sunset when we made our first entrance. The evening was beautiful; and the variegated tints of sunbeam, admitted through the stained glass of the window, just noticed, were perfectly enchanting. The window itself, as you look upward, or rather as you fix your eye upon the center of it, from the remote end of the abbey, or the Lady's Chapel, was a perfect blaze of dazzling light; and nave, choir, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the heavens the story of God's glory. Go forth into the field and behold his work. See him preparing the bright cloud, which the winds gently upheave, from whose bosom drops the softening shower—how richly the grass springs in the valley—how the golden grain steals splendor from the sunbeam which has smiled on it so long—how his hand is ever at work providing for the wants of his creatures, and ever reminding men by this silent ministry that he is the Author and Giver of every good and perfect gift. If God ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... "Look how the sunbeam burns upon their scales, And shows rich glimpses of their Tyrian skins; They flash small lightnings from their vigorous tails, And winking stars are kindled at their fins; These shall divert thee in thy weariest mood, And seek thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... she repeated the name of her friend Alexis Razumovsky. Her fair brow lighted up as with a reflected sunbeam on his approaching her throne, and, holding out to him both hands, she said aloud: "Alexis Razumovsky, I have you most to thank for my success in dispossessing the usurpers who have robbed me of my father's throne; for your wise counsels gave me courage and force: be then, henceforth, next ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... each of the three planets exterior (according to the astronomy of that age) to the Sun, we find some special image displayed. In the case of Mars, it is a vast crucifix, composed of spirits, who are darting in all directions within the figure, like motes in a sunbeam. One of them glides from the arm to the foot of the cross, and makes himself known to Dante as his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, probably (though this is not certain) of the family of the Elisei.[36] He had been, like all the other spirits, as it would seem, of this ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... discussion. The question of second wind did not concern her any more than it does a child, whose ordinary mode of progression is heartbreaking. Bennington found that he was engaged in the most delightful play of his life. He shouted aloud with the fun of it. He had the feeling that he was grasping at a sunbeam, or a ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... book with a fine realism. Like Bensington, he saw, "behind the grotesque shapes and accidents of the present, the coming world of giants and all the mighty things the future has in store—vague and splendid, like some glittering palace seen suddenly in the passing of a sunbeam far away." The parable is plain enough, but the application of it weakens when we realise that so far as the merely physical development goes, the food of the gods is only bringing about a change of scale. If ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... veneration with which we esteemed your sweet, departed daughter. She was so heroic, yet so quiet and modest; she was so prompt and decisive, yet so winning and amiable; she was so devoted to religion, yet never melancholy or austere. Ah, no! she was like God's own bright blue sky and genial sunbeam. Her very presence in the chamber of the sick appeared to have an instant and magnetic effect for the better. She was God's own dear child and handmaiden, and He has taken her home to himself. I only hope that when I come to die, my death may be so completely ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... and however light, buoyant, and ethereal they may seem, are subject to this force: the tiniest speck in a sunbeam and the most volatile vapour, equally with the heaviest metal and the hugest block, the particles of bodies as well as the bodies themselves. The rising of a balloon in the air may seem an exception to this law; but it is not so; for the balloon rises, not because the particles ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... small, the one window infinitely so. A single sunbeam shone coldly in through the latter and lit up the well-scrubbed bare floor. There was nothing but the plainest of "fixings" in the apartment, but they had been set in position by the deft hand of a woman of taste. The bed on which the unconscious man had been placed was narrow ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... she had some difficulty in persuading a friend that Miss Barrett was old enough to be introduced into society." Miss Mitford added that she was "certainly one of the most interesting persons" she had ever seen; "of a slight, delicate figure,... large, tender eyes, and a smile like a sunbeam." ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... look like a sunbeam in a cloud," he said poetically as she tied it over her brown head. "Oh, ho!" turning to the blackboard, "you do make handsome figures. Got ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... from Hong Kong and America last week, and brought such a lot of funny presents for every one. He had a lot for you, but he has given them to me instead as you are not here. He calls me his pretty little sunbeam, and says I must always ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... but never, until he heard of the great beauty of Aponibolinayen, had he found one whom he wished to wed. Then he determined that she should be his wife; and he begged his mother to help him win her. So Dinawagen, the mother of Gawigawen, took her hat which looked like a sunbeam and set out at once for Nalpangan; and when she arrived there she was greeted by Ebang, the mother of the lovely maiden, who presently began to prepare food for ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... only she to be described. She is my niece; but when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the world I adopted her, and have looked upon her ever since as my daughter. She is a sunbeam in my house—sweet, loving, beautiful, a wonderful manager and housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and gentle as a woman could be. She is my right hand. I do not know what I could do without her. In only one matter has she ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... friends. At last, and of her own will, she arose, and bowing, with a face all smiles and eyes dancing in light, to Mr. Hendrickson and Mrs. Florence, she stepped forward, and placing her hand on the arm of her husband, went like a sunbeam ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... top, the monkeys have gamboled in its branches, and the elephants have rubbed their tough flanks against its stem in times gone by; but it now throws a shadow upon a Christian's grave, and the churchyard lies beneath its shade. The church-bell sounds where the elephant trumpeted of yore. The sunbeam has penetrated where the forest threw its dreary shade, and a ray of light has shone through the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... which dealt me the sore blow, 'Gainst which nor helm nor shield avail'd to spare Within, without, behold me poor and bare, Though never in laments is breathed my woe. But since on me your bright glance ever shines, E'en as a sunbeam through transparent glass, Suffice then the desire without the lines. Faith Peter bless'd and Mary, but, alas! It proves an enemy to me alone, Whose spirit save by you to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch |
