"Vulture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is restricted so far as land-animals are concerned, it is extensive and varied in respect of birds. The list of known birds includes two sorts of eagle (Circaetos gallicus and Aquila naevioides), the osprey, the vulture, the falcon, the kite, the honey-buzzard, the marsh-harrier, the sparrow-hawk, owls of two kinds (Ketupa ceylonensis and Athene meridionalis), the grey shrike (Lanius excubitor), the common cormorant, the pigmy cormorant (Graeculus pygmaeus), numerous seagulls, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... cried Ned, grinning. "Now I'll confess. That's why I roused you up. There's coffee hot, and damper, and a split-up and frizzled bird. I don't know what it is. Sort of vulture ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... stretched over her young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold, subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely Louis; the still unconquered spirit of ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... was all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun —well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... were represented with great teeth, and therefore the same name was given to gluttons. The Harpies, to whom the two voracious poets are also compared, were monsters with the face of a woman, the body of a vulture and hooked beak ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... piercing bloodshot eyes, like the eyes of an overgorged bird of prey, appeared now as an object that moved one to tears, not to laughter. And yet because of this very quality which made him pitiable—this vulture-like instinct to seize and devour the smaller—he stood to-day the most conspicuously ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the same moment a flock of birds of prey, which skimmed along the surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were urubus, a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and black as crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and their voracity is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave forth the gases which inflated ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... that when the hand that molders here Was raised in menace, realms were chilled with fear, And armies mustered at the sign, as when Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy East— Gray captains leading bands of veteran men And fiery youths to be the vulture's feast. Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave The victory to her who fills this grave: Alone her task was wrought, Alone the battle fought; Through that long strife her constant hope was staid On God alone, nor looked for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a vulture and remarkable for the dimensions of its throat, fell upon the flagship. It is the same bird, which, according to the testimony of several writers, formerly lived domesticated in the marshes of Ravenna. I do not know if this is still the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... which Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow;... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P. R. Geog. S. ix. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... by he met a Vulture, and the Vulture, looking hungrily at the tender morsel before him, said: "Lambikin! Lambikin! I'll ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... alone rears i' the soft of his years; (120) He, long-wish'd for, an heir of wealth ancestral arriving,— Scarcely the tablets' marge holds him, a name to the will, Straight all hopes laugh'd down, each baffled kinsman usurping 125 Leaves to repose white hairs, stretches, a vulture, away; Not in her own fond mate so turtle snowy delighteth, (125) Tho' unabash'd, 'tis said, she the voluptuous hours Snatches a thousand kisses, in amorous extasy biting. Yet, more lightly than all ranges a womanly will. 130 Great ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... to the vulture's nest or nestlings than hearsay. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold enough, it seems, to do killing on their own account when no carrion is at hand. They dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the hunter home from the hill, and will even carry away offal ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... no more. He pictured in fancy the black locks that had scented this diadem with the sphinx's head, the slim brown arms these, beads of gold and lapis lazuli had touched, the shoulders that had worn these vulture's wings, the peaked bosoms these chains and gorgets had confined, the breast that had once communicated its warmth to yonder gold scarabaeus with the blue wing-cases, the little royal hand that once held that poniard by the hilt wrought over with flowers and women's faces. He ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire, or blazed ruby red, as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our Enchantress landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing spirits; and at night when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower deck to the cry of the darabukah, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Yellow Vulture wants but one ornament—the scalp of the white chief. Yellow Vulture has seen the taunts calling the red warriors "women with the hearts of deer." He will show the Paleface that the anger of the dusky ones is a big heap-lot terrible. When the sun has ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... man, he passed forth into the great and terrible wilderness of Judaea, which is so desolate that the Jews called it the abomination of desolation. Travellers who have passed over and through it say that it is destitute of all animal life, save a chance vulture or fox. For the most part, it is a waste of sand, swept by wild winds. When Jesus was there some two or three years after, He found nothing to eat; the stones around mocked his hunger; and there was no company save that ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... say Remus did truly see his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him, that then he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only on carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... that day, when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talked over your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purer and colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned with passion!—at that very moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated to live and prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in you, as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it. You seemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed with your own hopes; you seemed so little to regret leaving me; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... present head-gear he wore a sealskin travelling cap with huge lappets that came below his ears. In this cap, and wrapped to the chin in his bear-skin rug, he looked like some newly-discovered species of animal—a sort of cross between a vulture and a monkey, were such a thing possible, combining the deep-seated fierceness of the one with the fantastic cunning, and the impossibility of doing the most serious things without a grimace, of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... undeserving and the worthless—assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of Lucre, I will do anything, be anything—but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... height, pride is forbidden: in the griffon which is hostile to horses and men, cruelty of powerful men is prohibited. The osprey, which feeds on very small birds, signifies those who oppress the poor. The kite, which is full of cunning, denotes those who are fraudulent in their dealings. The vulture, which follows an army, expecting to feed on the carcases of the slain, signifies those who like others to die or to fight among themselves that they may gain thereby. Birds of the raven kind signify those who are blackened ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... marten, not the good, kind creature. You are unfriendly in all your acts, for when our brown hen flew over to you yesterday she was driven away with stones. Did Phaon mistake her for a vulture with sharp ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... am done, I'd have no son Pounce on these treasures like a vulture; Nay, give them half My epitaph And let them share ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... this Prussia is, and threatens to become! It is an eagle sketched in outline with the tip of one wing resting on the Rhine, and the other on the Russian frontier. There are gaps here and there in the outline, but when they are filled up the whole of North Germany will hang like a vulture over Austria's two-headed imperial eagle. France must control her hatred against the House of Hapsburg, and not compromise with the Hohenzollerns, for you know not what you do. One hears much talk of plans here, but I dare not write them ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... thee dead for this deceit, immediate lightning blast thee, me, and the whole world! Oh! I could rack myself, play the vulture to my own heart, and gnaw it piecemeal, for not ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... open to the remorseless public gaze, if the bill, which had been so often renewed, had to be dishonoured at last. Mr. May had a conscience, though he was not careful of his money, and the fear of ruin to Cotsdean was a very terrible and real oppression to him. The recollection was upon him like a vulture in classic story, tearing and gnawing, as he sat there and smiled over the cup of tea Ursula gave him, feeling amused all the same at Phoebe's talk. He could scarcely have told why he had permitted his daughter to pursue her acquaintance ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... struggling in the arms of the giant Mongolian. He could see the great drawbridge swinging down to the white road in the moonlight or the blistering heat of noonday. And on the hill, like a greedy, white vulture, he could see that solemn palace with minarets stretching like claws to the sky, crouching upon the red slime ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... appearance, though any one would have noticed him in a crowd as an unusual type. Instead of being fair, he was as dark as a Moor; instead of turning up, his immensely long and melancholy nose curved downwards over his thin lips like a vulture's beak as if trying to peck at his chin. His eyes were shadowy and uncertain under his prominent forehead and bushy eyebrows. His beard was a mere black wisp, and the points of his scant moustaches were waxed and stood up stiffly. He was the taller of the two, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... way through the deep marsh in which it lived. I can only say that it seemed to be larger than a cow and had the strangest musky odor. I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to the shelter of the rocks one day—a great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with a chisel. This time at ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and winds that are weary with travel; Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible wartrails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... whole still enclosed in a capsule. B, A section through the same; a, the invaginated proboscis; b, proboscis sheath; c, beginning of the neck; d, lemniscus. Highly magnified (both from Hamann). king vulture, Sarcorhampus papa, and G. taeniodes in Dicholopus cristatus, a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not come to the time yet, my dear," said Lady Davenant smiling. "Look at Lady Katrine; strength of mind on this one subject would have saved her from being a prey to envy, and jealousy, and all the vulture ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... was appointed to confer with Arnold, and got off the ship Vulture to make his way to the appointed place, but it was daylight by that time, and the Vulture, having been fired on, dropped down the river. Andre now saw no way for him but to get back to New York; but at Tarrytown he was met by three patriots, who caught his horse by the reins, and, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... richly earned money, checked the rising fears of the guests by repeated proclamations that there was plenty of time, and that he would give them due warning before the train started. Those who had flocked out of the cars, to prey with beak and claw, as the vulture-like fashion is, upon everything in reach, remained to eat like Christians; and even a poor, scantily-Englished Frenchman, who wasted half his time in trying to ask how long the cars stopped and in looking at his watch, made a good dinner in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mighty vermin of the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... rarely indulging in his favorite amusement. He preferred to wander along the borders of the magnificent Lake of Constance, or to loiter among the neighboring hills, and watch, from some bare peak, the broad-winged vulture sailing slowly and steadily through the skies. He would watch it until it became a mere speck in the blue distance: we may often catch ourselves gazing after receding objects as though they were bearing ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... carried him to the fort by main strength. The assaults were frequently renewed, and the besieged were worn out with fatigue and reduced to the last extremity by famine, being forced to feed even upon naseous vermin. A crow or a vulture taken while feeding upon the dead bodies was so great a dainty for the sick that it sold for five crowns. Even the ammunition was almost spent. In this extremity, the enemy gave a fresh assault and forced their way into the bastion of St John, whence they were driven out. Scarcely had they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... women—who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph, vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned—the choosers ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!" he smiled. "I do not eat carrion!" He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome of self-satisfied amusement. His horse blocked the way again, and all retreat was cut ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... with thy sorrow Which like a vulture feeds upon thy heart; Thou shalt, in the worst company, to-morrow Feel that with men a man thou art. Yet I do not exactly intend Among the canaille to plant thee. I'm none of your magnates, I grant thee; Yet if thou art willing, my friend, Through life to jog on beside me, Thy pleasure ...
— Faust • Goethe
... said Hildebrand; 'and you know how brave I am. Why, it was only last week that I was the chief of the mighty tribe of Moccasins, who waged war against Bill Billson, the Vulture-faced Redskin——' ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory, with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound and perfect, (see Gaillard tom. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the man, the house was Swallow's own; If wrong, his kindness and good-will were shown: "Rogue!" "Villain!" "Scoundrel!" cried the losers all: He let them cry, for what would that recall? At length he left us, took a village seat, And like a vulture look'd abroad for meat; The Borough-booty, give it all its praise, Had only served the appetite to raise; But if from simple heirs he drew their land, He might a noble feast at will command; Still he ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... you never looked in the brook?" resumed the poor hen. "Don't you know that you lack an eye, a leg, and a wing? To make your fortune, you need the eyes of a fox, the legs of a spider, and the wings of a vulture. Once outside of these walls, ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... (1803-76) was published in 1828. The reference is probably to the following passage: "Does that prattling oak whisper in his ear sad tales of the disasters of this land, when beneath its sky the gloomy vulture of slaughter extended a dread shadow with bloody wings, and after it ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... largeness, I could not deny. But that Paragot should have been guilty of it I would not have believed had the accusation come from Joanna's own lips. The confounded scrap of paper, however, was proof. Therein he had pledged himself to give up Joanna for ten thousand pounds, and the scaly-headed vulture had paid the money. I turned away sadly and went to help the nurse minister to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... a thin wail. The vulture pauses, and is stationary on the white and desert skies. She strives with her last strength to free herself from the thrall of the great lianas, and she falls into fresh meshes.... The claws are heard amid the ruins, there is a hirsute smell; she turns with terrified eyes to plead, but ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... adjectives which he separates from the parent stock. Thus, a lady 'whispers pantingly and close,' makes 'hushing signs,' and steers her skiff into a 'ripply cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls 'refreshfully,' (45); and a vulture has a 'spreaded ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... secret, which roused in him for the first time a feeling of his own inconceivable insignificance. He felt as small as an earth-worm must feel when on the grass along which it is crawling—the shadow of a vulture falls as it sweeps through the azure sky—and as the worm hides in the crack of a stone, so he sank into the snowy folds of crape and muslin which veiled the walls of that chamber. He felt as weak as if he were not a man of strong will and splendid labor, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... square feet of wing surface per pound of weight. A fish hawk (Pandion haliaetus) weighing nearly three pounds had a wing area of 1.08 square feet to each pound. A turkey buzzard weighing 5.6 pounds had a little less than one square foot of wing surface to each pound. A griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) weighing 16.52 pounds had a wing surface of only .68 square feet ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... while the Vulture of sedition, Feedes in the bosome of such great Commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to losse: The Conquest of our scarse-cold Conqueror, That euer-liuing man of Memorie, Henrie the fift: Whiles they each other crosse, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... delighted with the excursion, as the vaquero showed him how to set the snares, and told him a great many curious stories of Puna life and habits. Some of these stories were about the great condor vulture—which the narrator, of course, described as a much bigger bird than it really is, for the condor, after all, is not so much bigger than the griffon vulture, or even the vulture of California. But you, young reader, have already had a full account ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... his new role, he was less ridiculous than his betters. He was at least no public official, like the thousands of improvised secretaries and generals who crowded their jealousies and intrigues on the President. He was not a vulture of carrion — patronage. He knew that his father's appointment was the result of Governor Seward's personal friendship; he did not then know that Senator Sumner had opposed it, or the reasons which ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... open of the blue above, a vulture wheeled with sinister alertness; and far out among the dwarfed growing things a coyote skulked knowingly. The weird, phantom-like beauty of it stole upon him, torn as he was, while he looked over the dry, flat reaches. It was a good place to die in, this lifeless waste languishing under an angry ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... fresh bark and darted towards a gigantic bird which had swooped down. It was a vulture. When Serko ran towards it, it rose, but returning struck at the dog. The latter leapt up at it. A blow from the formidable beak alighted on his head, and this time Serko fell back lifeless on ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... scarce a cow is left to give drink to a motherless babe. He asks for maidens also, but if he took those he seeks we should have none left for our young men to marry. And why is this so? It is because the vulture, Lobengula, has picked us to the bone; yes, while we are yet alive he has torn the flesh from us. Year by year his soldiers have stolen and killed, till at last nothing is left of us. And now he seeks what we have not got to give, in order that he may force a quarrel upon us and murder ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... visitor will notice the strongbearded vulture of the Alpine and Himalayan mountains. The next six cases (2-7) are filled with the varieties of the Vulture, including the American, carrion, black, and king vultures; the South African sociable vulture; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—a decided brute and villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... is on the watch. He lurks in the strongholds of the mountains. He hides in the shadows of the forest. He hovers over you like a hungry vulture ready to pounce upon its prey. He has made a boast that he will keep his eye upon you, from his look-outs on the hills, day and night, till you have walked into his snare, when he will shoot down your gay red-birds ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... against the wall of the room the Richlings had occupied, a spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... poor fellow's life was certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it's too dark to read it here, and I will give you a resume. The first part of that entry is full of jokes, evidently flung about among the men, about somebody called the Vulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one of themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of as one of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he were some local go-between and non-combatant; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... great god of wars! Hail, Carnage, queen of blood! And hail those muffled armaments— Thy fettered vulture brood! Their sable wings are laureled and Their necks are ribboned gay, And silken folds their talons hide This ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... Lady stretched a vulture throat, And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 'The plan was mine. I built the nest' she said 'To hatch the cuckoo. Rise!' and stooped to updrag Melissa: she, half on her mother propt, Half-drooping from her, turned her face, and cast A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, Which ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... imaginings of his pain-constricted brain, came the ugly black bird again, shrieking horribly and perching itself on his chest. Its huge claws raked his ribs, and its dripping beak fastened itself on his throat. Now he recognized the species for what it was: a vulture, a bird of prey, unwilling to be robbed of its Earth victim; trying to pinion him to the planet with the strength of its anger. Its great wings flapped, flapped, flapped, beating against his body, ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... neighbours, he has scourged his foes; Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes, Long-descended valiant lords whom the vulture knows, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... It used to disgust him and drive him away, but now Wahb felt that it had a message for him; he was drawn by it. It was in his line of flight, and he hobbled slowly toward the place. He went nearer, nearer, until he stood upon the entering ledge. A Vulture that had descended to feed on one of the victims was slowly going to sleep on the untouched carcass. Wahb swung his great grizzled muzzle and his long white beard in the wind. The odor that he once had hated was ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... most of power, and seem capable of most quick and joyous sensation. Hence we find gradations of beauty from the apparent impenetrableness of hide and slow motion of the elephant and rhinoceros, from the foul occupation of the vulture, from the earthy struggling of the worm, to the brilliancy of the butterfly, the buoyancy of the lark, the swiftness of the fawn and the horse, the fair ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... two following may for the present be sufficient instances: by the figure of a vulture they indicate the name of nature; because naturalists declare that no males are found in this class of bird. And by the figure of a bee making honey they indicate a king; showing by such a sign that stings as well ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... swiftly. Where the rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together. These same Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Manasseh carried off in chains and flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his projects, and to find out there that the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... monster an unsatiated desire is, tearing your heart with its sharp claws and piercing beak for want of other prey! The punishment of Prometheus pales beside it, for the arrows of Hercules cannot reach this unseen vulture! This is my first unsuccessful love; the first falcon that has returned to me without bringing the dove in his talons; I am devoured by an inexpressible rage; I pace my room like a wild beast, uttering inarticulate cries; I do not know whether ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... locomotion on a journey, is equivalent to stopping the circulation of his blood; to disturb the repose of a Turk on his, is to re-awaken him to a painful sense of the miseries of life. The one nation at rest is as much tormented as Prometheus, chained to his rock, with the vulture feeding on him; the other in motion is as uncomfortable as Ixion tied to his ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Singh rubbed his fat hands. "So the time nears when we shall wring the vulture's neck? Ai, it is good! Umballa, the toad, who swells and swells as the days go by. Siva has guarded him well. The king picks him out of the gutter for a pretty bit of impudence, sends him afar to Umballa, where he learns to speak English, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... vultures, were, however, still met with, as they are everywhere throughout the continent, performing their graceful evolutions in the air, wheeling round and round without closing their wings, in large flocks, above the watery region we had left. The black vulture (Cathartes atratus), which closely resembles the well-known turkey buzzard in habits and appearance, performs, like it, the duty of scavenger, and is protected therefore by the inhabitants of all parts of the country. It may be distinguished from the ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... among a number of things that were thrown in a confused heap at the back of the shop. While in this attitude he looked so gaunt and grim that he reminded me of an aged vulture stooping over carrion, and yet there was something pitiable about him too. In a way I was sorry for him; a poor half-witted wretch, whose life had been full of such gall and wormwood. What a different ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... mid-afternoon the Belgians and Germans were in places barely a hundred yards apart, and the rattle of musketry sounded like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket-fence. During the height of the battle a Zeppelin slowly circled over the field like a great vulture awaiting a feast. So heavy was the fighting that the embankment of a branch railway from which I viewed the afternoon's battle was literally carpeted with the corpses of Germans who had been killed during the morning. One of them had ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little Saillard," stout shoes ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and his mother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm away from his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever over his childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up his home, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn his bread, still there ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Heaven! mad Av'rice at thy side, At coward distance, yet with kindling pride— Safe 'mid thy herds and corn-fields thou hast stood, And join'd the yell of Famine and of Blood. All nations curse thee: and with eager wond'ring Shall hear DESTRUCTION like a vulture, scream! Strange-eyed DESTRUCTION, who with many a dream Of central flames thro' nether seas upthund'ring Soothes her fierce solitude, yet (as she lies Stretch'd on the marge of some fire-flashing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the vulture out," continued the first speaker; "why, our poor friend and servant, man. And do you desire to share ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... Stump," "The Marquis of Granby," "The Blue Boar," "The White Horse Cellars" in Piccadilly, and "The Great White Horse" at Ipswich are for ever branded upon the memory. The following half-dozen will perhaps be best recalled: "The Old White Hart" in the Borough High Street; "The George and Vulture," Mr. Pickwick's own favourite; "The Golden Cross," reminiscent of Dickens' own personality as well; "The White Horse Cellars," the starting-place of the Ipswich Coach; "Osborne's Hotel" in the Adelphi, still occupied as a rather shabby sort of hostelry, though the name has gone; "Jack ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... a vulture whose claws are hard to unloose from the vitals of the spirit, I think it is jealousy. I found it had got hold of me, and was tearing the life out of me. I knew it in time. O sing praise to our King, you who know Him! he is mightier than our enemies; we need not be the prey of any. But I struggled ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... me then. I looked at him as I would have looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might be—Preston said there was—but the power of the fox and the vulture it seemed to ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said in his dogmatic tone. Captain Whalley made no movement. "There you sit like a gorged vulture—exactly ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... a pillar'—Whereat I asked her, 'And where is the pillar?' and she answered, 'It is in such a place.' 'And what manner of thing may the talisman be?' said I: said she, 'It is in the semblance of a vulture[FN244] and upon it is a writing which I cannot read. So go thou thither and seize it, and set it before thee and, taking a chafing dish, throw into it a little musk, whereupon there will arise a smoke which will draw the Ifrits to thee, and they will all present ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... six, seven, eight,—so Mardonius led. Already before him he could see the glistering crests and long files of the Spartans—the prey he would crush with one stroke as a vulture swoops over the sparrow. Then nigh involuntarily his hand drew rein. What came to greet him? A man on foot—no horseman even. A man of huge stature running at ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... huge pair of mustachios, an elaborate jewelled ring in the nose, and a wavy star on each cheek, and in the middle of the forehead; while over the balustrade on which she was leaning there peeped a monster with grotesque eyes, a pair of twisted horns, a parrot's beak, vulture's claws, and a scaly tail stretching away in complicated spires far into the distance. No one could for a moment doubt that this was Gerald's work, and Marian felt sure that he had been thereto incited by Lionel. Extreme was her consternation at the thought of the ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... name of liberty invoking the tyranny of terror! An assassin—shouting fraternity and committing fratricide! A libertine—claiming equality with the good, while ravishing the pure! A monster—part vulture, part toad—who, in the holy name of progress, makes our Country and our ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... or deep without motion, solitude is never perfect without some vestige of life. Even desolation is not felt to be utter, unless in some slight degree interrupted: unless the cricket is chirping on the lonely hearth, or the vulture soaring over the field of corpses, or the one mourner lamenting over the red ruins of the devastated village, that devastation is not felt to be complete. The anathema of the prophet does not wholly leave the curse of loneliness upon the mighty ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... man had power to build aught like it. In due time, after sore toil, we entered therein and found an endless treasure, ranged in mounds with the utmost ordinance and regularity. Seeing a heap of Ashrafis I pounced upon it as a vulture swoopeth upon her quarry, the carrion, and fell to filling the sacks with golden coin to my heart's content. The bags were big, but I was constrained to stuff them only in proportion to the strength of my beasts. The Darwaysh, too, busied himself in like manner, but he charged his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have no company. But this man suffered ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... vulture on Imaus bred, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; But in his way lights on the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... earth is seen pitted with hundreds of these neat symmetrical bores. It is also an enemy to ground-nesting birds, being fond of eggs and fledglings; and when unable to capture prey it will feed on carrion as readily as a wild dog or vulture, returning night after night to the carcase of a horse or cow as long as the flesh lasts. Failing animal food, it subsists on vegetable diet; and I have frequently found their stomachs stuffed with clover, and, stranger still, with the large, hard grains ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... covet riches was his fate, And punishment of his offence; He therefore never stirr'd from thence, But both in hunger and the cold, With anxious care he watch'd the gold, Till wholly negligent of food, A ling'ring death at length ensued. Upon his corse a Vulture stood, And thus descanted:— "It is good, O Dog, that there thou liest bereaved Who in the highway wast conceived, And on a scurvy dunghill bred, Hadst royal riches in ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... carrion, like the vulture. Its throat is very large, and it will greedily eat everything that comes in its way. In the swamps and plains around Khartoom, on the Nile, are immense flocks of marabous, and they are so daring as to come to the slaughter-houses on the outskirts of the city in search of food, and whole ox ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... paupers and beggars, a beautiful coach passed now and again. Within it sat either a Fox, a Hawk, or a Vulture. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... determined man, and full forty human beings were thus murdered, but the disease was not stayed. The effort to check it was therefore given up, and the slaves were left to recover or die where they sat. See account of capture of dhow by Captain Robert B. Cay, of H.M.S. "Vulture," in the Times ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... reception and an unmolested passage through their territory. If they refused, we would force them to grant it, as we did the Masai. 'Look here'—I took a repeating-rifle in my hand—'this thing hits at any distance;' and I gave it to one of our best marksmen and pointed to a vulture which sat upon a tree a little more than three hundred yards off. The shot was heard, and the vulture fell down mortally wounded. The Wa-Kikuyu showed signs of being about to run away, although they had ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... of burning sand No bird can move, nor ant, nor fly; No water slakes the fiery land, Intensely glows the flaming sky. No tiger fierce, nor lion ever Could breathe that pestilential air; Even the unsparing vulture never Ventures ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and the wind three days About him whirled the shroud. Then did a shrill dawn bring the sun— And a gaunt vulture-crowd. A few bleak bones on the Desert still Lie for the Judgment Day to thrill Again into life—if Allah will: Let not your heart ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... storm or of the bloody outrage of the night remained—all was peace and beauty. In the distance was a single snow-white sail, floating swan-like on the bosom of the blue waters. All around was beauty and peace, yet from the young man's tortured bosom peace had fled, and remorse, vulture-like, had struck its talons deep into his heart. He called himself a murderer, the destroyer of Marian; he said it was his selfishness, his willfulness, his treachery, that had exposed her to this danger, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mountain chain, Where dreary ice-fields stretch on every side, And sound is none save the hoarse vulture's cry, I reach'd the Alpine pasture, where the herds From Uri and from Engelberg resort, And turn their cattle forth to graze in common. Still as I went along, I slaked my thirst With the coarse oozings of the glacier heights ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the behaviour of the man who has remained master of the ground. During the contest, Dick Darke has shown the cunning of the fox, combined with the fiercer treachery of the tiger; victorious, his conduct seems a combination of the jackal and vulture. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... something unexpected and a little vulture-like about this gathering of creditors and seizing of plate about the death-bed of a man who had always, after all, shown himself exceedingly affectionate towards the Stonors and devoted to their interests, and who was now my lady's son-in-law. The attempt to make the young wife ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... inferiority of the African ever dreamed of, until recently adduced by the slave-holders and their abettors, in justification of the policy. This, with contemptuous indignation, we fling back into their face, as a scorpion to a vulture. And so did our patriots and leaders in the cause of regeneration know better, and never for a moment yielded to the base doctrine. But they had discovered the great fact, that a cruel policy was pursued ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... certain cut and coloured clearness that belongs rather to the things of art than to the things of experience. The broken flowerpot with its red-hot geraniums, the green bulk of Smith and the black bulk of Warner, the blue-spiked railings behind, clutched by the stranger's yellow vulture claws and peered over by his long vulture neck, the silk hat on the gravel, and the little cloudlet of smoke floating across the garden as innocently as the puff of a cigarette— all these seemed unnaturally distinct and definite. They existed, like symbols, in an ecstasy of separation. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the same feeling. I heard him saying, as I passed him five minutes before, where he sat astride a chair in front of the long oriel casement: "There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... example. If you wish to guide a young man on the path of true culture, beware of interrupting his naive, confident, and, as it were, immediate and personal relationship with nature. The woods, the rocks, the winds, the vulture, the flowers, the butterfly, the meads, the mountain slopes, must all speak to him in their own language; in them he must, as it were, come to know himself again in countless reflections and images, in a variegated round of changing visions; and in this way he ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... face. He looked an accusing angel from the pit, swart of skin and with eyes of flame. He was tall and bent of figure, with the serpent-browed head set deep between hunched shoulders like those of a moulting vulture. He grasped his bundle of papers and rose to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stooping to meanness, the royal bird's aspect was no longer grand. He flew heavily and clumsily to the spot. He settled without grace, and almost overbalanced on to his Grecian nose. He clutched, and tore, and gulped, and gorged like a vulture. Thus Nature always dresses her actors for their parts. You may ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... led to many myths. Thus, the Greeks insisted that Prometheus, in order to perform a great service to humanity, stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. For this crime against the authority of the gods, he was chained to a rock to suffer the torture of the vulture who pecked at his vitals. Aeschylus has made the most of this old legend in his great drama of Prometheus Bound. Nearly every tribe or nation has some tradition regarding the origin of fire. Because of its mystery ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... about six miles below Stony Point, called the Long Clove. Arnold, with infinite cunning, had devised this meeting, and had tempted the adventurous spirit of Andre, who left a British man-of-war called the Vulture in order to hold converse with his fellow-conspirator. But before the unfortunate Andre could return to his ship (having completed his midnight confab and received from Arnold the most damning documentary ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the ridges of the Rocky Mountains! How grand and impressive the scenery presented to their admiring gaze, when from an elevated station they saw the mountain torrent hurling its foamy waters over the black crags of the rugged ravine, while on wide-spread wings the Great Vulture sailed overhead watching the departure of the travellers, that he might feast on the Salmon which in striving to ascend the cataract had been thrown on the stony beach! Now the weary travellers are resting on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the whites of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the gardens are embellished. Hell is shown to me under the same form, but all within it is, on the contrary, close, confused, and crowded; every object tends to fill the mind with sensations of pain and grief; the marks of the wreath and vengeance of God are visible everywhere; despair, like a vulture, gnaws every heart, and discord and misery reign around. In the Heavenly Jerusalem all is peace and eternal harmony, the beginning, fulfilment, and end of everything being pure and perfect happiness; the city is filled with splendid buildings, decorated in such a manner as to charm every ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... now identified with his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire; she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... delays and many plans, early one May morning I was taken to the mouth of the harbor. There the boat of the English warship Vulture was in waiting, and I was formally transferred to the English Government, and Curtin. Perry, Hayden and Green went on board with me. Soon after she steamed out of the harbor. Later in the day the Moselle, the regular passenger steamer to Plymouth and Southampton, came out, and about ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... The ancient people had to think and work and fast much to get the world in shape. The birds came together to see what they could do to bring about order in the world, so that it would be possible to plant corn. First they asked the red-headed vulture, the principal of all the birds, to set things right, but he said he could not. They sent for all the birds in the world, one after another, to induce them to perform the deed, but none would undertake it. At last came the bat, very old and much wrinkled. His ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... to Aurelian, he smiled his evil smile, which makes him more like an embittered vulture than ever, and remarked that he was thinking over his offers and hadn't yet decided which was the best. As the fact that he has been refused by seven women is well-known, we really rather admire the persistence of his pose as a lady-killer. He has even been known to write passionate ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... been turned downwards by the frontal bone, through which it crashed, finally lodging in the root of the tongue, the lead showing on both sides. I cut out the tongue and hung it up to dry, intending to keep it as a trophy; but unfortunately a vulture swooped down when my back was turned, and carried ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... those fearful deeds That seem to add but Guilt to Woe? Alas! the breast that inly bleeds Hath nought to dread from outward blow: Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss.[ej] Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now To thee, old man, my deeds appear: 1160 I read abhorrence on thy brow, And this too was I born to bear! 'Tis true, that, like that bird of prey, With havock have I marked my way: But this was taught me by the dove, To die—and know no ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... rock that overlooks the road through the mountain is set the Vulture's Nest, Sir Fool," began the adventurer in a voice at once confident and arrogant. "At least, so the time-honored fortress of Hochfels is disparagingly designated by the people. As the road is the only pass through the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... to speech, the chaplain cast up his pale eyes and looked volumes. This was quite enough for Mrs Pansey; she scented evil like a social vulture, and taking Cargrim's arm dragged him away to find out all the bad she could about The Derby Winner and its ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... journeyed, a famished vulture made a pounce at the meat, and Hassan's turban fell off, with which the vulture, balked of the meat, flew ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... mad hands! for ever on your plain Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood? For ever must your Nigers tainted flood Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain? Hold your mad hands! what daemon prompts to rear The arm of Slaughter? on your savage ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... It now resembled a mass of dried leather twisted into a deformity, without the slightest shape of an arm; this was about fourteen inches in length from the shoulder. The stiff and crippled hand, with contracted fingers, resembled the claw of a vulture. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... her, curse her, taking her at Kells's word, the wife of a bandit? But no! he would divine the truth in the flash of an eye. And then! She could not think what might happen, but it must mean blood-death. If he escaped Kells, how could he ever escape this Gulden—this huge vulture of prey? ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... have entered the Dismal Swamp they have seen no living creature; neither bird, beast, insect nor reptile, came to view. Not even a turkey-buzzard will venture to fly over it, no more than the Italian vulture will venture to fly over the filthy lake of Avernus; or the birds of the Holy Land over the Salt Sea where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood." And yet, in the present day, insect and reptile life swarms there in every form through all the hours of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... faithful all these months, but in this last week should he worn out and give herself to another: such things had been known. He went to Lincoln's Inn with this irritating fear tearing him like a vulture. Mr. Compton received him cheerfully, and told him he had begun operations in Hardie versus Hardie: had written to Thomas Hardie two days ago, and inquired his London solicitor, and whether that gentleman would accept service of the writ in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... yet, after all, this is a superficial way of looking at it, for it is the qualities of the mind—courage, endurance, patriotism, loyalty, fidelity to comrades—which make the hero, and the soul is beyond the reach of vulture or jackal. As for the mere body without it, it is of no more value than an empty champagne bottle. When there was light enough they went on again, and in due time reached the ambulance. And Green, having seen his friend made as comfortable ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the morrow, as they drew near to the mountains and rode up the rising ground, they saw afar off a man standing by one who lay stark on the ground, and driving off a vulture and a score of ravens with a long staff. The Queen's heart stood still when she saw this sight, and she spurred her Arab mare forward before all the army till she stopped beside the dead body and saw that the face was not Gilbert's. The squire who was ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... with ivory teeth and gills upon either side, which rose and fell whenever breath passed through them. The nose was like the beak of the vulture. A tuft of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the consciences of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans). Where was the legitimate influence of such a man? Was it in the white terror ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... was called to the tribune and appeared in it transfigured. He had no longer the air, as in former days, of one of the sacred geese of the Penguin citadels. Now, bristling, with outstretched neck and hooked beak, he seemed the symbolical vulture fastened to the livers of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "To denote Hephaestos (Ptah,) they delineate a scarabaeus and a vulture, and to denote Athena (Neith,) a vulture and ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... Tiger loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar, Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl— Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song Shall be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dependants Who give me attendance. Hear them, to deeds and passion Counsel in shrewd old-fashion! Into the world of strife, Out of this lonely life That of senses and sap has betrayed thee, They would persuade thee. This nursing of the pain forego thee, That, like a vulture, feeds upon thy breast! The worst society thou find'st will show thee Thou art a man among the rest. But 'tis not meant to thrust Thee into the mob thou hatest! I am not one of the greatest, Yet, wilt thou to me ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... its edge, convinced him a strong upward current existed to-day, as on the day when they had made their short flight over the void. The bird soared and circled and finally shot away to northward, without a wing-flap, almost in the manner of a vulture. Stern knew an eagle could not imitate the feat without some aid in the way of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... galled with gall-stones, to those whom the Chameleon litmus paper of "coming events casts their shadows before;" to Indian livers condemned, else hopelessly, to the fate of Prometheus, preyed upon by that vulture Hepatitis, in its gnawing and chronic forms; and to the melancholy hypochondriac, steeped at once both in sadness and in pains—she calls, and calls loudly, that all these should come and see what great ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... near it. If it were light, I could show you its towers. But what can a dove like you be seeking in that vulture's nest?" ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... sanctity of war is lost, Lost like the kindred sanctity of Love, Our household boast of old. The Father-God Vowed us to battle but as Virtue's proof, High test of softness scorned. His warrior knew 'Twas Odin o'er the battle field who sent Pure-handed maiden Goddesses, the Norns, Not vulture-like, but dove-like, mild as dawn, To seal the foreheads of his sons elect, Seal them to death, the bravest with a kiss: His warrior, arming, cried aloud, "This day I speed five Heroes to Valhalla's Hall: To-morrow night in love I share their Feast!" He honoured whom he slew.' To her the King: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... intentions of a fellow broker, the word would sweep through that crowd with the sureness of uncorked ether, and the other two hundred and ninty nine, at gong-strike, would be at each others' throats for his vitals, and before he knew the game had started would have his bones picked to a vulture-finish cleanness. Suddenly, as I watched the scene, there rang through the great hall the first sharp stroke of the gong. There were no echoes heard that morning. The metallic voice was yet shaping its command to "at 'em, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... life But a spectre-crowded tomb? Startled with unearthly strife, Spirits fierce in conflict met, In the lightning and the gloom, The agony and sweat; Passions wild and powers insane, And thoughts with vulture beak, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Les Vignes before daybreak, I might have seen them start off all together, the brown vultures and their black cousins, the arians, in quest of carrion; but now there was not one to be seen. As the vulture has become a rare bird in France, inhabiting only a few localities where there are very high and inaccessible rocks, and where man is crestfallen in the presence of nature, it is to be hoped that they will not be driven ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... fail in this my vow, may all the vengeance of the spirits fall upon me and upon my children; may they perish by the vulture, by the wolf, or other beasts of the forest; may their flesh be torn from their limbs, and their bones blanch in the wilderness: all ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... militia officer would presume so far on his good nature as to come to him at such an hour, unless he had really something of definite importance to communicate. He, therefore, did not interrupt his visitor. Roderick Hardinge continued to say that, fearing lest Arnold should pounce like a vulture upon the city while most of the troops of the Colony were with General Carleton, near Montreal, and in the Richelieu peninsula, and while, consequently, it was in an almost defenceless condition, he had determined ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... the opposite side of the river, answered; for they thought that the attacking party had been defeated. The only British soldier to escape from Stony Point was a captain. Leaping into the Hudson, he swam a mile to the Vulture and told its captain what had happened. In this way the news of the disaster reached Sir ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... law reports. John Nason, one of his principal clients, was a wealthy and successful merchant, and both proud and fond of his only son. Frye had heard various stories of the elder Nason, connecting his name with certain good-looking girls that had been or were in his employ, and that vulture, with a keen scent for evil, was only too ready to take advantage of anything, no matter what, so long as it would aid him in his efforts to make the most out of his client. He knew also that Frank was, as the saying goes, "cutting a wide swath." To use the son's friend as a ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... him. Oh, what blood I have had on my hands! God forgive them!—if that be possible. They make me hold his head, and the bucket filled with crimson water. O Heaven!—I, who was the bride of God! They throw their bodies into the abyss of snow; but the vulture finds them; he lines his nest with their hair. I now see thee full of life; I shall see thee bloody, pale, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... shall presently find recognized in the name of Pallas,—the vibratory power of the air to convey sound, while, as a purifying creature, the fly holds its place beside the old symbol of Athena in Egypt, the vulture; and as a venomous and tormenting creature has more than the strength of the serpent in proportion to its size, being thus entirely representative of the influence of the air both in purification and pestilence; and its courage is so notable ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Naples—Giuseppe Ribera, nicknamed Lo Spagnoletto—carried on Caravaggio's tradition. Spagnoletto surpassed his master in the brutally realistic expression of physical anguish. His Prometheus writhing under the beak of the vulture, his disembowelled martyrs and skinless S. Bartholomews, are among the most nauseous products of a masculine nature blessed with robust health. Were they delirious or hysterical, they would be less disgusting. But no; they are merely vigorous and faithful representations of what anybody ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... and papers in agitation, and nowhere did he find anything which could confirm or disprove the fateful rumour. Sometimes he was disgusting to himself. "What am I about," he thought, "waiting, like a vulture for blood, for certain news of my wife's death?" He went to the Kalitins every day, but things had grown no easier for him there; the lady of the house was obviously sulky with him, and received him very condescendingly. Panshin treated him with exaggerated politeness; Lemm had entrenched ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... haunting memory and stimulating imagination, forbade repose. Ever, in the midst of all his busy, useful, aspiring life he was conscious, deep in his heart, of a gnawing anguish, whose name was Claudia Merlin. To-night this deep-seated anguish tortured him like the vulture of Prometheus. One vivid picture was always before his mind's eye—the sofa, with the beautiful figure of Claudia reclining upon it, and the stately form of the viscount, leaning with deferential admiration over her. The viscount's admiration of the beauty was patent; he did not attempt to conceal ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... middle state or degree of talents. Me'di-o-cre (pro. me'di-o-kr), a man of moderate talents. 3. Re-spec'tive, particular, own. 4. Ab-solve', set free, release from. Fi'at, a decree. 5. Con'-dor, a large bird of the vulture family. Em-pyr'e-al, relating to the highest and purest region of the heavens. 6. Ca-reer'ing, moving rapidly. Prow'ess (pro. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... we forget, that "the Holy Ghost came down, not in shape of a vulture, but in the form ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... represented in hieroglyphs by the same characters as her husband—a leopard, with an eye above, and the sign of the feminine gender an oval or egg. But as a goddess she is always portrayed with wings; the vulture being dedicated to her; and, as it were, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... Surenen's fearful mountain chain, Where dreary ice-fields stretch on every side, And sound is none, save the hoarse vulture's cry, I reach'd the Alpine pasture, where the herds From Uri and from Engelberg resort, And turn their cattle forth to graze in common. Still as I went along, I slaked my thirst With the coarse oozings of the ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... solitude. Batouch, smothered in his burnous, his large head sunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares of State. Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished. Ali, perched behind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady and remote as those of a vulture of the desert. The houses of Beni-Mora faded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of Count Anteoni's garden. Along ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... enumerate if I did but recollect them, and for which men so often have been and still are impleaded in Court Christian—these particulars, I say, being recapitulated and set forth in terrible array, by the rector, excited in the whole parish so much dread of the rapacious vulture, who was coming with such a swoop upon them, that high and low, young and old, rich and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... are a cheat, a vulture in the guise of woman!" cried Mrs. Whitney. "Ellen, tell her what ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... living flame, Sapphires, whose azure emulates the skies, And dust of gold. Yet there's a curtain'd path Which the unfettered denizens of air Have not descried, nor even the piercing eye Of the black vulture seen. The lion's whelps In their wide roaming, nor their fiercer sire Have never trod it. There's a Hand that bares The roots of mountains at its will, and cuts Through rifted rocks a channel, where the streams And rivers freely flow—an Eye that scans Each precious thing. But where doth Wisdom ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... shepherd, with his dog, stalking along the valley, and hearing only the dashing of torrents, which the woods concealed from the eye, the long sullen murmur of the breeze, as it swept over the pines, or the notes of the eagle and the vulture, which were seen towering ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... destitute of trees, and indescribably silent and lonesome, partaking of the savage and solitary character of Africa. What adds to this silence and loneliness, is the absence of singing-birds, a natural consequence of the want of groves and hedges. The vulture and the eagle are seen wheeling about the mountain-cliffs, and soaring over the plains, and groups of shy bustards stalk about the heaths; but the myriads of smaller birds, which animate the whole face of other countries are met with in but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... a philanthropist," said Sypher, "but by the side of you I'm a vulture. Has it not struck you that, if the big gun is what I think, any government on earth would give you what you like to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke |
