"Wrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bird make its appearance. Diving for it, and bringing it up in its bill, the canvas-back readily breaks off the long lanceolate leaves, which float off, either to be eaten by another species—the pochard—or to form immense banks of wrack, that are thrown up against the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... had started bright and clear, but a wrack of grey clouds soon covered the sky, and a wind from the east began to whistle. As I stumbled along through the snowy undergrowth I kept longing for bright warm places. I thought of those long days on the veld when the earth was like a great yellow ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... lashed him and clasped him, he squeezed him and shook him, so that he spilled all the dirt out of him, [8]so that the ford was defiled with his dung[8] [9]and the air was fouled with his dust[9] and an [10]unclean, filthy[10] wrack of cloud arose in the four airts wherein he was. Then from the middle of the ford Cuchulain hurled Larine far from him across through the camp [11]till he fell into Lugaid's two hands[11] at the door ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, 130 In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank. Search, the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, deg. face and flank! deg.135 You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset sky ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... which men in treeless plains 410 To build them boats fish from the flooded rivers, Hyphasis deg. or Hydaspes, deg. when, high up deg.412 By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time Hath made in Himalayan forests wrack, deg. deg.414 And strewn the channels with torn boughs—so huge 415 The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside, Lithe as the glancing deg. snake, and the club came deg.418 Thundering to earth, and leapt from Rustum's hand. And Rustum follow'd his ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... down upon us early, and so dark that we could not see as far as the length of the ship, there being no moon, while the light of the stars was completely obscured by the dense canopy of storm-wrack that overshadowed us, the only objects visible outside the bulwarks being the faintly phosphorescent heads of the breaking seas as they swept down menacingly upon us from to windward; the air was raw and chill, although it was only the first ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... at town land till all have gone to wrack, The very straws may wrangle till they've thrown down the stack; The very door-posts bicker till they've pulled in the door, The very ale-jars jostle till the ale is on the floor, But this ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... drowsy tinklings on th' attentive hills; The milkmaid stops her ballad, and her pail Stays it's low murmur in th' unbreathing vale; No night-duck clamours for his wilder'd mate, Aw'd, while below the Genii hold their state. —The pomp is fled, and mute the wondrous strains, No wrack of all the pageant scene remains, [vii] So vanish those fair Shadows, human Joys, But Death alone their vain regret destroys. Unheeded Night has overcome the vales, On the dark earth the baffl'd vision fails, If peep between ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... granted us peace and plenty, and the quiet we've sought so long; He hath thwarted the wily savage, and kept him from wrack and wrong; And unto our feast the Sachem shall be bidden, that he may know We worship his own Great Spirit, who ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... your flaunting banner, for a scout comes breathless and pale, With the terror of death upon him; of failure is all his tale: "They have fled while the flag waved o'er them! they've turned to the foe their back! They are scattered, pursued, and slaughtered! the fields are all rout and wrack!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the rain That all day long had soaked the level plain. Against the horizon's fiery wrack, The sheds loomed black. And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met, The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wet With the flickering storm, Drifted and smouldered, warm With flashes sent From the lower firmament. And they concealed— They only ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... As the afternoon wore on the weather improved. The sun, soon to drop behind the cliff-summits on the left, asserted itself with a last effort and shot a red gleam through a chink low in the cloud-wrack. The shaft widened. The breakers—indigo-backed till now and turbid with sand in solution—began to arch themselves in glass-green hollows, with rainbows playing on the spray of their crests. And then—as though the savage coast had become, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of leaf and water, London, the while, kept herself in her smudgy convent, her ear tuned only to the jolting music of her streets, the rough syncope of wheel and voice. Since then what countless winds have blown across the world, and cloud-wrack! And this older century is now but a clamor of the memory. What mystery it is! What were the happenings in that pin-prick of universe called London? Of all the millions of ant hills this side Orion, what about this one? London ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... they are! "Whip, whip the fool!" We wrack Our weary brains to make a jest and then, In payment, we are whipped if they so feel Inclined! They treat us ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... little mate, coolly, "since you've worked yourself up so much over the matter, and as we're a-goin' along on our course agin, as I suggested to the skipper afore we raised the wrack"—here he went to the pantry and brought out a bottle, and held it out ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... come home for the last fortnight, but she just won't leave off going around with the sailors. The whole beach is ashamed of her. It's general talk down below. What can I do? The little old coral house is going to wrack and ruin and the baby ain't been properly took care of since she left. What am I going to do, madam? What am I going to ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... and black, She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, With a sudden shudder of death, And the cannon's breath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mist and the great clouds rolling away in billows, as if to expose fully the wonder of those primeval leagues of tree-tops sunlit, mist-strewn, where the feathery fingers of the palms made banners of the wrack and the baobabs ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... companionship of the sea. He glanced down into the water whose uneven floor was diapered with long weedy patches, fragments of fallen rock, and brighter patches of sand; he inhaled the pungent odour of sea-wrack and listened to the breathings of the waves. They lapped softly against the rounded boulders which strewed the shore like a flock of nodding Behemoths. He remembered his visits at daybreak to the beach—those unspoken ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... sobbed. Cascades, born somewhere in the dun firmament above, dropped down the mountain sides in ever-growing white threads. The rivers roared and plunged with aimless passion down the ravines. Stray little clouds, left behind when the wrack lifted a little, ran bleating up and down the forlorn hill-sides. More often, the clouds trailed along the valleys, a long procession of shrouded, melancholy figures, seeming to pause, as with an indeterminate, tragic, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Brightling, and said: "Hallblithe, it is not of death that we have to tell, but of sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... warld's wrack, we share o't, The warstle and the care o't; [struggle] Wi' her I'll blythely bear it, And think my ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... mind their awfish(3) skreekin', They 'tice folk to their death; Then ride aboon yon billows An' gloor at them beneath. They gloor at eenless corpses Slow driftin' wi' the tide, Deep doon amang the weedy wrack, Wheer t' ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... her breast, And, with still panting rock, there took his rest. So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft: Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer'd wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world been black. Amorous Leander, beautiful and young, (Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung,) Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none For whom succeeding times make greater ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... for upon the night of the 11th we fairly entered upon that por- tion of the Atlantic which is known as the Sargasso Sea. An extensive tract of water is this, inclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... bidden Small Porges a cheery "Good-night"—Bellew went out to walk among the roses. And, as he walked, he watched the flying wrack of clouds above his head, and listened to the wind that moaned in fitful gusts. Wherefore, having learned in his many travels to read, and interpret such natural signs and omens, he shook his head, and muttered to himself—even as Adam had done ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... wild day passed, and it was not till the evening that the weather moderated. Little by little the great seas began to calm, and the drifts of stinging rain ceased. In their wake the stars struggled through the cloud wrack, and towards morning the ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... before you a man who has used up the name of Waife, and who on entering the town of Gatesboro' becomes a sober, staid, and respectable personage, under the appellation of Chapman. You are Miss Chapman. Rugge and his Exhibition 'leave not a wrack behind.'" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried: "Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have friends and foes, That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and the world slips back, That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and fashion the wrack: Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall aback on thine head; Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed! For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st; If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach—as leaden, indeed, as the heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides acting as the avant courier of a fresh squall—the wind just then tearing and shrieking through the ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Overberg was not a bad fellow—he had made many repairs, and even promised to build a new barn which the General would never consent to. It was a pity for the man! A good gentleman, but he took no interest in farming; the whole place must have gone to wrack and ruin if the General had not agreed to sell it before it was too late. The Freule was sorry, for she liked farming; she had learned to milk, and talked to the cows just as if they were human beings. And horses—yes, ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... Western Ghauts, where Lieutenant (now Colonel) Herschel was posted, unremitting bad weather threatened to baffle his eager expectations; but during the lapse of the critical five and a half minutes the clouds broke, and across the driving wrack a "long, finger-like projection" jutted out over the margin of the dark lunar globe. In another moment the spectroscope was pointed towards it; three bright lines—red, orange, and blue—flashed out, and the problem was solved.[514] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... girl who was ugly in the other act comes on very beautiful (but hideously dressed, why don't they get Worth or Doucet, I wonder, to help them?) and she sings a great deal and very loud, and kisses Parsifal, and then everything goes suddenly to wrack and ruin. I shall never dare kiss any very good young man again—not after that! In the last act, this same creature, looking more like Act I., washes Parsifal's feet. I should hate to play that part, but it's all very pretty and affecting, ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!—and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession! Laws bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in three ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... humor in that which they thinke no crime. As to your third reason, it scarselie merites an answere. For if the deuill their master were not bridled, as the scriptures teacheth vs, suppose there were no men nor women to be his instrumentes, he could finde waies inough without anie helpe of others to wrack al mankinde: wherevnto he employes his whole study, and goeth about like a roaring Lyon (as PETER saith) (M16) to that effect, but the limites of his power were set down before the foundations of the world were laid, which he hath not power in the least ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... individyooals nor neighborhoods, but whole counties comes stampedin' to the rescoo. It's no use; the boat bogs right down in the sand; in less than an hour her smoke stack is onder water. All we ever gets from the wrack is the bell, the same now adornin' a Presbyter'an church an' summonin' folks to them services. I tells you, gents, the thoughts of that Willow Run, an' we not able to save so much as a quart of it, puts a crimp in that commoonity they ain't yet outlived. It 'most drives ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... field and mead, The rounding noon hangs hard and white; Into the gathering heats recede The hollows of the Chelsea height; But under all to one quiet tune, A spirit in cool depths withdrawn, With logs, and dust, and wrack bestrewn, The stately river ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... da'kest hour, dey allus say, Is des' befo' de dawn, But it's moughty ha'd a-waitin' Were de night goes frownin' on; An' it's moughty ha'd a-hopin' When de clouds is big and black, An' all de t'ings you's waited fu' Has failed, er gone to wrack— But des' keep on a joggin' ind a little bit o song. De moon is allus brightah w'en de night's ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their lameness, and feel that they are really fellow-countrymen, native ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... stunned soul can first lift tired eyes On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack, Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise Brings all sweet memories of the lost past back, With wild self-pitying grief of one betrayed, Duped in a land of dreams where Truth ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... a moment doubt; nor can I doubt that I do it, with many foolish fears and delays, and shall do it to the end. Why it is that, voyaging thus to the haven beneath the hill, I meet such adverse breezes, such headstrong currents, such wrack of wind and thwarting wave, I know not; nor what that other land will be like, if indeed I sail beyond the sunset; but that a home awaits me and all mankind I believe, of which this quiet house, so pleasantly ordered, among its old trees and dewy pastures, is but a faint sweet symbol. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the world, and all its virtue, all its pleasures and all its pains, will have effected nothing. They will all have faded like an unsubstantial pageant, and not left a wrack behind. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... under them to do it. The chief of whom is the [Courlividani.] Courlividani. This person beside his entertainment in the Countrey unto which he is sent to Govern under the Dissauva, hath a due revenue, but smaller then that of the Governour. His chief business is to wrack and hale all that may be for his Master, and to see good Government, and if there be any difference or quarrel between one or other, he takes a Fine from both, and carrieth to the Governour, not regarding equity but the profit of himself and him that imploys him. But he hears their case and determines ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... deafening shore We sought no more aloft, but sunk our eyes, Probing the sea for food, the earth for ore. Ah, yet had one good soldier of the skies Burst through the wrack reporting news of them, How had we run ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... the tree. Stas was so accustomed to think of Nell in every situation that now he was occupied, above all, in ascertaining whether she was not in danger of falling, whether she had sufficient room and whether she could lie down comfortably. Satisfied in this respect, he began to wrack his brains as to how to protect her from the rain. But for this there was no help. It would have been easy to construct during the daytime some kind of roof over her head, but now they were enveloped in such darkness that they could not see each other at all. If the storm ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... yellow and russet leaves, whirling them aloft and away. Round the woman's head was a garland of ivy leaves, and she was gazing aloft with expectant face, stretching up her arms, as if to implore or receive some precious gift from the sky. Above, against the slaty-gray cloud-wrack, four exquisite slender girl-forms appeared, with loose hair, silver-gray drapery and gauzy wings as of ephemerae, flying in pursuit of the cloud. Each carried a quantity of flowers, shaped like lilies, in her dress, held up with the left hand; one carried red lilies, another yellow, the ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... grass and tree showed vivid green against white walls, and flowers stood still on airless terraces, shedding strange perfumes. And she also saw her new acquaintance coming towards her, balancing himself on the slippery, wrack-grown rocks, in boots and things that were much too good for the purpose; but Alfred and Dicksie never appeared, and were not to be found of her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... but veered as much to the south, he might have chanced the run through Concepcion Strait, or even weathered Duke of York Island. He nodded to his junior, whose presence on the bridge was a mere matter of form, owing to the powerless condition of the ship and the impenetrable wrack of foam and mist that barred vision ahead, and strode off on a tour of inspection. As wind and sea were now beating more directly on the port side, there was some degree of shelter along the covered-in deck to starboard. He found that two boats had been cleared of their hamper and lowered ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... do God's will. All else is nought. This is solid. 'The world passeth away, ... but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' Everything besides is show and delusion, and a life directed to it is fleeting as the cloud-wrack that sweeps across the sky, and, whether it is shone on or is black, is equally melting away. Happy the child who begins with such surrender of self to be God's instrument, and who, like Samuel, can stand up at the end and challenge men's judgment ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... time to say good-night to the guest he rather cavalierly treats." And he rose and went downstairs to meet his host. The great door was ajar. He went into the open air. The garden was utterly dark, for clouds obscured the stars, and the air was laden with the saline odour of the wrack below high-water mark. The tide was out. What he had expected was to see Mungo and his master, but behind the castle where they should have been there was no one, and the voices he heard had come from the side next the shore. He listened a little and took alarm, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... fled, Their bodies glowed like fox-fire far ahead; But every moment saw the distance close Between our thirsty spear-heads and our foes. Louder the blast our buzzing pinions made Than mighty forest in a whirlwind swayed; The giant cliffs of Redwing speeding back, Like specters melting from a cloudy wrack, Melted from view in our dissolving track. Kaposia's village, clustered on the shore, With sound of snapping poles and tipis riven, Vanished like swan's-down by a tempest driven. Stung by our flight, the keen air smote us sore As ragged hailstones; on, still on, we ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... had she been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all the storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... harbour large and unstirred by the winds' [571-604]entrance; but nigh it Aetna thunders awfully in wrack, and ever and again hurls a black cloud into the sky, smoking with boiling pitch and embers white hot, and heaves balls of flame flickering up to the stars: ever and again vomits out on high crags from the torn entrails of the mountain, tosses up masses of molten ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... still panting rocked, there took his rest. So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft. Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... is here. He's got a duty and a responsibility. Your dear father didn't leave him the estate for him to let it go to wrack and ruin. It's most cruel and wrong ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... of our wants; our wishes may be right, and our confidence may be firm that God will give us what we ask; yet how often there is no vivid thought of Him filling the mind! How often our prayers are offered to a mere name! How seldom through the cloud-wrack beneath His feet do we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... but too plainly indicate, that he conceived, and wrote some part of, his poem of 'Don Juan;'—and never did pages more faithfully and, in many respects, lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and passion that, like the wrack of autumn, swept across the author's mind in writing them. Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this moment, could have suggested, or been capable of, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sun's warmth so long as we were cruising among the ice-wrack. Some of the passengers, having been forewarned, were provided with heavy overcoats, oilskin hats, waterproofs, woolen socks, and stogies with great nails driven into the soles. They were iron-bound, copper-fastened ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... fearful trip is done! The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won. The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. But, O heart! heart! heart! Leave you not the little spot Where on the deck my Captain lies, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... like the great English people, the great German people, and the people of every country where the privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep all this sea-wrack high and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,— Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake On ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Besides which, he industriously gathered the histories of their martyrdom, together with other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a large and noble library." Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near Exeter, where Boniface was first instructed. At the monastery of Nursling he was taught grammar, history, poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there also manuscripts were copied. Books were produced under Abbess Eadburh of Minster, a ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... and Maya, walking side by side. Behind them were half a dozen women, playing fifes and horns. One was carrying a tattered flag. Behind the musicians came a motley crowd. Old women, young women, half-grown children, and dozens of old men. All were armed. And they came forward like the wrack of a surviving army at ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... forms of the unburied flitted pale and ghastly before my eyes. I fancied that I was still on the sea; that the massive copper-coloured clouds which hovered scarcely a yard overhead, were suddenly transformed into uncouth shapes, who glared at me from between saffron chinks, made by the scudding wrack; that the waters teemed with life, cold, slimy, preternatural things of life; that their eyes after assuming a variety of awful expressions, settled down into that dull frozen character, and their voices into that low, sepulchral, indefinable tone, which marked the Mysterious Tailor. This wretch ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... lest his mind should fail him through grievous wrack of pain of body, but that trouble ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... out of the swirling drift of cares, anxieties, ambitions, hopes; and I see now that I could not have rescued myself; that I should have gone on battling with the current, catching at the river wrack, in the hopes of saving something from the stream. Now I am face to face with God; He saves me from myself, He strips my ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He made me, unashamed, nestling close to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have the following ill effects: It would make the member more shamelessly and shockingly corrupt; it would increase his dependence on those who could best support him at his election; it would wrack and tear to pieces the fortunes of those who stood upon their own fortunes and their private interest; it would make the electors infinitely more venal; and it would make the whole body of the people, who are, whether they have votes or not, concerned in elections, more lawless, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the latter being a cold dry wind is, consequently, a heavy wind. And when the sky was comparatively clear and blue, the display of cirri was noticeable. In some places they formed filmy crosses and thready lozenges; in others the wrack fell into the shape of the letter Z; and from the western horizon the curl-clouds shot up thin rays, with a common centre hid behind the mountains of Sinai, affecting all the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... province. The capitalists of Nova Scotia treat it like a hired house, they won't keep it in repair; they neither paint it to preserve the boards, nor stop a leak to keep the frame from rottin'; but let it go to wrack sooner than drive a nail or put in a pane of glass. 'It will sarve ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... soon after midnight, and before dawn had blown itself out. Day came, filtered slowly through the wrack of it to the south-east; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on the cliff above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat, with an arm thrown out and pointing eastward. He turned and galloped off ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... (when he saw his countries go to wrack), From bick'ring with his folk, to keep the Britons back, Cast up that mightly mound of eighty miles in length, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind'; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back; 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... proud Spanish Armado to wrack, And Travell'd all o'er the old World, and came back, In his old Ship, laden with Gold and old Sack, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... righteous grace On me, on me look down! Grant not to youth its heart's unchaste desire, But, swiftly spurning lust's unholy fire, Bless only love and willing wedlock's crown The war-worn fliers from the battle's wrack Find refuge at the hallowed altar-side, The sanctuary divine,— Ye gods! such refuge unto me provide— Such sanctuary be mine! Though the deep will of Zeus be hard to track, Yet doth it flame and glance, A beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance That wrap mankind Yea, though ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... a panting rash that we reached the place, to find it must have been the house of the collector of the district; but it was all one wrack and ruin—glass, tables, and chairs smashed; hangings and carpets burnt or ragged to pieces, and in one or two places, blood-stains on the white floor, told a terrible tale of what had taken place not ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... I did not know, I did not feel— what wrack, what weal for him: golden one, golden one, turn again Aphrodite with the yellow zone, I am cursed, cursed, undone! Ah and my face, Aphrodite, beside your gold, is cut ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... Virginia were skillful with the pen. William Strachey's "True Reportory of the Wrack of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., vpon and from the islands of the Bermudas" may or may not have given a hint to Shakespeare for the storm-scene in "The Tempest." In either case it is admirable writing, flexible, sensitive, shrewdly observant. Whitaker, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... one rock in the coral belt, through which a boat can safely run to shore; but the little wharf, built there of the largest coral blocks that could be rolled together, has been once and again swept clean off by the hurricane, leaving "not a wrack behind." ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... foreign foe, First to strike the battle blow; Last to turn from triumph back, Last to leave the battle's wrack; Clan of Cas shall victors be When ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... any other time, a solid foundation for comfort is needed in times of deep grief. Then the hosts of darkness press round the dismayed spirit; clouds of darkness roll across the mental sky; the sun and all light is hidden; in the storm-wrack the fiery darts of the wicked one fall thick as rain. Every long-accepted truth is questioned; the very foundations seem to dissolve. A firm foothold, indeed, must we have on which to stand at such a time. Faith must be seen not at war with her poor blind—or at least ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... in maidens' hearts, of the nature of an intermittent fever. The tide of Solway flows, but the more rapid his flow the swifter his ebb. The higher it brings the wrack up the beach, the deeper, six hours after, are laid bare the roots of the seaweed upon the shingle. Now Winsome Charteris, however her heart might conspire against her peace, was not at all the girl to be won before she was asked. Also there was that delicious ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... which all who will may drive a gimlet? See, I am a salaried wit; and is there aught in nature more ridiculous? A poor, dull, heart-broken man, who must needs be merry, or he will be whipped; who must rejoice, lest he starve; who must jest you, jibe you, quip you, crank you, wrack you, riddle you, from hour to hour, from day to day, from year to year, lest he dwindle, perish, starve, pine,and die! Why, when there's naught else to laugh at, I laugh at myself ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... moon above Shines bright and ever brighter; And all the black And sullen wrack Grows in ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... something more than an aggregation of atoms. The body dissolves into its constituent elements and serves in its turn to build up other organisms: but as a human body it all turns to dust nor 'leaves a wrack behind'. Thus Darwinism was made the basis first for a materialistic, and then for a monistic, view of the world, and hence came to be rigorously opposed to every form of Theism. But since, at that time, Darwinism was the only theory of evolution recognized ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... my best remembrance, he lay crying out all one night for fear, and at times he would so tremble, that he would make the very bed shake under him. {143c} But, Oh! how the thoughts of Death, of Hell-fire, and of eternal Judgment, did then wrack his conscience. Fear might be seen in his face, and in his tossings to and fro: It might also be heard in his words, and be understood by his heavy groans. He would often cry, I am undone, I am undone; my vile life ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... time I had crossed the cove, the western sky was brilliant with the reflected dawn. Above the cliffs behind, morning had edged the flying wrack of indigo clouds with a glittering line of gold, while the sea in front still heaved beneath the pale yellow light, as a child sobs at intervals after the first gust of passion is over-past. The tide was at the ebb, and the fresh breeze dropped as I got under the shadow of Dead ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... death, But if thou wed my fortunes with my state, This sauing health shall suffocate my breath, To flye from them that holds my God in hate, My Mistres, Countrey, me, and my sworne fayth, Were to pull of the load from Typhons back, And crush my selfe, with shame and seruille wrack. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... FOR SHAKESPEARE'S TEMPEST.—WILLIAM STRACHEY, a contemporary of Shakespeare and secretary of the Virginian colony, wrote at Jamestown and sent to London in 1610 the manuscript of A True Repertory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas. This is a story of shipwreck on the Bermudas and of escape in small boats. The book is memorable for the description of a storm at sea, and it is possible that it may ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... flags they tore; The English strove with desperate strength, paused, rallied, staggered, fled— The green hill-side is matted close with dying and with dead. Across the plain, and far away, passed on that hideous wrack, While cavalier and fantassin dash in upon their track. On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun, With bloody plumes, the Irish stand—the field is fought ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... if he saw the slanting spars, And if he watched the shifting track, He marked, too, the eternal stars Shine through the wrack. ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... for I looked for Jamie back; But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack; His ship was a wrack! Why didna Jamie dee? Or why was I spared to cry, Wae ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... night when the storm tore and tugged at the stones and birchbark of the turf roof, and the sea-wrack came right up to the ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the night's blind wrack, He feels the dread berg's ghastly breath, Or hears draw nigh through walls of black A throbbing engine chanting death; But with a calm, unwrinkled brow He fronts them, grim and undismayed, For storm and ice and liner's bow— These are but ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with jaculation dire, That under ground they fought in dismal shade; Infernal noise; Warr seem'd a civil Game To this uproar; horrid confusion heapt Upon confusion rose: and now all Heav'n Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspred, 670 Had not th' Almightie Father where he sits Shrin'd in his Sanctuarie of Heav'n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult, and permitted all, advis'd: That his great purpose he ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... which he coasted! for there Was shedding of blood and rending of hair, Rape of maiden and slaughter of priest, Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast; When he hoisted his standard black, Before him was battle, behind him wrack, And he burned the churches, that heathen Dane, To light his band to their ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady |
