"Fitful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been so extravagantly and overwhelmingly happy with the remembrance of her adventure at Lord Andover's house, and her knowledge of the secret between herself and Cuthbert, that the young man had felt half afraid lest she should contrive to betray it to others by her blushes, her bright, fitful glances, and her newborn softness in his presence, which gave a sweeter quality to her childish charms. He himself did not wish Martin Holt to be aware that anything had passed between him and Cherry till he could come boldly ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... swamp edge I passed with the night falling fast. Twilight lingers long in our latitude and the gray sky still lighted the path dimly, though the woods were black on either side. The tranquillity of the home-like hollow was with me yet, but I was in for another panic shudder. A fitful gleam of pale light showed just ahead of me through the black thicket and I rounded a familiar curve in the path to stand face to face with a most portentous presence. A veritable ghost stood just within the wood, seven feet tall, stretching out a rattling bone of an ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... set on subduing these fierce nobles, and perhaps of developing the people at large, the nation itself, if that is not too modern an ambition. The reign of Law, broken and disturbed by a hundred storms, but still henceforward with a statute-book to fall back upon and some fitful authority at its command, began in Scotland in ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... calmed her heart with this prayer, there was noise at a little distance, and red gleams on the fitful mist which drove past the window; and then followed a loud knocking ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... the universe in which it is served to them. We want to know about life's origin and meaning and destiny. We cannot keep our questions at home. We cannot stop thinking. If this universe is fundamentally physical, if the only spark of spiritual life which it ever knew is the fitful flame of our own unsteady souls, if it came from dust and to dust will return, leaving behind no recollection of the human labour, sacrifice and aspiration which for a little time it unconsciously enshrined, that ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... young woman stirred uneasily in the early slumber of the evening. Eleven floors below her, in the foyer of the Hotel Manhattan, the after-theater crowd of visitors thronged and buzzed happily. But the girl, after an unusual day of anxiety in a strange land, was ill at ease, with fitful dreams. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... flight by a bright red blaze which lighted up the horizon to the southward and cast a crimson glow far over the sea. This appearance was accompanied by a low growling sound, as of distant thunder, and at the same time the sky above us became black, while a hot, stifling wind blew around us in fitful gusts. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... however, there were signs of it changing; and as the sun rose from its ocean-bed it looked like a huge globe of fire, diffusing a ruddy glow throughout the sky, and tingeing with a lurid hue the edges of the rapidly gathering clouds. The wind came in fitful gusts for some time from the westward; but soon after Uncle Paul had put the boat's head to the north, it suddenly shifted, and began to blow with considerable violence from that quarter. We had then, under ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... rock, it lighted on the Lagunes, without the tiers of the shipping. From this point to the barrier of sand, it was apparent by the stooping sails and the struggles of the gondoliers who pulled towards the quay, that the air was swift. Without the Lido itself, the element was shadowed and fitful, while further in the distance the troubled waters, with their crests of foam, sufficiently proved ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... occasional journeyings alone and sometimes with Rachel into the homes of chance acquaintances, and had put in fitful appearances at the various excitements pursued by the city's more radical intelligentsia—little-theater premiers, private assemblings of shrewd, bored men and women, precious concerts, electric discussions of political unrest. From ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... task, and lay in a drunken sleep on the floor. The uninjured raiders had followed his example, the candle had burned itself out and all was darkness and silence save the low, fitful sounds of suffering. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Richmond on the twelfth of June, the day the fitful firing ceased around Cold Harbor. There was danger in the Valley, where Hunter had won success at Staunton, and where Crook's and Averell's Union troops were expected to arrive from West Virginia. Sheridan, too, was ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... jowl on two wooden benches in front of a fire, which they from time to time nourished with sticks from a heap of wood on the hearth. The fire however would not burn, but kept smouldering and smoking, now and then springing up into a fitful blaze, which threw a spectral air over the room, peopling its dim recesses with all sorts of fantastic forms, and then expired, leaving it more gloomy than ever. The appearance of the men, their subdued, whispering voices and startled ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half-way across our path. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... dock's sheer edge, they glowered into one another's eyes through the fading twilight, the great steam cranes behind flinging out giant arms over the stone heaps, the black water below glancing with fitful gleams of steel and copper from the sunset's last saffron afterglow. The yellow headlight of a low-lying grain boat stole nearer, unheeded till the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the bedside of the former when Dr. Bayard nerved himself to make the necessary call. To his great relief, the young soldier had fallen into a fitful doze and was unconscious of his presence. Mrs. Miller, in low tones, described his condition; and the doctor was content to go without other examination, though he left directions with the attendant as to what was to be done when the patient awaked. Next he repaired to Mrs. Forrest's rooms, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... said Hillocks, pointing to the smithy, whose fire sent fitful gleams across the dark road, "and he's carryin' on maist fearsome. Ye wud think tae hear him speak that auld Hornie wes gaein' louse in the parish; it sent a grue (shiver) doon ma back. Faigs, it's no cannie to be muckle wi' the body, for the Deil and Donald ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the story of a shattered hope. As I think, Vanbrugh was a man to whom Fortune could never come. He must have hunted her from him all his life, with his pride, his waywardness, his fitful morose ambition. I soon read his character—for I had read another very like it, once. But that is changed now, thank God," said Harold, softly. "Well, so it was: the painter dreamed his dream, the little sister stayed at ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... these thoughts Mr. Eglantine fell asleep; but it was evident that the idea of seeing Morgiana once more agitated him considerably, else why should he have been at the pains of preparing so much heroism? His sleep was exceedingly fitful and troubled; he saw Morgiana in a hundred shapes; he dreamed that he was dressing her hair; that he was riding with her to Richmond; that the horse turned into a dragon, and Morgiana into Woolsey, who took him by the throat and choked him, while the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sandro as he was called, was a great trial to his father. He would settle to no trade or calling. Restless and uncertain, he turned from one thing to another. At one time he would work with all his might, and then again become as idle and fitful as the summer breeze. He could learn well and quickly when he chose, but then there were so few things that he did choose to learn. Music he loved, and he knew every song of the birds, and anything connected with flowers ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... followed by horizontal lurid flames, belched forth from their dread mouths, lighting for the instant wood and field, formed the grandest of pyrotechnic displays. Rare spectacle—in one magnificent panorama, gleaming through the dark mantle of night, were the steady lights of peaceful camps, and the fitful flashing of the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... swell of the Bay of Biscay; and she still kept true to her old character, with but this drawback, that she had now got somewhat crazy in her fastenings, and made rather more water in a heavy sea than her one little pump could conveniently keep under. As the fitful gust struck her headlong, as if it had been some invisible missile hurled at us from off the hill-tops, she stooped her head lower and lower, like old stately Hardyknute under the blow of the "King of Norse," till at length the lee chain-plate rustled sharp through ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... intervene; break, break in upon, break off; interpose &c 228; break the thread, snap the thread; disconnect &c (disjoin) 44; dissever. Adj. discontinuous, unsuccessive^, broken, interrupted, dicousu [Fr.]; disconnected, unconnected; discrete, disjunctive; fitful &c (irregular) 139; spasmodic, desultory; intermitting, occasional &c v., intermittent; alternate; recurrent &c (periodic) 138. Adv. at intervals; by snatches, by jerks, by skips, by catches, by fits and starts; skippingly^, per saltum [Lat.]; longo intervallo ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fashion, with long Rip Van Winkle slumbers and occasional faint awakenings, the French Academy faltered on with fitful persistence towards the completion of its famous Dictionary. But, as I have said, it was a period of great enthusiasm about all such summaries of knowledge, and Paris was thirsting for grammars, lexicons, inventories of language and the like. The Academy ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... waves the boat would go; And still remembers those rich wooded hills, While deep emotion all his spirit thrills. Sometimes tired Nature would assert her sway, Then gloomy thoughts rose up in dark array; He thus would wander, weary and alone, Listening the breezes in their fitful moan, As in their anger they swept through the woods, While thunder-clouds sent down their copious floods, And ask himself, in bitterness of soul, Why he his destiny could not control? Why some were wealthy, and could take their ease, And ride ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... wine bill at Mess; polo ponies, and other luxurious necessities of Indian life, bought on credit; the inevitable appeal to the "shroff,"[21] involving interest upon interest; the final desperate attempt to mend matters by high stakes at cards, and fitful, injudicious backing of horses, most ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... fourteenth century, and a choir of the fifteenth and a gigantic trick tower, in which three long Gothic arches, between octagonal tourelles, enclose several tiers of windows. At the top is a great clock, and below the church a grove of elms, through which fitful sunlight falls on the grass and the dead red of the brick pavement (so grateful to feet sore with the sharp stones of other Dutch cities), where groups of fishermen are collecting in their blue ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford her ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... continuity of the war was scarcely broken by the fitful, armistice. The death of John of Cleve, an event almost simultaneous with the conclusion of the Truce, seemed to those gifted with political vision the necessary precursor of a new and more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. And if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we do the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... you gone, Age and Widowhood!—Come back, unwedded Youth!—But, alas! the charm will not work. In spite of Fancy's most potent spell, I can see only an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation, while the November blast roars at her in the chimney and fitful showers rush ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... President and Leon Trotzky Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was thus begun. Kerensky's attempt to rally forces enough to put an end to this dictatorship was a pathetic failure, as it was bound to be. It was like the last fitful flicker with which a great flame dies. The masses wanted peace—for that they ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... vagabondage. I started out as a Pilgrim to the Inner Shrine of Truth which I have sought from St. Petersburg to Lisbon, from Taormina to Christiania. I have lived in a spiritual shadowland, dreaming elusive dreams, my better part stayed by the fitful vision of things unseen. Such an exquisite wild-goose-chase has never man undertaken before or since the dear Knight of La Mancha. And now I come to think of it, I don't know what the deuce I have been after, save that instead of pursuing I have all ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds whirled over, trailing snow-flurries. Rarely the sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot a ray through and remind the world that he was still in his place and ready to shine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... power seemed to enter into her and give her a fitful strength. She sat down at her husband's desk and began writing rapidly, and as the thoughts came to her; and when she had finished, she inclosed her letter with the torn fragment, and, after addressing ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were new and holy impulses that refused to be put aside, and hungerings and thirstings that must be satisfied, and not until the candle gave out its last flicker did Archibald Mackie spare himself the pittance of slumber that was to prepare him for another toilsome day. Even in his fitful and nervous sleep was he mentally solving some abstruse problem, or following out some philosophical train of reasoning, while all the time in his dreams the strange lady would urge him onward in his tasks, smiling upon him with the sweet and gentle face. Forgetful of the simple hovel and its ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... she said. "You have the making of a great novelist in you. It may take years and years, and—and I'm afraid you'll always have to be helped; but if you can only get the right kind of help...." She looked away, out across the lake where a fitful breeze was turning the molten-metal dimples into laughing wavelets. Then, with one of her sudden topic-wrenchings: "Speaking of help, reminds me. Why didn't you tell me you had gone into the foundry ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... life is the floor of the Deep Sea, the abyssal area, which occupies more than a half of the surface of the globe. It is a region of extreme cold—an eternal winter; of utter darkness—an eternal night—relieved only by the fitful gleams of "phosphorescent" animals; of enormous pressure—2-1/2 tons on the square inch at a depth of 2,500 fathoms; of profound calm, unbroken silence, immense monotony. And as there are no plants in the great abysses, the animals must live on one another, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... playing an ancient march of the days of Ferdinand and Isabel,' whispered Clara; 'could you not guess its stately measures were pure old Castilian? Now mark the change—that is a Moorish serenade; is it not like the fitful breathings of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... wife sits beside the fire With folded hands and dreaming eyes, Watching the restless flames aspire, And rapt in thralling memories. I mark the fitful firelight fling Its warm caresses on her brow, And kiss her hands' unmelting snow, And ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... man was at the ship's side, shading his eyes against the dazzle that made a brassy light over sea and sky. The Ryukyu Islands, off the port beam, were not visible in the metallic haze that grew as the sun arched higher. The fitful wind gave promise of stopping altogether ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful outbursts. Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of precipitate which only waits for the injection of a single unusual substance before it settles to the bottom and leaves the remaining liquid clear. It was for the unusual, then, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... bustling trafficking town, Worn out and weary, climbs his favourite hill And thinks it Heaven to see the calm green fields Mapped out in beautiful sunlight at his feet: Or walks enraptured where the fitful south Comes past the beans in blossom; and no sight Or scent or sound but fills his soul with glee:— So I,—rejoicing once again to stand Where Siloa's brook flows softly, and the meads Are all enamell'd o'er with deathless flowers, And Angel voices fill the dewy air. Strife ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... flat, and then went tunnelling its way with fitful explosions among the channels of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound: it was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson's wan countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... along the corridor until he came to the entrance of the great hall. He drew aside the arras hangings and peered into the deserted room. All was silent as the grave. The crackling embers of the fire gave but a sorry light, with only a fitful glimmer that rose now and again from some half-consumed pine log. But with the feeble moonbeams, that shone through the thin films of skin that in those days — except in the churches — did service for glass, there was still light ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Montcalm's floating batteries; while in the mean time the roar of artillery from a dozen different quarters filled the simmering July days, and lit the short summer nights with fiery shapes, and drew in fitful floods the roving thunder-clouds that at this season of the year in North America are apt to lurk ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... alive! How he would tower in indignation at the thought of my being so neglected and ignored, and by my own daughter, too,—a girl on whose education he lavished a fortune! Why, Mr. Hayden, forgive me, Robert, he would turn in his grave, literally turn in his grave, and"—in a burst of fitful weeping—"he may be quite aware of it, for all we know, and he may be turning in his grave ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... class reading:— On the Beach at Night Bivouac on a Mountain Side To a Locomotive in Winter A Farm Picture The Runner I Hear It was Charged against Me A Sight in Camp By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame Song of the Broad-Axe A Child said What is the grass? (from ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... group would carry a lighted pine torch, pointing the way with fitful shadows. But wherever it was possible they followed in the wake of ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... be allowed to reach it. Thus the primary defence of the outlying base is the active, sea-going fleet. Moderate local defence, chiefly of the human kind, in the shape of a garrison, will certainly be needed. Though the enemy has not been able to obtain control of the communications of the place, fitful raids on it will be possible; and the place should be fortified enough and garrisoned enough to hold out against the inconsiderable assaults comprised in these till our own ships can drive the ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... came, The world no longer was the same. I still had pleasures:—who could live Without the healing aid they give? But, as a plant surcharg'd with rain, When radiant sunshine comes again, Just wakes from a benumbing trance, I caught a feverish, fitful glance. The dove, that for a weary time Had mourn'd the rigour of the clime, And, with its head beneath its wing, Awaited a more genial spring, Went forth again to search around, And some few leaves of olive found, But not a bower which could impart Its interchange ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... of leisure, or his wife, wakens in the morning until they drop into a fitful slumber at night, their day is an agitated chase. No matter where or when you meet them, they are always ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... sense of humor, but it did not always serve him. Occasionally it was fitful, and when summoned by irony remained ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... his side and his hunting-knife handy in his belt. Crusoe mounted guard by stretching himself out couchant at Dick Varley's side. The faithful dog slept lightly, and never moved all night; but had any one observed him closely he would have seen that every fitful flame that burst from the sinking fire, every unusual puff of wind, and every motion of the horses that fed or rested hard by, had the effect of revealing a speck of glittering white ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... freely, with open shoulders. After all, he was proud of those years, and had a right to be. They had tested every inch of him, and it would have been stupid to pretend that he did not know his own mettle. He heard his footsteps ring out through the fitful whimpering of the wind and they seemed to mark the rhythm of his life—a steady, resolute progression. The lighter fall of Francey Wilmot's feet beside him was like an echo. But yet it had its own quality. Not ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... partiality for Ronald's society, and the latter had therefore many opportunities of intervening to prevent open quarrels from breaking out. The prince himself was frequently greatly depressed in spirits, and the light hearted gaiety which had distinguished him on the first landing was now fitful and short lived. His disappointment at the failure of a campaign in which he had won every battle was deep and bitter. He had relied upon the aid of France, but no aid had come. He had been grossly misinformed as to the willingness ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds. The interior was soothing; the lights, blurred voices, the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... A little piping of leaf-hid birds; A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to the eastward ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the Rhine, Where seed was never sown, What harvest lay upon thy sands, By those strong reapers thrown? What saw the winter moon that night, As, struggling through the rain, She poured a wan and fitful light On marsh, and stream, and plain? A dreary spot with corpses strewn, And bayonets glistening round; A broken bridge, a stranded boat, A bare and battered mound; And one huge watch-fire's kindled pile, That sent its quivering glare To tell the leaders of the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... no lights this evening.... We must learn to do without them.... I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is muttering, to the great staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer the darkness. I see the steps, which are white and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded at the bottom by filth and desolation. As I approach the room where the wounded are ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... the simultaneous approach required in order to accotnt for the simultaneous phenomena visible in the heavens, by a succession of aggregative events, by hypothesis at intervals of nearly infinite duration, when the events of the universe had consisted of fitful gleams lighted after eternities of time and extinguished ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... with great difficulty that the little couple succeeded in reaching the high road, for the ground was covered with ice, on which a continual sleet fell, and the wind, in fitful blasts, howled about them, threatening at almost every step to overthrow them. But they had no time to think of these things; slipping and running, giving each other all the aid in their power, they pressed on in the direction of ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... recovering from that attack of fever and dysentery, and these two were lying beside me; the one mumbling and the other panting in a fitful sleep. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... and the reapers have come hither to answer to the summons of their chief. Little reck they whether it be for festival or war; he needs them, and has called them, and that is enough. Higher and higher rose the fitful distant chant, but no one could be seen. Suddenly there stood before us a creature, a woman, who, save for the colour of her skin, might have been the original of any one of Macbeth's "weird sisters." ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... became altogether, in these first half-dozen days out. People grow intimate in two days at sea, as they would not in two years on land. Was it all gentlemanly courtesy and politeness on the baronet's side? the girl sometimes wondered. She could analyze her own feelings pretty well. Of that fitful, feverish passion called love, described by the country swain as feeling—"hot and dry like—with a pain in the side like," she felt no particle. There was one, Mr. Charles Stuart, lying about in places, looking serene and sunburnt, who saw it all with sleepy, half-closed eyes, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... own strange, fitful way over Le Gardeur. She had no thought of losing him wholly. She would continue to hold him in her silken string, and keep him under the spell of her fascinations. She still admired him,—nay, loved ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... say.' This impression is confirmed by Sir Villiers Lister, who served under Lord John at the Foreign Office. He states that his old chief, whilst always quick to seize great problems, was somewhat inclined to treat the humdrum details of official life with fitful attention. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... that Justice abides. The troops filed past the body, for the most part silently, while desultory cries of "Viva Espana!" from among the "patriotic" Filipino volunteers were summarily hushed by a Spanish artillery-officer's stern rebuke: "Silence, you rabble!" To drown out the fitful cheers and the audible murmurs, the bands struck up Spanish national airs. Stranger death-dirge no man and system ever had. Carnival revelers now dance about the scene and Filipino schoolboys play baseball over ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... poacher nailed to a door in an oak tree; sometimes they saw a fairy scuttle away from them; once Tonker stepped heavily on a hard, dry stick, after which they both lay still for twenty minutes. And the sunset flared full of omens through the tree trunks, and night fell, and they came by fitful starlight, as Nuth had foreseen, to that lean, high house where the gnoles ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... presence I must go; that I perceived well. When—how—whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion; that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! how weak ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... their trampling feet, The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,— Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet, And then to a fitful slumber. ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... desirous to gratify his wishes. But whatever changes of feeling she had experienced toward her new guardian, she showed no change of manner toward Gualtier. To her, application to any thing was a thing as irksome as ever. Perhaps her fitful efforts to advance were more frequent; but after each effort she used invariably to relapse ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... reached the palisading which inclosed the garden, passed through the gate, and found ourselves in sight of the house. There it stood just as we had last seen it, door and windows wide open, the muslin curtains at the windows waving idly in the fitful breeze, and the bamboo lounging-chairs—one of ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... months seemed to him much longer than the first. The charm of respectful adoration had lost its novelty, and once again his breast was racked by fitful fevers which could scarcely calm themselves even by conversion into sonnets. The one point of repose was that shining fixed star of marriage. Still smarting under Winifred's reproach of his unpoetic literality, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Crusades (1096-1272), during which the Christians of Europe endeavoured, with tremendous yet fitful energy, to wrest the birthplace of Christianity from the equally fanatic Moslems, the Knights Templars fought bravely among the foremost. Whether by the side of Godfrey of Bouillon, Louis VII., Philip V., Richard Coeur de Lion, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nearly an hour before the potion became fully effective, and even then Earle's sleep was fitful and disturbed, his semi-coherent mutterings showing that his mind was still unhinged. To be brief, the outbreak of delirium was followed by a period of extreme weakness and profound dejection, during which the patient ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... birds circled and called with shrill, uncanny voices. Yet the moonlight was so bright that they saw each other as plainly as if it were day, and its placid radiance seemed strangely at variance with the disturbed wild-fowl, and certain weird and fitful sounds that seemed to be sighed forth from the ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... our backs and rations in our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient and in places an obliterated bark road that followed and crossed and recrossed the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind was fitful and petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest solitude our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely,—no shanty there now for twenty-five ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... their minds and rode slowly back to the roadway with scarce a thought for the business in hand. Abel Cumshaw would have whistled had he dared; as it was he hummed softly to himself. The moon was now well up in the heavens, and its fitful light creeping through the leafy roof above, made gibbering ghosts of the swaying gums. Mr. Abel Cumshaw and his companion, Jack Bradby, had been brought up in the Australian bush, their nerves were as steady as a rock, and where others ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... mire, often thinks that he is embracing his best friend, whereas it is but descending to fellowship with the swine. It is blind love, which is no love, but passion without reason. It is crazy, fitful, stormy, raising the feelings up to boiling point, and bringing the affections under the influence of the high-pressure system. Consequently it is raving, frothy, of a mushroom growth, making mere bubbles, and completing its work in an evaporation of all that it operated upon, passing ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... had begun the day before, blowing first in fitful gusts that whistled under the eaves, sent the hay from the stacks flying through the yard, and lifted the ends of the roof shingles threateningly. It had gradually strengthened to a gale toward midday, and the steady downfall of flakes had been ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... to his meditations. His part it was to lie at Jud's feet, his nose between his paws, his eyes twinkling sagaciously behind his shaggy eyebrows, while occasionally, as a token of approval, he wagged his tail. Once or twice, during a fitful slumber, he had been known to give vent to his feelings in a sharp bark, but he never failed to awaken immediately, with every appearance of the deepest abasement and confusion at ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... right, but you'll have to be more careful. It is noble to give, but it is not wise to look for an opportunity. It is better to give to the young than to the old, for the good we do the youth grows with him into a hallowed memory—stimulates him to help others—while the memory of the aged is fitful. Whenever you see a boy trying to amount to something, help him, for that is a direct good, done to mankind. Now to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... had beauty's grace? I know not—but a nobler face My eyes have seldom seen; A keen and fine intelligence, And, better still, the truest sense Were in her speaking mien. But bloom or lustre was there none, Only at moments, fitful shone An ardour in her eye, That kindled on her cheek a flush, Warm as a red sky's passing blush And quick with energy. Her speech, too, was not common speech, No wish to shine, or aim to teach, Was in her words ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a moment. The cabin lamp—taking long swings this way and that—was burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted door,—a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming silence to reign there, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... high, the wind could not be depended on. It might blow in from the sea, but if so it would be by daylight, which would deprive the attack of the benefits of a surprise; while at night the land wind was too fitful and unreliable to assure the ships reaching their anchorage before the enemy could discover them, and have time for adequate ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... eyes and distorted forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; whilst spectres and goblins now stood motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as if in fits, leaped, danced, and tumbled before their evocator. The air was filled with shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning of the storm-wind, with the hooting of the owl, with the jackal's long wild cry, and with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river, from whose banks the earth-slip thundered ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... reflecting, you will never see That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed, Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me, But the Whole Life wherein my part was played; And you amid its fitful masquerade A Thought—as I in ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... night after the conversation just had with his companion, Edward Sommers; the buoyancy of his hopes was shaken, and between the fitful, restless slumbers, dark dreaming and frowning visitants came to him in all the ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... eyes. A faint smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of his features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his parched lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep in which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow hours dragged along the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but with steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course. It was at no time immediately threatening, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... people outside. I groped my way into the shop, which was so dark as well as dingy that they had lighted a small oil-lamp just above the head of the man who served out the slops. Even so the light that fell on him was dim and fitful, and was the means of giving me another start in which I gasped ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... A few fitful gleams of sunlight mocked their shiverings with promise of warmth—promise unfulfilled. Their brandy was now exhausted, and some ship's biscuits in the boatswain's pocket were sodden and uneatable. Thirst began to add to the horrors ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... light save the strange, fitful glow from that uncanny sky to guide them; no lights from the inky carpet of the Thomahlia, lights such as one would expect for the benefit of fliers. But the soldier touched a button, and instantly another and larger dial ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... His independence is little better than that of an uncaptured brute. Having accepted none of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. The blacks, therefore, instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... as they were set to work at four bells (six o'clock) next morning, awoke me; and, hastily donning such garments as were indispensable, I went on deck to take a look round. The easterly breeze, though it had proved somewhat fitful, had held with sufficient strength through the night to place us off Selsey Bill, with the high land of Saint Catherine's Point looming faintly ahead of us about two points on the starboard bow; and there, too, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few minutes would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terror yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... white, that the hour has touched with blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and fitful light ... "un soir equivoque d'automne," ... "les belles pendent reveuses a nos bras" ... and they whisper "les mots ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... his energy and force of mind. The highest type of artist and human being is thus represented. To interpret him requires simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and genuine sentiment—not fitful, fictitious sentimentality. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... sinister character, completely obscured the light of the sun, continuing for about ten minutes at a time, and being frequently repeated during the afternoon. In the interval between each mysterious eclipse dense masses of black clouds, streaked with yellow, drove athwart the darkened sky, with fitful gusts of wind; thunder, lightning, black rain, and showers of ashes added to the terrors of the scene; and, when the sun appeared, its color was a bright red. The Indians ascribe this wonderful phenomenon to ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... heard a wondrous song, which, rising and falling with each change of the fitful breeze, now broke into a wild strain of piercing sweetness, and anon died away into a soft musical murmur like the rippling ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... to do that night, after making Prince secure. The boys ate a little mid-night supper, and from the tent of the girls came the odor of chocolate, which Grace insisted on making. Then, after fitful slumbers, morning came. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... and to-morrow After life's fitful fever they sleep well And like this insubstantial bourne from which No traveller returns ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... musical tinkle of the stream, all to the right was silence, but from the other side there arose an occasional sound, borne faintly from a distance—a voice calling, the blare of a far-off bugle, the echo of a hammer pounding on iron. Once through the obscuring branches the fitful yellow of a camp-fire was dimly visible, but the ravine twisted so that I could not determine whether this was from Federal or Confederate lines. Anyhow no eye saw us creep past, and no suspicious voice challenged. Indeed we had every reason to believe the ravine unguarded, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... ever deprive myself of sleep. In that matter our regiment is very fitful: one time we sleep for three days and three ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... heart! Now from her eastern clime the golden Moon, Set in a frame of azure, lifts her shield, And all creation wakes to life renewed! Not long she holds supreme her joyous course; Her foes in sullen vapors fitful rise, And envious, hovering over her splendid path, Now thin—now dense, impede her kindly ray. In hasty, partial gleams, of light and shade, She holds her purposed way.—Now darker clouds Collect, combine, advance—she falls—'twould seem To rise no more—sudden they break—they ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... I discerned that there would be contrasts between his inward and outward man; contentions, too; for I suspected his soul had more of will and ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle. Perhaps, in these incompatibilities of the "physique" with the "morale," lay the secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to his good looks, I should have liked to have a woman's opinion on that subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the same effect on a lady that a very piquant ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness of a fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are dulled, and have dwindled from motives into a vacillating expectation of motives: a mind made up of moods, where a fitful impulse springs here and there conspicuously rank amid the general weediness? 'Tis a condition apt to befall a life too much at large, unmoulded by the pressure of obligation. Nam deteriores omnes sumus licentiae, or, as a more familiar ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... all experiences were equally pleasurable or painful; in such a case all acts would be equally good or equally sad; there would be no ground for choice. One might in any of these hypothetical worlds be driven by mechanical impulse or fitful whim to do this or that, but there would be no rational basis for preference. Such, however, is not the case. Comparative valuation is possible; all secondary goods and evils arise, all morality, all art and religion and science have their wellspring in this brute fact, this primordial parting ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... ever-changing light of the open fire; the long, wavering shadows within the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, of the three who were the representatives of a type, in manners and customs at least, new ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself. The earth was a grey shadow more unreal than the sky. We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... dimpling smile, with sweetness fraught, The bosom, 'mid its snow, upheaving; Who, that had seen them, could have thought That things so fair could be deceiving? The moon, the sky, the wave, the wind, In all their fitful moods of changing, Are nought to wavering woman's mind, For ever ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... remembered gold mines, and broad prairies, Indian councils, and much experience in the new western lands. I remembered the shock it gave me to hear after my return from a barbarous country of the calamity that had overtaken the fond man whom I called father, and the hot fitful life ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... length on the ground, except Thaouka, who slept standing, true to his high blood, proud in repose as in action, and ready to start at his master's call. Absolute silence reigned within the inclosure, over which the dying embers of the fire shed a fitful light. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... farther in and sat down in the arm-chair beyond the fire. What memories a fire gathered into it, with its flaky ashes, its little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow and flicker! What tale of passions! How like to a fire was a man's heart! The first young fitful leapings, the sudden, fierce, mastering heat, the long, steady sober burning, and then—that last flaming-up, that clutch back at its own vanished youth, the final eager flight of flame, before the ashes wintered it to nothing! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... people, would the Westerners have remained allied or subject to the Spaniards longer than the immediate needs of the moment demanded. At the bottom the Spaniards knew this, and their encouragement of American immigration was fitful ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and there among the trees, torches of lightwood threw a wild and fitful light over the little cluster of graves, and revealed the long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two negroes, and lit up the score of russet mounds beneath which slept the dusky kinsmen who ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... into the habit of remaining whole hours at some favourite spot, lying flat on the ground, with his face toward the sky. The flickering shadows of the sun; the rustling of the leaves on the trees; the sailing of the fitful clouds over the horizon, and the golden blaze of the sky at morn and eventide, were to him spectacles of which his eye never tired, with which his heart never got satiated. And as he grew more and more ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... was calm as it was clear. The cathedral bells below had thrice told the approaching third hour before midnight, when I heard the voice of some one singing, in the monotonous, drawling, but melodious tone of prayer; and, at last, as the fitful evening zephyr stirred uneasily, I could distinctly catch the soft intonation of a female voice; and, whatever woman she was, she sang a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... very old man, lay dying of consumption in one of the rooms, and my little sister and I were assigned for the night to a bed directly opposite the death couch. The one tallow candle on the stand beside him, guttering down in its socket, the fitful light from the vast fireplace, which made strange fantastic shapes and shadows on the rough dark walls, and the clear cut profile of the dying man, with the erect dignified figure beside him, rising occasionally to arrange his pillow, or give him water, impressed us most painfully, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... that succeeded was wild and melancholy. The moon was nearly full, but its place in the heavens was only seen, as the masses of vapor which drove through the air occasionally opened, suffering short gleams of fitful light to fall on the scene below. A south-western wind rather moaned than sighed through the forest, and there were moments when its freshness increased, till every leaf seemed a tongue, and each low plant appeared to be endowed with the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... out shortly after they had started on their row that morning, now sprang up in fitful gusts, with a rather uncanny, moaning sound, as if it was testing its strength before venturing to ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... Jesuit mission the last days of Champlain are inseparably allied. A severe experience had proved that the colonizing zeal of the crown was fitful and uncertain. Private initiative was needed to supplement the official programme, and of such initiative the supply seemed scanty. The fur traders notoriously shirked their obligations to enlarge the colony, {133} and after 1632 the Huguenots, who had a distinct motive ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... destroyed or that there should be violent and radical changes therein. Our past experience shows that great prosperity in this country has always come under a protective tariff; and that the country can not prosper under fitful tariff changes at short intervals. Moreover, if the tariff laws as a whole work well, and if business has prospered under them and is prospering, it is better to endure for a time slight inconveniences and inequalities in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the fitful winds and steady currents carried them hither and thither, ever alert, ever ready for combat and plunder. With guns primed and powder-horn stocked, these plunderers roamed the trackless sea, at times with impatience ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... gallant knight, Save that before a mirror huge and high A hallowed taper shed a glimmering light On mystic implements of magic might; On cross, and character, and talisman, And almagest and altar, nothing bright; For fitful was the lustre, pale and wan, As watch-light by the bed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... words show you the difficulty of their situation? "Hurried", "crowding", "crushing", "steep and narrow gorge", "suppressed voices", "fitful glancing of torches", "anxiously ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... are rolling heavy, Fitful gusts distend his sail; See the whirlpool's foaming eddy, Hear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... beauty and the passion which poets in Sicily have found in the purple grape. As they walked along Philip felt himself overwhelmed by the rich luxuriance. A sweet scent arose from the fat Kentish soil, and the fitful September breeze was heavy with the goodly perfume of the hops. Athelstan felt the exhilaration instinctively, for he lifted up his voice and sang; it was the cracked voice of the boy of fifteen, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... on. Our fitful and capricious spring passes by, and summer takes its place. But our New-England summer is not like the summer of Thomson and Cowper, and images drawn from English poetry and transplanted here would be out of place; and our faithful interpreter of American Nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... same time, the wind shifted, and blew fitful gusts down the mountain. Then it lulled; ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... North! that mouldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,— O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... several canal-boats, at intervals of a quarter of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, and one by one disappeared round a point above. With their broad sails set, they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some mysterious counter-current. It was a grand motion, so slow and stately, this "standing out," as the phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... a friend, and a friend only he must remain, and to this end the regular correspondence which he and she had kept up since Reggie left school, must become irregular and fitful. If only he would take his summer holiday in the school holidays, Gertrude thought she could manage somehow to be away when he was at home, and that would break the continuity of other summer holidays when they two had spent much time together, cycling and playing ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... was the archers, already an obsolete arm. Invading hosts could never be victualled for more than three months, or stand a winter campaign; English troops were ploughmen by profession and soldiers only by chance; Henry VII.'s treasure was exhausted, and efforts to raise money for fitful and futile inroads nearly produced a revolt. Henry VIII. himself was writing that to provide for these inroads would prevent him keeping an army in Ireland; and Wolsey was declaring that for the same reason English interests in Scotland must take care of themselves, that border warfare must ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the junction being about a quarter of a mile from the church. As he neared the stile which admitted to the road he saw, on the other side of the hedge and showing just above it, the head of a man. At the sound of his footsteps the man quickly turned, and, as for a moment the fitful moonlight caught his face, Gifford was sure he recognized Gervase Henshaw. But he took no notice and kept on his way to the stile, which he crossed and gained the road. As he did so he glanced back. A horse and trap was waiting there with Henshaw ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... having turned his face partially aside from the fire, he was watching unconsciously the fitful gleaming of a light cast on the opposite wall by the occasional flaring up of a tongue of flame from the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... cedars stretched across the yard. Their shapes, so familiar to him, were already disordered. The sleet must have been falling for hours to have weighed them down this way and that. A peculiarity of the night was the wind, which increased constantly, but with fitful violence, giving no warning of its high ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen |
