"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... long since folded in their quiet dreams; and Lilian, unable to sleep, had at last arisen and thrown on some garments, and wrapping a great cloak about her, had stolen on deck. The person still pacing the deck, who saw her ascend and flit along with her fair hair streaming over her white cloak and her face shining white in the starlight, might have taken her for a spirit. But he was not the kind of man that believes in spirits. He went and leaned with her as she leaned over the vessel's edge, and watched the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... her landlady, found it wise to change her quarters. She had taken a room in an apartment house two blocks removed from her former home, and Win, not being able to afford a "flit," remained at the old address. At first, when her pay was increased by two dollars a week, she had intended to save and follow Sadie. One had, however, to live mostly on ice-cream soda in the hot weather, which cost money. Besides, even had she possessed the dollars, she lacked ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... beats off shore above the loudest gale. Ever they wait the winter's hate as the thundering boorga calls, Where northward look they to St. George, and westward to St. Paul's. Ever they greet the hunted fleet—lone keels off headlands drear— When the sealing-schooners flit that way at hazard year by year. Ever in Yokohama Port men tell the tale anew Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light And the Stralsund fought ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... He walked on by Tony's side; with feeble and tottering steps, deaf and blind, but whispering all the while, with trembling lips, to One whom no one else could see or hear. Once or twice Tony saw a solemn smile flit across his face, and he nodded his head and raised his hand, as one who gives his assent to what is said to him. So they passed on through the noisy streets till they reached quieter ones, were there were neither shops ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain, But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee as though through ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... disappeared and became a bay of the great Lake itself. Every moment of this portion of the ride is a delight. The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... who spoke; and amongst other labels on his baggage was one marked Khartoum. His hands were sinewy and his face was bronzed, while his eyes, brown and deep-set, held in them the glint of the desert places of the earth: the mark of the jungle where birds flit through the shadows like bars of glorious colour; the mark of the swamp where the ague mists lie dank and stagnant in the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... world. So long as I have your face here, I care not to cross my own threshold till friendly hands bear me out to my quiet resting-place under the willows of Greenwood. Electra, my darling, think me weak if you will, but bear with me a little longer, and then this, my shadow, shall flit from your young heart, leaving not even a memory to haunt you. Be patient! I will soon pass away to another, a more peaceful, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... battle, was borne to be healed of his hurts. With straining eyes the fisherman watches the mist-wrapped islet, and, peering through the evening haze, cheats himself into the belief that giant forms are moving upon its shores and that spectral shapes flit across its sands—that the dark hours bring back the activities of the attendant knights and enchantresses of the mighty hero of Celtdom, who, refreshed by his long repose, will one day return to the world of men and right the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... object was unusual; for it was his chief aim to make it as little like the original before him, as possible. Shall we reveal the fact that another image, wearing a gentler aspect than the stern, rigid features of the minister's portrait, seemed to flit before the young painter's fancy, coming unbidden, and mingling more especially with recollections of the past? As a ray of moonlight stole into the low dormer-window, the young man turned on his humble bed, a sigh burst from his lips, followed by ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... he dared not watch the porte cochere during the day; he contented himself with going at night to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times he saw shadows flit across them, and his heart began ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... matchless among you for wit; A Leyden jar always full charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric; In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... wouldn't sit down! he'd prefer to flit up and down the room if it was all the same to me. And so he did, and in a little while we were deep in a long and serious talk. And presently, you know, something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out of me, and I began to realise just a little what a thundering rum and weird ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... mortality knows,—annihilates falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehension of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught which mirrors ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... charm of poesy!" rejoined Sah-luma complacently.. "It makes the hours flit like moments, and long days seemed but short hours! ... Nevertheless 'tis time we were within doors and at supper,—for if we start not soon for the Temple, 'twill be difficult to gain an entrance, and I, at any rate, must be early in my ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... whole world-full of victims of injustice, whose souls flit restlessly around, because they died under a weight of undeserved shame—because they lost a battle in which the right was theirs—because they suffered and strove for truth, but went down because falsehood was the stronger. Truth? Right? ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... winds and deep snows of winter will be here all too soon. Summer days are long and joyous, life stretches out before them; why waste its hours with frets and fears about the future? Another round of merry chatter and away they flit. Scarcely have they gone until a blood-red streak shoots down from the elm tree to the grass. It is the scarlet tanager. For the last half-hour his loud notes, tied together in twos, have been ringing from an ash tree in the pasture, near the spreading oak where the mother sat so ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... dead, lie there; No record of thee Shall there ever be, Since thou dost not share Roses in Pieria grown. In the deathful cave, With the feeble troop Of the folk that droop, Lurk and flit and crave, Woman severed ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... poignant sorrow had transformed him from a bright, happy youth, to a man sad-eyed, dull, morose. Sometimes, as I watched, I noticed how he would suddenly sigh heavily, and set his teeth as a bitter relentless expression would flit for an instant across his countenance, and I knew that at such moments there entered into his heart the contemplation of a ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... their rich white and chestnut plumage to perfection. Now they chase each other for very joyfulness, uttering their sharp twittering notes; then they hover with expanded wings like miniature Kestrels, or dart downwards with the velocity of the sparrowhawk; anon they flit rapidly over the neighboring pool, occasionally dipping themselves in its calm and placid waters, and leaving a long train of rings marking their varied course. How easily they turn, or glide over the surrounding hedges, never resting, never weary, and defying the eye to ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily across ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would be pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hard for years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flit in and simply say 'Rotten!' ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... I have not got hers. I fear—nay, I am certain of that, from what I saw this morning. Bah! What's the use of thinking about it, or about her? Luisa Valverde cares no more for me than the half-score of others—these young Creole 'bloods,' as they call themselves—who flit like butterflies around her. She's a sweet flower from which all of them wish to sip. Only one will succeed, and that's Carlos Santander. I hate the very sight of the man. I believe him to be a cheat and a scoundrel. No matter ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... courtesies, Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest; The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green; ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... one of themselves. Robin the Red-breast and shy little Veery, Pewee the plaintive and cheerful Chewink, Long-sparrow, Bluebird, and sweet Chickadee, all glide freely in and out of their green and golden halls, flit through their winding streets, and take part in all their delights. Nor have the Leaflanders any trouble to understand bird-language. They have not, like the old Ger-men, eaten the hearts of birds, but by a more ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... had set in. There was nothing to be seen of any bird although some do flit to and fro through the forest in winter-time and the children on their way to Millsdorf had even heard some twitter. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song and merry laughter made sylvan echoes ring and brought smiles to the faces of the simple women who watched her with loving ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... Paul said. Because of the bats, Jesus answered, and looking up they saw the vermin hanging among the clefts, a sort of hideous fruit, measuring three feet from wing to wing, Paul muttered, and as large as rats. We shall see them drop from their roosts as the sky darkens and flit away in search of food, Jesus said. Paul asked what food they could find in the desert, and Jesus answered: we are not many miles from Jericho and these winged rats travel a long way. In Brook Kerith they are destructive ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... barbarian ignorance. Up and down they wandered, and she gave him eyes, whether for Artemis, or Aphrodite, or Apollo, or still more for the significant and troubling art of the Renaissance, French and Italian. She would flit before him, perching here and there like a bird, and quivering through and through ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a deeper purpose in this than might have been supposed. There were few things he did not think over as he sat looking into the fire. What if this young man should unwittingly steal away his darling's heart and then flit away to some other flower, and leave this, his own treasure, with all the soul gone out of her life. He believed Mr. Monteith to be an honourable man, but then he would hedge this blossom of his about and guard it carefully. There should be no opportunity for tender ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the Land of Three Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the Land of One or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... sad and sodden street, To and fro, Flit the fever-stricken feet Of the freshers as they meet, Come and go, Ever buying, buying, buying Where the shopmen stand supplying, Vying, vying All they know, While the Autumn lies a-dying Sad and low As the price of summer suitings when the winter breezes blow, Of the summer, summer suitings ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... convent-bells were proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... remainder of these small creatures, including all that were fair, good, and useful, the gods called Fairies and Elves, and they sent them to dwell in the airy realm of Alf-heim (home of the light-elves), situated between heaven and earth, whence they could flit downward whenever they pleased, to attend to the plants and flowers, sport with the birds and butterflies, or dance in the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... residence of Grant, Huddington, the house of Robert Winter, and Shrewsbury, to Holt, in Flintshire. In some uneasy nightmare during that pilgrimage, did a faint prescience of that which was to come ever flit before the eyes of Ambrose Rookwood, as to the circumstances wherein he should journey that road again? From Holt the ladies walked barefoot to the "holy well," which, according to tradition, had ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... rain dashed down upon him and the wind hustled him, Huldbrand grew bewildered. The storm seemed to have changed the peaceful meadows into a weary wilderness, and even the maiden herself seemed to flit before him as a phantom ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the breezes warm; The violet lends the poppy her sweet breath; The song of nightingales is heard, a swarm Of butterflies flit hov'ring ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Hilliard watched the clouds flit over the beautiful face, and was at no loss to understand their meaning. During the last fortnight he had more than once been a witness to a storm of misery and rebellion, and apart from that fact ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... numerous birds that flit through the trees as visitors, or else stay with us and nest in secluded places, how comparatively few do we really depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that opens a glimpse of Eden to our eager ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... that of the labouring classes of most other countries. He visits her marts, her harbours, and her ports—men of all nations are met together there—fleets of rich argosies are ever arriving and departing—and myriads of steamers flit to and fro, happily now engaged in promoting the arts of peace, but ready at a moment's notice to become the defenders of his country's shores, and, as recent events have shown the world, able also to carry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... advisable for a vessel to try it. These two small islands possess all the characteristic beauties of the clime. Formed of brown granite, with a speck of white sandy beach, and rising into hills covered with the noblest timber, wreathed with gigantic creepers. Cream-colored pigeons flit from tree to tree, and an eagle or two soared aloft watching their motions. Frigate-birds are numerous; and several sorts of smaller birds in the bush, difficult to get at. A small species of crocodile, or alligator, was likewise seen: but we were not fortunate enough to shoot one. The natives, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... which one is united by early memories and the first affections of the heart; we do not definitely seek, Fate does not help us find. We adjust our lives to habits which really leave no room for a wife, and so the years flit by till some day we discover that we are bachelors and that it is ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... stood the test. Many young fellows of his age would have abused their opportunities. He has not done so. My only disappointment has been that he has developed no definite taste, but has been content to flit from one fancy to the next, always carried away by the latest novelty on ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... saw it fly; Presager of death! I hailed its wing, She scorned the omen but felt the sting Of bitter grief, when another day Bore her angel Mother from earth away. I warned her, when on the coming blast I saw the phantom-like shades flit past; She smiled on my words as idle play, But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray, Felled to the dust by the Tory's blade, Died in the home where his bones are laid; When the cold drops stood on the forehead fair, And the curdling blood on the thin, gray hair. But the dead in silence forgotten ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... market to Louise, while Claire, whom the smell of the skate and the herrings affected in the lungs, installed herself among the fresh water fish. And from that time the old mother, although she pretended to have retired from business altogether, would flit from one stall to the other, still interfering in the selling of the fish, and causing her daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence with which she would at ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... had scarcely any opportunities of observing. Our Consul kindly undertook to take us to one of their encampments; but they flit so often from place to place, it is very difficult to light upon them. Here and there, as we cruised about among the fiords, blue wreaths of smoke rising from some little green nook among the rocks would betray their temporary place of abode; but I never got a near view ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... well as the student of aesthetics, will do well to examine by what means these various effects are produced. In the second nocturne, F sharp major, the brightness and warmth of the world without have penetrated into the world within. The fioriture flit about as lightly as gossamer threads. The sweetly-sad longing of the first section becomes more disquieting in the doppio movimento, but the beneficial influence of the sun never quite loses its power, and after a little there is a relapse into the calmer mood, with a close like ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... floating white veil and her coat, on a chair in one corner, and began to move softly about in her restful, capable way. Her very presence, I had once said of her, would make a home, and I remembered this a little later as I watched the shadow of her head flit across the faded walls above the fine old wainscoting, from which the white paint was peeling in places. Her touch, swift and unfaltering, released some spirit of beauty and cheerfulness which must have lain imprisoned for a generation ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... in few short words, the place is only fit For those who were sent out here, for from this they cannot flit. But any other men who come a living here to try, Will vegetate a little while and then lie ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... appearance and manifested a feeling of nostalgia. Mother Carey's chickens, little birds resembling swallows, began to flit around us, skimming closely along the waves. There is a fiction among the sailors that nobody ever saw one of these birds alight or found its nest. Whoever harms one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly his companions. A prudent traveler would be careful not to offend ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... swallows are the night-hawks. My roof, in fact, is the best place I have ever found to study their feeding habits. These that flit through my smoky dusk may not make city nests, though the finding of such nests would not surprise me. Of course a night-hawk's nest, here or anywhere else, would surprise me; for like her cousin, the whippoorwill, she never builds a nest, but stops in the grass, the gravel, the ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... steal her agents and her spies, Gliding through temples, baths, and theatres; Possess all angles, corners, noonday halts, And darknesses; they flit with casual poison Softly; the city secretly is filled With murmurs, lifted eyebrows, and with sighs. The mischief's in the very blood of Rome Unless the sore that ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... and harvest-frost—they meet them lightly, for you see neither anxious faces nor bent shoulders there. Our people walk upright, as becomes free men. Then, through the long winter, when the snow lies firm and white, and the wheat crop has been hauled in, you can hear the jingling sleigh teams flit across the prairie from homestead to homestead under the cloudless blue. The settlers enjoy themselves when their work is done—and ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... has written (La Messe des Morts). Above the witches' lake come shadows of the women who suffered under Knox and the Bastard of Scotland, poor creatures burned to ashes with none to help or pity. The shades of Dominicans flit by the Black Friars wall—verily the place is haunted, and among Murray's pleasures was this of pacing alone, by night, in that airy press and throng of those who lived and loved and suffered so ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... friends. One's resentment distinguishes them, and the only Gratitude they can pay for that distinction is, to double the abuse. Wilkes's mind, you see, is sufficiently volatile, when he can already forget Lord Sandwich and the Scotch, and can employ himself on you. He will soon flit to other prey, when you disregard him. It is my way: I never publish a sheet, but buzz! out fly a swarm of hornets, insects that never settle upon you, if you don't strike at them and whose venom is diverted to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... jocund one. Lightly and brightly breaks away The Morning from her mantle grey, And the noon will look on a sultry day. Hark to the trump, and the drum, And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, And the flap of the banners that flit as they're borne, And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, And the clash, and the shout, 'They come! they come!' The horsetails are plucked from the ground, and the sword From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word. Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, Strike your tents, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... with youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... wrath from the Niblung slippeth and the shame that anger hath bred, And the heavy wings of the dreamtide flit over Gunnar's head: But he doth by his brother's bidding, and Sigurd's hand he takes, And he looks in the eyes of the Volsung, though scarce in the desert he wakes. There Hogni sits in the saddle aloof from the King's desire, And little ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... sail-boat on the sea, when the rising tide swept it toward the shore. May I not understand the poet's figure: "The green of spring overflows the earth like a tide"? I have felt the flame of a candle blow and flutter in the breeze. May I not, then, say: "Myriads of fireflies flit hither and thither in the dew-wet grass ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... boyhood,—from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... flit, Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. We saw the heavens fling down their rose; On rapturous waves we saw her glide; The pearly sea-shell half enclose; The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more Behold than tracks along a startled shore, With ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, real, certain, and formidable. PUBLIUS. 1 This objection will be fully examined in its proper place, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows—so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me "blushes" almost in vain "with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... flit out after him when he was going to church at night. If he were going to be alone, he swung her over the wall, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... infernal, worthier far to sit About the sun, whence you your offspring take, With me that whilom, through the welkin flit, Down tumbled headlong to this empty lake; Our former glory still remember it, Our bold attempts and war we once did make Gainst him, that rules above the starry sphere, For which like ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... citizens! here old Ennius's image presented, Who to your forefathers' deeds gave their own glory again. Honour me not with your tears; by none let my death be lamented: Why? still in every mouth living I flit among men. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late—and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... galloping off, pull the rope taut; a second man would then drop from his horse, and running up to the animal behind, pluck out his big knife and with two lightning-quick blows sever the tendons of both hind legs. Instantly the beast would go down on his haunches, and the same man, knife in hand, would flit round to its front or side, and, watching his opportunity, presently thrust the long blade into its throat just above the chest, driving it in to the hilt and working it round; then when it was withdrawn a great torrent of blood would pour out from the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... wishes. Some flit through our hearts like birds darting under the foliage of trees, then out again, lost in the sunshine; others linger awhile and we nestle them in our bosoms until we forget that they are there, and the noble desire, the craving for something dear, for something that ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... they were deceived, or that they were trying to deceive us. We should know that Napoleon's real means of estimating the strength of his enemy were of a different nature, and that he did not resort to the upper air and flit about at will. We should know that no fire was prayed down, and that although soldiers might be told to put their trust in God, the little addition—"and keep your powder dry"—would be the really important part of ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... old laundry as soon as all were assembled. About a dozen were already there, but, when the scout returned with such dire tidings, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and all made haste to get back to their rooms ere the enemy appeared. But, alack-a-day! that enemy could flit about in a surprisingly lively manner, and, ere some of them had reached safety behind their own doors, she came in view. To get to their rooms now was out of the question, so, making a virtue of necessity, they all ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... actually been thrown into prison for her deed of madness and now the executioner's axe awaits her. She sits on the damp straw, rocking a bundle, which she takes for her baby, and across her poor wrecked brain there flit once more pictures of all the scenes of her short-lived happiness. Then Faust enters with Mephisto, and tries to persuade her to escape with them. But she instinctively shrinks from her lover, loudly imploring ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... thee far. Her slender keel now grates Upon the beach; and swift her shapely prow Will skim the deep, as swallows' fleet wing. Thou Seest! comely and strong it is. For thee Its golden sails, its purple canopy. With skin of spotted pard, I cushioned it. Ere the fresh breeze doth die, light let us flit Across the sea. No craft so proud, so staunch, Goes glancing through the foam. I safely launch Her now, and speed to fairy isles. Come thou With me." And glad she crossed the burnished prow; And 'mong the thick furred rugs sat down. "Oh craft, Fair fashioned, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... fern. All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue, Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew. The lone white star of evening comes out among the hills, And in the darkling forest begin the whip-poor-wills. The fireflies that wander, the hawks that flit and scream, And all the wilding vagrants of summer dusk and dream, Have all their will, and reck not of any after thing, Inheriting no sorrow and no foreshadowing. The wind forgets to whisper, the pines ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... They flit about, the yellow birds, And rest upon the jujube trees [1]. Who followed duke M in the grave? Dze-k Yen-hs. And this Yen-hs Was a man above a hundred. When he ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... "Leap from their seats; earth groans; the neighbouring trees "Grow pale; the grass with sprinkled blood is wet; "Stones hoarsely seem to roar, and dogs to howl; "Earth with black serpents swarms; unmatter'd forms "Of bodies long defunct, flit through the air. "Tremble the crowd, struck with th' appalling scene: "Appall'd, and trembling, on their heads she strikes "Th' envenom'd rod. From the rod's potent touch, "For men a various crowd of furious beasts "Appear'd: his form ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Cooling off—? It was getting cold fast! He wished that he had a com-unit. Because of the interference in the Burn he had left it behind—but with one he might be able now to locate some settlement. All that remained was to find the seashore and, with it as a guide, flit south towards the center of ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... a very fine insect-like warble, and occasionally I see a spray tremble, or catch the flit of a wing. I watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly or a moth, and I see ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... experience and humiliation, I could boom forth with a sound equal to that of dozens of singers, if I could only hit upon the formula. During morning and evening prayers, which were extremely lengthy and fatiguing, I fancied that one of my two selves could flit up, and sit clinging to the cornice, and look down on my other self and the rest of us, if I could only find the key. I laboured for hours in search of these formulas, thinking to compass my ends ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... than comfortably settled myself, and let thoughts of a cigar and a nap flit through my mind, when a row up the street showed that the jail-breaking had been discovered. Then followed shouts and confusion for a few moments, while a search was being organized. I heard some horsemen ride over the tracks, and also down the street, followed ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for I remember no excitement or interest about the journey, which ought to have had so much for me. In a passive state of mind I followed Miss Pinshon from steamer to station; from one train of cars to another; and saw the familiar landscape flit before me as the cars whirled us on. At Baytown we had been joined by a gentleman who went with us all the rest of the way; and I began by degrees to comprehend that my governess had changed her vocation, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... called his lyre, to write a commercial prospectus or an electoral address. That was all very well for the poet Rodolphe, a good-for-nothing who was ready to turn his hand to anything, and who never let a five franc piece flit past him without trying to capture it, no matter how. The painter Lazare, a proud wearer of rags, would never have soiled his brushes by painting the portrait of a tailor holding a parrot on his forefinger, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere image or emblem of the Spiritual. It is a working model of the Spiritual. In the Spiritual World the same wheels revolve—but without the iron. The same figures flit across the stage, the same processes of growth go on, the same functions are discharged, the same biological laws prevail—only with a different quality of {bios}. Plato's prisoner, if not out of the Cave, has at least his face to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... and said: "Nay, nay, let me grow a few days older yet. Nevertheless there is this new thing, that this morning I have brought thee a gift which I deem I may to flit to thee, and I shall give it to thee with a good will if thou wilt promise that thou wilt not part with ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... or change of expression, but a tear seemed to flit and zigzag its way down the dried courses of her thousand wrinkles. She stood in the doorway, facing the moon as it rose above the roof of the granary. If she was a little translucent for so solid-shaped an old presence, Old Dalton did not notice ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... my first you glide along, Naught ruffles up the temper of your mind; All goes as smoothly as a summer song, All objects flit beside you ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... instinctive selfishness of human nature, you will recognize your own future habitation; perhaps your eye will mark the identical spot where the body you love must lie through all seasons and weathers, through the slow centuries that will flit so fast for you, till the crash of doom. It is good that you should think of that, although it makes you shudder. The English churchyard takes the place of the Egyptian mummy at the feast, or the slave in the Roman ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Flit around one and the same tree; One of them tastes the sweet berries, The other without ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... aspiring for? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no substance; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... rose. "Why," he asks, "should any one be interested in my stories any more than in the thousand and one stories published this year? Mine are among the number of trivial things that compose the tedium which we call life." His thoughts will flit back over the past, and his own life will seem hardly more real than the day's work on the easel if he be a painter, on the secretaire if he be a writer. He will seem to himself like a horse going round and round a well. But the horse is pumping water—water is necessary; ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... flight of birds, the gulls and rooks and little brown wavering things which flit out and along the edge of the chalk-pits, is once more refreshment to me, utterly untempered. A merle is singing in a bramble thicket; the dew has not yet dried off the bramble leaves. A feather of ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... fro, And now all right, and now all wrong they go. Prisons, we all remember, oft would wear Three rings at once, then show his finger bare; First he'd be senator, then knight, and then In an hour's time a senator again; Flit from a palace to a crib so mean, A decent freedman scarce would there be seen; Now with Athenian wits he'd make his home, Now live with scamps and profligates at Rome; Born in a luckless hour, when ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... on the other. These men have no true sense of values, no way of selecting the fit combinations of imagination from the unfit; and even though some transcendently true and original thought were to flit through the diseased mind of such a one, it would go as it came, and the world would wait for a man with a sense of fitness to arise and rediscover it. The other class, the exaltes, are somewhat the reverse; the illusion of personal greatness is so strong that their ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... spoke he saw a strange expression flit across her face. The next instant she rose and going across to her husband's chair stood looking down upon ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... her or not, so long as he was at hand to take her about. And she didn't intend to encourage him, either. Love meant ties and responsibility—Alice proved that clearly enough. There was plenty of time for love. Let her flit first. Let her remain young as long as she could, careless and care-free. The fact that she was married was just an accident, an item in her adventure. It didn't make her less young to be married, and she didn't ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... continuous, unresolved melody. The melody which circumscribes itself like Giotto's O is almost as tangible a thing as a statue; it has almost contour. But this melody afloat in the air, flying like a bird, without alighting for more than a moment's swaying poise, as the notes flit from strings to voice, and from voice to wood and wind, is more than a mere heightening of speech: it partakes of the nature of thought, but it is more than thought; it is the whole expression of the subconscious life, saying more of himself than ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... and the Governess flit to Barmoor to-day and I shall be alone in my glory. I shall be very comfortable and well cared for, so make your mind easy, and if I fall ill I am to send for Clark. He expressly told me to do so as I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the deep woods of Mexico, Where screams the "painted paraquet," And mocking-birds flit to and fro, With borrowed notes they half forget; Where brilliant flowers and poisonous vines Are mingled in a firm embrace, And the same gaudy plant entwines Some reptile of a poisonous race; Where spreads the Itos' icy shade, Benumbing, even in summer's ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... most amusing to me, as a spectator, to see the shadow of Brokenribs flit rapidly past, and still better perhaps to see it followed by that of Mr. Cape, with bald head and uplifted cane. When this entertainment had lasted some time I heard a great banging of doors, and Brokenribs issued from the house, rushing like a hunted deer ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... which often flit about, but must not be trusted. Mr. Patch could not have given a better proof that his rejection ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... birds around. It is the favorite haunt of gaily-colored kingfishers. Swallows skim hither and thither over its crystalline and placid surface; and, as if kissing their own reflections in the glass, they just touch the water as they flit across, creating circles that grow and grow until they reach the utmost edge. Like a giant who, conscious of his grandeur, loves to see his image in the mirror, the scarped and weather-beaten summit gazes sternly down from above and sees his splendors reproduced, and even ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... dance, and flit about the studio, like an incarnate sprite of jollity, pausing at last on the extremity of one toe, as if that were the only portion of himself whereby his frisky nature could come in contact with the earth. The effect in that shadowy chamber, whence the artist had so carefully ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Schuyler, standing still, saw her slim figure flit across a strip of frost-bleached sod ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... them creeping about the trunks or larger limbs. Unlike their two Northern relatives, they are eminently social, often traveling in small flocks, even in the breeding season, and keeping up an almost incessant chorus of shrill twitters as they flit hither and thither through the woods. The first one to come near me was full of inquisitiveness; he flew back and forth past my head, exactly as chickadees do in a similar mood, and once seemed almost ready to alight on my hat. "Let us have a look at this stranger," he appeared to be saying. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... at Whitby Saw a couple of Zeppelins flit by; Though she felt a sharp sting, It's a curious thing That she never knew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... or 15,000 spectators. I have heard of such people as those who actually hate cricket and football, and make it a constant aim to prevent those over whom they have some influence from engaging in the manly sport. They occasionally flit across one's path like an evil spirit, and disappear as rapidly, but leave behind a chilling effect on the imagination, far more intense than the terrible nightmare after a disastrous defeat. They cannot see the fun of spending valuable time in such a way. If you follow ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... time, lapse of time, flow of time, flux of time, stream of time, tract of time, current of time, tide of time, march of time, step of time, flight of time; duration &c 106. [Indefinite time] aorist^. V. elapse, lapse, flow, run, proceed, advance, pass; roll on, wear on, press on; flit, fly, slip, slide, glide; run its course. run out, expire; go by, pass by; be past &c 122. Adj. elapsing &c v.; aoristic^; progressive. Adv. in due time, in due season; in in due course, in due process, in the fullness of time; in time. Phr. labitur ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... I feed on rice and wild oats I am perfectly delicious. Some birds were, you see, born to sing, and flit about in the trees, and look beautiful, while some were born to have their feathers taken off, and be roasted, and to look fine in a big dish on the table. The Teal Duck is one of those birds. You see we are useful as well as pretty. We don't mind it much if you eat us ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... midst of strangers, you do feel rather melancholy. You try to read, and when you are tired of chasing the words up and down the page, you look out of the window and admire the scenery as you flit past until your eyes ache to such an extent you are obliged to withdraw your gaze and be satisfied with the study of human nature, as far as it can be procured from the inmates of your compartment. Finally you go to sleep, only to wake up after a few minutes, to find the eyes of all your ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... the place of the bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd,) continue to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple—now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists' palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast of the pond I notice ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and vacant look. He had been witness to this description of scene so frequently, that he began to believe it to be a part of the debtor's craft. As some people can regard the most beautiful varying tints of heaven, the lights and shadows which flit across the face of nature, and see nothing more in them than a part of that vast and complicated machinery that governs the world—so he, in these lights and shadows of life, only beheld the natural workings ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... her own way. So she goes from t'one to t'other, till at last she says, 'There's poor Tommy Johnson, as used to live in the stone row; he's flitted with his wench Betty, and nobody knows where they've gone.' 'That's strange,' says I, 'what made 'em flit that fashion?' 'Oh,' she says, 'they'd a deal of trouble. Thomas wasn't right in his head arter his lad Sammul went off, so he took up with them Brierleys, and turned teetotaller; and then his missus,'—but I canna tell ye what she said about poor mother. I were fair upset, ye ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Such a towering rage as he has been in ever since; and he's given me warning to go on the 10th of next month." He thought he observed a faint smile flit over the faces of all ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... sanity of intellect: it is like the calm in the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back again.—To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are abroad, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... looked upon a wilder or more interesting scene. The valley is blazing with camp-fires; the men flit around them like shadows. Now some indomitable spirit, determined that neither rain nor weather shall ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,—not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... distressed it. It was, to a certain extent, occupied with the marks on the teapot; it is true that the mournful idea strove hard with the marks on the teapot for the mastery in my mind, and at last the painful idea drove the marks of the teapot out. They, however, would occasionally return and flit across my mind for a moment or two, and their coming was like a momentary relief from intense pain. I thought once or twice that I would have the teapot placed before me, that I might examine the marks at leisure, but I considered that it would be as well to defer ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... VIRTU—whether connected with coins, pictures, or books—can never be banished, at least, from my grateful mind:—And if, at this solemn hour, when yonder groves and serpentine walks are sleeping in the quiet of moon-light, your spirits could be seen placidly to flit along, I would burst from this society—dear and congenial as it is—to take your last instructions, or receive your last warnings, respecting the rearing of a future age of bibliomaniacs! Ye were, in good earnest, noble-hearted book-heroes!—but ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... preeminence should have been so generally admitted, during his life, can only be explained by a bottom of good sense, kindliness, and sound judgment, whose solid worth could afford that many a flurry of vanity, petulance, and even error should flit across the surface and be forgotten. Whatever else Dryden may have been, the last and abiding impression of him is that he was thoroughly manly; and while it may be disputed whether he was a great poet, it may be said of him, as Wordsworth said of Burke, "that he was by far the greatest man ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... far away in the darkness—then a groan that seemed to flit about in space, as if seeking to escape the dark, and then died away in a low moan of despair. Before him the blackness seemed to hang like a dark curtain about ten yards in front of him, and in it shone a tiny ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... king," led the brawls. He was young when society was most scandalously diverting. He had a pretty wife, "poor wretch," of whom he stood in some awe; and yet this inconsistent naval secretary liked to flit from flower to flower. He was vain, greedy, wanton, fond of the delight of the eye and the pride of life; he was loving and loose in his manners; he was pious, repentant, profligate; and he deliberately told ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Dr. Rauparaha had much writing to do, and passed his mornings and afternoons in the quiet library. Sometimes, as he wrote, a shadow would flit across the wide, sunlit veranda, and Helen Torringley would flit by, nodding pleasantly to him through the windows. Only two or three times had he met her alone since he came to Te Ariri, and walked with her through the grounds, listening with a strange pleasure to her low, tender voice, and ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... ghosts that flit around, While spade and mattock death-fields glean, Open with words from the unseen The ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... would be to try to get clear of the city before they push a way through the tunnel," said Jack. "We've certainly got a couple of hours before they find where we came out. Then, very likely, they'll start a fresh search for us among the ruined houses. That would give us a bit more pull in making a flit of it." ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... told me of the happy hours Enjoyed by thee in fair Italia's bowers, Where, lingering yet, the ghost of ancient wit Midst modern monks profanely dares to flit. And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid, Haunt every stream and sing through every shade. There still the bard who (if his numbers be His tongue's light echo) must have talked like thee,— The courtly bard, from whom thy mind ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... little idea of the phantoms of trouble which flit, in such circumstances, before the uneducated mind of the slave. Upon either side, we saw grim death assuming a variety of horrid shapes. Now, it was starvation, causing us, in a strange and friendless land, to eat our own flesh. Now, we were contending with the waves ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... days passed, and again, descending to the stream, he saw a figure flit by him through the covert; and this time a deeper fear entered into him; but he put away the thought, and prayed fervently for all souls in temptation. And when he spoke with the Wild Woman again, on the feast of the Seven Maccabees, which falls on the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... he!" said my uncle Jervas, viewing me languidly through his quizzing-glass. "How confoundedly the years flit! Nineteen—and on me soul, our poor youth looks as if he hadn't a single gentlemanly vice to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... it to be Sabbath-day always. I was conscious of a pleasure in the thought of games and frolics and coming week-day delights that would flit across my mind even when I was studying my hymns, or trying to listen to the minister. And I did want the congregation to break up some time. Indeed, in those bright spring days, the last hymn in the afternoon always ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... fine warm day in June. Out of the town the air is soft and pure. Bird and bee flit from tree to tree, from blue-bell to rose, till at sun-set they hie away ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... in the street outside, the bell rang, and she watched the figure of a trim mulatto maid flit through the hall to the door. An instant later Arthur's name was announced, and Gabriella, with her hands in his clasp, stood looking into his face. It had been eighteen years since they parted, and in those eighteen years she had carried his image ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... said because he saw a shadow flit over the fair face of the widow, who, like most indulgent mothers, did not wholly believe in Solomon. The sight of Janet in the hall suggested a fresh subject to the doctor's mind, and, after coughing a little, he said, "Did I understand that your domestic was intending ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... found the great camp near Springfield, it seemed to John Barclay that all the soldiers in the world were gathered. It is difficult for a boy under a dozen years to remember things consecutively; because boys do not do things consecutively. They flit around like butterflies, and so the picture that they make of events jumps from scene to scene. One film on a roll of John's memory showed a hot August day in the camp of "C" Company; the men are hurrying about the place. The tents are down; the boys—John ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... of meadows, Circling above us the black rooks fly Forward, backward; lo, their dark shadows Flit on the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... like poppies spread,— You seize the flower, the bloom is shed; Or like the snow-falls in the river,— A moment white, then lost for ever; Or like the rainbow's fleeting form, Evanishing amid the storm; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place. No man can tether time or tide: ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you have caught the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over the pasture to the copse. And that, indeed, was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... bedtime for Happy Jack then, for you know he goes to bed very early, just as soon as it begins to get dark. The later it got, the more anxious and uneasy Happy Jack grew. He had just made up his mind that in a few minutes he would have to give up and go to bed when there was a flit of tiny wings, and Tommy Tit the Chickadee dropped into ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... glad to help the cause, even so little as that," she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look of disappointment that he had seen flit across her face ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... officer, in whose cold hand lay an open locket, and in the locket two portraits; one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... upon the shore, Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... completeness; it will shrink before the long dull vista of a solitary, aimless existence. Sometimes, wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even the dearest bonds of adopted affection can. ever ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Italy only at this season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against a whole flotilla ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... as if his head were about to fly away from his shoulders; but his whole figure rose lightly into the air and Perseus followed. By the time they had ascended a few hundred feet the young man began to feel what a delightful thing it was to leave the dull earth so far beneath him and to be able to flit about like ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... were walking, and walking with no appearance of effort, swiftly, lightly, joyously. Julia, at the head, moved with the frank, free, swinging gait of an Amazon. Peachy seemed to flit along the ground; there was in her progress something of the dipping, curving grace of her flight. Clara glided; her effect of motionless movement was almost obsidian. Chiquita kept the slow, languid ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... is in these shades! Ye leaves, That murmur once so dear, when will it cease? Your sound my heart of rest bereaves, It robs my heart of peace. [1] Thou Thrush, that singest loud—and loud and free, 25 Into yon row of willows flit, Upon that alder sit; Or sing another ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... quality of the emotions through which he had been passing of late, that Roland felt but a faint interest at the prospect of meeting face to face a genuine—if exiled—monarch. The thought did flit through his mind that they would sit up a bit in old Fineberg's office if they could hear of it, but ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... see when gentle Geordie was seeking to get other folk out of the Tolbooth forby Jocky Porteous? but ye are of my mind, hinny—better sit and rue, than flit and rue—ye needna look in my face sae amazed. I ken mair things ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the blue and bending sky, Like joyous living things, And rainbow-tinted birds flit by With swiftly glancing wings: O summer, summer! joyful time! Singing a gentle strain, Thou comest from a warmer clime ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... to have come to a standstill, the shops were closed, the streets silent. From time to time an inhabitant, intimidated by their silence, would flit rapidly along the pavement, keeping ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a question of wages—" began the young man, who was watching the various expressions flit over Darry's face with an ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... numerous cahars[10] and sadoes, drawn by the agile native pony, and with itinerant vendors, who, bearing their baskets suspended from their shoulders by the pikulan, or cross-piece, each with a lamp fixed to the rearmost basket, flit to and fro noiselessly on ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold |
