"Rift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He went up to his ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... coerce employers upon various points. The movement was a hopeless failure because the working men declined to have anything to do with the so-called leaders. When the split took place in the Chamber of Mines, it became the business of Dr. Leyds and the President to keep the rift open. This was done persistently and in a very open manner—the seceders being informed upon several occasions that a fusion of the two Chambers would not be welcome to the Government. Both before and since that time the same ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... A rift now appeared in the war cloud. Early in April, Washington received intelligence of a new order in council dated January 8, 1794, which only forbade trade between the French colonies and Europe, leaving American vessels to trade freely with the French ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... overtake her or meet her returning—alone. The road—little more than a trail—wound along the crest of the hill looking across the canada to the long, dark, heavily-wooded flank of Mount Tamalpais that rose from the valley a dozen miles away. A cessation of the warm rain, a rift in the sky, and the rare spectacle of cloud scenery, combined with a certain sense of freedom, restored that lighthearted gayety that became him most. At a sudden turn of the road he caught sight of Rosey's figure coming towards him, and quickened his ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... little rift? But first permit me! [Lights his torch at ORDONIO'S, and while lighting it. (A lighted torch in the hand Is no unpleasant object here—one's breath Floats round the flame, and makes as many colours As the thin clouds that travel near the moon.) You see that crevice there? My torch extinguished ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mingled with huge masses of glowing incandescent rock, were projected far into the air; a terrific storm of thunder and lightning suddenly burst forth to add new terrors to the scene; and to crown all, a new rift suddenly burst open in the side of the hill, out of which there immediately poured a perfect ocean of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... more by keeping cool-headed than any other way," rejoined Frank. "A crevasse, into one of which the professor has fallen, is not 'a hole' as you call it, but a long rift in the earth above which snow has drifted. Sometimes they are so covered up that persons can cross in safety, at other times the snow 'bridge' gives way under their weight and they are precipitated into the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... descending the home slope of the mountain they witnessed a rare and beautiful sight. A few light clouds had gathered around the moon, and these at last opened in a rift. The rays of light through the misty atmosphere created the perfect colors of a rainbow, and this phenomenon took the remarkable form of a shield, its base resting upon one cloud, and its point extending into a little opening ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the valley, beyond the beaver marsh and on the farther shore of the lake she saw a little glimmer of light through the rift in the trees. She dared not believe in its reality at first. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination only, a hallucination born of her starvation, child of her heartfelt prayer. She looked away, then peered again. But, yes—a tiny gleam ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... never find any adequate words to describe, nor was he sure he could remember. The disorientation of the pass-through he had experienced before; this time he was whirled into a vortex of feeling in which his body, his identity, were rift from him and he lost touch with ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... formed this masterpiece of awe? What hands have wrought these wonders in the waste? O river, gleaming in the narrow rift Of gloom that cleaves the valley's nether deep,— Fierce Colorado, prisoned by thy toil, And blindly toiling still to reach the sea,— Thy waters, gathered from the snows and springs Amid the Utah hills, have carved this road Of glory to the Californian Gulf. But now, O ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... uneasy over the incident. Kate, climbing alone to the station, trying the door, waiting around for a few minutes and then going back the way she had come, did not strike Jack as being a tourist come to view the scenery. So far as he had been able to judge as he peeped out through a narrow rift in the ledge, she had paid very little attention to the scenery. She seemed chiefly concerned with the station, and her concern seemed mostly an ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... south; Congo River floods (seasonal); in the east, in the Great Rift Valley, there ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and soon they mounted into total darkness, so that the Wizard was obliged to get out his lanterns to light the way. But this enabled them to proceed steadily until they came to a landing where there was a rift in the side of the mountain that let in both light and air. Looking through this opening they could see the Valley of Voe lying far below them, the cottages seeming like toy houses from ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... split by a river, now frozen to its bed. But, from the hut door, the rift which marks its course in the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... intervals, a lantern guttering above a door showed them a hand's-breadth of the dirty path, a litter of broken withes and basket-weavers' refuse, between the mouldy wall of the town and a row of huts, no less black and silent. In this greasy rift the air lay thick, as though smeared into ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Looking back he sees none. Memory has softened down all the past into one uniform tone, as the mellowing distance wraps in one solemn purple the mountains which, when close to them, have many a barren rock and gloomy rift, All behind is good. And, building on this hope, he looks forward with calmness, and feels that no evil ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... interim, and there he crouched at watch, terrified at the thought of staying till the other entered, still more terrified at the idea of bolting across the open clearing. He could see Perris clearly, in outline, for just behind him there was a rift in the circle of trees which fenced the clearing and Red Jim was thrown into somewhat bold relief against the blue-black of the night sky far beyond. He could even make out that a bandage circled the head of Perris and with that sight a new thought leaped into the brain ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... we entered I had three distinct shocks in quick succession. Flashy, painted and rouged as I was I dreaded Orontides' eyes. There he was behind his counter, visible through a rift in the press of handsomely dressed customers ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... did not land. Under the guidance of Matlack they swept slowly around the lower end of the lake; they looked over the big untenanted camp-ground there; they stopped for a moment to gaze into the rift in the forest through which ran the stream which connected this lake with another beyond it, and then they rowed homeward, keeping close to the farther shore, so as to avoid the ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... line of battle. Then one vast shadow, with a gap yawning like a serpent's mouth, trailed along, and for a while hid Paris, which it seemed ready to devour. And when it had reached the far-off horizon, looking no larger than a worm, a gush of light streamed from a rift in a cloud, and fell into the void which it had left. The golden cascade could be seen descending first like a thread of fine sand, then swelling into a huge cone, and raining in a continuous shower on the Champs-Elysees district, which it inundated with a splashing, dancing radiance. For a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... slept in vain, for at his head The Tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams Disturb'd his sleep; and either Tropic now 'Gan thunder, and both ends of Heav'n, the Clouds 410 From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire In ruine reconcil'd: nor slept the winds Within thir stony caves, but rush'd abroad From the four hinges of the world, and fell On the vext Wilderness, whose tallest Pines, Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... feet wide—appeared on the wall; widened, and as the sinking slab that made it dropped to the level of our eyes, we looked through a hundred-feet-long rift in the living rock! The stone fell steadily—and we saw that it was a Cyclopean wedge set within the slit of the passageway. It reached the level of our feet and stopped. At the far end of this tunnel, whose floor was the polished rock that had, a moment before, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... was called to pity as well as admiration. The rift in this Deal's nature was emotional not physical—some mad poetic thing, forever struggling in the tight matrices of a hard-set world. India was rising clearer to Skag; even certain of her profound complexities. He knew that instant how the fertilising pollen ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... they took turns at reading aloud. All the time the teacher kept the principal part of their attention focused on the story gradually revealed. During that one hour a week Keith's mind never wandered. But it was the only rift in the scholastic fog that kept him in a state of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... more than a peep at his personality. His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as were his modes of thought, he would bewilder you with an excursion into latter-day literature, and like a rift of light in a fogbank you then caught a gleam of an entirely different mentality. One day I found him reading a book by the French writer Huysmans, dealing with new art. And he confessed to me that he admired Hauptmann's ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... and brought it down on the top of the chest with a blow which made the little room echo. He was a powerful man, and the axe was imbedded to its haft. He worked it out of the tough wood and planted another blow, which widened the rift and made the stout old chest creak like a falling tree. The mutilated wood acted upon Dartmouth like the smell of blood upon a wolf: the spirit of destruction leaped up and blazed within him, a devouring flame, and the blows fell thick and fast. He felt a fierce delight in the havoc he ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... right in on top o' her Hottentot pillow-shams 'n' old Dr. Carter tore a sham with his toothpick. 'N', added to all that, Amelia 's furious 'cause she read in a book 't teaches how to stay married 't a husband's first night out is the first rift in the lute, 'n' she was down town buyin' a dictionary so 's to be sure what a lute is afore she accuses young Dr. Brown. 'N' there's a man over in Meadville down with a sun-stroke, 'n' they want Dr. Carter to hurry, 'n' they can't seem to make him realize nothin'. He jus' sits there in ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... of which pussy has crept is small and barely furnished; it would be perfectly dark too, but that the holes in the roof and the rift in the door admit light into this most squalid room. There is nothing standing against its rough gray walls but a wooden chest, near this a few earthen bowls stand on the ground with a wooden cup and a gracefully wrought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the old guitar And moldering into decay; Fretted with many a rift and scar That the dull dust hides away, While the spider spins a silver star In ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... morning by trampling noises in the stable below, and starting up could not at first make out where she was. The sun was shining through a rift in the loft door, Tib was gone, cocks were crowing outside, all the world was up and busy. She could hear Ben's gruff voice and the clanking of chains and harness, and soon he and the three horses had left the stable and gone out to their day's work. ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... brave veins in the breccia ruddy! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water? A hope I have nursed, That the waterless cup will quench my thirst.' —Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam. And here, is there water or not, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... of Irish imagination French Naturalism, it is true, was no less congenial; hence the rift between the realist and the spiritual Irishmen delightfully played on in Max Beerbaum's cartoon of Yeats presenting the Faery ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great Auditorium appeared before us softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough rocks ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... like this inspection, and I fear that foxy old Bhme who prompted it. The mere fact of their inviting us shows that we stand badly; for it runs in the teeth of Brning's warning at Bensersiel, and smells uncommonly like arrest. There's a rift between Dollmann and the others, but it's a ticklish matter to drive our wedge in; as to to-night, hopeless; they're on the watch, and won't give us a chance. And after all, do we know enough? We don't know ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... scruples, and soon had a huge fire and a savory repast of coffee, turtles' eggs, and yams. At midnight it was extinguished, and a watch stationed on top of the plateau. Toward morning I clambered grumblingly up the narrow, almost perpendicular sides of the rift that cut into the rocky watch-tower. I did not believe in pirates and was willing to take my chances in sleep. I paced back and forth, inhaling deep breaths of the rich tropical air; below me the waves beat in ripples against the rugged beach, casting off from time to time little ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... do I desire thine ear. The cause of this rift is yonder." And he jerked his thumb backward over his shoulder towards the poop-house. "If we remove that cause, of a surety the rift itself will vanish, and all will be well ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... throbbed away as I lay on my flea-ridden couch—moments which seemed long as hours, and no gleaming rift broke the settled and deepening blackness of my hateful environs. Every thing and every place was full of the wearisome, depressing, beauty-blasting commonplace of Interior China. Stenches rose up ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... broke: down the rift A kind ray shot from a holy star. Then my dream did waver and break and lift — Through it, O ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... concerned himself so seriously about the affairs of Elizabeth's heart. The very next day the rift between the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... And so a first rift of light began to shine in the dark place. But it was not broadened by the letter which he found waiting upon ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... changed, as the sky changes when a rift of blue that promised a smiling day is swallowed up again in the midst of uncertain weather; whatever softness lingered was veiled by doubt. "I don't know," she said hesitatingly, "I'm not sure yet. I can't tell. Must you ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... now it seems to me like one of those bright, wide rays of glorious light which we have sometimes seen bursting through a rift in the clouds, from the setting sun, and illuminating, for a brief space of time, the black, perturbed and convulsed sky. One of our poets has compared ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... speaking very low. "Oh, dear lad, they're cut off from the shore. There's a big rift in the ice now, and it's growin' each moment bigger, and they're on the wrong side o' it, and—floatin' ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Ramelton a place of beauty has been done. It is hemmed in by hills that lie up against the sky, marked off into fields by whin hedges, till they look like sloping chequer-boards. Beyond them, in places, tower up the mountain-tops of dark Donegal, crusted over with black heather, seamed by rift and ravine, bare in places where these rocks, those bones of the mountains, have pushed themselves through the heather, till it looks like a ragged cloak. The sun shines, the rooks flap busily about, as noisy as a ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... misstep, not printed in shifting sand but upon the granite of recollection. Single, he could go back to his world and pick up the threads again, but not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to help her ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... moment the Waz-don gazed down into the green rift at the bottom of which a tumultuous river tumbled downward along its rocky bed, then he closed his eyes as to a sudden spasm of pain ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would pause in a rift of the hills and look wistfully upon the bed of sere leaves and feathery snow, tempting her to sink down and die, with the grim hemlock boughs, plumed with snow wreaths drooping over her, and lulled by the gurgle of unseen waters wandering to the river, under ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of wicked slate-coloured cloud, which looked as though it were rising straight up into the western heavens, while the wind whirled along and twisted into quaint shapes a ragged rift of white vapor, which went hurrying by, almost touching the tops of the moaning firs,—altogether an uncanny evening to be keeping tryst at the top of a wild knoll; and so thought our friend with the horses, and showed it, too, clearly enough, had anyone been there to put a construction ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... blowing through the open casement, brought him back to the present. The night had fallen, the street below a misty rift, its lights smothered in swimming vapor. There was brightness about it, blotted and obscured but gayly intentioned, even the sheds on the gore sending out golden gushes that suffused the milky currents with a clouded glow. He lighted the gas and looked ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... growing almost in tropical luxuriance; but this was a mile or so farther down, and to reach that spot from above, Alessandro had had to let himself down a sheer wall of stone. The canon at its head was little more than a rift in the rocks, and the stream which had its rise in it was only a trickling spring at the beginning. It was this precious water, as well as the inaccessibility of the spot, which had decided Alessandro to gain the place at all hazards and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... green so deep and strong that it resembles a blanket spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and lonely, rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and still below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly rift turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till lost in the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river in the waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks baked and sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... black river. "Such the feelings of the happy, Such the minds of merry maidens: Like the early dawn of spring-time, Like the rising Sun in summer No such radiance awaits me, With my young heart filled with terror; Happiness is not my portion, Like the flat-shore of the ocean, Like the dark rift of the storm-cloud, Like the cheerless nights of winter! Dreary is the day in autumn, Dreary too the autumn evening, Still more dreary is my future!" An industrious old maiden, Ever guarding home and kindred, Spake ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... bad dissembler; his finer instincts told him that he did not possess her full confidence, and he was too proud to ask it. So they lived together a few short weeks after marriage, on outward terms of courtesy and cordiality, but with this little rift of dissatisfaction gradually yet surely widening into a fissure that should rend each of these proud ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... slush and mire, and the water soaked through his leggings and moccasins again, but he paid no attention to it now. His new courage and strength lasted. Glancing up at the heavens he beheld a little rift in the western clouds. A bar of light was let through, and his mind, so imaginative, so susceptible to the influences of earth and air, at once saw it as an omen. It was a pillar of fire to him, and ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... arrived at the conclusion that they were to stop until morning. In this he found himself mistaken, for with the very next moment he heard the splashing of water, seemingly beneath his feet. Up to now he had been looking upward at the rift in the rocks. Instead of a rocky gorge he now saw the shimmering of water, and a fresh exclamation of surprise fell from ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... manhood was shivered within him, utterly and suddenly, as 4000 years ago the rock was cloven in Horeb, the Mount of God. Now, too, from the rift in the granite the waters flowed; the first tears that he had shed since he was a very little child—the last that any mortal saw there—streamed hot and blinding from his eyes down on the thin, transparent hand that he ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... observed with astonishment that they were following a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up— up— up they went until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw himself to the ground to keep Teddy from ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... servant," said Chaka, and the dreadful light came into his eyes that never shone in the eyes of any other man. Then I grew sick at heart, my father—ay, though I loved my people little, and they had driven me away, I grew sick at heart. Now we had come to a spot where there is a great rift of black rock, and the name of that rift is U'Donga-lu-ka-Tatiyana. On either side of this donga the ground slopes steeply down towards its yawning lips, and from its end a man may see the open country. Here Chaka sat down at the end of ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... surely sounds a pretty phrase, Some poeesy for woe it wins, Commemorating roundelays And troubadours and mandolins: We seem to view some minstrel-boy Beside his shattered music mute, The shattered string, the ruined joy— The Rift within the Lute. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... countenance and advice of a fellow-creature, was enough for him at the moment. He threw himself from the pinnacle of the cliff once more into the arms of the projecting oak-tree, whose boughs waved in middle air, anchored by the roots in a huge rift or chasm of the rock. Catching at the branch which was nearest to him, he dropped himself from that height upon the ground; and such was the athletic springiness of his youthful sinews, that he pitched there as lightly, and with as little injury, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... close as he could to his general, who was now in the very heart of the conflict. But it was a difficult task. His clothing was torn by bushes and briars, and boughs whipped him across the face. Now and then in a rift in the smoke he beheld a terrible sight. The ground was covered with the arms and blankets and tents of the Union army. Ahead of them were great masses of men, retreating and jammed among the wagons. The ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... alarming Valentine to anxiety and waking Julian to a new observation, had hindered the intended triumph. What circumstance was that? He looked back along the past evening and found it in himself, in his theory that a soul expelled was not necessarily a soul dead. The rift in the glory of the Litany came with that. Valentine was trying to close it by this act of sitting, to impress the strength of his will upon his companions in the darkness. The doctor felt his effort like a continually repeated blow, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the trapper, "it's the boy's own piece, and he let it off as he shot the rift the fourth bend above. Yis, the boy knows his danger and he took the vantage of the rift to signal me with his piece, for oars couldn't help him in the rift and the missin' of a single stroke wouldn't count. I trust the boy got the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... arrangement that won the day for Tessie, and once more the black clouds of anxiety rolled away to disclose a rift of new interest, and a gleam of new-found joy. No one could touch the life of Jacqueline Douglass without sharing its delight. The child, temporarily disabled through an acute ailment, had been enjoying every delight her handsome big ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... a dry wind stirred the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this boor, who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as if in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has been accustomed ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... longitudinal gleam of silver upon the road before her, like a bright sword half embedded in the mud. As she came closer she gave a little cry of satisfaction—it was a wagon-rut full of water, and glancing heavenward she saw a light rift of sky and knew that the moon ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hotel on the crest of the hill was bathed in sunlight that poured from a rift in the clouds, as if sent for the sole purpose of showing the grand portico, the broad piazza, and the flag that floated ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... was at the other end of the little island, but there was a considerable rift in the rock surface, not deep, but of sufficient width to permit the passage of a body. The jagged stone made the way rough in the dark, and Westcott found himself at the upper extremity, gashed and bruised ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... prehistoric time some convulsion of nature broke the African continent all along its spine, and formed this system of lakes. Another break occurs on the high plateau, from Portuguese East Africa in the south to British East Africa in the north, along the Great Rift Valley, with its magnificent escarpments and weird scenery, prolonged through Lake Rudolf to the Red Sea and on to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley. Great volcanoes, now mostly extinct, though some to the north of Kivu are still active, are a still ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... acrass the said merin to their own side. Now it so happened that they met exactly at a narrow gap in the ditch behind Rosha Halpin's house. The goats, bein' coupled together, got one on each side of the rift, wid the rope that coupled them extended acrass it. The mare stood in the middle of it, so that the goats were in the way of the mare, an' the mare in the way of the goats. In the meantime they surveyed one another wid great composure, but had neither of ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Presently we found a rift in the cliff which had been widened and extended by the action of the water draining through it from the plateau above. It gave us a rather rough climb to the summit, but finally we stood upon the level mesa which stretched back for several miles to the mountain ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... perilous scrambling Sundown managed to keep within sight of Chance, who had picked up Fernando's tracks leading from the cottonwoods. The dog leaped over rocks and trotted along the levels, sniffing until he came to the rift in the canon wall down which the herder had toiled on his grewsome errand. Chance climbed the sharp ascent with clawing reaches of his powerful forelegs and quick thrusts of his muscular haunches. Sundown followed as best he could. He was ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and the breezes lift Their melancholy tones; 'Tis evening: through each passing rift The stars, like precious stones In lustrous beauty (clouded soon), Sweet incense to the sight, Attend their white-robed mistress moon, Queen of romantic night. Anon, as the cloud hosts fly Before the wind across the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... valley rise The purple hills of Paradise. Oh, softly on yon banks of haze Her rosy face the Summer lays! Becalmed along the azure sky, The argosies of cloudland lie, Whose shores, with many a shining rift, Far off their pearl-white ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... a long slope of wave-worn fragments of rock as he spoke, forming a steep ascent that ran up into a rift in the great cliff; and he drew Dick's attention to the fact that what seemed like a level place a hundred feet above was so situated that anything thrown down would have fallen in the niche or combe of the cliff just ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... though it roused my anger so much that I added my injunctions to the effect that if she wished to please me she would break off all acquaintance with her cousin, Ellen Vaughan. This, however, she would not promise to do, and it was the first beginning of the rift, which afterwards widened into a chasm between us. Her cousin also was too much attached to her to be easily alienated from her, and the two girls met more frequently than either her uncle or I were aware of. There was another girl, too—I forget her name—but she was a sister of Essec Powell's. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... blood and fire, And can smite, too, in passion and with ire. Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting Thy gift, this land, that is in nothing wanting; Give Mind to match the glory of the gift, Give great Ideals to bridge the sordid rift Between our heritage and our ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... was a pronounced, even an enthusiastic, "Welsleyite," and had practically forgotten "old London," as he negligently called the greatest city in the world. They were very happy in Welsley. In fact, the Dean's widow was the only rift in Rosamund's lute, that lute which was so full of sweet and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... each man's life there comes a time supreme; One day, one night, one morning, or one noon, One freighted hour, one moment opportune, One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, One space when fate goes tiding with the stream, One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon, And ready for the passing instant's boon To tip in favor the uncertain beam. Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, Knows also how to watch and work and stand ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... comfort the boy had: he was often enabled to give a far better recitation than White could. On these occasions a faint look of admiration in Liddy's blue eyes was like a rift of sunshine on a cloudy day to him. When the standing of all pupils was read at the middle of the term, the boy was away ahead of White, and felt almost as proud as the night he walked home with Liddy from his first party. It cheered ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... dissension, bringing a new political movement into being, and an issue overriding all the legislative interest of the session. Mr Ritchie's remission of the shilling import-duty on corn led to Mr Chamberlain's crusade in favour of tariff reform and colonial preference, and as the session proceeded the rift grew ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... little enough to guide by, merely a single faint star peering out from a rift of the clouds, but Keith's remembrance was that the ford led straight out to the centre of the stream, and then veered slightly toward the right. He knew the sand ridge was only used by horsemen, not being wide enough for the safe passage of wagons, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... could do for her now was to let her live where she chose to live: but he grew more sullen and dogged, day by day; and Sally grew sadder and quieter, and things were fast coming to a bad pass, when Hetty Gunn's generous offer came to them, like a great rift of sunlight ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... fear almost overpowered him; then the old Psalm whispered, "He that keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep." A sweet consciousness of the absolute safety of God's children stole over the youth; and catching, from a rift in the roof, one glimpse of the stars struggling through the tree tops, he turned over and fell asleep as peacefully as if in his ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... rising up out of the sloping [W.5044.] valleys of mist. It seemed to him they were wide-yawning caverns that he saw there leading into that mist. It seemed to him it was all-white, flaxy sheets of linen, or sifted snow a-falling that he saw there through a rift in the mist. It seemed to him it was a flight of many, varied, wonderful, numerous birds [1]that he[a] saw in the same mist,[1] or the constant sparkling of shining stars [LL.fo.96a.] on a bright, clear ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... for the grades. Life suddenly grew very full. There was the most excitingly interesting work for every hour, and that work was to pay high school expenses and start the college fund. There was one little rift in her joy. All of it would have been so much better if she could have told her mother, and given the money into her keeping; but the struggle to get a start had been so terrible, Elnora was afraid to take the risk. When she reached home, she only told her mother that the last of the things ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... persons were reclining on the grass under it, and one of them, a very handsome Christian boy, spoke to us in Italian and English. I scarcely remember a brighter and purer day than that of our departure. The sky was a sheet of spotless blue; every rift and scar of the distant hills was retouched with a firmer pencil, and all the outlines, blurred away by the haze of the previous few days, were restored with wonderful distinctness. The temperature was hot, but not sultry, and the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the right-hand side, but with no better luck, for here he was stopped by a yawning rift in the rock. Now Otter sat down and ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... very irregular in outline;—southwardly the morne pitches sheer into a frightful chasm, between the converging of two of those long corrugated ridges already described as buttressing the volcano on all sides. Through a cloud-rift we can see another crater-lake twelve hundred feet below—said to be five times larger than the tang we have just left: it is also of more irregular outline. This is called the tang Sec, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less rainy seasons. It occupies a more ancient ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... of dawn widened into a silver rift, and the silver rift streamed into a bar of gold, and the gold broke up into long strands of blush pink and pale blue like festal banners hanging in heaven's bright pavilion, and the "White Eagle" flew on swiftly, steadily, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... abroad and won a medal for bravery. Her husband was displeased when Mrs. Fair came home to a fame which lifted her out of his life. The dissatisfaction grew as she became absorbed in public functions. Mr. Forbes traces the widening of the rift between husband and wife with great skill in the first two acts. These are light comedy. In the third the mood becomes serious and we find that Mrs. Fair's absence from home has set the husband to philandering and the daughter to intimacy with a gay ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... enough. I could guess the rest. I walked to the window and stood, looking out. The clouds were breaking and, as I stood there, a ray of sunlight streamed through a rift and struck the bay just at the spot where the dingy had grounded. The shallow water above the flat flashed into fire. I am not superstitious, as a general thing, but the sight comforted me. It seemed like an omen. There was ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Great drops of moisture gathered on the wood-work of the wharf, and on the burdock leaves that grew between gaps in the planking. High overhead the sky must have been cloudless, for we could see the moon, now and then, like a dim dinner-plate, when there was a moment's rift in the fog. ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... spoke, a great brightness fell about him, causing him to look upward, thinking the sun had burst through a rift in the clouds; but there were no clouds. No more than an arm's length away stood a beautiful maiden. So beautiful she was that the flowers about her feet folded their petals in despair and bent their heads in token of submission; so sweet her look that the humming birds thronged ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... battlements, grim and gloomy on either side, and the seething, boiling waters of the Humboldt - that for once awakens from its characteristic lethargy, and madly plunges and splutters over a bed of jagged rocks which seem to have been tossed into its channel by some Herculean hand - fill this mighty "rift" in the mountains with a never-ending roar. It has been threatening rain for the last two hours, and now the first peal of thunder I have heard on the whole journey awakens the echoing voices of the caon and rolls and rumbles along the great jagged fissure like an angry monster muttering ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... spermatozoa and embryos not only of all human races but of all things that live, whether animal or vegetable, think little, but that little almost identically on every subject. That "almost" is the little rift within the lute which by and by will give such different character ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... rift in the clouds gave passage to an oblique ray of light that clearly proved that the sun was setting ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... middle of the chasm, for the further torment of the waters, was jammed a huge black rock, against which the incoming green avalanche dashed itself to fragments and went rocketing into the air. The solid granite at the further end was cleft from summit to base by a tiny rift a foot wide through which the boiling spume poured ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... sooth, I had to spring, and no mystery about it, ere ever I got to the top of the rift leading into Doone-glade. For the stream was rushing down in strength, and raving at every corner; a mort of rain having fallen last night and no wind come to wipe it. However, I reached the head ere dark with more difficulty than danger, and sat in a place which comforted ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... made you valiant, strong and swift, And maimed you with a bullet long ago, And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, Gave back your youth to you, And packed in moments rare and few Achievements manifold And happiness untold, And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, In manhood's ripeness, power and pride, And on your sandals the strong wings of youth. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... like dynamite, blasted away all opposition. He was in thorough mastery of the situation. The waves of the sea were now calm, the fierce winds had abated, there was a great rift in the dark clouds. The ship of state was sailing placidly on the bosom of the erstwhile troubled sea, and Belton ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... and the moon, glinting now and then through a rift in the clouds, whitened the curling waves, but showed no signs of the Brixham, ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... watch thee, all unfettered sweeping High o'er the rift that weighs my pinion here, I yearn like thee my plume in ether steeping, To soar away through ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... they sailed slowly on, seeking in vain for a rift in the blanket of mist: then Rodier ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... combining taste and elegance and refinement in their furnishing, still impress one with the feeling that somewhere within the lute there is a rift which destroys its perfect harmony, and that rift is not far to seek—it lies in the pictures. Cheap chromos, lithographs, and woodcuts have small excuse for being in these days of fine reproductions in photographs, photogravures, and engravings, and their presence in a home indicates ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... through a rift in the clouds, and filled the drawing-room with its bright white light. But only for a moment. Then the moon again retired behind its ethereal draperies, and darkness and silence reigned supreme. No sound could be heard, save the monotonous ticking of the clock. It struck two, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... again late in the evening. The clouds had passed away to the south and east, but the lightning still fired the distant horizon far beyond Eastthorpe and towards Abchurch. The sky was clearing in the west, and suddenly in a rift Arcturus, about to set, broke through and looked at her, and in a moment was again eclipsed. What strange confusion! What inexplicable contrasts! Terror and divinest beauty; the calm of the infinite interstellar space and her own anguish; each an undoubted ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... you know that?" He spoke the words with a bluff good-fellowship which pleased her, in a way, but at the same time left her silent. And he, too, realized that there was a false note, a rift such as often creeps in between friends and if not perceived and checked ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... abode unburst by then, e mukel lauande loghe to e lyfte rered The much (great) flowing deep (loch) to the loft (sky) reared. Mony clustered clowde clef alle in clowte[gh] Many a clustering cloud cleft all in clouts (pieces), To-rent vch a rayn-ryfte & rusched to e vre Rent was each a rain-rift and rushed to the earth; Fon neuer in forty daye[gh], & en e flod ryses Failed never in forty days, and then the flood rises, Ouer-walte[gh] vche a wod and e wyde felde[gh] Over-flows each wood and the wide fields; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... ringing flies apart, Suddenly cracks the vaulted hall; And through the rift, the wild flames start; The guests in dust are scattered all, With the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
