"Blight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a holy, blest companionship In the sweet intercourse thus held with those Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;— Though even in the yet unfolded rose The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth, The light born with us long so brightly glows, That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth, To life's cold after lie, selfish, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... complained about their war-time coffee, made from chicory and acorns, had they once tasted the Java product. Yet I was assured that this was the choicest coffee grown in Java. I might add that, as a result of a blight which all but ruined the industry in the '70s, fifty-two per cent of the total acreage of coffee plantations in the island is now planted with the African species, called Coffea robusta, and ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Summer's bloom and Autumn's blight, For bending wheat and blasted maize, For health and sickness, Lord of light, And Lord of darkness, hear ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... events, you are in a moody state of mind, my friend." My answer is, I have described myself as a public character with a blight upon him—which fully accounts for the curdling of the milk ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... course, till his blanched cheeks and cadaverous aspect, from close study and want of proper exercise, proclaim the loss of health, and the probable establishment of some pulmonary affection that may, before he scarcely reaches maturity, blight the ambitious hopes of his father, and consign 38 the son "to that bourne from ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of size, and showing a forest of masts, occupied the wharfs. These and a thousand other objects, seen as they were under a brilliant sun, presented a picture of surpassing splendour; but the curse and blight of ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Rom. viii:19-22). Sin has brought a curse upon creation. The thorns and thistles are the result of the fall of man as well as the blight and misery which rests upon a creation, which was pronounced good by the Creator. But this condition into which creation has been plunged will not continue forever. A better day is coming. Groaning creation is to be delivered. The curse will be removed. This cannot be the work of man. Scientists ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... the power of unbelievers to say that the Bible is for me only what the Koran is for the deaf Turk, and the Vedas for the feeble and acquiescent Hindoo. No; I will retire UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN, and hold secret commune with my Bible above the contagious blastments of prejudice, and the fog-blight of selfish superstition. FOR FEAR HATH TORMENT. And what though MY reason be to the power and splendour of the Scriptures but as the reflected and secondary shine of the moon compared with the solar radiance; yet the sun endures the occasional co-presence ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wonder, Devoid of blight or flaw, The peerless blooms of Eden Our primal mother saw In redolent beauty before her placed So tempted fair ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy before the Heavens, with stones of pure ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... You may think this pride a weakness, but it is too deeply rooted in my nature ever to be eradicated. When I look about the world and see girls disgracing themselves by improper marriages, elopements, often social crimes, which must blight their lives and those of all connected with them, I think what I should do ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... instances, and still more extraordinary ones, in which this process takes place naturally, in a more hidden, a more recondite kind of way. You are all of you familiar with that little green insect, the Aphis or blight, as it is called. These little animals, during a very considerable part of their existence, multiply themselves by means of a kind of internal budding, the buds being developed into essentially non-sexual animals, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... especially early in the season, but jam fruit sells at an average of 2-1/2d. per lb., at which price it pays fair wages, but is not a bonanza. As a rule the plants are very healthy, and any fungus pests to which they are subject, such as leaf blight, are easily kept in check by spraying, a knapsack pump being used for this purpose. The ground is kept well worked and free from weeds, whilst the plants are fruiting, and occasionally the ground is mulched, as is the case in the plot ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... self-esteem determined the quality of Margaret's influence, which was singularly penetrating, and most beneficent where most deeply and continuously felt. Chance acquaintance with her, like a breath from the tropics, might have prematurely burst the buds of feeling in sensitive hearts, leaving after blight and barrenness. Natures, small in compass and of fragile substance, might have been distorted and shattered by attempts to mould themselves on her grand model. And in her seeming unchartered impulses,—whose latent law was honorable integrity,—eccentric spirits might have found ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... homes, illumined with hope and happiness, where mothers, freed from the necessity for long hours of toil beyond their own doors, may preside as befits the hearthstone of American citizenship. We want the cradle of American childhood rocked under conditions so wholesome and so hopeful that no blight may touch it in its development, and we want to provide that no selfish interest, no material necessity, no lack of opportunity shall prevent the gaining of that education so essential ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... lord, beware!" he cried, "'tis nigh the midnight hour and she a noted witch—heed her not lest she blight thy ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the port of Alexandria with a pretence of returning in triumph from a naval victory. Laurel wreaths hung on spars and bulwarks, flags flew, trumpets sounded, and she received the enthusiastic greetings of Greeks and Egyptians as she landed. But the truth could not be long concealed, and under the blight of defeat, linked with stories of leaders deserting comrades and allies, Antony and Cleopatra failed to rally any determined support to their side when the conqueror of Actium came to threaten Egypt itself. Both ended their lives with their ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... because of natural disasters, fluctuations in global oil prices, and government policies designed to curb inflation. Banana exports, second only to oil, have suffered as a result of EC import quotas and banana blight. The new President Sixto DURAN-BALLEN, has a much more favorable attitude toward foreign investment than did his predecessor. Ecuador has implemented trade agreements with Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela and has applied ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... entering manhood. Her thoughts were always with them, and her prayers followed them in all that they did. So much was at stake. Three lives to be made or marred. Three men to bless the world or to curse it. And they had the blight upon them which their father was bringing. Every woman who is a real mother knows that Elizabeth Hill's face was often wet with tears as she contemplated what the future might bring. And happy are the sons who are blessed with such a ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Love and Friendship their charmed spells weave; Trust not too deeply—they may deceive! Hope with her Dead Sea fruits is there, Sin is spreading her gilded snare, Disease with a ruthless hand would smite, And Care spread o'er thee her withering blight. Hate and Envy, with visage black, And the serpent Slander, are on thy track; Falsehood and Guilt, Remorse and Pride, Doubt and Despair, in thy pathway glide; Haggard Want, in her demon joy, Waits to degrade thee and then ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... said the smith, looking up from the horse's foot; "'tis the trade of yonder philosophers to gainsay whatever honest folk believed before them. They'll deny next that hens lay eggs, or blight rots wheat. My good wife speaks but plain truth, and we have seen ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a mob who think that life is a sort of St. Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... ruefu' chance Has twin'd ye o' your stately trees? Has laid your rocky bosom bare— Has stripped the cleeding o' your braes? Was it the bitter eastern blast, That scatters blight in early spring? Or was't the wil'fire scorch'd their boughs, Or canker-worm wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... front rose the tower-topped hill of Monte Giove, marking the site of Corioli; and just as they turned towards Nemi the Appian Way ran across their path. Overhead, a marvellous sky with scudding veils of white cloud. The blur and blight of the scirocco had vanished without rain, under a change of wind. An all-blessing, all-penetrating sun poured upon the stirring earth. Everywhere fragments and ruins—ghosts of the great past—yet engulfed, as it were, and engarlanded by ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he answered. "Do not blight my hopes and your own happiness a second time. Your father is about to shut up his house for a twelvemonth, if the plague lasts so long. This done, we shall meet no more, for access to you will be impossible. Do not hesitate, or you will ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... thy mother grieve, nor let Thy father with too solemn thinking fret His head, but thou must kiss them, daughter mine, And all with that entrancing laugh of thine! Now on the house has fallen a dumb blight: Thou wilt not come with archness and delight, But every corner lodges lurking grief And all in vain the heart ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... unsparing discharge of their duty in searching out and punishing the guilty. "It is come to our ears," says the bull, "that numbers of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with the infernal fiends, and that by their sorceries they afflict both man and beast; that they blight the marriage-bed, destroy the births of women, and the increase of cattle; they blast the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, the grass and herbs of the field." For which reasons the inquisitors were armed with the apostolic power, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... from the North by elements of inherent hostility, we speak only of the governing faction, and not of the millions of nominally free men who are scarcely less its thralls than the black slaves themselves. This unhappy class of our countrymen are the first to feel the blight which Slavery spreads around it, because they are the nearest to its noxious power. The subjects of no European despotism are under a closer espionage, or a more organized system of terrorism, than are they. The slaveholders, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... shall blight our vines Nor Sirius blaze above us. But you and I shall drink our wines And sing to the loved ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... came upon me I will tell you as we go,— The blight of the shadow hunter Who walks ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... The executive session will be held after the meeting, as many are here to hear the paper on the chestnut blight, so we will proceed at once to the order of business and listen to the first paper ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... liable to several diseases, which affect the flour made from it, and render it unfit for good bread. The principal of these are the blight, mildew, and smut, which are occasioned by microscopic fungi, which sow themselves and grow upon the stems and ears, destroying the nutritive principles, and introducing matter of a deleterious kind. The farmer is at the utmost pains to keep ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... spy passing through hostile lines. None other of the friends of the afflicted father had ventured to bear or send a message of condolence. It was as if the house of the once acknowledged leader had been marked for the pestilence—and no pestilence was more to be shunned than the deadly blight of broken power. Even the slaves shifted about in embarrassed silence, offered little service, and obeyed as if conscious that obedience was something of an indiscretion, and was liable at any moment to become a crime. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... some demand of life which would make her ideals appear the dreams of bygone halcyon days, useless and worse amid the threats of gathering tempest. An essentially human apprehension, be it understood. The vulgarities of hysterical pietism Emily had never known; she did not fear the invasion of such blight as that; the thought of it was noisome to her. Do you recall a kind of trouble that came upon her, during that talk in the hollow, when Wilfrid suggested the case of her being called upon to make some great sacrifice in her father's behalf? It was an instance of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... blight was falling fast, When straight through dirty London passed A youth, who bore, through road and street, A ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... sake, don't be too hasty! Give me opportunity for explanation. I admit that I did wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances. Let me explain, I entreat you, before you thus blight my life, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... religion of the Roman Catholic Church in China was quite incompatible with the supposed celestial origin of the emperor, who was alleged to receive his authority direct from Heaven. It is not surprising that Yung Ching, at the earliest possible moment, decided to blight these hopes, and to assert the natural and inherited prerogative of a Chinese emperor. There is no room to doubt that the Catholic priests had drawn a too hasty and too favorable deduction from the favor of Kanghi. They confounded their practical utility with the intrinsic ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that are not referable to any known eclipsing body. Of course there is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic; that to defy him would have brought on—withering by ridicule—shrinking away by publishers—contempt ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... shown that this destructive Blight, of which the Turnleaf is the victim, is caused by a deadly ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... at last, but it was not until the brightness of May was on the fields outside, and the deadly blight of famine on all within, that a haggard, wasted-looking deputation came down from the upper city to treat ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fair," replied Godwin; "and worthy of you, who are the most honest of men. Yet, Wulf, I am troubled. See you, my brother, have ever brethren loved each other as we do? And now must the shadow of a woman fall upon and blight that love which ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... while glad songs handed down by their fathers. No amount of priests would be able to make the festive Eskimo bask in the sun and sing in chorus when there wasn't any sun and it was altogether too cold to open their mouths wide in the open air. In fact the priests are not the cause of the blight where it exists, just as they are not the cause of the jolliness, when there is any. But Orthodoxy is Chesterton's sincerest book. It is perhaps the only one of the whole lot in the course of which he would not be justified in repeating a remark which begins one of the Tremendous ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... upon this household," the woman cried. The monkey whimpered again, and she took it by the scruff and tossed it to the floor. "Peace, ape, or I will have you strangled. Bestir yourself, father, and call Anton. There is a blight of deafness ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... days of our doom and our dread Ye were cruel and callous. Grim Death with our fighters ye fed Through the jaws of your gallows. But a blasting and blight was the fee For which ye had bartered them. And we smite with the sword that from ye We had ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? How much tranquillity has been reflected to man ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... disguise; there was a continual warfare being waged between the Deity and the devil for the possession of every soul, the latter generally being considered victorious. The flood, the tornado, the volcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that blackened, the earthquake that devoured, were ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... blows from hill to hill And every valley rings—O Daffodil! What promise for the season newly born? Shall wave on wave of flow'rs, full tide of corn, O'erflow the world, then fruited Autumn fill Hedgerow and garth? Shall tempest, blight, or chill Turn all felicity ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Aleck in an outhouse pointed out to him by his friend the gardener, and thence to dress for a dinner that he looked forward to with dread, and Philip to make his way home. As he passed up through the little flower-garden at the Abbey House, he came across his daughter, picking the blight from ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... torture they are! Think of the needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself and pinched his friends to enter the profession, which will never yield him a morsel of bread. The waiting—the hope—the disappointment—the fear—the misery—the poverty—the blight on his hopes and end to his career—the suicide, perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right about them?" And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at having found another point of view in which to ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... flower garden; "out of Weathersfield" Wethersfield (the modern spelling), Connecticut, was famous for its onions (there is still a red onion called "Red Weathersfield"), until struck by a blight about 1840; "old Egyptians" ancient Egypt was proverbial ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... worth of bubble advertisements, yielding a profit of say 25 pounds on this single issue. In this one are nearer 100 pounds worth of such advertisements. Now is it in nature that a newspaper, which is a trade speculation, should say the word that would blight its own harvest? This is the oblique road by which the English press is bribed. These leaders are mere echoes of to-day's advertisement sheet, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... sorrow, alone remained. It was never removed, in all the changes of seasons, fortunes, and years, which, in the vicissitudes of a suffering, female, savage life, she was subsequently doomed to endure. As in the case of a premature blight, let the plant quicken and revive as it may, the effects of that withering ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to be avoided is monotony in colour. Who can not recall barren rooms, without a spark of attraction despite priceless treasures, dispersed in a meaningless way? That sort of setting puts a blight on any gathering. "Well," you will ask, "given the task of converting such a sterile stretch of monotony into a blooming joy, how should one begin?" It is quite simple. Picture to yourself how the room would look if you ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Burke; and the Earl of Chatham soon found that though he was dignified by the king, he had shorn himself of all his honours in the sight of the people. The influence which the Earl of Bute was supposed to have had over him tended still more to blight his fair fame. He was taunted with being a willing agent of men whom he did not esteem, and his acceptance of a peerage was a never-failing source of invective. Moreover, in his negociations with his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, he had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... original bearer of the name she knew nothing. Waiting on table at the Golden Nugget and later bearing children and helping on the ranch had not left her time for historical study. When her son, waking to the blight she had so innocently put upon him, asked her where she had found the name, she had answered, "In a book," but beyond that could give no data. When, unable to bear his shame, he had abbreviated it to "Mark D.L." she ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Ray until I know," she had told herself over and over in great distress, "for I love him too well ever to bring any blight upon his life." ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... not." Your standing, your influence, your usefulness—all depend upon your faithfulness; and if you are faithful, you will be faithful to your promises. Think seriously over these things. If you are at fault, set about to amend. Such a fault will be a blight upon your life and upon your character until it is corrected. When the Psalmist pictures a righteous man, he says that he "sweareth [promiseth] to his own hurt, and changeth not." Are you that sort of ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of her life, and that everything which she published during the forty-three years which preceded her death lowered her reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the time when her faculties ought to have been in their maturity they were smitten with any blight. In The Wanderer we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the Memoirs of her father there is no trace of dotage. They are very bad; but they are so, as it seems to us, not from a decay of power, but from a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... solitude and desolation; but my life, with its wasted energies and flagging purpose, rises up before me, darkly and reproachfully reminding me of what I might have done, have been! O Heaven! what bitter years of suffering and crushing disappointment, years on which the tracks of time have left their blight and mildew, have passed since first I listened to the bird-like warbling of its simple strains. Then was the blissful May-time of my existence, when I was governed by youth's generous impulses, led captive by its sweet delusions, when I fondly dreamed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the wild cat in the hush. I call Tikoloshe (a water spirit) out of the river in the night-time and ask him questions. I make sickness do my bidding on men and cattle. I drive it away when I like. I can bring blight to the crops, and stop the milk of cows. I can, by my magic medicines, find out the wicked ones who do these things. I alone can look upon Icanti (a fabulous serpent) and not die. I know the mountain where Impandulu (the Lightning Bird) builds its nest. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... consideration. From that utterance, however, Lady Harman would no doubt have gone on to the slow, tentative but finally conclusive statement of the new difficulty that had arisen out of her husband's jealousy and to the discussion of the more fundamental decisions it forced upon her, if a peculiar blight had not fallen upon their conversation and robbed it at last of even an ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... o'er the bleak and dreary prospect steals.— Spring claims our tender, grateful, gay delight; Winter our sympathy and sacred fear; And sure the Hearts that pay not Pity's rite O'er wide calamity; that careless hear Creation's wail, neglect, amid her blight, THE SOLEMN LESSON OF THE ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... long-backed sons and daughters. They were but a speck on the land yet, as Chadron had told the smoky stranger when he had engaged him to try his hand at throwing the "holy scare." But they spread far over the upland plain, having sought the most favored spots, and they were a blight and a pest in ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... lately stayed 'Mong rosebuds, wooing to the cheeks of these Loth blushes faint and maidenly—rich Breeze, Still doth thy honeyed blowing bring a shade Of sad foreboding. In thy hand is laid The power to build or blight rich fruit of trees, The deep, cool grass, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... you so! How could I! Oh, that some blight may come upon this unhappy tongue! I, who have had nothing but good from you! I to insult you, who are the author of all my happiness! Oh, sire, forgive me, forgive me! ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cogs' loud roll,— That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what is news from town: next county fair: How well the crops are looking everywhere:— Now this, now that, on which their interests fix, Prospects for rain or frost, and politics. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... blend of the parent species, the nuts being double the size of the wild parent and of sweet, rich quality. The trees were very shapely and bid fair to become extremely productive but a year or two later were all attacked by the dreaded blight or bark disease, then spreading from its original starting point in Long Island. The work of destruction was very rapid and by the third year all were hopelessly crippled, but a few individuals continued to send up suckers as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... over the whole world, always moving forward and travelling at times favourable to it. For it seemed to move by fixed arrangement, and to tarry for a specified time in each country, casting its blight slightingly upon none, but spreading in either direction right out to the ends of the world, as if fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it. For it left neither island nor cave nor mountain ridge ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... can catch glimpses of banana-orchards, which look like dishevelled patches of gigantic cornstalks. The fields of Easter lilies do not quite live up to their photographs; they are presently suffering from a mysterious blight, and their flowers are not frequent enough to lend them that sculpturesque effect near to, which they wear as far off as New York. The potato-fields, on the other hand, are of a tender delicacy of coloring which compensates for the lilies' lack, and the palms give ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... competition, to obtain novelty of material. The varieties of aspect and color in healthy fruit, be it sweet or sour, may be within certain limits described exhaustively. Not so the blotches of its conceivable blight: and while the symmetries of integral human character can only be traced by harmonious and tender skill, like the branches of a living tree, the faults and gaps of one gnawed away by corroding accident can be shuffled into senseless change like ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he repeated. "A blight! That's more a phrase to apply to the potato than to a blooming ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... city's biggest shame, its most ancient and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest barbarity—the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it survive, and here most of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so Has died or married; how curculio And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit, And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot; Or what the news from town; next county fair; How well the crops are looking everywhere: Now this, now that, on which their interests fix, Prospects for rain or frost, and politics. While, all around, the sweet smell ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... more request. To keep the meeting of last night, and all that passed between us there, for ever a secret. Were it to become known, it would utterly blight the happiness of a trusting and generous man, whom I love still, and ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... is practically free from blight; the coddling moth is under perfect control. There is nothing, Mr. Pederstone, and you know it too, nothing in the world to prevent the Valley's production of fruit from increasing year by year as the younger orchards come to bearing age and fresh ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... warranted. The Cardinal's face—a composite portrait of various types of middle-class dog-life—made pretense useless and early in his puppy career he seemed to realize it and to abandon himself to a philosophy of irresponsible pleasure. But Ritchy's eye had taken on a saddened cast since the blight had fallen on his master. He no longer frisked and devised, out of his comedian's soul, mirth-provoking antics. It was as though he understood and his ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... pulling themselves together, and if order and some sort of law could be established, they were confident that they could rebuild their life again. We talked to them and encouraged them to continue their struggle against the blight that had defiled their homes and their country. Their hopes seemed to revive from our assurance of English working-class sympathy. I am pleased they did not know that we had some people mad enough to wish to inflict similar wounds upon ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... whine at his losses, A man doesn't whimper and fret, Or rail at the weight of his crosses And ask life to rear him a pet. A man doesn't grudgingly labor Or look upon toil as a blight; A man doesn't sneer at his neighbor Or sneak from a cause ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... reason he failed to understand that the withdrawal of the royalists from the neighborhood of the coast was merely a strategic retreat that made the occupation of the capital a more or less empty performance. This blunder and a variety of other mishaps proved destined to blight his military career. Unfortunate in the choice of his subordinates and unable to retain their confidence; accused of irresolution and even of cowardice; abandoned by Cochrane, who sailed off to Chile and left the army stranded; ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... cultivator. The "rot" is a very severe trial to human patience. The vines look thrifty, the grapes are large and abundant, and all goes well, until the time when the grapes, being fully grown, are about to change color. Then a sudden blight occurs, and two thirds of the whole crop of grapes, the result of the year's labor, wither and spoil. The cause, probably, is the exhaustion of some elements in the soil needful to the supreme effort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the writer fulfilled her promise is testified by those packets of letters, dim with the dust and blight of a vanished century, but in which her reward is likewise attested. "I do not believe," she affirms proudly, "that there is a man at either of the Universities who writes so often to his mother as you do, and let me beg you will continue to do so, for the hearing from ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... he explained, "on my departure to-night. The cause hangs upon it. A blight on my evil luck!" he cried. "Were Colonel Myddelton at home, I should not be fleeing from my own country empty-handed. I shall be writing to him most of this day, but a spoken word is worth a volume of ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... truck-garden planted. We're glad of a good fire in the shack-stove after sun-down. I've rented thirty acres from the Land Association that owns the half-section next to mine and am going to get them into oats. If they don't ripen up before the autumn frosts come and blight them, I can still use the stuff for green feed. And I've bargained for the hay-rights from the upper end of the section, but heaven only knows how I'll ever ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Piache announced one day in public, that in consequence of the impiety of the Omaguas, he should retire to a neighboring tribe, of more religious turn of mind; and taking with him the precious instrument, leave their palms to blight, and themselves to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... we appropriate one hundred dollars to put with the Butterfly's money for Mr. Munroe," said William Blight, and Charles had lost the honor of ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... so. The presence of Pauline would have been no obstacle. The presence of her father would have been no obstacle. The presence of her father would have been rather an incentive. But at the supreme moment, the shadow of Batoche fell upon the lighted door, like a blight of fate, the current of all their thoughts were turned elsewhere, and the exquisite opportunity ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness— Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness; A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence; A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... through the waiting room and the casting office. "Swell cabaret stuff" was the phrase that brought the applicants to a lively swarm about the little window. Evening clothes, glad wraps, cigarette cases, vanity-boxes—the Victor people doing The Blight of Broadway with Muriel Mercer—Stage Number Four at 8:30 to-morrow morning. There seemed no limit to the people desired. Merton Gill joined the throng about the window. Engagements were rapidly ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... hoped to have travelled the weary road of life. Friends approved—fortune smiled—one little month, and we should have been one; but it pleased Him, to whom in my present frame of mind I dare not look up, to blight my beautiful flower, to canker my rose—bud, to change the fair countenance of my Elizabeth, and send her away. She drooped and died, even like that pale flower under the scorching sun; and I was driven forth to worship Mammon, in these sweltering climes; ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... fall like a dreadful blight upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... underwear neatly over a chair, was struck by the enormity of the task she had undertaken. A great blight of utter discouragement swept over her—she never could do it! Her mother—all her kin—seemed to take shadowy shape to menace this little haven she had found. Chester—suppose he should find her! Suppose Mark should! Sooner or later some one must ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... winds, ye are dead, with your voices attuned, That thrilled the green life in the sweet-scented sheaves, When I touched a warm hand which has faded, and swooned To a trance of the darkness, and blight ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... fetched from the lumber-rooms and distributed among their owners, when a letter arrived from Mother saying that the two little boys had sandy blight, and that Laura would not be able to come home under two or three weeks, for fear of infection. These weeks she was to spend, in company with Pin, at a watering-place down the Bay, where one of her aunts ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... as a London summer dies, in days of feverish sunlight and breathless languor. Everywhere there was the same torpor, the same wornout, desiccated life in death. It was in the streets with their sultry pallor, in the parks and squares where the dust lay like a grey blight on every green thing. Everywhere the glare accentuated this toneless melancholy. It was the symbol of the decadence following the brilliant efflorescence of the season, the exhaustion after that supreme effort of Society ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... years," she said, "this awful blight of sin continued; then Jesus, the provision that God had promised, came into the world to live a life of perfect obedience to God. And God sent to all the world by his Son the message that any and all who would follow Christ's example and ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... his race was Kano Indara; the last of a mighty line of artists. Even in this material age his fame spread as the mists of his own land, and his name was known in barbarian countries far across the sea. Tokyo might fall under the blight of progress, but Kano would hold to the traditions of his race. To live as a true artist,—to die as one,—this was his care. He might have claimed high position in the great Art Museum recently inaugurated by the new government, and housed in an ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... confession, but allowing love to cherish its fairest hopes without fear or torment! How pure a memory for life! What a free blossoming of all the flowers that spring from the soul, which a mere trifle can blight, but which, at that ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... judges should have sometimes shifted places. I was unable to divine why he fevered me so much. Must I say it?—He had ceased to entertain me. Instead of a comic I found him a tragic spectacle; and his exuberant anticipations, his bursting hopes that fed their forcing-bed with the blight and decay of their predecessors, his transient fits of despair after a touch at my pulses, and exclamation of 'Oh, Richie, Richie, if only I had my boy up and well!'—assuming that nothing but my tardy recovery stood in the way of our contentment—were examples of downright ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fallen gladiator, spent and prostrate on the Alban hills, still awaits the issue of the conflict between the forces of life and death within. Dead, where the blight of pagan and mediaeval superstition has eaten into the quivering tissues; it lives where the pulsing current of modernism expands its shrunken arteries and bears the nourishing truth. Though eternal in tradition and colossal in material achievement, the glory of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the dainty things That dance in wind and water. Nature herself Makes war on her own loveliness and slays Her children like Medea. Nay but, my Lord, Look closer still. Why in this damask here It is summer always, and no winter's tooth Will ever blight these blossoms. For every ell I paid a piece of gold. Red gold, and good, The fruit ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... een. But he had left some of it with his mother, at ony rate. She entered the room like a woman demented, and the first words she spoke were, Elspeth Cheyne, did you ever pull a new-budded flower?' I answered, as ye may believe, that I often had. Then,' said she, ye will ken the better how to blight the spurious and heretical blossom that has sprung forth this night to disgrace my father's noble houseSee here;'(and she gave me a golden bodkin)nothing but gold must shed the blood of Glenallan. This child is already as one of the dead, and since thou and Teresa alone ken that ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... though thy bloom shall pass away, By winter overtaken, Thoughts of the past will charms display, And many joys awaken. When time shall every sweet remove, And blight thee on my bosom, Let beauty fade!—to me, my love, Thou'lt ne'er be ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... military fidelity, a voluntary oath; (3) then the exacted oath of allegiance; (4) any oath whatever; (5) in early Christian use any sacred or solemn act, and especially any mystery where more was meant than met the ear or eye" (Blight's "Select Sermons of St. Leo on the ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... Idealism, and no spiritual possession is more easily lost. The spiritual depression of a reactionary period, the routine of work, the immersion in the stream of events, the decline of moral energy, conspire to blight this noble use of the imagination, and to chill the faith which makes creative living and working possible. The familiar companionship of the great Idealists is one of the greatest resources against the paralysis of this faith and ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... As with a blight upon a rose-tree, the little green creatures lurk on the underside of the leaves, and in all the folds of the buds, and because unseen, they increase with alarming rapidity. The very fact that we have faults in our characters, which everybody ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feelings were not less deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his associates, in after times. The historian of the sect affirms that, by the wrath of Heaven, a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the "bloody town" of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient persecutors, and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them, in old age ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... cries and beat of wings, Grown eager now and venturesome, The swallows hold their twitterings, To see the blight of winter come. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... ruled by a heedful while unobtrusive respect and self-respect. Do not think a strong word of caution in this matter out of place and out of scale. Carelessness of even appearances here may wreck a life; it may certainly blight an influence. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... that has been assigned is The Development and Propagation of Blight Resistant Chestnut in West Virginia. Now, being a forester, I am perhaps interested in blight resistant chestnut from a little different standpoint than the majority of this group. As representing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... with change, A cloud in one and billow of battle, a surge High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now The winter of this wind out of the deeps Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here, Here never shall the Thracian plant on high For ours his father's symbol, nor ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have come forward to our assistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Dante's Italy.[890] But after the decay of the Greenland colonies converted Iceland from a focal into a remote terminal point, and after the progress of the world became based upon complex and far-reaching commercial relations, the blight of extreme isolation settled upon the island; peace ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... voice behind him, which I recognised as his wife's, "because you're bringing a blight on us, and our houses—because we want our children's faces left as God ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Cromwell, and Vane passionately inveighed against Prelacy and the "Man of Blood," as I had just heard the Radicals of the Victorian era overwhelm with diatribe the obstructors of the popular will. Then, during the subsoiling which the land, growing arid and worthless through mediaeval blight, underwent in 1832 and after, when the Reform Bill and its successors, like deeply penetrating plows, threw to the surface much that was unsightly, yet full of potentialities for good, the spot was the same. The ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... myself—have you no heart that you can refuse to repair a little of the harm that you have done? You are a cruel woman—I could almost say a wicked woman: hard, false, and cowardly; and I wish my words could blight your life as your coquetry ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... strokes of the midnight bell As they thrilled the quiet air, And saw the soft, white curtains wave In the lamp's uncertain glare; And felt the breath of the July night, Laden with fragrance and warmth and blight. ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... world has not either heard or read of this poisonous tree, supposed to carry death to every living thing for a wide distance around it, not even sparing shrubs or plants—things of its own kind—but inflicting blight and destruction wherever its envenomed breath may be ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... duration, and it never recurred, which, considering all the sorrows and all the irregularities of his life, seems remarkable. He had not been long in a condition to be responsible when the tragedy took place which cast its blight upon his life. In September of the year 1796 Mary Lamb, "worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needle-work all day and by watching with her mother at night, broke into uncontrollable insanity, and seizing a knife from the table ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... hardening and demoralising than to call forth the tenderest feelings of a woman's heart and cherish them yourself as long as you need them, as long as your children require a nurse to love them, and then to blight and thwart and destroy them, whenever your own use for them is at an end? This may be Utopian; but it is always a little thing if one mother or two mothers can be brought to feel more tenderly to those who share their toil and have no part ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to tobacco. After doing this, if time and energy remained, they might try some of Sir Edwin Sandys' ideas—maybe set out a few grapevines or mulberries, as they had been instructed to do. There was good reason for the growing fear among the leading adventurers in London that tobacco might put a blight on ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... was to begin. She thought with a shudder of the pain she had passed through, of the horror of that terrible discovery. It was all over now, thank Heaven. It had never been any brand or stigma to her; she had never felt any false shame over it; she had never bowed her bright head as though a blight had passed over her. She said to herself it was not her fault, she was not in the least to blame. She had believed herself in all honor to be the wife of Lord Chandos, and she could not feel that the least shadow of blame ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... innuendoes, ending only the day before in a positive demand for money. It was too certain that there was a chain of events there leading direct to the horrible encounter in the laboratory. His money had cast a blight where he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coupled with the world-hardness which marred her, there lingered something of tenderness in her love. Then, too, she was a consummate actress, and a being gifted with the womanly genius for charming, and therein lies sympathy. It is when this sympathetic spark is killed by the terrible blight of over-prosperity, that the deterioration of a woman takes place. Not all in a day, but gradually, the poison works: the first stage signalised by a cruel hardness to those they love; then an entire incapacity for ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the only cause that operated to disappoint the reasonable hopes and to blight the fair prospects under which the original compact was formed. The effects of discriminating duties upon imports have been referred to in a former chapter—favoring the manufacturing region, which was the North; ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... triumphantly fanned their lights along the base of that vast monument in which King Cheops vainly sought eternal privacy. What would he say, we wondered, could he see the crowds of tourists tearing out to pay him a call, on their way to the Sphinx? Would he blight them with a curse, or would he remember pearly nights of old, when his subjects assembled in multitudes for the feast of the Goddess Neith when the moon was full, and all the white, brightly painted houses along the Nile reflected their flowerlike ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... New England, adapting itself to a great variety of situations, but preferring a soil that is constantly moist. Nursery or good collected plants are easily transplanted. A disease, similar in its effect to the pear blight, so often disfigures it that it is not desirable ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... one's mouth; find one a false prophet. not realize one's hope, not realize one's expectation. [cause to be disappointed] disappoint; frustrate, discomfit, crush, defeat (failure) 732; crush one's hope, dash one's hope, balk one's hope, disappoint one's hope, blight one's hope, falsify one's hope, defeat one's hope, discourage; balk, jilt, bilk; play one false, play a trick; dash the cup from the lips, tantalize; dumfound, dumbfound, dumbfounder, dumfounder (astonish) 870. Adj. disappointed &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... no; not in retrospect. I remain their ideal, and all that, of course. They cherish the thought of me. They see the world in terms of me. But I am an inspiration, not an obsession; a glow, not a blight." ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... I heard it sigh, Hollow and sad, as night crawled sluggishly: Hollow and sadly sighed the corn while I Moved darkly in the midst, a blight Darkening ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... barrel." The Hartford Wits had fought out the war against King George; they now took up the pen against King Mob, and placed themselves in rank with the friends of order, good government, and union. Hence the "Anarchiad." An ancient epic on "the Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Blight" was dug up in the ruins of an old Indian fort, where Madoc, the mythical Welsh Columbus, or some of his descendants, had buried it. Colonel Humphreys, who had read the "Rolliad" in England, suggested the plan; Barlow, Hopkins, and Trumbull joined with him in carrying it out. Extracts from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... powers at his command to bring about a good understanding between the kings of France and Spain. He pictured to Henry, in darkest colours, the blight that would come over religion and civilization if the progress of the rebellious Netherlands could not be arrested. The United Provinces were becoming dangerous, if they remained free, not only to the French kingdom, but to the very ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I were as frisky as they, We laugh'd at their biting, and kiss'd all the time, For the spring of her beauty was just in its prime! But now for their frolics I never can sleep, So I crack 'em by dozens, as o'er me they creep: Curse blight you! I cry, while I'm all over smart, For I'm bit by the arse, while I'm ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... The pear blight has destroyed whole orchards of pear trees in the Western states. The citrus canker is now threatening the orange orchards of ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... therefore remember that, if I infringe the Divine order, I can turn the sacramental cup into a vehicle of moral poison and spiritual blight. "They must be holy who bear the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... ills which summer knew, Pest and blight for life and fruit Winter's hosts have put to rout. In peace she shall awake again Purified by winds and snows, Peace shall greet her ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... left deserted in my age? The child Britta,—sole daughter of my sole daughter,—is she not stolen, and kept from me? Has not her heart been utterly turned away from mine? All through that vile witch,—accursed of God and man! She it is who casts the blight on our land; she it is who makes the hands and hearts of our men heavy and careless, so that even luck has left the fishing; and yet you hesitate,—you delay, you will not fulfill your promise! I tell you, there are those in Bosekop who, at my bidding, would cast her naked ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground, and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet, frost, or snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the reason I threw ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... under the same roof with Tai-y in dowager lady Chia's suite of rooms, he naturally became comparatively more friendly with her than with his other cousins; and this friendliness led to greater intimacy and this intimacy once established, rendered unavoidable the occurrence of the blight of harmony ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Anson was quite gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have been an arrow—not a thorn—in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vales, which each held a thousand or several thousand when the blight of the white man came, the abandoned paepaes are solemn and shrouded witnesses of the death of a race. The jungle runs over them, and only remnants remain of the houses that sat upon them. Their owners have died, leaving no posterity to inhabit their homes; neighbors have removed their few chattels, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... in the same way as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is tamed. {152b} These passages prove that the classical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed Pliny {152c} describes a magical manner of defending the crops from blight, by aid of women, which is actually practised in America by ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... loved a tree or flower; But, if I had, I beg to say The blight, the wind, the sun, or shower Would soon have withered it away. I've dearly loved my Uncle John, From childhood to the present hour, And yet he will go living on— I would he ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... he flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly raised his head and gave ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... and far from thy border, By the grace of my godhead benignant I order The blight which may blacken the bloom of the trees. Far from thy border, and far from thy dwelling, Be the hot blast which shrivels the bud in its swelling, The seed-rotting taint, and the creeping disease. Thy flocks ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... now, by the light of what happened afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must have cast a blight on the whole company. I plied them well with wine; and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round the table, and whispered to the company confidentially, "Please to change your mind and try it; for I know it will ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... gruesome place. Everything in it and for yards around it, was covered with a yellow blight, as if the slight beard of some pestilential fungous were sprouting ... the only people the company could induce to work there were foreigners who knew little of America.... Swedes mostly ... attentive churchgoers on Sunday,—who on week-days, and overtime at nights, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... grasp all the elements of prosperity. We are free from the thousand time-honoured evils and abuses that afflict and retard the nations of the Old World. Not even our neighbours of the United States occupy an equal position of advantage, for we have not the canker-worm of domestic slavery to blight our tree of liberty. And greater than these, we are but commencing our career as a people, our institutions have yet to be established. We are free to look abroad over the earth and study the lessons of wisdom taught by the history of older countries, and choose those systems and those laws ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... murmured Mrs. Channing, her own tears dropping upon the fair young face, as she gathered it to her sheltering bosom. "What have you done that this blight should extend ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer but to guard them:—if you could bid the black blight turn away and the knotted caterpillar spare—if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in frost—"Come, thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow out." This you would think a great thing? And ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... any rate) such living monuments of human history are made sacred and treated with greater care than are our ancient monuments in stone. Smaller creatures, birds like the dodo and the great auk and a whole troop of others less familiar, have disappeared and are disappearing under the human blight. Even some beautiful insects—the great copper butterfly and the swallow-tail butterfly—have been exterminated in England by human "progress" in the shape of the drainage of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... his ever-winning smile responded less readily than before; sharp lines began to reveal themselves, flanking his nostrils. His heart was bitter. The weeks had brought him to a fuller realization of the horrid blight upon his fair name; he had come to see the wreck in all its cold, brutal aspects. The realization that he was a hunted, branded thing, with a price on his head, sank deeper and deeper into his soul. Hunted! Chased as a criminal! He, a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... never invented the like for them. The chief, Mankambira, likewise treated us with kindness; but wherever the slave-trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and uncivil; that invariably leaves a blight and a curse in its path. The first question put to us at the lake crossing- places, was, "Have you come to buy slaves?" On hearing that we were English, and never purchased slaves, the questioners put on a supercilious air, and sometimes refused to sell us food. This want of respect ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... with which it is entirely covered during a great part of the year seems to have cast a blight upon it. The very few palms have a drooping and tragic air. The ground has a gangrened appearance, and much of it shows a crawling mass of unwholesome-looking plants, which seem crouching down as if ashamed of their brutal exposure by the receded river, and of harsh and yellow-green grass, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... that Thou gavest Me I have kept." Oh, the wonders of redeeming love! the rapture of that hour when the infinite Father, looking upon the ransomed, shall behold His image, sin's discord banished, its blight removed, and the human once more in ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... available it is difficult to understand how people can continue to pour forth nonsense about the ruin of our national industries. During the very decade in which the blight of German competition was supposed to have destroyed the profits of our manufacturers, it is clear from the above infallible test that the incomes of our commercial, professional, and property-owning classes have ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... the blight of sorrow's smart, Her woman's heart oft faileth, She moaneth not but with fond wiles Her pain in smiles she veileth; So sings she through the live-long night, Till hope's bright light appeareth, Which glittering like a radiant eye, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... tranquillity quite inconsistent with the rules of romance, I cannot say that the under-plots are equally propitious. The "opening bud of love" between the general and Lady Lillycraft seems to have experienced some blight in the course of this genial season. I do not think the general has ever been able to retrieve the ground he lost, when he fell asleep during the captain's story. Indeed, Master Simon thinks his case is completely desperate, her ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... growing much more warm and strong in its support." "Once," he said, "the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the same sentiments,—that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, and a curse"; but now it is "a cherished institution in that quarter; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and moral blessing." He then asked how this change of opinion had been brought about, and thus answered the question: "I suppose, sir, this ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... intimacy greater than he and she had yet known, would seem to be enforced by this winter of isolation and leisure, she did not, for a time, see as much of him as before. A constraint, almost like a blight upon their friendship, seemed to have fallen between them ever since the night that she had danced. Seagreave did not come down to Gallito's cabin quite so frequently in the evenings, and, according to Jose, spent much time by his own fireside absorbed ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow |
