"Parching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will be terrible companions, or rather foes, there. Eternal longings after society, but no companion, no love, and no sympathy there. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Everything had favoured him. He had even cleared himself of the curse of the Furies and the pursuit of Nemesis. He had, he congratulated himself, shown marvellous qualities of mercy. Glaucon lived? Yes—but the parching sand-plains of Libya would be as fast a prison as the grave, and the life of a slave in Africa was a short one. Glaucon had passed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Billy of this openly, one Sunday afternoon at Lydia's. They were sitting on the lake shore, for the day was parching hot. Both the young men were in flannels and hatless, and lolled on the grass at Lydia's feet, as she sat with her back against a tree. She noticed how Kent was all grace, and ease, while Billy, whose face had lately become thinner, was all ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... these great events began in the year 1333, fifteen years before the plague broke out in Europe: they first appeared in China. Here a parching drought, accompanied by famine, commenced in the tract of country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai. This was followed by such violent torrents of rain, in and about Kingsai, at that time the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... that he had gone from daylight until 11:30, parching for a drink. The saloons were closed by order of Gen. Funston, but he managed to get beer ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... means of seed, dispersed within certain limits. The Animal Kingdom consists of sentient beings, that enliven the external parts of the earth. They possess the powers of voluntary motion, respire air, and are forced into action by the cravings of hunger or the parching of thirst, by the instincts of animal passion, or by pain. Like the vegetable kingdom, they are limited within the boundaries of certain countries by the conditions of climate and soil; and some of the species prey upon each other. Linnaeus has divided them into six classes;—Mammalia, Birds, Fishes, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... is kept concealed in the bed of some stream far away in the gloomy forest, and wherever that river may wander, or however brightly its waters may sparkle in the sunny glades, no mortal who values his life may cool his parching lips with its freshness, or bathe his aching limbs in its clear depths. Only for solemn festivals is the Juruparis brought out by night and blown outside the place of meeting, and it is restored to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... shower just before he had set out, and now, although rain had ceased, the sky remained blackly overcast and a curious, dull stillness was come. The air had a welcome freshness and the glistening pavements looked delightfully cool after the parching heat of the day. In the quiet square, no doubt, it was always restful in contrast with the more busy highroads, and in the murmur of distant traffic he found something very soothing. About him then ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... :—" I received from home," says he, "the sum of two hundred crowns for the expenses of myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our money went away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same time, died of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our laboratory, from which he seldom or never stirred, and which was scarcely less hot than the arsenal of Venice. His death was the more unfortunate for me, as my parents took the opportunity of reducing my allowance, and sending me only sufficient ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... walked by the side of his cornfields in the early year, and a cloud was over his face, for there had been no rain for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the cold east winds, and the young wheat had not been able ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... consisted of grits, bacon, syrup, corn bread and vegetables. On Sundays and holidays the meals varied to the extent that they were allowed to have biscuits which they called "cake bread." The slaves made coffee by parching corn meal, okra seed or Irish potatoes. When sufficiently parched any one of the above named would make a vile type of coffee. Syrup was used for all sweetening purposes. The produce from the gardens which the master allowed them could only be used for home consumption and under no circumstances ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... was pale, and there were twin mountains of great clouds in the northwest, hiding the sun, and in the southeast, whence the parching wind was blowing in fierce gusts. It blew the dry dust from the clods of earth on the grave, and the dust settled on the black clothes of the men ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of gradual heat in rendering clay fit for use in cookery and preferable to any previous makeshift. The modern Zuni name for a parching-pan, which is a shallow bowl of black-ware, is thle mon ne, the name for a basket-tray being thlae' lin ne. The latter name signifies a shallow vessel of twigs, or thla we; the former etymologically interpreted, although of earthenware, is a hemispherical vessel of the same kind ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... cemilhuique, compounded of tlanqua, to set the teeth, as with strong determination, and cemilhuitia, to run during a whole day. Sahagun, Historia, Lib. iii, cap. iii, and Lib. x, cap. xxix; compare also the myth of Tezcatlipoca disguised as an old woman parching corn, the odor of which instantly attracted the Toltecs, no matter how far off they were. When they came she killed them. Id. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... high, of the stalks some beare foure heads, some three, some one, and some two: euery head containing fiue, sixe, or seuen hundred graines, within a few more or lesse. Of these graines, besides bread, the inhabitants make victuall, either by parching them, or seething them whole vntill they be broken: or boiling the flowre with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... without his perceiving it:—so they continued to fire as directed, until they are either sent down to the cock-pit themselves, or have a momentary respite from their exertions, when, choked with smoke and gunpowder, they go aft to the scuttle-butt, to remove their parching thirst. So much for the lower and main deck. We will now ascend to the quarter-deck, where we shall find old Adams at the conn, and little ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... geuen this first amorous atteint, the Lord of Mendozza taking her by the arme, conducted her vnto his castell, deuising of pleasaunt matters. And he was greatlye astonned, to see so rare a beautie, as appeared in the Princesse: whiche neither the wearinesse of the waye, nor the parching beames of the Sunne, coulde in any wyse so appaire, but that there rested ynough, to drawe vnto her the very hartes of the moste colde and frosen men of the world. And albeit the Lorde of Mendozza tooke great pleasure and admiration ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... that trembling is not an effect of fear. Because trembling is occasioned by cold; thus we observe that a cold person trembles. Now fear does not seem to make one cold, but rather to cause a parching heat: a sign whereof is that those who fear are thirsty, especially if their fear be very great, as in the case of those who are being led to execution. Therefore fear ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching, And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching, Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year, Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear —As ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... middle. The sources of the river were said not to be far off. From hence they advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind, and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the fourth night renewed all our miseries. Weak, distracted, and destitute of every thing, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer wanted sustenance.—The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to urine and salt water, which only increased the wants; half a hogshead of vinegar indeed floated up, of which each had half a wine glass; it afforded a momentary relief, but soon left us again in the same state of dreadful thirst. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... beside him. "Lionel...Boy!" he cried. It was as if all that had befallen in the last five years had been wiped out of existence. His fierce relentless hatred of his half-brother, his burning sense of wrong, his parching thirst for vengeance, became on the instant all dead, buried, and forgotten. More, it was as if they had never been. Lionel in that moment was again the weak, comely, beloved brother whom he had cherished ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road. The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes. The locusts shrilled in the parching trees. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops. There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong. The moss that thatched the red banks was burned, and all the ferns were shrivelling up. Everywhere ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Pandavas (to a match of dice). Whither then had this virtue of thine gone? When many mighty car-warriors, encompassing the boy Abhimanyu in battle, slew him, whither had this virtue of thine then gone? If this virtue that thou now invokest was nowhere on those occasions, what is the use then of parching thy palate now, by uttering that word? Thou art now for the practice of virtue, O Suta, but thou shalt not escape with life. Like Nala who was defeated by Pushkara with the aid of dice but who regained his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... see the flowery race Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, When fever revels in their azure veins But one, the lofty follower of the sun, Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, Drooping all night, and when he warm return, Points her enamoured bosom ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a glass, returns, and, holding it to the sufferer's lips, supports his head while he drinks: "And did they let you lie here, my poor sir, racked with this parching thirst?" ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... August is the rainy season, which gradually passes into the dry; heavy fogs forming during the transition. These last till the end of September. Occasional showers, too, continue till November. Then the weather becomes really clear and dry, until, towards the end of January, the dry parching wind, called the Harmattan, sets in, with its over-stimulant action upon the human system, and clouds of penetrating impalpable sand. If this is not blowing, the atmosphere is loaded with moisture; and this it is, combined with the heat of an intertropical sun, and the effluvia engendered by the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... compassion and with fear, now gazed at her little hands, which became as white as paper, and bitterly reproached himself because, having lost so much time in the preparation and in drilling the negroes to shoot, he had exposed her to a journey in a season of the year so parching. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in Spain at present. The horses are remarkably good, and the roads (I assure you upon my honour, for you will hardly believe it) very far superior to the best English roads, without the smallest toll or turnpike. You will suppose this when I rode post to Seville, in four days, through this parching country in the midst of summer, without fatigue ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... at thy loved one's side, though hour by hour "The path runs on; though Summer's parching star "Burn all the fields, or blackest tempests lower, "Or monitory rainbows threaten far. "If he would hasten o'er the purple sea, "Thyself the helmsman or the oarsman be. "Endure, unmurmuring, each unwelcome toil, "Nor fear thy unaccustomed ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the stream."[95] It is sufficiently notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think invariably the inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... all was conspiring against it,—king, queen, court, ministers, authorities, foreign powers,—it threw itself headlong into the arms of its defenders. The most eloquent in its eyes was he who inspired it with most dread—it had a parching thirst for denunciations, and they were lavished on it with prodigal hand. It was thus that Barnave, the Lameths, then Danton, Marat, Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Petion, Robespierre, had acquired their authority over the people. These ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... their thanks repay, And in triumphant melody confess The titillating joy. Thus on the air Depend the hunter's hopes. When ruddy streaks At eve forebode a blustering stormy day, Or lowering clouds blacken the mountain's brow, When nipping frosts, and the keen biting blasts Of the dry parching east, menace the trees With tender blossoms teeming, kindly spare Thy sleeping pack, in their warm beds of straw 370 Low-sinking at their ease; listless they shrink Into some dark recess, nor hear thy voice Though oft invoked; or haply if thy call Rouse up the slumbering tribe, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... It strayed out in tattered yellowish streamers toward the English lines, half dissipating itself in twenty yards, until the steady outpour of the green smoke gave it reinforcement and it made headway. Then, creeping forward from tuft to tuft, and preceded by an acrid and parching whiff, the curling and tumbling vapor reached the English lines in a wall twenty ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwana. There stands my easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guerin, who said that his 'head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every passing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,' I feel that my brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... cozy warmth the more for this little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool, pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house which the labourers are pulling down, amid clouds of the white, blinding, parching dust of lime, on a sultry summer day. I can hardly think of any human position as worse, if not intended directly as a position of torture. I picture, too, a crowded wharf on a river in a great town, with ships lying alongside. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... prevail, And rest on the parching land, The cool sea breeze would I inhale, O'er the ocean breathing bland. A restless sprite, that likes delight, In calm and tempest found, 'Twere joy to me o'er the bonnie blue sea For ever and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... seen, indicating the presence of natives, nor even any appearance of trees; the whole country being covered with a thick bush or scrub. For the four winter months spent by Mitchell near the Darling, neither rain nor yet dew fell, and the winds from the west and north-west, hot and parching, seemed to blow over a region ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... opposite bank, and paid a visit to their friends, the Bernards, who lived a mile or two below them. The air was delightful, the country looked beautiful—fresher, perhaps, than at midsummer; for the heat was no longer parching, and the September showers had washed away the dust, and brought out the green grass again. Harry had become interested in the conversation, and was particularly agreeable; Miss Agnes was pleased with his remarks, and Elinor thought ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to have been recently shaven off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted unpleasantly with the dark tinge which he had gallantly wrought for on the glowing sands of Egypt, and the bronzing of his general features from fierce suns and parching winds. His bare neck and hands were delicately fair, the former firm and muscular, the latter slender and tapering, like a woman's. He was reading a gazette, or some printed paper, when we entered; and although there was a tolerable clatter of muskets, sabres, and spurs, he never once lifted ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... dawn, when leaving Mdaburu River, the solemn warning had been given that we were about entering Ugogo; and as we left Kaniyaga village, with trumpet-like blasts of the guide's horn, we filed into the depths of an expanse of rustling Indian corn. The ears were ripe enough for parching and roasting, and thus was one anxiety dispelled by its appearance; for generally, in early March, caravans suffer from famine, which overtakes ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... oppression, such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... semi-tropical. This they accounted for by its total immunity from cold, the density of the air at sea-level, and the warm moist breezes it received from the tepid ocean. The climate was about the same as that of the Riviera or of Florida in winter, and there was, of course, no parching summer. "This shows me," said Bearwarden, "that a country's climate depends less on the amount of heat it receives from the sun than on the amount it retains; proof of which we have in the tops of the Himalayas perpetually covered with snow, and snow-capped mountains ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... have been swearing at the east wind for parching your verdure, and are now weeping for the rain that drowns your hay. I have these calamities in common, and my constant and particular one,-people that come to see my house, which unfortunately is more in request than ever. Already ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... troop familiar, streaming through the air, From every quarter threaten man's estate, And danger in a thousand forms prepare! They drive impetuous from the frozen north, With fangs sharp-piercing, and keen arrowy tongues; From the ungenial east they issue forth, And prey, with parching breath, upon thy lungs; If, waft'd on the desert's flaming wing, They from the south heap fire upon the brain, Refreshment from the west at first they bring, Anon to drown thyself and field and plain. In wait ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... summer fired; For parching fields, for pining flowers, The spirits of the air desired The brook's bright life ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... strength of wine, and curds with pressed milk. Secretly, she added drugs to be concealed beneath this sweetness. We received the cups presented by her sacred right hand. Soon as, in our thirst, we quaffed them with parching mouth, and the ruthless Goddess, with her wand, touched the extremity of our hair (I am both ashamed, and {yet} I will tell of it), I began to grow rough with bristles, and no longer to be able to speak; and, instead of words, to utter a harsh ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an uproar,' said the exasperated Alda. 'I'm sure I thought Geraldine's had been taken long before, and in this parching weather fruit is quite a necessity ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... servant who carried his provisions. It is said that he never spoke harshly to this man, no matter what food he placed before him, but that he would often help him to do his work when he was at leisure from military duty. He drank only water when campaigning, except that when suffering from parching thirst he would ask for some vinegar, and sometimes when his strength fairly failed he would ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... awakened by a sense of a parching and suffocating heat. She started up with the idea of fire in her drowsy mind. But a glance at him revealed the real cause. His face was fiery red, and from his lips came rambling sentences, muttered, whispered, that indicated the delirium of a high fever. She had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not flote upon his watry bear Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of som melodious tear. Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may som gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn, And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Put! Put! developed into a steady throb, they resumed work. But if after a spasm or two, silence reigned again, Roger would pull his hat over his eyes and start for the ranch, and eventually that day, water would be given the parching fields. In the meantime, Dick began to prepare a second ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... desert, where I might gulp mephitic winds and drop dead; or in a moment be buried in tornados of burning sand! Would that my scull were grinning there, and blanching; rather than as it is consciously parching, scorched by ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... at last under way. He gave no thought to the heat of the oil-dripping pit in which he stood. He was oblivious of the perilous steel that whirred and throbbed about him. He was unconscious of the hot hand rails and the greasy foot-ways and the mingling odor of steam and parching lubricant and ammonia-gas from a leaking "beef engine." He quite forgot the fact that his dungaree jumper was wet with sweat, that his cap was already fouled with oil. All he knew was that he and Binhart ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... building that met her eye, was the old, dark-looking prison, in which was confined her husband. How gladly did her eyes greet its sombre walls! It was the dwelling-place of one, for whom, in all his wanderings, her heart retained its warm emotions of love. Suddenly, like a parching wind of the desert, came upon her the thought that he might be dead. For three long years she had not been permitted to receive tidings from him, and who could tell, if in that time, the wing of death ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... grateful dew that cools the upland air and moistens the bunch-grass that has been bleaching all day in the fierce rays of the summer sun, a little column of infantry is swinging steadily southward. Long and toilsome has been the march; hot, dusty, and parching the day. Halts have been few and far between, and every man, from the colonel down, is coated with a gray mask of powdered alkali, the contribution of a two hours' tramp through Deadman's Canon just before the sun went down. Now, however, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... suited the occasion perfectly. He did not encourage any attempt at gaiety. Oh dear, no! Far from it! I felt myself gradually freezing, and our conversation was of the most uninteresting character and dry almost to parching. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... walling out distant views. Spouts of water ran off the carriage top down the oil cloth apron which protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness. The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted, through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts in fluted sheaths, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... large Indian village Isaac saw unmistakable indications of war. There was a busy hum on all sides; the squaws were preparing large quantities of buffalo meat, cutting it in long, thin strips, and were parching corn in stone vessels. The braves were cleaning rifles, sharpening tomahawks, and mixing war paints. All these things Isaac knew to be preparations for long marches and for battle. That night he heard speech after speech in ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... lay by, make the drawings, and draw up the report, while Mr. Currie and Randolf do my work over again, all my marks having been effaced by his majesty the Fire King, and the clearing done to our hand. If I could only get rid of the intolerable parching and thirst, and the burning of my brains! I should not wonder if I were in for a touch ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for gentlemen who desired to step into a bar to inquire for letters. He would pursue the fleeting pig at the behest of a drover. He would carry water to the lions of a travelling menagerie, or do anything, for gain. He was sharp-witted too: before conveying a drop of comfort to the parching king of beasts, he would stipulate for six-pence instead of the usual free ticket—or "tasting order," so to speak. He cared not a ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... dreariness. It was amid this gloom of human agony, these heartrending scenes of real mourning, that the brilliant star shone to disperse the clouds which hovered over our drooping heads,—to dry the hot briny tears which were parching up our miserable vegetating existence—it was in this crisis that Marie Antoinette came, like a messenger sent down from Heaven, graciously to offer the balm of comfort in the sweetest language of human compassion. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the characteristics are the sighs and starting tears of memory and apprehension. It is an everlasting spring, in which the mighty but temperate Sun of Salvation is shining, and will not set; not parching but quickening all day long. "We exult." It is a happy life, not only with the happiness of a cheerful contentment, beautiful as that is; ours is the happiness of wondering discovery, and rich possession, and ever-opening prospects; it is "quick and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... have smil'd Had wine to Eden come? Would Horeb's parching wild Have been refreshed with rum And had Eve's hair Been dressed in gin Would she ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... I beg you will not prematurely magnify her into a woman. There are so few unaffected, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching August day. Keep her a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... hunger pain their souls, He bids their parching thirst be gone, And spreads the shadow of his wings To screen them ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... It is then that Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas, looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying the course of parching suns and desolating frosts, loves to luxuriate for a period in the broad and teeming bosom of her gigantic offspring. It is then that the forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of the howling hurricane of summer, and the paralysing and unfathomable snows of winter, cleave, tame and stirless ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... from the upper to the lower regions of the world. The next instant its blazing summit breaks into splinters on every side. Occasionally fearful hail-storms sweep over the plains; and at other times the air from the south comes heated, as from a furnace, drying up all moisture from the skin, and parching the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Baltic, and the utmost bounds 290 Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns: And lo! great Lebanon—abrupt and dark With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow Above the midland main, where hang the capes Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa, Beneath the parching sun, her long domain Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost Amid the torrid sands; and to the south Her stormy cape. Beyond the misty main 300 The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold Plata, through vaster territory poured; And Andes, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... mighty arm and stately pride Like a wild elephant in stride, As fair in face as that fair stone Dear to the moon, of moonbeams grown,(263) With noble gifts and grace that took The hearts of all, and chained each look, World-cheering as the Lord of Rain When floods relieve the parching plain. The father, as the son came nigh, Gazed with an ever-thirstier eye. Sumantra helped the prince alight From the good chariot passing bright, And as to meet his sire he went Followed behind him reverent. Then Rama clomb, the king to seek That terrace like Kailasa's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... twisting and tumbling, the pillow continually descending into the depths of infinity, but never getting any where—the bed rolling like a dismantled hulk upon a stormy sea—the room filled with steaming and hissing urns—a fearful thirst parching my throat, while myriads of horrid bearded Russians were torturing me with tumblers of boiling-hot tea dashed with vodka—thus I lay a perfect victim of tea. I could even see Chinamen with long queues picking tea-leaves off endless varieties of shrubs that grew upon ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the midst of an arid, sandy desert. The sun's rays seemed to pelt down with blistering intensity on my uncovered head. There was not a single tree, nor a scrap of foliage anywhere in sight, to afford a moment's shelter:—all was barrenness; parching heat; death! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and to facilitate the physical degradation both of new countries and of old. If the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... portable and simple preparation of subsistence that I know of, and which is used extensively by the Mexicans and Indians, is called "cold flour." It is made by parching corn, and pounding it in a mortar to the consistency of coarse meal; a little sugar and cinnamon added makes it quite palatable. When the traveler becomes hungry or thirsty, a little of the flour is mixed with water ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... intensely thirsty, and he looks to his feet with coveting eyes; but his good sense and firm resolutions are not to be overcome so easily, and he withdraws the open hand that was to grasp the delicious morsel and convey it into his parching mouth. He has several miles of a journey to accomplish, and his thirst is every moment increasing; he is perspiring profusely, and feels quite hot and oppressed. At length his good resolutions stagger, and he partakes of the smallest particle, which produces a most exhilarating ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... alluvial plains through which the Ganges flows. Trees were scarcely discernible, and so dry was the wind that drops of water vanished like magic. Neither ferns, mosses, nor lichens grow along the banks of the Ganges, they cannot survive the transition from parching like this to the three months' floods at midsummer, when the country ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... flint and burning, parching Death at the throat, with gall to taste. Rank on rank are the footmen marching, Wave on wave do ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... unhappy fellow-creatures." Torments, however, were always inflicted in these cases. The punishment was gibbeting alive, and exposing the delinquents to perish by the gradual effects of hunger, thirst, and parching sun; in which situation they were known to suffer for nine days, with a fortitude scarcely credible, never uttering a single groan. But horrible as the excesses might have been, which occasioned these punishments, it must be remembered, that they were committed by ignorant savages, who had ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... that long parching afternoon they had toiled on, with the draught cattle growing more listless, the horses sluggish and restless; and a general feeling of weariness seemed to ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... generally of a class suited to resist the droughts, having hard, coriaceous leaves. Such is the shrubbery described in a former chapter, which, exempt from severe frosts on the one hand, and thriving in an arid soil and parching heat on the other, clothes half the surface of the island with perpetual verdure. There have been seasons when even these shrubs were so burnt up that the slightest accident might have caused a wide-spread conflagration. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... have their whacking fill of prairie hen and suckling pig and barbecued shote, and sure-enough beefsteak, and goobers hot from the parching box; and scrapple, and yams roasted in hot wood-ashes; and hotbiscuit and waffles and Parker house rolls—and the thousand and one other good things that may be found in this our country, and which are distinctively and uniquely ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... boredom, the harsh constriction of warm bodies full of gestures and attitudes and aspirations into moulds, like the moulds toy soldiers are cast in. The phrase became someone shouting raucously in his ears: "Arbeit und Rhythmus,"—drowning everything else, beating his mind hard again, parching it. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... had risen, that icy wind that cracks the rocks and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts, which were more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard." And then he waited again. Everything was silent ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... twelfth of August.... It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears—a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the stems are generally close to the heating apparatus, it is advisable to bind them up with moss or haybands, neatly clipped, as far as the parching heat extends. The moss or haybands being damped morning and evening with the syringe, will keep the bark and stems in a healthy state, and will frequently induce a mass of roots to be produced there. That by watering occasionally with liquid manure will contribute to sustain the vigour ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... and cast him down: and there he sat all alone, astonished and confounded, like Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, when she sat alone upon the parching rock. Like Rizpah, he watched the dead corpses of all his hopes and plans, all for which he had lived, and which made life worth having, withering away there by his side. But it was told David what Rizpah, the daughter ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... unhealthy season. Bencoolen is an exception to this rule, being unhealthy all the year through. Even vegetation suffers here from the south-east monsoon; and a nutmeg-plantation exposed to its dry, parching influence, has the appearance of a plantation of heather-brooms more than of any thing else.[9] The natives do not appear to suffer from the climate, but seem to be as healthy and long-lived as Asiatics generally. Of the character of ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... in terror. Herhor was pale; the tablets fell from Pentuer's fingers; Mefres held the amulet hanging on his breast, and prayed while his lips were parching. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... sun is glowing as a brand; And faint before the parching heat, The strength forsakes the feeble feet: "Thou hast saved me from the robbers' hand, Through wild floods given the blessed land; And shall the weak limbs fail me now? And he!—Divine one, nerve ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Then, like raging hounds, they rushed to search for a spring; for besides their suffering and anguish, a parching thirst lay upon them, and not in vain did they wander; but they came to the sacred plain where Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over the golden apples in the garden of Atlas; and all ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... while in the distance, far down upon the horizon, he could see a clump of mountains, towards which he made his way, toiling on day after day, week after week, as it seemed to him, and the range seemed to be always receding with tantalising regularity, while he was parching with thirst and the tops ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... tropical country, or the blessings of a cool, pure draught. I have been in districts of Ceylon where for sixteen or twenty miles not a drop of water is to be obtained fit for an animal to drink; not a tree to throw a few yards of shade upon the parching ground; nothing but stunted, thorny jungles and sandy, barren plains as far as the eye can reach; the yellow leaves crisp upon the withered branches, the wild fruits hardened for want of sap, all moisture robbed from vegetation by the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... picture. The imperishable marble glows white in the sunlight as it did in the days of Shah Jehan. The great red bastions of the Fort frown over the same placid Jumna, and watch each morning the pearly dome of the Taj Mahal rise like a moon in the dawn-glow, shimmer through the parching glare of an Indian day, and at eve sink, rosy, into the purple shadows of swiftly-falling night, as they did when Shah Jehan sat "in the sunset-lighted balcony with his eyes fixed on the snow-white pile at the bend of the river, and his heart ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... through limbs and veins, For eating. And the moist no less departs Into all regions that demand the moist; And many heaped-up particles of hot, Which cause such burnings in these bellies of ours, The liquid on arriving dissipates And quenches like a fire, that parching heat No longer now can scorch the frame. And so, Thou seest how panting thirst is washed away From off our body, how the hunger-pang It, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... either annihilates or suspends the former impulse; the second motive becomes stronger than the preceding; that is, the fear of death, or the desire of preserving himself, necessarily prevails over the painful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink. But, (it will be said) if the thirst is very parching, an inconsiderate man, without regarding the danger, will risque swallowing the water. Nothing is gained by this remark: in this case, the anterior impulse only regains the ascendency; he is persuaded, that life may possibly be longer preserved, or that he shall derive a greater good ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the bowl, benumb His aching sense With medicined sleep."—O awful in Thy woe! The parching thirst of death Is ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... gardens, with orchards of fig, and apple, and pear, and pomegranate, and olive. Drought hurts them not, nor frost, and harvest comes after harvest without ceasing. Also there was a vineyard; and some of the grapes were parching in the sun, and some were being gathered, and some again were but just turning red. And there were beds of all manner of flowers; and in the midst of all were two fountains which ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... obtained with so much difficulty, nothing surely ought to be wasted; yet their method of clearing their oats from the husk is by parching them in the straw. Thus with the genuine improvidence of savages, they destroy that fodder for want of which their cattle may perish. From this practice they have two petty conveniences. They dry the grain so that ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of the rainy season is delightful. The doors are thrown open, and the dry, parching wind gives place to a refreshing coolness. When the rain ceases, the heat returns; the weather is very muggy, the skin is irritated by the excessive perspiration, and many suffer more than during the hot season. When ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... thousands of sheep and cattle that never knew the shelter of fold or stable, nor the taste of man-grown grain or fodder, from the day of their birth to the day of their marketing. Winter and summer alike, under the parching sun, under the strangling drifts, that clinging, gray vegetation ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Sultry, parching, enervating, sure precursor, if she had thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness of her questionings, of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... including Yucca among these articles; but when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to decorate touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in the parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel that the bloom stems might as well be used for food as to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... me, and many more my countrymen. Oh! could my words portray him what he is; Bring to your mind the blessings of his deeds, While thro' the fever-heated, loathsome holds, Of floating hulks, dungeons obscene, where ne'er The dewy breeze of morn, or evening's coolness, Breath'd on our parching skins, he pass'd along, Diffusing blessings; still his power exerting, To alleviate the woes which ruthless war, Perhaps, thro' dire necessity, heap'd on us; Surely, the scene would move you to forget His late intent—(tho' only serving then, As duty prompted)—and turn the rigour Of ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... of miles where no other tree is found,—it will have to be replaced very frequently; for it decays rapidly, and has a fancy for twisting itself into all manner of ungainly shapes when cut and exposed to the sun and parching ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and Lanty is decidedly at this time the most important personage on the ground. He is stooping over the fire, with a small but long-handled frying-pan, in which he is parching the coffee. It is already browned, and Lanty stirs it about with an iron spoon. The crane carries the large coffee-kettle of sheet iron, full of water upon the boil; and a second frying-pan, larger than the first, is filled with sliced ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... and swift, as it could not help being with such a mass of combustibles,—loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour. And ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Meanwhile, in the manifest pleasure her singing gave at Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she recovered her equanimity, being disposed to think approval more trustworthy than objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons who have a parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... attendant on a love of flowers—that sort of love which leads us into the woods for the earliest primrose, or to the river side for the latest forget-me-not, and carries us to the parching heath or the watery mere to procure for the cultivated, or, if I may use the expression, the tame beauties of the parterre, the soil that they love; amongst the many gratifications which such pursuits bring with them, such as ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... me; and, indeed, the prospect was anything but inviting. On both sides of the creek the soil showed evidences of the severity of the past drought. Great gaping fissures—usun cracks we called them—traversed and zig-zagged the hot, parching ground, on which not a blade of grass was to be seen. Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were oases of green—thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter months; but underneath them lay the shrivelled carcasses ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... 'em for Irish—and thinking that, they did make bloody work with the poor ladies at Naseby. But the dame there will be safe enough," he added, as she was already on the move down hill. "Has no one a keg of cider to give her? I know what 'tis to lie parching ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he aspired to make the best of himself; to make this hillside yield its purple banners from the secret storehouses within. So he had struggled with soil and season, with suns that scorched and winds that chilled, with parching days that opened the earth in great crevices, and with torrents that made the paths between the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... living thing exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead—about whose borders nothing grows but weeds and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing one finds only a squalid camp of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of the ground with his foot in passing, and a crop of beans was planted, grown and gathered therefrom, without as much rain as will usually fall in a shower of fifteen minutes' duration, while vegetation on the next field was parching for lack ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Universe and the source of the food supply. Her son, the corn god, became, as the Egyptians put it, "Husband of his Mother". Each year he was born anew and rapidly attained to manhood; then he was slain by a fierce rival who symbolized the season of pestilence-bringing and parching sun heat, or the rainy season, or wild beasts of prey. Or it might be that he was slain by his son, as Cronos was by Zeus and Dyaus by Indra. The new year slew the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... No more shall flowers the meads adorn, Nor sweetness deck the rosy thorn, Nor swelling buds proclaim the spring, Nor parching heats the dog-star bring, Nor laughing lilies paint the grove, When blue-eyed Ann I ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the man cleared his throat. It was parching, and he felt that words were impossible. What trick was this Peter had played on him? He longed to flee, yet in the face of all that crowd he could not. He knew he must smile, and with all the power of his body he set himself ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the middle of May, and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... and melancholy desert. It hardly ever rains in Chaldaea.[18] There are a few showers at the changes of the season, and, in winter, a few days of heavy rain. During the summer, for long months together, the sky remains inexorably blue while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the sea, and is, therefore, in many ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... presence of the chief priests and scribes, as they were congratulating themselves on the success of their plot. There was despair on his face, a piercing note in his voice, anguish in his soul; the flames of hell were already consuming him, the thirst of the bottomless pit already parching his lips; his hand convulsively clutched the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... water, except at the half-way station, Moorahd (from moorra, bitter); this, although salt and bitter, is relished by camels. During the hot season in which we unfortunately travelled, the heat was intense, the thermometer ranging from 106 degrees to 114 degrees Fahr. in the shade. The parching blast of the simoom was of such exhausting power, that the water rapidly evaporated from the closed water-skins. It was, therefore, necessary to save the supply by a forced march of seven days, in which period we were to accomplish ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the winds are low, and when the tides are still, And the round moon rises inland over the naked hill, And o'er her parching seams the dry cloud-shadows pass, And dry along the land-rim lie the shadows of thin grass, Then aches her soul with longing to launch and sink away Where the fine silts lift and settle, and sea-things drift and stray, To make the port of Last Desire, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Diemen's Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name Which honors all who bear it, and the power Of making words obedient. This is much; But overshadowing all is still the curse, That never shall I be fulfilled by love! Along the parching highroad of the world No other soul shall bear mine company. Always shall I be teased with semblances, With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy Flings a kaleidoscope, which ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... had he gone a score of steps before he saw a star reflected in a spring at his feet. Timokles dropped upon his knees, and with thankfulness drank of the refreshing water. How he had longed for some, as he had lain on the roof under the parching sun this day! He bathed his scratched arm, which had ceased to bleed ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... 'Parching summer hath no warrant To consume this crystal well; Rains, that make each brook a torrent, Neither sully ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... on so barren a ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head akes at the bare thought of letter writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering [? shrivelling] up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposit'n to write it is has stopt my Elias, but you will see a futile Effort in the next No., "wrung from ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... exclaimed, "she drives me mad, and I believe she would look on, if I was parching with thirst in the torments of hell, and not give me a single ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... thou'rt far away, Wilt thou not cast a wish behind? Say, canst thou face the parching ray, Nor shrink before the wintry wind? O! can that soft and gentle mien Extremes of hardship learn to bear, Nor, sad, regret each courtly scene Where thou ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... fatiguing, amongst sand hills under a noonday sun. We fully appreciated the luxury of a swim, and especially as we were lucky enough to find a hole of fresh water on the edge of the lake, to slake our parching thirst. Ducks, teal, and pigeons were numerous, and the recent traces of natives apparent everywhere. It was after sunset when we returned, tired and weary, to ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... flood shall be dearth, And the rain no longer shall fall On the parching fields; and a pall, As of ashes, shall cover the earth; And dust-clouds shall darken the sky; And the deep water ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... And the feel of the sun-warmed moss; And each cardoon, like a full moon, Fairy-spun of the thistle floss; And the beech grove, and a wood dove, And the trail where the shepherds pass; And the lark's song, and the wind-song, And the scent of the parching grass! ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... far excell'd;— Itself surpassing far the age of brass. The ancient durance of perpetual spring He shorten'd, and in seasons four the year Divided:—Winter, summer, lessen'd spring, And various temper'd autumn first were known. Then first the air with parching fervor dry, Glow'd hot;—then ice congeal'd by piercing winds Hung pendent;—houses then first shelter'd man; Houses by caverns form'd, with thick shrubs fenc'd, And boughs entwin'd with osiers. Then the grain Of Ceres ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... bag, and as I went away with a pocket full of corn the mule looked at me with tears in its eyes, but I couldn't be moved by no mule tears, with hunger gnawing at my vitals, so I hurried away like a guilty thing. While I was parching the corn stolen from the mule, in a half of a tin canteen, over the fire, the chaplain came along and wanted to sample it. He was pretty hungry, but I wasn't running a free boarding house for chaplains any more, and I told him he must go forage for ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... and when weary of overwrought temples and tombs, when arid plains and malodorous towns lose their power to interest, they journey north to Rajputana to revel in Jeypore, the unique—at least, lovers of Kipling do. And the effect on jaded senses is like a cooling draught after a parching thirst. Kipling called Jeypore "A pink city, to see and puzzle over," It surely is pink, all of it that is not sky-blue, and for various reasons it is more satisfying than ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... that at first. After a while you begin to think of how delightful it is, and what a change from pacing over the burning sand in the daylight with the sun making the air quiver and glow like a furnace, and your mouth turn dry and lips crack with the parching you have ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Good. Breit,(Ger.) - Broad. Bring it down to dots - Reduce it to figures. Brisner - Prisoner. Broosh-pinder - Brushbinder,(Ger. Buerstenbinder.) - Brushmaker. The brushmakers are supposed, probably on account of their throat-parching business, to be always thirsty. Brummed - growled - (Ger. Brummen). Brücke,(Ger.) - Bridge. Bugs - In America all insects, especially Coleoptera. Bummer,(Amer.) - A fellow haunting low taverns; applied ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... however, that not only the glow of autumn and the flush of summer are beautiful, but that every season, every climate, every aspect in the shifting panorama of Nature, has a beauty as real. Our own region, be it arid with parching suns, or wet with frequent rains; be it always winter there, or always summer, is full of beauty. There is sunset on the desert, moonrise on mid-ocean, gorgeous coloring and crowding life in the tropics, dazzling starlight ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... dregs in her cup, she was not satisfied, and bade her drink those, even with tears in her eyes. Maggie drank them as she bade her, and then the bright one vanished, leaving the child quite well and vigorous. The weariness vanished from her frame, the parching thirst from her mouth, and, what was yet more amazing, she found the little Dove quite well, and she stood with it in her arms before the two ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... foster'd at his daughter's breast! O! filial piety!—The milk design'd For her own offspring, on the parent's lip Allays the parching fever. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... march of some days we came to an opening between the mountains, the only passage out of Dancali into Abyssinia. Heaven seems to have made this place on purpose for the repose of weary travellers, who here exchange the tortures of parching thirst, burning sands, and a sultry climate, for the pleasures of shady trees, the refreshment of a clear stream, and the luxury of a cooling breeze. We arrived at this happy place about noon, and the next day at evening left those fanning winds, and woods flourishing with unfading verdure, ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... had risen, that icy wind which cracks the rocks, and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights. It came in sudden gusts, more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" Then he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook with terror, and with a bound he was inside the inn. He shut ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... cry of horror straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... boiling, and the "cook" sat listening to the cheerful sounds that issued from the pot—now and then taking off the lid to examine its savoury contents, and give them a stir. He would then direct his attention to the tea-leaves that were parching in the frying-pan; and, having shifted them a little, felt himself at liberty to look about for a ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the warmth of the sun drying his skin while the sea hummed in his ears; he felt distinctly the sharp pain between his eyes, and a parching thirst. He groped around in a delirious search for water, which he did not find; he pressed his head and limbs against the earth in an exquisite relief from pain; and at last his bruised feet, his aching bones and head constrained him to a lethargy ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... that ever living world which we sometimes call the field of human life in its perpetual summer. It is run through by many different laws; governed by many distinct forces, each of which strives to control it wholly—but never does. Selfishness blows on it like a parching sirocco, and all things seem to bow to the might of selfishness. Generosity moves across the expanse, and all things are seen responsive to what is generous. Place yourself where life is lowest and everything like an avalanche is rushing to the bottom. Place yourself ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... and had rather an unpleasant ride of twenty- five miles, against a very high N.W. wind. This wind is very hot, very parching, and very violent; it blew the dust into our eyes so that we could hardly keep them open. Towards evening, however, it somewhat moderated, as it generally does. There was nothing of interest on the track, save a dry river-bed, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... music like a river rolls Among the mountains, and thy song is fed By living springs far up the watershed; No whirling flood nor parching drought controls The crystal current; even on the shoals It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed Darkens below mysterious cliffs of dread, Thy voice of peace grows deeper ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... the summer before, and had served no further use than the grazing of some picketed cows. Then, one parching July day it had been cut, to kill the thistles and pigweed that overran it, and in the following May had been plowed, dragged, and sown to wild timothy. The few mounds dotting it had been turned under with the belief that, between the fallow and the new plowing, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways Thy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... made several unavailing attempts to ford the creek with infantry,—their entire right and centre, marched out the Charles City Road, and gave impetuous battle at New Market. The accounts and the results indicate that the Federals won the day at New Market, sheerly by good fighting. They were parching with thirst, weak with hunger, and it might have been supposed that reverses had broken their spirit. On the contrary they did not fall back a rod, during the whole day, and at evening Heintzelman's corps crowned their ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... sample—that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts—the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... kindness which fell like dew upon the parching misery of the day, Annie burst into tears. Mr Cowie was greatly distressed. He drew her between his knees, laid his cheek against hers, as was his way with children, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... infant colony, of which we are especially speaking, has already been peopled! The majestic rusa, captured in the sultry forests of Bengal, and the elegant gazelle, which has once bounded over the parching deserts of Barbary, have become intimate and make their couch with the white reindeer, brought from the icy wastes of Lapland. The misshapen but harmless kangaroo of New Holland is a fellow-lodger with the ferocious gnu of Southern Africa; and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... them trailed the ashen country roads over which farmers were crawling with their covered wagons; but, while Cyrus watched from his height, there was as little thought in his mind for the men who drove those wagons through the parching dust as for the beasts that drew them. It is possible even that he did not see them, for just as Mrs. Pendleton's vision eliminated the sight of suffering because her heart was too tender to bear it, so he overlooked all facts except those which were ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering of his heart, and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... sky into a sort of inverted funnel, and lay in blinding pools upon the scattered slabs of rock. Within the hollow, every cup of the innumerable flowers which tapestried the cliffs seemed a mouth breathing heat. He became possessed with a parching thirst, and he felt his tongue heavy and fibrous like a dried fig. There was, however, one obstacle which prevented him from acting upon his impulse, and that obstacle was his sense of shame. It was not so much that he thought it cowardly ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... autumn was in the air, and a fine, misty rain drifted in at his windows as he sat at his breakfast. He took deep breaths of the moisture, and it seemed to water and revive his parching soul. He found himself, to his surprise, surveying with equanimity the pile of books in the corner which had led him to the conviction of the emptiness of the universe—but the universe was no longer empty! It was cruel, but a warring force was at work in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and foggy winter air, and serious derangements of the respiratory organs are the natural consequence. If, moreover, this pernicious habit of breathing be once contracted, we shall soon also sleep with open mouths, thus parching our throats, and sowing the seeds of many a ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... consequently grew worse to bear, the parching and scorching of each day being carried over into the next. What the newspapers call a heat-wave was drawing to its culmination, which generally reaches the verge of the unbearable, even to the well and strong, just before ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... I loved, loved madly, and all my heart was wounded, woe is me, and my beauty began to wane. No more heed took I of that show, and how I came home I know not; but some parching fever utterly overthrew me, and I lay a-bed ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... lines. He can translate the 500 or 1,000 feet of snow-slope into a more tangible unit of measurement. To him, perhaps, they recall the memory of a toilsome ascent, the sun beating on his head for five or six hours, the snow returning the glare with still more parching effect; a stalwart guide toiling all the weary time, cutting steps in hard blue ice, the fragments hissing and spinning down the long straight grooves in the frozen snow till they lost themselves in the yawning chasm below; and step after step ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.) |
