"Reft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length. I knew Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth, White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth, God, immortal and dead! Therefore I go; never to rest, or win Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. Accordingly, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, looking in the face all the threatened evils to property, held that nothing but absolute law could trench on personal freedom. He used on the occasion a Latin expression, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... now to my matter retourne agayn And tu begyn new where I left. whan al the goddis had done her besy payne. The way to contryue how it shuld be reft Of his lyf Attropos had no cause eft To co{m}pleyn than Phebus stert vpon her fete / And sayd I pray you let me speke ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... foremost of ages called the Kirta is said to set in" (ibid., p. 228). "The King must be skilful in smiting" (ibid., p. 174). "Fierceness and ambition are the qualities of the King" (ibid., p. 59). "The King who is mild is regarded as the worst of his kind, like an elephant that is reft of fierceness" (ibid., p. 171). Indeed, failure to treat subjects with rigour is visited with penalties as tremendous as failure to protect them. "They forget their own position and most truly transcend it. They disclose the secret counsels of their master; without the least anxiety they set ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... to your skies. 'Gainst wind and wave we pile our stone and mold. Powered of genius, panoplied of gold, We build the bastions of our high emprise. But yet, but let the plunging torrent rise, The winds awake on glutted rivers rolled— We die as the reft robin fledgeling dies— We perish as the beast in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... Mrs. Beaufort, then! Well, you can understand me. I want my brother. He has been basely reft from me. Tell me where he is, and I will forgive all. Restore him to me, and I will bless you and yours." And Philip fell on his knees and grasped the train of her gown. "I know nothing of your brother, Mr. Morton," cried Mrs. Beaufort, surprised and alarmed. "Arthur, whom we expect ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... across the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!" To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!" And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... have been whole save by the blood of this Black Knight. And for this carried they off the body piecemeal and the head, for that they well knew you were wounded; and of the head shall I have right sore need, for thereby shall a castle be yielded up to me that was reft from me by treason, so I may find the knight that I go seek, through whom it ought to be yielded up ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... such the monarch whose reft hand made discord ring Like a clarion through the country that had gladly hailed him king. Darkly, like the tempest, rode he on the avenger's wing! And when midnight drew her curtain round the land, that hour In her blood-stained chamber did he stand with fearful power, And renew ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... slowly raise she up, And slowly, slowly left him, And sighing said, she could not stay, Since death of life had reft him. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... Even the Gods divine! What is the blood Of mighty Uranus—what all the flood Of nectar and ambrosia—what the throne Of high Olympus—what the power I own, The golden sceptre of the starry skies— What the omnipotence that never dies, What might eternal, immortality— What e'en a god, oh love, if reft of thee? The shepherd who, beside the murmuring brooks, Leans on his true love's breast, nor cares to look After his straying lambs, in that sweet hour Envies me not my thunderbolt of power! She comes—she hastens nigh! Pearl ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in this same moment he Is as softly moved—"no rose Would he pluck before the storm Reft it ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... out so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark object—the form ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... they and suppliant, whose own hands their very bosoms bruised, While fixed, averse, the Goddess kept her eyes upon the ground. Thrice had Achilles Hector dragged the walls of Troy around, And o'er his body, reft of soul, was chaffering now for gold. Deep groaned AEneas from his heart in such wise to behold The car, the spoils, the very corpse of him, his fellow dead, To see the hands of Priam there all weaponless outspread. Yea, thrust amidst Achaean lords, his very self he knew; ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... cried William at that, seeing himself reft of his arms. "It were great villainy to do ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... a pretty wooden villa which looked down upon a deep inlet. He knew the mountain valleys of the Cumberland, and had wandered, sometimes footsore and hungry, under the giant ramparts of the Selkirks and the Rockies, but he had never seen a fairer spot than the reft in the hills which sheltered Savine's villa, and was known by its Indian name, "The Place of ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... treatment, and moreover they were sure to be rewarded by the tender caresses of living mothers when the season of refreshment and repose arrived; but she alas! was friendless and alone, an orphan girl, reft of father, mother, kindred and friends. One Father, one Friend, poor Catharine, thou hadst, even He—the Father of ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... love—that love was mine, 1110 And shown by many a bitter sign. 'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh, I knew but to obtain or die. I die—but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed. Shall I the doom I sought upbraid? No—reft of all, yet undismayed[eg] But for the thought of Leila slain, Give me the pleasure with the pain, So would I live and love again. 1120 I grieve, but not, my holy Guide! For him who dies, but her who died: She sleeps beneath the wandering wave— Ah! had ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... verses, weep!—ye rhymes, your woes renew! For Cino, master of the love-fraught lay, E'en now is from our fond embraces torn! Pistoia, weep, and all your thankless crew! Your sweetest inmate now is reft away— But, heaven, rejoice, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the names of all that press Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight Nigh reft ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... parts: men therefore deem That equal number gods do not esteem, Being authors of sweet peace and unity, But pleasing to th' infernal empery, Under whose ensigns Wars and Discords fight, Since an even number you may disunite In two parts equal, naught in middle left To reunite each part from other reft; And five they hold in most especial prize, Since 'tis the first odd number that doth rise From the two foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of number. Next, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... romance has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and grown rusty at climbing" has clothed himself so long that as he beholds himself in the delusive mirrors he has for centuries held up to nature he believes he is somehow of cosmic importance. Poor and naked ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... his good Queen, the Flemish Philippa. In a line with them is their handsome, unfortunate grandson Richard II., whose picture hangs beside the altar. Here also is the Coronation Chair, which encloses the Stone of Scone, and upon this "Seat of Majesty," ever since the time of Edward I., who reft the ancient stone from the Scots, all our Sovereigns have been seated at the moment of their coronation. On the west of the royal chapel a screen depicts the legends of the Confessor's life; on the east is the mutilated tomb of Henry V., the victor of Agincourt; ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... others, driven wild by the blows, returned them with their hunting-crops and walking-canes. And then, as half the crowd strained to the left and half to the right to avoid the pressure from behind, the vast mass was suddenly reft in twain, and through the gap surged the rough fellows from behind, all armed with loaded sticks and yelling for "Fair play and Gloucester!" Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, the inner ropes snapped like ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Scotland, and in Edinburgh principallie, thought that thei could do no wrong to no Scottishe man; for a certane French man delivred a coulvering to George Tod, Scottisman, to be stocked, who bringing it throwght the streat, ane other French man clamed it, and wold have reft it from the said George; but he resisted, alledgeing that the Frenche man did wronge. And so begane parties to assemble, asweall to the Scottishman, as to the French; so that two of the French men war stryckin doune, and the rest chassed from ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... open-mouthed have reft the face Of brightly gleaming ice, that upward led. Their clear green depths a gap impassable present Across the glacier slope ahead; Save on yon steep and scintillating slope Which promises ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... arms aloft, in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive, headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Crown. In seizing on the control of the Church through his organized prelacy James held himself to have seized the control of the forces which acted through the Church, and to have won back that mastery of his realm which the Reformation had reft from the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the crow he started, like one mad, And tore out every feather that he had, And made him black, and reft him of his stores Of song and speech, and flung him out of doors Unto the devil; whence never come he back, Say I. Amen. And hence all ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... allas! What subtiltee. What newe lust, what beautee, what science, 1255 What wratthe of iuste cause have ye to me? What gilt of me, what fel experience Hath fro me raft, allas! Thyn advertence? O trust, O feyth, O depe aseuraunce, Who hath me reft Criseyde, al my ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... blotted from Life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,[gf] And with the ills of Eld ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reft of all, faint, feeble, prest with age, We mark her feelings in the last great stage; The feverish hopes, the fears, the cares of life, No more oppress her with torturing strife; The chivalrous spirit of her early day Has passed with beauty and with youth ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... word he spake, even in free speech; Patient and lordly; generous to bestow Beyond all givers; scorning to be base, Yea, even in secret—such Nishadha was. Alas! when, day and night, I think of him, How is my heart consumed, reft of its joy!" So meditating, like one torn by thoughts, She mounted to the palace-roof to see; And thence, in the mid-court, the car beheld Arriving. Rituparna and Vahuka She saw, with Vrishni's son, descend and loose The panting horses, wheeling back the car. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... doings are the doings of Kings and not merchants' doings. Wherefore, Allah upon thee, do thou acquaint me with this, that I may know thy rank and condition." And he went on to test him with questions and cajole him, till Ma'aruf, being reft of reason, said to him, "I'm neither merchant nor King," and told him his whole story from first to last. Then said the Wazir, "I conjure thee by Allah, O my lord Ma'aruf, show us the ring, that we may see its make." So, in his drunkenness, he pulled off ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... steel and iron in the grey clouds rang about; But how to tell of King Volsung, and the valour of his folk! Three times the wood of battle before their edges broke; And the shield-wall, sorely dwindled and reft of the ruddy gold, Against the drift of the war-blast for the fourth time yet did hold. But men's shields were waxen heavy with the weight of shafts they bore, And the fifth time many a champion cast earthward Odin's door And gripped the sword two-handed; and in sheaves the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... mother dead! Her one true guide and friend! Her heart seemed reft in twain. Would she had died! A year at least it meant ere yet again, She needs must list to suits to be denied. O death, or Harold, come and let ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The rock was sheer—the pool deep—yet still he hurried on. He reached the muddy embankment; mounted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thou art God I do not fear,— Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had gone forth—that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion of an accursed race there ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... honour of France is lost." Hotly Sir Olivier's anger stirs; He pricked his steed with golden spurs, Fairly dealt him a baron's blow, And hurled him dead from the saddle-bow. Buckler and mail were reft and rent, And the pennon's flaps to his heart's blood went. He saw the miscreant stretched on earth: "Caitiff, thy threats are of little worth. On, Franks! the felons before us fall; Montjoie!" 'Tis ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... belief in its moral superiority, even with many whose loyalty to the British cause never wavered during the Great War and who still pride themselves on India's share in its final victory, when they see how the world of Western civilisation has been reft asunder by four years of frightful conflict which drenched all Europe with blood and left half of it at least plunged in black ruin. We have preached to Indians, not untruly, but with an insistence that seems to them now more than ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... has been shedding a glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone; equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought into the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... went footing slow, His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, 110 (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How well could I have spar'd for thee, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk 'gainst two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline stamped it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its winsome roundness, and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this hour the breath went out; was't that I loved? 'Twas this I clasped and kissed. What is it that we've christened love, that glamours ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... purpose, "varium et mutabile semper foemina." Passion on the other hand is the mainspring of modern poetry, and it is difficult for us to realize the superior beauty of the calmer and vaster ideal of the poets of old. The figure of Dido, whirled hither and thither by the storms of warring emotions, reft even of her queenly dignity by the despair of her love, degraded by jealousy and disappointment to a very scold, is to the calm, serene figure of AEneas as modern sculpture, the sculpture of emotion, is to the sculpture of classic art. Each, no doubt, has its own ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... on the lads an' the land I hae left, An' how love has been lifted, an' friendship been reft; How the hinnie o' hope has been jumbled wi' ga', Then I sigh for the lads an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the church which the old houses knew has gone. They pulled it down in the forties—that unhappy decade for anything ancient and quiet in Surrey villages; all they left was the tower, a mighty mass of stone and ivy that stands with its nave reft from it, the forlornest and most meaningless of ruins. If the tower might stand, why not the nave? They pulled the nave down, and left the tower standing, so Mr. C.J. Swete, one of Epsom's historians, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... thousand men had to Asturias march'd Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge His quarrel, twice that number left their bones, Slain in unnatural battle, on the field Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths By righteous Heaven was reft." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the impending struggle, he became aware that the President was giving in greater detail an account of the afternoon's proceedings. But he listened only for the opening of the door. From that instant war should be declared, ruthless war on each and every person present who had reft him of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... since thou dost not salute this foremost one of the Vrishni's race? O son, repairing to thy sire tell him these words of mine, viz.,—it is difficult for living creatures to die before their time comes, since though reft of thee, my husband, and now deprived of my child also, I am yet alive when I should die, unendued as I am with everything auspicious and everything possessed of value.—O mighty-armed one, with the permission of king Yudhishthira the just I shall swallow ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Can you behold this fact, this bloody fact, And shower not fire upon the murderer? Ah, peerless Lingua! mistress of heavenly words, Sweet tongue of eloquence, the life of fame, Heart's dear enchantress! What disaster, fates, Hath reft this jewel from our commonwealth? Gustus, the ruby that adorns the ring, Lo, here defect, how shalt thou lead thy days, Wanting the sweet companion of thy life, But in dark sorrow and dull melancholy? But stay, who's this? inhuman wretch! Bloodthirsty miscreant! is this thy handiwork? To kill ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... regretful tears, From the fond recollections of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... shall be to thee a token Of a fond heart reft and broken; And the month of joy and gladness Shall but fill thy soul with sadness— And thou wilt ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... restless spirit, these enterprises also fed and soothed those imperious, if unconscious, instincts which prompt every able man of inquiring mind to reclaim all possible domains from the unknown or the chaotic. As Egypt had, for the present at least, been reft from his grasp, he turned naturally to all other lands that could be forced to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... within, Dearer to him than life itself had been, Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, Whom lately from his unconsenting breast The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, Intolerably had reft—Eurydice, Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom— And uncompanioned led her ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell shall rouse your souls again, 55 And send the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there is something good behind it all, bitter and terrible as it seems. The infinite majesty (as it will be always in regard to us the bubbles of an hour) the infinite majesty must have moments, if it were no more, of greatness; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shape above him, and then he set his lips, and pulled up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Reft the charm of the social shell By the touch of the sorrowful mood; And already the worm, in her cell, Is preparing the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crimson and gold, crossed by rapid flashes of pale yellow and white lightning, which momentarily obliterated their rich colours. To the south was a great bank of black thunder-cloud crested with crimson, reft to its deepest darkness by successive flashes of forked lightning. Immediately overhead a narrow curtain of leaden clouds was driven hither and thither by uncertain winds; while below, the prairie ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... even like his brother Death— We know not when it comes—we know it must come— We may affect to scorn and to contemn it, For 'tis the highest pride of human misery To say it knows not of an opiate; Yet the reft parent, the despairing lover, Even the poor wretch who waits for execution, Feels this oblivion, against which he thought His woes had arm'd his senses, steal upon him, And through the fenceless citadel—the body— Surprise ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and yet whimsical too. "Why, I have heard somewhere," says he, "that at its uttermost this success is but the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... what mortal's roof may I repair, I and my Muse, and find a welcome there? I and my Muse: for minstrels fare but ill, Reft of those maids, who know the mightiest's will. The cycle of the years, it flags not yet; In many a chariot many a steed shall sweat: And one, to manhood grown, my lays shall claim, Whose deeds shall rival great Achilles' fame, Who from ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Whom in long warfare he had kept from harms, From western climes to eastern shores her guide In his own land, 'mid friends and kindred arms, Now without contest severed from his side. Fearing the mischief kindled by her eyes, From him the prudent emperor reft the prize. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... is me—I would that I had ne'er to Susa gone, To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son. Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes! All desolate—my native land, reft ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... I fancy I can see Thee amid the daffodils. Golden wealth thy basket fills; Golden blossoms at thy breast; Golden hair that shames the West; Golden sunlight round thy head! Ah! the golden years have fled; Thee have reft, and me have left Here alone, ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... soul like mountain tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... business. Funds had to be collected to buy instruments. Musicians who could play the instruments had to be picked out from among the men, and nobody knew how to find them. Hardly anybody stayed long in these base camps, and a good musician might at any moment be reft away ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... is to pass that way; but he does not come, because his kind kinsman, Ottocar, must have time to consult the god-fathers and god-mothers of the piece, or "Witches of the Rhine;" which he does in the "storm-reft hut of Zabaren." This Zabaren is a hospitable gentleman, who sings a good song, sees much company, and is played by that convivial genius Paul Bedford. Ottocar is introduced amongst other friends ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... my life is riven, And reft away from my control, Take back the hours of passion given! Love me one moment ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... beastly, Billy, you can picture something worse— There's the wrecking of an empire, and its broken people's curse; There are nations reft of freedom, and of hope and kindly mirth, And the shadow of an evil black ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... approach. Tears fast and large were rolling from those haughty eyes, which men who shrank from their indifferent glance little deemed were capable of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through the aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary mourner; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen intensity of grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that hour and on that spot, he sat with Isabel's young cheek upon his bosom, and listened to a voice now ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lion who broughtest thyself to woe, * Thou art slain and worse sorrows my bosom rend! Thou hast reft me of fairest companionship, * Made her home Earth's womb till the world shall end. To Time, who hath wrought me such grief, I say, * 'Allah grant in her stead never ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... for loss of lover sped I sight; * Nor life enjoying neither life's delight: My case is one whose cure is all unknown; * Can any cure the sick but doctor wight? O who hast reft my sleep-joys, leaving me * To ask the breeze that blew from that fair site,— Blew from my lover's land (the land that owns * Those charms so sore a grief in soul excite), 'O breeze, that visitest her land, perhaps * ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... tongue to meet her. What a lovely vision she had made!—"Una donzella non con uman' volto (a gentle lady not of human look)." Well, what next? Ah, something about "Amor, che ha la mia virtu tolto (Love that has reft me of my manly will)." Then should come amore, and of course cuore, and disio, and anch' io! This was very new; it was also very strange what a fascination he found in his phrenetic exercises. Rhyme, now: he had called it often enough a jingle of endings; it were more true ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... old woman had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him, 'O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray, Lance to lance, and horse to horse? Long ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... with the remainder sought shelter in Powys, in the hall of Cynddylan, its prince. But the Saxon bills and bows found their way to Powys too. Cynddylan was slain, and with him the last of the sons of Llewarch, who, reft of his protector, retired to a hut by the side of the lake of Bala, where he lived the life of a recluse, and composed elegies on his sons and slaughtered friends, and on his old age, all of which abound with so much ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... slow! heave-a-ho!— Lower him to the mould below; With the well-known sailor ballad, Lest he grow more cold and pallid At the thought that Ocean's child, From his mother's arms beguiled. Must repose for countless years, Reft of all her briny tears, All the rights he owned by birth, In the dusty ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Once or twice he pshawed his melancholy vapours, gave a pace back and forward on the oaken floor, with a bent head, a bereaved countenance, and sat down again, indulging in the passionate void that comes to a bosom reft of its joys, its hopes and loves, and only mournful recollection left. A done man! Not an old man; not even an elderly, but a done man none the less, with the heart out of him, and all the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... each in turn awake From virtue, as a man from his brief love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those dear; obsessed by your possessions With a dull ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... tangled web is reft, The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers, And hapless innocence is left With no assets save ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death within ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... startling sound Tells of deed of blood! a soldier's hand With aim too true himself hath reft of life! * * * Beneath that roof For many days none had heard sounds of gladness. He was distressed—each fond retainer then Softened his voice to whispers—each pale face Did but reflect the sadness fixed in his: Save where the two—two fair and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... this reft house is that, the which he built, Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled, Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak'd so wild, Squeak, not unconscious of their fathers' guilt. Did ye not see her gleaming through the glade? Belike 'twas she, the Maiden all forlorn. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... which the weaker man staggers under. Incompletion is force fighting; completion is force quiescent, its work done. Nature's forces are patent enough in some scarred volcanic moon in which no creature can breathe; only the sage, in some soft green earth, can discover the same forces reft of fierceness and terror, and translated into sunshine, and falling dew, and the rainbow gleaming on the shower. It is somewhat in this way that the propriety of Hazlitt's criticism is to be vindicated. Chaucer is the most simple, natural, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... that he imagined her an injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or make any disavowal, and found the few displeased words ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was. I had seen the Russian ballet just before the war, and one of the men in it reminded me of this man. But the dancing was the least part of it. It was neither sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell, but something far more potent. In an instant I found myself reft away from the present with its dull dangers, and looking at a world all young and fresh and beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had vanished. It was a window I was looking from, and I was gazing at the finest landscape on earth, lit by the pure clean ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... indeed, still exist some fragments of the ancient Catholic families of Ireland; but, alas! what VERY fragments! They linger like the remnants of her aboriginal forests, reft indeed of their strength and greatness, but proud even in decay. Every winter thins their ranks, and strews the ground with the wreck of their loftiest branches; they are at best but tolerated in the land which gave them birth—objects of curiosity, perhaps of pity, to one class, but of veneration ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... room at home where Jack Rupert had come to her, and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak, solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl who ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... been reft of sense, By gazing on their excellence, But meeting Mopsa in my way, And looking on her face of clay, Been healed, and cured, and made as sound, As though I ne'er had had a wound? And when in tables of ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... am and weak, Still have I left a little breath To seek within the jaws of death An entrance to that happy place, To seek the unforgotten face, Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me Anigh the ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... so fair, So ripe with joy for Daisy Dare, Fate's cruel sickle swept, and left Life of its golden harvest reft. ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... that the brighte sun had lost his hue, For th' horizon had reft the sun of light, (This is as much to say as: it ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... fretwork he flitted, The gem-stones much worthy, all over the waves' cup. The King the full mighty cring'd under the shield; Into grasp of the Franks the King's life was gotten 1210 With the gear of the breast and the ring altogether; It was worser war-wolves then reft gear from the slain After the war-shearing; there the Geats' war-folk Held the house of the dead men. The Hall took the voices; Spake out then Wealhtheow; before the host said she: Brook thou this roundel, lief Beowulf, henceforth, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... awa for to cross the stormy main, An' to face the battle's bray in the cause of injured Spain; But in my love's departure hard fate has injured me, That has reft him frae my arms, an' his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that gifted practitioner. A roll-top desk was partly broken open, but not rifled, the American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things more, but ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... bear, or death if it should come, because they were factors of the common lot; but it had never occurred to her that so resplendent a thing as a silver tea-set could belong to any one and then be reft away. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... for an angel of a young woman, daughter of the gentleman of the house. This charming girl was engaged to be married to Crookshanks. Waked by the firing and horrid din of battle in the piazza, she was at first almost 'reft of her senses by the fright. But the moment she heard her lover's voice, all her terrors vanished, and instead of hiding herself under the bedclothes, she rushed into the piazza amidst the mortal fray, with no armor but her love, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems |
