"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the maids that be In divine Olympus, Hail! Hail to thee! To thee I bring this woven weed Culled for thee from a virgin mead, Where neither shepherd claims his flocks to feed Nor ever yet the mower's scythe hath come. There in the Spring the wild bee hath his home, Lightly passing to and fro Where the virgin flowers grow; And there the watchful Purity doth go Moistening with dew-drops all the ground below, Drawn from a river untaintedly flowing, They who have gained by a kind fate's bestowing ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... with the morning mist o'er it A gray line sweeps like a scythe of fire, And it burns the stubble of blue before it,— (How their bugles ring and their ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... and by and passed his forefinger across his forehead, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook—he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... 'The scythe-chariot, O my friend Loeg!' said Cuchulainn; 'can you yoke it? and is its equipment here? If you can yoke it, and if you have its equipment, yoke it; and if you have not its equipment, do not yoke it ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... we saw the boat rush in between the two flippers, the harpooner at the same time darting an iron straight down. There was a whirl in the waters, and quick as thought the vast flukes of the whale rose in the air, recurving with a sidelong sweep as of some gigantic scythe. The blow shore off the bow of the attacking boat as if ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... wind-driven snow so that his tracks vanished as soon as made. It was very desolate—the blank surface of the world with its flying scud, the blank yellow-gray sky, the range, all iron and white, the blue-black scars of leafless trees, the green-black etchings of firs. The wind cut across like a scythe, sharp, but making no stir above the drift. It was all dead and dark—an underground world which, Prosper felt, never could have seen the sun, had no memory of sun nor moon nor stars. The roof of Pierre's ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... himself must be in front of us. We have not seen him, but the circumstantial evidence is conclusive. Nobody else in the world could have swept this portion of the Wilderness with shell and shrapnel in such a manner. Why, he has mowed down the bushes in long swathes as the scythe takes the grass and he has cut down our men with them. How ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... majestic, serene as when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... timber in prairie countries which have been settled, where the grazing of stock, by diminishing the quantity of grass, renders the annual fires less destructive to the growth of wood. The prairie (i. e., land destitute of wood) is covered with grass, much of which is of suitable length for the scythe." ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... a scythe raised in the air, looks closely at two boys wrestling beneath him in a field of grain, a red ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the chirping of little birds under the eaves, began and increased. A laborer, then another, on their way to work, passed within sight along a field-path leading to the mill; a troop of reapers came by the same road. Then there was the pleasant sound of sharpening a scythe, and Bessie saw a gardener on the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... was the cliff high enough? He hurried up to higher ground and flung himself prostrate. The front of the slide was cutting down the heavily forested slope as though the trees were blades of grass before a keen scythe. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... and Nicholas resolved to discover the great secret by himself, without troubling the philosophers. He found on the first page of the fourth leaf, the picture of Mercury attacked by an old man resembling Saturn or Time. The latter had an hour-glass on his head, and in his hand a scythe, with which he aimed a blow at Mercury's feet. The reverse of the leaf represented a flower growing on a mountain top, shaken rudely by the wind, with a blue stalk, red and white blossoms, and leaves of pure gold. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... own enjoyment," and began again to make all the noise he could. At last the father and mother were awakened, and they ran to the room-door and peeped through the chink, and when they saw a wolf in occupation, they ran and fetched weapons—the man an axe, and the wife a scythe. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement of house ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... for a conger eel if it were not for the golden stripes on its side. In the genus stromateus, whose bodies are very flat and oval, I saw some of the most brilliant colours, carrying their dorsal fin like a scythe; an excellent eating fish, which, dried and pickled, is known by the name of Karawade; then some tranquebars, belonging to the genus apsiphoroides, whose body is covered with a shell cuirass ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... to many was to him invigoration. He knew nothing of boxing, or rowing, or billiards, but he could run and jump well, and ride very fairly, and, above all, he could endure. In the last harvest he had for the first time wielded a scythe, and had held his own with the rest, though, it must be allowed, with a fierce struggle. The next spring—I may mention it here—he not only held the plough, but by patient persistence and fearless ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that shalt skip from my sword as from a scythe; I'll cut thee out in collops and eggs, in steaks, in slic'd beef, and fry thee with the fire I shall strike from the pike ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... water, either of a spring or rain that had settled there, he hid in it a goose egg, in which he had inclosed a little serpent that had just been hatched. The next day, very early in the morning, he came quite naked into the street, having only a scarf about his middle, holding in his hand a scythe, and tossing about his hair as the priests of Cybele; then getting on the top of a high altar, he said that the place was happy to be honoured by the birth of a god. Afterwards running down to the place where he had hid the goose egg, and going into ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Dispute. He convoked the various antagonistic worlds of philosophy and religion, and they all appeared, in the guise of a fleshless shape, like that in which art embodies Time,—an old man bearing in one hand a scythe, in the other a broken globe, the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... de la Revolution a gruesome engine they called the guillotine was levelling all things, and fast establishing the reign of absolute equality. But with all the swift mowing of its bloody scythe, not half so fast did it level men as Mademoiselle de Bellecour's ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been honoured with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:— "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged by the ocean, Than were our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's cannon. Fear no evil, my friend, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... With my cradle scythe, feeling brisk and blithe, In the breeze-tempered heat of this fine day; I'll haste to the field with the wheaten yield, And there will ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... to my side In the cold mist of morning. "O wirra" she cried, "'Tis farewell now, mavourneen! When the crescent moon hung Like a scythe in the sky, I heard in the ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... flamed up within him as he lay on the hard bed in his little room, with the summer scents floating in and the out-of-doors sounds,—a woman's voice calling a child afar off, the lowing of cattle, the rhythmic whetting of a scythe-blade, the echoing strokes of an axe, the mellow fluting of a robin,—all coming to him a little muted, as if he were no longer in ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... a mower stands Among the morning wheat and whets His scythe, and for a space forgets The labor of the ripening lands; Then bends, and through the dewy grain His long scythe hisses, and again He swings ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... cherry-trees, and listening to the murmurous song, I heard my boyhood speak to me, and felt again the old breath on my brow. The sun died away across the old swaying woods; the rattling hone upon the scythe; the measured sweep; the mellow music—all were gone away. The day was done, and the long twilight came—twilight, which mixes the crimson of the darkling west, the yellow moonlight in the azure east, and the red glimmering starlight overhead, into one magic light. And so we went home ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... rifles spoke with a simultaneous crash. Again, and yet again, the vivid sheet of flame flashed from the side of the square; then, through the drifting fog, it was seen that the enemy were apparently changing the direction of their attack. Falling in scores before the terrible, scythe-like sweep of the volley firing, they swerved round the flank of the square and ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... little impression on my mind. I have, however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages through the old-fashioned school-books. The interesting ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... all trivial things. 'In all manner of conversation.' There is nothing that grows so low but that this scythe will travel near enough to the ground to harvest it. There is nothing so minute but it is big enough to mirror the holiness of God. The tiniest grain of mica, upon the face of the hill, is large enough to flash back a beam; and the smallest thing we can do is big enough to hold ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... third, a strong white mare, was so covered with the blood of her fellows and from a wound of her own, that she looked a roan. The driver's spine was crushed, the foot of a gunner was taken off—clean at the ankle as by a scythe. The noise was dreadful; the shriek that the mare gave echoed through the March woods. The other guns of the battery, together with Carpenter's and Waters's, swept round the ruin and over the high ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... followed it; so the human body contains the special gift of all earlier and lower forms of animal life. In making a reaper the machinist does not begin with the sickle, and then unite the hook with the scythe, afterward joining thereto the rude reaper and so move on through all the improving types. But in the germinal man, nature does adopt just this method. As the embryo life develops it passes into and through the likeness of each lower animal, and ever journeying ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... as merry as any grig—Lord love their beaks and wings! There's hay-time o' the evening full o' soft, sweet smells—aye, sweet as lad's first kiss; there's wheat-time at noon wi' the ears a-rustle and the whitt-whitt o' scythe and whetstone; there's night, Martin, and the long, black road dipping and a-winding, but wi' the beam o' light beyond, lad—the good light as tells o' journey done, of companionship and welcomes and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... with his axe, to the sad injury of its cutting edge. These sods were then built into a wall like bricks, resting gently against the framework of poles, from which, however, they were separated by a padding of grass, which Harris cut in a sleugh with his scythe, and small willows from the ravine. This mattress of grass and willows prevented any earth shaking through into the house itself. A framework made of a hewn log was inserted in the south wall to leave space for a window, which ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... at work in the field, a long distance from the house. He was cutting grain with a scythe and told me he would just about get that piece done if I would bring him his supper. I had never been over on this knoll which was on the other side of a small hill from the house. I got his supper ready, taking all the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private men ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... shoulder, then Polly Ann; and lastly I drove the two shaggy ponies, the instruments of husbandry we had been able to gather awry on their packs,—a scythe, a spade, and a hoe. I triumphantly carried ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... inch you are a dead child!" she wheezed, her pale eyes bulging from the sockets. "Cap'n Gates and the overseer came out here last night and just sowed all this patch with side-blades!" (Scythe-blades.) "Edges up! Sharp as razors and thick as thieves! Hundreds of them! To keep the negroes from stealing any more of them! I heard Cap'n Gates tell them he was going to do it, and the overseer told them this morning that they had done it. And I haven't an atom of an idea where ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a little boy I wuz follin' wid my father's scythe. It fell on my arm and nearly cut if off. Dey got somethin' and bind it up. Eventually after a while, it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... were hatched. But on the third morning the nest was empty; something had taken them. Addison said that it was most likely a crow, but possibly a snake. We often found the nests, while haying in the fields; the scythe generally passed over them without doing any harm, and to save them from the rake, we would put up a stick close beside them. But their enemies are wofully numerous; not half the nests of young are reared. Ants, I think, kill numbers of the nestlings, soon after they are hatched, when they chance ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... cut it by hand,—the machine wouldn't work on it. And jest as quick as Elburtus had got so he could see out of that eye, nothin' to do but what he had got to go out and help Josiah cut that wheat. He hadn't touched a scythe for years and years, and it wasn't ten minutes before his hands wus blistered on the inside. But he would keep at it till the blisters broke, and then he had to ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the master of the horse, to young Beauvau, and to De Thou. "It is only in them that we can place our hope for the future. Such men are indeed very rare now, for the great leveller has swung a long scythe over France." ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... gully of the hills went plunging precipitously, all rolled with leaf and flower, to the undercliff of soft blue lias and the very roof ridges of King's Cobb, whose walls and chimneys, now snowed with light, fretted a scallop of the striding bay that swept the land here like a scythe. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Mower stamp'd his heel, and struck His hurtful scythe against the harmless ground, Saying, "Ye foolish imps, when am I stuck With gaudy buds, or like a wooer crown'd With flow'ry chaplets, save when they are found Withered?—Whenever have I pluck'd a rose, Except to scatter its vain leaves around? For so all gloss of beauty ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wonderful air of Arcadia. Indeed, I am as full of suppressed energy, these days, as Adam is of the 'Old Adam.' And, talking of Adam reminds me that he has solemnly pledged himself to initiate me into the mysteries of swinging a scythe to-morrow morning at—five o'clock! Yes indeed, my heart bounds responsive to the swish of a scythe in thick grass, and my soul sits enraptured upon ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... around the stalls but couldn't find her. So Mitch went back to the house for a lantern and we looked all through the barn and finally all around the barn. And pretty soon he saw her lyin' by the barn. She was dead—all over blood. Somebody had run a great knife like a scythe or a corn-cutter through her. And I never see a boy cry like Mitch did. He ran back and told Zueline and she and all the children came out and most of us cried. Then Mr. Miller came out, and Mrs. Miller, ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the latter end of December, which was my second harvest, I reaped it with a scythe, made of one of my broad swords. I had no fatigue in cutting down my my first crop it was so slender. The ears I carried home in a basket, rubbing it with my hands, instead of threshing it: and when the harvest was over, found my half peck ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... It was as well so, Shenac said to herself with a sigh, for they could not manage much hay by themselves, and paying wages would never do for them. Indeed, they would need some help even with the little they had; for Dan had never handled a scythe except in play, and Hamish, even if he had the skill, had not ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... know how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the "quick-coming" churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced "the man with the hoe," while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn harvester that cuts and binds ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... days and years When health was on my cheek, and hope and love O'er all the future wove one iris bright. Ah, little prophets, do you then predict A rainy morrow? By yon crimson west I doubt your warnings; so in truth it seems Does yonder farmer who, with shouldered scythe From meadows fragrant with the new-mown hay, Goes whistling homeward, glad to seek repose Until another sun shall call him forth, To gather into barns the winter's store Of food provided for the gentle king That faintly lowing from the pastures come Scented with herbage, giving promise ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... was similar to continuous, uninterrupted thunder. On it came with a magnificent roar that shook the very earth, and revealed itself at last in the shape of a mighty whirlwind. In a moment the distant woods bent before it, and fell like grass before the scythe. It was a whirling hurricane, accompanied by a deluge of rain such as none of the party had ever before witnessed. Steadily, fiercely, irresistibly it bore down upon them, while the crash of falling, snapping, and uprooting trees mingled with the dire artillery ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... brave Wallace!" exclaimed Lennox, "grant us thine arm to wield its scythe! But how have you accomplished this? How have your few overthrown this ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order every scythe out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... before had occasion to suggest, was a master of strategy, and instead of another stroke at the head of his savage foe, with only one chance in ten of hitting the mark he commenced swinging it vigorously to the right and left, as a mower does his scythe. His object was to hit the legs of the dog—a plan which was not entirely original with him, for he had seen it adopted with signal success by a fisherman at the Harbor. The consequence of this ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... saddle that they could hardly walk in their huge boots. With them were Acatzirs, painted blue, hair as well as skin; Alans, wandering with their waggons like the Huns, armed with heavy cuirasses of plaited horn, their horses decked with human scalps; Geloni armed with a scythe, wrapt in a cloak of human skin; Bulgars who impaled their prisoners—savages innumerable as the locust swarms. Who could ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... from crumbling interstices of the stones in the perpendicular face of the masonry, fifty feet from the ground. Large trees were growing on what had formerly been the floors of the halls, or of the chambers, and tall grass waved there, ready for the scythe. ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... tayout,—[Tailliers-hors; in modern phrase, Tally-ho]—for which he had the hearty curses of the huntsman, as well as of the baron, who entered into the spirit of the chase with all the juvenile ardour of twenty. "May the foul fiend, booted and spurred, ride down his bawling throat, with a scythe at his girdle," quoth Albert Drawslot; "here have I been telling him that all the marks were those of a buck of the first head, and he has hollowed the hounds upon a velvet-headed knobbler! By Saint Hubert, if I break not his pate with my cross-bow, may I never cast off hound more! ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that has reached him is true, now expresses the hope that God will be propitious to their cause, now relates that he has vented his patriotism by putting on the studs with the Polish eagles and using the pocket-handkerchief with the Kosynier (scythe-man) ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Joe Danvers, who unfortunately slipped in reaching for the ball, and as his foot was not on the bag the umpire called the runner safe. But he died there, Alan Tyree cutting the next two men down as a mower in the field might the ripe grain with his scythe. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... of distinction. The garden with one towering sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August 1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the last of whom ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... annalists, "and the heads of the Russians fell under the swords of the Tartars as the grass falls before the scythe." ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings. Scepter and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.—SHIRLEY. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... could never bear Your tender flesh to hack and tear, Forgetting that poor worms endure As much as I should, to be sure, If any giant should come and jump On to my back, and kill me plump, Or run my heart through with a scythe, And think it fun to see ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... left along the water's surface. The farm-houses across the river made their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard, shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow. Meantime, I continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the little fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake somewhat of the character of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... came to the corn. She heard them enter by the gate; and presently, along the broad path cut by the scythe around the field, the great machine clanked and whirred. All day the strange, disturbing noise continued, drawing gradually nearer the spot where the leveret lay. Through the spaces between the stalks she watched the whirling arms swinging over, and the horses ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... saw the setting sun, He swung his scythe, and home he run, Sat down, drank off his quart, and said, "My work is done, I'll go to bed." "My work is done!" retorted Joan, "My work is done! your constant tone; But hapless woman ne'er can say, 'My work ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... men sticks carried whither the tide takes them. We have seen that biography vetoes this theory. Will makes circumstances instead of being ruled by them. Alexander Stephens, with a dwarf's body, did a giant's work. With a broken scythe in the race he over-matched those with fine mowing-machines. Will-power, directed by a mind that was often replenished, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe, and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now for a season, now ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale, Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... lady-love were left To their own hearts' most sweet society; Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms; he Sigh'd to behold them of their hours bereft, Though foe to love; and yet they could not be Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring, Before one charm ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... heart a bit. But, Lord love ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't want to die if I can help it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect. And I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin' his scythe. Ye see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin' about it all at once. The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an' greet, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... but was always ready to do his share toward making it. Before extreme old age, he could outrun and outleap any of his children. He did not hide his satisfaction at having outwalked some one who boasted of his pedestrianism, or at having been able to swing the scythe after all the rest of the harvesters had dropped from exhaustion, or at having, in legislative hall, tripped up some villainous scheme for robbing the public treasury. We never had our ears boxed, as some children I wot of, for the sin of being happy. In long winter nights ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... down-stairs softly, wondering whether he could easily get out, but to find that the front door was wide open, and hear the servants busy in the kitchen; while, as he stepped out on to the lawn, he suddenly heard the musical sound of a scythe being sharpened, and the next minute he was alongside of David, who had just begun to sweep the keen implement round and lay ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... they were mowing the meads, the hatches had to be drawn and the water let out of its channels for the convenience of the mowers. It was thus that the discovery was made. A man, stooping low with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. A day or two after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. Fish and flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked article which ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... straws. She thrust her hand down, thinking it was a field-mouse, and caught the thing. A speckled toad wriggled in her fingers, lustily enough, but it was a toad that had seen tragedy. The keen edge of a scythe must have caught it, for one side of its head was shorn away; the eye had just been missed, but the inside of the poor little animal's mouth and throat lay exposed, pulsating and brilliantly red—a purer hue of blood was never seen than in that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... restrained by sense from goin' too fur. A silky mustache the same color of his hair, and both with a considerable number of white threads a-shinin' in 'em, jest enough so's you could tell that old Time hadn't forgot him as he went up and down the earth with his hour-glass under his arm, and his scythe ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... the Bay of Fundy, flooding the marsh lands reclaimed by the Acadians. Much damage was done along the coast, thousands of trees were blown down all over the country, while near the coastline the forest was levelled as with a scythe. A considerable part of Fort Frederick was washed away by the storm and Lieutenant Winckworth Tonge, of the Engineers, was sent with a party of men to repair it and put it in the most defensible state the situation would allow, ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... old scythe from the barn, and felt of the edge. There was not much danger in so doing, for it was as ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... shepherd swain of whom I mention made, On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd: An honest heart was almost all his stock; His drink the living water from the rock: The milky dams supplied his board, and lent Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... carelessness and largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,—a generous land, bright with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... man thy barge for Whitehall Stair; Salute th' Exchequer Barons there, Then summon round thy civic chair To dinner Whigs and Tories— Bid Dukes and Earls thy hustings climb; But mark my work, Matthias Prime, Ere the tenth hour the scythe of Time Shall amputate, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... at Avignon again, I should not care for his boasts," said Theodora. "I do not grudge him his spiritual subjects; I am content to leave his superstition to Time. Time is no longer slow; his scythe mows quickly in this age. But when his debasing creeds are palmed off on man by the authority of our glorious capitol, and the slavery of the human mind is schemed and carried on in the forum, then, if there be real ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... should we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional importance? Suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark night in Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves, the world would have wagged on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to his book; and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are not many works extant, if you look the alternative all over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of limited means. This is a sobering reflection for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nearer and nearer marched the British. They were almost close enough for the final charge, when suddenly at the word "Fire!"—up sprang 1500 Americans and poured a storm of bullets into the advancing enemy. Down went the British platoons as before the scythe of death. Whole companies were swept away. The survivors could not stand before the deadly hail, and back they fell to the shore. Some shots had been fired at the British from houses in Charlestown, and General Gage gave orders to fire that place. The British advanced ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... wreath, with "Rest" in the centre, from Dr. and Mrs. Hodgins; pillow, with "Father," from Mrs. E. Harris; crown from the scholars of Ryerson school; pillow, with "Grandpapa," from the grandchildren of the deceased: wreath from Mr. C. H. Greene; cross, also scythe, with sheaf, from Mr. and Mrs. George Harris, London; crown and cross from Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Potts; anchor from W. E. and F. E. Hodgins; sheaf from George S. Hodgins; lilies and other choice flowers inside the casket from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... light upon the land whither I go. Live thou and take thy fill of days and die When thy day comes; and make not much of death Lest ere thy day thou reap an evil thing. Thou too, the bitter mother and mother-plague Of this my weary body—thou too, queen, The source and end, the sower and the scythe, The rain that ripens and the drought that slays, The sand that swallows and the spring that feeds, To make me and unmake me—thou, I say, Althaea, since my father's ploughshare, drawn Through fatal seedland of a female field, Furrowed thy body, whence ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lowland Bluegrass, all the while a gaunt skeleton was stalking down the Cumberland—tapping with fleshless knuckles, now at some unlovely cottage of faded white and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits, within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... abide on the Glittering Plain, or go back again to Cleveland by the Sea and dwell in the House of the Kindred; and for his part he yearned to behold the roof of his fathers and to tread the meadow which his scythe had swept, and the acres where his hook had smitten the wheat. But he said to himself, "I will wait till I hear her ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... I never enter it without a new heaven above and new thoughts below. The lake has no lofty shores and no level ones, but a series of undulating hills, fringed with woods from end to end. The profaning axe may sometimes come near the margin, and one may hear the whetting of the scythe; but no cultivated land abuts upon the main lake, though beyond the narrow woods there are here and there glimpses of rye-fields that wave like rolling mist. Graceful islands rise from the quiet waters,—Grape Island, Grass Island, Sharp Pine Island, and the rest, baptized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Bulgaria - at least by the route I am crossing it - is a land of mountains and elevated plateaus, and the inhabitants I should call the "ranchers of the Orient," in their general appearance and demeanor bearing the same relation to the plodding corn-hoer and scythe-swinger of the Morava Valley as the Niobrara cow-boy does to the Nebraska homesteader. On the mountains are encountered herds of goats in charge of men who reck little for civilization, and the upland plains are dotted over with herds of ponies that require constant watching in the interest of scattered ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... or a mouse had been especially far-sighted and had located his family near a stump fence on a particularly uneven bit of ground, why there was always a walking Giant going about the edges with a gleaming scythe, so that it was no wonder, when reflecting on these matters after a day's palpitation, that the little denizens of the fields thought it very natural that there should be Nihilists and Socialists in the world, plotting to overturn monopolies and other gigantic schemes ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... appetite is sharper than a scythe; but my indigestion is duller than a whetstone," said the mate, to whom a feast was ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the flagged pavement, there sat, leaning against a stone post, a young fellow in a coarse blue linen shirt, and breeches of the same, in plaited bark shoes, and a torn, reddish cap. Near him lay a little bag, and a scythe without a handle, with a wisp of hay twisted round it and carefully tied with string. The youth was broad-shouldered, squarely built, flaxen headed, with a sunburnt and weather-beaten face, and big blue eyes that stared ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... man bent over in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a towel ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... No more beneath his stalwort blow shall writhe: Peace spreads her reign wide o'er his inland seas— He swings the scythe. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... is an emblem of time, which cuts the brittle thread of life and launches us into eternity. Behold what havoc the Scythe of Time makes among the human race! If by chance we should escape the numerous ills incident to childhood and youth, and with health and vigor arrive at the years of manhood, yet withal we must soon be cut down by the all-devouring Scythe of Time, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... be ready for death when it comes, but as yet I am not extending an invitation to the gentleman with the scythe. Are you, my worrying reader, anxious to be mowed down before your time? Quit your worrying, and don't urge the Master Reaper to harvest you in until He is sure ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Time the harvester surveys His sorry crops of yesterdays; Of trampled hopes and reaped regrets, And for another harvest whets His ancient scythe, eying the while The budding year with cynic smile. Well, let him smile; in snug retreat I fill my pipe with honeyed sweet, Whose incense wafted from the bowl Shall make warm sunshine in my soul, And conjure mid the fragrant haze Fair memories of ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford
... Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... man stood at the gate of the Norwegian graveyard, sharpening his scythe in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... where the river flowed round a headland of the meadows, we stopped a while for rest and victuals, and settled ourselves on a beautiful bank which almost reached the dignity of a hill-side: the wide meadows spread before us, and already the scythe was busy amidst the hay. One change I noticed amidst the quiet beauty of the fields—to wit, that they were planted with trees here and there, often fruit-trees, and that there was none of the niggardly begrudging of space to a handsome tree which I remembered too well; and though ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... There is a kind of a business (looks to me like it is the axle and wheels of a toy wagon, stood up on end and covered with white paper muslin and a string tied around the middle) that is supposed to be an hour-glass. Then there is a scythe covered with cotton batting, and then a man in a bath-robe (I saw the figure of the goods when the wind blew it open) also covered with white cotton batting. The man has a wig and beard of wicking. First, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... perfectly smoothly along without jolts or jerks, and sometimes on the contrary, the plateau would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... remember a single one of them. Next we went, without any guide, to a church attached to a convent of Dominican monks, with a Gothic exterior, and two hideous pictures of Death,—the skeleton leaning on his scythe, one on each side of the door. This church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by famous hands; but these pictures, having become much injured, they were all obliterated, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paradises have come and gone; Adams and Eves many," happy one day, have been "miserable exiles" the next; and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... shining bright, and the laird was out in his fields. His oats were nearly ready for the scythe, and he was judging where he had best begin to ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... which it would not get over for years: its benefactress was now its advocate in heaven, since earth was not worthy of her; truly the angel of Death did not come to her, as to us common mortals, with blood-stained scythe, but fair to behold (onesta), and with so kind a face that every fear was allayed.' But we meet, also, with sympathy of a different kind. Novelists, depending wholly on the favour of their patrons, tell us the love stories of the prince, even before his ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... were hell, and pleasure painfulness. The sting of envy and the dart of love, Avarice' talons, and the fire of hate, Would poison, wound, distract, and soon consume The heart, the liver, life, and mind of man. The sturdy mower, that with brawny arms Wieldeth the crooked scythe, in many a swath Cutting the flowery pride on velvet plain, Lies down at night, and in the weird[316] folds Of his wife's arms forgets his labour past. The painful mariner and careful smith, The toiling ploughman, all artificers, Most humbly yield to my dominion: Without due rest nothing is durable. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... came and went, the grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Father Time swings round his scythe, Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine, So that its juices, red and blithe, May cheer these thirsty bones ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... throat of the visitor, and by the frequent coughing of the sorters. They protect their hair with turbans of veiling, occasionally decorated with a bit of bright color. These turbans give the room the appearance of an industrious Turkish harem. Short, sharp scythe blades, like Turkish scimeters, gleam above all the girls' benches. When a sorter wishes to cut a rag, she pulls it across the edge of this blade, and is not obliged to hunt for a pair ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... time: so don't worry that poor old man in the garden about it. He hasn't a scythe, or a bald head, or a dismal forelock: so he can't know anything ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Time, his cruel scythe Has swung full oft around, Since last the merry Christmas, bells Rang out their cheerful sound. With cruel vigor he has held His great, impartial sway, And many thousands mown to earth, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... northward when apple-bloom blows, See laggards drop spent from their flight as it goes, Yet can pause not in Heaven as they scythe the thin air But go on to the house-eaves and the nests clinging bare, So Charles flashed beyond them, those three men the less Who had gone to get glory and ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... this quiet sound and the roaring of the wind in a storm. Then I heard the wild bee's hum, and the little tiny noises made by the small creatures that live in the wood. I heard our gardener sharpening his scythe, and the trickling of the brook ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle and the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how in happy manhood that strong hand had fondled and sheltered and led the little children that now had grown up and were gone!—Strength and activity, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... I took most pleasure in was the barley, which I looked upon as my legitimate harvest; the other crops seeming to be more like gardening than real harvest work. I cut every handful with a reaping hook, which took a long time; but as I had not a scythe this was my only way of cutting it down. True, the Channel Islands mode of harvesting the barley is to pull it up by the roots, a handful at a time, knocking the soil off the roots upon the toe of the boot; but this seemed to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... from the stockings she was darning. She said "she always took Time by the forelock," and the little girl had a fancy some time she would drag him out. She wondered if she would really like to see Time with his hour-glass and scythe, and all ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... notes upon the probable and usual time for the yellow fever to make its appearance, when it would wield, its scythe of destruction upon the fresh harvest of life made ready for it, in the bands of the Northern soldiers in Louisiana. My whole soul was in a stir of opposition to the speakers. I had to be still, but ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... how much Cyrus had at heart the scythe-bearing chariots and the cavalry and the war-horses with their armour, and he resolved to equip a hundred chariots for him out of his own cavalry force. [51] These he proposed to lead himself in a chariot of his own, four-poled and drawn by eight horses, all the eight protected by chest-plates ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... appear, I hired it cut. No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, and raked up most of it, and carried it away. He had evidently been waiting that opportunity. When the grass grew again, the neighbor did not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cow tethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a short distance from the house. This seemed to be the man's idea of the best way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow there, because I knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her wrinkles and she would have looked at her daughter with the air of genial treachery which old women wear when they contrive a young girl's marriage, and she would have dropped some subtle hint at the next convenient assignation; and the girl herself would have stood by like a dark living scythe in the Latin attitude of modesty, very straight from the waist to the feet, but the shoulders bent as if to hide the bosom and the head bowed, mysteriously intimating that she knew nothing and yet could promise to submit to everything. But here was Mrs. Melville ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Skarpedin's, on the other hand, was quite plain, but partly gilded; his armour was of pieces of steel like fish scales sewed on a leathern shirt, and over his shoulders he wore as a mantle the skin of a wolf. His chief weapon was a bill—a sort of hook or short scythe fixed to a pole, and it was very deadly in his hands. Most of the carles and thralls were content to wear thick shirts of wolf and other skins, which were found to offer good resistance to a sword-cut, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... dumb, some miracle is here; Their courage and their faith must I revere; We slay them; yet, like Cadmus' seed, new-born They sprout afresh, and laugh our scythe to scorn. We give them cord and flame, they torture hail; Friends fail them, but themselves they never fail. We mow them down, fresh nurslings to unbare, What moves the seed lies hid, but it is there. They bless the world, though by the world accurst, Their shield am ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... queen and court, sought refuge at this place from the plague, which was ravaging London. But there was another trouble that came upon him from which he could not escape, even here. Death, with his scythe, passed by the healthful shades of the country palace, but the executioner with his axe ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them specimens and vanguards ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... in a field as a Wanderer went by clad in a dark blue cloak and carrying a wanderer's staff in his hand. One of the thralls spoke to the Wanderer: "Tell them in the house of Baugi up yonder that I can mow no more until a whetstone to sharpen my scythe is sent to me." "Here is a whetstone," said the Wanderer, and he took one from his belt. The thrall who had spoken whetted his scythe with it and began to mow. The grass went down before his scythe as if the wind had cut it. "Give us the whetstone, give ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... citing the example of Vespasian, who, after ridiculing a comet, soon died. The general shape and appearance of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and he cites Tertullian to prove them "God's sharp razors on mankind, whereby he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down multitudes of sinful creatures." At last, rising to a fearful height, he declares: "For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the heavens among the stars of God there; the fearful sight is not yet out of sight. The warning piece of heaven is going off. Now, then, if ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... word scythesman, for a short poem, is insufferably rough; and furthermore requires the inhalation of a good breath, before it can be pronounced; besides which, as the second objection, by connecting sheaves with scythesman, it shows that the scythe is cutting wheat, whereas, wheat is cut with a hook or sickle. If my agricultural knowledge be correct, barley and oats are cut with a scythe, but these grains are not put into sheaves. Had you not ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... on the brow of the hill—in the valley— rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won, but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a great wedge of gray was hurrying ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... that young squire has," growled shaggy Hanak behind his back, "it would look very well on the point of my scythe." ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... many a woe, Sore hearts, broken pledges. Meadows green laid waste I saw, Scythe of sand the field did mow, Death calls from the glacier's ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... pleasant afternoon, past the fields where the newly-mown hay, fresh from a recent shower, sent forth its fragrance upon the summer air, while the song of the mowers mingled with the click of the whetting scythe, made sweet, homelike sounds which he loved to hear. Why did he lean so constantly from the carriage, and why when Victor exclaimed, "The old ruin is there yet," referring to Grassy Spring did he, too, look across ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... peculiarly exciting to the imagination. Such is anatomy, with its sad yet instructive revelations of the structure of the human frame—so "fearfully and wonderfully made"—wielding in its hand a scalpel which at first seems ruthless and disenchanting as the scythe of death, but which afterwards becomes a key to unlock some of the deepest mysteries, and leads us down whole galleries of wonder. There is botany, culling from every nook and corner of the earth ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... is climbing swift and lithe, Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe, Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap, Ringdove flies with ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... a resting-spell. We cut clean and even. There'll be a little clipping, maybe, round the stumps and stone piles, but you don't seem to have many of them. You just see me go once round your big field there with my team, and you'll never want to touch a scythe again. Only give me the chance. The first day sha'n't cost you nothing but my victuals and good feed of oats for my team. Now ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... death by a timely flight, and she fell from the height of her desires to penury in England. Much of this tale she concealed from Raymond; nor did she confess, that repulse and denial, as to a criminal convicted of the worst of crimes, that of bringing the scythe of foreign despotism to cut away the new springing liberties of her country, would have followed her application to any among ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... usually find seated on garden walls, rocks, or, in Europe, even on the roofs of old buildings. Rooting freely from the joints, our plant forms thrifty tufts where there is little apparent nourishment; yet its endurance through prolonged drought is remarkable. Long after the farmer's scythe, sweeping over the roadside, has laid it low, it thrives on the juices stored up in fleshy leaves and stem until it proves its title to the most ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week, when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the hands of R-y-lty, ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines, and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as if the trees had been arranged by a landscape gardener. Far off, through an opening in a canyon, we saw the prairie simulating ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook, I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared further for my labours than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in the way after my own heart. A country lad seldom carries on a love adventure without an ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... first is a king in his regalia; his motto, I govern all: the second, a bishop in pontificals; motto, I pray for all: third, a lawyer in his gown; motto, I plead for all: fourth: a soldier in his regimentals, fully accoutred; motto, I fight for all: fifth, a poor countryman with his scythe and rake; motto, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. Birds came and went, each on its special errand. Never was Nature more inveigling, more restful. He shut ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... this and two other reasons, I shall take as my text the entry of March 28, and a portion of the following verse. This arbitrary departure in dates will give you another glimpse of Alf Jones. Also, the peculiar scythe-sweep of my style of narrative will take in a rencontre with another person, to whom, in your helpless state as a reader, you have already been introduced. And if you take it not patiently, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy |
