"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kingly mantles, fragments of armor, wrecks of crowns, and cast at my feet thousands of broken sceptres. I then enquired what would become of the thrones of to-day. What the first became, was the reply—and Time waved the direful scythe which levels all things under its merciless strokes—these also will be. I asked if a like destiny was in store for the Throne of Peter. Time was silent; Eternity alone ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... unable to keep away, Barnett hung about that walk, and bullied the man at one end who was cutting the grass by hand where the machine could not be used; and at last made the poor fellow so wroth that he threw down his scythe as soon as Barnett had gone, and said he might do ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... 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, my deary!"—for he saw that I was crying—"if he should come this very night I'd not ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... morning of the hallowed day! Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song. The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath Of tedded grass, mingled with faded flowers, That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze; Sounds the most faint attract the ear,—the hum Of early bee, the trickling of the dew, The distant bleating, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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
... these hardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws and palaces of Rome. But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn, [1301] still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the human feasts of the Laestrigons [1401] have never been renewed on the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... took up a scythe and began to cut the wheat. This took five times twenty-one days; four times twenty-one days were spent in thrashing the grain; three times twenty-one days in grinding it into flour; and twice twenty-one days in making it into ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the head clerk, Desforges.[3162]—Not only was the reaping-machine constructed under his own eye, and with his assent, but, again, when it is put in motion, he holds the handle, so as to guide the scythe. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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
... to by you, there is An Autumn Effect in the Portfolio, and a paper on Fontainebleau—Forest Notes is the name of it—in Cornhill. I have no objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting The Pentland Rising. For God's sake let me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less horribly than the first; the 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 open ground toward a stone wall that ran diagonally across. The infantry ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... frantic effort to keep going on these accounts, but the battle was too much for him. He could not imagine ways and means—he knew nothing of the ropes of finance. He was like a farmer with a scythe against sharpshooters. Ellaphine began to fear that the struggle would break him down. One night she persuaded ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the hut. The sky was solid with stars; the moon rose like a sharp scythe. The confused rumor of women crying in fright resounded from the various huts; the men who had been sleeping in the open, also woke up and the rattle of arms echoed ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sat asleep in the corner, and two aides slumbered on the floor, tired out, I fancy. I walked to and fro over the creaking boards, and watched the Dutch clock. As it struck eleven the figure of Time, seated below the dial, swung a scythe and turned a tiny hour-glass. A bell rang; an orderly came in and woke up an aide: "Despatch for West Point, sir, in haste." The young fellow groaned, stuck the paper in his belt, and went out ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... had to 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 ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... adjoining, with its Gothic windows, lends a touch 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 ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... sad scenes in life, for the scythe of death stops not to ask if they be sweet and precious to some fond wife, or mother, or brother, who knows? whom their heart chose. On! on! he pursues his desolating work, amid their sighs, their cries, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... scythe has mowed the hero down, The muse again awakes him to renown; She tells proud Fate that all her darts are vain, And bids the hero live and strut about again: Nor is she only able to restore, But she can make what ne'er was ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where death with a scythe in both hands was cutting down the ranks of the armed warriors; thither, where the children of weeping mothers were being trampled on by horses' hoofs; thither, thither, where they were casting into a common grave the mangled ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... in time of corn-harvest 2d., the first week in August, and 3d. till the end of the month; and they are likewise neither to ask meat nor any other perquisite or indulgence. The law likewise requires that they shall repair to the next town or village, carrying their scythe or sickle openly in their hands, and shall there be hired in some public place.... The second chapter directs that no man in harvest—before settled to be in the month of August—shall leave the village in which he lived during the winter, except the inhabitants of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... on the eaves At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe, And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait Stretching their huge and dripping ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied; But what it needs the most of all is some people ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... 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) depicted ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... a scythe raised in the air, looks closely at two boys wrestling beneath him in a field of grain, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... to the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and playing cards, as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Newton was sitting where I had left her, talking to Mr Robert Page. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... the deep furrows, the vehicle going up and down like a boat upon the waves. Why there should be such furrows in a meadow is a question that naturally arises in the mind. Whether it be mown with the scythe or the mowing-machine, it is of advantage to have the surface of the field as nearly as possible level; and it is therefore most probable that these deep furrows had their origin at a period when a different state of things prevailed, when the farmer strove to grow as much ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... compelled to do so. You know my mode of living here, and it is far worse in this cold stormy weather. My continued solitude only still further enfeebles me, and really my weakness often amounts to a swoon. Oh! do not further grieve me, for the scythe of Death will ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... and their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would afford to the citizen to obey every call of duty! At the first summons of the note of war you would find him leaving his plow in the half-finished furrow, taking his only horse and converting him into a war-steed: his scythe and sickle would be thrown aside, and with a heart full of valor and patriotism he would rush with alacrity to the standard ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... eyelids, and shut up our glassy eyes for ever; tie up the fallen jaw, and prepare the corrupting body for its long, but not final resting-place. Our hour-glass is fast ebbing out; time stands ready with his scythe to cut us down; the grave yawns to receive us. 'Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he' (Job 14:10). The answer is ready, sure, certain—he goes to the judgment of the great day. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the grass is grown, Ready for the mower's care, When his scythe has laid it low, To the hay-field ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... 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 and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... shrieked, and the ranks of the sepoys wilted, mown down as though a scythe had swept them. Once, and once only, they gathered for a charge on the two guns; but they were met half-way up the rise by a shrieking blast of grape that ripped through them and took the heart out of them; and the grape was followed by well-aimed volleys from behind. Then they drew off to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... of their victories. Fancy what Europe would be now, if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks—if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans—if the noble and pathetic architecture of the middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm—we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish—ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame; and the soul of man is to its own work as the moth that frets when it ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Gruff-and-Tackleton. The cuckoo on the Dutch clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... hast given me in coming here." In saying this, he opened his horrible jaws, and advanced to devour her; but she, being on her guard, jumped back, and had just time to pluck out a hair; and pronouncing two or three words, she changed it into a sharp scythe, with which she immediately cut the lion in two ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... of Eastern mythology, had the power of changing their form instantaneously. This is powerfully illustrated by the combat between the queen of Beauty and the son of Eblis. The genius first appeared as an enormous lion, but the queen of Beauty plucked out a hair which became a scythe, with which she cut the lion in pieces. The head of the lion now became a scorpion, and the princess changed herself into a serpent; but the scorpion instantly made itself an eagle, and went in pursuit of the serpent. The serpent, however, being vigilant, assumed the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... need not be told that we are friends to the spread of liberty: indeed, we think she may "triumph over time, clip his wings, pare his nails, file his teeth, turn back his hour-glass, blunt his scythe, and draw the hobnails out of his shoes;" but to show how this may be done, we must run over a few varieties of liberty for the benefit of such as do not enjoy the inestimable blessings of being free and easy: we quote these words, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... tip to th' la-ads that makes th' boats. No more ixpinsive steel an' ir'n, but good ol' grass fr'm th' twinty-acre meadow. Th' ship-yards 'll be moved fr'm th' say, an' laid down in th' neighborhood iv Polo, Illinye, an' all th' Mississippi Valley 'll ring with th' sound iv th' scythe an' th' pitchfork buildin' th' definse iv our counthry's honor. Thank th' Lord, we've winrows an' winrows iv Shafter's armor plate ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... of death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire her, impelled by a feeling that arrested ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Time himself grew young again, and, resting on his scythe, dreamed the sunlit hours away. Until eventide the summer skies above us slept, as did the summer seas below us, when both awakened from their slumbers flushed and rosy. On some evenings the heavy white clouds piled high in the west seemed to catch fire, the red blaze spreading over ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions to him; "he wa'n't no burglar," he would have scornfully asserted. A strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant of his thefts; but it was the small things—the ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to-day am sitting as of old in my accustomed Bedroom, looking out on a Landscape which your Eyes would drink. It is said there has not been such a Flush of Verdure for years: and they are making hay on the Lawn before the house, so as one wakes to the tune of the Mower's Scythe-whetting, and with the old Perfume blowing in at open windows. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... 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 over ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... 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, which ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of us," said a sharp-nosed old man. "You say, 'Why do you let the horse get into the corn?' just as if I let it in. Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind, the livelong day, till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell asleep while watching the herd of horses at night, and it got into your oats, and now ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... seat of one of the Pilkingtons, of which family Fuller says—"The Pilkingtons were gentlemen of repute in this shire before the Conquest;" and the chief of them, then sought for after espousing the cause of Harold, was fain to disguise himself as a mower; in allusion to which the man and scythe was taken as their crest. James Pilkington, a descendant, and Master of St John's, Cambridge, was one of the six divines appointed to correct the Book of Common Prayer; for which and other services he was in 1560 created Bishop of Durham. After the suppression ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ear-piercing note, sounding as if a scythe-blade were being held against a rapidly-revolving grindstone, and then ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... struggle, but we succeeded in saving the bulk of the barley, and cut it down with a scythe and three reaping-hooks. The girls helped to bind it, and Jimmy Mulcahy carted it in return for three days' binding Dad put in for him. The stack was n't built twenty-four hours when a score of somebody's crawling cattle ate their way up to their tails in it. We took ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... simple, May. Old Father Time just measured the days off with his hour-glass in the first place, and marked them down with the point of his scythe. The world has known all ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... titanium sheets for the tank. Anna de Jong said something about hot showers, and not having to take any more sponge-baths. Howell was watching the stuff come off the other landing craft. A dozen pairs of four-foot wagon wheels, with axles. Hoes, in bundles. Scythe blades. A hand forge, with a crank-driven fan blower, and a hundred and fifty pound anvil, and sledges and cutters and swages ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... and respiration ceased, and she fell forward, like the flower Virgil alludes to, which the scythe of the reaper severed in the midst of the grass. The king, at these words, at this vehement entreaty, no longer retained any ill-will or doubt in his mind: his whole heart seemed to expand at the glowing breath of an affection which proclaimed ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... grown-up son or daughter is so much capital to the parents. But this poor fellow really loved that boy of his. 'Nothing cam comfort me for my loss,' he said one day when I came across him out in the fields. He had forgotten all about his work, and was standing there motionless, leaning on his scythe; he had picked up his hone, it lay in his hand, and he had forgotten to use it. He has never spoken since of his grief to me, but he has grown sad and silent. Just now it is one of his little ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... character long familiar to Canada. All emigrants with families were to be carried thither at the King's expense; and every settler was to receive in free gift a gun, a hoe, an axe, a ploughshare, a scythe, a sickle, two augers, large and small, a sow, six hens, a cock, six pounds of powder, and twelve pounds of lead; while to these favors were added many others. The result was that twelve families were persuaded to go, or about a twentieth ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... backwater here and there, then run on again. And of all fine spots on a sunny day the Hound's Pool was finest, for here Dean Burn had scooped a hole among the roots of forest trees and lay snug from the scythe of the east wind, so that the first white violet was always to be found upon the bank and the earliest primrose also. In winter time, when the boughs above were naked, the sun would glint upon the water; and sometimes all would be so still that you ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... year were blotted away, And the strawberry grew in the hedge again; That the scythe might swing in the tangled hay, And the squirrel romp in the glen; The walnut sprinkle the clover slopes, Where graze the sheep and the spotted steer; And the winter restore the golden hopes, That were trampled in ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... mixed for ordinary purposes. I was assured that the sheep (of which large flocks were grazing near) afford the finest wool of any. The animals were caught by the tail, their legs tied, the long winter's hair pulled out, and the remainder cut away with a broad flat knife, which was sharpened with a scythe-stone. The operation was clumsily performed, and the skin ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... 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 ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... began To see how little thought could sparkle well, And turn him, even in the midst of talk, Back to the silence of his homely toils. Around him still and ever hung an air Born of the fields, and plough, and cart, and scythe; A kind of clumsy grace, in which gay girls Saw but the clumsiness; while those with light, Instead of glitter, in their quiet eyes, Saw the grace too; yea, sometimes, when he talked, Saw the grace only; ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... us the inventor is the true hero for he multiplies the working value of life. He performs an old task with new economy, as when he devises a mowing-machine to oust the scythe; or he creates a service wholly new, as when he bids a landscape depict itself on a photographic plate. He, and his twin brother, the discoverer, have eyes to read a lesson that Nature has held for ages under the undiscerning gaze of other men. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... greatest and most practical objection of the old folks to the chimneys was that robbers used them to climb down at night and steal people's money, when they were asleep. So, many householders used to set old scythe blades across the new smoke holes, to keep out the thieves, or to slice them up, ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn, And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn. But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these, And greener its grasses and taller its trees, Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung, Or the mower his scythe in the meadows ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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
... her silken buds by the woodman's door; The sparrow shall see and exult; but lo! as the spring draws gaily on, The woodcutter's hut is empty and bare, and the master that made it is gone. He is gone where the gathering of valley men another labour yields, To handle the plough, and the harrow, and scythe, in the heat of the summer fields. He is gone with his corded arms, and his ruddy face, and his moccasined feet, The animal man in his warmth and vigour, sound, and hard, and complete. And all summer long, round the lonely hut, the black earth burgeons ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... stands entranced and rooted to the spot, While grows the scene upon him vast, sublime, Like some gigantic city's ruin, not Inhabited by men, but Titans—Time Here rests upon his scythe and fears to climb, Spent by th' unceasing toil of ages past, Musing he stands and listens to the chime Of rock-born spirits howling in the blast, While gloomily around night's ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... when a pack of killers set out whale-hunting, they will be joined by a thresher—the fox-shark (Alopias vulpes)—and then while the killers bite and tear the unfortunate cetacean, the thresher deals him fearful blows with his scythe-like tail. The master of a whaling vessel told me that off the north end of New Caledonia, there was, from 1868 till 1876, a pack of nine killers which were always attended by two threshers and a sword-fish. Not only he, but many other whaling skippers had seen this particular swordfish, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... lay looking at the sunlit blind, in the stillness of early morning he heard a sound always delightful, always soothing, that of scythe and whetstone; then the long steady sweep of the blade through garden grass. Morton, old stick-in-the-mud, would not let his gardener use a mowing machine, the scythe was good enough for him; and Harvey, recalled to the summer mornings of more than thirty ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... n'importe, said these citizens, we must have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... partridge and landrail run serious risk from scythe and plough while sitting on the nest. Landrails have before now been decapitated by the swing of the scythe, and a case is on record in which a sitting partridge, seeing that the plough was coming dangerously near her nest, actually removed the whole clutch of eggs, numbering ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... 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 dishes and food in a basket and carrying ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... the rude hand-machine of Guttenberg and the best features of all the machines that 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 upward ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked, before he answered, "You mean ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... front door reposed an old fashioned cradle for reaping grain, such as farmers used before the horsepower reapers came into use—a hand cradle with rusty scythe and hickory fingers. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... 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 delicate statues and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... walking to see any of his patients' families, if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe, in wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheelbarrow, or trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen, rocking along the road as if they had just been landed after a three-months' voyage, the toiling native, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... native ferns with sufficient respect. Homage is paid in literature to the palm, and it is an emblem of honour, but our New England ferns, many of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for hay and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer every autumn when he shows his greatest agricultural energy by stripping the waysides of their beauty prior to the coming of the roadmender with his awful "turn-piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists succeed in stopping this piking practice, we will print ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... yardstick the soldiers measured the deed, for they knew the fighting competency of a single machine gun and had seen the destructive power of the scythe-like sweep of a battalion of them. The civilian, in doubt and wonder, realized the magnitude of the achievement in visualizing the number of prisoners that ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... rather two than ten, and rest refreshed from them; except that he does not like to kill things, he could trudge the whole day through fields and woods with his gun on his shoulder; though he does not golf, and cannot know whether or no it would bore him, he likes to wield the axe and the scythe in the groves and meadows of his summer place. When he stretches himself on the breast of the mother alike of flesh and grass, it is with a delicious sense of her restorative powers and no fear of rheumatism. If he rests a little longer ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... will hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers, Where smiling youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul, Congeals the tear of Pity's eye, Or checks the sympathetic sigh, Or hears unmoved misfortune's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... acknowledged, sufferers; for it is a well-known fact, that during the three months the college was suspended in the air, and therefore incapable of attending their patients, no deaths happened, except a few who fell before the scythe of Father Time, and some melancholy objects who, perhaps to avoid some trifling inconvenience here, laid the hands of violence upon themselves, and plunged into misery infinitely greater than that which ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... the giant would not be able to find him. The giant Skrymsli, however, possessed wisdom far beyond what Odin imagined, and, failing to find the child at home, he strode off immediately to the field with his scythe, and mowing the wheat he selected the particular ear where the boy was hidden. Counting over the grains of wheat he was about to lay his hand upon the right one when Odin, hearing the child's cry of distress, snatched the kernel ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... they must sometimes have wars, as they are well provided with offensive weapons, such as clubs, spears, darts, and slings for throwing stones. The clubs are about two feet and a half long, and variously formed; some like a scythe, others like a pick-axe; some have a head like an hawk, and others have round heads, but all are neatly made. Many of their darts and spears are no less neat, and ornamented with carvings. The slings are as simple as possible; but they take some pains to form the stones that they use into a ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... and I 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... stern ideas, the specious formulas of 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 ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... some of oak and some of skins, And quilted vest and turban's twisted band. Lightly such drapery good Rinaldo thins, And cleaves, and bores, and shears, on either hand; Nor better from his sword escapes the swarm, Than grass from sweeping scythe, or ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... not be named in relation to them. They are so high above us and so deep below us that there is neither height nor depth in them. There is neither east nor west in them, nor north and south in them. Nor is there beginning or end to them. Time drops his scythe and stands appalled before that dreadful host. Number applies not to its eternal multitudes. Distance is lost in boundless space. And from all the stars that stud the caverns of the Universe, there swells this awful chorus: Failure! failure ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... undertaking; each, however, promised to be there by four o'clock in the morning, and to start from home as the clock struck three. As it would take an hour to walk three miles and a half with the scythes on their backs, it was agreed that they should carry my scythe, and that I should bring the bottles and bag upon ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... neat little match against time in two left boots at Philadelphia; but this must be considered as a pedestrian eccentricity, and cannot be accepted by the rigid chronicler as high art. The old mower with the scythe and hour-glass has not yet laid his mauley heavily on the Bantam's frontispiece, but he has had a grip at the Bantam's top feathers, and in plucking out a handful was very near making him like the great Napoleon Bonaparte (with the exception of the victualling ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe, he dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when he chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... he quoted, 'I shall not want.' This morning He left the door opened and I wandered into His Treasure House, so I guess I'll get busy and grab what I can before the Night Watchman comes around. Ever see the Night Watchman, Boston? I have. He's a grave old party with a long beard, and he carries a scythe. You see him when you're thirsty, and—well, in the pursuit of my inborn hobby for taking chances, I'll introduce you to him this trip. Permit me to remind you once more of the consequences if you help yourself ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... air. The scythe and the sickle still hung in the barn. Grass and grain swayed and whispered and sparkled in the sun and wind. June loitered upon all the gentle hills, and peaceful meadows, and winding brook sides. June breathed in the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and all his joy and splendour as the flower of the meadow. Hay is first green grass, and soon after brings forth flowers: and a while after, the flowers dry and fall; after it is mown down with the scythe, and dried and taken to a house to be beasts' food. Thus it befalls man: in his childhood he springs and grows as the grass does; after, he comes to manhood and flowers in fairness and strength and wit and having of goods; afterwards: ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... there!' said Death. He was a strong old man, with a scythe in his hand and great black wings. 'He shall be laid in a coffin, but not now; I only mark him and then leave him for a time to wander about on the earth to expiate his sin and to grow better. I will come some time. When he least expects me, I shall come ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... lake no fisher His net to-day is flinging; On the dark rind of Alba's oaks To-day no axe is ringing; The yoke hangs o'er the manger; The scythe lies in the hay: Through all the Alban villages No work is ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forth his tobacco pipe and made the three doomed ones sit with him in the path to smoke the peace-whiff all around, we picked out each his man and smote to slay. The scythe-like sweep of Jennifer's mighty claymore left the five-feathered chieftain the shorter by a head in the same pulse-beat that the Ferara scanted a second of the breath to yell with; though now I recall it, the gurgling death-cry ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... which seemed like the breath of a heated oven. As the day advanced, the sky gradually became overcast—a strong south wind sprung up, before whose warm puffs the drifted snow-banks seemed literally to be cut down, like grass before the scythe of the mower; and, at length, from the thickening mass of cloud above, the rain began to descend in torrents to the mutely recipient earth. All this, for a while, however, produced no very visible effects on the general face of nature; for ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... used oftener on such occasions? I may notice also that cruel and most disadvantageous mode of employment of making Negroes collect grass for the cattle, by picking it by the hand blade by blade. Are no artificial grasses to be found in our islands, and is the existence of the scythe unknown there? But it is of no use to dwell longer upon this subject. The whole system is a ruinous one from the beginning to the end. And from whence does such a system arise? It has its origin in slavery alone. It is practised no ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... hundred ghosts have ceased to affray The dust of Kyoto, Ah yet, what phantom blooms a-sway Murmur, a-loft, a-low, In dells no scythe of death can mow, No power of reason scan, O, what Samurai singers know The Flower of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... under the Hawthorn Hedge on the Brow of the Hill, listening to the Mower's Scythe, and the Song of Birds, which seemed enough for him, without talking; and as he spake not, I helde my Peace, till, with the Sun in my Eyes, I was like to drop asleep; which, as his own Face was from me, and towards the Landskip, he noted not. I was just aiming, for Mirthe's ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... according to Diderot, suggests the image of a jet of blood; 'cervix collapsa recumbit,' the fall of a dying man's head upon his shoulder; 'succisus' imitates the use of a cutting scythe (not plough); 'demisere' is as soft as the eye of a flower; 'gravantur,' on the other hand, has all the weight of a calyx, filled with rain; 'collapsa' marks an effort and a fall, and similar double duty is performed by 'papavera,' the first two syllables symbolizing the poppy upright, the last ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... dwell within her breast; How sad to see her worth untimely die! Yet who may wail the needful rest? Her willing hand, her tireless step, her active brain, Rear'd lofty landmarks on the busy way; The haunts that knew her long'd with yearning vain, The reaper's scythe to stay. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... plates of food set there for the cellar coolness, and in one corner a little dairy compartment, built over a spring covered by a wooden trap-door, completed the furnishings of the floor. For the rest, the place was a fairly well-stocked tool-house; a scythe and a grindstone, snow-shovel and ladders were arranged compactly; a watering-pot and rake stood fresh ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... General Sherman was moving with his main body to destroy the Macon road, and that the fate of Atlanta depended on our ability to defeat this movement." During the fateful pow-pow at the house of Dudley Field, Sherman's army like a colossal scythe was swinging round Atlanta, from the west and south, across Flint River, through the vital railway, on toward the city. On the second of September, the news that Atlanta was taken "electrified the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Probstheida still the conflict rolls Under Napoleon's eye surpassingly. Like sedge before the scythe the sections fall And bayonets slant and reek. Each cannon-blaze Makes the air thick with human limbs; while keen Contests rage hand to hand. Throats shout "advance," And forms walm, wallow, and slack suddenly. Hot ordnance split and shiver and rebound, And firelocks ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... States Cavalry, and at the first intimation of an advance these leaped forward in eager rivalry of their white comrades. Across the plain they charged, and then up the steep hill-side, while the Spanish fire doubled in fury, and the tall grass in front of them was cut as though by the scythe of a mower. Spectators in the rear gazed appalled at the thin line of troopers thus rushing to ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... 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 does ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler |
