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Drift   Listen
verb
Drift  v. i.  (past & past part. drifted; pres. part. drifting)  
1.
To float or be driven along by, or as by, a current of water or air; as, the ship drifted astern; a raft drifted ashore; the balloon drifts slowly east. "We drifted o'er the harbor bar."
2.
To accumulate in heaps by the force of wind; to be driven into heaps; as, snow or sand drifts.
3.
(mining) To make a drift; to examine a vein or ledge for the purpose of ascertaining the presence of metals or ores; to follow a vein; to prospect. (U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... and the sea wails long, As the ages of waiting drift slowly by, But the sea shall sing no bridal song— As well know ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... approach which I made to a declaration of my love, choosing rather to drift by force of circumstances into the position of Marian's accepted lover than hazard all I had gained by seeking to pluck the fruit before it was ripe. It was sufficient for me in the meantime to elicit from her those expressions of abhorrence ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... against the front of our dwelling-place, so as entirely to cover the windows of the lower story of the house, and to rise above the main door which was of ordinary height, and that at length we were released from this imprisonment by means of an archway to that entrance, dug through the drift by the friendly efforts ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... economic development from a lamentably low base. In December 2003, the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP were forced to step in to provide emergency budgetary support in the amount of $107 million for 2004, representing over 80% of the total national budget. Government drift and indecision, however, have resulted in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the companionship grew. Corthell shut his eyes, his ears. The thought of Laura, the recollection of their last evening together, the anticipation of the next meeting filled all his waking hours. He refused to think; he resigned himself to the drift of the current. Jadwin he rarely saw. But on those few occasions when he and Laura's husband met, he could detect no lack of cordiality in the other's greeting. Once even Jadwin ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... as I sat watching the light grow dim, the water receded slowly, and strange little things floated past downstream. And I thought of the no less real human tide which long years ago had flowed to my very feet and then ebbed, leaving, as drift is left upon the sand, the convicts, a few scattered Indians, and myself. In the peace and quiet of this evening, time seemed a thing of no especial account. The great jungle trees might always have been lifeless emerald ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... morning from the warm marshes, scenting the harsh north through leagues of air, and goes away on steady wing-beats. But he did not feel he was a free soul until the outlines of Howth began to melt into the grey drift of evening. There was a little mist on the water, and he stood watching the waves tossing in the mist thinking that it were well that he had left home—if he had stayed he would have come to accept all the base moral coinage in circulation; and he stood watching the green waves ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,— "O Christ! ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... vessel sailed into the harbor as if she had been an ordinary merchantman, and managed to drift down close to the fine frigate which the Tripolitans had snatched from their blundering enemy. The crew on board the "Philadelphia" did not suspect the character of the little vessel which came so close to them, until she was made fast, and more than eighty men sprang up from the places where ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... broken windows, where they were picked up by those outside and carried to a safe place. In the meanwhile the flames were creeping closer, and now a sudden change in the air caused a heavy volume of smoke to drift toward them. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... his chief, who found therein not only information but amusement. He insisted also upon hearing the numerous ephemeral pamphlets, of which the age was prolific, and which found their way to him. His quickness in detecting the drift of an author was marvellous. Two or three pages of a pamphlet were generally sufficient to put him in complete possession of the writer's object, while nothing was too trivial for his attention where there existed a possibility of its contributing a clue to the problems of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... elevated region were not tall enough to act as wind breaks; they were hardly more than shrubs a great deal of the time, and merely served to force him into detours around dense hedges. Sometimes, in a clearing, he found himself staggering to the knees in a compacted drift of snow; sometimes an immense sheet of snow was picked up by the wind and flung in his face like ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... is very beautiful, and in the autumn, when its myriads of star-leaved maples are scarlet and crimson, against a dark background of cryptomeria, among which a great white waterfall gleams like a snow-drift before it leaps into the black pool below, it must be well worth a long journey. I have not seen anything which has pleased me more. There is a fine flight of moss-grown stone steps down to the water, a pretty bridge, two superb stone ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... part of the Southern Tyrol. One portion is Italian, one portion is Austrian, and the rivalry of the two nations is keen. Under a warm summer sun, the quaint little villages seem half asleep, and the inhabitants appear to drift dreamily through life. Yet this is more apparent than real for, in many respects, the people here are busy in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... who, however, felt more inclined to think that his last day had come, than he had ever been before. As he looked out, there was the sea, hitherto so smooth, now leaping and raging, and covered with seething foam, the spoon-drift flying in vast sheets of white, from top to top of its broken summits, while huge watery mountains seemed about to burst over the deck. Still, he knew very well that sailors had to expect rough seas as well as smooth, and that many a ship had been in ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston

... instructor who is inclined to keep shifting the burden back to the home. As a result, while the German youngster is early being adapted to a particular future course for which Nature has given him an aptitude, his American competitor is often left to drift through the years without definite ambition, or at least with only a belated or ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... disinterested friend of Esther Lockwin to note the upward drift of his political opportunities. It is silently taken for granted that he is a coming man. Whenever he shall cease his disinterested attentions to the widow it is clear he will be a paragon. And the critics who might aver as much, did ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... of dark spirits, Quebec became the scene of a profligacy unparalleled in her history. The Palace, instead of being a hall of justice, was the abode of debauchery and gambling; and the mad revellers, whom a cynical fate had placed at the head of affairs, allowed the ship of state to drift upon the rocks. Even the fine palace within the city gave too little scope for the diversion of the Intendant and his confederates, and, accordingly, a rustic chateau was built near the high hill of Charlesbourg. Here they paused when tired of the chase, and the revels of the mysterious ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... the meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper Britt in the cemetery had settled down heavier on its heels, as if making grimly sure that Hittie was staying where ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... into the metre," replied Pollux. "I inherit from my father—who, when he is not gate-keeping, sings and recites—a troublesome tendency whenever anything incites me to drift ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... triple loops, hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and to scatter their pursuers, separated, joined again, and again separated. The enemy followed them to the very bank of the river, where, finding the "drift" covered with the swollen waters, they were forced to swim. They reached the other bank only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another force of ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... perseverance, thoughtfulness, and the habit of keeping his temper; and though he had never had a single "object lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys; in which brutal habit he took much delight, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... entertaining of gossips—more weather-wise that Old Probabilities, and as full of moving incident as Othello himself—then he is not the wintery-haired shipman I used to see a few years ago on the strip of beach just beyond Liberty Bridge, building his drift-wood fire under a great tin boiler, and making it lively for a lot of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... "The drift homeward of our crippled men, you tell of, is indeed sad. I am glad that Grace's boy is well; and so Rivers has gone to the army again. Pole's lad, with the lost arm, must have some work at the mills. Say I ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... end of a glorious chapter, found him tramping and muttering. His flying look dared Bylash to address him, and Bylash prudently took the dare. But he poured his drink slowly, stealing curious glances and endeavoring to catch the drift of the little ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... ordinary Scholers) was visited of a certaine kinde of men, allured by the noble fame of Plato, and the great commendation of hys profound and profitable doctrine. But when such Hearers, after long harkening to him, perceaued, that the drift of his discourses issued out, to conclude, this Vnum, Bonum, and Ens, to be Spirituall, Infinite, Aeternall, Omnipotent, &c. Nothyng beyng alledged or expressed, How, worldly goods: how, worldly dignitie: how, health, Strength or ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... strange thing that happens to us, if God takes us at our word, and strips us for a while of all that made life beautiful. It may be outward things—bodily comfort, leisure, culture, reputation, friendships—that have to drift away as our hands refuse to clasp on anything but God's will for us. Or it may be on our inner life that the stripping falls, and we have to leave the sunny lands of spiritual enjoyment for one after another of temptation's battlefields, where every inch of our foothold has ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter

... revolutionary. Old cries of dependence upon God grow unreal upon the lips of multitudes. Sometimes without knowing it, often without wanting it, men are drawn by the drift of modern thought away from all confidence in God and all consciousness of religious need. Consider two pictures. The first is an epidemic in New England in the seventeenth century. Everybody is thinking about God; the churches are full and days are passed in fasting and agonizing ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... sat awaiting from moment to moment the appearance of her brother, or at least the sound of his voice over the telephone, the pang had been prolonged into an agony. She had let herself drift into a fantastic speculation of a sort that was perfectly new. What if the boy who had shared that crazy adventure with her, himself an officer bound overseas, had fallen in with Rush, made friends with him, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... discuss its reasonableness—though this also may be undertaken with the hope of success. In developing as it has done, the Library in the United States of America has not been simply obeying some law of its own being; it has been following the whole stream of American development. You can call it a drift if you like; but the Library has not been simply drifting. The swimmer in a rapid stream may give up all effort and submit to be borne along by the current, or he may try to get somewhere. In so doing, he may ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... to pursue and challenge. A fixed conviction of the dreariest pessimism would have been better for this man than the lofty uncertainty which had tortured his days; for in the belief that one may neither struggle nor aspire there is a certain practical drift. But how shall he do any good who bears about him a quick conscience, a skeptical understanding, sensitive religious affections, and a feeble will? Charles Clifton had neither the leisure, nor possibly the application, to follow the creeping advances of systematic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... use a long, finely tapered leader. A 4x is about right. Fish in the same waters, and very much the same way as with a dry fly except that the nymph is allowed to sink. Fish upstream, or up and across the current. In the ripples. Around boulders. At the edge of fast water. Let the nymph drift with the current. Follow it with your rod tip, and be prepared to set the hook at the least hesitation of the line. Trout will sometimes take a drifting nymph and eject it, without being felt on the most delicate ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg

... "Nobody is." Never before had she seemed to him more unapproachable, more different and more remote. The glow of a number of small fires lighted the ground only, and brought out the black bulk of men lying down in the thin drift of smoke. Only one of these fires, rather apart and burning in front of the house which was the quarter of the prisoners, might have been called a blaze and even that was not a great one. It didn't penetrate the dark space between the piles and the depth of the verandah above where only a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... there was, no doubt, something in the claim if I could get the true contact with calcimine walls denoting a true fissure. He thought I ought to run a drift. I told him I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... as technical conditions allow. That will go on until East and West agree to drop this whole mad weapons race. It will be done quietly, peacefully. Nobody will be hurt except by a fluke. But if needs be, they will lift every major scientific brain off the face of Earth to stop the present drift to disaster for everybody. There are no weapons, no devices that you have at present, which can stop this plan going into effect. There it is—it's as simple ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking

... it seemed, though, that the boat with its helpless freight should have been carried by the ebbing tide straight into my care, and how deeply thankful I was that it had been so ordered, saving the poor girl from a terrible, lonely drift out to sea, from many hours' exposure, perhaps from being run down by a passing vessel, certainly from grave danger in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... promptitude, for I had no notion of her drift; but then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and still puzzled I turned into my room, TO FIND, neatly hung over the end of the bed, nothing less than the dainty petticoat and silk stockings of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... splendid, and I am striving to let my light so shine that others may be led to the truth. There have been some mighty struggles with error, and I have learned that we cannot reach heaven with one long stride or easily drift inside the gate, but that the "asking" and the "seeking" and the "knocking" must be earnest ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... was so far above the point where the cascades began, that nothing was to be feared from them. The clumsiest raft could be ferried over by a child before it would drift into danger, while in case of swimming, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... of mental excitement by the criticisms on his Vienna performances that appeared in German papers. He does not weary of telling his friend about them, transcribing portions of them, and complaining of Polish papers which had misrepresented the drift and mistranslated the words of them. I do not wonder at the incorrectness of the Polish reports, for some of these criticisms are written in as uncouth, confused, and vague German as I ever had the misfortune to turn into English. One cannot help thinking, in reading what Chopin says with ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... boat for running before the wind Jack had never seen before. The sea stood up round about them like a deep snow-drift, although it was almost calm. But they hadn't gone very far before a nasty piping began in the air. The birds shrieked and made for land, and the sea rose like a ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... yet," said De Haan, turning around. The committee had resolved itself into animated groups, dotted about the office, each group marked by a smoke-drift. The clerks were still writing the ten thousand wrappers, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system,—a ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... begin to see the drift of this long exordium, although my purpose was indeed twofold. First, I wished, after the example of my betters in literature, to give you a slight glimpse of the immense extent of my learning. Secondly, I wished ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... two most distinctively Christian features of his character have still to be mentioned. One of these was the sense of having a divine mission to preach Christ, which he was bound to fulfill. Most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is determined by a hundred indifferent circumstances; they might as well be doing anything else, or they would prefer, if they could afford it, to be doing nothing at all. But, from the time when he became a Christian, Paul ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... us would cry out, on sighting the enemy in the distance; and, in an instant, everything was got ready to receive her. I would take the lines, and Harris and George would sit down beside me, all of us with our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift out quietly into mid-stream. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... drift along the pale-yellow cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper colour and the narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem. Sometimes I went south to visit our German ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... 17 ft. wide, and 27 ft. high, connected the south end of the shaft with the tunnels. The drift was excavated in three stages, a top heading and a bench in two lifts. While blasting the cut in the top heading, there was enough concussion to break glass in the neighboring buildings. The use of a radialax machine reduced the concussion somewhat, but it was very quickly abandoned ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason

... and up to a favourite spot where there was a special haunt of the fish, where the stream curved round and formed a deep pool. But I felt as if I must stop again and again to let the boat drift, and watch humming-birds, or brightly-painted butterflies and beetles, flitting here and there, so that it was quite a couple of hours before we reached the spot, and suddenly turned the curve of the river ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... which we were to partake of with grand ceremony under the willows. Then we were to have some music, and generally take it easy. Afterwards we were to bathe, and then row some mile or two farther up to the woods, and have a squirrel hunt; and towards evening, after a picnic tea, drift down with the stream in time for the nine o'clock bell. It seemed a perfect plan, and as we sat and discussed it our spirits rose, and we found ourselves already enjoying our picnic in prospect. But presently Growler came into the room, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... sighed, and with that Jim and Toby seemed to drift farther away. She began to see their life apart from hers. She could picture Jim with his head in his hands. She could hear his sharp orders to the men. He was always short with the others when anything went ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo

... dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, [11] I strive, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... since known that she was attached to the person of, and warmly personally attached to, the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales,—then only unfortunate; so that I can now guess at the drift of much sad and passionate talk with indignant lips and tearful eyes, of which the meaning was then of course incomprehensible to me, but which I can now partly interpret by the subsequent history of that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... time's airy hall, That not a moment holds them all, While some keep up, and others fall, The atoms shift; then, thick and swift, They drive along to form the drift, That weaving up, so dazzling white, Is rising like a wall ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... boat and had rowed down the lake in the hope of reaching Crook's Rapids on the Trent before nightfall. Irishman-like, their only stores for the voyage consisted of a bottle of whiskey, to which it appears they applied themselves more diligently than to the navigation of their boat, which they let drift at the mercy of the winds ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of long-fibred timber they ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... am well aware that I took upon myself a great responsibility in deciding this question. Perhaps, without the counsel of my brother, I should not have dared to proceed as I did. Bad as the consequences threatened to be, I did not regret that I had permitted the log to drift ashore. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... have seen that the old religious ties are not only weakened by the Atlantic voyage, but often broken altogether. In some nationalities this tie is strong, in most of them not very binding. The great bulk of the new immigration is Roman or Greek Catholic. Thousands of these nominal church members drift into open infidelity or schools of atheism, or else into nothingism. Their former Church does not keep them, and Protestantism does not get them. It is a question whether their new condition is better or ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... unloaded, I turned it around and crossed alone. The remainder of the load was put in, with our two men, and, one of them seated by my side with the whip, we "yelled" ourselves across again. Our wagon was stopped in a sandy drift, our grub box thrown out, a fire lighted, and with the impending storm in close proximity, we hurriedly cooked and ate our evening meal. No sooner was my plate cleared than, taking my roll of blankets, I wearily threw them down not more than ten feet ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... acquaintances beyond those with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other—perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly wrong suggestion of the Hebraic—he was ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... down with them, they were tossing about among the rocks and seaweed, so much human drift on the great ocean of Death! And we four were saved. But one day a sunrise will come when we shall be among those who are lost, and then others will watch those glorious rays, and grow sad in the midst of beauty, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... work comprehends is interesting. It is a statistical account of the "growth of the Negro population from decade to decade; its geographical distribution at each decennial enumeration; its migratory drift westward in the early decades of the last century, when Negroes and whites were moving forward into the East and West South Central States as cultivators of virgin soil; its drift northward and cityward, and in more recent decades southward out of the "black belt," in response to the universal ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... suddenly to blaze fire. For the first time she perceived the drift of the cruel suspicion which her fellow-students were seeking to cast upon her. "How wicked you are!" she said to Rosalind. "Why do you look at me like that? Miss Day, why do you smile? Why do you all smile? Oh, Nancy," added poor Prissie, springing to her feet and looking ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... tendency to canonise it, and to magnify it as an ideal exemplar for nations. John Adams said, in 1766: "Here lies the difference between the British Constitution and other forms of government, namely, that liberty is its end, its use, its designation, drift and scope, as much as grinding corn is the use of a mill." Another celebrated Bostonian identified the Constitution with the law of Nature, as Montesquieu called the Civil Law, written Reason. He said: "It is the glory of the British ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... taste for eccentricity, she had never regarded him with serious interest, and would not now, under any circumstances, renew her intercourse with him. Lucian found little solace in these conversations, and generally suffered from a vague sense of meanness after them. Yet next time they met he would drift into discussing Cashel over again; and he always rewarded Alice for the admirable propriety of her views by dancing at least three times with her when dancing was the business of the evening. The dancing was still less congenial than ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... wrinkled his brows. "It's a great deal," he answered slowly. "I seem to feel that we shall drift further and further apart if once I ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... great net-work of exposed roots, some of them a foot or two in thickness, and others varying in size all the way down to mere threads. The freshets which had washed the earth away from the roots, had piled a great mass of drift-wood against one side of them. Sam made a careful examination of the place, and then all went to work. The two boys so disposed some of the drift-wood as to make a sort of covered passage from the edge of the bank to the two ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... to cross one a horse sunk up to his haunches, and we had much difficulty in extricating him. At five miles from our camp we ascended some high ridges of an oolitic limestone formation, which were partially covered by drift-sand, and in the distance looked like the ridge of a sea shore. From their summit Cape le Grand bore E. 27 degrees S., the peak called by the French the "Chapeau," E. 23 degrees S., and the head of the salt-water lake E. 10 degrees S. We had now a succession of barren, sandy and stony ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... either of the brothers to the cause which had provoked it. Rand was at work in the shaft, Ruth having that morning undertaken the replenishment of the larder with game from the wooded skirt of the mountain. Rand had taken advantage of his brother's absence to "prospect" in the "drift,"—a proceeding utterly at variance with his previous condemnation of all such speculative essay; but Rand, despite his assumption of a superior practical nature, was not above certain local superstitions. Having that morning put on his gray ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the yellow circle of the electric torch travel over the cracked stucco-wall that faced them, the paintless door at its left extremity, the drift of dead leaves ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... mental and moral worth will be more than negatived. The present state of affairs in the Southern States of America is a warning against easy optimism in this respect. We must expect clashing and growing ill-will rather than social serenity to be the outcome of a continued policy of drift. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... least our houre forestall us, ile in and deale for your disguise; tarry thou & give mine host a share of our intent; marry, charge him to keep it as secret as his Garbage. He undoes our drift [else] and cloathes the foole ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... gradually came to the man who had a parcel of immutable axioms and postulates, and who was ready with a deduction and a phrase for each case as it arose. He began to stand out like a needle of sharp rock, amid the flitting shadows of uncertain purpose and the vapoury drift of wandering aims. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... in Camp and Bombardment of the Boer lines at Colenso — General Buller moves his army, and by a flank march seizes "Bridle Drift" over the Tugela — The heavy Naval and Royal Artillery guns are placed in position — Sir Charles Warren crosses the Tugela with the 5th Division, and commences his flank ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... snow-drift to the knees, and when they had floundered through it for thirty yards or so Weston sank suddenly well over his waist. He flung himself forward, and with the help of Kinnaird wriggled clear, but when they looked down there was empty ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... whom we see through a picturesque medium," said Julius; "but who could not have been pleasant to the mediaeval clergyman. I have hopes of poor Fanny yet. She will drift home one of these days, and we ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... one of you—even you, Mr. Beeson, sir, whom I tried to befriend although you may not know it." And she turned upon me. "You have not a word to say. I am never going back, I tell you all. You won't take me, any of you? Very well." She smiled wanly. "I'll drift along, gentlemen. I'll play the lone hand. Montoyo shall never seize me. I'd rather trust to the wolves and the Indians. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... in the ordinary course of things must succeed each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth. I will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme development of Adeptship; an achievement which means that the person reaching it has so violently stimulated his ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... cousin of the Duke of Ellswold, he put the case before him. On the instant, the Duke gave a solution to Constance' aims, explaining everything to the King. He also—for he dreaded what the King might do—said 'twas possible she was not of sound mind. His Majesty saw the Duke's drift and declared that death should not come upon her, but she should be imprisoned. This satisfied the Duke, for he was seriously afraid for the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... that moral organisation was not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached any meaning to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basis of our present safety. Sustaining and constructive forces did indeed for a time more than balance the malign drift of chance and the natural ignorance, prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... this from my hiding I had heard very clearly, for they stood right under me in the dusk. But as the old gentleman paused to let his question sink in, and the bully to catch the drift of it before answering, one of the dicers above struck up ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... signifies the sudden return of spring. As told by an Indian, it is very effective. This tale was told me by Tomah Josephs.] And he was a Partridge, who after the manner of his kind had been wintering under a snow-drift, and now came forth to greet the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... fact, which the island afforded. The boys returned, and we felt safe. At seven o'clock, however, we found the river still rising rapidly. It covered nearly the whole island. Logs, brush, green trees, and all manner of drift went sweeping by at tremendous speed, and the water rushed over land which had been dry half an hour before, with apparently as strong a current as that in the channel. We knew then that the sick and wounded were in danger. How to rescue them was now the question. A raft was ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... he desires; and he falls back steadily upon his last resource of a strike, and—if by repressive tactics we make it so—a criminal strike. The central fact of all this present trouble is that distrust. There is only one way in which our present drift towards revolution or revolutionary disorder can be arrested, and that is by restoring the confidence of these alienated millions, who visibly now are changing from loyalty to the Crown, from a simple patriotism, from habitual industry, to the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... were lying down and turning their backs on the flying drift, Wandering William, as he called himself, retired once more. But he couldn't sleep for thinking of the strange ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... not, unless you rode a cow and shot at a goat," Flint answered, and was rather relieved to have the conversation drift away on to the comparative merits, as hunting-grounds, of the different sections of the country. The subject was not specially exciting to Flint; but it was at least impersonal, and he felt an unaccountable aversion to hearing any further discussion ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... the fear of the net of Rome is futile also. People drift to where they belong, and Rome seems to offer to take all spiritual responsibility from the shoulders of her children. It gives them an emotional satisfaction which brings comfort to all, and amongst these any of hysterical nature probably become far happier and better citizens ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... since the hermit had spoken to any living being, that he had almost lost the use of his tongue, and his sentences were slow and ill-formed. However, Cuthbert was able to understand him, and he to gather the drift of what Cuthbert told him. The old man then showed him, that by touching a stone in the corner of his cave the apparently solid rock opened, and revealed an entrance into an inner cave, which was lit by a ray of light, ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... to understand the drift of this question; she looked up as if bewildered, and her beautiful eyes dilated with a painful, tortured expression. He went on, without noticing the look on her face; he did not see ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... be occasionally transported in another manner. Drift timber is thrown up on most islands, even on those in the midst of the widest oceans; and the natives of the coral islands in the Pacific procure stones for their tools, solely from the roots of drifted trees, these stones being a valuable ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... the small piece of drift-wood which the native brought to him, and, plunging into the sea, struck out vigorously in the direction in which the pastor was still perseveringly, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... couplings like wool, icicles pendent from the carriage eaves, and an air of punctual unconcern; or those who have known some of our other equally sterling trains—these will hardly mind if friendship does let them drift into exaggeration when speaking of expresses." The author well remembers how, when living some years ago at Newcastle-on-Tyne, it was often his custom to stroll on the platform of the Central Station to watch the arrival ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... however, made up his mind that he could not let the son of his only brother, the youth whom he had regarded almost as a son, and who had lost so much by the discovery of the child, drift away into expatriation, without being personally satisfied as to these new companions. This was ostensible reason enough for a resolution to go out himself to the transatlantic Northmoor to make arrangements for his nephew. Moreover, he was bent on doing so before the return of Mrs. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sums thus miserably raised were as miserably doled away. With a sullen apathy the woman contemplated famine. She would make no effort to live—appeal to no relations, no friends. It was a kind of vengeance she took on others, to let herself drift on to death. She had retreated from lodging to lodging, each obscurer, more desolate than the other. Now, she could no longer pay rent for the humblest room; now, she was told to go forth—whither? She knew not—cared not—took ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "he is a great wood-drift." "Yohskoharo, writes Mr. Bearfoot, means an obstruction by driftwood in creeks or ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... once and with decision that I intended to do nothing of the sort and immediately regretted my words, since, although I spoke in Zulu, I suppose she read their meaning from my face. At any rate she understood the drift of them. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... let you go thus. You must hear me,' he cried, and he wheeled round an easy-chair, with a gesture of entreaty; which she obeyed, partly because she was hardly alive to understand his drift, partly because she could scarcely stand; and there she sat, in the same drowsy resignation with which she had listened ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... skies My weary gaze I lift, His gently shining eyes Look from the cloudy drift, Or stooping o'er the wave I see him ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... high wrongs I am struck to the quick, Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... am astonished at the wasteful lives which so many of our women are living. They seem utterly destitute of purpose. They make no effort to give them shape or plan, or to set up a goal in the distance, to be reached by some kind of industrious application. They drift along listlessly and mechanically, in the old well-worn tracks, trusting to accident to give them a new direction. It is a sad thing, this waste ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a drift and finding ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... contrast to the case of a gentleman then at the bar, about whom he has often laughed heartily with me. "Whenever," said he, "the judges put a question to ——, however subtle and dangerous it may be, and though he evidently cannot in the least degree perceive the drift of it, before the words are out of their mouths, he, as it were, thrusts them down again with a confident good-humoured volubility, a kind of jocular recklessness of law and logic, which often makes one wonder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... she staved off a personal drift in the conversation. "It's getting darker," she said, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... may take all the steam-hammers that ever were forged and batter at an iceberg, and, except for the comparatively little heat that is developed by the blows and melts some smell portion, it will be ice still, though pulverised instead of whole. But let it get into the silent drift of the Arctic current, and let it move quietly down to the southward, then the sunbeams smite its coldness to death, and it is dissipated in the warm ocean. Meekness is conqueror. 'Be not overcome of evil, but overcome ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... bent on mischief, and he unstoppered the cables, permitting them to run out and sink to the bottom of the lake. The wind was blowing, still pretty fresh, from the west, and the steamer, now loosened from her moorings, began to drift toward the middle of ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic

... child had climbed upon the pile of drift-wood, and stood hunched with the cold, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands withdrawn in his parki sleeves, but he was grinning still. The Boy, a little concerned as to possible reprisals upon so impudent a young woman, had gone on and on, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... the shelter had been cleaned up and on one side were placed several piles of fresh pine boughs, which in camping out make the best kind of a couch. Then the fire was brought in and placed where the smoke could drift out between the trees. The blaze soon warmed the place up, and the ruddy glare made the boys ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... sky-line of every ridge which bordered and limited these gulches; he seized frequent opportunities of making long diagonals down the slopes. Nothing escaped him. In time he knew the general appearance of every bit of drift or outcrop in his district. Then he sat down in his cabin and carefully considered the probabilities. If they had not happened to please him, he would have repeated the whole wearisome process in another valley; but as ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... to get homesick for a higher existence, usually they soon drift quietly away where ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... a fast one. We had enough steerageway to drift over your position after a few turns of the screws down by the reef passage. You see, we didn't know what was going on, so we took no chances. Then, when we got into position, we got into the water without waiting to anchor. We dropped anchor ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... inherited; because Johnson did not habitually or often use imagery, whereas Gibbon did use habitual imagery, and such use is what deprives a language of elasticity, and leaves it either rigid or languid, oftener languid. Encumbered by this drift and refuse of English, Charlotte Bronte yet achieved the miracle of her vocabulary. It is less wonderful that she should have appeared out of such a parsonage than that she should have arisen out of such ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... the flock, usually one dog for every shepherd is considered enough, but the practice varies. Thus there should be more in localities where wild beasts are plentiful, and those increase the number also who are wont to drive their flocks over the long forest drift ways to their summer or ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... man and felt sorry for him; he was frank, rather handsome, and generally a pleasant companion, but she thought their friendship was ripening too fast and was not prepared to see it change to something deeper Indeed, since it was pleasant to be sought after, she feared she had allowed herself to drift too far, and now the time ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... all been ingeniously planned, the minutest incidents and conditions of Hadria's life conspired towards the event that was to decide its drift for ever. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... "the lower and auriferous part of the channel of an old river of the Tertiary period " ('Century'). "The lowest portion of a lead. A gutter is filled with auriferous drift or washdirt, which rests on the palaeozoic bed-rock." (Brough Smyth, 'Glossary of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... for a little way up, but all that upper part isn't perpendicular; it hangs right over towards us. Impossible, my lad. Nothing could get up there but a bird or a fly. We must give up that idea. Burgess, you will have to lower a boat and let her drift down to the headland there, stern on, and with the men ready to pull for their lives, as you may be fired at. When you get to the head you must let her slide along close under the bushes till you get a sight of the boats and see ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... cindery powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii. We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... the party. Good trapper he is, but the fame he has earned among adventurers of his class is not from fur-getting. He is a lonely man, but a creature of action. He never seeks to avoid the Indian trails. Cautious and crafty he is, certainly, but he follows closely the westward drift of the red men, and when opportunity comes he spares not at all. He is a hunter of Indians, vengeance personified. He is the boy who hid beneath the brush-heap; the memory of that awful day and night is ever with ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... aright, and had a compass never losing its polarity, that he would reach port whether he made sail or not, whether he minded his helm or not. He knew he couldn't drift into port. With waterlogged and becalmed Christians or those who heaved to crafts expecting to drift to the celestial heaven, he had but little fellowship. Such he would cause to shake out reefs and have yards well trimmed to catch every breeze from ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... they may have been given by the one interviewed. Often in conversation a man will give more time to an idea than is its due, and often the most important part of an interview will not be introduced until the last. Or, again, a person may drift away from the immediate topic and not return to it for some minutes. In all such cases it is the duty of the reporter to regroup and develop the ideas so that they shall follow each other logically in the printed interview and shall present the thought ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... Alas! it appears that he had not. For one thing, he has not always been sober, he is confessing, when Noah interrupts with the comment that insobriety is not such a very serious affair. In fact, he himself once ... and by this time the reader begins to get the drift of this joyous humane fantasy, the point being that the hierarchy of Heaven are all on the side of the brave simple soldier who has died that France might live. As how could they not be? Another time, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... rocks lifted their mossy tops in the path. And ever, as they went, the roar of the rapids followed, while through the foliage could be seen the hurrying waters, pouring over rocks, stealing amid drift-logs, eddying in chasms, and shooting in white lines of foam along every ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... repetition added to the overwhelming sense of universal monotony in Gordon Makimmon's brain. He turned at the corner, by Simmons' store, while the memories faded; the customary greyness, like a formless drift of cloud obscuring a mountain height, once more descended ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... and the snow lying four or five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey more ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... beauty of the scene seemed to impress even the restless spirits of which our little party was composed, and, by common consent, we ceased rowing, and suffered the boat to drift with the tide, merely pulling a stroke now and then to keep her head in the right direction. After drifting for some twenty minutes or so in the manner I have described Lawless, who never could remain quiet long, dropped ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... in his Mail a Report from the Expert in charge of Shaft No. 13 in the Skiddykadoo Fields showing that the Assay ran $42.16 and the Main Lateral had been opened as far as the Mezzanine Drift, which meant that the $1 Shares would be selling ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... inside, so I took the key out again and put it down on the deck, and took another survey of the limited portion of the room visible to me. I could hear Harris talking in a low tone, and Captain Riggs asking questions, and by putting my ear to the keyhole I heard enough to get the drift of their conversation, although in this position I could not ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... at that instant, Forester observed a little flash, and then a faint glimmer of light where Marco was. He had lighted a match by rubbing it against some drift-wood. He touched it to some dry bark, and soon had a pleasant little blaze upon the rocks, near the shore. He piled on pieces of drift-wood, such as branches of trees, old slabs, &c., which he found lying about there, and he soon had a very good fire. Forester ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott

... of me! Ungrateful, perjured cheat! A coward, too: but ingrate's worse than all! Beggar—my slave—a fawning, cringing lie! Leave me! Betray me! I can see your drift! 245 A lie that walks and ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... but the professor had a feeling that she was still concealed somewhere in the darkness. And, at last, she came again—she, or something that looked like her. The old gentleman shivered and recoiled, as though a snow-drift had somehow blown into his warm, old heart. Was it his daughter who looked with those unmeaning eyes, encircled with dark rings, in which life and passion burned out had left the dull ashes of remorse and hopelessness? Where were the luminous cheeks and the ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... your character, never read a bad book. By the time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift; If you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, away with it. You may tear your coat, or break a vase, and repair them again, but the point where the rip or fracture took place will always be evident. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... "I perceive your drift, and it is toward a harbor that is the King of England's affair, and not mine. My part is to go away now, so that you two may settle the details of that ambassadorship in which Dom Manuel is to be the ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... orbit round the Earth's centre, and the longer each degree; so that moving eastward only a thousand miles an hour, I should constantly lag behind a point on the Earth's surface, and should not reach the midnight meridian till somewhat later. I had, moreover, to lose 500 miles of the eastward drift during the last hour in which I should be subject to it, through the action of the apergic force above-mentioned. Now, an elevation of 330 miles would give the Astronaut an orbit on which 90 deg. would represent 6500 miles. In seven hours I should be carried along ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... m'son. And after all is over, you'll wonder where the dickens they all went to. Montana is some bigger than you realize, I guess. And next fall, when shipping starts, you'll think you're seeing raw porterhouse steaks for the whole world. Let's drift out uh this dust; you'll have time to get a carload uh pictures before our ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... about her an amazing quality of restfulness, of which I quickly got into the habit of taking advantage, after the vulgar, competitive days of a journalist's existence. You can't imagine what it meant to me, to drift into the seclusion of that little Chelsea room, with the mistiness of the trees and the river outside the window, to be greeted by her smile, and to sink into my familiar arm-chair, where I might lounge sucking at my pipe and watching the cool glimmer of her beautiful ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... idea, now and then above the trees would burst what seemed a rocket of coloured stars. The stars would drift away in a flock on the wind and be lost. They were flights of birds. All-coloured birds peopled the trees below blue, scarlet, dove-coloured, bright of eye, but voiceless. From the reef you could see occasionally the seagulls rising here and there in clouds like small ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Sam, after a pause, "I think I see your drift, and it's my 'pinion that you're a-comin' it a great deal too strong, as the mail-coachman said to the snowstorm ven it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... No drift or dream of passing bell, Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred More yearning ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... or ten million years. The entire solar system is gradually losing its internal heat, and must inevitably die of sheer inanition. The time is coming when the sun will drift through space, a black star in the midst of dead worlds. Perhaps the system will fall together, perhaps it will run against a star. In either case there would probably be a 'new heaven and a ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... up in a few minutes, I cut the saddle-girths with my knife, that the horse might be freer in his movements, and then, bidding him lie still, I took my pistols and burrowed into the snow beside him. After I had dug down a little way, I struck off in the drift, and worked myself along it toward the valley. I had not tunnelled far before I heard the Indians coming, and, pushing up my head, I cut a small hole in the crust of the snow, so I could peep out. As the savages came up they began ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... endeavour to project what cannot easily be said in verse.[14] A little patience will generally make it clear what Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and ungrammatical sentences in which he has enveloped it. The form of Campanella's poetry, though often grotesque, is always ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... a few small pieces of iron on the beach, where he had observed numerous human footprints; but as nothing more could be done, the pinnace went back to the yacht, which we could not get round to eastward owing to the strong current; we were accordingly forced to weigh the anchor again, and drift with the current, and thus ran on along the coast till the first watch, when we cast anchor, it being a dead calm and we having no knowledge ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... lead you, newly-married bride, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue, And where kind tongues bring no captivity; For we are but obedient to the thoughts That drift into the mind at a wink of ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire • William Butler Yeats



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