"Sunbeam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light on both these miracles at once. This it was which had led the high-born dame to cast aside all the vanities and foolishness in which she had grown up, to the end that she might protect a young and oppressed creature whom she truly cared for from an ill fate. Yea, and that sunbeam had cast its light far and wide in the coppersmith's home, and illumined Ann likewise, so that she now saw the old mother of the household ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... genius like his own, a germ of the finest fruit still hidden beneath the soil, the "Chante pauvre petit" of Beranger shall strike, like a sunbeam, and give it force to emerge, and wherever there is the true Crusade,—for the spirit, not the tomb of Christ,—shall be felt an echo of the "Que tes armes soient benis ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... flushed warmly with the glow of health,—and he had broad, bold, intellectual brows over which the rich hair clustered in luxuriant waves,—hair that was almost black, with here and there a curious fleck of reddish gold brightening its curling masses, as though a stray sunbeam or two had been caught and entangled therein. He was arrayed in a costume of the finest silk,—his armlets, belt, and daggersheath were all of jewels,— and the general brilliancy of his attire was furthermore increased by a finely worked flexible collar of gold, set with diamonds. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Dr. Franklin's invention, but his courage. It was as follows: "Once upon a time an eagle, scaling round a farmer's barn and espying a hare, darted down upon him like a sunbeam, seized him in his claws, and remounted with him to the air. He soon found that he had a creature of more courage and strength than a hare, for which, notwithstanding the keenness of his eyesight, he ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... moving over strange waters. Then occurred the most notable event of my life. In the twinkling of an eye I was caught away from the Earth and, without any effort of my own, I was darting through space faster than a sunbeam. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath, On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of the blast there entered in a sunbeam, clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and a marvellous great glory fell upon them all. Then each knight, looking on his neighbour, found his face fairer than he had ever seen, and so—all standing on their feet—they gazed as dumb men on each other, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... heavens the story of God's glory. Go forth into the field and behold his work. See him preparing the bright cloud, which the winds gently upheave, from whose bosom drops the softening shower—how richly the grass springs in the valley—how the golden grain steals splendor from the sunbeam which has smiled on it so long—how his hand is ever at work providing for the wants of his creatures, and ever reminding men by this silent ministry that he is the Author and Giver of every good and perfect gift. If God hath so clearly revealed the great truth of his own existence, is it not reasonable ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... unerring aim across the theatre at the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other object worth aiming at—an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture, and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling. His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its contents are composed of three bellpull-handles, a valuable series of shutter-fastenings, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... a perfumed place, A slim girl sits with a happy face; Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies On her lovely ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... convinced that the whole human race is entitled to it, and that it can be wrested from no part of them without the blackest and most aggravated guilt. The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... think without sorrow, for she wore that same sweet smile that you see now frozen upon her lips. Oh, Beverly, I am sorry you brought him here!" she added, in a lower tone, glancing with a shudder at Philip Searle, who stood looking with a frown out at the lattice, and stopping the sunbeam from coming into the room. "It seems," she continued, "as if his presence brought a curse that would drag upon the angels' wings that are bearing her to heaven. Though, thank God, she is beyond his power to harm her now!" and she knelt ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... eyebrows. She was wearing no hat, as it was more comfortable to recline against the cushions with uncovered head, but a fluffy white parasol belonging to her hostess was placed by her side, in case an obtrusive sunbeam penetrated the branches overhead. "I never know where the sun is going to move next. Men always do, don't they? I think it is so clever of them!" Madame had declared in her charming, inconsequent fashion ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... kneeling there By the child's side, in humble prayer, While the same sunbeam shines upon The guilty and the guiltless one, And hymns of joy proclaim through Heaven 110 The triumph ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and hoary, O'er us breaks the mighty day, And the sunbeam, cold and gory, Lights us on our fearful way. In the womb of coming hours, Destinies of empires lie, Now the scale ascends, now lowers, Now is thrown the noble die. Brothers, the hour with warning is rife; Faithful in death as you're faithful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... upper part of the spray into a rainbow, and never to my eyes had the bow of promise looked so heavenly as when it spanned the black, solemn, tree-shadowed abyss, whose deep, still waters only catch a sunbeam on five days ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the tenderness of tone in which they were spoken, told plainly that it was anything but a matter of indifference to the speaker, and Agnes, blushing deeply as she met Arthur's compassionate glance, felt the conviction, darting like a ray of sunbeam through her mind, that to at least one person in the world she was dearer than aught ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... portion of Leslie's nature, which required abundant and invigorating food, was slow of development; the lighter side flourished in the silent, dull house, where nothing else courted the sunbeam. In her childhood and girlhood, Leslie had gone out to school, and although always somewhat marked and individual in character, she had companions, friends, sufficient sympathy and intercourse for an independent, buoyant nature at the most plastic period of its existence. This stage ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Snatch the retrieveless sunbeam as it flies, Nor lose one sand of life's revolving glass— Aspiring still, with energy sublime, By virtuous deeds ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... wandering Israelites were abundantly fed in the Assyrian desert with manna from the skies and marvel at the Providence which saved a million souls from death, forgetting that every harvest is a repetition of the same miracle, that each morsel of food we eat is a gift of Heaven conveyed to us by a sunbeam. Food is simply sunshine captured by the chlorophyll of plants and served up to us in tiny bundles called molecules, which, when torn apart in our bodies by the processes of digestion and assimilation release the captured energy which ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... not absolutely necessary—to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons and thread ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... painted galleys, from the Lucrine Lake [40] to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Cayeta, [41] they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, [42] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... gliding into the gloomy consulting-room like a sunbeam, delivered her message to the old gentleman, who appeared to be in some pain, and prepared ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... dining-room. The walls were adorned with paintings, principally of fruit and flowers. A large and superb picture of a sylvan dell in the side of a rock, was one exception. Its deep, cool shadows, and the pellucid water, which a wandering sunbeam accidentally revealed, were strikingly realistic. Nearly all of the pictures were upon panels of crystal that were set in the wall. The light shining through them gave them an exceedingly natural effect. One picture that I especially admired, was of a grape vine twining around the body and trunk ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... of discipline, I frequently adopt a querulous manner, finding it necessary in dealing with office-boys, but the moment I leave shop behind me I become a different individual entirely, and have been called a moteless sunbeam by those who have seen only that side of my character. This, by-the-way, must be regarded as a confidential communication, since I am at present engaged in preparing a vest-pocket edition of the philosophical works of Schopenhauer in words of one syllable, and were ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... roots, the myrtle and lauristinus, mingled with the oleander, the rhododendron ponticum, and other evergreen shrubs, fed by the fostering moisture of the atmosphere, almost to the size of trees, spread out their luxurious branches to shut out each straggling sunbeam, and deepen the shade of the narrow dell almost to twilight. It was a cavern, with its vaulted roof removed, laying it gently open to the light of day, without its glare. The wood-pigeon amidst the boughs mingled his plaintive notes with the murmur of the falling water, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... beautiful sight to look upon, as the long jet, curving like the tail of a horse, plunged into the foaming pool below; and then rising with its millions of globules of snowy spray, glittered under the sunbeam with all the colours of the rainbow. It was, indeed, a beautiful sight; but our eyes did not dwell long upon it, for other objects were before them that filled us with wonder. Away below—far below where we were—lay a lovely valley, smiling in all the luxuriance ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the relation by law, and bestowed the highest manifestations of his favor upon slaveholders; and has caused it to be written as with a sunbeam in the Scriptures. Yet such saints would be refused the ordinary tokens of Christian fellowship among abolitionists. If Abraham were on earth, they could not let him, consistently, occupy their pulpits, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The attorney was dismissed, with directions to hold himself in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... his hand graciously. "This is, indeed, a pleasure. Permit me to present you to my aunt, Miss Caarter, of Virginia, who has left her home to gladden our Christmas with her presence. The gentlemen, of co'se, you already know. Yo' little daughter, suh, is a perfect sunbeam. She has so crept into our hearts that we feel as if we never wanted her to leave us——" and he laid his hand on the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... physical frame; that must be equally an object of incessant care. Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—he is one with God. Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then comes another, and there is death. Living ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the third room. There also a pot was suspended from a hook, and boiling without fire. Yvon dipped a lock of hair into it, and took it out all coated with gold. It shone so brightly that it might have been mistaken for a sunbeam. ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... torpedo attack. This is likely to develop in the future into one of the most important uses of aircraft in naval operations, but during the war it was never given an objective by the German fleet. In May, 1915, two Sunbeam Short machines were embarked in the "Ben-my-Chree" for operations at Gallipoli, and it was in this theatre that for the first time in history ships were sunk by torpedoes released from aircraft. I shall never forget the night when we steamed ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... relieved; but he could not sleep. Three years of night, and through the darkness a sunbeam at last! At sea adrift and lost, and now land! Dead so long, and, lo! the thrill and stir of resurrection. Sleep was not for such an hour. Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on her with impulse and suggestive circumstance. Starting from the favor of the tribune, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying in a sheltered corner, where no sunbeam ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Aissa. He threw himself down in the grass by the side of the brook and listened for the sound of her footsteps. The brilliant light of day fell through the irregular opening in the high branches of the trees and streamed down, softened, amongst the shadows of big trunks. Here and there a narrow sunbeam touched the rugged bark of a tree with a golden splash, sparkled on the leaping water of the brook, or rested on a leaf that stood out, shimmering and distinct, on the monotonous background of sombre ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the belles of the county; her hair was as bright as a sunbeam, her eyes as blue as a summer sky, her full lips were red, her cheeks had the bloom of the peach upon them. Mildred was a well-grown girl, with a largely ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... anticipating this journey, while those formidable things lay between! The thought of the mountains seemed not worth a straw, and now looking back to only this day week is wonderful. Home still smiles upon me like a lake that catches a sunbeam; and sometimes I feel truly thankful that the way that I knew not has led ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... rumbling sound in his insides as if his feelings were getting quite too much for him, and then suddenly he sent a loud "cuckoo" ringing through the silent room. Instantly the little gray mouse leaped down from the table and scampered away to his hole in the wall, the golden sunbeam flickered and was gone, and shadows began to creep into the corners. "Cuckoo, cuckoo," he shouted at the top of his voice, "cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,"—six times in all,—and then, his duty done, he popped back again ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... unto Camelot, and so went to evensong to the great minster. And so after upon that to supper, and every knight sat in his own place as they were toforehand. Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder, that them thought the place should all to-drive. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. Then began every knight to behold other, and either saw other by their seeming fairer than ever they saw afore. Not for then there was no knight ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... retired spot; at night they ran over Francis's bed with an infernal uproar, so that he could find no repose from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith and courage. "A single sunbeam," he used to say, "is enough ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... child's face into a strange beauty, as a stray sunbeam finds a hidden flower and glorifies it. Turning her face upward to the nest, she patted her own cheek and said: "Be goodu, Yuki, ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... said, after her mother had kissed her, "Why has papa don away? I 'ove my papa ever so much, and I asked him, before he went away, if he 'oved oo and Eddie and Allie, and he taid he did, and that he 'oved me, his 'ittle sunbeam, too, and ett he has don and left us all. I am so ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... of the time—a sunbeam took human shape when he was born. But naturally that dreadful scene left a scar on his brain, as the bullet left a scar on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... the cloud? As I have said, the light which the cloud obscures, shining on the upper surface of it, dissipates it layer by layer till it gets down at last to the lowermost, and then rends a gap in it, and sends the shaft of the sunbeam through on to the green earth. And that is only a highly imaginative way of saying that it is the love against which we transgress that thins away the cloud of transgression, and at last, as the placid moon, by simply shining silently on, will sweep the whole sky clear of its clouds, dissipates ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... forget all about her, when, in response to some remarks of her aged companion, she laughed, and in laughing so great a change came into her face that it was as if she had been transformed into another being. It was like a sudden breath of wind and a sunbeam falling on the still cold surface of a woodland pool. The eyes, icily cold a moment before, had warm sunlight in them, and the half-parted lips with a flash of white teeth between them had gotten a new beauty; and most remarkable ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... of a child entered; a perfect sunbeam irradiating the whole room. If, under the confidence induced by the vision I had had of him on his knees the night before, any suspicion remained in my mind of his being Gwendolen Ocumpaugh in disguise, ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... he shall spy The glitterance of Christ. From horn to horn, And 'tween the summit and the base did move Lights, scintillating, as they met and pass'd. Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, The atomies of bodies, long or short, To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line Checkers the shadow, interpos'd by art Against the noontide heat. And as the chime Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help With many strings, a pleasant dining makes To him, who heareth not distinct the note; So from the lights, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the card of her boutique, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... was movin' inside, lads," said Fuller, glancing up at the church clock. Ruth inclined her head to Ferdinand, gave a nod and a smile to Reuben (who nodded back rather gloomily), and passed like a sunbeam into the shadow of the porch. Fuller took up his 'cello in a big armful, and followed, with the brethren in his rear. Ferdinand, feeling Reuben's company to be distasteful, lingered in it with a perverse hope that the young man might address him, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... had one charm even greater than her beauty. She talked well and gracefully—the play of her features, the movement of her lips, were something not to be forgotten; and her smile seemed to break like a sunbeam over her whole ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... sound, a blaze of golden light, aroused him. He sat up, dodging a sunbeam which had flicked his eyelids. Shrill voices came from a distance. The odor of manure exhaled by the caravan sheds floated into the room, and Peter jumped up front the couch with an angry grunt. His heart was heavy with the guilt of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... many little rocky arbours, with floors of sunny sand, and three or four feet of water. Here you might bathe, or sit on the ledges with your feet in the water, medicated with the restless glitter and bewilderment of a half-dissolved sunbeam. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... few steps nearer the gate, near enough now for him to see her rosy face framed in a blue hood, and to catch the brightness of her eyes under their lovely lashes. Ordinarily they were cool and limpid and grave, Waitstill's eyes; now a sunbeam danced in each of them. And her lips, almost always tightly closed, as if she were holding back her natural speech,—her lips were red and parted, and the soul of her, free at last, shone through her face, making it luminous with a ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and old, Waiting at the gates of gold, Spake he with his dying breath: "Life is done, but what is death?" Then, in answer to the king, Fell a sunbeam on his ring, Showing by a heavenly ray: "Even this shall ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... came Uriel, gleaming through the even On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired Impress the air, and shows the mariner From what point of his compass to ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... when Heidi began her self-imposed task, it took her longer than usual, for the weather was too glorious to stay within. Over and over again a bright sunbeam would tempt the busy child outside. How could she stay indoors, when the glistening sunshine was pouring down and all the mountains seemed to glow? She had to sit down on the dry, hard ground and look down into the valley ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... girls going on such excursions. I wish I might have gone to school to Agassiz just to get my eyes opened. If I had, I'd probably assign to my pupils such subjects as the evolution of a snowflake, the travels of a sunbeam, the mechanism of a bird's wing, the history of a dewdrop, the changes in a blade of grass, and the evolution of a grain of sand. If I could only take them away from books for a month or so, they'd probably be able ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... whose point the breath Of venomed words has armed with death, And the silver-orbed shield, Sunbeam of the battlefield! And take with thee My grayhounds three, Slender and tall, Bright-spotted all, Take them with thee, chieftain bold, With their chainlets light Of the silver white, And their neck-rings of the tawny gold. Slight ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... blest eyes, which dealt me the sore blow, 'Gainst which nor helm nor shield avail'd to spare Within, without, behold me poor and bare, Though never in laments is breathed my woe. But since on me your bright glance ever shines, E'en as a sunbeam through transparent glass, Suffice then the desire without the lines. Faith Peter bless'd and Mary, but, alas! It proves an enemy to me alone, Whose spirit save by you to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... was to Alfred like losing a sunbeam, and his spirit felt very dreary after he had heard this sentence. Ellen knew her well enough to suspect that she was very sorry, but that she could not help herself; and Mrs. King caught the brother and sister making such grumbling speeches to each other about ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary,— Watched within a curtained room Where no sunbeam brake the gloom, Round the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... cool brown twilight came on. If, as Knowles thought, the world was a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it. People were going from their work now,—they had time to talk and joke by the way,—stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street. From the houses near you could catch a faint smell of supper: very friendly people those were in these houses; she knew them all well. The children came out with their faces ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... senorita was a white and gold angel, made of a sunbeam! It was she who bought the knife, while the others chose a thing for the tall senora. She quickly gave it and the money to an attendant, with the address, saying it must be put ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... brierwood pipe! may the heart be as light When memory supplanteth the dream; When the sun has gone down may the sunbeam remain, And life's roses, though dead, all their fragrance retain, Till they catch at ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction." The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shot up to a height of fifty feet, entirely free from branches, which then, however, spread out at right angles to the stem, making the trees appear like gigantic umbrellas, and covering the whole morass with an impenetrable roof, through which not even a sunbeam could find a passage. On looking behind us, we saw the daylight at the entrance of the swamp, as at the mouth of a vast cavern. The further we went the thicker became the air; and at last the effluvia was so stifling and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... when from Life the Actual GENIUS springs, When, self-transformed by its own magic rod, It snaps the fetters and expands the wings, And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god, How the mists vanish as the form ascends! How in its aureole every sunbeam blends! By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen, How dim the crowns on perishable brows! The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen, Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows. Cimmerian glooms with Asian ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fragrance of the garden every morning when you awake; look at that pretty bower with the honeysuckle screen, 'tis there we will sit every evening, and talk over the joys of the day. Our life will be bright and beautiful as a sunbeam among roses!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... sit at his feet. He is the most amusing knave on the coast. He is like a sunbeam in a sick room when you can once get him to talk of his experiences. Have you seen young Nugent lately? Does ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... like of it," broke in Foy; "look, it runs together like quicksilver and is light as leather. See, too, it has stood sword and dagger stroke before to-day," and holding it in a sunbeam they perceived in many directions faint lines and spots upon the links caused in past years by the cutting edge of swords and the points of daggers. Yet never a one of those links ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... bowed shoulders. What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every close of day? Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the evening sky! Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Bat spread a bed for me on the kitchen floor, and I turned in. But my sleep resolved itself into a series of cat-naps. When the first sunbeam gleamed through the window of Bat's tiny kitchen, I arose, pulled on my boots and went to feed my horse. And when we had eaten breakfast I headed straight for Lessard's private quarters. I expected he would object to talking business out of business hours, but I didn't care; I wanted ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and my right-hand man," she heard Gail saying, "and Hope, our sunbeam; Charity, the ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails into the lid of a soap box that was partly filled with straw. Something else was there; as he ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... face. Sometimes she had wondered who and what her mother had been; what she had thought of as her baby grew within her; and with what regrets she had exchanged her life for her child's. More often she had considered herself as a being without a mother, a fairy's child, brought into this world on a sunbeam or born from ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and corries,—supremely grand in their impressive desolation, uplifting their stony peaks around us like the walls and turrets of a gigantic fortress, and rising so abruptly and so impenetrably encompassing the black stretch of water below, that it seemed impossible for a sunbeam to force its shining entrance into such a circle of dense gloom. Yet there was a shower of golden light pouring aslant down one of the highest of the hills, brightening to vivid crimson stray clumps of heather, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... dew, and when about seven o'clock, the first sunbeam pierced the grey mantle of the east, every leaf flashed back the yellow light. Will was walking there alone, his eyes turned now and then to the white window of ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... I was buried—that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... French marshals, had ridden forth and aviewed the state of the English host; and as these two knights returned towards their hosts, they met together: each of them bare one manner of device, a blue lady embroidered in a sunbeam above on their apparel. Then the lord Clermont said: 'Chandos, how long have ye taken on you to bear my device?' 'Nay, ye bear mine,' said Chandos, 'for it is as well mine as yours.' 'I deny that,' said Clermont, 'but an it were not for the truce this day between us, I should make ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Canongate! Edinboro'! Edinboro'! Music built the towers of Troy, but thy grey walls are built of sorrow! Wind-swept hills, and sorrowful glens, of thrifty sowing and iron reaping, What if her foot were fair as a sunbeam, how should it touch or melt your snows? What if her hair were a silken mesh? Hands of steel can deal hard blows, Iron breast-plates bruise fair flesh! Carry her southward, palled in purple, Weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping, What had their rocks to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... discern intervals of less than one-fiftieth of a second. Atmospheric vibration does not become sound until a considerable frequency is attained. Every movement we make displaces air but our sense of touch does not inform us of it, but if we stand in a sunbeam the dust particles will show that it is so. Our sense of feeling will not register above certain degrees of heat or below certain degrees of cold. Sensation, moreover, is not indefinitely sustained, as anyone may learn who will follow the ticking ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... gaze, and her fingers clasped his hand. From her face his eyes went slowly round the apartment, lingering with an intent look on familiar objects, and then they went to the roof, and for fully twenty minutes he watched the glowing patch where a sunbeam struck the canvas cover, and there was in his face something of the wonder of a creature born into a new world. Aurora was very grave: she did not smile, her heart felt no elation—it was numb and old. Jim had a perplexing sensation ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... his songs in manuscript, and they reveal a remarkable strenuousness, and a fine understanding of the poetry. His song, "Desire," is full of high-colored flecks of harmony that dance like the golden motes in a sunbeam. His "Madrigal" has much style and humor. He has set to music a deal of the verse of Langdon E. Mitchell, besides a song cycle, "The Journey," which is an interesting failure,—a failure because it ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, the authoress of the "Essay ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... so many festivals! And from the depths of the room it is as though, when they are heard, there passed lovely waves of sound through the soft air, free winging birds, and the moist soughing of the wind. Through the window smiles a patch of blue sky; a sunbeam slips through the curtains to the bed. The little world known to the eyes of the child, all that he can see from his bed every morning as he awakes, all that with so much effort he is beginning to recognize and classify, so ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... there is power not ourselves. We did not make this world. We did not put into it even the lowest force, gravitation. It is more than our minds can compass to measure its power. We have no arithmetic to tell its power on every mote in the sunbeam, or flower, or grain-head bowing toward the earth, tree brought down with a crash, or avalanche with thunder. Much less can we measure the power that holds the earth to the sun spite of its measureless centrifugal force. We did not make ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... mother fondly. 'I do not think anyone ever was happier than our Audrey. She is like a sunbeam in the house, John;' and then they ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is as beautiful as its face. Listen: A sunbeam lingered under a leaf in the forest at sunset, loath to leave so fair a spot, until the moon suddenly rose. Enraptured with the shimmering beauty of a moonbeam, he stood entranced and trembling and could not go. In ecstasy ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... about to set the bloodhounds upon this little sunbeam! 'Tis long since these grim walls have echoed strains so sweet as hers. (Croons.) "Woa, LUCINDY," &c. "Dey tried him by a jury, way down in ole Missouri, an' dey hung him to a possum-dip tree!" (Goes to couch, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... be waiting for thee," she answered, with a mixture of arch sweetness and playfulness that he scarce knew whether to call childlike confidence or maiden trust. But the look in her eyes went to his heart, and was treasured there, like the memory of a sunbeam, for many ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... secret reproach, and this grand impassive nature tells me that to-morrow I shall have disappeared, butterfly that I am, without having lived. Or perhaps it is the breath of eternal things which stirs in me the shudder of Job. What is man—this weed which a sunbeam withers? What is our life in the infinite abyss? I feel a sort of sacred terror, not only for myself, but for my race, for all that is mortal. Like Buddha, I feel the great wheel turning—the wheel of universal illusion—and the dumb stupor which enwraps me is full of anguish. Isis lilts ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Thy sunbeam comes upon this earth of mine with arms outstretched and stands at my door the livelong day to carry back to thy feet clouds made of my tears and sighs ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... mine for three years—mine only!—and my passionate admiration and love of her had increased in proportion to that length of time. I raised one of the scattered golden locks that lay shining like a sunbeam on the pillow, and kissed it tenderly. Then—all unconscious ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... ladies. I cannot look on them, and I never could wear them. When you first came, I told Walter that I felt as if a sunbeam had come into the house and remained behind you. Last night I told him that my new sunbeam had ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... of the body ceases and the body itself is burned and its ashes scattered to the winds and waves, the infinitesimal, imponderable, and indestructible something we call the soul is known to lose itself in a sunbeam and make for the sun, with all its memories about it, that it may then receive further development, fitting it for other systems altogether beyond conception; and the longer it has lived in Mars the better for its eternal life ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Peleus' son, and next Menander; Then thine own self; next, a sunbeam shalt be; And nine score annual rounds ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... But if the two children, or either of them, happened to be in the study,—if they ran to open the door at the knock, if they came scampering and peeped down over the banisters,—the sordid and rusty gloom was apt to vanish quite away. The sunbeam itself looked like a golden rule, that had been flung down long ago, and had lain there till it was dusty and tarnished. They were cheery little imps, who sucked up fragrance and pleasantness out of their ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first ray saw the mighty in arms, And the tyrant's proud banners insultingly wave, And the slogan of battle from beauty's fond arms Roused the war-crested chieftain, his country to save; The sunbeam that rose on our mountain-clad warriors, And reflected their shields in the green rippling wave, In its course saw the slain on the fields of their fathers, And shed its last ray on ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... apprenticeship, and for two years more he was surgeon's helper in the hospitals; but though skillful enough to win approval, he disliked his work, and his thoughts were on other things. "The other day, during a lecture," he said to a friend, "there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland." A copy of Spenser's Faery Queen, which had been given him by Charles Cowden Clark, was the prime cause of his ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... great exploit of our voyage, take it all in all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before, which made her sweeter and more benevolent. She no longer spoke of retiring from business. The discouragement which had seized her left her as if by magic. The house which had been so dull for some months became noisy and gay. The child, like a sunbeam, had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sail ships, bore mountains, buy and sell, but belonging to the surface, knowing only that. The medal turns, and lo! here is this 'cute Yankee a thinker, a mystic, fellow of the antique, Oriental in his subtilest contemplations, a rider of the sunbeam, dwelling upon Truth's sweetness with such pure devotion and delight that vigorous Mr. Kingsley must shriek, "Windrush!" "Intellectual Epicurism!" and disturb himself in a somewhat diverting manner. Pollok declaimed against the attempt to lay hold of the earth with one hand and heaven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... see it now, at last! The dawn—the dawn is here. The night is gone. I have dreamed, I suppose: ugly dreams.—But they, too, are done with.—Look, my beloved, it is morning! The first sunbeam shines there—and is reflected in your dear eyes!" And, lifting his thin body, arms wide-stretched, eyes a-glitter, Joseph made his last reach up, after the great sun-shaft he had sought so long:—reached, and so, with a faint, far cry of satisfaction, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... senior conducted himself with that manly straightforward vigour which had characterised him during the earlier part of the festivities, though he faltered a little and almost broke down when, in a speech, he referred to Flora as a bright sunbeam whom God in His love had permitted to shine upon his path for many years, who in prosperity had doubled his joys, and who in adversity had taught him that the Hearer and Answerer of prayer not only ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... Barbara!" was the salutation of Miss Carlyle. "The justice might well call out—you are finer than a sunbeam!" ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... noblesse, in various attire, grouped themselves protectingly about his person; the sable Jesuits looked critically on; while the Third Estate hung breathlessly upon the gracious motions of his Excellency. A sunbeam from Versailles had fallen upon the rock in the wilderness, and Quebec once more basked in the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... that it was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a crevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in open places she could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. The plantations were always weird at this hour of eve—more spectral far than in the leafless season, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... shades their framework roll, Grandly fronts for once thy soul. And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam Of yet another morning breaks, And like the hand which ends a dream, Death, with the might of his sunbeam, Touches the flesh and the soul awakes, Then"— Ay, then indeed something would happen! But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's; {690} There grew more of the music and less of the words; Had Jacynth only been by me to clap ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... him, shining out like a sunbeam among the rest, he felt something like blood-guiltiness on his soul, when he felt that he was sanctioning the young boy's presence in that ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Boyle, I think men are the most irresponsible creatures! A woman wouldn't turn her family over to a neighbor and go off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam. I—I'm horribly disappointed in father. A man has no right to a family when he puts everything else first in his mind. He'll be gone three or four years, and will spend all he has, and we—can shift for ourselves. He only left us a hundred dollars, to use in an emergency! ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... bath, and we can only suppose the intense cold had caused an attack of cramp, so that he could not get out again, and thus was drowned. Many tears were shed for the loss of the cheery little bird, who seemed like a bright ubiquitous sunbeam about the house, and our only consolation was the thought that, as far as we knew, he had never had a sorrow in his life, and we can only hope that if there are "happy hunting-grounds" for birds our Dick may be ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... sunbeam, Daisy, Daisy; April sent it to wake you, dear! How can you be so lazy, lazy? Haven't you heard ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... this moment in ran Johnny. He had put on his best suit. His yellow hair was freshly brushed and his face was wreathed in smiles. He reminded one of a dancing sunbeam. It was wonderful to see how quickly he set the social wheel moving in the parlor. In three minutes he had them all acquainted and talking to each other. At one side I noticed Naomi and Jessica who were trying to make the parrot ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the second and more noble, springing from the first, is ours through that faculty by means of which the beauty and harmony of the visible world become transmuted in the soul, which is like a pencil of glass receiving the white sunbeam into itself, and changing it to red, green, and violet-colored light: thus nature transmutes itself in our minds, and is expressed in art. But in you this second faculty is wanting, else you would not willingly forego so great a pleasure as its exercise affords, and love nature like one that loves ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... a waif, who had been sent out by the same thin little old lady who had sent Jack out. She was very pretty, and possessed of delightfully amiable domestic qualities. She grew up to be a very handsome girl, and was a very bright sunbeam in the homestead. But Jack did not fall in love with her. All unknown to himself his heart was pre-occupied. Neither did Nancy fall in love with Jack. All unwittingly she was reserving herself for another lot. Of course our hero corresponded diligently with the ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the faded hues. And the outline of the whole Grandly fronts for once thy soul. And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam Of yet another morning breaks, And, like the hand which ends a dream, Death, with the might of his sunbeam, Touches the flesh, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... horse-power had been fitted, in a temporary fashion, to carry a 14-inch torpedo weighing 810 pounds. With the same end in view, after the war broke out, the principal manufacturers of motor-cars were encouraged to develop air engines of high power, especially the Sunbeam engine of 225 horse-power, and the Rolls-Royce engine, which played so distinguished a part in the war. When H.M.S. Engadine was fitted out as a carrier in the first month of the war, it was expressly stated by the Admiralty that her business was to carry torpedo seaplanes to the scene ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... hopeless would be the opening measures of "Tristan and Isolde" without that upward inflection which comes like a sunbeam through a rift in the cloud; with a downward inflection the effect would be that of unrelieved gloom. In the Prelude to "Lohengrin," Wagner pictures his angels in dazzling white. He uses the highest ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... heeded none of the priest's words, and did not notice now that he approached them, so eager were they to see which fiery snake would go highest among the oak branches. Foremost among them, and most intent on the pretty game, was a boy like a sunbeam, slender and quick, with blithe brown eyes and laughing lips. The priest's hand was laid upon his shoulder. The boy turned and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the little yellow man. "Why, I'm the Last Sunbeam, of course. I thought you knew that. My job, you know, is to shut up the show when the sunset is over. And it's pretty hard work, I can tell you, because I've got to keep on doing it all round the earth every few minutes or so. And it gets very tiresome at ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... them up sometimes—mayn't I? for it would be much nicer to be carried by your wings—sometimes, you know. Look, look, Willie! Look at the sunbeam on the trunk of the fir—how red it's got. I do wish I could have a peep at the sun. Where can he be? I should see him if I were to go ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Dismal Throng! 'Tis thus they preach, From Christiania to Cadiz, Recruited as they talk and teach By dingy lads and draggled ladies; Without a sunbeam or a song, With no clear Heaven to hunger after; The Dismal Throng! the Dismal Throng! The foes of Life and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The sunbeam that slanted across the cell was cut off at intervals, and the room darkened. Something half covered the embrasure without. It was the face of some idle lepero, who, curious to catch a glimpse of the captive, had caused himself to be ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... ENTIRELY, is the grand principle of life, to be written upon the sacred standard of all temperance movements, and under which the contending host may be as sure of victory as if, like Constantine, they saw inscribed with a sunbeam upon the cloud, In hoc signo vinces.[F] But such being the eminent importance of total abstinence, it deserves to be presented in detail. We begin, therefore, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... flung himself in courtly indolence upon the sand, and waited and watched eagerly for the rich girls to come down to the well to water their father's flocks, just as one watches in the twilight for the first star to sparkle in the azure overhead, for the first sunbeam of the morning or ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... prays, comes windless Pestilence, Transparent as a glass of poisoned water Through which the drinker sees his murderer smiling: She stirs no dust, and makes no grass to nod, Yet every footstep is a thousand graves, And every breath of hers as full of ghosts As a sunbeam with motes. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... women permits to them in this field of art. Not a detail is spared, yet the whole is full of delight and pity and humour. Only one lyric passage is allowed to poetise and accentuate the realism of the description. Georgette, some twenty months old, scrambles from her cradle and prattles to the sunbeam. ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... man. "I have heard nothing from my family for two months. That is hard. Pleasures smile along every path, and I like my profession of soldier, but it often grieves me sorely to hear so little from home. Oh! if one were only a bird, a sunbeam, or a shooting-star, one might, if only for the twinkling of an eye, learn how matters go at home and fill the soul with fresh gratitude, or, if it must be—but I will not think of that. In the valley of the Saale, the trees are blossoming and a thousand flowers deck all the meadows, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... remains, first interred in Manchester, were afterward removed by her husband to Brussels, where he raised a circular memorial chapel to her memory at Lacken. Her statue, chiseled in white marble by Geefs, represents her as Norma, and stands in the center, faintly lit by a single sunbeam admitted from a dome, and surrounded by masses of shadow. "It appears," says the Countess de Merlin, "like a fantastic thought, ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... sunshine journeying through the prisoner's cell,—it may be considered as something sent from Heaven to keep the soul alive and glad within him. And there is something equivalent to this sunbeam in the darkest circumstances; as flowers, which figuratively grew in Paradise, in the dusky room of a poor maiden in a great city; the child, with its sunny smile, is a cherub. God does not let us live anywhere or anyhow on earth without placing something of Heaven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... SUN.—Prof. S. P. Langley has made the following calculation: A sunbeam one centimeter in section is found in the clear sky of the Alleghany Mountains to bring to the earth in one minute enough heat to warm one gramme of water by 1 deg. C. It would, therefore, if concentrated upon a film of water 1/500th of a millimeter thick, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... vapor lay along the horizon; the first sunbeam would dissipate it; to the maiden it exhibited that aspect of the sea which seems to blend it with the sky. Her view was now enlarged, without producing the impression of the boundless ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... my dear; Sunshine and violets blue, you know; Crocuses lifting their sleepy heads Out of their sheets of snow. And I know a blossom sweeter by far That violets blue, or crocuses are, And bright as the sunbeam's glow. But how can I dare to look in her eyes, Colored with heaven's own hue? That wouldn't do at all, my dear, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Poe's mother lay in an unidentified grave. In Hollywood slept his second mother, who had surrounded his boyhood with the maternal affection that, like an unopened rose in her heart, had awaited the coming of the little child who was to be the sunbeam to develop it into perfect flowering. On Shockoe Hill was the tomb of "Helen," his chum's mother, whose beauty of face and ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... A sunbeam, as it were, illuminated Amelia's countenance; her eyes shone, and her cheeks were glowing with joy. Quickly putting her hands on Blucher's shoulders, she looked up to him with a smile. "You made him win the money, Gebhard," she said, in a voice tremulous with emotion. "Oh, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... contentment: a king might have envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward. Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk, as a common tree, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... little too much Christian resignation, the rest of the town was mightily stirred up over Bud's death, and every one just quit work to tell each other what a noble little fellow he was; and how his mother hadn't deserved to have such a bright little sunbeam in her home; and to drag the river between talks. But they ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... a puzzler, for in came another animal, on all-fours this time, with a new sort of tail and long ears. A gray shawl concealed its face, but an inquisitive sunbeam betrayed the glitter as of goggles under the fringe. On its back rode a small gentleman in Eastern costume, who appeared to find some difficulty in keeping his seat as his steed jogged along. Suddenly a spirit appeared, all in white, with long newspaper ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... in the sunbeam for a moment, and then are illumined no more. Legend takes some of them, and they become pictures; and the rest, it would seem, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... great nerves of the medulla oblongata, and this is the end to which, by the aid of the most delicate sections, colored so as to bring out their details, mounted so as to be imperishable, magnified by the best instruments, and now self-recorded in the light of the truth-telling sunbeam, our fellow-student is making a steady progress in a labor which I think bids fair to rank with the most valuable contributions to histology that we have had from ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... can't get over. To take me up to an old garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She might have had some old woman there at least to pass ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... The sunbeam of her fleeting life Gladdened the unsuspecting days; And all the dusky imps of strife Paled in her wisdom's lambent rays. Her laugh to one was as a knife: But she ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... gloom of this eternal cell, which never Knew sunbeam, and the sallow sullen glare Of the familiar's torch, which seems akin[bl] To darkness more than light, by lending to The dungeon vapours its bituminous smoke, Which cloud whate'er we gaze on, even thine eyes— No, not thine eyes—they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... little faint dots in it all night, was the real thing—the big, final, and important thing—and that they and their churches and popes and pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years like a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them good. It started them looking Up, and looking the other ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... But the effluence of Thy light divine Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too. Yes, in my spirit doth Thy spirit shine, As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. Naught! But I live, and on Hope's pinions fly Eager toward Thy presence; for in Thee, I live, and breathe, and dwell, aspiring high, Even to the throne of Thy divinity. I am, O God, and surely ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the various animals, birds, insects, and flowers which are, apparently without rhyme or reason, placed in one great disarray in the Stuart pictures is said to have been heraldic and symbolic. The sunbeam coming from a cloud, the white falchion, and the chained hart are heraldic devices belonging ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... may born Reared by her mother, Whiter and brighter Than is the bright day; She shall be Swanhild, She shall be Sunbeam. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... grasp at the immortality of fame. Beyond the walls of his narrow room he knows no object; beyond the elucidation of a dead tongue he indulges no ambition; his life is one long school-day of lexicons and grammars—a fabric of ice, cautiously excluded from a single sunbeam—elaborately useless, ingeniously unprofitable; and leaving at the moment it melts away, not a single trace of the space it occupied, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to look like a Ministering Child or a Little Willie, the Sunbeam of the Home, when you go to a public school, you must take the consequences. As Thomas sat by the window of the junior day-room reading a magazine, and deeply interested in it, there fell upon his face such a rapt, angelic expression that the sight of it, silhouetted against the window, ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Laura's, and each day Lady Idleways gave them lessons together. They walked, they rode, they gathered flowers. Kathie was teaching Laura to knit, and Laura was teaching Kathie many little nice ways about herself; and Laura was all brightness and energy—a veritable sunbeam, as all in the castle said; but Kathie grew quieter and sadder, and one day Laura found her unable to rise from her bed. In alarm ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... fortune. He cheered me on. Frederick's eye rested on me with pleasure, and he was delighted to see my manufactories thrive and increase. The king's satisfaction was for many years the only spur to my exertions, and when he looked on me with smiling benevolence, it seemed to me as if a sunbeam of fortune shone from his large blue eyes into my heart. I have learned to love the king as a man, and because I love mankind I love the king. It is said that he likes the French better than he does us, and prefers every thing that comes from them; but, indeed, he was the first to supply ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill; a man can but do his best, and I will not shoot where I am sure to miss. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I can ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... evening, when all were gathered about the Round Table, each knight in his own siege, suddenly there was heard a crash of thunder, so mighty that the hall trembled, and there flashed into the hall a sunbeam, brighter far than any that had ever before been seen; and then, draped all in white samite, there glided through the air what none might see, yet what all knew to be the Holy Grail. And all the air was filled with sweet odours, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... stood the warrior Indian, chopping and cutting at imaginary foes among the sunbeams. But the father's eyes sought his children. Ah! yes, he was thankful to see, there they were, both sweetly sleeping, Mab in the old man's bed, a stray sunbeam flitting over her face, like a smile from somewhere, Jack wrapped in blankets ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... since I spoke here last, for Darwin has passed away. He was a true child of nature—one who knew more about his mother than any other child she had. Yet he was not a Calvinist. He did not get his inspiration from any book, but from every star in the heavens, from the insect in the sunbeam, from the flowers in the meadows, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of tenderness fell on the old man's head; it was from the Shining One who watched the children. He thought it was an afternoon sunbeam. His heart grew gentle and peaceful, and his thoughts went far back to a distant green grove where his own little one was sleeping. "Seems to me I've loved all little ones ever since," he said, thinking far back to the Christmas week when his lamb was laid to rest. "Well, ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the others when they tried to rouse him, "for you can't hate." No, the cold in his mind was like the night- frost; it melted at the first sunbeam. When he looked back there were redeeming ties that held the whole together in spite of all the evil; and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... like a flower, Transplanted in an unfamiliar soil, Which therefore slumbered in its prison folds: Then came a sunbeam from the distant home,— O, that was you, my Gandalf! Opened then The flower its calyx. In another hour, Alas! the sunbeam ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... assorted sizes of plates and saucers, graded pyramidically, rising from the floor. There were also individual copper casseroles and serving dishes, and a heterogeneous assortment of Japanese basketry tangled in excelsior and tissue. A wandering sunbeam took her hair, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... quiet composure of the figure was what attracted me, and the peculiar expression of the face. It was sad, almost severe; so I thought it at first; till a smile once for an instant broke upon the lips, like a flitting sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that kindliness was quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of merriment were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look of care, of sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that it was ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell |
