"Swaying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were seated on the porch of Betty's house in Deepdale, busy as always, with their knitting. Mollie and Betty were swaying gently in the big porch swing, while Grace and Amy were curled up comfortably ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... tender relucting on his part and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him sounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know for the fondness, and if I looked out of my door there he was in his long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging his great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in the hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snow had fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... resting on our oars, drifted slowly back with the current. The evening was indescribably brilliant and serene. The sky was cloudless, of a greenish blue, and full of light. The river was clear as glass. We could see the flaccid water-weeds swaying languidly with the current far below, and now and then a shoal of tiny fish shooting along half-way between the weeds and the surface. A rich fringe of purple iris, spear-leaved sagittarius, and tufted meadow-sweet (each blossom a bouquet on a slender ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... are losing some charming music," was her only reply to this, and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her finger she set the air to swaying to the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took good care that the music should leave no opportunity for conversation. She kept her face averted from me, and pretended to be absorbed in the airs, but that it was a mere pretense the crimson tide standing ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the swaying Jacob's ladder, and the boat's painter was cast off; and under three oars she moved slowly off over the hot sun-kissed swells. Advice and farewells boomed like a thunderstorm from the steamer, and an animated frieze of faces and figures ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... of busses rolled through the night. Outside was dark desert. Overhead were many stars. Inside the jammed bus were swaying figures crowded in the aisle, and every seat was filled. There was the smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. Somebody still had garlic on his breath from lunch. There was the noise of many voices. There was an argument two seats ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... was held on the plains to the east of the post-office. The Browns owned the great corral, strongly fenced, and with a smooth sandy floor bordered by a grandstand weathered and unpainted but still sturdy enough to withstand the swaying and stamping of the crowd. Neither the Browns nor any other of the Lost Chief families made money out of the exhibition. It was a community affair in which was felt an intense pride. All Lost Chief attended, of course, and people came in automobiles and in sheep wagons and in the saddle from the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train. Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out, muttering: "I must find a lower berth, or wait over." His servant came presently and carried away ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is, it is, I tell you," sobbed Mrs. McGuire still swaying her body back and forth. "Susan, my boy is—BLIND." With the utterance of the dread word Mrs. McGuire stiffened suddenly into rigid horror, her eyes staring straight ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... pace, with her majestic motion, her body swaying, her head erect. One would have looked for a page behind her, but she had none, and her long blue robe—she rarely wore short skirts—trailed on the sand and over the dry leaves with the soft rustle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... NAPOLEON, diminished to the aspect of a doll, reappears in front of his suite on the plain below. He rides across the swaying bridge. Since the morning the sky has grown overcast, and its blackness seems now to envelope the retreating array on the other side of the stream. The storm bursts with thunder and lightning, the river turns leaden, and the scene is blotted out ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... said. He had risen, and he began to walk up and down, swaying his figure and tilting his head from side to side, and frowning his shaggy eyebrows together in a tangled hedge. Suddenly, he stopped before Dylks. "Why, you poor devil, you're not in any unusual fix. It must have been so with all the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and many lodging houses collapsed with every occupant. There was no warning of the awful catastrophe. First came a slight shock, followed almost immediately by a second and then the great shock that sent buildings swaying and tumbling. Fire broke out immediately. Every able-bodied man who could be pressed into service was put to work rescuing ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Palace Hotel? I waited impatiently for the first street-lamp to throw a gleam of light into the carriage. But when it came I was little the wiser. I could see faintly the outlines of a figure shrouded in black that leaned in the corner, motionless save for the swaying and pitching of the hack as it rolled ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... behold this Christian squadron emerging from a blazing copse, which they fired on their march; the red light gleaming on their complete armour, as, in steady and solemn order, they swept on to the swaying and clamorous ranks of the Moorish infantry. Boabdil learned the danger from his scouts; and hastily quitting a tower from which he had for a while repulsed a hostile legion, he threw himself into the midst of the battalions menaced by the skilful ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... long, low room, with furniture almost black, against whose windows heavy roses every now and then softly patted, caught in the fringes of the rain gusts. The dusky room, the perfect stillness within, the low mingled sounds of swaying trees and pattering rain without, the sense of the great darkness folding in its bosom the beauty so near and the moaning city miles upon miles away—all grew together into one possessing mood, which rose and sank, like the water ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... remorselessly selfish. I should have taken my wife back to Chicago at once, but my New England conscience would not let me forget how lonely that old man would be in this empty house, silent, yet filled with voices of the moaning, swaying branches ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which crowds but does not ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... cold was Godfrey felt it even less than he had anticipated. The wide-spreading woods broke the force of the winds, and while they could sometimes see the tops of the trees swaying beneath its force they scarcely felt a breath below. Luka knew nothing of the Esquimaux fashion of making snow-huts, and said he had never heard of it among the Ostjaks or Samoyedes. At each of the halts, however, Godfrey piled the snow high over the low tent of reindeer-skin ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... glorious creature—came out of an adjoining room. She was as frail, as swaying as a garden lily. Her great blue eyes turned irefully upon me, her bowed ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... something I knew once and know not now!— A something different from all this earth! It matters little; I care not—only know That God will keep the living thing he made. How mighty must he be to have the right Of swaying this great power I feel I am— Moulding and forming it, as pleaseth him! O God, I come to thee! thou art my life; O God, thou art my ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... of some stout twigged shrub; larkspur in the coleogyne, and for every spinosa the purpling coils of phacelia. In the shrub shelter, in the season, flock the little stemless things whose blossom time is as short as a marriage song. The larkspurs make the best showing, being tall and sweet, swaying a little above the shrubbery, scattering pollen dust which Navajo brides gather to fill their marriage baskets. This were an easier task than to find two of them of a shade. Larkspurs in the botany are blue, but if you were to slip rein to the stub of some black ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... not satisfactory; they are ignoble," he thought, surveying his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... there, while I gazed upon it, it faded away, ceased to be. I didn't die, but I swear, from what I experienced in those few succeeding moments, that I know full well that men can die of fright. I stood there, knife in hand, swaying automatically to the roll of the ship, paralysed with fear. Had the Bricklayer suddenly seized my throat with corporeal fingers and proceeded to throttle me, it would have been no more than I expected. Dead men did rise up, and that would be the most likely thing the malignant ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... up in the air first, then dropped down amidst the grasses, where a little brook which the drought had not dried was still running; and he bathed and drank, and bathed again, seeming mad with the joy of the water. When I lost him from sight he was swaying among the leaves on a bough over the river; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... departure from his chair, he gained his port. He had undoubtedly expected to be lugged back again; for he whisked the tails of his coat out of reach, while, with his other hand on the lock of the door, and swaying himself about from side to side, like a ship in a calm, he stood the very image of tottering equilibrium, as the mathematicians call it. Our adroit landlord, who was not a man to shrink from difficulties, mustered ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... It bent the Aspen tree almost to breaking, still the loving little leaves clung trembling to their parent, feeling that their very safety rested on their keeping close to it. Then, finding its strength was in vain, away the north wind rushed to the sturdy old Oak, swaying its branches wildly about, and even making them crack in its ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... pair of showy but ill-matched horses, looking unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park on the other, drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest ran from end to end of the shop, swaying as well those outside as those inside the counter, for the carriage was well known in Testbridge. It was that of Lady Margaret Mortimer; she did not herself like the Margaret, and signed only her second name Alice ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... be remembered, Thord will never be forgotten. Give this to him in sheer gratitude for swearing at me in such wise that he overcame the sore sickness that comes of the swaying of the deck ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... effects. Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who feels the most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is the one who has most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men. Self-sacrifice and a lofty sense of duty find their rewards in the intangible realm of the spirit, but they do not find them in a brilliant society whose foundations are laid in vanity and sensualism. "The virtues, though superior to the sentiments, are not so agreeable," said Mme. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... as far as possible. A great mass of mud, dislodged from the roof, fell, smiting alike boy and beast, enveloping them in a cloud of blinding dust. The lad clung to the branch with desperate strength, though his support was swaying to and fro. The claws of one of the leopard's paws raked Timokles' arm, and then the beast dropped ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... of wire and whipcord where moments before had been a creature of warm softnesses; a being of feline agility, and devilish skill that reflected the devilish skill of her teacher, Milo. The chain-links tinkled and clashed against their swaying bodies, but she never let them fall; they hung from her girdle; her hands were free; and she had both his wrists in a grip that outrivaled the irons. Laughing, ever laughing, her hot breath playing over his face, she placed one foot behind ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... bright brown locks of youth, fading away into the dim hoariness of age. When weary of dipping water from the wimpling brook, she would sit under the lilac bushes, and look at Miss Thusa's sybilline figure, moving slowly over the grass, swaying the watering-pot up and down in her right hand, scattering ten thousand liquid diamonds as she moved. Sometimes the rainbows followed her steps, and Helen thought it ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... manner, he wondered resentfully, or did the difference lie still deeper in some unlikeness of soul? For the first time in his life he felt ill at ease in the presence of those he loved, and as his eyes dwelt moodily on Lila's graceful figure—upon the swell of her low bosom, her swaying hips, and the free movement of her limbs—he asked himself bitterly if he had aught in common with so delicate and rare a thing? And she? Was her blithe acquiescence, after all, but an assumed virtue, to whose outward rags she clung? Was it possible that there was here ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... with full moonlight streaming, and stars peering between the swaying fronds of the lofty palm-trees, which grow more luxuriantly in Gaza ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... The reptile's swaying head had drawn back and the huge snake launched itself forward from its coils straight for the dazed lad only a few ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... around its cove with tall and picturesquely-coloured houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just beneath the castle. There is one point of the descending carriage road where all this gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive branches, swaying, wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back from their grey leaves. Here Erycina ridens is at home. And, as we stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women from ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... driver, and often rode the whole two hundred and fifty miles of his division without any rest or sleep, except what he could catch sitting on the top of the flying coach. The coach itself was a roomy, swaying vehicle, swung on thorough-braces instead of springs. It always had a six-horse or six-mule team to draw it, and the speed was nerve-breaking. Passengers were allowed twenty-five pounds of baggage, and that, with the mail, express, and the passengers themselves, was in charge of the conductor. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... brasier-light[FN350] and joy of the sprite, let us hear thy lovely voice, whereby all that hearken are ravished with delight.' So she took the lute and thereon made harmony till the place was moved to glee; then, captivating all hearts with her graceful swaying, she sang these couplets, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... fiddles and the blare of the horns in the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes. Girls in ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth, dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... unquestionable ability as a public speaker. Few men, in our country, better understand the means of swaying a popular assembly, or employ them with greater success. His forte lies in moving the passions of those whom he addresses. He knows how to call into vigorous action both the sympathies and antipathies of those who listen to him. I do not mean to imply by these remarks that his ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the main companionway, impatience in his stride—a tall man, of good carriage, muffled almost to the heels in a heavy ulster, a steamer-cap well forward over his eyes. But the light was poor, the pale shine of the aged moon blending trickily with the swaying shadows; Lanyard was unable to place him among the passengers. There was a suggestion of Lieutenant Thackeray—but that one was handicapped by one shell-shattered arm, whereas this man had the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the Funeral March having died away into silence, the last cannon-shot gone booming out, down came the foggy dusk on bereaved London. A chill rime settled on the swaying laurel wreaths, and on the folds of the fluttering purple draperies at the close of the dismal day. The shops were shut, and many of the restaurants, but the windows of the Clubs gleamed radiantly down Piccadilly, and every refreshment-bar and public-house was thronged to bursting. Noon changed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of his embrace was violent for a moment; but Ysabel might have been cut from marble. Her body had lost its swaying grace; it was almost rigid. She did not lift her eyes. But De ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... snoring in his hammock. Terrence, who was on duty scrubbing the gun deck, had a large tub filled with water, which was unconsciously left just under the head of the hammock of the quarter-master. No one could tell how it happened; but the supports were all cut save two or three, which the swaying of the hammock gradually loosened until, just as the officer went to "change sides," down he came with a frightful splash head first into ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... bending the knees and twisting the body from side to side, but soon she becomes more animated, the feet are raised high above the floor and brought down with a sort of shuffle which reminds one of the sound made by the feet of a clog dancer. Still swaying her body, she begins to circle, contra-clockwise, around the gongs, and soon she is joined by others until all the dancing space is filled. The scene is most picturesque, for these dances usually occur at night, in rooms illuminated only by the flickering light of torches. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black faces,—eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the smoke, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... no longer so young as he had been, was blown by his climb of the High Street and stood, breathing hard for a moment before he passed into the Precincts, lights dancing before his eyes as they will when one is out of breath, the ground swaying a little under the pressure of the heart, the noise of the town ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and saw Paulina Maria coming up the road, walking with a firm, swaying motion of her whole body from her feet, her cotton draperies ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... significance to him, as has been said, is movement. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention are directed to moving things—a swaying curtain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... a light grey check in their tartans, the gay Gordons a brilliant golden check, but the 48th have this check in red, and when the kilts are properly made the stripe comes on the fold of the tartan and gives a peculiar shimmering effect to the swaying kilts while the men are on the march. The nickname of the "Red Watch" is not as well known as that of the "Black Watch," but the Imperial Battalion of the "Red Watch" loyally earned the name at the great salient at Ypres, where they watched at the post of honor and halted the German ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... see how he can be so sure," said Dorothy, swaying gloomily to and fro against the wheel. "I don't care for myself,—I'm not afraid of work,—but thee's not able to do what thee does now, mother. If I have outside things to look after, how can I help ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... could not make out, unless it was that soft one, which suppressed love, emerging from terrible uncertainty, generates in deep natures and which usually finds vent in tears. Beulah Sands was a study. Her heart was evidently swaying and tugging with the news Bob had brought her. She must have seen the nearness of release from the torture that had been filling her soul during the past three months, and yet such was the remarkable self-control of the woman, such her noble courage, that she refused to ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... for him at this juncture. He burst out laughing, and then looked thoroughly sheepish. Lida, her hands on her hips and swaying gracefully to and fro, turned ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the mutterings of thunder, like the low growls of some angry animal, and the shrieking of the wind through swaying branches, gave a weird, uncanny effect to a scene which was being enacted, on a certain April night of the year 1862, in a secluded piece of woodland a mile or more east of the village of Shelbyville, Tennessee. In the centre of a ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over, and all the leaf butterflies ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the car swerved and vibrated, ran along her frame. More horrid than all, the lips slowly contracted, and the white, sharp-edged teeth stood uncovered, giving an indescribable look of ferocity to the partially opened mouth. The car suddenly reeled as it dashed around a curve, swaying her almost off her feet, and, as a contortion shook her, she recovered herself, and rearing upward as high as the car permitted, plunged directly at me. I was expecting the movement, and dodged. Then followed exhibitions of pain which ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... Messer Simone spoke, and if it had been it would not have mattered, for Messer Guido would have cared no whit for what Messer Simone said of him or thought of him, and now as Simone spoke, Guido only stood there and laughed in his face, swaying gently with ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the fall; and the golden lights and flitting shadows fell upon and marbled the surface of that seething pot; and rays plunged deep among the turning waters; and a spark, as bright as a diamond, lit upon the swaying eddy. It began to grow warm where Otto lingered, warm and heady; the lights swam, weaving their maze across the shaken pool; on the impending rock, reflections danced like butterflies; and the air was fanned by the waterfall as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a windy one, and she swung backward and forward as she went down. By what chance it was I know not—for I had examined the rope and found it secure—but methinks in swaying backward and forward it may have caught a sharp stone, maybe it was a punishment from Heaven upon me for robbing a father of his child—but suddenly I felt there was no longer a weight on my arms. A fearful shriek rang through the air, and, looking out, I saw far below a ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... going to destruction. Every man in the room had heard somewhat of Nancy's peculiar existence, and they listened with doubly aroused interest to her simple tale. Suddenly an interruption came from a very unexpected quarter. Moore was swaying unsteadily, and but for the timely arm of the officer near him, would have collapsed on the floor. The court immediately adjourned whilst a doctor ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... that I could see the gleam of Lisbeth's hair and the point of the little tan shoe. With my eyes on this, I writhed my way along the bough, which bent more and more as I neared the end. Here I hung, swaying up and down and to and fro in a highly unpleasant manner, while I waited the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... the interpellation, the Chamber decided that the debate should take place at once. And thereupon complete silence fell, save that now and again a brief quiver sped by, in which one could detect the various feelings, passions and appetites swaying the assembly. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... hasty words dashed off home said but little—it was a different world. If ever at night he found himself under the light of the stars, if he heard the ripple of water, if he stood for a moment watching the swaying of green boughs, his thoughts at once flew to her—the happy, simple home-life at Richmond was like some quiet, beautiful dream, the very memory of which gives rest. He found himself at times wondering how he liked it so well, it was such a contrast ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... tempest with rain and wind, a great wild wind that shouted mightily near and far, filling the world with halloo; while, ever and anon, thunder crashed and lightning flamed athwart the muddy road that wound steeply up betwixt grassy banks topped by swaying trees. Broken twigs, whirling down the wind, smote me in the dark, fallen branches reached out arms that grappled me unseen, but I held on steadfastly, since every stride carried me nearer to vengeance, that vengeance for the which I prayed and lived. So with ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... keeping. Then we called to the old olive-tree yonder, asking how soon the midnight hour would come; but all the old olive-tree answered was "Presently, presently," and finally we, too, fell asleep, wearied by our long watching, and lulled by the rocking and swaying of the old olive-tree in the breezes of ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... malady, the inability for motion, except in a running pace, appeared to exist in an extraordinary degree. It seemed to be necessary that the gentleman should be supported by his attendant, standing before him with a hand placed on each shoulder, until, by gently swaying backward and forward, he had placed himself in equipoise; when, giving the word, he would start in a running pace, the attendant sliding from before him and running forward, being ready to receive him and prevent his falling, after his having run ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... weaver. Have you ever seen his cradle swaying from an elm branch? It is so well made that it often lasts ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... soon followed; for the two sweet little things would swing on the burdock-leaves that grew over the brook. Sitting side by side, the plump sisters were placidly swaying up and down over the clear brown water rippling below, when—ah! sad to relate—the stem broke, and down went leaf, chickens and all, to a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... stood before his eyes, though for five weeks not one penny had been sent in for this purpose. Meanwhile there went on that searching scrutiny of his own heart by which he sought to know whether any hidden motive of a selfish sort was swaying his will; but as strict self-examination brought to light no conscious purpose but to glorify God, in promoting the good of the orphans, and provoking to larger trust in God all who witnessed the work, it was judged to be God's will that he should ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Harding, swaying awkwardly with bent leg, held on to him. The hollow was small, a smooth groove of slightly lower level than the rest ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... minute and a half, but it seemed like years, and then a man in flames appeared in the fiery porch—and not alone. He carried a girl in his arms. He wavered even at the threshold with the timbers swaying overhead, but, with a last effort, he plunged forward through the furnace, and was caught by eager hands on the margin of endurable heat. The two were smothered in quilts brought from the Cure's house, and carried swiftly to the cool safety of the grass ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... between the road and the river, which in fact dipped its very feet in the stream; from its quaint oriel and gallery, Hugh could look down, on a bright day, into the clear heart of the water, and survey its swaying reeds and poising fish. The house was near the centre of the town; yet from its back windows it overlooked a long green stretch of rough pasture-land, now a common, and once a fen, which came like a long green finger straight into the very heart of the town. There was a ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... about the watch-fire, were mentally as children, with keen senses and eager imagination, but feeble reason, with fresh and vigorous emotions, but without elaborate language for these emotions. Swaying and shouting in rhythmic consent, they came slowly to the use of ordered words and, even then, could but have repeated the same phrases over and over. The burden—sometimes senseless to our modern understanding—to be found in the ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... spoke the guttering tallow candle, swaying in its socket, suddenly went out with a loud splutter and a sizzle that echoed through the desolate room like the mocking laugh ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Shouting, struggling, swaying to and fro, the contest went on, much to the amusement of a crowd of spectators, among which the tall, blue-coated form of a policeman loomed up prominently, although he deigned not to interfere. At length the weight of superior ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... notice that the britchka was swaying violently, and dealing him occasional bumps. Consequently he suspected that it had left the road and was being dragged over a ploughed field. Upon Selifan's mind there appeared to have dawned a similar inkling, for he ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... disease, but considering her life too solitary, simply recommended a great deal of exercise. It was like a gradual fading away of her whole being; a disappearing by slow degrees, an obliterating of her physique from its immaterial beauty. Her form floated like the swaying of two great wings; a strong light seemed to come from her thin face, where the soul was burning. She could now come down from her chamber only in tottering steps, as she supported herself by putting her two hands against the wall of the stairway. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... sunning himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses, but for those cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole—while Pen is tossing between his passion and a more agreeable sensation, unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to see the world—Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside, and sitting behind him on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the rest of us. How lonely ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flown for years. He was pitched and tossed about; and in no time at all he was drenched with water—for the cold rain pelted him as much as it pleased. He could only cling to the handle of his umbrella. And so he sailed away, swaying this way and that as the wind caught him, and always climbing higher and higher ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... vernal equinox there came a tempest in comparison with which all previous wind and rain were but a whispering and a sprinkling. Every door was being rattled as if by giant hands, the glass sang in the latticed windows, and the whole house seemed swaying, when Mary told her mistress that something had gone wrong with the big straw stack and that the master was attempting to climb to the top of it on ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... drop had fallen, and the victims were struggling in the throes of a horrible death. The ropes jerked and swayed with the convulsive movements of the dying men. A minute later, and the vibrations ceased—the end had come, the swaying limbs fell rigid and stark, and the souls of the strangled men had floated upwards from the cursed spot—up from the hateful crowd and the sin-laden atmosphere—to the throne of ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... on the arm curled under him he knew it must have been the roof. By nothing else could he have been so smitten. The roof must have fallen, though the faces around him were still tossing and swaying, though the referee stood counting above him, though there was no wreckage. And the clarity of his mind astonished and pleased him. A brick roof—sure! A brick roof! That was unusual, very unusual. But it had to be that. It was a brick ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... strength by steady and determined resistance. But her position was more than difficult; it was desperate. There was scarcely one, even amongst the most indulgent of her friends, who did not misunderstand her and blame her at times. She kept the pendulum of public opinion swaying vehemently during the whole of her first season in Malta. Major Livingston shook his head about her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a sixteen-foot butt; the two bottom logs were eighteen footers. With a silent prayer of thanks to Providence, Bryce slid down to the landing thus formed. He was still five feet above the coupling, however; but by leaning over the swaying, bumping edge and swinging the axe with one hand, he managed to cut through the rubber hose on the air connection. "The blamed thing might hold and drag the caboose along after I've pulled out the coupling-pin," he reflected. "And I can't afford ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... against the dark background of the cave. Jock ran to the fall and filled the pan with water, and soon the mealy puddings were bobbing merrily about in the boiling water, while the boys, snug and safe in the shelter of the cave, watched the boughs of the pine trees swaying in the wind and waited for Jean to tell them that dinner was ready. She could cook but one thing at a time over the fire, but it was not long before the feast was spread, and they fell to with appetites that caused the ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... his knees should fail him altogether and his feet slip from beneath him. To bend down until his hands could rest upon the ice, and meanwhile to keep his feet—no, he could not do it. He stood trembling, his face distorted with fear, and his body swaying a little from side to side. Garratt Skinner called ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Congo," that poem which so sympathetically catches the spirit of the uplift of the Negro race through Christianity, that weird, musical, chanting, swinging, singing, sweeping, weeping, rhythmic, flowing, swaying, clanging, banging, leaping, laughing, groaning, moaning book of the elementals, was inspired suddenly, one Sabbath evening, as the poet sat in church listening to a returned missionary speaking on "The Congo." Nor a Poe nor a Lanier ever wrote ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... toiled and perspired. We made a ramp of heavy wooden beams in front of the train and then we slowly pushed the iron mass into a truck. We went back and, raising a big fly-wheel on its edge and supporting it with a wooden beam under each axle, we rolled it painfully along, swaying ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... of delight the boughs are swaying, Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying, Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the long, colourless grasses, rippling in faint waves like a still lake that reflects the sunshine and swaying lightly beneath myriads of gauzy-winged bees that flashed with a droning noise from blade to blade, to find rest in the yellow hearts of the damask roses. Across the white vaults and the low-lying marble slabs innumerable shadows chased, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... made his way. He passed the spot where he had met the Major, and he looked eagerly for the girl who had won his heart. But she was nowhere to be seen, although a small fire was burning near the shack, before which the colored woman was keeping watch, swaying her body, and humming ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... camp-meetings, attracted him. He did not go in: stood at the tent-door, listening. Two or three of the guard stood around, leaning on their muskets; in the vivid fire-light rose the gaunt figure of the Illinois boatman, swaying to and fro as he preached. For the men were honest, God-fearing souls, members of the same church, and Dave, in all integrity of purpose, read aloud to them,—the cry of Jeremiah against the foul splendors of the doomed city,—waving, as he spoke, his bony arm to the South. The shrill ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... stones, which propping each the other, Form a mock portal with their pointed arch? Pardon my smiles! 'Tis a poor idiot boy, Who sits in the sun, and twirls a bough about, His weak eyes seeth'd in most unmeaning tears. And so he sits, swaying his cone-like head, And, staring at his bough from morn to sun-set, See-saws his voice in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... times upon secrecy, by a necessity; so that he that will be secret, must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning, to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence, as by his speech. As for equivocations, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the violin. Whatever instrument gave it forth, it drew the girl's heart after it to wander its own way. When it was gay it won her feet to some dance measure, and all alone in the great empty rooms she would move to it with head thrown back and her whole body swaying in a new sense of rhythm. When it was sad, it set her heart to beating in great throbs, for then it begged and pleaded. There was need in it, a human cry that surely was not the voice of a god. It spoke out of ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... and carts creaked and strained and rattled under their swaying loads, and the line gradually defined itself along the road from the confused jumble at the camp. He remembered his father again now, and hurried forward to assure himself that all was right. As he overtook along the way the stumbling ones obliged ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... but a warehouse in which the trader kept his stock, but the second and third were furnished with balconies edged with stout wooden balustrades. As the uncle and the nephew sprang out of the caleche, they found themselves upon the outskirts of a dense crowd of people, who were swaying and tossing with excitement, their chins all thrown forwards and their gaze directed upwards. Following their eyes, the young officer saw a sight which left him standing bereft ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them. Alongside them came another long column of ambulance-carts drawn by mules, beyond which, again, marched the auxiliary branch of the medical service, the camels, soft-footed and supercilious, with the white hoods of the cacolets swaying unevenly as they marched. Then came the light armoured-car batteries and in the centre the horse-artillery. Out on the flank the plain was black with the horses of the mounted divisions, disposed in brigades, and on ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... often said that there is nothing so indispensible as the newspaper. It is the moulder of public opinion; the medium of free speech; the promoter and stimulator of business; the prophet, the preacher, swaying the multitudes and carrying them like the whirlwind into the right or wrong path. To millions its the Bible, the Apostles Creed. Their opinion of God, of religion, of immortality is shaped by what the newspaper has to say upon such subjects. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, and compass, and range over the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... troop was ridden through and through, Our swaying, tattered pennons fled, a broken beaten few, And all a summer afternoon they hunted us and slew; But to-morrow, By the living God, we ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... them ruin! shunned, scorned, despised, and hated, if not feared by all men. I could paint, to your very eyes, ourselves in rags or fetters! our enemies in robes of office, seated on curule chairs, swaying the fate of nations, dispensing by a nod the wealth of plundered provinces! I could reverse the picture. But, as it is, your present miseries and your past deeds dissuade me. Your hopelessness and daring, your wrongs and valor, your injuries and thirst of vengeance, warn me, alike, that words ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying rhythmically ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... to her, and showed her a few moments later how the pilot came with incredible rapidity up the swaying rope ladder ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... frog was splashing about and performing rotatory movements that caused the swaying of the rushes, and that he was making a curious singing noise on which he prided himself as showing his fine voice. Looking up he perceived the great sharp face of the fox peering down upon him. Not that the fox was looking at him, ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Constance waded on in front through the drifts. Sophia balanced that enormous swaying mass, her mother. Owing to their hoops, she had much difficulty in keeping close to her. Mrs. Baines laughed with the complacent ease of obesity, yet a fall would have been almost irremediable for her; and so Sophia had to laugh too. But, though she laughed, God had not helped her. She did not know ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of his sense of smell, filled me with admiration; I ordered my coachman to go wherever the other wished. The horses walked heavily through the deep snow. The kibitka advanced but slowly, now raised on a hillock, now descending into a hollow, swaying from side like a boat on a ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry owl—the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown |
