"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hundred miles in the air and gaze thence upon Egypt, he would see the strange outlines of that country and the peculiar changes in its color. From that elevation, on the background of white and orange colored sands, Egypt would look like a serpent pushing with energetic twists through a desert to the sea, iii which it has dipped already its triangular head, which has two eyes, the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... opposite or eastern side of this rock was a large ledge or cave, under which the Troglodytes of these realms had frequently encamped. It was ornamented with many of their rude representations of creeping things, amongst which the serpent class predominated; there were also other hideous shapes, of things such as can exist only in their imaginations, and they are but the weak endeavours of these benighted beings to give form and semblance ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... set off. It was pleasant riding over the green prairie. Now and then the children saw little prairie dogs scurrying in and out of their burrows. And once they saw a rattlesnake. But the serpent crawled quickly out of the way, and Bert and Nan did not stop to see where ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... greater part of his warriors behind, and enter the place with only a few of them, and without arms, as he preferred to pass the night at Cajamarca. At the same time he ordered accommodations to be provided for himself and his retinue in one of the large stone buildings, called, from a serpent sculptured on the walls, the "House of the Serpent". No tidings could have been more grateful to the Spaniards. It seemed as if the Indian monarch was eager to rush into the snare that had been spread for him! The fanatical ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... with a divine family. He dwells on Mount Kailasa: he has three eyes: above the central one is the crescent of the moon and the stream of the Ganges descends from his braided hair: his throat is blue and encircled by a serpent and a necklace of skulls. In his hands he carries a three-pronged trident and a drum. But the effigy or description varies, for Siva is adored under many forms. He is Mahadeva, the Great God, Hara the Seizer, Bhairava the terrible one, Pasupati, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to set it up in, not like Abraham with camels and asses to help them along. The weakly wife had to carry the sickly baby, who, with many ups and downs, had been slowly pining away. The father went laden with the larger portion of the goods yet remaining to them, and led the Serpent of the Prairies, with the drum hanging from his neck, by the hand. The other boys followed, bearing the small stock of implements ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... not. We incline to think that this small serpent, in company with many others of like kind, crawled secretly and privately around, and when it found a good chance, bit an honest Briton, whose blood was thenceforth ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... my married life I bought a small country estate which my wife and I looked upon as a paradise. After enjoying its delight for a little more than a year our souls were saddened by the discovery that our Eden contained a serpent. This was ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... last century. Nay, every good Review of "Essays and Reviews" has answered the book: for what signify the details, if the fundamental lie has been detected, and unrelentingly exposed? The man who plants his heel on the serpent's head, and refuses to withdraw it, can afford to disregard the tortuous writhings of the long supple body.—Again. These attacks are seven. Must seven men with "concert and comparison,"—with leisure ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... they are carnal and devilish, and the devil has power over them; yea, even that old serpent that did beguile our first parents, which was the cause of their fall; which was the cause of all mankind becoming carnal, sensual, devilish, knowing evil from good, subjecting ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and cause the doors to open of their own accord, animate statues and make the eye-witness think them men, make trees grow suddenly, pass through fire unhurt, change his face or become double-faced, or turn into a sheep or goat or serpent, make a beard grow upon a boy's chin, fly in the air, become gold, make and unmake kings, have divine worship and honours paid him, order a sickle to go and reap of itself and it reaps ten times as much as an ordinary sickle (R. ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... which called forth the cry from our Irish friend, as related in the last chapter, was neither more nor less than a serpent of dimensions more enormous than Barney had ever before conceived of. It was upwards of sixteen feet long, and nearly as thick as a man's body; but about the neck it was three times that size. This serpent was not, indeed, of the largest size. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... women—anyway, it's the same way with Mis' Beckman. You can know her face a mile off, but yuh never know who she's goin' t' rake over the coals next. As the sayin' is: 'The tongue of a woman, at last it biteth like a serpent an' it stingeth like an addle,' an' I guess it's so. Anyway, Mis' Beckman's does. I do b'lieve on my soul—what's the matter, Dell? What ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... modern Greek [Greek: phelo] and [Greek: thelo]—nay, Menenius's 'first complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified Zohak, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still knows by the name of Ash dahak, with the Azhi dahaka, the biting serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thraetaona in the Avesta; and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de voir ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... bracelet of hair, of some curious foreign workmanship. A green enameled serpent, studded thickly with emeralds and with eyes of ruby, was curled around the clasp. A crystal plate covered a wide flat braid of hair, on which the letters "D.M." were curiously embroidered in a cipher of seed pearls. The whole was in style and workmanship quite different from ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hoped I feared, Since I hoped I dared; Everywhere alone As a church remain; Spectre cannot harm, Serpent cannot charm; He deposes doom, ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... I was!" repeated Hannah, with a sigh. "But the serpent lurked in my Paradise. I came to know the pangs of jealousy, and I hated Marie Falkenhein—hated her from the bottom of my soul. Ah, beloved! it hurts, hurts deeply, to see the glance of the man one loves passing one over for another woman. Do you remember the night ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... damned you, willing to be third-rate, anything; for you are stung with the poison that never leaves your blood. So it has been with me: even when I found that I must choose a calling, I chose the one that gave me most time to nurse the serpent that ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... symbolism. I am inclined to think that it was made up of abstract propositions, derived from antediluvian traditions. Dr. Oliver thinks it probable that there were a few symbols among these Primitive and Pure Freemasons, and he enumerates among them the serpent, the triangle, and the point within a circle; but I can find no authority for the supposition, nor do I think it fair to claim for the order more than it is fairly entitled to, nor more than it can be fairly proved to possess. When Anderson calls Moses a Grand Master, Joshua his Deputy, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... look to it that the Republic takes no harm," and Georgie was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended. Behind him, but not too near, was the wise and temperate Head, now suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now counselling the mildness of the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints than by any direct word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who can handle the one will assuredly in time ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... seldom attempt to go off the track thus formed, though the first four or five teams have the hardest work; after which the road becomes hard, and the rest easily follow. It was curious to look forward and back at the long thin line, like some vast serpent moving over the snowy plain, following all the windings of the pioneers ahead; and it was cheering to hear the tinkling sound of the bells, and the voices of the drivers as they urged on ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... stationery. And it strikes me that it would be particularly profitable to study it backwards; to begin at the end, and so lay a proper foundation for a full comprehension of the beginning. All true wisdom goes in a circle, and is typified by a serpent biting at its own tail. We will begin this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the Black Mustard are sharper than the serpent's tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the White Mustard, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (Brassica alba) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods are constricted like a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... one of our hunters brought us a Serpent beautifully variagated with small black spotts of a romboydal form on a light yellow white ground the black pedominates most on the back the whiteis yellow on the sides, and it is nearly white on the belly with a few party couloured scuta on which the black shews but imperfectly ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... us that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of life is to live honorably such days as these come and develop character. Every one has some lurking enemy eager to misinterpret him to his own advantage. The lark must fly to the open sky when he sees the serpent coiling among the roses, or he must fight and dare the odds. Woe be to the wrongdoer who triumphs in such a case as this! He may gain money and ease, and laugh at his adversary, but when a man has proved untrue to any man for the sake of his own advantage, it may be written ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... that tree, which cost the first gardiner and posterity so dear; and where the most voluptuous inclinations to the allurements of the senses, may take, and eat, and still be innocent; no forbidden fruit; no serpent to deceive; none ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... twisted roots of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the mat, and gets up as you come in. There stand in vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. Here and there are chamois heads and pressed seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper with a gold pen and handle twisted with a serpent. His inkstand is a mystery of beauty which unskilled hands dare not touch, lest the ink spring at him from some of the open mouths, or sprinkle on him from the bronze wings, or with some unexpected squirt dash into his eyes the blackness ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... bottom of all this. The vain coxcomb has had the insolence to imagine the Countess would favour an address of his; and is enraged to meet with a repulse; and has taken liberties upon it, that have given birth to all the scandals scattered about on this occasion. Nor do I doubt but he has been the Serpent at the ear ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... get near enough to see it if you hiss like a serpent," said the hermit. "Get out your binoculars, follow me, and hold your tongue, all of you—that will be ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... eyes turn past him to us, and swung sharply round. For an instant he stood poised like a serpent about to strike, then I saw his eyes fix in a frightful stare, his face turned livid, and with a strangled cry, he fell back and down. Together we lifted him to the low window-seat, pursuers and pursued alike, loosened his collar, chafed his hands, bathed his temples, did ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... valuable ring, young man. This intaglio of the fish with the crested serpent above it, in the black stratum of the onyx, or rather nicolo, is well shown by the surrounding blue of the upper stratum. The ring has, doubtless, a history?" added Cennini, looking up keenly at the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the absence of friends. I daresay you have heard of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Do they still teach the dear old tale in these modern schools? No. But you have heard it—very well. You will remember that if they had not allowed the serpent to scrape acquaintance with them, on pretence of a friendly interest in their intellectual development, Adam and Eve would still be inventing names for the angelic little wild beasts who were too well-behaved to eat them. They would still be ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... angry, and, though with much reluctance, he seized the little dog by the nape of the neck and threw him off, but without hurting him. Suddenly the little dog changed into a monstrous serpent, bigger even than the griffin himself, and the watch-dog barked with all his might. The griffin rose in a great hurry, and the serpent sprang upon him ere he was well awake. I wish, dearest Nymphalin, you could ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mother, to her horror, saw a deadly reptile coiled in the very path along which the child was rolling his "bushee," and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent, carried him to the house, and with the stout staff ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... and he had warmed himself by the cheerful fire blazing on the hearth. Then, sitting in his easy-chair, and moving the lamp nearer to him, he took Mrs. Meredith's letter and broke the seal, starting as if a serpent had stung him when, in the note inclosed, he recognized his own handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was so full of hope as the brown stalks now beating against his windows with a dismal sound were full of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... savage bound, the lion sprang upon the serpent, and tried to tear him in pieces, while the boa, hissing like a thousand geese, twisted himself, fold after fold, round the body of his enemy, crushing him, squeezing him, and rolling over till his bones cracked. The angry roar changed into a cry of despair and ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Sire! blest Spirit, hail once more, And ashes, vainly rescued! Not with thee Was I allowed to reach Italia's shore, The fields Ausonian that the Fates decree, And Latin Tiber—whatsoe'er it be." He ceased, when lo, a monstrous serpent, wound In seven huge coils, seven giant spires, they see Glide from the grave, and gently clasp the mound, And 'twixt the altars trail in many a ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... to the eastward. The Nooreele never die, and the souls (ludko, literally a shadow) of dead natives will go up and join them in the skies, and will never die again. Other tribes of natives give an account of a serpent of immense size, and inhabiting high rocky mountains, which, they say, produced creation by a blow of his tail. But their ideas and descriptions are too incongruous and unintelligible to deduce any definite or connected ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... a more pure begynynge euen by goddes commaundement then the brasen serpent? It was erected god both willinge and commandinge it. It was sett forthe with miracles / for whosoeuer dyd beholde it he was deliuered from the ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... months, to the great terror of all the country round, and even of the pious King Louis, to whom, at Paris, all the rumours were regularly carried with whole heaps of additions that accumulated on the way. At last a great spectre, clothed all in pea-green, with a long white beard and a serpent's tail, took his station regularly at midnight in the principal window of the palace, and howled fearfully, and shook his fists at the passengers. The six monks at Chantilly, to whom all these things were duly narrated, were exceedingly wrath that the devil should ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the Tyrian dye, and the fibulae, or buckles, by which it was fastened, sparkled with emeralds: around his neck was a chain of gold, which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet ring of elaborate and most exquisite workmanship; the sleeves of the tunic were loose, and fringed at the hand with gold: and across the waist a girdle wrought in arabesque designs, and of the same ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... vengeance, can claim no relief from suffering save death, though in the case of a human being 'twould suffice to temper vengeance with mercy, as thou saidst. Wherefore I, albeit no eagle, witting thee to be no dove, but a venomous serpent, mankind's most ancient enemy, am minded, bating no jot of malice or of might, to harry thee to the bitter end: natheless this which I do is not properly to be called vengeance but rather just retribution; seeing that vengeance should ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... him and his mother—you shall hear how, at another time. I suppose I felt a presentiment that the boy would have some evil influence over me. At any rate, when I accidentally touched him, I trembled as if I had touched a serpent. You will think me superstitious—but, after what you have said, it is certainly true that he has been the indirect cause of the misfortune that has fallen on me. How came he to steal the papers? Did you ask the Rector, when you went ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... finer ship was she than the 'Crane': forward she was fashioned with a dragon's head and aft with a crookSec. ending in like manner as the tail of a dragon, & both the prow & the whole of the stern were overlaid with gold. Now the King called this ship the 'Serpent,' for when the sail was hoisted aloft was it like unto the wings of a dragon, and this was the ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... the brother in the serpent-pit dreamed that his right sister had come swimming to the king's palace in the shape of a duck, and that she could not regain her own form until her beak was cut off. He got this dream told to some one, so that the king at last came to hear ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... herself Cara went to the bed, knelt by it, and buried her face in the coverlet; but a few minutes later she wound her lithe form like the twist of a serpent, and turned her face toward the ceiling. She remained in this posture rather long, only changing, from time to time, the position of her head, which rested on ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... of the Roman leader I hold— I am devouring it.' And you, sea-serpent, what are you doing there, Coiled 'round that neck, your flat head so close To that mouth, already cold and blue? 'To hear the soul of the Roman leader Take its departure am I ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... insidious speaker, "of that? must I needs mean you? did I name you? why do you then assume it to yourself? do you not prejudge yourself guilty? I did not, but your own conscience, it seemeth, doth accuse you. You are so jealous and suspicious, as persons overwise or guilty use to be." So meaneth this serpent out of the hedge securely and unavoidably to bite his neighbour, and is in that respect more base and more hurtful than the most flat ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... Svold took place in the year one thousand. Olaf Tryggvasson, King of Norway, had left Vindland in the Baltic and was on his way back to Norway with his fleet. He was on his ship the Ormrinn Lange (the "Long Serpent"). Svein, the King of Denmark, Olaf King of Sweden, and Erik Jarl of Norway, his enemies, lay in ambush for him under the island of Svold with all their ships. The three chiefs landed on the island. After a while they espied some ships of the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... can stay him, Nor can flowers, Round his knees all-softly twining With their loving eyes detain him; To the plain his course he taketh, Serpent-winding, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... man; "but he didn't. I was at the station myself—two miles from this forsaken place—to make sure that Hathaway didn't skip while I was waiting for orders. Therefore, he is either hidden somewhere in Beverly or he has sneaked away to an adjoining town. The old serpent is slippery as an eel; but I'm going to catch him, this time, as sure as fate, and this girl must give me all the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... direction. And he strove in vain to bring back the comforting vision of the chamber. She smiled, and the odours of sandal, coreopsis, and aloes encircled his soul like the plaited strands of her glorious hair. She was that other Lilith, the only offspring of the old Serpent. On what storied fresco, limned by what worshipper of Satan, had these accursed lineaments, this lithe, seductive figure, been shown! Names of Satanic painters, from Hell-fire Breughel to Arnold Boecklin, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the hermit, horridly austere, Whom clinging vines are choking, tough and sore; Half-buried in an ant-hill that has grown About him, standing post-like and alone; Sun-staring with dim eyes that know no rest, The dead skin of a serpent on his breast: So long he stood unmoved, insensate there That birds build nests within ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... which stands in the vestibule at the west end is a most excellent piece of work. It was carved from a block of white marble by Grinling Gibbons, and is about 5 feet in height. The shaft is the tree of life, round which is twined the serpent, while figures of Adam and Eve stand on either side. It is well worth going into the church to see this alone. The font originally possessed a cover, which was stolen in 1800, and is said to have been hung up in a spirit shop. In the church are many monuments ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Pensively my lord Yvain proceeded through a deep wood, until he heard among the trees a very loud and dismal cry, and he turned in the direction whence it seemed to come. And when he had arrived upon the spot he saw in a cleared space a lion, and a serpent which held him by the tail, burning his hind-quarters with flames of fire. My lord Yvain did not gape at this strange spectacle, but took counsel with himself as to which of the two he should aid. Then he says that he will succour the lion, for a treacherous and venomous ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... that a "boneless wonder" or a "man serpent" would be comfortable enough in this bed, and wishes that he had been brought up as a contortionist. If he could only tie his legs round his neck, and tuck his head in under his arm, all ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... first set eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy between us. We were drawn to each other. I felt instinctively he would be the man. I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically of the Brotherhood of Man—I, who knew the brotherhood of man was to the ape, the serpent, and the tiger—and he seemed to find a pleasure in stealing a moment's chat with me from his engrossing self-appointed duties. It is a pity humanity should have been robbed of so valuable a life. But it had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of December ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... to the house of Siricus. Contiguous to it in the Via del Lupanare is a building having two doors separated with pilasters. By way of sign, an elephant was painted on the wall, enveloped by a large serpent and tended by a pigmy. Above was the inscription: Sittius restituit elephantum; and beneath ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... multiply like a fish; in all other respects it was like the other two standards, save the above the sword-like hooks of gold were seen the third letters in the names of the Patriarchs, Resh, Het, and Kof. Dan's standard contained the form of a serpent, for "Dan shall be a serpent by the way," was Jacob's blessing for this tribe; and the gleaming letters over the hooks were: Mem for Abraham, Kof for Isaac, and Bet for Jacob. The letter He of Abraham's name was not indeed visible over the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... novice Gerard's self-imposed penances was to receive Lodovico kindly, feeling secretly as to a slimy serpent. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... flatter, tongue! Be a siren among the sirens, Sybil! Be a serpent among the serpents!" she hissed, as she glided down the stairs and entered ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... my ink was milk to that of my heart. The bitterness of my feelings was tormenting; words that could burn, contempt that could kill, shame that could annihilate, these and nothing less could satisfy me. Could the serpent revenge fly, how would it dart and sting! Happily for man it can only crawl. That I had been treated with great injustice was true: but of justice my notions were very inadequate; of revenge I had more than ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... bless the silent hours, When swains from shearing seek their nightly bowers, When weary reapers quit the sultry field, And crown'd with corn their thanks to Ceres yield; This harmless grove no lurking viper hides, But in my breast the serpent love abides. Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew, But your Alexis knows no sweets but you. 70 Oh, deign to visit our forsaken seats, The mossy fountains, and the green retreats! Where'er you walk, cool gales ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... homely, but an expressive word. Your Templeton Fun of Fire is fiery fun, for it has cost us something like a general conflagration. Mrs. Hawker has been near a downfall, like your great namesake, by a serpent's coming too near her dress; one barn, I hear, has actually been in a blaze, and Sir George Templemore's heart is in cinders. Mr. John Effingham has been telling me that he should not have been a bachelor, had there been two Mrs. Bloomfields in ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... right," said Uncle Roger, "but for real enjoyment give me something with a creep in it. Sara, tell us that story of the Serpent Woman I heard you tell ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... evil, malignant, and cruel, in those bleary eyes which thus sought Bob out, fastened themselves upon him, and seemed to devour him with their gaze. There was a hideous eagerness in her look. There was a horrible fascination about it,—such as the serpent exerts over the bird. And as the bird, while under the spell of the serpent's eye, seems to lose all power of flight, and falls a victim to the destroyer, so here, at this time, Bob felt paralyzed at that basilisk glance, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... if you have spiritual eyes wherewith to see, the Dragon, the serpent, symbol of political craft and the devilish wisdom of the Roman, giving authority to the Beast, the symbol of brute power; to mongrel AEtiuses and Bonifaces, barbarian Stilichos, Ricimers and Aspars, and a host of similar adventurers, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... they were complete; all the names had been called; we counted, and found that five hundred were for Father Rapp, and two hundred and fifty for Count Leon. Father Rapp, when I told him the numbers, with his usual ready wit, quoted from the book of Revelation, 'And the tail of the serpent drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... sometimes called the son of Urana and Gaea. His connection with the Orpheus myth was probably an innovation of Virgil (Georgics, iv, ll. 315-558) who tells how he caused the death of Eurydice, who was killed by a serpent while fleeing from his persecutions. See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, and Seyffert's Dictionary of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... [the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm] Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction, a serpent's tongue is soft but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In Midsummer Night's Dream he ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Indies and in the Kingdom of Quamsy in China, there is found a Stone in the Head of a certain Serpent (which they call by a name signifying Hairy Serpents) which heals the bitings of the same Serpent, that else would kill in 24 hours. This Stone is round, white in the middle and about the {103} edges blew or greenish. Being applyed to the Wound, it adheres to it of it self, and falls not off, but after it hath sucked the Poyson, then they wash it in Milk, wherein 'tis left awhile, till it return ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... back from the steely glitter as men step back from a serpent; "are you afraid of burglars? or when and why do you deal death ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... which escaped him as he obeyed the summons. Like the trembling bird fascinated by the snake, he fell into the arms of the dead body; which grasping him tight, rolled over and over in convolutions like a serpent, until it gained the break of the gangway, and then tumbled into the sea with its murderer entwined in its embraces. A flash of lightning succeeded, which blinded us for several minutes; and when we recovered our vision, the remainder of the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... And whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said. As ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... leg too will have its fling; well, 'tis but its right. I am so happy, so delighted at not having to carry my buckler any more. I sing and I laugh more than if I had cast my old age, as a serpent ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... than those belonging to the animal above described. The second skull was much flattened, of an elongated shape, very broad, the orbital cavity being high up on the skull—in fact, not unlike the skull of a great serpent. It possessed a long occipital spur, extraordinarily prominent, and fairly well-defined zygomatic arches—but not quite so prominent as in the skull previously discovered. Seen from underneath, there seemed to be a circular cavity on the left front, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... can follow up the banks on foot. However, we will soon baffle them, for the river winds like a serpent just above this, and by carrying our canoe across one, two, or three spits of land we will gain a distance in an hour or so that would cost them nearly a day to ascend in boats. They know that, and will certainly give up the chase. I think they have ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... do with God; we judge Him by our miserable understanding, and there is for Him neither present nor past, nor future; He sees them all at the same moment in light uncreate. For Him distance has no figure, and space is nought. It is consequently impossible to doubt that the Serpent will conquer. This amputated dilemma is ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... different material. The cup was pear-shaped, massive, dark-coloured, and highly polished, with gold ornaments, and two small handles by which it could be lifted. The foot was of virgin gold, elaborately worked, ornamented with a serpent and a small bunch of grapes, and enriched with ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... said Nan, beginning to enjoy it, "as grandsir used to say, between wind and water. He looked down at the thing in his hands—the rags, you know—and dropped them into the wood-box. You see that was the real wiliness of the serpent, my telling him he was in drink. He's full of spiritual pride, all eat up with it. Then I played Charlotte some more. I told Mrs. Tenney to come in, and remarked that she'd get her death o' cold; and she did come ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the nearest plane opened fire. The spitting flame told him this, for it darted out like the fiery tongue of a serpent. He also realized that the bullets were cutting through space all around them; and a splinter striking his arm announced the fuselage of the plane had already been struck, showing the gunner had ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... safe. He opened his eyes and looked about. His face was smeared with mud, one of his shoes was gone, his foot seemed to be twisted. It was all too plain that he had been within the suction pipe, within the devouring jaws of that monster serpent, when his frantic rescuer had dragged him ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... There are no means of strictly determining the precise meaning of the word in Babylonian; but it is perhaps allowable to connect it, provisionally, with the Arabic Hiya, which is at once life and "a serpent," since, according to the best authority, there are very strong grounds for connecting Hea or Hoa with the serpent of Scripture and the Paradisaical traditions of the tree of knowledge ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... own way, my charming angel, whom nobody believes to be a demon," said Thugut, laughing. "I feel precisely like you, my beautiful Victoria; I love you twice as ardently, because I penetrated your true nature; because, when you are smiling upon others, I alone perceive the serpent, while others only behold the roses, and because I alone know this angelic figure to conceal the soul of a demon. Thus we love each other because we belong to each other, Victoria; you call me the prince of darkness, and you are assuredly the crown-princess ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the first of those Yankee clippers that have since almost monopolized the China carrying trade. The "Sea Serpent," bound for the United States, passed close to us, and a magnificent specimen of naval architecture she was. She excited a strong yearning for home, and gladly would I have exchanged ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... return to England from my second sojourn in West Africa, I discovered, to my alarm, that I was, by a freak of fate, the sea- serpent of the season, I published, in order to escape from this reputation, a very condensed, much abridged version of my experiences in Lower Guinea; and I thought that I need never explain about myself or Lower Guinea again. This was one of my errors. I have been explaining ever since; and, though ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... amorous), and thus be contemplating matrimony, relieved the aching humiliation of all that had happened in the sea-mist. It shed a new and lurid light on Withers, it made her mistress feel that she had nourished a serpent in her bosom, to think that Withers was contemplating so odious an act of selfishness as matrimony. It would be necessary to find a new parlour-maid, and all the trouble connected with that would not nearly be compensated ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites; Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights; Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been much occupied in seeing brethren and sisters privately and the rest of my time, besides prayer and meditation, for my own soul and the work, has been occupied in preparing tracts for the press. Five are already finished. I have translated into German: "The love of God to poor sinners," "The Serpent of brass," and "The two thieves;" and I have written myself two tracts, on "Lydia's conversion," and "The conversion of the jailer at Philippi." In this work I purpose to continue, the Lord willing, while we remain here, either writing or translating tracts, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... bidden me spend no more winters here in the East; but return to our native sea-breezes, there to warm my frozen lungs; and has so filled my mother's fancy with stories of sick men, who were given up for lost in Germany and France, and yet renewed their youth, like any serpent or eagle, by going to Italy, Spain, and the Canaries, that she herself will be more ready to let me go than I to leave her all alone. And yet I must go, Amyas. It is not merely that my heart pants, as Sidney's does, as every gallant's ought, to make one of your noble choir ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... It was like that grim guardian which, according to the Arabian historian Ibn Abd Alhokin, the builder of the Pyramids, King Saurid Ibn Salhouk placed in the Western Pyramid to defend its treasure: 'A marble figure, upright, with lance in hand; with on his head a serpent wreathed. When any approached, the serpent would bite him on one side, and twining about his throat and killing him, would return again ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... swallow as a mere matter of taste. I can but recollect, Father Joliet," I went on more seriously, "that the last time I met you you begged me not to talk of Francine if I would not break your heart. I have to add to this the news brought me from Heidelberg, that this Kraaniff was a serpent who had fascinated some young girl for an approaching meal.—How dare you, Charles," I cried suddenly, recalled to the consciousness of his presence by this souvenir of his oratory, "stand here staring? Show the young man out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... may not fling a slur Upon our honor as we cast adrift This alien race to face the world alone. Caesar: Sweet Francos, truly thou hast quick discerned The thought which wisdom fathered in my mind. "Be wise as serpent, harmless as the dove," Should be our watchword as we scuttle ship, For there be those who speak with venomed tongues Of serpents, as we cast them helpless off. But if we of politicos make use, And to their clamour lend approving smile, We may while coolly ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... lust and on the anvil of despair, He slights the strokes of conscience. Nothing moves, Or nothing much, his constancy in ill; Vain tampering has but fostered his disease, 'Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death. Haste now, philosopher, and set him free. Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear Of rectitude and fitness: moral truth How lovely, and the moral sense how sure, Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps Directly to the FIRST AND ONLY FAIR. Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's Bath." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... out as if merely for a ride had joined them here. I was considering what would be the best 195course to pursue, and was just coming out to consult you, when the door was flung open, and Wilford and Wentworth entered hastily. The moment Wilford's eyes fell upon me he started as if a serpent had stung him, and his brow became black ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... high above. Other flames ran in and out among the withered white sheaths that had dropped off, and mounted up the smooth stems, and then there came a wandering puff of wind, which rustled over the bending tops and fanned the little serpent-tongues of fire into one ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... and mysterious condition, a dilated stomach, would restrain Annie Petowski or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara for a time. With the wisdom of the serpent, she would give the child her finger to suck—a finger so white, so clean, so soft in the last week that she was lost in admiration of it. And the child would take hold, all its small body set rigid in lines of desperate effort. Then it would relax suddenly, and spew out the finger, and the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of that Highlander wrenching from Sarah Lochrig's finger our wedding-ring did, in its effects and influences, cause a change in my nature as sudden and as wonderful as that which the rod of Moses underwent in being quickened into a serpent. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... is one of the seven favoured animals: the others being the Hudhud (hoopoe) of Solomon (Koran xxii. 20); the she-camel of Salih (chaps. Ixxxvii.); the cow of Moses which named the Second Surah; the fish of Jonah; the serpent of Eve, and the peacock of Paradise. For Koranic revelations of the Cave see the late Thomas Chenery (p. 414 The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Williams and Norgate, 1870) who borrows from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... shop-door. If it be a shop-door, there will be carved above it either a negro's head with the mouth wide open or the smirking face of a Turk. Sometimes the sign is an elephant, a goose, a horse's head, a bull, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, and sometimes an outstretched arm holding some article that is for sale in the shop. If it be a house-door—in which case it is always kept closed—it bears a brass plate on which is written ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... nature-worshipper. The moment Thoreau spurned the legal tax-gatherer the law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol. To enjoy nature the soul must be free—free not only from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every wrongful act awakes, out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... from his writings, was extensively acquainted with profane literature. But he formed quite too high an estimate of the value of the heathen philosophy, whilst he allegorized Scripture in a way as dangerous as it was absurd. By the serpent which deceived Eve, according to Clement, "pleasure, an earthly vice which creeps upon the belly, is allegorically represented." [374:1] Moses, speaking allegorically, if we may believe this writer, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... midshipman's face, as he felt how near they both were to a terrible end. The deep water after that awful fall, the fierce current which would carry him out to sea—and then came shuddering thoughts of the great, long, serpent-like congers, of whose doings horrible stories were current among ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... time of the great plague in Rome (291 B.C.), ambassadors were sent to Epidaurus, in accordance with the advice of the Sibylline books, to seek aid from AEsculapius. They returned with a statue of the god, but as their boat passed up the Tiber a serpent which had lain concealed during the voyage glided from the boat, and landing on the bank was welcomed by the people in the belief that the god himself had come to their aid. The Temple of AEsculapius, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... actions, which elegant description may soon after deliver in presence [of the spectators]. Let not Medea murder her sons before the people; nor the execrable Atreus openly dress human entrails: nor let Progue be metamorphosed into a bird, Cadmus into a serpent. Whatever you show to me in this manner, not able to give credit to, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... but only the glowing upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad went by broad, frowzy, treeless clearings flanked ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... posterity. Some creatures cast their eggs as chance directs them, and think of them no further, as insects, and several kinds of fish; others, of a nicer frame, find out proper beds to deposit them in, and there leave them, as the serpent, the crocodile, and ostrich; others hatch their eggs and tend the birth till it is able ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to be intensified into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its opposite—and in saying this we do not even say enough.—FR. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... Hetty answered her, cool in a moment and deliberate. "Nothing like it, my dear; 'tis the old genuine Serpent." ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the consequences of the possibility of their falling into the hands of foes. But here, all of a sudden, their path is intercepted by the actual presence of a formidable foe. One of the pursuers? No, but one equally defiant. It is a huge serpent of the 'Whip snake' species, which never gives way, but always takes a bold and defiant stand. It took its stand about fifty yards ahead, ready for battle, its head, and about a yard of its length, in semi-erect posture, and displaying every sign of its proverbial enmity to Adam's race. It has ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... stand in the pillory is all reprint: I have no doubt I confounded some of it with some of the manuscript or slips which I had received from my much not-agreed-with correspondent. He adds that my mistake was intentional, and that my reason is obvious to the reader. This is information, as the sea-serpent said when he read in the newspaper that he had a mane ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... another courtier came up, who remarked, "Your majesty has probably not observed that in every instance the squirrel is pursued by a serpent." ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... poison—imagine this, we say—but don't do it either! If you have never seen a rattlesnake, don't go near one, unless you have a chance to kill it, even if his fangs have been extracted. The heel shall bruise the serpent, and that is the best use to which they can ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... she had penned 14 Epistles, using the tall cuneiform Hieroglyphics, she didn't have a blessed thing to do before her 1 o'clock Engagement except drop in at a Flower Show and a Cat Show and have her Palm read by a perfectly fascinating Serpent with a Goatee who had been telling all the Gells the most wonderful ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... lost Man in Tortures yield his Breath Dying to save us from eternal Death! Oh mystick union!—salutary Grace! Incarnate God our Nature should embrace! That Deity should stoop to our Disguise! That man recover'd should regain the Skies! Dejected Adam! from thy grave ascend, And view the Serpent's Deadly Malice end, Adorning bless th' Almighty's boundless Grace That gave his son a Ransome for thy Race! Oh never let my Soul this Day forget, But pay in gratefull praise ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... together. This could not have lasted above a minute or so; but it seemed to me like a year. I heard every voice that had ever sounded in my ear since childhood; I saw every apparition that had ever glided before my fancy: the Sea-Serpent twisted his folds round my neck, and the keel of the Flying Dutchman grated along my back. When the vessel rose at last, and I rose with her, the waters gurgling in my throat and hissing in my ears, I did not attempt to spring up the shrouds. I looked round in horror for the objects of my ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... feeling of horror he felt himself settling, settling in the treacherous sands, until he was slicked down nearly to the neck, his face almost even with the surface, the dark water gliding by him like some slimy serpent into ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Orleans safest. Yea, notwithstanding Porter and Farragut were pelting away at Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Indeed, if the rumor be true, if Farragut's ships had passed those forts, leaving Porter behind, then the Yankee sea-serpent was cut in two, and there was an end of him in that direction. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... authors write, There liv'd a Serpent, the delight, Of an ingenuous child; Proud of his kindness, the brave boy. Fed and caress'd it ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... interest, from the point of view of diffusion, lies in the fact that it occurs in India, both early (see Benfey, i., 117) and late (Temple, 12, Frere, 14), in Greece, both classical (AEsopic fable of the serpent in the bosom) and modern (Hahn, 87, Schmidt, p. 3), and in the earliest mediaeval collection of popular tales by Petrus Alfonsi (Disciplina clericalis, vii.), as well as in the Reynard cycle. Besides these quasi-literary sources ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... yet to be seen of the various musicians, jugglers, fire-eaters, serpent-charmers, and conjurers, who in the evening displayed their skill in this part of the town, which at all times had the aspect of a never ceasing fair. But these delights, which Nemu had passed a thousand times, had never had any temptation for him. Women and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been made since the sunrise, which she awoke so early to study. She had found relatives, and an opportunity of living luxuriously; but, in the midst of this beautiful bouquet of surprises, a serpent's head peered out at her. Mr. Clifton loved her; not as a teacher his pupil, not as guardian loves ward, not as parent loves child. Perhaps he had not intended that she should know it so soon, but his eyes had betrayed the secret. She saw perfectly how matters stood. This, then, had prompted ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... speak of Mr. Carvel's death, the son and daughter he loved, and the child of his old age in the grave before him, he proceeded brokenly, and the tears blinded him. Mr. Carvel's last words will never be known, my dears. They sounded in the unfeeling ears of the serpent Grafton. 'Twas said that he was seen coming out of his father's house an hour after the demise, a smile on his face which he strove to hide with a pucker of sorrow. But by God's grace Mr. Allen had not read the prayers. The rector was at last removed from Annapolis, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all in lily white, And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, With wine and water filled up to the height, In which a serpent did himself enfold, That horror made to all that did behold; But she no whit did ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... personal fortunes has so greatly affected, for good or for ill, his poetic reputation. Those who detested his character and condemned his way of living found it difficult to praise his verses; they detected the serpent under every stone. For those who were fascinated by the picture of a reckless prodigal, always in love and in debt, with fierce passions and a haughty contempt for the world, who defied public opinion and was ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... to move more quickly. It was an exquisite sight, even from here, as the prelate set foot on the platform and began to move to the left. The long lines of tapers, four deep, went like some great serpent, rippling with light, above the heads of the sick; and here and there in the slopes of the crowded spectators shone out other lights, steady as stars in the motionless half-lit evening air. Then, as he went, slowly, pace by pace, he remembered the sick and glanced ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... enamelled in black, or black and white. They were frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a coffin with a full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. Sometimes they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his mouth. Many bore a posy. In the Boston News Letter of October 30, 1742, was advertised: "Mourning Ring lost with the Posy Virtue & Love is From Above." Here is another advertisement from ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of rattle snakes about the Clifts at which we halted we called them the rattle snake clifts. this serpent is the same before discribed with oval spots of yellowish brown. the river below the mountains is rapid rocky, very crooked, much divided by islands and withal shallow. after it enters the mountains it's bends are not so circuetous and it's general course more direct, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... reflex of his beautiful sister Amelie, but his countenance was marred with traces of debauchery. His face was inflamed, and his dark eyes, so like his sister's, by nature tender and true, were now glittering with the adder tongues of the cursed wine-serpent. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the scourge; yet it was our high privilege to come through the dark cloud without losing a loved one, while thousands were cast down with bereavements and grief. At one time it appeared that we were in the centre of the cloud which zig-zagged its ugly body, serpent-like, through districts, poisoning all that it touched, and leaving death in its wake. This was indeed cholera in ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... her face. In a moment it was all wet; and she sat for some time with her beautiful head thrown back, and her snowy teeth set on her lovely under-lip, as though she suddenly felt the sting of a poisonous serpent, without removing the handkerchief from her face, lest he should ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the river is very tortuous, turning back upon itself as if imitating the convolutions of a crawling serpent, and following a channel of more than eleven hundred and fifty miles before its waters unite with those of the Gulf of Mexico. This country between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico is truly the delta of the Mississippi, for the river north of Cairo cuts through table-lands, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... terrantola, a name given by the Italians to the stellio of the old Romans, which was a kind of lizard, said to be poisonous, and invested by credulity with such extraordinary qualities, that, like the serpent of the Mosaic account of the Creation, it personified, in the imaginations of the vulgar, the notion of cunning, so that even the jurists designated a cunning fraud by the appellation of a "stellionatus." Perotti expressly assures us that ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... and stood in front of her, and she saw that his face was grim. "What is the matter?" he said. "Surely you don't object to a serpent like that getting his ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... are hard up for news they get up something about the Philippines! It's the modern sea-serpent. When there's absolutely nothing else to print—no girl suicide in Brooklyn, or cyclone in Kansas, or joke on Chicago, then they give the Philippines a paragraph or an insurrection. ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... hid from my eyes. An overwhelming sense of compassion came over me, as for one who had sustained a mortal hurt that was beyond the power of healing. Alas, that simplicity and uprightness of soul, and the boasted womanly intuitions, should be such poor safeguards against the wiles of the serpent! And yet, I knew that to argue with her at this moment would be ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" and plumes from the eagle's wing. But sadder far is the spectacle of millions of men made for fellowship with God, building their hopes on the divinity dwelling in an amulet of tiger's teeth or serpent's fangs or curious shells. And it ought to enlarge our natures with a Christ-like sympathy when we contemplate those dark and desperate faiths which are but nightmares of the soul, which see in all the universe only malevolent spirits to be ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... that went through Mike almost paralyzed him. In hypnotized fascination he watched the sinuous uncoiling of the serpent; the gliding movement ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... recondite theological subjects which often torture such children, and which grown up people are too often so forgetful of their own childhood that they fail to sympathize with them. She regarded with disapproval the transformation of the Devil into a serpent, and thought it cruel in God to permit it. Referring to the time when her first communion drew near, she writes: "I felt a sacred terror ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq's indiscreet glances "under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain," lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... what is the use of recalling unpleasant truths. Why don't you silence memory, when you have ceased to feel remorse. But I tell you what it is, Moncton. The presence of the one proves the existence of the other. The serpent is sleeping in his coil, and one of these days you will feel the strength of his fangs. Is this the door that leads to his chamber? You have chosen a sorry dormitory for the heir of the ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... chance. The subject was, What was the most absorbing and longest-lived passion in the human breast? What was the passion so powerful that it would almost induce the generous to be mean, the careless to be cautious, the guileless to be deeply designing, and the dove to emulate the serpent? A daily editor of vast experience and great acuteness, who was one of the company, considerably surprised us by saying with the greatest confidence that the passion in question was the passion of getting ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... he took Laura by the hand, and asked her if she would be "so sweet as to play to him." She complied, through sheer astonishment. He sat by the piano, with his watch-chain resting in folds, like a golden serpent, on the sea-green protuberance of his waistcoat. His immense head lay languidly on one side, and he gently beat time with two of his yellow-white fingers. He highly approved of the music, and tenderly admired Laura's manner of playing—not as poor ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... or a flagon of wine, were readily determined in their vote for a minister; let the prostitutes of Jesus' ordinance answer for the unhappy consequences of their conduct. If they so enormously broke through the hedge of the divine law, no wonder a serpent bit them. But who has forgot what angry contentions, what necessity of a military guard at ordinations, the lodging of the power of elections in patrons or heritors, as ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... am so afraid that the buffaloes will butt us, and the great serpent eat us up. Let us travel to another ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... be continually pulling them from each other's arms. But the first influence which crosses the walls of their paradise, the first being to whom they speak, which possesses the semblance of a human voice, is most certainly Satan and that Old Serpent, who was a liar and a slanderer from the beginning, and whose counsels will lead inevitably to the withdrawal of God's presence and to the doom of a life of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... day, the harmony was shattered, for the serpent stole into that God-centred home, and with him, sin. And now, because they had lost their peace and fellowship with God, they lost it with each other. No longer did they live for God—they each lived for themselves. They were each their own gods now, and ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to call it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpent with the fowl."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and cried, "What do I see? Me Sister! me sweet Adulaide! and in teers! Willin!" he screamed, "and you're the serpent I took to my boosum, and borrowed money of, and went round with, and was cheerful with, are you?—You ought to be ashamed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... plan of salvation it is provided for us that more abundant care should be taken for preserving man who has been redeemed! For when the Lord, coming to us, had cured those wounds which Adam had borne, and had healed the old poisons of the serpent, He gave a law to the sound man, and bade him sin no more lest a worse thing should befall the sinner. We had been limited and shut up in a narrow space by the commandment of innocence. Nor should the infirmity and weakness of human frailty have anything it might do, unless the divine ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... higher natures. For everything which the candidate for initiation formerly had to go through must be repeated in one who follows the Christian path. Just as Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon so now "the great dragon, that old serpent" (xii. 9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it is not raised to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. In the Apocalypse it appears as the "old serpent." ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... confusion, and to the glory of my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ), 'Thou hast suffered great trouble for professing of Christ's truth; God has done great things for thee.'... O Mother! this was a subtle serpent who thus could pour in venom, I not perceiving it; but blessed be my God who permitted me not to sleep long in that estate. I drank, shortly after this flattery of myself, a cup of contra-poison, the bitterness whereof doth yet so remain in my breast, that whatever I have ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... the sand of imagination and boastfully concluding that facts were not there. Harry was a fact, but by continuously asserting that New Zealand was a long way off and that Harry would never come back, Harry's existence became a very pleasant fairy-story, like nautical tales of the sea-serpent and the Bewitching Mermaid. They might be there, and it was very pleasant to listen to stories about them, but they had no real bearing on life ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... this unusual scene and caught a glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlour, huddled by the corner of the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decided him at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing on the wainscot, and made a dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet entirely at an end, for even as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct, 'Have you seen ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the language as ever; it is far from so being; its supports are being cut from beneath it. Even now it only lives in a tropical and secondary sense, as 'a brazen face'; or if in a literal, in poetic diction or in the consecrated language of Scripture, as 'the brazen serpent'; otherwise we say 'a brass farthing', 'a brass candlestick'. It is the same with 'oaten', 'birchen', 'beechen', 'strawen', and many more, whereof some are obsolescent, some obsolete, the language manifestly tending now, as it has tended ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... of the basilisk, the serpent, and the evil eye, have probably all some facts for their foundation. The effect of the human eye in arresting the attacks of savage animals is better authenticated, and its influence upon domestic animals may be more easily made the subject of experimental proof. Let any one gaze steadily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... little man contorts body and face into postures and expressions as humbly flattering and cajoling as he can; at every few steps he scrapes and curtseys. "Welcome, Siegfried! Tell me, you soul of courage, have you learned fear?" "Not yet have I found the teacher!" "But the Serpent-Worm which you slew, a fearsome fellow, was he not?" "Grim and malignant though he were, his death verily grieves me, since miscreants of deeper dye still live at large. The one who bade me murder him, I hate more than ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... judge, who is giving orders for the fire to be increased, and the flames reflected on the face of the man who is blowing at them; and all the figures are painted in beautiful and varied attitudes. On the other side is S. Philip in the Temple of Mars, compelling the serpent, which has slain the son of the King with its stench, to come forth from below the altar. In certain steps the painter depicted the hole through which the serpent issued from beneath the altar, and so well did ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... more boys in line, and have each fellow place his hands firmly on the shoulders of the boy in front of him. Choose one of the fellows for the "Wolf." The first boy at the head of the line is called the "Head" of the Serpent, and the last fellow is the "Tail." The "Wolf" stands near the head of the Serpent until a signal is given. Then he tries to catch the "Tail" without touching any other part of the snake. The boys who form the body of the Serpent protect the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... said, snapping her fingers in his face, "your nation is a race of women, and the hoe is better fitted to your hands than the gun. Your squaws are the mothers of deer; but if a bear or a wild cat or a serpent were born among you, ye would flee. The Huron girls shall make you petticoats, and we ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various |
