"Cumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then his whip he flourished, Cracked his whip, all bead-embroidered, Quick he sped upon his journey, Lurched the sledge, the way was shortened, 10 Loudly rang the birchwood runners, And the rowan cumber rattled. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... tossing, and wild leaping of the water there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. The ridges, which in still water would proceed in circular curves ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... had a good bed in which to sleep. Where she was sinned against was in this: that her family looked upon her white hair and her wrinkles and arrived at the erroneous conclusion that her interest in life was gone—in short, that she was content to cumber the earth and to wait for the long sleep. To them she was simply one who tarries and is content. Scattergood looked into her sharp, old eyes, eyes that were capable of sudden gleams of humor or flashes of anger, and he knew. He knew that death seemed as distant to Grandmother Penny ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... in the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ships than that indispensably needed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... Finns and ... Greeks," he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the earth. What is the ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... John Binning's greatest enemy, being very active to obtain the gift of his forefaulture, with a designe of his ruine, and the prejudice of his numerous and just creditors, the deceased Mr. James Gordon, minister at Cumber in Ireland, John Binning's father in law and former Curator, to whom he was oweing a considerable soume of money, came over to Scotland, at John Binning's desire, who was then in Ireland, to obtaine the said ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... livest, my beloved, the Giver of Life sends down upon thee sometimes things of sadness; but I, the singer, shall make thee glad in the place of difficulty, in the place of cumber. ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Salem Village constitutes the First. This is drawn, almost wholly, from papers in the offices of registry, and from judicial files of the County, to which references would be of little use, and serve only to cumber and deform the pages. Everything can be verified by inspection of the originals, and not otherwise. The Second Part is a cursory, general, abbreviated sketch or survey of the history of opinions, not designed as an authoritative treatise for special students, but to prepare ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... roystering; like a cautious young bridegroom at his own marriage merry-making, Taji stood on his guard. And when Borabolla urged him to empty a gourd or two, by way of making room in him for the incidental repast about to be served, Taji civilly declined; not wishing to cumber the floor, before ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... cigarettes," said Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke, and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at Leith, for instance—you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated —but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thee cumber; What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... rather that the wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world's goods, we are rich in happy associations ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... battlements. These are luxuriant with vegetation, of which I should preserve a portion for shade and coolth. A fine arched cistern now affords a shelter to bats; and a building which appears to be the chapel remains on the northern side. Old iron guns still cumber ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... on the correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like dew on the mountain, 390 Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain Thou ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... been enacted, never regarded her as anything but his wife. The day after Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremony had taken place, 'the knocker of her door,' to quote her own complacent phrase, 'was never still.' The Duchesses of Portland, Devonshire and Cumber-land were among ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Unmatch'd, Achilles! whom themselves the Gods 255 Cease not to aid, if Saturn's son have doom'd All Ilium's race to perish by thine arm, Expel them, first, from me, ere thou achieve That dread exploit; for, cumber'd as I am With bodies, I can pour my pleasant stream 260 No longer down into the sacred deep; All vanish where thou comest. But oh desist Dread Chief! Amazement fills me at thy deeds. To whom Achilles, matchless in the race. River ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... that midnight dread, Or venturous less that daring, when La Seine Dismay'd, dismasted, cumber'd with her dead, Struck to the ship she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... waited for, corrected and enlarged. We have a memorable instance of this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly brutal rescript ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... might ransack every hole and corner of your dim brain, and pick over all the spiders' webs and old iron that cumber your head, without ever lighting on a picklock to open this word and extract the meaning. But for me, my poor friend, you would get yourself hanged and your body burned for a word of one syllable which neither you nor your judges know the sense of, so that none could ever have discovered ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... took him out again, And cutten all his joints in sunder, And burnt him eke upon a hill; I-wis they did him curstly cumber. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... not all. It would also follow that the names of substances would not only have, as in truth they have, but would also be supposed to have different significations, as used by different men, which would very much cumber the use of language. For if every distinct quality that were discovered in any matter by any one were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea signified by the common name given to it, it must ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... small and large, and he makes them fall as he wishes them to fall. He trims off all branches, and leaves no "slash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can get at them under a foot of solid ice. He digs canals, of any length he pleases, to float logs and billets of wood from ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... glossy and deep green, like laurel leaves, are poisonous; and because of its uselessness it will probably become extinct, like the graceful pampas grass in the same region. In this exceedingly practical age men quickly lay the axe at the root of things which, in their view, only cumber the ground; but before other trees had been planted the antiquated and grand-looking ombu had its uses; it served as a gigantic landmark to the traveller on the great monotonous plains, and also afforded refreshing shade to man and horse in summer; while the native doctor ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... No Persian cumber, boy, for me; I hate your garlands linden-plaited; Leave winter's rose where on the tree It hangs belated. Wreath me plain myrtle; never think Plain myrtle either's wear unfitting, Yours as you wait, mine as I ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689. The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion of the people. The Reformation of 1559-1560 had been met by ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... and cumber of the world, that will call a man off from looking after the salvation of his soul. This is intimated by the parable of the thorny ground. (Luke 8:14) Worldly cumber is a devilish thing; it will hurry a man from his bed without prayer; to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... continent sundering oceans. Sometimes action is denied, and then it strikes in and makes poets—perhaps the most daring adventurers of all. It must be difficult for the beaters of iron and the barterers in swine to understand why such useless timber is allowed to cumber the great workhouse; but then we don't know exactly what the trilobites were good for, and the utilitarians may find comfort in the reflection that at the present rate the obnoxious family is likely to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... them in the dust. Domestic cats may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line must be drawn; after that they must be chased up trees and barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under penalties. Black fellows must be barked ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged fast in the cumber, and he stood still and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... they have desired the seeds of them out of England, and preserve them with extraordinary care in their best gardens; this I learn out of our Johnson's Herbal; by which we may consider, that what is reputed a curse, and a cumber in some places, is esteem'd the ornament and blessing of another: But we shall not need go so far for this, since both beech and birch are almost as great strangers in many parts of this nation, particularly Northampton and Oxfordshire. Mr. Cook is much in praise of juniper ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... without rising, and looked awhile toward the house. She had as much trouble to get matters adjusted to her mind as if she had a houseful of furniture to place, with carpets to lay, curtains to hang, and the thousand and one "things" with which we bigger housekeepers cumber ourselves and make life a burden. This spasmodic visitation went on for days, and finally it was plain that sitting had begun. Still the birds of the vicinity were interested callers, and I began ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of Autumn . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... night she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can make of the day is to totter three or four times across the floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf, and think how green it once was, and how the birds sung to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... more like a second Robinson Crusoe than sober history. For that reason I have put the corroborative evidence in footnotes, rather than cumber the movement of the main theme. I am sorry to have loaded the opening parts with so many notes; but Radisson's voyages change the relative positions of the other explorers so radically that proofs must be given. The footnotes are for the student and may be omitted by the general reader. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... warm and animated discussion among the old ladies as to what was the most delightful product of the garden. One old lady said, that so "fur" as she was "consarned," she preferred the "per-turnip"—another preferred the "pertater"—another the "cow-cumber," and still another voted "ingern" king. But suddenly a wise looking old dame raised her spectacles and settled the whole question by observing: "Ah, ladies, you may talk about yer per-turnips, and your pertaters, and your passnips and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... "I pray you, O excellent wife, cumber not yourself and me to get a curiously rich dinner for this man and woman who have just alighted at our gate. These things, if they desire them, they can get for a few shillings at any village inn; but rather let that stranger see, if he will, in your looks, accents and behavior, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... my threshold had boasted and jeered and cried— 'The pledge of your offsprings' birthright your children have swept aside— They cumber the land of strangers, they dwell in the alien's tent Till "home" is a word forgotten, and "love" but a ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to go into a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber the ground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves with delicate lace-work, are now ready to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Joe Cumber." He grew still more ill at ease. "I hear that even if you hit the mark you got to talk to the sheriff ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... for the security of those who depended on their vigilance, with their own lives. These assurances had, beyond a doubt, a soothing influence on the apprehensions of Ruth and her handmaidens; but they somewhat failed of their effect, with those unwelcome visiters who still continued to cumber Wish-Ton-Wish with their presence. Though they had evidently abandoned all ideas connected with the original object of their visit, they spoke not of departure. On the contrary as night approached, their chief entered into council with ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and often interfere with the work of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... in which we resided has long since been swept away, with its barns, its piggery, and its shippon. Never more will its cornricks gladden the eye—never more will busy agricultural life be carried on in its precincts. Streets and courts full of houses cumber the ground. No more will the lark be heard over the cornfield—the brook seen running its silvery course—or the apple in the orchard reddening on the bending bough. The lark is represented by a canary in a gilded cage hanging out of a first-floor window—the corn-field ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal he will presently pass ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Balmile, "je n'ai pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comme il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court." [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old place, no murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, "I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth." Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long facade is striped with white and ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... skimmed the water over half the distance between her and the land. As he plied his skulls with vigorous and skilful arms, he soon stood upon her decks. Forcing his way among the crowd of attendants from the shore, that are apt to cumber a departing ship, he reached the part of the vessel where a circle of busy and anxious faces told him he should find those most concerned in her fate. Until now, he had hardly breathed clearly, much less reflected on the character of his sudden enterprise. It was too late, however, to retreat, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... knows it, and the society reporters are beginning their innuendoes. The next thing will be her picture in the sensational press, and a scandal. Don't you know this? It must not happen! We must make way for them—you and I. We cumber the path." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger, He'd wish to sleep a little longer. And could he be indeed so old As by the newspapers we're told? Threescore, I think, is pretty high; 'Twas time in conscience he should die! This world he cumber'd long enough; He burnt his candle to the snuff; And that's the reason, some folks think, He left behind so great a stink. Behold his funeral appears, Nor widows' sighs, nor orphans' tears, Wont at such times each heart to pierce, Attend the progress of his hearse. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... may say at once, without trespassing the bounds of my pledged word, that if these few concise instructions were known and practised by everyone, doctors would be entirely thrown out of employment, and chemists' shops would no longer cumber the streets. Illness would be very difficult of attainment—though in the event of its occurring each individual would know how to treat him or herself—and life could be prolonged easily and comfortably to more than a hundred years, barring, of course, accidents by ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... concubines as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond my power ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... from my sight; The moonbeam drooped, and deepest night Sunk down upon the heath. 'Twere long to tell what cause I have To know his face, that met me there, Called by his hatred from the grave, To cumber upper air; Dead or alive, good cause had he To ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the dark thee cumber: What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of this earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... a feeling of consternation and pity, as she thought of the orphan boy, she accepted his greeting with duteous welcome as he said, "Kinswoman, I am come to cumber you, whilst I inquire into this matter. I give your son thanks for the honesty and faithfulness he hath shown in the matter, as befitted his father's son. I should wish ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the snow was gone; there was left only its cold bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had left its dark stain where the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... tavern-keepers and princesses. As they talked with Elizabeth and her friend the countess, discoursing upon heavenly themes, they were interrupted by the rattling of a coach, and callers were announced. The countess "fetched a deep sigh, crying out, 'O the cumber and entanglements of this vain world! They hinder all good.' Upon which," says William, "I replied, looking her steadfastly in the face, 'O come thou out of them, then.'" This journey was of great importance as affecting afterwards the population of Pennsylvania. Here it was ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... tack later on: he never said a word about Raymond's going to college, and Raymond, as a fact, never went. He fed his own intellectual furnace, and fed it in his own way. He learned an immense number of useless and unrelated things. In time they came to cumber him. Perhaps college would ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... called a "romance," because the incidents, characters, time, and scenery, are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the Writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... gipsies, whom we met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... hammer, and assuming a more gentle and submissive tone of voice, "that when so poor a man does his day's job, he might be permitted to work it out after his own fashion. Your horse is shod, and your farrier paid—what need you cumber yourself further than to mount and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 9 Take thou the branches of the wild olive-tree, and graft them in, in the stead thereof; and these which I have plucked off I will cast into the fire and burn them, that they may not cumber the ground ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... noxiousness look very much like a direct command from the Author of Nature, to do that which shall turn the refuse to a good account—namely, to bury it in the earth. Yet, from sloth and negligence, it is often allowed to cumber the surface, and there do its evil work instead. An important principle is thus instanced—the essential identity of Nuisance and Waste. Nearly all the physical annoyances we are subjected to, and nearly all the influences that are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... Goody Conscience! indeed I do you wrong, But I'll quickly right it; my cloak shall not cumber you long. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... should wait to enter. I would not cumber his Highness' courtyards. We know not yet that this Lady ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... from the skies, Till they glance thro' the shade, and Come down to your brow Like—eyes of the maiden Who calls on you now— Arise! from your dreaming In violet bowers, To duty beseeming These star-litten hours— And shake from your tresses Encumber'd with dew The breath of those kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up!—shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— It would weigh down your flight; And true love caresses— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... battle at last. How sweet through the long convalescence to lie, And from the low window, gaze out at the sky, And float, as the zephyrs so tranquilly do, Aloft in the depths of ineffable blue:— In painless, delicious half consciousness brood,— No duties to cumber, no claims to intrude,— Receptive as childhood, from trouble as free, And feel it is bliss enough ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... readiness to perform any service with which the prince may intrust you; although for what service he destines you, I own that I am in ignorance. But," he said more gravely, "the prince is not a man to cumber himself with persons who are useless to him, nor to keep about his person any save those upon whose fidelity he is convinced that he can rely. Therefore I doubt not that he will find work for you to do, for indeed there is but little ease and quiet for those who serve him. This afternoon ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... and no place for a relation of personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Indians will never bear the strain of development. Lazy and ambitionless, they are incapable of uniting their tribal forces. Alas for them! They merely cumber the ground. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... much regretted a sudden note I wrote you just before the steamer of 1 September sailed, entreating you to cumber yourself about my proofsheets sent to the London bookseller. I heartily absolve you from all such vexations. Nothing could be more inconsiderate. Mr. Chapman is undoubtedly amply competent to ordinary correction, and I much prefer to send you my little book ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... courting slumber, The hours I number, And sad cares cumber My weary mind, This thought shall cheer me: That thou art near me, Whose ear to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... it were well you should die. You cumber the earth! Shall I do it?" Helwyse muttered to his heart,—"merely ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a nickname probably, and were allowed to play cards with them, and lose your money for their benefit. If you were non-congenial you did not exist—that was all. You might be sitting in a chair, but they only saw it and an empty space—you did not even cumber their ground. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... told of the Volsungs, and the gathered heart of these, And their still unquenched desire for garnering fame's increase? E'en so do I hearken thy words: for I wot how they deem it long Till a man from their seed be arisen to deal with the cumber and wrong. Bid me therefore to sit by thy side, for behold I wend on my way, And the gates swing-to behind me, and each day of mine is a day With deeds in the eve and the morning, nor deeds shall the noontide ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... too) who have not attained to that fruitfullness, altho they aime at perfection: And again there are others that have nothing to commend them but only a gay profession, and these are but leavie Christians, which are in as much danger of being cut down as the dry stock, for both cumber the ground. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... need for the yellow man to take this weed to our land," interrupted Komba, "for there we have plenty. Why does he cumber himself with the stuff?" and he stretched out his hand idly as though to take hold of and ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... by the captain's error; abashed, also, by the surprise and fear with which the Indian regarded me at first, and the obsequious civilities with which he soon began to cumber me. I know now that he must have overheard and comprehended the peculiar nature of my prayers. It is certain, of course, that he at once disclosed the matter to his patron; and looking back with greater knowledge, I can now understand what so much puzzled me at the moment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... links next to the hook, I say, not exceed three or four hairs at the most; though you may fish a little stronger above, in the upper part of your line: but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back; and the sun, if it shines, to be before you; and to fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your rod downward, by which means the shadow of yourself and rod too, will be the least ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... is shod, and your farrier paid—what need you cumber yourself further, than to mount ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... subject of legislation, when society was in its normal state? Sir George thought not, and hence he virtually says to the landlords, "Now is your time to get rid of the people; they have served your purpose; they are useful to you no longer; why should they cumber the ground?" Mr. Poulett Scrope objected to carrying the clause so suddenly into execution, as it would be a complete clearance of the small farmers of Ireland, and would amount to a social revolution in the state of things in that ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... wit have a Dadalus to guide him. That Dadalus, they say, both in this and in other, hath three wings, to bear itself up into the air of due commendation: that is, art, imitation, and exercise. But these, neither artificial rules, nor imitative patterns, we much cumber ourselves withal. Exercise indeed we do, but that, very fore-backwardly: for where we should exercise to know, we exercise as having known: and so is our brain delivered of much matter, which never was begotten ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... best are of two pieces; the line should not exceed (especially for three or four links towards the hook) I say, not exceed three or four haires; but if you can attain to Angle with one haire; you will have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must bee sure not to cumber yourselfe with too long a Line, as most do: and before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the Sun (if it shines) to be before you, and to fish down the streame, and carry the point or tip of the Rod downeward; ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... one wounded became a serviceable clod; rapidly as the dump and cumber of humanity filled the moat the ladders extended their upward reach; while drum-beat, battle-cry, trumpet's blare, and the roar of cannon answering cannon blent into one steady ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the grass shall grow—the reed"? I choose those rocky hills that, on our left, Drag down the skiey waters to the woods: Such loved I from my youth: to me they said, "Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst, And yield us back to God!"' The King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls: All ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word "impossible" to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began again, and went on steadily depositing ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... world and Mr. Present-good, namely, for they are two men full of civility and cunning. Let these engage in this business for us, and let Mansoul be taken up with much business, and if possible with much pleasure, and this is the way to get ground of them. Let us but cumber and occupy and amuse Mansoul sufficiently, and they will make their castle a warehouse for goods instead of a garrison for men of war.' This diabolical advice was highly applauded all through hell till all the lesser devils, while setting themselves to carry it out, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... without the consent of the bishop of the city; and further, that also the monks of every district and city shall be subject to the bishop, that they shall love peace and quiet and observe the fasts and prayers in the places where they are assigned continually; that they shall not cumber themselves with ecclesiastical and secular business and shall not take part in such; they shall not leave their cloisters except when in cases of necessity they may be commissioned by the bishop of the city with such; that no slave shall be admitted ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... quickening and sustentation has been exhausted. Some manly or Christian grace falls upon a young mind, and quickly strikes root and rises into flower and fruit; while the same grace thrown upon an adult mind would fail to reach the soil, through the vices that cumber and choke it. It is thus that home and the school-room are literally seminaries—places where seed is sown— and it is in these that we expect and intend that every seed shall produce after its kind. Let us talk ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... she said, "this people founded the city, of which the ruins yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand years before this cave was finished. Yet, when first mine eyes beheld it two thousand years ago, was it even as it is now. Judge, therefore, how old must that city have been! And now, follow thou me, and I will show thee ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them that will not ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... dog are known: A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar's ware, But buys at will or ribands, gloves, or beads, And willing maidens to the ale-house leads: And, Oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! can'st thou with contented mind, Become the help-mate of a lab'ring hind, And share his lot, whate'er the chances be, Who hath no dow'r, but love, to fix on thee? Yes, gayest ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... beach is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as good take ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom, Warm and lustrous with life lovely ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... out and penniless, she said; and now, as a snow-storm threatened to block up the roads, she could neither stay where she was, nor pursue her journey. Her infant, too,—she was sure, if she tried to force her way through the hills, it would perish in the snow. The master, though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such weather, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature, to take her aboard. And she was now with her child, all alone, below in the cabin I was stationed a-head on the out-look beside the foresail horse: the night ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... fairly well-to-do and were able to discard a garment when a passing fancy had been gratified, and after a thing was passe they would rather toss it aside than wear it out. In consequence shopkeepers, who studied the market as if it were a thermometer, refused to cumber their counters with expensive goods which must only be shelved after their color or design was out of date. Such conditions had created an American market for cheap silks such as was unknown in Europe where quality was a far greater factor in the sale of silk ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... excuse his excitement, even in a less interested person. The Castle of Hers, though built for strength, presented a very different appearance from that of Stramen: its outline was light and graceful, and it seemed rather to lift up than cumber the tall hill that it so elegantly crowned. It was situated upon the border of the lake, which, by trouvere and troubadour, in song and in verse, in every age and in every clime, has been so justly celebrated. A few miles to the southwest the mighty Rhine came tumbling in; who, as the German ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... further rules you will not break, And marriage liberties partake? Some really do, as I suppose, Upon design keep on some clothes, And yet in truth I'm not afraid For to describe a bundling maid; She'll sometimes say when she lies down, She can't be cumber'd with a gown, And that the weather is so warm, To take it off can be no harm: The girl it seems had been at strift; For widest bosom to her shift, She gownless, when the bed they're in, The spark, nought feels but naked skin. But she is modest, also ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... attack of honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to cumber yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... an easy, quiet life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent, quiet drones to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces madness; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... that churning-day and wash-day stand separate and distinct upon your household calendar. Under no circumstances is it conceivable that the churn and the wash-boiler shall be required for use upon the same day. Clearly the use of the one presupposes and compels the neglect of the other. Then why cumber your house with these two articles, equally large and equally unwieldly, when, by means of the beautiful invention that I have the honor of presenting to your notice, the two in one can be united, and money and house-room alike can be saved? I trust, ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... for the Public Prosecutor, who has little to do, and has even that little done for him by his chief clerk, Zolotucha. The Inspector of the Medical Department is also a man of leisure, and likely to be at home—if he has not gone out to a card party. Others also there are—all men who cumber ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... I may say, the foundations were shaken, it became necessary for me to work, and I took a resolution to do so, and have stuck to it. Possibly I should have done so in any case. You see when a man is told by a young lady he is a useless idler, who does but cumber the earth, it ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... her bow from her back, but he laughed aloud, and said: Nay, nay, I will not have that; for there be those who gird them to a sword and know not how to use it, but few will cumber their shoulders with bow and quiver who cannot shoot therewith; I deem it like that thou art a fell bowman. Keep thy bow therefore, and if thou wilt go without any other ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... envied her rejection of a serious suitor such as John. It was rumored the latter was taking to liquor, and she was blamed for it. Women often like to have others say yes to the first man who comes, and not leave old love affairs to cumber the ground. And girls, however loving to their friends, have but a cold sympathy ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... more delicate and sympathetic kinds of human beings, it is naught unless it is valued; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond price. Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their dreary abodes,—a thing of ostentation merely,—as uninteresting as the women who surround it, gorgeously apparelled, but without conversation, conscious of defective parts of speech. "There is much music, excellent voice, in that little organ," but there is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sin breaks out only where there is an assurance that they have enough to eat and drink and to spare, and idleness is joined therewith; just as we still see, the richer cities are the more shamefully do men live in them; but where there is hunger and cumber there the sins are so much the fewer. Therefore God permits, in regard to those that are His, that their education should be severe, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... though we cumber Earth we work His will. Shall we sleep through night's long slumber Unforgotten still? Onward! onward! toiling ever, Weary steps and slow, Doubting oft, despairing never, To the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... heartily. And so I cannot be persuaded her Majesty thinketh; for from herself I find nothing but most sweet and—gracious, favour, though by others' censures I may gather otherwise of her judgment; which I confess, doth cumber me." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for the souls that come unwelcomed into birth, I'm sorry for the unloved old who cumber up the earth, I'm sorry for the suffering poor in life's great maelstrom hurled - In truth, I'm sorry for them all who make ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Chart, What have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: "You raving maniac!" Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac was ne'er to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her charms had blighted the title of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium. Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments which have tumbled ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... absurd! The young man was just married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not cumber her ears with them! ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on these sheaves," he continued, "and look again. Let us reject not a single one of the little facts that build up the reality of which I have spoken. Let us permit them to depart of their own accord into space. They cumber the foreground, and yet we cannot but be aware of the existence behind them of a great and very curious force that sustains the whole. Does it only sustain and not raise? These men whom we see before us are at least no longer the ferocious animals of whom ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the fosse, and when she had come to the bottom, her fair feet, and fair hands that had not custom thereof, were bruised and frayed, and the blood springing from a dozen places, yet felt she no pain nor hurt, by reason of the great dread wherein she went. But if she were in cumber to win there, in worse was she to win out. But she deemed that there to abide was of none avail, and she found a pike sharpened, that they of the city had thrown out to keep the hold. Therewith made she one stepping place after another, till, with much travail, she ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... Paradise, Sin, Satan, and Serpent should occur "very frequently" in "Paradise Lost"? Would it not rather have been surprising that they should not? Such trifles at best come under the head of what old Warner would have called cumber-minds. It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great poets. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor "a mole here and there as broad as a trencher," and we shrink from a cup of the purest Hippocrene ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... ears. "Their minds run in ruts. It is the unexpected that upsets their stereotyped calculations—any new combination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will be all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause men like us—sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the everlasting Night, And blest the endless Slumber! We are heated with the day too bright, And withered up with cumber! We're weary of that life abroad: Come, we will now go ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt, What man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... I will save my father!" she exclaimed; "save him from worse than death! Let us fly together at once," she continued; "no, not together, I would cumber your flight; but make your escape, O my father, from this wicked court, this barbarous king, this life which, to a son of Hadassah, must be misery and bondage indeed! Oh, fly, fly; be safe, be free; be again what you were once! it is not too late! it is not too late!" There was intense delight ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... told it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at Lord's we happened to see Soames ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of sunset burning thro' the boughs Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours Cumber'd, and ugly sorrows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... crushed under this seven years' weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cumber yourself with such a useless thing,' cried the Lala in disgust; 'have you not enough to occupy your hands and mind, without taking an extra burden?' But the prince, who liked having his own way, paid no heed to him, and paying the high price asked by the man, he carried ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... steelyard, beam, weighbridge[obs3]; spring balance, piezoelectric balance, analytical balance, two-pan balance, one-pan balance; postal scale, baby scale. [Science of gravity] statics. V. be heavy &c. adj.; gravitate, weigh, press, cumber, load. [Measure the weight of] weigh, poise. Adj. weighty; weighing &c. v.; heavy as lead; ponderous, ponderable; lumpish[obs3], lumpy, cumbersome, burdensome; cumbrous, unwieldy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... girdle the city at last with a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation and spirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make your way among the heaps of gaudy shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and illegitimate jewels, that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were driven out of Spain, they left behind the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... feoffees' clerk. The clerk used it for drying his garden-seeds and onions, and spread his hoarding apples to ripen on the floor. So when Taffy grew to need a room of his own, and his father's books to cumber the very stairs of the gate-house, the money which Humility and her mother made by their lace-work, and which arrived always by post, came very handy for the rent which the clerk asked for ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... which surrounds the poet or the enthusiast. The bare boards, chairs, and T-light, in the midst of which he rehearses, are as significantly palaces or meadows to him, while he speaks his lines and lives himself into his character, as all the real grass and real woodwork with which the manager will cumber the stage on the first night. As little will he need to distinguish between the gilt and the gold cup as between the imaginary characters who surround him, and his mere friends and acquaintances who ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Having disclosed my intentions to La Trape, I left this road and struck into a woodland path which promised to conduct us in the right direction. But the luxuriance of the undergrowth, and the huge chaos of grey rocks which cumber that part of the forest, made it difficult to keep for any time in a straight line. After being an hour in the saddle we concluded that we had lost our way, and were confirmed in this, on reaching a clearing. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... "Let be; Israel shall cumber Egypt no longer," the murket muttered after a little; "and the quarrel between them shall be at an end. The hour approacheth when every Hebrew shall leave Egypt—shall be driven forth if he leave it ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... over violence, hath yet in it something of reason. Let him hear from Miss Lucy's own lips that she hath dutifully acceded to the will of her parents, and repenteth her of her covenant with him; and when he is assured of this he will depart in peace unto his own dwelling, and cumber us no more. Alas! the workings of the ancient Adam are strong even in the regenerate; surely we should have long-suffering with those who, being yet in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, are swept ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... unthank't, would be unprais'd, Not half his riches known, and yet despis'd, And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Natures bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl'd with her waste fertility; Th'earth cumber'd, and the wing'd air dark't with plumes. 730 The herds would over-multitude their Lords, The Sea o'refraught would swell, and th'unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forhead of the Deep, And so bested with Stars, that they below Would grow inur'd to light, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... also wearied and over-heated, looked him over with a sneer. "A fine soldier with your complaints!" was his jeering comment. "I wonder to see a Jew in our ranks, but you'll not cumber us long, I'm thinking. You Jews are fit only for trading and money lending—not fighting. You'll melt away quickly enough in the ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... the French differ from us and from the Spaniards, is that they do not embarrass or cumber themselves with too much Plot. They only represent so much of a Story as will constitute One whole and great Action sufficient for a Play. We, who undertake more, do but multiply Adventures [pp. 541, 552]; which (not being produced from one another, as Effects from ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... exclaimed, "there is enough clothing in those two cases to last us for the rest of our lives; to say nothing of that third case which you say is full of unmade silks and linen. Surely it was scarcely necessary to cumber yourself with the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... my lord, Bougwan, that—I love him, and that I am glad to die because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... with a sidewind sped, Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste, By powerful charms of gold and silver led The Lombard bankers and the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... that, because you can give it a hard name, you can destroy it. But hear what Tom is coming to. "Be early," says he, "take time by the forelock: get rid of your entail and get rid of your land. Don't wait till the Government does both for you, and have to accept whatever condition the law will cumber you with, but be before them! Get your son to join you in docking the entail; petition before the court for a sale, yourself or somebody for you; and wash your hands clean of it all. It's bad property, in a very ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the canon, "this is your sort, is it? I'll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child's head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can't Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation 'tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a follower of yours he must be looked to; I'll send Callum to you; but diaoul! ceade millia mottigheart,' continued the impatient Chieftain, 'what made an old soldier like Bradwardine send dying men here to cumber us?' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... various shapes invade, The swift-wing'd arrow, the descending blade; His naked breast their impotence defies; The dart rebounds, the brittle fauchion flies. Shut in himself, the war without he hears, Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears; The cumber'd strand their wasted volleys strow; His sport, the rage and labour of the foe. His pastimes like a cauldron boil the flood, And blacken ocean with the rising mud; The billows feel him, as he works his way; His hoary footsteps shine along the sea; The foam high-wrought, with white divides ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... themselves with few subtleties: to frame myself, therefore, to your country fashion with much faith and little flattery, know, beautiful shepherdess, that whilst I lived in the court I knew not love's cumber, but I held affection as a toy, not as a malady; using fancy as the Hyperborei do their flowers, which they wear in their bosom all day, and cast them in the fire for fuel at night. I liked all, because I loved none, and who was most fair, on her I fed mine eye, but as charily ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... advice—certainly not Sheila Melrose's! You go straight ahead and marry her! You've got money, I know, but I hope you won't chuck your job on that account. Stick to it, and you shall have the Dower House to live in while I yet cumber the ground, and Burchester Castle as soon ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... such respect is a national virtue and emotion. No nation loving war harbours that virtue. And in nothing do the kinsmen with whom we have much language in common differ from us more than in the policy that brought this Prussian host to cumber the stagnant waters of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers |
