"Grope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indelicacy because I lack the strength to smother my admiration. I adore you; my being dissolves, my veins are afire with longing for you; I am mad with the knowledge that you are mine. Mad? Caramba! I am insane; my mind totters; I grope my way like a man blinded by a dazzling light; I suffer agonies. But see! I refuse to touch you. I am a giant in my restraint. The strength of heroes is mine, and I strangle my impulses as they are born, although the effort kills me. Senora, I await the moment of your voluntary ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... of the disused farm-kitchen, holding the little wooden box carefully in both his dogskin-gloved hands. He crossed to the hearth, stubbing his toe against a jutting floor-brick, and as he did so he caught his breath. Then he stepped down under the yawning gape of the chimney, and seemed to grope and fumble at the back of the hearth. He raised himself then, stepped back, and called out sharply ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a child to be used blindly. You have objects which I do not comprehend—motives which are so rigidly concealed that I, who am to help work them out, grope constantly in the dark. I am told to listen, watch, work, even steal, and am left ignorant of the end to ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit, pressing its way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the fords of the river, with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring feet to grope their way back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of the chariots of fire and horses of fire, would have borne him again to the dull realities of life; and there, rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from Jezebel, punishing the prophets of Baal, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Roughly deny to be her guide, 830 She must renounce Decorum's plan, And get back when, and how she can; As parsons, who, without pretext, As soon as mention'd, quit their text, And, to promote sleep's genial power, Grope in the dark for half an hour, Give no more reason (for we know Reason is vulgar, mean, and low) Why they come back (should it befall That ever they come back at all) 840 Into the road, to end their rout, Than they can give why they went out. But to return—this book—the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the safe and natural way of Intuition! I cannot grope like a mole in the gloomy passages of experience. To the attentive spirit, the revelation contained in books is only so far valuable as it comments upon, and corresponds with, the universal revelation. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... deal at all with things, but only with thoughts about things. By faith we see God; by knowledge we become conscious that we see God; by belief we arrange in order what we see; and by opinion we feel and grope among our thoughts, seeking what we may find of his works and ways. Every act of faith brings us into the presence of God himself, and makes us partakers of the divine nature. Thus faith is strictly and literally the substance of things hoped for, or the substance of hope.(6) Substance here has its ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Prisoning, vain glorifying, strong soup, and roasted meats, but hard work, and one unchanging and uncompromising dietary of bread and water, well or ill; and we shall do much better than by going down into the dark to grope for the whip among the rusty fragments of the rack, and the branding iron, and the chains and gibbet from the public roads, and the weights that pressed men to death in the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... he knew, be terrible, he resolved to conform himself to his circumstances, trusting to absence for that diminution of affection which it often produces. Having settled these points in his mind, he began to grope that part of his head which had come in contact with Owen Connor's cudgel. He had strong surmises that a bump existed, and on examining, he found that a powerful organ of self-esteem ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much more than grope. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front of the Austrian camp. This shore was bordered with very ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... met hand to hand by the Afghan defenders, who had recovered from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing. But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was neither time nor space for methodic ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... like a blow. ... Mr. Wright pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table for ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... attempts and gropings, thus briefly summarized, entailed enormous labour, and required not only great pertinacity, but a most singularly constituted mind, that could thus continue groping in the dark without a possible ray of theory to illuminate its search. Grope he did, however, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect. Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird, the murmur ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice - he knows it well - but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on business, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... then spun around so as to confuse his sense of direction. He then says, "Still pond; no more moving!" whereupon the other players must stand still, being allowed only three steps thereafter. The blindfolded player begins to grope for the others. When he catches one, he must guess by touching the hair, dress, etc., whom he has caught. If he guesses correctly, the player changes places with him. If incorrectly, he must go on with his search. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the peculiarities of spirit condition, I could not grope my way out of this place, which appeared to me a very hell. I wandered in this gloomy labyrinth, breathing the foul air, and uttering fearful cries which struck my ears with anguish. Black, threatening shapes appeared ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... them away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... better or for worse. A miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a reasoning creature, much given to material consideration of natural causes and effects, and so compelled by his limitations to grope in outer darkness. And it was not so much a feeling as an instinct, and not so much an instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her that there was no need of thought; and so she did ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... run well; it was only 10 o'clock, and we were nearly there. Once or twice we saw a fire on the lonely, uninhabited shore, where fishing or exploring parties were encamping. It looked cheerful, but we did not stop. Now at length we reached our island, and drew along shore to grope for the dock. There were lights shining from two dwellings—one near the shore, the other upon the hill. Securing our boat, we landed and went up to a log hut. A half-breed woman appeared at the door when we knocked, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... all missed her: it seemed to me now that I had undervalued her. True, she had not been a congenial companion to me in my dark days; but even then I had wronged her. Why should I have expected her to grope among the shadows with me, instead of following her into the sunshine? Sara could not act contrary to her nature. Sad things depressed her. She wanted to cause every one ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... After all, she was but one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... water of the oasis mirage is to the lost dying of thirst in the desert. The outcries of the wretched and miserable, the gray-and-dreary lived din an unmanageable tinnitus in our ears. Like God, it may be but a large, vague idea toward which we grope to snuggle up against. It seems implicit in the doctrines of evolution. But how do we know that in man the spiral of life has not reached its apex, and that now, even now, the vortices of its descent are not beginning? How do we know that the From-man ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... I waxed old, The blynd boy, Venus baby, For want of cunning, made me bold In bitter hyve to grope for honny: But when he saw me stung and cry, He tooke his wings ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... another, like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out—he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall; then the lessening ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and science grope when they would explain to us the strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of "Death's twin brother, Sleep." This story will not attempt to be illuminative; it is no more than a record of Murray's ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... thrust me into the cell, manacled and blindfolded. I heard the door clang to; the rusty lock screeched venomously, and then I was alone in gravelike silence. I hardly, dared to take a step, for I knew these underground cells were honeycombed with death-traps. I could not grope about me with my hands, for they were tied, and I knew not what pitfall my ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was startling, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... necessary to descend into the valley for water and grass; and we were obliged to grope our way in the darkness down a very steep, bad mountain, reaching the river at about ten o'clock. It was late before our animals were gathered into the camp, several of those which were very weak being necessarily left to pass the night on the ridge; and we sat down again ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... bad. In this state of mind, he will fancy that the Chimes are calling, to him; and saying to himself 'God help me. Let me go up to 'em. I feel as if I were going to die in despair—of a broken heart; let me die among the bells that have been a comfort to me!'—will grope his way up into the tower; and fall down in a kind of swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin part of the thing: ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... popular shrine, and although the law now prohibits these, they are surreptitiously carried out at times, and I have witnessed them myself. Onwards and upwards towards the "Unknown God" these poor people grope their way— ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the enemy were in front, and that several men had been observed going into the woods on the right. A search was made of the bush, but as the shades of night had fallen fast it was impossible to grope through the woods, and fearing an ambuscade Col. Peacocke resolved to halt his column for the night. In the meantime he had sent two companies of the 16th Regiment to scour the woods, but owing to the darkness they were unable to do so. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... Europe, abounding in works of art, how much more so in our country, separated as it is by the broad Atlantic from the artistic world, which few comparatively can ever visit: many of our young artists, for the want of such an institution, are obliged to grope their way in the dark, and to spend months and years to find out a ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... I dare not hope, The freshness of the elder lays, the might Of manly, modern passion shall alight Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope (Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope) With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight; Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope. But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave O'erbrowed by hard rocks, a wild voice wooed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... is always bright, while to others it is never free from clouds. There is to me a mystery in this—something that looks like a partial Providence—for those who grope sadly through life in darkened paths are, so far as human judgment can determine, often purer and less selfish than those who move gayly along in perpetual sunshine. Look at Mrs. Adair. It always ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... an hour in the Land of Nod, ere three heavy blows from a handspike are struck on the forecastle hatch, which is then slid back, and a hoarse voice bawls: 'All ha-ands a-ho-oy! tumble up to reef tops'ls!' Out we bundle, and grope for our clothes (the forecastle being as dark as a dog's mouth), get them on somehow, and hurry-scurry on deck. We find the weather and sea altered much for the worse, and the Old Man (captain) himself on the quarter-deck, giving ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... man succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the place was of ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... refuge, then, behind duty that is obscure, difficult, contradictory. And these are certainly words to call up painful memories. To be a man of duty and to question one's route, grope in the dark, feel one's self torn between the contrary solicitations of conflicting calls, or again, to face a duty gigantic, overwhelming, beyond our strength—what is harder! And such things happen. We would neither deny nor contest the tragedy in certain situations or the anguish of certain ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Satan! Already has the Incarnation of goodness appeared to mankind, and, though the world be moved to virtue only slowly and with reluctance, mark how mighty has been his influence! What think you, then, would be the power of a Christ of evil, showing to men the path they already grope for? I tell you, the human race would be his only; Hell, full to bursting with their hurrying souls, would outweigh Heaven in the balance; the teller of the secret ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... that there is a tendency on the part of men of science at the present day so to regard it. It should, of course, be frankly admitted that no one is in a position to prove that, from the cosmic mist, in which we grope for the beginnings of our universe, to the organized whole in which vegetable and animal bodies have their place, there is an unbroken series of changes all of which are explicable by a reference to mechanical laws. Chemistry, physics, ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... eyes and quivering across his wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him come up against the wall of the cabin, give a grunt, grope around for the door, ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... up to grope his way through the murky darkness. He could escape now. If that explosion had not killed his pursuers it had certainly scared them off. He heard men running and yelling off to the left. A rumble of a train came from below the village. Finally Kurt ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... protected by guns and by a bodyguard, while inside there flitted to and fro a cloud of familiars, who have been compared by the enemies of the great Committee to the mutes of the court of the Grand Turk. Any one who had business with this awful body had to grope his way along gloomy corridors, that were dimly lighted by a single lamp at either end. The room in which the Committee sat round a table of green cloth was incongruously gay with the clocks, the bronzes, the mirrors, the tapestries, of the ruined court. The members ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very soon followed, one after another, by the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... hands that longing grope And straining eyes that search to pierce the doom, I creep the path-ways of my only Hope, And seek the Loved One passed ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... sight of his eye grew so dim that it was both difficult and dangerous for him to grope his way along the familiar streets where he transacted business. But so obstinately self-reliant was he that he refused the aid of an attendant. He paid dearly for this obstinacy; for, one day as he was going home from his bank, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... described always the same circle and never met. And then, finally, after millions of years, an invisible hand clutched him and bore him upward onto a plane, hitherto unexplored, then left him to grope his way as he could. All was blackness and chaos. Around him, as he passed them, he saw that dark suns were burning, but there was nothing to conduct their light, and they shed no radiance on the horrors of their world. Below him was an abyss in which countless souls were struggling, blindly, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Without a single lecture, either public or private, either christian or protestant, without any academical subscription, without any episcopal confirmation, I was left by the dim light of my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion-table, where I was admitted, without a question, how far, or by what means, I might be qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was productive ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... hungry for that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for them. No, no, I must return to the sitting-room. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... night, and the woods were so profoundly obscured, that Roy had to grope about for some time before he found a suitable tree. Cutting it down with the axe which always hung at his girdle, he returned to camp with it on his shoulder, and cut off the small soft branches, which Nelly ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... think, now, that it is not so!" said Mrs. Boynton, opening her eyes and looking at Waitstill despairingly. "I must grope and grope in the dark until I find out what is true, and then tell Ivory. God will punish false speaking! His heart is ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... call it tickling in England) is good sport. You go to a stony shallow at night, a companion bearing a torch; then stripping to the thighs and shoulders, wade in; grope with your hands under the stones, sods, and other harbourage, till you find your game, then grip him in your "knieve," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... regard Burke's pamphlets as specimens of our noblest literature, and to see them printed in comfortable volumes, that we are apt to forget that in their origin they were but the children of the pavement, the publications of the hour. If, however, you ever visit any old public library, and grope about a little, you are likely enough to find a shelf holding some twenty-five or thirty musty, ugly little books, usually lettered 'Burke,' and on opening any of them you will come across one of Burke's pamphlets ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the voice had been supported by simple, full-sounding harmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of F minor, rose a hesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: in imagination, one heard it given out by the bass strings; then the violas reiterated it, and dyed it purple; voice and violins sang it together; the high little flutes carried it up and beyond, out of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at the superiority of the sage who has convicted him of his ignorance, he is forced to quit the field: this dialogue is not merely philosophically ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in the Press astonished the land. They were these: "Medical World is Baffled by the 'Flu'."—"Exhaustive Experiments Leave Doctors Mystified."—"Every Test a Failure."—"Explosion of Accepted Theories Causes Science to Grope for Light." ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... yells of a frantic crowd, drown the shrieks of the sufferers, upon whom the earth is shovelled and stamped down by thousands of cruel fanatics, who dance and jump upon the loose mould so as to form it into a compact mass; through which the victims of this horrid sacrifice cannot grope their way, the precaution having been taken to break the bones of their arms and legs. At length the mangled mass is buried and trodden down beneath a tumulus of earth, and all is ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... reserves— The sacred remnants of our wide domain— With tamp'rings, and delirious feasts of fire, The fruit of your thrice-cursed stills of death, Which make our good men bad, our bad men worse, Aye! blind them till they grope in open day, And stumble into miserable graves. Oh, it is piteous, for none will hear! There is no hand to help, no heart to feel, No tongue to plead for us in all your land. But every hand aims death, and every heart, Ulcered with hate, resents our presence here; ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated— I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed— I aided— I surpassed them in volume ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... down, slow sailing from my sight, And left the stars to watch away the night. O stars, sweet stars, so changeless and serene! What depths of woe your pitying eyes have seen! The proud sun sets, and leaves us with our sorrow, To grope alone in darkness till the morrow. The languid moon, e'en if she deigns to rise, Soon seeks her couch, grown weary of our sighs; But from the early gloaming till the day Sends golden-liveried heralds forth to say He comes in ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... I recall: We seemed to grope in a cave profound. They might have come by a painful fall, Had we not ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and well-meaning—stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all unconscious of needing pity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to the wild pranks, the Houyhnhnm horse-play they had with drunken Gundling. He has staggered out in a drunk state, and found, or not clearly FOUND till the morrow, young bears lying in his bed;—has found his room-door walled up; been obliged to grope about, staggering from door to door and from port to port, and land ultimately in the big Bears' den, who hugged and squeezed him inhumanly there. Once at Wusterhausen, staggering blind-drunk out of the Schloss towards his lair, the sentries ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which most of the cafe chantants are situated, is bright with electric light, the back streets of the city are lit by flickering oil-lamps, and here the stranger must almost grope his way about after dark. If wise he will stay at home, for robbery and even murder are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt the night-houses in quest of prey. During our short stay a woman was murdered one night ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... train myself to come here at night and sit in the presence of this woman without raising my eyes. I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my way out of darkness into ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... again. Her air was wild and frightened; her trembling hands were stained with mud, seen by the light of the lantern she bore, and which she again hung in its accustomed place, stealing quietly away into the darkened hall, to grope her way up-stairs. All this while the farce of sending for Dr. Craig was being enacted, and Morton was out on his fruitless mission ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... have seen them: they'd slipped death's clutches, But sadder a sight you will rarely find; One had a leg off and walked on crutches, The other, a bit of a boy, was blind. And they both sat down, and the lad was trying To grope his way as a blind man tries; And half of the women around were crying, And some of the men had tears in ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... went out of sight. Then he rolled up like a huge hog. We were all scared now. That dip's rank poison, you know. Reckon Ruff knew that. He floundered along an' crawled up at the end. Anyone could see that he had mouth an' eyes tight shut. He began to grope an' feel around, trying to find the way to the pond. One of the men led him out. It was great to see him wade in the water an' wallow an' souse his head under. When he came out the men got in front of him any stopped him. He shore looked bad.... An' Glenn called to him, 'Ruff, that sheep-dip ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... temple I see those who see thee, and, in every tongue that is spoken, thou art praised. Polytheism and Islam grope after thee, Each religion says, 'Thou art one, without equal,' Be it mosque, men murmur holy prayer; or church, the bells ring, for love of thee; Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque: But thee only I seek from fane to fane. Thine elect ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... went into the water, feeling very carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little Boy ran on as hard as he could, to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... marsh,—blindly, experimentally, but persistently and successfully. The winged seeds find their proper soil, because they search in every direction; the climbing vines find their support, because in the same blind way they feel in all directions. Plants and animals and races of men grope their way to new fields, to new ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the dazzling brilliancy of the sun to the solemn gloom of the forest made it almost impossible to see anything clearly until my eyes got accustomed to the peculiar light; so I was perforce obliged for a short time to grope ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... man the position was well-nigh tragic. Had he not experience of the terror of a northern blizzard? Had he not many a time had to grope his way along a life-line lest the slightest deviation in direction should carry him out into the storm to perish of cold, blinded and lost? Oh, yes. This understanding was the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... you to say, my boy," retorted the yeoman. "Pray God he never has, and never may. Slow work this, however! I should really be glad to find something! Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and poke, and grope, hereabouts, till morning, and have our labor for our pains! For my part, I shouldn't wonder if the creature had only lost her shoe in the mud, and saved her soul alive, after all. My stars! how she will laugh at ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down and almost went out, the darkness seeming to swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her way back ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... I can talk as freely and fluently as anybody. I do not hesitate in the least. For years, I have not even known what it is to grope mentally for a word. I speak in public as well as in private conversation. I have no difficulty in talking over the telephone and in fact do not know the difference. In my work, I lecture to students ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... is the cause of all unprofitable forgetfulness. Do not allow your attention to grope vaguely among a number of things. Whatever you do, make a business of doing it with your whole soul. Turn the spotlight of your mind upon it, and you will not ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... the desired information, and left to grope for light wherever it might be found, your committee did not deem it either advisable or safe to adopt, without further examination, the suggestions of the President, more especially as he had not deemed it expedient to remove the military force, to suspend martial ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... With every premise upon which her conclusions were founded he disagreed, yet he said to himself that Edith was right; that the Pagans were quite too infallible about every thing. They would have him grope along poor and unknown, he argued with himself, simply for the sake of standing in the position of chronic rebuke to established authorities; with only now and then a chance to get a hearing upon what they assumed to be the true theory of art. What they believed—ah! there ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... small-minded modernity, that it is very short-sighted to be indifferent to all that is historic. But it is as disastrously long-sighted to be interested only in what is prehistoric. And this disaster has befallen a large proportion of the learned who grope in the darkness of unrecorded epochs for the roots of their favourite race or races. The wars, the enslavements, the primitive marriage customs, the colossal migrations and massacres upon which their theories ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... well lighted, and the guest has not to third his way through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it. We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich's poetry; afterwards, its other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... under the shelter of the gateway, he was admitted and did see Captain Bowerman, but only to find him sitting sulkily with about a dozen strange officers, who were evidently his masters for the moment, and prevented his being in the least communicative. Nothing was left for the Colonel but to grope his way back to Newport. It was near midnight when, with his clothes drenched with wet, he reached the King's lodgings; and there, what a change! Guards all round the house; guards at every window; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... switch was situated. His theory was a sound one; he argued that the natural and proper place for such a switch in such a room would be immediately inside the door, so that one entering could ignite the lamp without having to grope in the darkness. He was encouraged, furthermore, by the fact that at a point some four feet to the left of this switch there was a gap in the bookcases, running from floor to ceiling; a gap no more than ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... before nightfall. Here it was determined so to arrange their forces in the darkness, as to attack the place just before the dawn of the ensuing day. One half of the army, under the command of Colonel Logan, were to grope their way through the woods, and march around the town so as to attack it in the rear, at a given signal from Colonel Bowman, who was to place his men in position for efficient cooperation. Logan accomplished his movement, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... was curtained back From my exploring eye, And I seemed left to grope in night, And ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... not blindly grope For Truth that lies beyond our scope: A sober plot informeth all Of Life's uproarious carnival. Your day is such a little one, A gnat that lives from sun to sun; Yet gnat and you have parts to play — What ho! the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... tree against which he had spiked himself on his way out. Mrs. Wilberforce was on her way upstairs with her candle as he came in. She looked at him disapprovingly, and hoped, with something like irony, that he had enjoyed his walk. "Though you must have had to grope along in the dark, which does not seem much of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the desired box. "Only one more left; I shall presently have to send for more. Twice already have I been put to that trouble. I don't know what has come over the town." And he slams down the shutter with a fretful jerk. I grope my way home in Egyptian darkness, thanking in my heart the town council for its forethought in painting the lamp-posts white. It was when a dispute sprang up about the price of gas, or something. Danish ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Four its lonely night encampments; Four times must their fires be lighted. Therefore, when the dead are buried, Let a fire, as night approaches, Four times on the grave be kindled, That the soul upon its journey May not lack the cheerful firelight, May not grope about ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... arise every morning ready to reshape his course, prepared for any adventure, receptive, open-minded, and all willing to render his very life for what seemed good to do. Scientific reverence this, the willingness to experiment, to try, to test, and then, if the test failed, to grope for a new line of outlet, the readiness to reverse all he believed in in the face of a new and contradictory fact. He was a ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... followed the sound. I crossed the glade as silently as my own shadow. On its further side the path went on. Albeit with many fears, I went on too. The jungle growth was so thick here that it almost met overhead, leaving so small a passage for the light that I could scarcely see to grope my way along. Presently, however, it widened, and then opened into a second glade slightly smaller than the first, and there, on the further side of it, about eighty yards from me, stood ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... after-end of the vessel, with possibly a small sail-room, or something of that kind, abaft it, and that it took up the whole width of that part of the hull; that is to say, there were no staterooms between it and the ship's side, as is sometimes the case. Continuing to grope my way round the cabin, I presently arrived once more at the bulkhead, wherein, on the starboard side, I found another door, giving access to a stateroom, as I soon discovered by finding the bunk, with the bedding still in it, and apparently quite ready for an occupant. It did not take me ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... was fully apparent for once. And, apprehending that which he proposed to do, she was smitten by immense curiosity to realise the ultimate of the grotesque in respect of his appearance as he should move, walk, grope in the dimness over there after the lost crystal. But there are some indulgences which can be bought at too high a price, and along with the temptation to gratify her curiosity came an intensification of superstitious ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... ceased to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... reach the truth after a time," said Mr. Curzon, holding out his hand, "if you are ready to acknowledge a Power higher than yourself, to Whom you may safely appeal to guide you to all truth. Without that, you will grope along in the darkness." ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... it. "How could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerability, it is here certainly that she ought to strike, instead of persistently seeking the narrow slit in the neck. The weapon would not need to hesitate and grope; it would obtain admission into the tissues off-hand. No, the stroke of the lancet is not forced upon it mechanically: the assassin scorns the large defect in the corselet and prefers the place under the chin, for ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... "searched"—clang of iron cell door, and I grope for and crawl on to the slanting plank. Period of oblivion—or the soul is away in some other world. Clang of cell door again, and soul returns in a hurry to take heed of another soul, belonging to a belated drunk on the plank by my side. Other ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... because his safety demanded it. The movement by us through Snake-Creek Gap was a total surprise to him. My army about doubled his in size, but he had all the advantages of natural positions, of artificial forts and roads, and of concentrated action. We were compelled to grope our way through forests, across mountains, with a large army, necessarily more or less dispersed. Of course, I was disappointed not to have crippled his, army more at that particular stage of the game; but, as it resulted, these rapid successes gave us the initiative, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in the treatment of the sick—to prescribe according to this or that fanciful view of the nature of diseases, substances that only owed to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica. I had conscientious ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... Estrangement of their exile, twice accursed If they forget and join the accursed throng. How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst When I remember that my way was plain, And that God's candle lit me at the first, Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain, Desiring but to find Him Who is lost, To find him once again, but once again! His wrath came on us to the uttermost, His covenanted and most righteous wrath. Yet this is He of Whom we made our boast, Who lit the Fiery Pillar in our path, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, I say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... soon brought her back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still continued to deplore the balance of the money. In the meantime the supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to Kitt's Hole; but his men had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the Hole the lugger was already under way, though still close in. He hailed her. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Better that than grope among subterranean caverns, black and icy, as you are forever doing. You are even getting a weird, unearthly look. Sometimes, when I come in and find you, book in hand, with that far-off expression in your eyes, I really dislike to speak to you. There is no more color in ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... veil my heart with cloud; Since faith is dim and blind, I can but grope perplex'd and bow'd, Seek ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... top floor! Three black stair-pits would lie between me and the safety of escape. There would be no escape! No human being in the throes of fear could hope to discover that tortured outlet, could hope to grope his way through Stygian gloom down a triple ramp of black stairs. And even though he succeeded in reaching the lower corridors, there was still a blind alley-way, sealed at the outer end by a high ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... at him. He startled her almost as much as his mother had done. What a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his father and mother in him. But she had to grope for the resemblances to Paul Quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to Amabel. His father was like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence that was his mother. And where ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the presence of Maria Dovizio, who sat a little apart, heart-sick and bewildered, unable to grope her way through the thick fog of misconception which had drifted between herself ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... feet we were endeavouring to grope our way to the companion-ladder when we heard two loud crashes in quick succession, and directly afterwards, the brig righting with a violent jerk, we were thrown half across the cabin, bruised and almost stunned, among the numberless things knocking ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... when I feel Prometheus wake up in my heart and beat his puissant wings against the stone which confines him,—oh! then, in prey to a frenzy without a name, to a despair without bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue; but I grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delusive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer to my cries, as the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the despairing sob of impotent agony. For ten thousand years I have cried in infinite space: ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of the High Street of Clovelly, at night, turned out to be a matter of more difficulty than we had anticipated. There was no such thing as a lamp in the whole village; and we had to grope our way in the darkness down steps of irregular sizes and heights, paved with slippery pebbles, and ornamented with nothing in the shape of a bannister, even at the most dangerous places. Half-way down, my friend and I had an ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... avoid it to a certain extent, but it glanced off his left arm and caught the side of his head; and he, too, measured his length. All three, detective and police, were on their feet promptly, for none was seriously injured; but Furneaux was dazed and had to grope for the torch, and the second constable's lamp had gone out owing to a rush of oil from the cistern. Thus, during some precious seconds, they ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... have gone almost straight to that cleft, steering my course by the sea rocks I had noted from the window. But in the dark it was different. I could only grope along in hope, with many a stop to wonder where I had got to, and many a stumble and many a bruise. Stark darkness is akin to blindness, and blindness in a strange land, and that a land of rocks and chasms, is a vast perplexity. I wandered ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Latin. A fewe termes coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of some decree; No wonder is, he herd it all the day. And eke ye knowen wel, how that a jay Can clepen watte, as well as can the pope. But who so wolde in other thing him grope, Than hadde he spent all his philosophie, Ay, Questio quid juris ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... proceeded a short distance, however, when they got on to a sandbank, where they were obliged to remain for two hours, feeling the gravest anxiety all the time. At last the tide floated them off again, and they endeavoured to grope their way through the fog, passing several vessels, which were only visible when quite close upon them. Mr Montefiore was standing near the bow of the ship, when suddenly a steamer was seen to be quite close to them, and ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... on the bench against the wall and pulled off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained a healthy glow. But Faxon's gaze ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... her object in life? These questions are more or less frequently asked in our day, and asked in reference to that general spirit of reform and progress of society which seems to characterize our age, and in relation to which, just in proportion as men forget to listen to the Word of God, they grope about in the darkness of their own ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... 'It's more dignified to search for the secrets o' God in the soil than to grope for the secrets o' Satan in a lawsuit. Any fool can learn Blackstone an' Kent an' Greenleaf, but the book o' law that's writ in the soil is ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... always tied, or anything that comes handy, apparently for ornament. Now, when the husband feels moved to demonstrate his affection for his spouse by administering a beating, he is not obliged to fumble and grope among those straight folds for the awkward triangular little opening, quite unsuited to accommodate his fist. He can grasp her promptly by the neck of her chemise and this comfortable semicircle, and not force her to doubt his love by delay and hesitation in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the sitting-room was burst wide open—roughly, violently, as if a man, not a woman, had been on the other side. (The rector drew back; Nugent remained where he was.) Wildly groping her way with outstretched arms, as I had never seen her grope it in the time of her blindness, Lucilla staggered into the room. Merciful God! the bandage was off. The life, the new life of sight, was in her eyes. It transfigured her face: it irradiated her beauty with an awful and unearthly light. She ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... faith, a matter more {165} of the heart than of the reason. The divinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience, not by speculation. Reason was fallacious; left to itself the human spirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroil itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said, "nor think of him otherwise than according ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... exhorts to the imitation of these good things." This description of an early Christian service is applicable still. Wherever the Church meets there is religious teaching. (b) And it is the only such teaching that multitudes receive. Without it they would be left to grope their way alone. (c) Whenever, therefore, there has been a revival of life in the Church, great stress has been laid upon the preaching of the Word of God, and God has specially blessed it to the conversion of sinners and the edification of ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... towards evening, and Falkenberg was still tuning, I took a bit of something to eat in my pocket and went off for a walk, to be out of the way so they should not ask me in to supper. There was a moon, and the stars were out, but I liked best to grope my way into the dense part of the wood and sit down in the dark. It was more sheltered there, too. How quiet the earth and air seemed now! The cold is beginning, there is rime on the ground; now and again a stalk of grass creaks faintly, a little mouse squeaks, a rook comes soaring over ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... had to grope our way with difficulty and care; but from this date onwards all ambiguity and uncertainty disappears. It is like emerging out of twilight into the broad blaze of day. There is really a greater disproportion than we might expect between the evidence of the end of ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... learned, who grope your dull way on "By the dim twinkling gleams of ages gone, "Like superstitious thieves who think the light "From dead men's marrow guides them best at night[49]— "Ye shall have honors—wealth—yes, Sages, yes— "I know, grave fools, your wisdom's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... up. I'm strong in body and brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just at the crowning point ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... some other door," said Rose after they had screamed themselves hoarse. "We must not be frightened, Anne, for father is sure to look for us. Let's go round the room and try and find a door. We can feel along the wall," so the two girls began to grope their way ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... was empty and the lights were out when they emerged from the dressing-room. They had to grope their way in darkness. It was raining when they reached the street, and the only signs of life were a moist policeman and the distant glare of saloon ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of darkness and terror, When I would grope nearer to God, With my back to a record of error And the highway of sin I have trod, There come to me shapes I would banish— The shapes of the deeds I have done; And I pray and I plead till they vanish— All vanish and ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... period in the history of Buddhism is that which follows the reign of Asoka, but the enquirer cannot grope for long in these dark ages without stumbling upon the word Mahayana. This is the name given to a movement which in its various phases may be regarded as a philosophical school, a sect and a church, and though it is not always easy to define its relationship to other schools ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... smiling, "I'm in the dark, you see, and being only a flesh and blood human being, instead of a creation of one of you authors, I can only grope in the dark and look in every direction for the light. One person, two persons, three, even four may be engaged in this affair for all I know. Don't you be in a hurry, Mr. Beecot. I believe in that foreign chap's saying, 'Without ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... man schemed it is my hope - Yea, that it fell by will and scope Of That Which some enthrone, And for whose meaning myriads grope. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... past the shades where blind men grope Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, And makes for joy ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... deeper spot of blackness when he shut off his intermittent ray. And when at last Julia found herself at the place where the path entered the woods, the blackness ahead seemed still more frightful. She had to grope, recognizing every deviation from the well-beaten path by the rustle of the dead leaves which lay, even in summer, half a foot deep upon the ground. The "fox-fire," rotting logs glowing with a faint luminosity, startled her ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... need no longer grope. It was a race along the passage and up the winding stair, through the second door, and into the stone-flagged corridor of the Castle of Grosbois, with the oil-lamp still burning at the end of it. A frightful cry—a ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the trains, guarded by 1500 infantry and 500 horsemen. The night was dark—the darkest, said Stuart, that he had ever known. Without a guide concerted action seemed impossible. The rain still fell in torrents, and the raiders, soaked to the skin, could only grope aimlessly in the gloom. But just at this moment a negro was captured who recognised Stuart, and who knew where Pope's baggage and horses were to be found. He was told to lead the way, and Colonel W. H. F. Lee, a son of the Commander-in-Chief, was ordered to follow with ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the lightning's flash, I saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had brought—saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword I had let fall when Dick had ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,' he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man's wrist, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... no difference in the credit attached to them. There is no newspaper published in Aix, and the prefect, who is a person much suspected, has taken no steps to give the public correct information, but allows them to grope, in the dark; they have invented accordingly the most ridiculous stories, converting hundreds into thousands, and a few fishing boats and other small craft, into first a squadron of Neapolitans, and then a fleet of English ships. This report of the English ships is, I am sorry to say, still current, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... few minutes the fugitive remained motionless, then, hearing no sounds from above he started to grope about his retreat. Upon two sides were blank, circular walls, upon the other two circular openings about four feet in diameter. It was through these openings that the tiny stream ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... abeyance to primeval law, There burst the dawn from out the womb of night; Yet are all things unchanged around them,—these, The ancient hills, the town, the quiet trees, The household presences through which they grope Blind to all else but to each other's eyes, Wherein, transforming heaven and earth, there lies Sublime effulgence of ...
— The Angel of Thought and Other Poems - Impressions from Old Masters • Ethel Allen Murphy
... they had endured and what they had escaped—all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his bare feet until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. I don't care to see anything like that again—even if it is my ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb |
