"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standing on this round knoll, beneath the merrily-rustling cherry-trees, and listening to the murmurous song, I heard my boyhood speak to me, and felt again the old breath on my brow. The sun died away across the old swaying woods; the rattling hone upon the scythe; the measured sweep; the mellow music—all were gone away. The day was done, and the long twilight came—twilight, which mixes the crimson of the darkling west, the yellow moonlight in the azure east, and the red glimmering starlight overhead, into one magic light. And so we went home ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... transepts, the towers being supported on great pointed arches. In the large east window the stained glass commemorates St. Sidwell, a lady murdered in the eighth century at a well near Exeter by a blow from a scythe at the instigation of her stepmother, who coveted her property. The cathedral is rich in monumental relics, and it has recently been thoroughly restored. Little remains of the ancient convent-buildings beyond the chapter-house, which adjoins the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... read in the papers about tornadoes in America, and how houses were sometimes bodily lifted with their contents and carried long distances, and how everything above the surface was swept away as if a scythe had passed over it. He had heard these accounts discussed by the fishermen, and the general opinion in Leigh was that there was mighty little truth in them. The Leigh men thought they knew what a gale was, and what it could do. They knew that chimney-pots ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... out all over," said Olsen, and he waved a couple of his men away. One had a scythe and the other a long pole with a wet burlap bag tied on one end. They hurried toward the little ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... youthful bridegroom, Handsomest of all the people, Forge thou now a scythe of sharpness, Fix the best of handles on it, Carve it, sitting in the doorway, Hammer it upon a tree-stump. 50 When there comes the time of sunshine, Take thy young wife to the meadow, Look thou where the grass ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... four men mowing down by the Isar; I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four Sharp breaths taken: yea, and I Am ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... arms, to gather the blueberries that hung in clusters on their slender stalks. But thou art gone now to the fairer fields of paradise, to pluck sweeter fruit than ever ripened here. Thou art gone! The blueberry bushes have fallen long ago before the scythe; the field has changed its appearance; and as for me, the breezes woo me forth in vain—I cannot go. Sickness and sorrow have come between me and the love of earth; they have cast a dark shadow over what I once thought fair. But as there can be no shadow without ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... flames, forgets "His flocks, and caverns. All thy anxious care "Thy beauty, Polyphemus! to improve, "And all thy anxious care is now to please. "And now with rakes thou comb'st thy rugged hair; "Now with a scythe thou mow'st thy bushy beard: "Thy features to behold in the clear brook, "And calm their fire employs thee. All his love "Of slaughter; all his fierceness; all his thirst "Cruel of blood, him leaves; and on the coast, "Ships safely moor, and safe again depart. "Meantime ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely gardens, I feel like a grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June; yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle[670] when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter brained and "afternoon men" spoil much more than their own affairs in spoiling the temper of those who ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... are powerless during the daytime. Macko himself was willing to go, but it was finally arranged that Hlawa should venture, because he was a bold fellow, agreeable to all, specially to the ladies. He put an axe in his belt, and in his hand a scythe, and left. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... dead earths. "O Man, O the dreams of Man!" something within him unceasingly cried. He stood on the granite margin, turning toward the Coliseum, whose mountain ridges of wall stood high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which had been hewn in them by the scythe of Time. Sharply stood the rent and ragged arches of Nero's golden house close by, like murderous cutlasses. The Palatine Hill lay full of green gardens, and, in crumbling temple-roofs, the blooming death-garland of ivy was gnawing, and living ranunculi still ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... gladly have given my life, if only she should not grieve. I gazed at her—and though I could not understand why she was wretched, I vividly pictured to myself, how in a fit of insupportable anguish, she had suddenly come out into the garden, and sunk to the earth, as though mown down by a scythe. It was all bright and green about her; the wind was whispering in the leaves of the trees, and swinging now and then a long branch of a raspberry bush over Zinaida's head. There was a sound of the cooing of doves, and the bees ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... I bring this crown Inwoven with the various flowers that deck The unshorn mead, where never shepherd dared To feed his flock, and the scythe never came, But o'er its vernal sweets unshorn the bee Ranges at will, and hush'd in reverence glides Th' irriguous streamlet: garish art hath there No place; of these the modest still may cull At pleasure, interdicted to th' impure. Euripides: ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... the cellar coolness, and in one corner a little dairy compartment, built over a spring covered by a wooden trap-door, completed the furnishings of the floor. For the rest, the place was a fairly well-stocked tool-house; a scythe and a grindstone, snow-shovel and ladders were arranged compactly; a watering-pot and rake stood fresh from ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how, in its pride of strength, it had handled the scythe, and the sickle, and the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how, in happy manhood, that strong hand had fondled, and sheltered, and led, the little children that now had grown up and were gone! Strength and activity, ay, and the fruits ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sad scenes in life, for the scythe of death stops not to ask if they be sweet and precious to some fond wife, or mother, or brother, who knows? whom their heart chose. On! on! he pursues his desolating work, amid their sighs, their cries, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... old Father Time to lay his scythe across when he is aweary,' said Richard, and turned ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... capital, is level with the dust, And the proud halls of the mighty and the calm homes of the just; For the proudest works of man, as certainly, but slower, Pass like the grass at the sharp scythe of the mower! ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Space under the Hawthorn Hedge on the Brow of the Hill, listening to the Mower's Scythe, and the Song of Birds, which seemed enough for him, without talking; and as he spake not, I helde my Peace, till, with the Sun in my Eyes, I was like to drop asleep; which, as his own Face was from me, and towards the Landskip, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... they lay their eggs, as I was once an eye-witness; for a gardener at a house where I was on a visit, happening to be mowing, on the 6th of that month, by the side of a canal, his scythe struck too deep, pared off a large piece of turf, and laid open to view a curious scene ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... but we succeeded in saving the bulk of the barley, and cut it down with a scythe and three reaping-hooks. The girls helped to bind it, and Jimmy Mulcahy carted it in return for three days' binding Dad put in for him. The stack was n't built twenty-four hours when a score of somebody's crawling cattle ate their way up to their ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... 'The scythe-chariot, O my friend Loeg!' said Cuchulainn; 'can you yoke it? and is its equipment here? If you can yoke it, and if you have its equipment, yoke it; and if you have not its equipment, do ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... a list of tools and implements for the homestead: an axe, adze, bill, awl, plane, saw, spokeshave, tie hook, auger, mattock, lever, share, coulter, goad-iron, scythe, sickle, weed-hook, spade, shovel, woad dibble, barrow, besom, beetle, rake, fork, ladder, horse comb, shears, fire tongs, weighing scales, and a long list of spinning implements necessary when farmers made their own clothes. The author wisely ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... whom I mention made, On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; The sickle, scythe, or plough, he never swayed; An honest heart was almost all his stock; His drink the living water from the rock: The milky dams supplied his board, and lent Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, Did guide ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... danced, leaped away from the slope, out into space, and dropped like plummets. Huge bowlders (sleeping Titans that they were) stirred, roused themselves, and came crashing down, plowing through the forest below, furrowing the earth and cutting a swath through the trees as clean as a scythe through grass. What was first merely the metallic clink of rolling stones changed to a steady bombardment, and then into a sullen, ominous roar as the giant bowlders got ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... deacon and my deeply religious father alternately led the family devotions, and peace and comfort prevailed. The mowing machine, horse-hoe, corn-planter and power-rake dispensed with the drudgery of the scythe and back-breaking hand tools. A protective tariff had set the mill wheels rolling in the neighboring cities, thus furnishing excellent markets for all the products of the farm. The sky-scraping shoe manufactories, where ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... not your scythe, Suppressors of our Vice. Whet not your scythe, Suppressors of our ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... front upper corner of the finger bar, to afford a seat for the sickle or scythe bar, to vibrate upon, in combination with beveling off the lower side of the finger bar, for the reception of ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Carpathian Mountains, which form the natural boundary between the land of the Magyars and the Russian plains, take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe, the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through which flows the great Danube, the largest river in Europe next to the Russian ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Jerry pondered, and no more Found speech. They tramped on sternly. To the brow Of a long hill they came, whence they could see The village and blue ocean; then they sank Into a region of low-lying fields Half-naked from the scythe, and others veined With vines that 'midst dismantled, fallen corn Dragged all athwart a weight of tawny gourds, Sun-mellowed, sound. And now the level way Stretched forward eagerly, for hard ahead It ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Melchior sat, with his eyes fixed on a dirty old print that had hung above the mantelpiece for years, sipping his 'brew', which was fast getting cold. The print represented an old man in a light costume, with a scythe in one hand and an hour-glass in the other; and underneath the picture in flourishing capitals was the ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... you may not be aware, are made in the ground. These nests are frequently found in meadows, about the time the grass is mowed; and it not unfrequently happens that the mower disturbs one of these nests with his scythe, in which case, the first information the poor man obtains of the existence of the nest is from a score or two of the bumble-bees themselves—(we'll call them bumble-bees, for the sake of peace, though I must confess I feel a great partiality for the name by which I knew the rogues when ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... Can scarce th'impression of his footsteps find; Smooth as that airy nymph so subtly born With inoffensive feet o'er standing corn;[3] Which bow'd by evening breeze with bending stalks, Salutes the weary traveller as he walks; But o'er the afflicted with a heavy pace Sweeps the broad scythe, and tramples on his face. Down falls the summer's pride, and sadly shows Nature's bare visage furrow'd as he mows: See, Muse, what havoc in these looks appear, These are the tyrant's trophies of a year; Since hope his last ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... for my own enjoyment," and began again to make all the noise he could. At last the father and mother were awakened, and they ran to the room-door and peeped through the chink, and when they saw a wolf in occupation, they ran and fetched weapons—the man an axe, and the wife a scythe. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... to tell you," said he, "you'll have lots of servants now. Take my word for it, the best of them are good for nothing; but something may be made of them for all that. He who would have his servants mow well, must take the scythe in hand himself. And since you got your riches so quickly, don't forget the proverb: 'Light come, light go.' Keep steady, or it'll ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked, before he answered, "You ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pleasant interspaces, pleasanter even than those that lingered in my memory, I lay down, for, though the days were the first days of May, the grass was long and warm and ready for the scythe, the tasselled branches of the tall larches swung faintly in a delicious breeze, and the words of the old Irish poet came into my mind, "The wood was like a harp in the hands of a harper." To see the boughs, to listen to them, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... came to my own gate and my own field, and had before me the house I knew, I looked around a little (though it was already evening), and I saw that the grass was standing as it should stand when it is ready for the scythe. For in this, as in everything that a man can do—of those things at least which are very old—there is an exact moment when they are done best. And it has been remarked of whatever rules us that it works blunderingly, seeing that the good things given to a man are not given at the precise ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... it have right to be a good deal wuss than that," the chivalrous Swipes made answer, with the scythe beside his ear. "It don't consarn what the masters say, though enough to take one's legs off. But the ladies, Mrs. Cloam, the ladies—it's them as takes ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... did the dwellers of the city. The farmer, it is true, produced a greater yield of crops, was surrounded by more comforts, and was able to enjoy greater leisure than his kind had ever done before. The scythe and cradle had been supplanted by the mower and reaper; horse harrows, cultivators, and rakes had transferred much of the physical exertion of farming to the draft animals. But, after all, the farmer owed less to steam and electricity than the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... meadows. Chown snuffled and sweated and sneezed, for the pollen always gave him hay fever; his master daily worked like a giant from dawn till the owl-light, drank gallons of cider, and performed wonders with the scythe. A great hay crop gladdened the moormen, and Will, always intoxicated by a little fair fortune, talked much of his husbandry, already calculated the value of the aftermath, and reckoned what number of beasts ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... say—encouraged, I stumbled through my story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... from the crown of life: Love, sympathy, and faith; and year on year He sees them grow in lustre and in worth, And glowers by me, plucking at his beard, And dragging, as he goes, a useless scythe. ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... nature. Some of the objects, in themselves, give a fair idea of how the farmer used them. Most people, after all, know about edged blades and digging tools. Nearly anyone can grasp what a man might do with a scythe or a plow. Even the working of a modern reaper needs only a little explanation. But museums cannot well show cross-breeding of plants and animals. Museums seldom can show the results of that cross-breeding. Bags of fertilizer can be put on display, as can vials of penicillin, and jars of ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages through ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... on the festival of St. Michael broke up the short summer weather of the north. A wet and tempestuous month set in, and the harvest, in all but the very best places, lay flat on the ground, without scythe or sickle. The men of the Riding were not disturbed by this, as farmers would have been in Suffolk; for these were quite used to walk over their crops, without much occasion to lift their feet. They ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a rake! a hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... decay are ever at work upon them; they are unsubstantial. A real substance is the mind, with its thoughts and affections. Forms built there do not decay. How perfectly had I retained in memory the home of my childhood! Not a leaf had withered, not a flower had faded; nothing had fallen under the scythe of time. The greenness and perfection of all were as the mind had received them twenty years before. But the material things themselves had, in that brief space, passed almost wholly away. Yes; it is in the mind that we must seek ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... them into their ranks; their reply was to rise in support of the Austrian government. In the fight at Gdow (February 26th), where Benedek laid the foundations of the military reputation that was to end so tragically at Koeniggraetz, flail and scythe wrought more havoc in the rebel ranks than the Austrian musketry. Since, in spite of this object-lesson, the Polish nobles still continued their offers, the peasants consulted the local Austrian authorities ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... rest refreshed from them; except that he does not like to kill things, he could trudge the whole day through fields and woods with his gun on his shoulder; though he does not golf, and cannot know whether or no it would bore him, he likes to wield the axe and the scythe in the groves and meadows of his summer place. When he stretches himself on the breast of the mother alike of flesh and grass, it is with a delicious sense of her restorative powers and no fear of rheumatism. If he rests a little longer than he once used, he is much more rested ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... never be great, on account of the unproductive nature of some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been a most rapid succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Rome, p. 141) well says of these monuments, "No skeleton, no scythe, no hour-glass is in them to bring a shudder to the beholder. As they [the departed] were in life, mother and daughter, husband and wife, parents and children, here they are represented together, sitting or standing, clasping ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... examining the character of these places, coasting along the shore of Cuba, he first discovered, not far from Alpha (that is from the end of it), a harbour sufficient for many ships. Its entrance is in the form of a scythe, shut in on the two sides by promontories that break the waves; and it is large and of great depth. Following the coast of this harbour, he perceived at a short distance from the shore two huts, and several fires burning here and there. A landing ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... remember, he broke a leg, and each time he had to lie six weeks on his back for the bone to knit. Felons on his fingers tormented him; and it was a notable season that he did not have a big, painful boil or a bad cut from a scythe or from an axe. One mishap ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... all the time we were in the Island, cut under every possible disadvantage, and yet cut with marvellous persistency. With this labour, of course, the frost mounds interfere, being most disastrous to the scythe, and yet the natives never leave a single blade of grass, cutting round and round, and between these curious little hillocks. On the hay crop so very much depends, for when that fails, ponies die, sheep and cattle have to be killed and the meat preserved, and the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... and her basket was already nearly full of rags. Fastened upright beside her seat was a great knife, not unlike a scythe-blade, with which she cut off the buttons and hooks and eyes, running the garment along the keen edge with a quick and practised hand. Usually she amused herself by imagining stories about the buttons and their former owners, for she was a fanciful girl, and her child-life, without brothers or ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... irrepressible vitality, stood looking at the rich, warm human life which she had renounced for ever. A young wife, with an infant on her arm, had brought her husband his midday meal, and he had flung down his scythe to kiss her under the trees. Those two faces, browned with the sun, flushed with the bloom of the flower, seemed the natural product of the beautiful earth. You could almost hear the myriad sounds of summer; waters trickling through ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... were down on the brow of the hill—in the valley— rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won, but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance caught a body ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their homes and ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... opening in the rock, and he awaited her return with folded arms. He could not see into the cave, for the space in which the bed stood was closed at the end by the narrow passage which formed the entrance, and which joined it at an angle as the handle of a scythe joins the blade. She remained a long time, and he could hear now and then a tender word with which she tried to comfort the suffering creature. Suddenly he was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor woman's affectionate little ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers, Where smiling youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Time, his cruel scythe Has swung full oft around, Since last the merry Christmas, bells Rang out their cheerful sound. With cruel vigor he has held His great, impartial sway, And many thousands mown to earth, Who ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... We have not seen him, but the circumstantial evidence is conclusive. Nobody else in the world could have swept this portion of the Wilderness with shell and shrapnel in such a manner. Why, he has mowed down the bushes in long swathes as the scythe takes the grass and he has cut down our men with them. How ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... something grey that went rustling swiftly downwards between the straws. She thrust her hand down, thinking it was a field-mouse, and caught the thing. A speckled toad wriggled in her fingers, lustily enough, but it was a toad that had seen tragedy. The keen edge of a scythe must have caught it, for one side of its head was shorn away; the eye had just been missed, but the inside of the poor little animal's mouth and throat lay exposed, pulsating and brilliantly red—a purer hue of blood was never seen ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... went down in his path like grain before the scythe. Reaching the altar, he seized the priest whose knife was already upraised, and, lifting him bodily, flung him full into the ugly snout of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... like wire," he said, stopping to wipe his scythe and give it a touch with the stone, making the blade ring and send forth what always sounded to be ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... the likes of us," said a sharp-nosed old man. "You say, 'Why do you let the horse get into the corn?' just as if I let it in. Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind, the livelong day, till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell asleep while watching the herd of horses at night, and it got into your oats, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... creek-bottom below the shack was a meadow where Lan cut enough hay each year to feed his two ponies through the winter. This year when hay-time came Jack was his daily companion, either following him about in dangerous nearness to the snorting scythe, or curling up an hour at a time on his coat to guard it assiduously from such aggressive monsters as Ground Squirrels and Chipmunks. An interesting variation of the day came about whenever the mower ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... by Philip's sharp-shooters. Again and again the English soldiers, led by their captains, rushed upon the fatal bridge to supply the places of the slain, but they only presented a fair target for the foe, and they fell as grass before the scythe. In a few moments six captains and a large number of common soldiers were dead or dying in the ditch. The assaulting party, in dismay, were beginning to recoil before certain death, when, by some unexplained ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... first ridge we crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines, and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as if the trees had been arranged by a landscape gardener. Far off, through an opening in a canyon, we ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws and palaces of Rome. But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn, [1301] still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the human feasts of the Laestrigons [1401] have never been renewed on the coast ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... quick, red as a Turkish scimitar, led the persecution, stopping ever and anon to make sweeping imperious gestures over the heads of the others with a great scythe. Pallid, bare-headed, he held the van, in the name of San Pantaleone. More than thirty men followed him. They all had a dull, confused sense of walking through a conflagration, over quaking ground, and beneath a blazing vault ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... Black Billy, the general's servant, sat asleep in the corner, and two aides slumbered on the floor, tired out, I fancy. I walked to and fro over the creaking boards, and watched the Dutch clock. As it struck eleven the figure of Time, seated below the dial, swung a scythe and turned a tiny hour-glass. A bell rang; an orderly came in and woke up an aide: "Despatch for West Point, sir, in haste." The young fellow groaned, stuck the paper in his belt, and went out for his long ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... portrayed Uguccione della Faggiuola of Arezzo, in a figure which is holding its nose with one hand in order not to feel the stench of the dead and corrupted Kings. In the middle of this scene is Death, who, flying through the air and draped in black, is showing that she has cut off with her scythe the lives of many, who are lying on the ground, of all sorts and conditions, poor and rich, halt and whole, young and old, male and female, and in short a good number of every age and sex. And because he knew that the people of Pisa took pleasure in the invention of Buffalmacco, who gave speech ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... be ready for death when it comes, but as yet I am not extending an invitation to the gentleman with the scythe. Are you, my worrying reader, anxious to be mowed down before your time? Quit your worrying, and don't urge the Master Reaper to harvest you in until He ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down, and all I could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the broad-swords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the ship. However, as my crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to cut it down: in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... are not so boon As hearty cider;—that strong son of wood In fullest tides refines and purges blood; Becomes a known Bethesda, whence arise Full certain cures for spit tall maladies: Death slowly can the citadel invade; A draught of this bedulls his scythe, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... she reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a dead arm ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... senators repair; All at large tables, in long order set, A ram their off'ring, and a ram their meat. Above the portal, carv'd in cedar wood, Plac'd in their ranks, their godlike grandsires stood; Old Saturn, with his crooked scythe, on high; And Italus, that led the colony; And ancient Janus, with his double face, And bunch of keys, the porter of the place. There good Sabinus, planter of the vines, On a short pruning hook his head reclines, And studiously surveys his gen'rous wines; Then warlike kings, who for their ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... dejected, and alone, Making in thought the public woes my own, When, first, arose the image in my breast Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.3 How death, his fun'ral torch and scythe in hand, Ent'ring the lordliest mansions of the land, Has laid the gem-illumin'd palace low, And level'd tribes of Nobles at a blow. I, next, deplor'd the famed fraternal pair4 Too soon to ashes turn'd and empty air, ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... winding of a gradual slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new chapter in our history. We came again upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep their tops mown with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the crests of the broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages, with streets narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... and white calf cuddled down in a straw bed in the corner; and the little field mice darting over the barn floor; and the swallows twittering overhead among the beams and rafters; and the old grindstone that the children liked to turn; and the scythe and pitchfork that Grandpa charged them "not even to look at;" and the yellow ears of corn peeping out of their dry husks, in a pile in the corner, and the old rooster strutting round it, (followed by his ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... where General Meagher's Irish Brigade repeatedly charged the Rebel works, until at least two-thirds of his stalwart men strewed the ground, killed and wounded. Brigade after brigade was ordered to take these heights, and though their ranks were mown down like grass before the scythe, in the very mouth of Rebel guns the effort was again and again made. Midway up the Heights was a heavy stone wall, behind which lay the hosts of the enemy, who delivered their fire with scarcely any exposure, sweeping down our columns as they approached. This hillside was ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the Acrosticks two or three Files of Chronograms, which differed only from the former, as their Officers were equipped (like the Figure of Time) with an Hour-glass in one Hand, and a Scythe in the other, and took their Posts promiscuously among the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had been close to death; he knew that during the greater part of the next two years he should see the glimmer of the scythe oftener yet. For a moment it seemed to him that he felt the dark waters rise in his soul, heard the jeers of the gods at the vanity of mortal will. But the blood ran strong and warm in his veins. He shook off the obsession, and smiled a little cynically, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,—a generous land, bright with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, kind and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... a small loaf of bread to me. So the great thing was to get rid of these birds. My plan was this, I shot three, and hung them up, like thieves, to scare all that came to the corn; and from this time, as long as the dead ones hung there, not a bird came near. When the corn was ripe, I made a scythe out of the swords from the ship, ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... charge, the bloodiest fight began that ever men beheld, for the Scottish brigades, giving fire three ranks at a time over one another's heads, poured in their shot so thick, that the enemy were cut down like grass before a scythe; and following into the thickest of their foot with the clubs of their muskets made a most dreadful slaughter, and yet was there no flying. Tilly's men might be killed and knocked down, but no man turned his back, nor would give an inch of ground, but as they ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... murmured, with a look in his eyes that told the secret of a deathless but unrequited love. "Well, Death's scythe spares no one, and perhaps it is better so. But this girl—her daughter," he added, rousing himself from his sad reflections; "we must try ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... on its awful brink, such our leaden bias to the world, we turn our faces the wrong way; we are still looking on our old acquaintance, Time; though now so wasted and reduced, that we can see little more of him than his wings and his scythe: our age enlarges his wings to our imagination; and our fear of death, his scythe; as Time himself grows less. His consumption is deep; his annihilation is ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... beside the spring, fashioned a rude fork out of a pronged willow, and fitted a handle to the scythe he had brought for the purpose. From dawn to dark he swung the keen blade in the heavy grass which carpeted the bottom. Behind him Hazel piled it in little mounds with the fork. She insisted on this, though it blistered her hands and brought furious pains to her back. If her man ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... beginning to appear in the organ which is always the last to show the signs of failing life, namely the eyes; he would know, too, the cause of the sufferings which gave her that look as though death were near and she might drop at any moment beneath its scythe. The two signs, the two gestures—not denying their friendship but imploring caution —alarmed the young Breton. Evidently Pierrette wished him to wait and not attempt to see her; otherwise there was danger, there was peril for her. As ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... yellowish striations, or bold knobs or brown; sub-triangular in front; blackish; in male in male, spreading outward more compressed or angular, and forward with a sweeping backward circular sweep, points with a scythe-like curve or turned outward and forward spirally, points turned upward ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... picked troops, contingents also came in from the numerous other provinces that yet obeyed the Great King. Altogether, the horse are said to have been forty thousand, the scythe-bearing chariots two hundred, and the armed elephants fifteen in number. The amount of the infantry is uncertain; but the knowledge which both ancient and modern times supply of the usual character of oriental armies, and of their populations of camp-followers, may warrant us in believing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... one swing to its scythe, and our best merchants fall; their stores are sold, and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... nearly annihilated. One of his officers recounted that, as they were charging over the grassy plain, he threw himself down before a murderous discharge of grape and canister, which mowed the grass and men all around him as though a scythe had been swung just ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... miasma, With its desolating vengeance, With its greedy, fatal cravings, Laying hands upon the city. And the doomed victims yielded To the swift-distilling poison; White and black and high and lowly, Fell beneath the sweeping scythe-blade. On the air was borne the crying Of the hurrying, the fleeing, Through the air the sad lamenting Of the helpless and deserted, Cries of anguish and of terror, Wails of suff'ring and despairing. Some brave souls remained ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... signal fan the flame of patriotism in your hearts, and be the death-knell of your oppressors! Take up arms! Scythes and pikes may take the place of muskets. They will soon be replaced by English weapons already arrived. Wielded by strong arms, even the peaceful scythe becomes fatal. Let every one arm himself, and share the glory of the liberators of the fatherland, fighting not only for himself but for the safety and happiness of future generations! He who is cowardly enough to disobey this call, will be consigned to contempt and infamy. No noble German girl will ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... to escape from the fever heat and turmoil of Paris during the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the gently undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to the noise, if noise it can be called, of the mower's scythe, the rustle of acacia leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon a nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor, and the perpetual grind of the stone-mason's saw. Yes! to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat, and nestle down in some country resort is, indeed, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... used here, covinarius, signifies the driver of a covinus, or chariot, the axle of which was bent into the form of a scythe. The British manner of fighting from chariots is particularly described by Caesar, who gives them the name of esseda:—"The following is the manner of fighting from essedae: They first drive round with them ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... such work, God knows, was as much as she chose That dreary winter-tide, When Death hung o'er the damp and pestilent camp, And his scythe swung ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... ould jontleman wid the scythe that takes us down, afther all, Musther Talcott; the hours and hours that we sit mopin', wid our fingers as limp as a lady's, and our stomachs clatterin' like an impty can, and sorra a thing to think of but the poor crathurs that's dead, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, 425 Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake, With the Antarctic constellations paven, Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake— There she would build herself a windless haven Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make 430 The bastions of the storm, when through the ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... setting sun, He swung his scythe, and home he run, Sat down, drank off his quart, and said, "My work is done, I'll go to bed." "My work is done!" retorted Joan, "My work is done! your constant tone; But hapless woman ne'er can say, 'My work is done,' till judgment day. You men can sleep all night, but we Must toil."—"Whose fault ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the neighbourhood to satisfy the hirsute gentleman now passing before their eyes; or else he had a fancy to vary his diet by making a meal upon simple vegetables. He soon reached the patch of tall water-plants; waded in nearly knee-deep; and then with arms, each of which had the sweep of a mower's scythe, drew in their heads toward him, and with a mouth wide as that of a hippopotamus, cropped off the succulent shoots and flower-stems, and munched them like an ox in the act of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... on the farm and the workers are genuinely rustic, but not nearly so primitive as in the times that Mr. Burroughs most enjoys recalling. Oxen are of the past, the mowing-machine goes over the fields where formerly he labored with his scythe, stacks at which the cattle pull in the winter time are a rarity, and the gray old barns have given place to modern red ones. It is a dairy country, and on every farm is found a large herd of cows; but the milk goes to ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... control, we could also say something: How the two young Sons of the Burggraf once riding out with their Tutor, a big hound of theirs in one of the streets of Nurnberg accidentally tore a child; and there arose wild mother's-wail; and "all the Scythe-smiths turned out," fire-breathing, deaf to a poor Tutor's pleadings and explainings; and how the Tutor, who had ridden forth in calm humor with two Princes, came galloping home with only one,—the Smiths having driven another into boggy ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... lived all her life in the middle of Romance, and the very fire and passion of her South must make me dim prose to her. I remember the flicker of Salazar's returning candle, cast in lines like an advancing scythe across the two walls from the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for a long time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He was singing a ditty, with a nasal intonation, he swung and drew back his scythe incessantly. At every blow he traced around him a great circle of severed limbs. He advanced thus into the very thickest ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in the West. The methods employed were of the debilitating, paternal character long familiar to Canada. All emigrants with families were to be carried thither at the King's expense; and every settler was to receive in free gift a gun, a hoe, an axe, a ploughshare, a scythe, a sickle, two augers, large and small, a sow, six hens, a cock, six pounds of powder, and twelve pounds of lead; while to these favors were added many others. The result was that twelve families were persuaded to go, or about a ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... have just heard one say in the crowd, 'I remember old King Harry the Eighth.'" When she came to the grand allegory of Time and Truth, at the Little Conduit, in Cheapside, she asked, who an old man was that sat with his scythe and hour-glass. She was told "Time." "Time?" she repeated; "and Time has brought ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... event—seventeen years of age. Ever since his birth the world has been rife with discord and revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where death with a scythe in both hands was cutting down the ranks of the armed warriors; thither, where the children of weeping mothers were being trampled on by horses' hoofs; thither, thither, where they were casting into a common grave the mangled remains of darling ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... sounding as if a scythe-blade were being held against a rapidly-revolving grindstone, and ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... you who speak this, and myself, were to be tried at any task-work, that I had a good crooked scythe put in my hand, that was sharp and strong, and you such another, where the grass grew longest, to be up by day-break, mowing the meadows till the sun went down, not tasting of food till we had finished, or that we were set to plough four acres in one day of good ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the cabin. The mother had put away her spinning-wheel, and the smoke was curling up from out the wide-mouthed chimney, in preparation of her supper. The farmer and his sons had left the field and gone to a little blacksmith shop a few rods down the hill, where he had mended a broken buck-scythe. The two girls had joined them there; and now they all came trooping together to the house. The boys and their father were washing their hands and faces from the sweat of the forge and the burnt logs. The mother was busy with her ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets To turn the hour-glass in his hand, And all life's petty cares and frets, Its teasing hopes and weak regrets, Are still as that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... about with flowers, Will plight your faith to-day, Hold, evermore enthroned, the love Which you have crowned in May; And Time will sleep upon his scythe, The swallow rest his wing, Seeing that you at autumntide Still clasp ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... They who built their pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, but with solid blocks of granite fifty feet square! How they must have laughed in the depths of those sepulchres as they watched Time dull its scythe and pashas wear out their nails in vain against them. Let us build pyramids, my dear Sir John. They are not difficult as architecture, nor beautiful as art, but they are solid; and that enables a general to say four thousand years later: 'Soldiers, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... and sweetest in wooded coverts, provided they be neighboured by water, no matter whether in pool or rill, he resigned himself to that intermediate state between thought and dream-land which we call "revery." At a little distance he heard the low still sound of the mower's scythe, and the air came to his brow sweet with the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Jack Rabbit was told that a railroad must be level, he thought a man would come with a big scythe and slice off the top of the hill like a loaf of bread and lay the slices ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... at the throat of Gaznak and aimed with Sacnoth, and again Gaznak lifted his head by the hair; but not at his throat flew Sacnoth, for Leothric struck instead at the lifted hand, and through the wrist of it went Sacnoth whirring, as a scythe goes through the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... 2. Vo'cal, having a voice. 3. I-den'ti-fied, united. Cu-pid'i-ty, eager desire to possess something. 4. Tus'sock, a tuft of grass or twigs. 5. Cra'dler, one who uses a cradle, which is an instrument attached to a scythe in cutting grain. 6. U-surp'ing, seizing and holding in possession by force. 7. Af-fect', ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lay down all around upon the mountains, and lazy white ones lost themselves in the waters; and through the dozing air, the faint chirp of robin or cricket, and ding of bells in the woods, and mellow cut of scythe, melted into one song, as though the heart-beat of the luscious midsummer-time had set itself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... that be, The lark and the thrush and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: 20 Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... army gathered about him, and heaped insult and reproach upon him; and one furious peasant, whose brother's feet had been cut off by Ecelino's command, dealt the helpless monster four blows upon the head with a scythe. By some, Ecelino is said to have died of these wounds alone; but by others it is related that his death was a kind of suicide, inasmuch as he himself put the case past surgery by tearing off the bandages from his hurts, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... resolutions of parliament, no blare of party conventions, no lies graven on marble, nor statues of bronze, can change the truth, that the True Makers of Canada were those who, in obscurity and poverty, made it with ax and spade, with plow and scythe, with sweat of face and ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... not a parasol nor a riding-crop, but a great reaping-hook swung across her shoulder, and she smiled as impudently, as immortally, as if she were Youth and had slain old Time and carried off his scythe. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... offered no target to the former's fire. Presently, as Rupert Wilmshurst had predicted, came the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun, and a swathe of bullets traversed the open ground in front of the defences, rising until the hail of nickel simply cut a gap in the palisade like a scythe against ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... year by the invention or improvement of farm tools and machines. Perhaps some of you know how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the "quick-coming" churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced "the man with the hoe," while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn harvester that cuts and binds the grain, and even ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... half builded she hangeth many a day; The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way By the mountain-hunter fareth where his foot ne'er failed before: She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river's shore: The mower's scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot, But her will with the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... is it likely an old man like me should bring? You ask me so eager-like that I misdoubt me but it's some colleen that's caught your eye!" Patrick's eyes twinkled merrily as he made his little joke. Dermot's face saddened, and he turned to his scythe once more. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Dutch clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... stopped writing and watched them. The day grew hotter, and the spells of mowing became shorter. Miss King gave up the attempt to write, and lay dreamily gazing at the men, roused to active consciousness now and then by the rasp of the hones against the scythe blades. At one o'clock the men, guessing it to be dinnertime, stopped pretending to work and went away. A few minutes later Miss King, feeling the need of luncheon, disentangled herself from the hammock, bundled her papers together, and went into ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham |
