"Suppliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a holy zeal, To behold his country free, And would sooner see her baptized in blood, Than to bend the suppliant knee; Must agree to follow her White-Cross flag, Where the storms of battle roll, A soldier—A SOLDIER!—with arms in his hands, And the love of the South ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... This officer adduced reasons of a sufficiently specious character, but Nobunaga detected their fallacy, and appeared about to take some precipitate action when he happened to observe the wrinkles which time had written on the suppliant's face. He recovered his sang-froid and contented himself with sending the officer from his presence and subsequently causing to be handed to him a couplet setting forth the evils of bribery and corruption. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... soul as it fell on the pillar of rock, and it was as the pillar is. And it had fallen so soon! there had been such a little span of happiness and hope! And so she sat, like a stony Sphinx, and Bessie wept softly before her, like a beautiful, breathing, loving human suppliant, and the two formed a picture and a contrast such as the student of human nature does not often ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... potentate for compelling him to appear in the council chamber. "But," replied Maximus, "on a former mission you came to this chamber." "True," replied the prelate, "but then I came to sue for peace, as a suppliant; now I come to demand, as an equal, the body of Gratian." "An equal, are you?" replied the usurper; "from whom have you received this rank?" "From God Almighty," replied the prelate, "who preserves to Valentinian the empire he has given him." On this, the angry Maximus threatened the life of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... dreary paths without a guide, As treacherous phantoms in the mist delude, Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good; 10 How rarely Reason guides the stubborn choice, Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice; How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, When Vengeance listens to the fool's request; Fate wings with every wish the afflictive dart, Each gift of Nature, and each grace of Art, With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... can have no other motive, in what I write, than your good, and the safety of other innocent creatures, who may be drawn in by your wicked arts and perjuries. You have not, in my wishes for future welfare, the wishes of a suppliant wife, endeavouring for her own sake, as well as for your's, to induce you to reform those ways. They are wholly as disinterested as undeserved. But I should mistrust my own penitence, were I capable of wishing to recompense evil for evil—if, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... could not be returned, must have been a painful effort to this child of sorrow. But what will the heart not do to meet such a Comforter? What will Martha be unprepared to encounter if the intelligence brought her be indeed confirmed? One glance is enough. "It is the Lord!" In a moment she is a suppliant at His feet. Doubt and faith and prayer mingle in the exclamation, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Not a suppliant on earth Could I deny today, whate'er he ask, And you, our battle-hero, least ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... amazement saw him lead the way through the poor at the gate; and advancing to the porch with a courteous bending of his head, he said in the soft Provencal—far more familiar than English to Adam's ears—"Hast room for another suppliant, mi Dona?" ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... assiduous in the duty, nor is it common to see a suppliant so mindful of those whom he troubleth, by more ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beloved that it was difficult for me to see much of her. Her time was all bespoken by different girls. One might walk with her to school, another had the like promise on the way home. And at recess, of which we had every day a short half hour, there was always a suppliant at Katy's shrine, whom she found it hard to refuse. Yet, among all these claimants, she did keep a little place here and there for me. Georgiana was older and graver, and less fascinating to the other girls, but between her and me there grew up the warmest ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... young man bent a look of suppliant anguish upon Don Cornelio, while exhibiting the two objects which his attendants had found upon the path, and which had served to guide them in ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Little encouragement could be gathered from the noncommittal responses. Hall's restless, drumming fingers and lowered gaze threw the suppliant out of countenance. McDevitt, in turn, grew silent and drank the last of his mild refreshment. Hall looked up, with ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... princess had interfered, generously interfered, to save her life; she had shown herself touched by her situation; she had offered her, under certain conditions, succours and protection. Perhaps she would no longer remember in the suppliant who embraced her knees, the haughty rival who had laid claim to her crown;—perhaps she would show herself a real friend. The English people too,—could they behold unmoved "a queen, a beauty," hurled from her throne, chased from her country ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... probable that Germany desired to get rid of him, thus leaving Austria-Hungary completely in the power of its tool and puppet, Francis Joseph, and in the event of his death, in the power of the young and suppliant Karl; another instrument easily bent to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... sleep at last— Struggling hands and suppliant knees Get no goodlier gift than these. Song that holds remembrance fast, Light that lightens death, attend Round their graves who have to friend Light, and song, and ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... decision given in favour of the project of Christopher Columbus which followed as a consequence of the Christian victory. Though he nowhere states the fact, Martyr must at this time[2] have known the Genoese suppliant for royal patronage. Talavera, confessor to the Queen, was the friend and ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... while she trembled at the resolution which she read in his countenance of demanding as a soldier, and not as a suppliant, the restoration of Le ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... office of the church. Hom. 18, p. 568. Hom. 30, p. 6{5}0. On visiting the shrines of martyrs, he says, Hom. 26, p. 629, "The tombs of those who served the crucified Christ surpass in splendor the courts of kings. Even he who wears purple visits and devoutly kisses them, and standing suppliant, prays the saint to be a protection to him before God." He adds that emperors sue for their patronage, and count it an honor to be porters to them in their graves. By this he alludes to the burial of Constantine the Great in the porch of the church of the apostles. He proves, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... basis, as all history testifies. Thus the Thebans, when their generals were charged with not returning home, and laying down their office of Boeotarchs when their time had expired, but instead of that making inroads into Laconia, and helping Messene, hardly acquitted Pelopidas, who was submissive and suppliant, but for Epaminondas,[773] who gloried in what he had done, and at last said that he was ready to die, if they would confess that he had ravaged Laconia, and restored Messene, and made Arcadia one state, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the execution of manoeuvres which must be attended with much loss, and here I was moved—nay, painfully affected—by the cries and the grief of a dog. It is certain that at that moment I should have been more accessible to a suppliant enemy, and could better understand the conduct of Achilles in restoring the body of Hector to the tears of Priam."[3] The anecdote at once shows that Napoleon possessed a heart amenable to humane feelings, and that they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... scorn to come to you as a suppliant. If you choose to say after hearing me that you will put me away from you because you have seen some one fairer than I am, whatever course I may take in my indignation, I shall not throw myself at your feet to tell you of my wrongs. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... task to rule cities. Do thou, strong in the flower of thy first youth, flinch not, but govern the state by the power thy father held. Take me and shield me in thy bosom, thy suppliant and thy slave! Pity thy ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... France, and asked him a brevet as duke for young Brisacier. Our King, who did not throw duchies at people's heads, read and re-read the strange missive with astonishment and suspicion. He wrote in his turn to the suppliant King, and begged him to send him the why and the wherefore of this hieroglyphic adventure. The good prince, ignorant of ruses, sent the letter ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... world. They claimed and even partly exercised the right to create and depose kings and emperors. To such a supremacy as this, however, the Teutons were still too rude and warlike to submit. Much is made of the fact that the Emperor Henry IV was compelled to come as a suppliant to Pope Gregory at Canossa, 1077.[19] But this submission was only forced on him by quarrels with his barons, who welcomed the Pope as a chance ally. It proved the power of feudalism rather than that of religion. Still we may trace here the beginnings of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and Hilda again let their glances fall into the piazza at their feet. They there beheld Miriam, who had just entered the Porta del Popolo, and was standing by the obelisk and fountain. With a gesture that impressed Kenyon as at once suppliant and imperious, she seemed to intimate to a figure which had attended her thus far, that it was now her desire to be left alone. The pertinacious model, however, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the work was done, and she awoke not at the sound of the hammer on the nails. When all was completed, the father ascended to await the rays of morning, and listen for the voice of his child, which soon broke in suppliant ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That Glory never shall his wrath or might 110 Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deifie his power Who from the terrour of this Arm so late Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods And this ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest counsels; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are sufficiently distinct ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... after us." Can you conceive of the loving Saviour sending away a poor troubled one who comes to Him? I challenge you to find a single instance of His doing such a thing, from the beginning to the end of His ministry. Send her away! I believe He would rather send an angel away than a poor suppliant for His mercy; He delighted to have such as she come to Him. But He was going to test her, as well as to give an object-lesson to those who should come after. "It is not meet," He said, "to take the children's bread, and to cast ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... frightening hour under the faintly rustling ash-tree, while the wind sprinkled over her flakes of the may blossom, just past its prime. Love seemed now so little a thing, seemed to have lost warmth and power, seemed like a suppliant outside a door. Why did trouble come like this the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... where late she played, Setting a steady course toward the light, Swifter than thistledown the little shade, Reft from the nooks that she had made her own And from the love that sheltered, fared alone Forth through the gloomy spaces of the night, Until at last she lit before the gate Where all the suppliant shades ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... might take the condemned one's place. (What a speech Tommy could have delivered from the scaffold!) There was nothing he would not jump at doing for a woman in distress, except, perhaps, destroy his note-book. And Grizel was in anguish. She was his suppliant, his brave, lonely little playmate of the past, the noble girl of to-day, Grizel whom he liked so much. As through a magnifying-glass he saw her top-heavy with remorse for life, unable to sleep ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... hares; there sat he down by Zeus and the other Immortals, and showed his child, and all the Immortals were glad at heart, and chiefly the Bacchic Dionysus. Pan they called the babe to name: because he had made glad the hearts of all of them. Hail then to thee, O Prince, I am thy suppliant in song, and I shall be mindful of thee ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... future life,—then the mother hardly knew how to mount to higher ground, so as to seem to speak from a more exalted eminence. And yet she was not at all convinced. That the Lord should give bad counsel she knew to be impossible. That the Lord would certainly give good counsel to such a suppliant, if asked aright, she was quite sure. But they who send others to the throne of heaven for direct advice are apt to think that the asking will not be done aright unless it be done with their spirit and their bias,—with the spirit and bias which they feel when they recommend the operation. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... aid to such legislative labors as the exigencies of the hour permitted. Once again, he found himself acting with the Republicans to do justice to Kansas, for Kansas was now a suppliant for admission into the Union with a free constitution. Again specious excuses were made for denying simple justice. Toward the obstructionists, his old enemies, Douglas showed no rancor: there was no time to lose in personalities. "The sooner we ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... supposed to represent the temple of Minerva, on the Areopagus, while the lateral decorations were converted into Athens and its surrounding landscape. Orestes now enters, as from foreign land, and, as a suppliant, embraces the statue of Pallas standing before the temple. The chorus (who, according to the poet's own description, were clothed in black, with purple girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having perhaps something of the terrific beauty of Medusa-heads, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... written that to spurn A suppliant equals in offence to slay A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog,— So without any hope or friend save me, So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness, So agonized to die, unless I help Who ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... affections and the accomplishment of humble duties. She was a creature who wished to love and only to love. Sooner renounce life, reason, logic, the material world, everything, rather than love! And that love was infinite, suppliant, exacting: it gave everything—it wished to be given everything; it renounced life for love, and it desired that renunciation from others, from the beloved. What a power is the love of a simple soul! ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Jessica as far-fetched. She argued against it, and became petulant. Nancy lost patience, but remembered in time that she was at Jessica's mercy, and, to her mortification, had to adopt a coaxing, almost a suppliant, tone, with the result that Miss. Morgan's overweening conceit was flattered into arrogance. Her sentimental protestations became strangely mixed with a self-assertiveness very galling to Nancy's pride. Without the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Glendower's heart beat thick. He slouched his hat over his brows, and for one moment wrestled with his pride and his stern virtue: the virtue conquered, but not the pride; the virtue forbade him to be the robber; the pride submitted to be the suppliant. He sprang forward, extended his hands towards the stranger, and cried in a sharp voice, the agony of which rang through the long dull street with a sudden ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extreme desire to persuade her husband into an alliance with Lakamba, played upon the whole gamut of passion. With her soiled robe wound tightly under the armpits across her lean bosom, her scant grayish hair tumbled in disorder over her projecting cheek-bones, in suppliant attitude, she depicted with shrill volubility the advantages of close union with a man so ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... service—this time of Christians—and compared it with what I had seen in the morning? Instead of a money-hunting priest sitting beside a butcher's block and exacting a prescribed fee from each pushing, jabbering, suppliant of a bloodthirsty goddess, herself only one of the many jealous gods and goddesses to be favored and propitiated—instead of this there was a converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose characteristic is love, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... a sort of dithyramb with another and higher preamble about the honour due to the soul, whence are deduced the duties of a man to his parents and his friends, to the suppliant and stranger. He should be true and just, free from envy and excess of all sorts, forgiving to crimes which are not incurable and are partly involuntary; and he should have a true taste. The noblest life has the greatest pleasures and the fewest pains...Having finished the ...
— Laws • Plato
... feelings were hurt, and the idea seems to have been that in giving him a benefit they would placate any resentment he might harbor and at the same time proclaim their own generosity. Anson, however, declined to be put in the position of a martyr or a suppliant. He replied: 'I refuse to accept anything in the shape of a gift. The public owes me nothing. I am not old and am no pauper. Besides that, I am by ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... unconfin'd, And wreaths resplendent round their temples bind, 'Tis yours, to strew their steps with votive flowers; To watch them slumbering midst the blissful bowers; To guard the shades that hide their sacred charms; And shield their beauties from unhallow'd arms! Oh! may their suppliant steal a passing kiss? Alas! he pants not for superior bliss; Thrice-bless'd, his virgin modesty shall be To snatch an evanescent ecstacy! The fierce extremes of superhuman love, For his frail sense too exquisite might prove; ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... Shortsightedness! Were he, whom I gladly call my Betrothed, to be the Victim of Oppression or of Malice, it would seem to me but the throwing down of the Glove—a challenge to Battle, rather than a demand for Submission. Methinks it were not as a Suppliant that I should stoop to pick it up. But why talk of fighting, who am a peaceful Maid, who would labour, were it but Honourable towards her dear Country, to remove the Sound of Battle far from her Lover. For indeed he is more ready to fight than ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Justinian the Second clung for protection, in the revolution which hurled his father from the throne;[14] and we might entertain more respect for the superstition of the Greeks, if the supposed sanctity of this relic had produced either the observance of the oath, or the safety of the suppliant. At length, in the year 1078, the object of this narrative recommenced its travels. A wealthy citizen of Amalfi, whose name is not recorded, had long felt a wish to exchange active life for the cloister, and had selected the monastery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... listen to my prayer?" the lady urges. "You will not be deaf to the agonised entreaty of such a broken suppliant as I am?" ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... become a grey-haired woman, carrying her secret to the grave, when Florence Dombey was forgotten. But it was all dim and clouded to her now. She only knew that she had no Father upon earth, and she said so, many times, with her suppliant head hidden from all, but her Father who ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... pursuit he could yet win her. There he took repulses lightly, but here it was the woman alone who decreed, and whatever she might say no act or power of his could change it. He stood before her a suppliant. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... tell the truth, to do so lest I find him mangled and dead among the trees of the acacia grove, when he suddenly emerged from among the boles, his ears flattened, his tail between his legs and his body screwed into a suppliant S. He was unharmed except for minor bruises; but he was the most chastened dog I have ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... assert the manhood of this nation, Its courage, honor, might— Wipe off the dust of our humiliation— Dare nobly to do right! Shall women plead from out the dust forever? Will you not work, men, if you cannot pray? Hold up the suppliant hands with your endeavor, And seize the world's salvation while ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... you cannot think me a more egregious ass than I now think myself; but I was absolutely certain she was mine; so sure that, when she came, and we were alone together in the house of God, instead of going to her with the anxious haste of suppliant and lover, I called her to me at the chancel step as if I were indeed her husband and had the right to bid her come. She came, and, just as a sweet formality before taking her to me, I asked for her answer. It was this: 'I cannot marry a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... heat became almost insupportable. Again he prayed to Gurty in all the anguish of his torment, to rescue him from the fire, or shoot him dead upon the spot. A demoniac smile suffused the countenance of Gurty, while he calmly replied to the dying suppliant, that he had no pity for his sufferings; but that he was then satisfying that spirit of revenge, which for a long time he had hoped to have an opportunity to wreak upon him. Nature now almost exhausted from the intensity of the heat, he settled down a little, when a squaw threw ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... ships, and himself to their disposal, but the other orators of the town had their eyes quickly fixed upon his money, and came in to his assistance, persuading the Athenians to receive and protect their suppliant. Demosthenes at first gave advice to chase him out of the country, and to beware lest they involved their city in a war upon an unnecessary and unjust occasion. But some few days after, as they ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... ours; but it is as true for us as ever it was for them, that our safety is in God, and that, if we want to find shelter from impending dangers, we shall be wiser to betake ourselves to the altar and sit suppliant there than to make defences for ourselves. The ruined Jerusalem was better guarded by that altar than if its ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Jesus Christ, His royal rights, His glory and majesty, His jealousy over the Church, His indignation against evil, His vindication of right! What those nights of prayer must have been to that boyish heart! The Holy Spirit came down upon the tender suppliant; the glory of the Lord shone round about him; the heavens bent and burst with blessings above his head; he made many an incursion into the upper world. What a wonderful life we may expect to arise out of a beginning ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted cripple's knee! Suppliant-like for alms depending On a false and foreign court, Jostled by the flouting nobles, Half their pity, half their sport. Forced to hold a place in pageant, Like a royal prize of war, Walking with dejected features Close behind his victor's car, Styled an ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... there so still; at a word she could kneel at his side and own that she had always loved him; but his mind was far away and he took no thought of her weakness. He was silent—and she must be a woman to the end, a voiceless suppliant, a slave that waits, unbidden, a chip on the tide that carries it to some safe haven or hurries it ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... his wish The Suppliant shews, well as he can; Thought Peter whatsoe'er betide I'll go, and he my way will guide To the cottage of the drowned ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... disgrace yourself for ever. Oh, Fanny! though my heart were breaking, though I knew I were dying for very love, I'd sooner have it break, I'd sooner die at once, than disgrace my sex by becoming a suppliant ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... an exile, for I have killed a man of my own race. He has many brothers and kinsmen in Argos, and they have great power among the Argives. I am flying to escape death at their hands, and am thus doomed to be a wanderer on the face of the earth. I am your suppliant; take me, therefore, on board your ship that they may not kill me, for I ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... for her. The poor girl had come to entreat the pardon of her father, a storekeeper in the commissary department, who had been condemned to the galleys for grave crimes. His Majesty could not resist the many charms of the youthful suppliant, and the pardon ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... I am going to ask." Geoffrey, standing on the treacherous ledge above the thundering river, scarcely looked like a suppliant as he put his fate to the test. "It is your permission to ask Miss Savine to marry me when the time seems opportune. It would not be surprising if you laughed at me, but even then I should only wait ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... those of a submissive slave. From this setting issue spirals of white-belled convolvulus, twigs of pink rest-harrow mingled with a few ferns, and a few young oak-shoots having magnificently coloured leaves; all advance bowing themselves, humble as weeping willows, timid and suppliant as prayers. Above, see the slender-flowered fibrils, unceasingly swayed, of the purply amourette, which sheds in profusion its yellowy anthers; the snowy pyramids of the field and water glyceria; the green locks of the barren bromus; the tapered plumes of the agrosits, called wind-ears; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... so happen that the cry for help goes up, and is answered on a ground of kindred which in the eye of the physiologist has no existence. Or it may happen that the kindred is real in a way which neither the suppliant nor his helper thinks of. But in either case, for the practical purposes of human life, the plea is a good plea; the kindred on which it is founded is a real kindred. It is good by the law of adoption. It is good by the law the force ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... had a pronounced effect upon Charlie. The air of the suppliant fell from him, even the signs of his recent debauch seemed to give way before a startling alertness of mentality. In his curious way he seemed suddenly to have become the man of action, full of a keenness of perception and shrewdness which might well have carried an added conviction to Stanley ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... for she said mournfully: 'Now I have done all I could! I felt that the only counterpoise to my cruelty to you in my drawing-room would be to come as a suppliant to yours.' ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... puissant argument. A father sans a mother there may be. There stands the daughter of Olympian Zeus, She ne'er was nurtured in the darkling womb, Yet could no god in heaven beget her peer. Pallas, as always my endeavour is Thy city and thy people to exalt, So I have sent this suppliant to thy hearth, That he might be thy ever faithful friend, And thou might'st count him as a sure ally, Him and his race hereafter, and this bond Unbroken through ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... inhales the gas, sways to and fro in an ecstasy, and now, duly "inspired," answers in a somewhat wild manner the queries which the priest will put in behalf of the supplicants. Her incoherent words are very hard to understand, but the priest duly "interprets" them, i.e. gives them to the suppliant in the form of hexameter verses. Sometimes the meaning of these verses is perfectly clear. Very often they are truly "Delphic," with a most dubious meaning—as in that oft-quoted instance, when the Pythia told Croesus if he went to war with Cyrus, "he ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... prevent secession, let their success be what it may. Should the North prevail after a two years' conflict, the North will not admit the South to an equal participation of good things with themselves, even though each separate rebellious State should return suppliant, like a prodigal son, kneeling on the floor of Congress, each with a separate rope of humiliation round its neck. Such was my idea as expressed then, and I do not know that I have since had much ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Archbishop, who thrust the suppliant Pompilia back upon the wolf, the Convent of Convertities, who took her in as a suffering saint, and after her death claimed her succession because she was of dishonest life, the unspeakable Abate and Canon, Guido's brothers,—it ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... her visitor, the red cushions making vivid contrast to her white gown and black hair. In the half-kneeling, half-sitting posture, with her hands clasped before her, so to steady herself to composure, Angele looked a suppliant—and a saint. Her pure, straightforward gaze, her smooth, urbane forehead, the guilelessness that spoke in every feature, were not made worldly by the intelligence and humour reposing in the brown depths of her eyes. Not a line vexed her face ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is thinning; shadows are retreating; Morning and light are coming in their beauty; Suppliant seek we, with an earnest ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... little widower with a deep yellow complexion, prominent cheek bones, a hook nose and a scrubby, straggling little beard. Years of professional practice as a mendicant had stamped his face with an anguished suppliant conciliatory grin, which he could not now erase even after business hours. It might perhaps have yielded to soap and water but the experiment had not been tried. On his head he always wore a fur cap with lappets for his ears. Across ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the god he call'd at length, Most famous through the world for strength. "O, help me, Hercules!" cried he; "for if thy back of yore This burly planet bore, thy arm can set me free." This prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— "The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... in Gallia? 1.Sen. With those Legions Which I haue spoke of, whereunto your leuie Must be suppliant: the words of your Commission Will tye you to the numbers, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... giving him this satisfying proof of her love. And besides she thought that if he should take her with him, it would be without doubt because he desired to consecrate his life to her. She waited then with anxiety for what he should say to her, and her almost suppliant looks seemed to entreat a favourable answer. Oswald could not resist; he had at first been surprised at this offer and the simplicity with which Corinne made it, and hesitated for some time before he accepted it; but beholding the agitation of her ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... oath, and seeing who the suppliant was, he seized the bottle in his left hand, and with his right struck poor Inkspot a blow in the face. Without a word the negro stepped back, and then Garta put the bottle into a high, narrow opening in the side of the forecastle, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Scarcely knowing why, except that it had become nature to wish to be near her, he stood for a long time opposite her dwelling. "O house!" he cried, "inanimate object that can yet enthral me so, I stand before your cold front as a suppliant from a very distant realm; yet in my sadness I am colder than your stones, more alone than in a desolate place. She that dwells within you holds my love. I long for her shadow or the sound of her step. I am more wretchedly in love than ever—I, an impotent, invisible spirit. Must I bear this ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... when, after teaching people their duties, we represent their rights and make solicitations on behalf of the afflicted, on behalf of the absent despoiled of their position and their liberty. The clergy of France, Sir, stretch forth to you their suppliant hands; it is so beautiful to see might and puissance yielding to prayer! The glory of your Majesty is not in being King of France, but in being King of the French, and the heart of your subjects in the fairest of your domains." The assembly of the clergy granted to the treasury only a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wisely do we call her Mother—she Who from her liberal breath breathes sustenance To nations; a majestic charity! No marble symbol cold, in suppliant glance Deceitful smiling; strenuous her advance, Yet calm; while holy ardors, fancy-free, Direct her measured steps: in every chance Sedate—as Una 'neath the forest tree Encompassed by the lions. Why, alas! Must ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... their whole land cheers them on; they go to the inherited battlefields. And there is this difference in their attitude to kings, that those knightly Irishmen of old, driven homeless over-sea, appeared as exiles suppliant for shelter before the face of the Grand Monarch, and he, no doubt with exquisite French grace, gave back to them all they had lost except what was lost forever, salving so far as he could the injustice suffered ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... fear one breathless moment passed, The next, the bird has lighted down and settled on the mast. And soon within his grasp secure a seaman holds him fast. "Now glory be unto our God—and to His name be praise! Upon the deep he walketh, in the ocean are his ways, From ghastly fear our suppliant souls he royally hath freed, And sent us succor from the air in this ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... unusual haste; Winds urged them onward, like to restless ships; And light dim faded in its last eclipse; And Agitation turn'd a straining eye; And Hope stood watching like a bird to fly, While suppliant Nature, like a child in dread, Clung to her ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... like an invader! No, Daring, the Invitation's friendly, and as a Friend attended only by my menial Servants, I'll wait upon the Council, that they may see that when I could command it, I came an humble Suppliant for their Favour.—You may return, and tell 'em ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Eliot—in her; the scenes in which she is brought to shame are scarcely real, living, moving, all the rest of it. But on the other hand is there anything better than Lovelace in the whole range of fiction? Take Lovelace in all or any of his moods—suppliant, intriguing, repentant, triumphant, above all triumphant—and find his parallel if you can. Where, you ask, did the little printer of Salisbury Court—who suggests to Mr. Stephen 'a plump white mouse in a wig'—where did Richardson ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... efforts to suppress it, "I humbly put the question to you, for my slow wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship's sudden new mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a love-sick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the pleasure of kicking me aside, like a ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the suppliant, who stood trembling before him, the priest seemed to ponder the request. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet, crying: "Come with me!" and, seizing Iskender's arm, dragged the terrified youth into the church, of which the door stood open. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... I think there is no man is secure But the queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds That trudge betwixt the king and Mistress Shore. Heard you not what an humble suppliant Lord Hastings was to her ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... designed for the discomfiture of the prude; and, lastly, there is the coachman, whose only concern is the shilling for his fare, and who refuses to lend either of the useless greatcoats he is sitting upon, lest "they should be made bloody," leaving the shivering suppliant to be clothed by the generosity of the postilion ("a Lad," says Fielding with a fine touch of satire, "who hath been since transported for robbing a Hen-roost"). This worthy fellow accordingly strips off his only outer garment, "at the same time swearing a great Oath," for ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... sympathies have seldom vibrated; and, amid the struggles of faction and the anxieties of personal and family ambition, he has turned a deaf ear to the demands of genius, whether she appeared in the humble posture of a suppliant, or in the prouder attitude of ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... dived into the hat-box, and fished up a bit of battered pencil. With an air of pride, she placed the pencil across the outstretched hands of the ivory suppliant, asking the Boy in dumb-show, was not this a pen-rest that might be trusted to melt the heart of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... folly, maiden," said Elizabeth impatiently; for there was something in the extreme confusion of the suppliant which irritated her curiosity, as well as interested her feelings. "The sick man must tell his malady to the physician; nor are WE accustomed to ask questions so oft without receiving ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... safe conduct, and should never set foot in it again: any one who might hereafter be found there was to be the slave of his captor. It must be known that the Lacedaemonians had an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that they should let go the suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth with their children and their wives, and being received by Athens from the hatred that she now felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at Naupactus, which she had lately taken from ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... offender rather than of the offended; is the part of the vanquished rather than of the victor; is the part surely not of the king but of the rebel. And yet here, in the sublime transcending of all human precedent and pattern which characterises the divine dealing, we have the place of the suppliant and of the supplicated inverted, and Love upon the Throne bends down to ask of the rebel that lies powerless and sullen at His feet, and yet is not conquered until his heart be won, though his limbs be manacled, that he would put away all the bitterness out of his heart, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... rose suddenly and faced him. "Will you hear me, Father?" He used the ceremonial title without hesitation, and the Old One said in distress, "The son of Hastur need never speak as a suppliant to the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... and their eyes met. She tried to speak, but it was too late. The boy had crouched down on the floor beside her, and was clasping her knees like a suppliant before ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... aged suppliant's eye, and the calm of holy humility stole over him; the gentle look was again upon his countenance, when a young man of about twenty years, swung open the gate leading to the house, and, approaching, saluted the old man with a cordial ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... transient recognition of the authority of Christ, that fills up the measure of the terms, believing in Jesus. This we shall find no such easy task; and if we trust that we do believe, we should all perhaps do well to cry out in the words of an imploring suppliant (he supplicated not in vain) "Lord help thou our unbelief." We must be deeply conscious of our guilt and misery, heartily repenting of our sins, and firmly resolving to forsake them: and thus penitently "fleeing for refuge to the hope set before us," we must found altogether ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... state. I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of phosphorescent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the 'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal,' scattering seeds over the earth below. At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... prove it. Where does He show Himself? What does He save? What tortures of the heart, what disasters does He turn aside from all and each in the ruin of hearts? Where have we known or handled or embraced anything but His name? God's absence surrounds infinitely and even actually each kneeling suppliant, athirst for some humble personal miracle, and each seeker who bends over his papers as he watches for proofs like a creator; it surrounds the spiteful antagonism of all religions, armed against each other, enormous ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... sorrows, hopes, and joys have been the same— Been one from childhood; but the dream is past, And stern realities at length have cast Our fates asunder. Yet, when thou shalt see Proud ones before thee bend the suppliant knee, And kiss thy garment while they woo thy hand, Spurn not the peasant boy who dared to stand Before thee, in the rapture of his heart, And woo thee as thine equal. Courtly art May find more fitting phrase to charm ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... my soul bleeds for you. Gracious Heaven, So young, of such a noble line, the grandson Of Rudolph, once my lord and emperor, An outcast—murderer—standing at my door, The poor man's door—a suppliant, in despair! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... who escort them, have to eke out by charity. For that purpose, the most attractive person among each party of exiles is delegated—box in hand, but with an armed soldier behind—to beg alms of the benevolent; and Sophie was appointed to be the suppliant for the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... he strove to raise her from her suppliant posture, "mother, this shall not be! look upon that face and know thou pleadest in vain. I will not accept my freedom at such a price; thy knee, thy supplications unto a heart of stone, for me! No, no; mother, dear mother, we will ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... let me remind you how these words are not only a question, but are really a veiled and implied promise. The question, 'What do you want of Me?' may either strike an intending suppliant like a blow, and drive him away with his prayer sticking in his throat unspoken, or it may sound like a merciful invitation, 'What is thy petition, and what is thy request, and it shall be granted unto thee?' We know which of the two it was here. Christ asks all such ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... great Bonynge comes upon the scene And asks the favor of the British Queen. Suppliant he stands and urges all his claim: His wealth, his portly person and his name, His habitation in the setting sun, As child of nature; and his suit he won. No more the Sovereign, wearied with his ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Paul's part as being simply that of the channel for God's power. He prays, and then lays his hands on the sick man. There are no words assuring him of healing. God is invoked, and then His power flows through the hands of the suppliant. So with all our work for men in bringing the better cure with which we are entrusted, we are but channels of the blessing, pipes through which the water of life is brought to thirsty lips. Therefore prayer must precede and accompany all Christian ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of my amazement I am convinced, for, after standing silently for a time and almost in a suppliant attitude before me, Dr. Englehart departed, and for many days I saw ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... had befriended Auletes, and Gabinius, when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne—no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of money—suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal Senators—and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius possessed, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... hurried journey, with black care on the pillion. And meantime, on the other side, the widowed duchess came to Paris, in appropriate mourning, to demand justice for her husband's death. Charles VI., who was then in a lucid interval, did probably all that he could, when he raised up the kneeling suppliant with kisses and smooth words. Things were at a dead-lock. The criminal might be in the sorriest fright, but he was still the greatest of vassals. Justice was easy to ask and not difficult to promise; how it was to be executed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself, if the priest would only signify his wish that way; but he has come there to see that fresco, and see it he will: respecting that he will soon know more than either the priest or his worshippers. Perhaps some servant of the church, coming to him with submissive, almost suppliant gesture, begs him to step back just for one moment. The lover of art glares at him with insulted look, and hardly deigns to notice him further: he merely turns his eye to his Murray, puts his hat down on the altar-step, and goes on studying his subject. All the world—German, Frenchman, Italian, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was touched, his tears began to flow, And, as his tender heart would break in two, He sighed; and could not but their fate deplore, So wretched now, so fortunate before. Then lightly from his lofty steed he flew, And raising one by one the suppliant crew, To comfort each, full solemnly he swore, That by the faith which knights to knighthood bore, And whate'er else to chivalry belongs, He would not cease, till he revenged their wrongs; That Greece should see performed what he declared, And cruel ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... At first he thought of kicking Leather, a feat that his suppliant position made extremely convenient, if not tempting. Prudence, however, suggested that Leather might have him up for the assault. So he stood puffing and wheezing and eyeing the blear-eyed, brandy-nosed old drunkard with, as he thought, a withering ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... ply, reply, imply, plight, suppliant, explicit, implicit, implicate, supplicate, duplicate, duplicity, complicate, complicity, accomplice, application, plait, display, plot, employee, exploit, simple, supple; (2) pliant, pliable, replica, explication, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... time that he is a direct rebel to the Company, arbitrarily and tyrannically displacing Mr. Bristow, although he had previously joined in the approbation of his conduct, and in voting him a pecuniary reward. He is ordered by the Court of Directors to restore that person, who desires, in a suppliant, decent, proper tone, that the Company's orders should produce their effect, and that the Council would have the goodness to restore him ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... still enshrined, thy rites, Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appalls, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure — Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... heart of the manly boy. True chivalric dignity asserted itself in every form when necessity demanded. Her ladyship instantly received permission to remain, with a generous grace that made Johnnie a true hero in the estimation of his fair suppliant. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... held, and with him was his faithful ally Matilda. When they learned of the emperor's approach, however, the papal train turned aside to the nearby fortress of Canossa, one of Matilda's possessions, there to await the royal suppliant. In the immense hall of that great castle, all hung with armor, shining shields and breastplates, and all the varied accoutrements of war, the frowning turrets without and the dark corridors within swarming with the pope's defenders, Henry, the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... leafy boughs, under which it crawled and went to sleep. The next day it was evidently tamer, and more accustomed to the sight of human beings, and after this, the moment he appeared, it came towards him in a suppliant manner to receive its food. In less than a week, it was perfectly tame, and before a month was over, followed him about like a dog, while it became on perfectly friendly terms with the rest of the animals. ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his head and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that suppliant for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that suppliant a look that had passed from the place of accusation to the place of assembly in ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Queen had not long to wait for her revenge. Within eighteen months the monarchy of Louis Philippe, discredited, unpopular, and fatally weakened by the withdrawal of English support, was swept into limbo, while he and his family threw themselves as suppliant fugitives at the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... chamois, across the river to the magic Achensee, up the Zillerthal, across the Schmerner Joch, even to the railway station at Steinach. And in the evenings after the late dinners in the upper hall where the sleepy hounds leaned against our chairs looking at us with suppliant eyes, in the evenings when the fire was dying away in the hooded fireplace in the library, stories. Stories, and legends, and fairy tales, while the stiff old portraits changed countenance constantly under the flickering firelight, and the sound of the drifting Inn came ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... establishes all the power and authority of prayer; and thus causes the soul to repose in the Gods, as in a never failing port. But from these three terms, in which all the divine measures are contained, suppliant adoration not only conciliates to us the friendship of the Gods, but supernally extends to us three fruits, being as it were three Hesperian apples of gold. The first of these pertains to illumination; the second to a communion of operation; but through the energy of the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant |
