E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • More 'Presage' Quotes from Famous Books

— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... Concerning these, they resolved that they must needs have been very bad indeed, since even the beasts themselves would not touch them; which caused an extream sorrow to their Relations, they taking it for an ill boding to their Family, and an infallible presage of some great misfortune hanging over their heads, for they persuaded themselves, that the Souls which inhabited those Bodies being dragg'd into Hell, would not fail to come and trouble them, and that being always accompanied with the Devils, their Tormentors, they ...

— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... shown that he had reconsidered his predictions, and declared that he could not abide by his former alarming conclusions. And we should think very ill of any astronomer who would not rejoice for the sake of his fellow-creatures, if not for his own, to find the threatening presage invalidated in either or both of the ways just mentioned, even though he had committed himself to M. Babinet's ...

— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... large sums were extorted by either party. In 1235 the church was struck by lightning and set on fire, but fortunately a tank of rainwater was close at hand, and the fire was soon extinguished. As the Abbot died eight days afterwards, the accident was looked upon as a presage of his coming death. ...

— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... her doom! so cried in presage then The bodeful bondslave of the king of men, And might not win her will. Too close the entangling dragnet woven of crime, The snare of ill new-born of elder ill, The curse of new time for an elder time, Had caught, and held her ...

— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... his free and gentle vow 30 T'appeare in greater light, and make more plain His rugged oracle. I long to know How my deare mistresse fares, and be inform'd What hand she now holds on the troubled bloud Of her incensed lord: me thought the Spirit 35 (When he had utter'd his perplext presage) Threw his chang'd countenance headlong into clouds; His forehead bent, as it would hide his face, He knockt his chin against his darkned breast, And struck a churlish silence through his pow'rs. 40 Terror of darknesse! O, thou King of flames! ...

— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... in the beginning of June by what they regarded as a fearful sign from Heaven—a shower of what is commonly known as "red rain." In their eyes it was blood, and a presage of dreadful slaughter. The slaughter followed, whatever the shower might mean. The last year of ...

— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... to poor Owen! that necessity of expression, and the visible presage of weakening health so surely fulfilled! And his Lucilla! It was a melancholy work to have brought home a missionary, and secularized a parish priest! 'Not a generous reflection,' thought Honora, 'at a rival's grave,' and she turned to the boy, who had stooped ...

— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... children, before she again betook herself to her weary station, she heard the clatter of the horse's heels over the gateway. The restlessness of her little ones pained her: she imagined she saw, in their instinctive anxiety and fear, some presage of coming evil, whereby, before another night, they might be orphans; and all her efforts to remove the impression only tended to confirm it—thus strangely and fantastically prophetic, is the apprehensive heart. After again assuring them that their father was coming, she ...

— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... fulfilled. I have derived monuments and epitaphs from two sources of feeling: but these do in fact resolve themselves into one. The invention of epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, 'proceeded from the presage of fore-feeling of immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the scholars of Linus the Theban poet, who flourished about the year of the world two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their Master, when he ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... continued to frequent had given him polite manners, to a degree then rare in Berlin. His physiognomy was rather disagreeable than otherwise. A pair of thick black eyebrows almost covered the eyes of him; his look had in it something ominous, presage of the fate he met with: a tawny skin, torn by small-pox, increased his ugliness. He affected the freethinker, and carried libertinism to excess; a great deal of ambition and headlong rashness accompanied this vice." A dangerous adviser here in the Berlin element, ...

— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the scale would turn on neither side. She refused to give any decided answer, but requested a day or two for reflection; and the vicar, who recollected the adage, that, in an affair of the heart, "the woman who deliberates is lost," left her with a happy presage that his endeavours would be crowned with success. But Mrs Rainscourt would not permit her own heart to decide. It was a case in which she did not consider that a woman was likely to be a correct judge; and she had so long been on intimate ...

— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised his error, though he tried not to admit it. The extra subjects ...

— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... other hand, it is desired to do a man honour, how gladly, in like manner, is his name seized on, if it in any way bears an honourable significance, or is capable of an honourable interpretation —men finding in that name a presage and prophecy of that which was actually in its bearer. A multitude of examples, many of them very beautiful, might be brought together in this kind. How often, for instance, and with what effect, the name of Stephen, the proto-martyr, that name signifying ...

— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... his custom was, one hot and thunderous day, in the country lanes; it was very still, and through the soft haze that filled the air, the distant trees and fields lost their remoteness, and stood stiffly and quaintly as though painted. There seemed a presage of storm in the church-tower, which showed a ghostly white among the elms. A fitful breeze stirred at intervals. Hugh drew near the hamlet, and all of a sudden stepped into a stream of inconceivable sweetness and fragrance; ...

— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... outside the grove pressed closer upon the ring of Willamette warriors, who were still standing or squatting idly around it. More than one weapon could be seen among them in defiance of the war-chief's prohibition; and the presage of a terrible storm darkened on those grim, wild faces. The more peaceably disposed bands began to draw themselves apart. An ominous silence crept through the crowd as ...

— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... With good management, a favorable death rate, and very low expenses, some of them have provided protection at very low rates for many years. Others have failed with disappointment and disaster to the older members. Still others are struggling with difficulties that presage dissolution. Many now have some form of reserve accumulations, and some have so improved their methods that they closely resemble reserve companies. The assets of all the assessment companies are now $1.37 per $100 of insurance in force, while the legal reserve companies have $22.66. The assessment ...

— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... his letters, written a year after it was made, he thus balances the difficulties of the question—"The fires of civil war," says he, "are raging in Germany. Shall I then cross the sea whither Wotton invites me? I, a German, a lover of firm land, who dread the confinement of an island, who presage its dangers, and must drag along with me my little wife and flock of children?" As Kepler seems to have entertained no doubt of his being well provided for in England, it is the more probable that the British Sovereign had made him a distinct offer through his ambassador. ...

— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... several small temples and chapels, which had been vowed first by king Tatius, in the heat of the battle against Romulus, and which he afterwards consecrated and dedicated. In the very beginning of founding this work it is said that the gods exerted their divinity to presage the future greatness of this empire; for though the birds declared for the unhallowing of all the other temples, they did not admit of it with respect to that of Terminus. This omen and augury were taken to import that Terminus's not changing his residence, and being the only one ...

— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... Westbridge opened was a very beautiful day. The air was as soft as summer, but with a strange, pungent quality which the summer had lacked. There was a slightly smoky scent which exhilarated. It was a scent of death coming from bonfires of dead leaves and drying vegetation, and yet it seemed to presage life. When Maria and Evelyn went out to take the trolley for Westbridge, Maria wore a cluster of white chrysanthemums pinned to her blouse. The blouse itself was a very pretty one, worn with a black plaited skirt. It was a soft silk of an old-rose shade, and it was trimmed with creamy lace. Maria ...

— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... 945, two male children were brought from Armenia to Constantinople for exhibition. They were well formed in every respect and united by their abdomens. After they had been for some time an object of great curiosity, they were removed by governmental order, being considered a presage of evil. They returned, however, at the commencement of the reign of Constantine VII, when one of them took sick and died. The surgeons undertook to preserve the other by separating him from the corpse of his brother, ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... A presage gripped the man's heart, drawing powerfully at its strings with pain, yet with delicious hope and joy as ...

— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... Huntress, sister of Apollo, Who the dappled swift-foot deer O'er the wooded glade dost follow; Help with your two-fold power Athens in danger's hour! O wayfarer, thou wilt not have to tax The friends who watch for thee with false presage, For lo, an escort with the maids draws near. [Enter ANTIGONE and ...

— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... within their own bosoms the regrets and murmurs of the popish clergy; submission and a simulated loyalty were at present obviously their only policy: thus not a whisper breathed abroad but of joy and gratulation and happy presage of the ...

— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... pop over to London for a day or two with a steamer trunk, another trunk, a black box, a suit-case, and a small brown bag. Lady Underhill had evidently come prepared to stay; and the fact seemed to presage trouble. ...

— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... the athlete on both cheeks. "I leave you to faithful guardians. Last night I dreamed of a garland of lilies, sure presage of a victory. So ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... learn to echo Rochefoucauld's words as he entered Mazarin's carriage,—'everything happens in France;' and, like Goethe, cast ourselves on the waves of accident with a more than Quixotic presage,—if not of actual adventure, at least of adventurous observation; for it is a realm where Fashion, the capricious tyrant of modern civilization, has her birth, where the 'vielle femme remplissait ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Japanese H[o]-w[o], the second of the incarnations of the spirits, is of wondrous form and mystic nature. The rare advent of this bird upon the earth is, like that of the kirin or unicorn, a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers and good government. It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise, and the features of the dragon and fish. Its colors and streaming feathers are gorgeous with iridian sheen, ...

— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... reserve when amongst others, but I found that he had a strong foreboding of evil; he tossed and muttered in his sleep, and confessed to having had a wretched night of dreams, though he would not describe them otherwise than that he had seen the lady whose face he always looked on as a presage of evil. ...

— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... departure. "Our friend sleepeth." "They thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep." They understood it as the indication of the crisis-hour in sickness when the disease has spent itself, and is succeeded by a balmy slumber—the presage of returning health; but now He says unto them plainly, "Lazarus is dead." How gently He thus breaks the sad intelligence! And it is His method of dealing still. He prepares His people for their hours of trial. ...

— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... no disaster took place subsequently it was believed that if the occurrence was repeated it would be an omen of good fortune. On the other hand, the fall of a house had been preceded by the birth of a child without a mouth; the same result, it was supposed, would again accompany the same presage of evil. These pseudo-scientific observations had been commenced at a very early period of Babylonian history, and were embodied in a great work which was compiled for the library of Sargon ...

— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... patriot, the generous visions of manhood. They are full of the romance of boyish friendships, the echoes of the river and the cricket field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field. Thus he wrote in ...

— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... threaten to burst out like burning lava long repressed, he rushed precipitately from the room. Basilio heard him descend the stairs with unsteady tread, stepping heavily, he heard a stifled cry, a cry that seemed to presage death, so solemn, deep, and sad that he arose from his chair pale and trembling, but he could hear the footsteps die away and the noisy closing of the door ...

— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... daughter; and certainly beloved by me more than paternally, and enveloped in my retirement and solitude as one of the best parts of my own being: I have no longer regard to anything in this world but her. And if a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very great things; and amongst others, of the perfection of that sacred friendship, to which we do not read that any of her sex could ever yet arrive; ...

— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress and predicting the immediate ruin of their country. These birds of evil presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song; and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the periods of our most abundant prosperity. Very early in my public life I had occasion to make ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... (4,5) [This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 'tis!)] [W: presage 'tis] This emendation is ingenious, perhaps preferable to the present reading, yet since passage may be fairly enough explained, I have left it in the text. Passage is anything that passes, so we now say, a passage of an authour. ...

— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... ingenious and industrious. The conjunction of two such planets in a youth presage much good unto him. To such a lad a frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death; yea, where their master whips them once, shame whips them all the week after. Such natures he ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... a martyr, the tragedy shew'd, As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage. And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood, As his words do presage; as ...

— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... Biargey all that had happened, and took to his bed again, a poor, old, helpless, miserable man; but his wife, who saw her presage beginning to come true, kept up her courage, rowed out fishing every day, and guided the household for yet ...

— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... pleasant little eyes shone with unnatural anger, and there was a presage of wrathful words in her quivering lips. Mrs. Frump was desperately trying to keep back certain private opinions that she had long entertained, but proved unequal to the effort. She ...

— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... its plain, heroic completeness is touched with a stately life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote Balder Dead in his most fortunate hour, and that Merope is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective drama—the presentation of character through action—is impossible; to a ...

— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... been engaged, at a huge expense, to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence. So the celestial arch vanished in the echo of a horse-laugh. But Bressant and Cornelia, as they stood silently arm-in-arm, felt as if it were rather the presage of an emancipation of their own selves. From, or to what, they did not ask; nor did the old superstition, that such signs foretell ruin and disaster, recur to their ...

— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... experiencing many dangers, he landed in Italy. Being full of uncertainty where to fix his colony, he was reduced to great distress; on which his wife, whose name was Aithrias, with the view of comforting him, embraced him, and bedewed his face with her tears. He immediately adopted the presage, and understood the spot where he then was to be the ...

— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... companion—the one act of violence which sullies a strangely gentle career; and outraged at the affront of a flogging, he fled with twelve guineas and a gold repeater watch. A vulgar theft this, and no presage of future greatness; yet it proves the fearless greed, the contempt of private property, which mark as with a stigma the temperament of the prig. His faculty did not rust long for lack of use, and at Drogheda, when he was but sixteen, he encountered ...

— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... seemed rich with mystic presage. Pleadingly my hands went out to her, and trustfully she put hers into them. Slowly I backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings. Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance; and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet ...

— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... however, has never forgotten the cause of its birth or the teachings of its youth, as is clearly evidenced from year to year by the various undertakings and publications which a careful observer can clearly see are not put forward with any presage of success when viewed entirely from a business standpoint. This lesson is constantly taught to the employes of the Library Bureau, and they are positively instructed that, regardless of the promise of success in other directions, the ...

— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... Of one beloved on earth; or when at night In dreams it comes, and brings with it the DAYS And JOYS that are no more, Or when, perchance With power permitted to alleviate ill And fit the sufferer for the coming woe, Some strange presage the SPIRIT breathes, and fills The breast with ominous fear, and disciplines For sorrow, pours into the afflicted heart The balm of resignation, and inspires With heavenly hope. Even as a Child delights To visit ...

— Poems • Robert Southey

... no more. Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage; Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin ...

— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... grass within reach of them, I crept to the wall of the kraal so as to be quite out of earshot. The night was now pitch dark, dark as it only knows how to be in Africa. More, a thunderstorm was coming up of which that flash of sheet lightning had been a presage. The air was electric. From the vast bush-clad valley beneath us came a wild, moaning sound caused, I suppose, by wind among the trees, though here I felt none; far away a sudden spear of lightning stabbed ...

— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... of our departure, presents were made to us as a token of gratitude, and of course the Indians, having at the first moment of their confederation, made such a successful and profitable expedition, accepted it as a good presage for the future. Their services being no longer required, they turned towards the north, and started for the settlement under the command of Roche, to follow up their original intentions of visiting the Shoshones. As for us, I ...

— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... to seek shelter under a bluff in our front, along the base of which ran a small streamlet. The greater portion of the brigade was here huddled together in a jam, to avoid the shells flying overhead. The enemy must have had presage of our position, for they began throwing shells up in the air from their mortars and dropping them down upon us, but most fell beyond, while a great many exploded in the air. We could see the shells on their downward flight, and the men pushed still closer together ...

— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... impressed when she learned that this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings; for such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of his character; never were curious glances so well justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed ...

— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... under a firm persuasion of immortality! Themistocles might have lived at his ease; so might Epaminondas; and, not to look abroad and among the ancients for instances, so might I myself. But, somehow or other there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages; and this both exists most firmly, and appears most clearly, in men of the loftiest genius and greatest souls. Take away this, and who would be so mad as to spend his life amidst toils and dangers? ...

— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... moon, moved round the mansion in a direction opposite to that of the sun, and continued its revolution until the domestics retired to rest. This apparition appeared every night for a week, and was pronounced by certain wise sages as a presage of pestilence and death. A herdsman at the mansion was, shortly after the lady's death, persecuted by demons, and one morning he was found dead in bed. One Thorer, who himself had predicted that the apparitions were come to give warning of approaching ...

— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... turning into the sombre courtway of the old Palazzo Santonini and, so surely had she been attuned to the American note, she could presage Johnny's blunt disparagement. He would be astonished that they were living upon the third floor—with the lower apartment let. He would be amused at the servants toiling up the stairs from the kitchens to the dining hall. He would ...

— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to the idea prevailing in the western counties, are supposed to presage good luck, and are therefore most carefully preserved. Their presence is believed to be a sure omen of prosperity; while, on the other hand, their sudden departure from a hearth which has long echoed with their cry, betokens approaching ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... worship him.' I could not understand, but followed them to the Damascus Gate; and of every person they met on the way—of the guard at the Gate, even—they asked the question. All who heard it were amazed like me. In time I forgot the circumstance, though there was much talk of it as a presage of the Messiah. Alas, alas! What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart. ...

— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing gear and rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone sighed and climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for him at the airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time; Malone remembered calling Dr. O'Connor the night before, and congratulated himself on ...

— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... if we may credit tradition, this mountain broke out again so furiously, that its cinders and liquid fire were carried as far as Constantinople; which prodigy was thought, by superstitious minds, to presage the destruction of the empire, that happened immediately after, by that inundation of Goths, which ...

— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... says, all the whole Court is disturbed; it having been once concluded otherwise into the other hands formerly mentioned in yesterday's notes, but all of a sudden the King's choice was changed, and these are to be the men: the first of which is only for a puppet to give honour to the rest. He do presage that these men will make it their business to find faults in the management of the late Lord Treasurer, and in discouraging the bankers: but I am (whatever I in compliance do say to him) of another mind, and my heart is very glad of it, for I do expect they will do ...

— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... zeal and rapidity never before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that has ever yet ...

— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... was constantly verified by all our observations in these high latitudes,* that fair weather was always of an exceeding short duration, and that when it was remarkably fine it was a certain presage of a succeeding storm; for the calm and sunshine of our afternoon ended in a most turbulent night, the wind freshening from the south-west as the night came on, and increasing its violence continually ...

— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... How strange the stars have grown; The presage of extinction glows on their crests And they are beautied with impermanence; They shall be after the race of men And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions, Entangled in the ...

— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... said was remembered to his injury. He had preached the doctrine of an "irrepressible conflict" between the forces of slavery and the forces of freedom, and timid men dreaded such a trial as his nomination would presage. The South had made continuous assault on this speech, and on the particular phrase which distinguished it, and had impressed many Northern men with the belief that Mr. Seward had gone too far. In short, he had been too ...

— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... excellence, beauty, and truth where pessimists see only degradation, vice, and ugliness. The one hears the nightingale, the other the raven only. To one, the sunsetting forms a magic picture; to the other, it is but a presage of bad weather tomorrow. Some people seem to look at nature through a glass of red wine or in a Claude Lorraine mirror; to them the landscape has ever the bloom of summer or a spring-tide grace. To others, it is always cloudy, dreary, dull. The desolate ravine, the stony path, the blighted ...

— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... too serious to be lightly spoken of,' said they, significantly; 'and this dispute is a sad presage of future events; and well will it be if the anger of the Most High is not provoked ...

— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... was once more lifting his voice above the crowd of minor singers. The mighty verse swept Odo out to open seas of thought, and from his vision of that earlier Italy, hapless, bleeding, but alive and breast to breast with the foe, he drew the presage of his country's resurrection. ...

— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... the town, so neatly built, so strategically situated, was "honoured with 5 Governors in Consultation; a happy presage I hope, [wrote George Washington to William Fairfax at Williamsburg] not only of the success of this Expedition, but for our little Town; for surely such honours must have arisen from the Commodious and pleasant situation of this place the best constitutional ...

— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... As with all superstition, the sign is not merely the prediction of an event; it is felt that as the avoidance of the omen would be to escape its consequence, so the careless action, in becoming the presage of calamity, is likewise its cause. Here appear natural antinomies of human thought: on the one hand, the sense of the inevitableness of the designated fate; on the other hand, the consciousness of ability by altering conditions ...

— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... and gloomy screen; the mournful twittering of the warbling birds bespoke anxiety and alarm; the hoarse rushing of the wind threatened destruction to the woods; the flowers of the fields began to droop; the sun withdrew his light from the world beneath, and all seemed to presage a day of grief and bitterness—save in the home where the fair Sol arose, like another Circe, from her couch, and sallied forth, seeming to temper by her enchanting presence the angry frowns of the elements without. In the house of Hachuel was a chamber, set apart for devotional purposes. ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... eighth year passed The careful King bethought to teach his son All that a Prince should learn, for still he shunned The too vast presage of those miracles, The glories and the sufferings of a Buddh. So, in full council of his Ministers, "Who is the wisest man, great sirs," he asked, "To teach my Prince that which a Prince should know?" Whereto gave answer each with instant voice "King! Viswamitra is the ...

— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... few feet from the unconscious stranger, was regarding him with the gentle speculative look which Bowers knew to presage mischief. It was not difficult to interpret Mary's intentions, and Bowers was fully aware that it was his duty either to warn the sleeper or reprimand Mary. His eyes, however, had the fondness of a doting parent who takes a secret pride in his offspring's ...

— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... me; 'Foe to our rights; that leaves a pow'rful few 'The paths of emulation to pursue:... 'For emulation stoops to us no more: 'The hope of humble industry is o'er; 'The blameless hope, the cheering sweet presage 'Of future comforts for declining age. 'Can my sons share from this paternal hand 'The profits with the labours of the land? 'No; tho' indulgent Heaven its blessing deigns, 'Where's the small farm to suit my scanty means? 'Content, the Poet sings, with us resides; ...

— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... dismal tidings when he frown'd: Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill, For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thund'ring sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around— And still they ...

— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... impressions, it is strange and worth thinking on that the dominant suggestion of Nature through all her changes, whether her mood be stormy or sunny, melancholy or jubilant, is one of presage and promise. She seems to be ever holding out to us an immortal invitation to follow and endure, to endure and to enjoy. She seems to say that what she brings us is but an earnest of what she holds for us out there along the vanishing road. There is nothing, ...

— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... I pray God keep you, for I dimly fear, So dark a presage doth obscure my mind, That we ...

— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... Holy Isle."— Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents from his wounded side. "Then it was truth!" he said,—"I knew That the dark presage must be true.— I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs, Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone, Might bribe him for delay. It may not be!—this ...

— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... Or, "shouting in presage of their doom," as Heyne and Kennedy would take it, a meaning borne out by [Greek: proidosin]. Cf. Longus. Past. ii. 12: [Greek: oi kometai tarachthentes, epipedosin autois ...

— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... what once was called a hunch, a premonition, the presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred feet away. ...

— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... impress him more and more with the conviction of his innocence, had much difficulty to support his assumed character; but not choosing his visit to the prison should be known at present, he restrained his feelings, and when the minister had finished took his leave, saying, he hoped his presage would be fulfilled. He then returned undiscovered to the palace, and entering his cabinet, resumed his usual habit; after which he issued orders for the release of the vizier, sending him a robe of honour and splendid attendants to escort him to court, at the same time condemning to ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... tears with his. Some incidents in reference to him in that early period, and some interesting and useful conversations I had with him, then deeply impressed on my mind, and which the lapse of near half a century has not yet obliterated, afforded no doubtful presage of his future greatness and celebrity. On my going into the family, as far as I can judge, he might be in his twelfth or thirteenth year, a boy in the rector's class. However elevated above the other boys in genius, though generally ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... the traitor doth presage his harm, See how he glories at his own decay, See how he triumphs at his proper loss; O ...

— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... of the disease, that is, in the one corresponding with the completion of maturation, and the absorption and drying away of the pus in the simple distinct form of small pox. After some experience, we were enabled, from the appearance of the eruption at the outset, to presage the event, which in the above described kinds, ...

— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... violent in the quarter of the royal residence, the site of the ancient palace of the Moorish kings. Many looked upon this as an omen of some impending evil; but Fray Antonio Agapida, in that infallible spirit of divination which succeeds an event, plainly reads in it a presage that the empire of the Moors was about to be ...

— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... rather more than forty-four years since we declared our independence, and thirty-seven since it was acknowledged. The talents and virtues which were displayed in that great struggle were a sure presage of all that has since followed. A people who were able to surmount in their infant state such great perils would be more competent as they rose into manhood to repel any which they might meet in their progress. ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... When Oliver Cromwell was in election to be member for the town of Cambridge, as he engaged all his friends and interests to oppose it; so when it was carried but by one vote, he cried out with much passion, that, that single vote had ruined church and kingdom[1], such fatal events did he presage from the success of Oliver. Mr. Cleveland was no sooner forced from the College, by the prevalence of the Parliament's interest, but he betook himself to the camp, and particularly to Oxford the head quarters of it, as the most proper ...

— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... I think it is the heat or some presage of woe to come, not to me only, but to all men. Look, nature herself is sick," and she led him to the broad balcony of the chamber and pointed to long lines of curious mist which in the bright moonlight they could see creeping toward Venice from the ocean, although what ...

— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... close the ceremonies of the holy day. Still the declining sun glowed with unnatural intensity of hue; and the evening breeze swept over the town in unusually fitful and stormy gusts. The air seemed to be laden with mysterious melancholy, to sigh with a hidden presage of some awful calamity ...

— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... Not one of those who were hurrying to wish the travelers God-speed, nor any of the band who were leaving their homes, but felt the thrilling promise and the presage of that new country toward which the emigrants were about to ...

— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... stood upon; and called Carthada,(572) or Carthage, a name that, in the Phoenician and Hebrew tongues, (which have a great affinity,) signifies the New City. It is said, that when the foundations were dug, a horse's head was found, which was thought a good omen, and a presage of the future ...

— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... our way drinking a great deale of milke, which I drank to take away, my heartburne, wherewith I have of late been mightily troubled, but all the way home I did break abundance of wind behind, which did presage no good but a great deal of cold gotten. So home and supped and away went Michell and his wife, of whom I stole two or three salutes, and so to bed in some pain and in fear of more, which accordingly I met with, for ...

— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... deepens the darkness which is in front. We can see but little at a time, and heed that little far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next; ever peering curiously through the glare of the present into the gloom of the future, we presage the leading lines of that which is before us, by faintly reflected lights from dull mirrors that are behind, and stumble on as we may till the trap- door opens beneath us and we ...

— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... Severinus' presage was strangely fulfilled. Feva had handed over the city of Vienna to his brother Frederic,—"poor and impious," says Eugippius. Severinus, who knew him well, sent for him, and warned him that he himself ...

— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... don't say that!" exclaimed Eric in a heart- broken voice; "you are not ill, you are not ailing, mother dear?" and he peered anxiously with a loving gaze into her eyes, to try and read some meaning there for the sorrowful presage that had escaped thus inadvertently from her lips, drawn forth by the ...

— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Ricketts has pointed to that of Antonello da Messina in the portraits of young men at Vienna (1505) and at Hampton Court (1506). The former of these has an allegorical sketch of Avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the Venetian school, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment by Giorgione which Duerer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. The latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the Feast of Rose Wreaths ...

— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... when the aged man arose And met Romara's wistful eye,— What accents shall the change disclose That marked his visage, fearfully?— From joy to grief and deepest dole, From radiant hope to dark presage Of future ills beyond control— Hath passed, the ...

— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... proved bound by other ties. Her dream so far had come true. She had found him; he loved her. The rest of it would as surely follow, and that before long. For dreams were serious things, and time had proved hers to have been not a presage of misfortune, but one of the beneficent visions that are sent, that we may enjoy by anticipation the good things that are in store ...

— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... instant for this important information to sink in. Several slight, little sighs of relief escaped the students, especially from the girls' side of the great room. This speech did not presage anything very ...

— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... some fool dispelled it by discovering the gun to be a "creuzot" which had been purchased in France by the Transvaal. But it mattered little where it had been purchased; it was a tangible reality, a presage of sanguinary import. It was a time for action; and maybe the picks and shovels did not rise to the occasion! Fort-making was the rage; the men worked with a will—the women acting as hod-carriers—to ...

— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... unblighted Honor and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... and there was only one way to do that—talk to her. He must persuade her to come and live with him. She would, he thought. She admitted that she liked him. That soft, yielding note in her character which had originally attracted him seemed to presage that he could win her without much difficulty, if he wished to try. He decided to do so, anyhow, for ...

— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... royal alliance for Louis. He often expressed regret at the precipitate marriages of his sisters. It should be recollected that we were now in the year which saw the Consulship for life established, and which, consequently, gave presage of the Empire. Napoleon said truly to the companions of his exile that "Louis' marriage was the result of Josephine's intrigues," but I cannot understand how he never mentioned the intention he once had of uniting Hortense to Duroc. It has been erroneously stated that the First Consul believed ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... all that they carried. At that place many of their Christian captives were recovered. At this time, in the middle of the night, a strange thing happened, almost prophetic of the misfortune to those Moros, and apparently a presage of their fall and destruction. There was an earthquake, so sudden and so terrible that it was plainly felt upon the sea; and a rumbling which sounded as if some aperture of hell were opening. All our soldiers were thoroughly terrified at ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... an hour after, that my father suddenly, after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, and ...

— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... When Zein ul Asnam saw these portents, his joints trembled and he was sore affrighted, for that he beheld a thing he had never in all his life seen nor heard. But Mubarek laughed at him and said to him, "Fear not, O my lord; this whereat thou art affrighted is that which we seek; nay, it is a presage of good to-us. So take heart and be of good cheer." After this there came a great clearness and serenity and there breathed pure and fragrant breezes; then, presently, behold, there appeared the King of the Jinn in the semblance of a ...

— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... into the same waiting-room. This seemed to her a favourable presage, and she offered up a prayer that Monsignor would not refuse to see her; everything depended on that. She listened for his step; twice she was mistaken; at last the door opened. It was he, and he guessed, before she had time ...

— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe!' and 'Here's to British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America!' Of course they were standing toasts. The men who drank them already felt the presage of Pitt's great Empire Year ...

— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... sad presage of an approaching famine (as one well observes), not of bread nor water, but of hearing the word of God, when the thin ears of corn devour the plump full ones; when the lean kine devour the fat ones; when our controversies about ...

— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan

... adequately fulfilled. I have derived monuments and epitaphs from two sources of feeling: but these do in fact resolve themselves into one. The invention of epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, 'proceeded from the presage of fore-feeling of immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the scholars of Linus the Theban poet, who flourished about the year of the world two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... disappear. And then, while Gawayne dressed, there came a knock Upon his chamber door. He threw the lock, And a boy page brought robes of ermine fur And Tarsic silk,—black, white, and lavender,— For his array, and with them a kind message, Which the good knight received with no ill presage: "Will brave Sir Gawayne spare an idle hour For quiet converse in my lady's bower?" The boy led on, and Gawayne followed him Through crooked corridors and archways dim, Along low galleries echoing ...

— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... grew clammy with the slimy ooze That fester'd on the walls in sick'ning streams, As on the pallid brow Death's icy dews Gather, the presage of corruption's seams; Pale horror every sound and motion glues, So corpse-like all around the dungeon seems; But on—and a low portal met her hand, By iron staunchions in quaint ...

— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... hope so, dearest. Yet this strange presage of coming evil, this shadow which I so often seem to see, appears so real, so ...

— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... passed, and another Sunday came,—a Sunday so still and hot and moist that steam seemed to rise from the heavy trees,—an idle day for master and servant alike. A hush was in the air, and a presage of we knew not what. It weighed upon my spirits, and even Nick's, and we wandered restlessly under ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Already a presage of evil seemed to be forming itself in his mind. He would have given anything to have thought of some ...

— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... it you say?" cried she, in a piercing voice. "Did you say it hath caused the death of three men? Quick! Tell me what has happened, for I feel somehow a presage that you bring me news of safety and ...

— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... the beginning of June by what they regarded as a fearful sign from Heaven—a shower of what is commonly known as "red rain." In their eyes it was blood, and a presage of dreadful slaughter. The slaughter followed, whatever the shower might mean. The last year ...

— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... and immediately did she feel her mind filled with a train of shocking and fearful reminiscences. Her physical sufferings were also great. She felt benumbed and chilled; her heart was cold, and a shivering sickness ran through her whole frame, with a deadly presage of approaching dissolution. She looked up to the sky, then round her at the graves, and in a moment recognized the burying-place of her husband and children. All the circumstances then connected with the Extermination scene at Drum Dim, and that of the treble death in the mountains, rushed ...

— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... surface of the sea. Huge banks of dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and a hot unnatural closeness seemed to pervade the atmosphere, as if a storm were about to burst upon the scene. Everything, above and below, seemed to presage war—alike elemental and human—and the various leaders of the several expeditions felt that the approaching night would tax their powers and ...

— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... of a youthful life. As with all superstition, the sign is not merely the prediction of an event; it is felt that as the avoidance of the omen would be to escape its consequence, so the careless action, in becoming the presage of calamity, is likewise its cause. Here appear natural antinomies of human thought: on the one hand, the sense of the inevitableness of the designated fate; on the other hand, the consciousness of ability ...

— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... conflict at the harbour mouth. Even in the darkness, against the still faintly grey western sky, the spume could be seen rising like waterspouts. But it was the ear rather than the eye which made certain presage of disaster. No boat could face the challenge of ...

— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... she chose a piece of pure organ music—the exquisitely simple Largo of the Second Sonata. From that she passed on to the Pastoral itself, opening it, as of custom, with the fine Andante movement—the presage ...

— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... providential appointment commonly preceded and facilitated by the setting in of a certain current in men's thoughts and feelings in that direction toward which a change is to be made. And, as lighter substances whirl about before the tempest and presage it, so words and deeds, ominous but not effective of the coming revolution, are circulated beforehand through the multitude or pass across the field of events. This was specially the case with Christianity, as became its high dignity; it came heralded and ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... and social system, which has come down to us from savage antiquity, undermined by the modern humane spirit, riddled by the criticism of economic science, is shaking the world with convulsions that presage its collapse. ...

— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... a light carried by a man on horseback. But if this were true where was the clatter of the horse's hoofs? On that rocky blur no horse could run noiselessly. It could not be a horse. Fascinated and troubled by this new mystery which seemed to presage evil to them the watchers waited with that patience known only to those accustomed to danger. They knew that whatever it was, it was some satanic stratagem of the savages, and that it would come all ...

— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Buller and Clery and the increasing concentration of troops now began to presage an important and, it was hoped, decisive movement. Visual communication was being held nightly with General White, and a combined action seemed quite possible. It was recognised, however, that the Boer position at Colenso could not be taken by direct frontal attack, and that ...

— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... which, with myself and (I can answer for it) with every one of my colleagues, will have their just weight. But at present these considerations all operate one way; at present there is nothing from which we can presage a favourable disposition to change in the French councils. There is the greatest reason to rely on powerful co-operation from our allies; there are the strongest marks of a disposition in the interior of France to active resistance against this new tyranny; and there is every ground to believe, ...

— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... physical and moral daring to the field of theological and political speculation, it is easy today to select, among the writings of the earliest colonists, certain radical utterances which seem to presage the very temper of the late eighteenth century. Pastor John Robinson's farewell address to the Pilgrims at Leyden in 1620 contained the famous words: "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word. I cannot sufficiently bewail ...

— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... and unattainable pinnacles that are known as the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopeful presage of blood. ...

— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany

... it, yielded an income of six or eight thousand livres a year, and constituted the general's entire fortune. Roland's departure on this adventurous expedition deeply afflicted the poor widow. The death of the father seemed to presage that of the son, and Madame de Montrevel, a sweet, gentle Creole, was far from possessing the stern virtues of ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village{8} all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides{9} presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:{10} In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the ...

— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... babe, her eye dissolved in dew; The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child ...

— Familiar Quotations • Various

... pleasd with it, because I am sure you could not be comfortable in your house at Dedham in the cold Season. When we shall return to our Habitation in Boston, if ever, is uncertain. The Barbarity of our Enemies in the Desolations they have wantonly made at Falmouth and elsewhere, is a Presage of what will probably befall that Town which has so long endur'd the Rage of a merciless Tyrant. It has disgracd the Name of Britain, and added to the Character of the Ministry, another indelible Mark of Infamy. We must be content to suffer the ...

— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... the Whitechapel Countess . . . the whole story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny was retold, and it formed a terrific halo, presage of rains and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl had incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had a son and a daughter born aboard:—in wedlock, we trust. The girl may be as wild a one as ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... never forgotten the cause of its birth or the teachings of its youth, as is clearly evidenced from year to year by the various undertakings and publications which a careful observer can clearly see are not put forward with any presage of success when viewed entirely from a business standpoint. This lesson is constantly taught to the employes of the Library Bureau, and they are positively instructed that, regardless of the promise of success ...

— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... with the aid of memory so definitely discerned that they could hardly have been more distinct by noonday,—a face of inexplicably sinister omen. "Oh, why did I see it to-day!" she exclaimed, the presage of ill fortune strong upon her, with that grisly mask leering at her from across the valley. But the day was well-nigh gone; only a scant space remained in which to work the evil intent of fate. She seated herself anew, for in the shadowy labyrinth of the woods her path ...

— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... dull, close, overcast summer evening. The clouds, which had been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish mass of vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed to presage a violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, turning out of the main street of the town, directed their course towards a scattered little colony of ruinous houses, distant from it some mile and a-half, or thereabouts, and erected on a low unwholesome swamp, bordering ...

— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... have been entrusted with its execution; since it will from hence appear, that the accidents the expedition was afterwards exposed to, and which prevented it from producing all the national advantages the strength of the squadron and the expectation of the public seemed to presage, were principally owing to a series of interruptions, which delayed the commander in the course of his preparations, and which it exceeded his utmost industry either to ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... the young man turned back, without another word, springing away, over the graveled walks. Nadine's face grew ashen white, as the presage of coming disaster ...

— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... her babe, her eyes dissolved in dew, The big drops mingled with the milk he drew Gave the sad presage of his future years— The child of ...

— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... under ground, or waters forcing way, Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat, Half sunk with all his pines. Amazement seised The rebel Thrones, but greater rage, to see Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, and shout, Presage of victory, and fierce desire Of battle: Whereat Michael bid sound The Arch-Angel trumpet; through the vast of Heaven It sounded, and the faithful armies rung Hosanna to the Highest: Nor stood at gaze The adverse legions, nor ...

— Paradise Lost • John Milton

— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... custom was, one hot and thunderous day, in the country lanes; it was very still, and through the soft haze that filled the air, the distant trees and fields lost their remoteness, and stood stiffly and quaintly as though painted. There seemed a presage of storm in the church-tower, which showed a ghostly white among the elms. A fitful breeze stirred at intervals. Hugh drew near the hamlet, and all of a sudden stepped into a stream of inconceivable sweetness and fragrance; ...

— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and his prevision consequently very vague; in others he himself may see clearly, but may find his lower vehicles so unimpressible that all he can succeed in getting through into his physical brain may be an indefinite presage of coming disaster. Again, there are cases in which a premonition is not the work of the Ego at all, but of some outside entity, who for some reason takes a friendly interest in the person to whom the feeling comes. In ...

— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... our unhappy companions; we did not presage, at this moment, the still more terrible scene which was to take place the following night; far from that, we enjoyed a degree of satisfaction, so fully were we persuaded that the boats would come to our relief. The day was fine, and the most perfect tranquillity prevailed ...

— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... kind, or, if severe in aught, 205 The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew: 'Twas certain he could write, and cypher[17] too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,[18] And even the story ran that he could gauge:[19] 210 In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For, even though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 215 ...

— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... standing at a man's left hand, it is a presage that she will be his wife, whether they be married to others, or unmarried at the time of ...

— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Queen's Accession to the Throne, and the first Year in which that Day was solemnly observed, (for, by some Accident or other, it had been overlook'd the Year before;) and every one will see, without the date of it, that it was preached very early in this Reign, since I was able only to promise and presage its future Glories and Successes, from the good Appearances of things, and the happy Turn our Affairs began to take; and could not then count up the Victories and Triumphs that, for seven Years after, made it, ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... women, Jean made his final adieus and strode down the pebbled drive to the gate, a sturdy, purposeful figure, despite his years. To the three who watched him almost out of sight, the determined set of his broad shoulders in itself seemed to presage ...

— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... repentance and contrition might soften vengeance"). He can now pray for mercy and in his dying moments is vouchsafed assurance of forgiveness ("Yet Heaven is gracious—I ask'd for hope, as the bright presage of forgiveness, and like a light, blazing thro' darkness, it came ...

— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... awoke at one o'clock the next day. The doctor was very pleased at her long and sound sleep, the like of which the old lady had not enjoyed since her first collapse, and which, in his view, was certain to presage a turn for ...

— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... frieze and vault, the loving modeling of sculpture, the artistic planning of vistas, the inspired brushing of murals—are marvelous beyond my telling. It is an outpouring of the arts before the altar of humanity. It is a presage of what men can do when they ...

— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt

... been walking down a street of modest homes; the bare trees groped into a sky clear and blue with the first chill presage of winter. A quick step fell unheeded by his side; the girl passed, ...

— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament, being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war, and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the south-east. The west side has one clerestory window beneath a great unmoulded arch, and a circular-headed door below, the jambs of which are made of earlier fragments; the late belfry is of three arches, two and one; beneath is an unusual curved ornamentation, a curious presage of the "New Art" of a few years ago. The church appears to have been restored in the fourteenth century, since a consecration by Bishop Doimo II. is recorded in 1368; but it has been a Greek church since 1689, was ...

— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... out his tracks from detecting his hidden retreat? Wunpost knew the ravens well, for no man ever crossed Death Valley without hearing the whish of black wings, but he wondered now if this early morning visit did not presage disaster to come. What the ravens really sought for he knew all too well, for he had seen their knotted tracks by dead forms; yet somehow their passage conjured up thoughts in his brain which had never disturbed him before. They were birds of death, rapacious and evil-bringing, and they ...

— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... gravel became of a heavier nature. Their pace slackened; Pepin threw all his weight on to the stick, and they pulled up. Dorothy saw that they were now about half-way down—they must have dropped about three hundred feet in a matter of seconds. Then something that to Dorothy seemed to presage the end of all things happened. There was a roar as of thunder over their heads. Looking up as they still lay prone they beheld a terrifying spectacle. A huge rock was bounding down upon them from the heights above. It gathered force as it came, rising high in the air in a series of ...

— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... for food, and in that hour Each drew a presage from his dream. When I 'Heard locked beneath me of that ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... as it were, a Presage in his own Breast, of the Misfortune impending from his accepting Laertes's Challenge, is beautiful; and we are to note, that our Author in several of his Plays, has brought in the chief Personages as having a sort of prophetick Idea of their Death; as ...

— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... delicate tints or colours, with soft undefined forms of clouds, foretell fine weather: but gaudy or unusual hues, with hard, definite outlines, presage rain ...

— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... of a king; and when in conformity to the usage of the country he was, a few days after his birth, presented before the altar of a deity, the image is said to have inclined its head as a presage of the future greatness of the new-born prophet. The child soon developed faculties of the first order, and became equally distinguished by the uncommon beauty of his person. No sooner had he grown to years of maturity than ...

— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... suddenly dissolved at the death of an unfortunate but undistinguished servant. The motive of the threnody was somewhat too obvious, and many minds passed from the memory of Tiberius's death to the thought of the doom which this little drama was meant to presage for his brother. ...

— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... so much as a backward glance to presage future favour. So may a lady, if she plays her game well, ...

— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... child. I say of my master, as did the holy Apostles: 'Let us also go, that we may die with him.' I feel a heavy presage. But I must not trouble you, child. Early in the morning I will be up and away. I go with this youth, whose pathway lies a certain distance along mine, and whose company I seek for his good as well ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... the streets of Galway-town, When night had let her dusky curtains down, And in a doorway, tall and fair and slight, Framed by an inner beam of golden light, Beheld a maiden of madonna face, Pensive and sad, yet with a nameless grace, Presage, I thought, of the unfolding years, That hide some things that are ...

— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... was approaching to the camp of the enemy. Biron and his soldiers, elated with successes obtained in Ireland, had entertained the most profound contempt for the parliamentary forces; a disposition which, if confined to the army, may be regarded as a good presage of victory; but if it extend to the general, is the most probable forerunner of a defeat. Fairfax suddenly attacked the camp of the royalists. The swelling of the river by a thaw divided one part ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... Sound. With Vigour and Alacrity they started from their Prayers, or their Despair, and with all imaginable Speed, unlash'd the Rudder, and hoisted all their Sails. Never sure in Nature did one Minute produce a greater Scene of Contraries. The more skilful Sailors took Courage at this happy Presage of Deliverance. And according to their Expectation did it happen; that heavenly Point of Wind deliver'd us from the Jaws of those Breakers, ready open to devour us; and carrying us out to the much more wellcome wide ...

— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... gospel among the blacks and among the savage tribes on our borders has been rapidly increasing during the last year. The Assembly take notice of this circumstance with the more satisfaction, as it not only affords a pleasing presage of the spread of the gospel, but also furnishes agreeable evidence of the genuineness and the benign tendency of that spirit which God has been pleased to ...

— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... whose loins recorded Psyche sprung. His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head. Just at the point of time, if Fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly. So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook, Presage of sway from twice six vultures took. Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head, And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial dulness: Long he stood, Repelling from his breast the ...

— English Satires • Various

... drawing her down into their torment.—Unfortunate one.—That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young face seemed to have been framed, destined from the ...

— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... he threw into the river at the same place, and bade the divers seek it. So they did [his bidding] and brought up the first ring, and this was reckoned [an omen] of Er Reshid's good fortune and [a presage of] the ...

— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... such should keep their horses to aid them in their future work at home—That the two armies so fiercely opposed for four years could have parted with no words but those of sympathy and respect was an assured presage of a day when all the wounds of the restored Union should be ...

— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... still, to reproduce the beautiful in some way for myself, I should find they far outnumbered those of delightful sensation, of full and soothing thought, of gratified tastes and affections, and of proud hope. Yet these last, if few, how lovely, how rich in presage! None, who have known them, can in their worst estate fail to hope that they may be again ...

— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... unmistakable signs to presage what was coming that I knew a cannibal feast was about to take place. But for obvious reasons I did not protest against it, nor did I take any notice whatever. The women (who do all the real work) fell on their knees, and with their fingers scraped three long trenches in the sand, ...

— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... of Iras's maids interrupted him to tell the story of the swallows on the "Antonius," Cleopatra's admiral galley. He could scarcely report from Pelusium an omen of darker presage. ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... chords, which sounded infinitely sweet and tender. Then the northern knight, much moved, clasped him in his arms, and said: "Dear Edchen, sing and say and do whatever pleases you; it shall ever rejoice me. But you may well believe me, for I speak not this without a spirit of presage—your sorrow shall change, whether to death or life I know not, but great and overpowering joy awaits you." Edwald rose firmly and cheerfully from his seat, seized his companion's arm with a strong grasp, and walked forth with him through the blooming alleys of the garden into ...

— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... tide marks along the roots of the mangroves, and the salt flavour was in the air, and white-winged gulls swept screaming over our heads, scaring away the gaudy, noisy parrots that had been our feathered companions for so long. The next morning the sun shot up for us, a golden ball of cheering presage, from out the glittering bosom of the Pacific. What a shout we raised! Weeks of toil and fever were forgotten, scars and bruises healed—or were felt no longer—when the glorious heave of ocean waters ...

— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... but he felt that he saw it out of the corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at it. And yet for weeks his mother had never seemed so well: the cloud had lifted off her this morning, and, but for some vague presage of trouble that somehow haunted his mind, refusing to be disentangled, he could have believed that, after all, medical opinion might be at fault, and that, instead of her passing more deeply into the shadows as he had been warned was inevitable, she might at least maintain the ...

— Michael • E. F. Benson

... upon you, watch over you, bear with you, with more than the love and tenderness of a brother. You shall see me only when you wish it. Your loneliness shall never be invaded. When you get better, as I presage you will, I will leave you to come back to England, and provide for the worst, by ensuring your sister a protector. I will then return to you alone, that your seclusion may not be endangered by the knowledge, even ...

— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the mournful twittering of the warbling birds bespoke anxiety and alarm; the hoarse rushing of the wind threatened destruction to the woods; the flowers of the fields began to droop; the sun withdrew his light from the world beneath, and all seemed to presage a day of grief and bitterness—save in the home where the fair Sol arose, like another Circe, from her couch, and sallied forth, seeming to temper by her enchanting presence the angry frowns of the elements without. In ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Sleep Your Shadow The Full Tide Hands The Night Watch The Haunted Shadow Alone and Cold Inevitable Change Loneliness I heard a Voice upon the Window beat First Love The Call The Shade Happy is England Now The Stars in their Courses Sweet England Presage of Victory The Return English Hills Homecoming England's Enemy From Piccadilly in August Evening Beauty: Blackfriars Sailing of the Glory At the Dock "The Men who loved the Cause that ...

— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... deities. So as to portents: loud thunder, taken to be the voice of the great god Tangaloa, is a good sign; the significance of lightning (which also is sent by the god) depends upon the direction taken by the flash. An eclipse is regarded as a presage of death. A similar system of interpretation of signs is found elsewhere. The Masai and the Nandi draw omens from the movements of birds.[1604] In Ashantiland the cry of the owl means death.[1605] When in Australia the track of an insect is believed to point toward the abode of the sorcerer ...

— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... yellow. There is a ruff about his neck, and a pair of fine buckles to his shoes, and he always dances. He has his back to the thunderclouds, but there is that in his eyes which tells us that he has seen them, and that he knows their presage. He is afraid. Yet he dances. Never, howsoever slightly, swerves he, see! from his right posture, nor fail his feet in their pirouette. All a' merveille! Nor fades the smile from his face, though he smiles through the tarnished air of ...

— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... prisoners was kind. His purposes, however, were bloody and revengeful. With his own hands he painted every prisoner black! As they were conducted towards the town, the captives observed the bodies of four of their friends, tomahawked and scalped. This was regarded as a sad presage. In a short time, they overtook the five prisoners who remained alive. They were seated on the ground, and surrounded by a crowd of Indian squaws and boys, who taunted and menaced them. Crawford and Knight were compelled to sit down apart from ...

— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... of genius in early life presage its future character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands; and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the ...

— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... Whether a boy with limbs effeminate Assault him, or a woman darting love From all her body—that one strains to get Even to the thing whereby he's hit, and longs To join with it and cast into its frame The fluid drawn even from within its own. For the mute craving doth presage delight. ...

— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... this day that a considerable change had taken place in our position relative to the Rampart Berg. It appeared that a big lead had opened and that there had been some differential movement of the pack. The opening movement might presage renewed pressure. A few hours later the dog teams, returning from exercise, crossed a narrow crack that had appeared ahead of the ship. This crack opened quickly to 60 ft. and would have given us trouble if the dogs had been left on the wrong side. It closed on the 25th and ...

— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... of night the divisions of Augereau and Massena retired through Verona. Officers and soldiers were alike deeply discouraged by this movement, which seemed to presage a retreat towards the Mincio and the abandonment of Lombardy. To their surprise, when outside the gate they received the order to turn to the left down the western bank of the Adige. At Ronco the mystery was solved. A bridge of boats had there been thrown across ...

— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... spirits among us, as his was who when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations ...

— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... this interview, meeting imaginary objections, arguing points which might have to be argued, a servant came out to him with an ochre envelope on a little silver tray—that unpleasant-looking envelope which seems always a presage of trouble, ...

— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... now a-gathering, but our horizon is covered over with blackness, and great drops are a-falling, that presage a terrible overflowing deluge of error, and apostacy from the truth and profession of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be at hand, if the Lord wonderfully prevent it not. And behold (O wonderful!) the generality of professors are sleeping in security, apprehending no danger. ...

— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... over the wild landscape, the distant buttes softened in the haze that seemed to presage the advance of autumn, considering much. When he looked into her face again it was with the harshness gone ...

— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... burn the turrets of this cursed town, Flame to the highest region of the air, And kindle heaps of exhalations, That, being fiery meteors, may presage Death and destruction to the inhabitants! Over my zenith hang a blazing star, That may endure till heaven be dissolv'd, Fed with the fresh supply of earthly dregs, Threatening a dearth [107] and famine to this land! Flying dragons, lightning, fearful thunder-claps, ...

— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... hostilities that animated the younger members of the tribe in particular and had wondered what spark would eventually set ablaze the smouldering fires of hatred and rivalry that had so long lain dormant. And it had been really a subconscious presage of such an outbreak that had brought him back to the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah. His presentiment, the outcome of earnest desire, had been fulfilled, and in its fulfilment attended with horrible details which, had it not been already his intention, would have driven ...

— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence—begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it—continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the Vita Nuova. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Tonnant, in which, after some delay, occasioned by the general difficulty of procuring men, he joined the Channel fleet. Anxious to take part in the important naval operations to be expected, he wished to sail with Nelson, whose reputation gave a just presage that the most decisive blow would be struck where he commanded; but after he had been appointed to a station, his sense of naval obedience forbade any attempt to change it. With that care for the improvement of his young officers which was always a prominent feature of his conduct, he advertised ...

— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... became the flower of martyrs, the presage of the beauty and joy of Paradise. With the same thought, the early Christians decorated with roses the graves of martyrs and confessors on the anniversary of their death. It has been conjectured that it is from this connection of the ...

— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... imaginative cowboys, he often hunted for it. His friend, von Franckenberg, who relates the story and says that he had it from Boehme's mouth, thinks that the experience was "a sort of emblematic omen or presage of his future spiritual admission to the sight of the hidden treasury of the wisdom and mysteries of God and Nature,"[14] but we are more interested in it as a revelation of the extraordinary psychical nature of the boy, with his tendency ...

— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... King's brother, afterwards James II. It would perhaps be straining the suggestion already made of the persistent influences of origins to see in the varied racial and national beginnings of New York a presage of that cosmopolitan quality which still marks the greatest of American cities, making much of it a patchwork of races and languages, and giving to the electric stir of Broadway an air which suggests a Continental rather than an English city, but it ...

— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... transfixed with such a gruesome stare, Once beamed with laughter, innocent and bright; The morning gave no presage of the night; A smile may be ...

— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... his mental eyes the vision of a petrified wooden cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it, with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory in the great game ...

— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... of a larger army, it was believed, by which the land was to be reduced to a state of servile subjection to Spain. A low, constant, but generally unheeded murmur of dissatisfaction and distrust upon this subject was already perceptible throughout the Netherlands; a warning presage of the ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... imagination of Bassompierre was deeply moved. "Would," he exclaimed to his companion, "that any sacrifice on my part could have averted so dire a presage as ...

— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... accounted Theomancy, or Prophecy; Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity; which was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery: Sometimes in the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury: Sometimes in the Entrayles of a ...

— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... lures them back On the proud flutter of a Gallic wing Soon they return; soon make their full descent; Soon glut their rage, and riot in our ruin; Their idols grac'd and gorgeous with our spoils, Of universal empire sure presage! Till now repell'd by seas of British blood." And whence the manners of the multitude? The colours of their manners, black or fair, Falls from above; from the complexion falls Of state Othellos, ...

— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... This was a presage of what we have seen happen since, when the whole Court was infected with heresy, about the time of the Conference of Poissy. It was with great difficulty that I resisted and preserved myself from a change of religion ...

— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... increased by what had taken place at the Democratic Convention, a fortnight before. General Cass had been nominated for the Presidency, but his militia title had no glamour of carnage about it, and the secession of the New York Anti-slavery "Barnburners" from the convention was a presage of disaster which was fulfilled in the following August by the assembling of the recusant delegates at Buffalo, where they were joined by a large number of discontented Democrats and "Liberty" men, and the Free-soil party was organized for its short but effective mission. Martin Van Buren ...

— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... prisonnier, je n'avois pas vu un seul homme se montrer a cette fenetre, qui donnoit sur une cour ou regnoient le silence et l'horreur. Je compris par la que je faisois du bruit dans la ville, mais je ne savois si j'en devois concevoir un bon ou mauvais presage." ... "La dessus le juge se retira, en disant qu'il alloit ordonner au concierge de m'ouvrir les portes. En effet, un moment apres, le geolier vint dans mon cachot avec un de ses guichetiers qui portoit un paquet de toile. ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... his coming, but bade him direct his steps once again towards his home on the Mohawk. Thereupon Brant turned about and strode away among the trees. Just then thick clouds blotted out the sky; a terrible storm swept in violence across the land, a fitting presage, as men thought, of the scourge of war that must now bring ruin and havoc ...

— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... and he admitted afterwards that he, too, had remembered about that rainbow in the morning, and had also thought of the comet that had appeared a few years before and that many people believed to presage ...

— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... departure, presents were made to us as a token of gratitude, and of course the Indians, having at the first moment of their confederation, made such a successful and profitable expedition, accepted it as a good presage for the future. Their services being no longer required, they turned towards the north, and started for the settlement under the command of Roche, to follow up their original intentions of visiting the Shoshones. As for us, I remained ...

— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... diverse causes: one, because we were told that four companies of Spaniards were entered into Perpignan: the other, that the plague was spreading through the camp. Moreover, the country folk warned us there would soon be a great overflowing of the sea, which might drown us all. And the presage which they had, was a very great wind from sea, which rose so high that there remained not a single tent but was broken and thrown down, for all the care and diligence we could give; and the kitchens being all uncovered, the wind raised the dust ...

— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... warning us away troubled us much; on the other side, to find that the people had languages, and were so full of humanity, did comfort us not a little. And above all, the sign of the cross to that instrument was to us a great rejoicing, and as it were a certain presage of good. Our answer was in the Spanish tongue; that for our ship, it was well; for we had rather met with calms and contrary winds than any tempests. For our sick, they were many, and in very ill case; ...

— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... unrest which has lately swept over India is happily beyond doubt. Does this lull indicate a gradual and steady return to more normal and peaceful conditions? Or, as in other cyclonic disturbances in tropical climes, does it merely presage fiercer outbursts yet to come? Has the blended policy of repression and concession adopted by Lord Morley and Lord Minto really cowed the forces of criminal disorder and rallied the representatives of moderate opinion to the cause of sober ...

— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... searched already an Alliance for him, and was resolv'd on his Favourite's marrying Agnes, conjur'd her so tenderly to prevent these Persecutions, by consenting to a secret Marriage, that, after having a long time consider'd, she at last consented. I will do what you will have me (said she) tho' I presage nothing but fatal Events from it; all my Blood turns to Ice, when I think of this Marriage, and the Image of Constantia seems to ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... thus given often dazzles us, and deepens the darkness which is in front. We can see but little at a time, and heed that little far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next; ever peering curiously through the glare of the present into the gloom of the future, we presage the leading lines of that which is before us, by faintly reflected lights from dull mirrors that are behind, and stumble on as we may till the trap- door opens beneath ...

— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... it we are led to share vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and enriching the experience of the present. We are enabled, symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In countless ways, language condenses meanings that record social outcomes and presage social outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal share in what is worth while in life that unlettered and uneducated have become ...

— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... led to this auspicious crisis, the confidence reposed in me by my fellow-citizens, and the assistance I may expect from counsels which will be dictated by an enlarged and liberal policy, seem to presage a more prosperous issue to my administration than a diffidence of my abilities had taught me to anticipate, I now feel myself inexpressibly happy in a belief that Heaven, which has done so much for our infant nation, will not withdraw its providential influence before our political felicity ...

— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... the fetes given in Paris at the nuptials of the Duke of Orleans, in 1837, the sad presage of misfortune that had accompanied the marriage festivities of Marie Antoinette was repeated. One of the spectacles given to the Parisians was a sham attack on a sham citadel of Antwerp in the Champ de Mars. The crowd was immense, but all went well so long as the spectacle lasted. When the crowd ...

— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... home; Then 'neath the western hills he sought repose, And sank to rest as calmly as he rose: Bright at the dawn of day, but brighter now, When day had almost passed, and round her brow Hung the expiring beams of dazzling light, The certain presage of approaching night. Slowly his gorgeous train, like him, withdrew, Changing as they advanced in form and hue, Until one lovely tint of fairest dye Stole softly o'er the calm and cloudless sky; Day, gently smiling, ...

— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... situation of Rall and Donop seemed to invite attack. Their fancied security seemed also to presage success. An inexorable necessity called loudly for action before conditions so favorable should be changed by the freezing up of the Delaware when, if the enemy had any enterprise whatever, the river ...

— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage— 'Al scenery'—but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. 'There ought to be duck'—vague, very vague. 'If it gets cold enough' . . . cold and yachting seemed ...

— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... the sixty-fourth anniversary of the birth of General U. S. Grant, at the Metropolitan church in Washington on the 27th of April, 1886. The text given me was "Grant and the New South." As this brief speech expressed my appreciation of the character of General Grant soon after his death, and my presage of the new south, I ...

— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... making me believe in the possibility of his committing such an atrocity. "As you doubt what I tell you," replied Prince Louis, "I will send you the Moniteur, in which you will read the sentence." He left me at these words, and the expression of his countenance was the presage of revenge or death. A quarter of an hour afterwards, I had in my hands this Moniteur of the 21st March, (30th Pluviose), which contained the sentence of death pronounced by the military commission sitting at ...

— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... trust the flattering eye of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne, And all this day, an unaccustomed spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. ...

— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... away from Agrinion until the next daybreak had wrought a stupendous change in his outlook. He unhesitatingly considered it an omen of a good future. He was up before the darkness even contained presage of coming light, but near the railway station was a little hut where coffee was being served to several prospective travellers who had come even earlier to the rendezvous. There was no ...

— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... as an unfavourable omen, and threw the sailors into the greatest consternation. Pericles observing that the pilot was much astonished and perplexed, took his cloak, and having covered his eyes with it, asked him if he found anything terrible in that, or considered it as a bad presage? Upon his answering in the negative, he said, 'Where is the difference, then between this and the other, except that something bigger than my cloak causes ...

— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... crossed again with the red lamps of the steamers. The aurora of dark vapour, streamers extending from the thicker masses, slowly moves and yet does not go away; it is just such a sky as a painter might give to some tremendous historical event, a sky big with presage, gloom, tragedy. How bright and clear, again, are the mornings in summer! I once watched the sun rise on London Bridge, ...

— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... am weary, I am weary! Cometh not across my breast Transient thought of that which shall be, presage of better rest? And the sounds of early spring-time with an inner meaning fraught, Seem the last notes of a requiem from some old minster brought; Solemn mass for gentle spirits, the unsullied and the true, Gone with all their bright aspirings, like the fragrant morning dew. Yet the visions ...

— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... when we fain would run From our imagined fears, our idle feet Grow to the ground, our struggling voice dies inward; So now, when I would force myself to chear you, My faltering tongue can give no glad presage: Alas, I ...

— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... sweet with fluttering presage, Felt she that ethereal sense, Drinking charms of love delirious, Reaping bliss of ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... has been immortalized by the grave of Scott, the Clyde can boast the birthplace of Campbell, and the mountains of the Dee first inspired the muse of Byron. I rejoice at that burst of patriotic feeling—I hail it as a presage, that as Ayrshire has raised a graceful monument to Burns, and Edinburgh has erected a noble structure to the Author of Waverley, so Glasgow will ere long raise a worthy tribute to the bard whose name will never die while Hope pours its balm ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... brilliant and mournful; a curious sense of intermingled death and birth, as of withered leaves and dreaming seeds being blown about together on their errands of decay and resurrection by the same breath of the unseen creative spirit. Incidentally it meant a rain-storm by evening, and its mysterious presage had prompted Colin to the furnishing of our knapsacks with water-proof cloaks, which, as the afternoon wore on, seemed more and more a wise provision. But the rain still held off, contenting itself with threatening phantasmagoria of cloud, moulding ...

— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... felt what a generation ago they called a hunch, a premonition, the presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred feet away. It was a ten-foot, black yawning hole in the ...

— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... these impressions, it is strange and worth thinking on that the dominant suggestion of Nature through all her changes, whether her mood be stormy or sunny, melancholy or jubilant, is one of presage and promise. She seems to be ever holding out to us an immortal invitation to follow and endure, to endure and to enjoy. She seems to say that what she brings us is but an earnest of what she holds for us out there along the vanishing road. There is nothing, indeed, ...

— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... in its plain, heroic completeness is touched with a stately life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote Balder Dead in his most fortunate hour, and that Merope is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective drama—the ...

— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... make more plain His rugged oracle. I long to know How my deare mistresse fares, and be inform'd What hand she now holds on the troubled bloud Of her incensed lord: me thought the Spirit 35 (When he had utter'd his perplext presage) Threw his chang'd countenance headlong into clouds; His forehead bent, as it would hide his face, He knockt his chin against his darkned breast, And struck a churlish silence through his pow'rs. 40 ...

— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... obscuring her blessed light. The maiden, deeming it an inauspicious omen, sat down upon the green bank, and, leaning her head upon her hand, suffered the tears to stream through her slender fingers. But vain was the presage—idle were her fears. The cloud has passed away from the face of the pale orb, and lo! there is her lover. He comes with a joyous step and a laughing eye, as though he had been successful in his search for the further means ...

— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... Saturday morning seemed to presage failure for the girls' plans at the very start. It was always dismal, Marjorie thought, to go anywhere in the rain, but especially to a new town. Frieda would receive a bad impression of the place from the beginning, and, if she had any tendency toward homesickness, the inclemency ...

— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... times, would have left a fair reputation as a statesman of the second rank; but a man hopelessly unfit alike in character and in mind either to comprehend the present emergency or to rise to its demands.[66] Yet, while the Democrats triumphed, the Republicans enjoyed the presage of the future; they had polled a total number of votes which surprised every one; on the other hand, the Democrats had lost ten States[67] which they had carried in 1852 and had gained only two others,[68] showing a net ...

— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old a-ches[2] throb, your hollow tooth will rage; Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud ...

— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... The aurora of dark vapour, streamers extending from the thicker masses, slowly moves and yet does not go away; it is just such a sky as a painter might give to some tremendous historical event, a sky big with presage, gloom, tragedy. How bright and clear, again, are the mornings in summer! I once watched the sun rise on London Bridge, and never ...

— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... who seem to smell blood and presage crime, reached Avignon from Versailles: his name was Jourdan. He is not to be confounded with another revolutionist of the same name, born at Avignon. Sprung from the arid and calcined mountains of the south, where the ...

— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... success should be diminished; all these, in their due place, are considerations which, with myself and (I can answer for it) with every one of my colleagues, will have their just weight. But at present these considerations all operate one way; at present there is nothing from which we can presage a favourable disposition to change in the French councils. There is the greatest reason to rely on powerful co-operation from our allies; there are the strongest marks of a disposition in the interior ...

— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... Henry's presage rose;— De Brehan link'd him with our foes: Yes! ours! the Brehans us'd to be Patterns of faith and loyalty: And many a knightly badge they wore, And many a trace their 'scutcheons bore, Of noble deeds in days of yore,— Of royal ...

— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle ...

— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... think of your immortal weal! In vain for Constance is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle."— Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents from his wounded side. "Then it was truth!" he said,—"I knew That the dark presage must be true.— I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs, Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone, Might bribe him for delay. It may not ...

— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... frequent had given him polite manners, to a degree then rare in Berlin. His physiognomy was rather disagreeable than otherwise. A pair of thick black eyebrows almost covered the eyes of him; his look had in it something ominous, presage of the fate he met with: a tawny skin, torn by small-pox, increased his ugliness. He affected the freethinker, and carried libertinism to excess; a great deal of ambition and headlong rashness accompanied this vice." A dangerous adviser here in the Berlin element, with lightnings going!"Such a ...

— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and he was wholly weary of them; and the thought of the absolute want of reason in the causeless jealousy, and the misery that these little bickerings made of his life, exasperated him beyond measure. The dinner proceeded in silence, and every slight remark was a presage of storm. Hubert hoped the girl would say nothing until the servant left the room, and with that view he never spoke a word except to ask the ladies what they would take to eat. These tactics might have succeeded ...

— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... to kill a companion—the one act of violence which sullies a strangely gentle career; and outraged at the affront of a flogging, he fled with twelve guineas and a gold repeater watch. A vulgar theft this, and no presage of future greatness; yet it proves the fearless greed, the contempt of private property, which mark as with a stigma the temperament of the prig. His faculty did not rust long for lack of use, and ...

— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... bride was filled with terror and remorse, and looked upon this uproar of the elements as the anger of heaven directed against her. All the efforts of her lover could not remove from her mind a dismal presage ...

— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... which there are two kinds, is an insect famous for a ticking noise, like a watch, which superstitious people take for a presage of death, in the family where it ...

— The History of Insects • Unknown

... thicket Is all this, where reason gives Not a thread whereby to issue? My own honour here is wronged, Powerful is my foe's position, I a vassal, she a woman; Heaven reveal some way in pity, Though I doubt it has the power; When in such confused abysses, Heaven is all one fearful presage, And ...

— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... refluent soul. Smiting, with simulated smile constrained, Her beauteous bosom, "Oh, perfidious man! Oh, cruel foe!" she twice and thrice exclaimed, "Oh, my companions equal-aged! my throne, My people! Oh, how wretched to presage This day, how tenfold wretched to endure!" She ceased, and instantly the palace rang With gratulation roaring into rage— 'Twas her own people. "Health to Gebir! health To our compatriot subjects! to our queen! Health and ...

— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... overmastering consumption left him strength scarcely sufficient to bring him to London, where he arrived about the middle of September, 1828. The conclusion of his career was thus related to Mrs. Forster by Sir Thomas Lawrence:—'Your sad presage has been too fatally verified; the last duties have just been paid to the lamented Mr. Bonington. Except in the case of Mr. Harlow, I have never known, in my own time, the early death of talent so promising, ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 'tis!)] [W: presage 'tis] This emendation is ingenious, perhaps preferable to the present reading, yet since passage may be fairly enough explained, I have left it in the text. Passage is anything that passes, so we now say, a passage of an authour. and we said about a century ago, ...

— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... on the spent tan this dark day! Over his shoulder he was forever glancing, hoping that Nate would presently appear from the woods. He saw only the mists lurking in the laurel; they had autumnal presage and a chill presence. He buttoned his coat about him, and the old mule sneezed as he jogged round ...

— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... that he beheld a thing he had never in all his life seen nor heard. But Mubarek laughed at him and said to him, "Fear not, O my lord; this whereat thou art affrighted is that which we seek; nay, it is a presage of good to-us. So take heart and be of good cheer." After this there came a great clearness and serenity and there breathed pure and fragrant breezes; then, presently, behold, there appeared the King of the Jinn in the semblance ...

— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... superstition. Rousseau, indeed, had begun the most famous of his political speculations by crying that man, who was born free, is now everywhere in chains. But Rousseau was vague, abstract, and sentimental. In the System of Nature we have a clear presage of the trenchant and imperious invective which, twenty years after its publication, rang in all men's ears from the gardens of the Palais Royal and the benches of the Jacobins' Hall. The writer has plainly made up his mind that the time has at last come for dropping all the ...

— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... best place, fair youth. I see your smile— The scornful smile of that ambitious age That thinks it all things knows, and all the while It nothing knows. And yet those smiles presage Some future fame, because your aim is high; As when one tries to shoot into the sky, If his rash arrow at the moon he aims, a bolder flight we see, Though vain, than if with level poise it safely ...

— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... Oh! native Spain! Farewell for ever! These banished eyes shall view thy coasts no more; A mournful presage tells my heart, that never Gonzalvo's steps ...

— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... of aught save the wails and groans that seemed to fill the air from their mangled, bleeding country. And the dead leaves rustled in the paths as the wind swept them before it beneath the gloomy sky, and over the naked fields brooded a funereal silence, broken only by the cawing of the crows, presage ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... a halo round the moon fixed the attention of the inhabitants of Cumana, who considered it as the presage of some violent earthquake; for, according to popular notions, all extraordinary phenomena are immediately connected with each other. Coloured circles around the moon are much more rare in northern countries than in Provence, Italy, and Spain. They are seen particularly ...

— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... to any green wound, heals it; and the powder thereof drank in oyl olive, consolidates inward ruptures: Lastly, the salt of the wood taken in decoction of althaea to three grains, is an incomparable remedy to break, and expel gravel. The service gives the husbandman an early presage of the approaching Spring, by extending his adorned buds for a peculiar entertainment, and dares peep out in ...

— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... gloomy house, lit by a single flickering candle, assaulted her. She had to fight it before she could descend. The garden door was latched, but not locked. Extinguishing the candle, she went forth. The gusty breeze from the estuary was now damp on her cheek with the presage of rain. She hurried, fumbling as it were, through the garden. When she achieved the hedge the spectacle of the yacht, gleaming from stem to stern with electricity, burst upon her; it shone like something desired and unattainable. Carefully she issued from the grounds by the little ...

— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... Provincial Protestant Normal School. Its buildings, like itself, have been growing by a process of accretion, and the latest, that in which we are now assembled, [the Peter Redpath Museum], is far in advance of all the others, and a presage of the college buildings of the future. We have five chairs endowed by private benefactors, fourteen endowed scholarships and exhibitions, besides others of a temporary nature, and eight endowed gold medals. More than this, we have sent out about 1,200 graduates, ...

— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... house-cleaning, the new Brussels carpet was at length brought in and nailed down, and its beauty praised from mouth to mouth. Our old friends called in and admired, and all seemed to be well, except that I had that light and delicate presage of changes to come which ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... dispatch of this letter, the presage of Lord Carrick was verified; he was seized in the night with spasms, and died in the arms ...

— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... the unconscious stranger, was regarding him with the gentle speculative look which Bowers knew to presage mischief. It was not difficult to interpret Mary's intentions, and Bowers was fully aware that it was his duty either to warn the sleeper or reprimand Mary. His eyes, however, had the fondness of a doting ...

— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... withered leaves and dreaming seeds being blown about together on their errands of decay and resurrection by the same breath of the unseen creative spirit. Incidentally it meant a rain-storm by evening, and its mysterious presage had prompted Colin to the furnishing of our knapsacks with water-proof cloaks, which, as the afternoon wore on, seemed more and more a wise provision. But the rain still held off, contenting itself with threatening phantasmagoria of cloud, ...

— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... the grove pressed closer upon the ring of Willamette warriors, who were still standing or squatting idly around it. More than one weapon could be seen among them in defiance of the war-chief's prohibition; and the presage of a terrible storm darkened on those grim, wild faces. The more peaceably disposed bands began to draw themselves apart. An ominous silence crept through the crowd as ...

— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that ...

— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... of those who were hurrying to wish the travelers God-speed, nor any of the band who were leaving their homes, but felt the thrilling promise and the presage of that new country toward which the emigrants were about to ...

— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... ring with carollings; strange and gaudy plants flecked the waste round us; and insects without number whirred over our heads, or hung poised with their wings outspread on the tall stalks of marram grass. All at once a cloud hid the sun, and a summer whirlwind, presage of the thunderstorm, swept past us, carrying up with it a column of dry sand, and rattling the dry ...

— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... insipid. Yet such things are the web and stuff of life, and these days of transition from childhood to full manhood in every case mark a crisis. These insipidities test the education of home and family, and they presage definitely what is to come. The roots of character, good or bad, are shown for this short space, and they remain unchanged, though most people learn from their fellows the decent and useful art of covering them over with a little dust, in the shape of ...

— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... Bills—the Home Rule Bill and the Bill to amend it—might become law practically at the same time. But he gave no hint as to what the "amending proposal" was to be, and the reception of the announcement by the Opposition did not seem to presage agreement. ...

— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... nature and of art, or, worse still, to reproduce the beautiful in some way for myself, I should find they far outnumbered those of delightful sensation, of full and soothing thought, of gratified tastes and affections, and of proud hope. Yet these last, if few, how lovely, how rich in presage! None, who have known them, can in their worst estate fail to hope that they may be again upborne ...

— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... on his own. Mr. Ricketts has pointed to that of Antonello da Messina in the portraits of young men at Vienna (1505) and at Hampton Court (1506). The former of these has an allegorical sketch of Avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the Venetian school, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment by Giorgione which Duerer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. The latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the Feast of Rose Wreaths in exactly ...

— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, clever, ingenious. Skin, hide, pelt, fell. Sleepy, drowsy, slumberous, somnolent, sluggish, torpid, dull, lethargic. ...

— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... o'clock on one of those perfect mist-steeped summer mornings that presage a day of burning heat, French's force came in sight of the Boer laagers. As the mist cleared the enemy could be spied in large numbers about the station and the colliery buildings and over the yellow veldt. French ...

— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... what very secret business was afoot. She obeyed his orders literally, saw that her people were early in bed, and, after receiving the officers, retired herself to her room, but not to sleep. This conference might presage some peril to the American cause. If so, she wished ...

— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... of a personal fascination never entirely dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits; it was ...

— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far ...

— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... company with the other less imaginative cowboys, he often hunted for it. His friend, von Franckenberg, who relates the story and says that he had it from Boehme's mouth, thinks that the experience was "a sort of emblematic omen or presage of his future spiritual admission to the sight of the hidden treasury of the wisdom and mysteries of God and Nature,"[14] but we are more interested in it as a revelation of the extraordinary psychical nature of the boy, with ...

— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... float; And yet, from childhood up familiar with the note, To Life it now renews the old allegiance. Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy; And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church-bell slowly, And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss. A sweet, uncomprehended yearning Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free, And while a thousand tears were burning, I felt a world arise for me. These chants, to youth and all its sports appealing, ...

— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... the fervent sky sets forth her twentieth of changing morns: Winds fall mild that of late waxed wild: no presage whispers or wails or warns: Far to west on the bland sea's breast a sailing crescent uprears ...

— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the throne, And guard my father's glories and my own. Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates, (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!) The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend, And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind, My mother's death, the ruin of my kind, Not Priam's hoary hairs defil'd with gore, Not all my brothers gasping on the shore, As thine, Andromache! Thy griefs I dread: I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led, In Argive looms our battles ...

— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... Great Britain, and later with the outside world, though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to serfs, kept ...

— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... think necessary to civilization, and even to happiness. It is, in our panegyric of polished ages, the parent of arts, the support of commerce, and the minister of national greatness, and of opulence. It is, in our censure of degenerate manners, the source of corruption, and the presage of national declension and ruin. It is admired, and it is blamed; it is treated as ornamental and useful, and it is proscribed as ...

— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... at a moment when victory has crowned both our nations. This circumstance is a happy presage of his future glory, and promises, that he will one day be the support of your independence as well as of the alliance, which unites France with the ...

— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... fierce light of presage, unknown star, Whose tongue shall tell us what thy secrets are, What message trembles in thee from so far? Cry wellaway. ...

— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... popular delusion that Townshend had exceptionally full and accurate knowledge concerning American affairs. His self-confident air, making assurance of success, won for him one half of the battle by so sure a presage of victory. He lured the members of the House by showing them a considerable remission in their own taxes, provided they would stand by his scheme of replacing the deficit by an income from the colonies; and he boldly assured his ...

— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... been very sultry, and if our travellers had not been ignorant of the signs of the Pampas they might have known that the day was heavy with the presage of storm. ...

— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Pride cometh before a fall, 'tis said. Then, in sooth, by the rule of contraries, a fall should presage humility's reward. What ...

— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... said Charmion, who stood by with downcast eyes, and I thought that there was bitter meaning in her soft tones; "may no rougher words ever affront thy ears, and no evil presage tread less closely upon its ...

— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... whose hearts unblighted Honor and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... largely through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, largely through the officers controlling the estates; at any rate unmistakable, as present in the very air of the streets as is the presage of a thunderstorm. Surely, to be so dominated, without actual influence, must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed peace; and yet a little oppressive too, with the great house and its ...

— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... my nerves, and seriously injure my temper, by the overpowering pressure I laid upon them to keep them quiet when you were by? Could I not, by the sense of coming ill through all my quivering frame, presage your advent as exactly as the barometer heralds the approaching storm? Those three months of agony are little atoned for by this late vengeance: ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... dome, And deigned to smile upon the peasant's home; Then 'neath the western hills he sought repose, And sank to rest as calmly as he rose: Bright at the dawn of day, but brighter now, When day had almost passed, and round her brow Hung the expiring beams of dazzling light, The certain presage of approaching night. Slowly his gorgeous train, like him, withdrew, Changing as they advanced in form and hue, Until one lovely tint of fairest dye Stole softly o'er the calm and cloudless sky; Day, gently smiling, left ...

— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... 1653 Moliere's brilliant comedy of "L'Etourdi" was performed at Lyons, and gave a noble presage of the talents of its illustrious author. The piece is known to English readers by a translation entitled "Sir Martin Marplot," made originally by the celebrated Duke of Newcastle, and adapted to the stage by the pen of Dryden. The piece turns upon the schemes formed by a clever and intriguing ...

— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... him, the dog thrust its pretty nose against his knee and looked up at him gravely with dark, questioning eyes. He gently stroked its soft, wavy coat. Overhead shone the silent stars. A sense of fear came over him, as the presage of some ...

— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... neck, and a pair of fine buckles to his shoes, and he always dances. He has his back to the thunderclouds, but there is that in his eyes which tells us that he has seen them, and that he knows their presage. He is afraid. Yet he dances. Never, howsoever slightly, swerves he, see! from his right posture, nor fail his feet in their pirouette. All a' merveille! Nor fades the smile from his face, though he smiles through the tarnished air of a sultry ...

— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... flies from the heavens; black clouds conceal the hiding stars; the night is deprived of its fires. Thou, Icarus, dost conceal thy rising countenance; and {thou}, Erigone, raised to the heavens through thy affectionate love for thy father. Three times was she recalled by the presage of her foot stumbling; thrice did the funereal owl give an omen by its dismal cry. Yet {onward} she goes, and the gloom and the dark night lessen her shame. In her left hand she holds that of her nurse, the ...

— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... lot, may, by viewing it right, Convert all its darkness to visions of light When mortals of hope the fair presage assume, Even death's sable pall is no object of gloom: They smile on the path which their best friends have trod, And rejoice, when they feel, they are summon'd to God. Be it long, my young friend, ere such joy can be thine, First embrace all the gifts, ...

— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley

... conversed with men, and, in reply to their taunts, upbraided them openly with everything they had done from their birth, and which they were not willing should be known or heard by others. I do not presume to assign the cause of this event, except that it is said to be the presage of a sudden change from poverty to riches, or rather from affluence to poverty and distress; as it was found to be the case in both these instances. And it appears to me very extraordinary that these places could not be purified from such illusions, either by the sprinkling of holy ...

— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... evil presage, To the lonely house on the shore Came the wind with a tale of shipwreck, And shrieked ...

— Poems • William D. Howells

... hearing presage? A like vain waiting and disclosure of death-dealing accident? Notwithstanding her attitude of high resolution, the question challenged Damaris in sardonic fashion from beneath the black canopy of the great bed. Her hand ...

— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... flower of martyrs, the presage of the beauty and joy of Paradise. With the same thought, the early Christians decorated with roses the graves of martyrs and confessors on the anniversary of their death. It has been conjectured that ...

— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... of his spirit the course of the sun, moon, and stars, that he had the most famous name of all the mathematicians that lived in his time, as may well appear by his works dedicated unto sundry dukes and lords, for he did nothing without the advice of his spirit, which learned him to presage of matters to come, which have come to pass since his death. The like praise won he with his calendars and almanack-making; for when he presaged of anything, operations, and alterations of the weather or elements, as wind, rain, ...

— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... in March, we may cry Alas! A dry year never beggars the master. An evening red, and a morning grey, makes a pilgrim sing. January or February do fill or empty the granary. A dry March, a snowy February, a moist April, and a dry May, presage a good year. To St. Valentine the spring is a neighbour. At St. Martin's winter is in his way. A cold January, a feverish February, a dusty March, a weeping April, a windy May, presage a good ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... their strange love's sake Rode Balen forth by lawn and lake, By moor and moss and briar and brake, And in his heart their sorrow spake Whose lips were dumb as death, and said Mute words of presage blind and vain As rain-stars blurred and marred by rain To wanderers on a moonless main Where night ...

— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... common herd of students and lovers of either art this may perhaps appear no great discovery; but that it should at length have dawned even upon the race of commentators is a sign which in itself might be taken as a presage of new light to come in an epoch of miracle yet to be. Unhappily it is as yet but a partial revelation that has been vouchsafed to them. To the recognition of the apocalyptic fact that a workman can only be ...

— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the nucleus of a larger army, it was believed, by which the land was to be reduced to a state of servile subjection to Spain. A low, constant, but generally unheeded murmur of dissatisfaction and distrust upon this subject was already perceptible throughout the Netherlands; a warning presage of the ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... old type of Puritan clergymen, was born in Boston and died in his native city, without ever having traveled a hundred miles from it. He entered Harvard at the age of eleven, and took the bachelor's degree at fifteen. His life shows such an overemphasis of certain Puritan traits as almost to presage the coming decline of clerical influence. He says that at the age of only seven or eight he not only composed forms of prayer for his schoolmates, but also obliged them to pray, although some of them cuffed him for his pains. ...

— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... brother Hurrell died, and the tragic extinction of that commanding spirit seemed a presage of his own early doom. Two of his sisters, both lately married, died within a few months of Hurrell, and of each other. The Archdeacon, incapable of expressing emotion, became more reserved than ever, and scarcely spoke at all. Sadly was he disappointed ...

— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... should never accomplish, though the tables were ready drawn for it. About the same time, the first letter of his name, in an inscription upon one of his statues, was struck out by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage that he would live only a hundred days longer, the letter C denoting that number; and that he would be placed amongst the Gods, as Aesar, which is the remaining part of the word Caesar, signifies, in the Tuscan language, a God [252]. ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... balances the difficulties of the question—"The fires of civil war," says he, "are raging in Germany. Shall I then cross the sea whither Wotton invites me? I, a German, a lover of firm land, who dread the confinement of an island, who presage its dangers, and must drag along with me my little wife and flock of children?" As Kepler seems to have entertained no doubt of his being well provided for in England, it is the more probable that the British Sovereign ...

— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time, My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime, While he insults o'er ...

— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... that took possession of my fancy, I got up by times, and, flying to the place of rendezvous, had in a little time the pleasure of seeing Miss Williams approach with a smile on her countenance, which I interpreted into a good omen. Neither was I mistaken in my presage. She presented me with a letter from the idol of my soul, which, after having kissed it devoutly, I opened with the utmost eagerness, and was blessed with her approbation in ...

— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... the stern truth of Lazarus' departure. "Our friend sleepeth." "They thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep." They understood it as the indication of the crisis-hour in sickness when the disease has spent itself, and is succeeded by a balmy slumber—the presage of returning health; but now He says unto them plainly, "Lazarus is dead." How gently He thus breaks the sad intelligence! And it is His method of dealing still. He prepares His people for their hours of trial. He does not lay upon them more than they are ...

— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... conspiracy on the general body of any realm, gives me less cause to apprehend it as a thing certain to be put in execution. Considering that all conspiracies commonly distinguish of men and persons, yet seeing the words do rather seem (as far as they are to be regarded) to presage danger to the whole Court of Parliament (over whom my care is greater than over mine own life), and because the words describe such a form of doing as can be no otherwise interpreted than by some stratagem of fire and powder,—I wish that there may be special ...

— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... the Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril. Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The mystery grew deeper day by ...

— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... sound, poured out in a tumult of joy; and, understanding that their young master was returned, raised such a peal of acclamation, as astonished the commodore and his lady, and inspired Julia with such an interesting presage, that her heart began to throb with violence. Running out in the hurry and perturbation of her hope, she was so much overwhelmed at sight of her brother, that she actually fainted in his arms. But from this trance she soon awaked; and ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... thousand men in Khinjan Caves, and of another large lashkar not far away from Khinjan. There must be no jihad, King! India is all but defenseless! We can tackle sporadic raids. We can even handle an ordinary raid in force. But this story about a 'Heart of the Hills' coming to life may presage unity of action and a holy war such as the world has not seen. Go up there and stop it if you can. At least, let me ...

— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... year passed The careful King bethought to teach his son All that a Prince should learn, for still he shunned The too vast presage of those miracles, The glories and the sufferings of a Buddh. So, in full council of his Ministers, "Who is the wisest man, great sirs," he asked, "To teach my Prince that which a Prince should know?" Whereto gave answer ...

— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... seen anything of him?" asked Mr. Damon, as Ned jumped out of his small runabout at the Swift home as soon as possible after receiving the telephone message that seemed to presage something wrong. ...

— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... monuments and epitaphs from two sources of feeling: but these do in fact resolve themselves into one. The invention of epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, 'proceeded from the presage of fore-feeling of immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the scholars of Linus the Theban poet, who flourished about the year of the world two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... sufficient number of victims had been offered, the priests gave the signal of retreat, and the Indians slowly withdrew from the accursed spot. Such was the aspect under which the Natchez showed themselves, for the first time, to their visitors: it was ominous presage for the future. ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... little fishing hamlet, humble suburb of the fashionable watering-place. I fancy that others too perceive the light, and that certain huge visitors are attracted, even when the storm keeps neighbors and friends at home. For the slightest presage of foul weather is sure to bring to yonder anchorage a dozen silent vessels, that glide up the harbor for refuge, and are heard but once, when the chain-cable rattles as it runs out, and the iron hand of the anchor ...

— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... her countenance a pale and delicate hue, which I afterwards found to be a presage of consumption; and the idea then occurred to me that she would ...

— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... which he cherished towards his native land. Pondering over the past, he became despondent and low-spirited; a morbid imagination caused him to brood over small troubles, and gloomy, melancholy thoughts possessed his mind—symptoms which seemed to presage the approach of some serious malady. One evening, when visiting at the house of a friend, he was seized with a painful illness, to which he succumbed in less than a fortnight. He died at Prague on October 24, 1601, when ...

— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... song no tremor of misgiving! All of his heart he pours into his lay,— "Love, love, love, and pure delight of living: Winter is forgotten: here's a happy day!" Fair in your face I read the flowery presage, Snowy on your brow and rosy on your mouth: Sweet in your voice I hear the season's message,— Love, love, love, and Spring ...

— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... had accomplished in peace his great work, he had reaped the fruits of it. On the eve of the terrible shocks whereof no presage disturbed his spirit, "directed for fifty years towards the great objects of nature," the illustrious scholar had been permitted to see his statue placed during his lifetime in the Jardin du Roi. On sending to the ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... night. A flame arose on the opposite side; and Julian, who too clearly understood that his foremost vessels, in attempting to land, had been fired by the enemy, dexterously converted their extreme danger into a presage of victory. "Our fellow-soldiers," he eagerly exclaimed, "are already masters of the bank; see—they make the appointed signal; let us hasten to emulate and assist their courage." The united and rapid motion of a great fleet broke the violence of the current, and they reached ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... from one object to another of a particular superstition is a matter of absolute observation. Thus, the labourers in Norfolk considered it a presage of death to miss a "bout" in corn or seed sowing. The superstition is now transferred to the drill, which has only been invented for a century. Again, in Ireland, it is now considered unlucky to give any one a light for his pipe on May-day—a very modern ...

— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... the coming changes can presage, And mark the future periods of the Stage? 40 Perhaps if skill could distant times explore, New Behns,[1] new Durfeys, yet remain in store; Perhaps where Lear has raved, and Hamlet died, On flying cars new sorcerers may ride; Perhaps (for who can guess the effects ...

— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage; Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swill'd more liquor ...

— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... enough to ruffle the surface of the sea. Huge banks of dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and a hot, unnatural closeness seemed to pervade the atmosphere, as if a storm were about to burst upon the scene. Everything, above and below, seemed to presage war—alike elemental and human; and the various leaders of the several expeditions felt that the approaching night would tax their powers and resources to ...

— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. A tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, distinguishes Longhi's pictures from the works of Hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change. ...

— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... king. Were there not steel kings, and iron kings, railway kings, oil kings—money kings? He thought it was not unlikely that he would first engage the world's notice as an express king. He had received those fifty shares of stock from Aunt Clara and regarded them as a presage of his coming directorship. But he took no pride in this thought. Baseball was to be his life work. He would own one major-league team, at least; perhaps three or four. He would be known as the baseball king, and the world would forget his ...

— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... the snow which usually precedes the frost in that country had not come as yet, it was evidently not far away, and the trooper shivered in the blasts from the pole which cut through fur and leather with the keenness of steel. The temperature had fallen steadily since morning, and now there was a presage of a blizzard in the moaning wind and murky sky. If it broke and scattered its blinding whiteness upon the roaring blast there would be but little hope for any man or beast caught shelterless in the empty wilderness, for it is beyond the power of anything made of flesh and ...

— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... frowne, then I should dye for griefe: I cannot see him frowne, it may not be: Armies of foes resolu'd to winne this towne, Or impious traitors vowde to haue my life, Affright me not, onely AEneas frowne Is that which terrifies poore Didos heart: Nor bloudie speares appearing in the ayre, Presage the downfall of my Emperie, Nor blazing Commets threatens Didos death, It is AEneas frowne that ends my daies: If he forsake me not, I neuer dye, For in his lookes I see eternitie, And heele make me immortall ...

— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe

... night the liquid note of the adventurous meadow lark fell like the dropping of a silver stream into the pool below. Brave little heart, roused from slumber perchance by domestic care, perchance by the first burdening presage of the long fall flight waiting her sturdy careless brood, perchance stirred by the first thrill of the Event approaching from the east. For already in the east the long round tops of the prairie undulations are shining gray above the dark hollows and faint bars of light are shooting ...

— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... meaning is altered slightly: "You are surely fey," would be said in Scotland, as Professor Masson remarks, to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament,—the notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and a presage of his approaching death, or of some other calamity ...

— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... sharply into view by the flare of cannon, weary, glad of the General's thoughtfulness, without a suspicion that her present companion had suggested it, taking the rest that came to her and enjoying it as simply as a child would do, yet radiant at moments in the presage of national success, or pale with a glow of sublime faith at the efficacy of the sacrifice that was being offered up for her country. She seemed in harmony with the nature about her and the earnestness, perhaps tragedy, of her surroundings. Katie could not have been at home here; it was not because ...

— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... the North seemed to presage the full triumph of the Confederacy; and it was a gloomy time enough for Lincoln and his Ministers. A second and more serious invasion by Lee was impending, and the lingering progress of events in the West, of which the story must soon be resumed, caused protracted and deepening ...

— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... of the rubber-tree where the cobra slips in peace Are wonders that he has waved from the earth as a presage of his power. And the giant stems of the bamboo-grass, the pool astounded, sees, Are a marvel to keep ...

— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... king James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament, being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war, and a ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... in her thoughts, a sudden rush of joy overflowed her heart, which seemed to her the presage of seeing him, tho' how he should imagine she was in Paris was a mystery:—but she gave herself not much time for reflection, before she ordered ...

— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... eel so soon was looked upon as a lucky omen, to have lost it would have been a presage of ill-fortune for the rest of the day, and the incident put every one in high good humour. By this time the tide was flowing over the flatter parts of the reef and young bonito could be seen jumping out of the water in all directions. ...

— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... the turrets of this cursed town, Flame to the highest region of the air, And kindle heaps of exhalations, That, being fiery meteors, may presage Death and destruction to the inhabitants! Over my zenith hang a blazing star, That may endure till heaven be dissolv'd, Fed with the fresh supply of earthly dregs, Threatening a dearth [107] and famine to this land! Flying dragons, lightning, ...

— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... Lordship's favourite boast that at his birth a number of swords which hung up in the hall of his paternal home leaped themselves out of their scabbards, denoting that he was to be a mighty man of arms. The presage was not fulfilled, but Lord Lovat's ingenuity suggested the following means of imposing upon the credulity of his simple clansmen, by the composition of an epitaph which he erected in the old church of Kirkhill, a few miles from ...

— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... the conditions which surrounded her, and there was only one way to do that—talk to her. He must persuade her to come and live with him. She would, he thought. She admitted that she liked him. That soft, yielding note in her character which had originally attracted him seemed to presage that he could win her without much difficulty, if he wished to try. He decided to do so, anyhow, for truly ...

— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... took up again their line of retreat toward White Oak Swamp. They left in the hands of the grey their dead, several hundred prisoners, and twenty-five hundred men in hospital. In the hot and sultry night, dark, with presage of a storm, through a ruined country, by the light of their own burning stores, the blue column wound slowly on by the single road toward White Oak Swamp and its single bridge. The grey brigades lit their small camp-fires, gathered up the ...

— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... general. The Thebans willingly decreed this, but when all was ready and the general was about to march, the sun was eclipsed and darkness fell upon the city. Pelopidas, seeing that all men were disheartened at this, thought that it was useless to force frightened men full of presage of evil, to march with him, nor did he like to risk the lives of six thousand citizens, but he offered his own services to the Thessalians, and took with him three hundred horsemen, volunteers and men of other states. With this force he started, though forbidden by the ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... the temple. None stayed or hindered them, yet although they reached the chambers of Aziel in safety, their hearts, which should have been light, were still heavy with the presage of ...

— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... your immortal weal! In vain for Constance is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle." Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents, from his wounded side. "Then it was truth," he said—"I knew That the dark presage must be true. I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone Might bribe him for delay. It may not ...

— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... and moral daring to the field of theological and political speculation, it is easy today to select, among the writings of the earliest colonists, certain radical utterances which seem to presage the very temper of the late eighteenth century. Pastor John Robinson's farewell address to the Pilgrims at Leyden in 1620 contained the famous words: "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word. ...

— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... strange silence, the feeling of mystery and power he seemed to create, all that was incomprehensible about him were emphasized in the light of his slow, sure, and ruthless action. If he dominated the others, surely he did more for Gale—colored his thoughts—presage the wild and terrible future of that flight. If Rojas embodied all the hatred and passion of the peon—scourged slave for a thousand years—then Yaqui embodied all the darkness, the cruelty, the white, sun-heated blood, the ferocity, ...

— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... that place many of their Christian captives were recovered. At this time, in the middle of the night, a strange thing happened, almost prophetic of the misfortune to those Moros, and apparently a presage of their fall and destruction. There was an earthquake, so sudden and so terrible that it was plainly felt upon the sea; and a rumbling which sounded as if some aperture of hell were opening. All our soldiers were thoroughly terrified at so frightful rumblings ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... in the portraits of young men at Vienna (1505) and at Hampton Court (1506). The former of these has an allegorical sketch of Avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the Venetian school, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment by Giorgione which Duerer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. The latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the Feast of Rose Wreaths ...

— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... round heads of two or three swimmers from the bathing cove appeared like corks upon the surface of the water. Half lost in the hazy horizon, a dim fairy island hung between sky and ocean; while overhead flew the milk-white birds, whose presence inland is said to presage stormy weather. ...

— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... in his breast and threaten to burst out like burning lava long repressed, he rushed precipitately from the room. Basilio heard him descend the stairs with unsteady tread, stepping heavily, he heard a stifled cry, a cry that seemed to presage death, so solemn, deep, and sad that he arose from his chair pale and trembling, but he could hear the footsteps die away and the noisy closing of the door to ...

— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the Lord Of this faire mansion, master of my seruants, Queene ore my selfe: and euen now, but now, This house, these seruants, and this same my selfe Are yours, my Lord, I giue them with this ring, Which when you part from, loose, or giue away, Let it presage the ruine of your loue, And be my vantage to ...

— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain,— Bent o'er the babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of ...

— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... their own Disgrace. True Valour's slow, deliberate, and cool, Considers well the End, the Way, the Means, And weighs each Circumstance attending them. Imaginary Dangers it detects, And guards itself against all real Evils. But here Tenesco comes with Speed important; His Looks and Face presage us something new. ...

— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... same red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words, as with blast and forge and hammer, which startle us in the two battle-pieces. The lines "Annus Memorabilis," dated Jan. 6th, 1861, read like prophecy in 1865. "Wood and Coal" (November, 1863) gives a presage of the fire which the flame of the conflict would kindle. "The Burial of the Dane" shows the true human sympathy of the writer, in its simple, pathetic narrative; and the story of the "Old Cove" had a wider circulation ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... Scotland, I rejoice to say, can claim them all as her own. For if the Tweed has been immortalized by the grave of Scott, the Clyde can boast the birthplace of Campbell, and the mountains of the Dee first inspired the muse of Byron. I rejoice at that burst of patriotic feeling—I hail it as a presage, that as Ayrshire has raised a graceful monument to Burns, and Edinburgh has erected a noble structure to the Author of Waverley, so Glasgow will ere long raise a worthy tribute to the bard whose name ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... small number of as great spirits among us, as his was who when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations ...

— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... this second hearing presage? A like vain waiting and disclosure of death-dealing accident? Notwithstanding her attitude of high resolution, the question challenged Damaris in sardonic fashion from beneath the black canopy of the great bed. Her ...

— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... all the gayest young nobles, who were in attendance on the prince. Including the crew, the Blanche Nef was expected to carry full three hundred persons across the Channel. All were in high spirits, in that reckless state of mirth which the grave Scots deem as the absolute presage of a fearful catastrophe, as well as often its cause; and the young Etheling, with open-hearted, imprudent good-nature, presented the crew with three casks of wine to drink to his health and the success of the voyage. ...

— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... that evening in a sky that glowed like molten copper and was streaked with long tatters of smoky-looking cloud, which seemed to presage both a windy and a dark night, to my great anxiety; for the ship was now navigating a comparatively restricted area of landlocked sea, the chart of which was dotted—much too thickly for my peace of mind—with dangers ...

— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... of this generation. Unto us are committed those oracles which declare, "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth." And already do I see, in the silent kindling of unnumbered minds, in our Sabbath-schools and other institutions, the presage of unexampled good to the nations. Who, then, of the rising race, is so dead to generous feeling, so deaf to the voice of Providence, so blind to the beauty of moral excellence, that he will not now aspire to some course of worthy action? Let this motto, then, stand out ...

— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a very important ...

— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... became alarmed at the murmurings of the whites, which seemed to presage a coming storm. A number of them sought to arm themselves, but ascertained, upon inquiring at the stores, that no white merchant would sell a negro firearms. Since all the dealers in this sort of merchandise were white men, the negroes had to be satisfied with oiling ...

— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... flag-officer, who should have no other care. The innate tact, courtesy, and thoughtful consideration which distinguished Nelson, when in normal conditions, removed all other misunderstandings. "The delicacy you have always shown to senior officers," wrote St. Vincent to him, "is a sure presage of your avoiding by every means in your power to give umbrage to Admiral Dickson, who seems disposed to judge favourably of the intentions of us all: it is, in truth, the most difficult card we have to play." "Happy should I be," he said at another ...

— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... glories and my own. Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates, (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!) The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend, And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind, My mother's death, the ruin of my kind, Not Priam's hoary hairs defil'd with gore, Not all my brothers gasping on the shore, As thine, Andromache! Thy griefs I dread: I see thee trembling, ...

— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... in his song no tremor of misgiving! All of his heart he pours into his lay,— "Love, love, love, and pure delight of living: Winter is forgotten: here's a happy day!" Fair in your face I read the flowery presage, Snowy on your brow and rosy on your mouth: Sweet in your voice I hear the season's message,— Love, love, love, ...

— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... such an important part began to blow on the eastern horizon of New England." From the ocean-bordered shores were faint streaks of light that ere long began to deepen into hues of a sanguine color that seemed to presage a tempest. At first the sound was like the faint lisping murmur of pines along the shore or the sobbing surf as it retreated from the charge it made; but ere long it broke forth in loud, angry tones like the wailing of branches on a stormy ...

— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... dispirited, we seated ourselves on the margin of the hill, hard by the very mile-stone where Whittington of yore heard the Bow bells ring out the presage of his future greatness. Alas! no bell rung in invitation to us, as we looked disconsolately upon the distant city. Old London seemed to wrap itself up unsociably in its mantle of brown smoke, and to offer no encouragement to such a ...

— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... understand, but followed them to the Damascus Gate; and of every person they met on the way—of the guard at the Gate, even—they asked the question. All who heard it were amazed like me. In time I forgot the circumstance, though there was much talk of it as a presage of the Messiah. Alas, alas! What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart. You have ...

— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... strong enough to ruffle the surface of the sea. Huge banks of dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and a hot unnatural closeness seemed to pervade the atmosphere, as if a storm were about to burst upon the scene. Everything, above and below, seemed to presage war—alike elemental and human—and the various leaders of the several expeditions felt that the approaching night would tax their powers and resources ...

— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... later, the two friends crossed the bridge to D—— to visit the Baileys. When they reached the end of the bridge they paused a moment to rest. The day was one of those warm, bright spring days which deceitfully presage an immediate summer. On the river-shore crawfishes were lazily creeping over the gravel. The air rang with the blue jay's chatter, a robin showed his tawny breast among the withered grasses, and a flicker on a dead stump bobbed ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... angle-worm chasers and will get across a pool and grab a bait before any other denizen of the place can possibly get to it. Their agility is the more surprising when one remembers that the grown hornpout is but a sluggish chap and that they are not built on lines that presage swiftness. You may catch the big horn pouts at any season, but these little chaps are peculiar to the dog days. I have an idea they hibernate in the mud at bottom until warm weather calls them forth, and that by next spring, so voracious is their appetite ...

— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... those who were hurrying to wish the travelers God-speed, nor any of the band who were leaving their homes, but felt the thrilling promise and the presage of that new country toward which the emigrants were ...

— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... in vain, for every morning the surgeons, making their rounds, found seven or eight dead. Some died in fevers, some in deadly chill; so that heat or cold might be the presage of death. ...

— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... balanced against each other so exactly, that the scale would turn on neither side. She refused to give any decided answer, but requested a day or two for reflection; and the vicar, who recollected the adage, that, in an affair of the heart, "the woman who deliberates is lost," left her with a happy presage that his endeavours would be crowned with success. But Mrs Rainscourt would not permit her own heart to decide. It was a case in which she did not consider that a woman was likely to be a correct judge; and she had so long been on intimate terms with McElvina, that she resolved ...

— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... him without so much as a backward glance to presage future favour. So may a lady, if she plays her game well, take ...

— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... of youth ran strong in him. He had imagination. He could dream. The good things he was tasting were a presage only of the better things to come, and that is a wholesome point of view. He was proud—as who would not be?—to step straight into the tracks of such a father; and with that thought came another—just as good for him, and for India, that made him feel as though he were a robber yet, a thief in ...

— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... with his. Some incidents in reference to him in that early period, and some interesting and useful conversations I had with him, then deeply impressed on my mind, and which the lapse of near half a century has not yet obliterated, afforded no doubtful presage of his future greatness and celebrity. On my going into the family, as far as I can judge, he might be in his twelfth or thirteenth year, a boy in the rector's class. However elevated above the other boys in genius, though generally in the list ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... of the Deities, who still with grace preuents our ill presage, This groue was hallow'd to no Hiadres, but chast Diana, who with violent rage Discending from her towre of Christalline, To keepe the place still sacred and diuine: against her rites, brought with her thereupon white Poplar ...

— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... of his appearance, so unusual to him, gave her a presage of misfortune. She followed him into the ...

— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... only imitating therein, his betters. Next reflect upon the opposite reputation of his accusers, and I venture to say malingers, though in truth there is but one, not sustained by the other. Men are murmuring at your sentence, and holding your justice for naught, a sure presage of troublous times; and be assured, that a commonwealth not founded in righteousness cannot stand, for on it rests not ...

— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... streets of Galway-town, When night had let her dusky curtains down, And in a doorway, tall and fair and slight, Framed by an inner beam of golden light, Beheld a maiden of madonna face, Pensive and sad, yet with a nameless grace, Presage, I thought, of the unfolding years, That hide some things that are too ...

— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... martyr, the tragedy shew'd, As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage. And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood, As his words do presage; as ...

— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... superstitious fear, fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted on snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds. And the passing of the Wild Hunt, known as Woden's Hunt, the Raging Host, Gabriel's Hounds, or Asgardreia, was also considered a presage of such misfortune as pestilence ...

— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... explore the event of momentous wars, is to oblige a prisoner, taken by any means whatsoever from the nation with whom they are at variance, to fight with a picked man of their own, each with his own country's arms; and, according as the victory falls, they presage success to the one or to ...

— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... display, ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, clever, ingenious. Skin, hide, pelt, fell. Sleepy, drowsy, slumberous, somnolent, sluggish, torpid, dull, lethargic. Slovenly, ...

— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... echoes of the river and the cricket field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field. Thus he wrote in "A Retrospect of ...

— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... him." Then after a silent pause, "It is then he," resumed his Majesty, "who is the victim of the fatality! I have always been oppressed by a feeling that the events of the ball were a sinister omen, but it is very evident now that it was he whom the presage indicated." ...

— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... set forth in the sharp, fresh morning, the Callow shone with radiant brown and silver, and no presage moved within it of the snow that would hurtle upon it from ...

— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... to admire it, when all on a sudden he felt himself raised up in the air by divine power, so that he had reached the top of the tree, and that from thence he easily made the tallest branches bend quite to the ground. The Holy Spirit pointed out to him that this was a presage of the favorable issue of his application to the Apostolic throne. This filled him with joy, and his recital of it to his brethren renovated ...

— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... When, a few days afterwards, the unfortunate Prince addressed his council for the first time, he said, with mournful truth, these words. "For me it will be no new thing if I am unfortunate: my whole life, even from my cradle, has been a constant series of misfortunes." This sentiment of ill-presage was re-echoed in the address ...

— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... Midgard serpent; the third Hela (Death). The gods were not long ignorant that these monsters continued to be bred up in Joetunheim, and, having had recourse to divination, became aware of all the evils they would have to suffer from them; their being sprung from such a mother was a bad presage, and from such a sire, one still worse. All-father therefore deemed it advisable to send one of the gods to bring them to him. When they came he threw the serpent into that deep ocean by which the earth is engirdled. But the monster has grown to such an enormous size that, holding his tail ...

— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... myself and (I can answer for it) with every one of my colleagues, will have their just weight. But at present these considerations all operate one way; at present there is nothing from which we can presage a favourable disposition to change in the French councils. There is the greatest reason to rely on powerful co-operation from our allies; there are the strongest marks of a disposition in the interior of France to active ...

— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... resumed; they will have many apparent revivals, and will not become totally extinct until an entirely new people shall have succeeded to that which now exists. Now, it must be admitted that there is no symptom or presage of the approach of such a revolution. There is nothing more striking to a person newly arrived in the United States, than the kind of tumultuous agitation in which he finds political society. The laws are incessantly ...

— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... me poore Dame, O you amase me Vncle, Is this the wondrous fortune you presage? What man ...

— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... yielded an income of six or eight thousand livres a year, and constituted the general's entire fortune. Roland's departure on this adventurous expedition deeply afflicted the poor widow. The death of the father seemed to presage that of the son, and Madame de Montrevel, a sweet, gentle Creole, was far from possessing the stern virtues of a ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... are about to befall a City or Country, signs are seen to presage, and seers arise ...

— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... looking after a royal alliance for Louis. He often expressed regret at the precipitate marriages of his sisters. It should be recollected that we were now in the year which saw the Consulship for life established, and which, consequently, gave presage of the Empire. Napoleon said truly to the companions of his exile that "Louis' marriage was the result of Josephine's intrigues," but I cannot understand how he never mentioned the intention he ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... while his quivering lip the summons gave, Grew black, as tho' the shadows of the grave Compast him round and ere he could repeat His message thro', fell lifeless at her feet! Shuddering she went—a soul-felt pang of fear A presage that her own dark doom was near, Roused every feeling and brought Reason back Once more to writhe her last upon the rack. All round seemed tranquil even the foe had ceased As if aware of that demoniac feast His fiery bolts; and tho' the heavens looked red, 'Twas but some distant conflagration's spread. ...

— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... of the adventurous meadow lark fell like the dropping of a silver stream into the pool below. Brave little heart, roused from slumber perchance by domestic care, perchance by the first burdening presage of the long fall flight waiting her sturdy careless brood, perchance stirred by the first thrill of the Event approaching from the east. For already in the east the long round tops of the prairie undulations are shining gray ...

— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... Lope," she answered; "the expression of my grief I know is painful to thee, but a dismal foreboding obtrudes itself upon my mind, which I strive in vain to banish. Alas! it is fraught with a most fearful, but indefinite anticipation; a woeful presage ...

— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... is Miracle. I venture not to soar to yonder regions Whence the glad tidings hither float; And yet, from childhood up familiar with the note, To Life it now renews the old allegiance. Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy; And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church-bell slowly, And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss. A sweet, uncomprehended yearning Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free, And while a thousand tears were burning, I felt a world arise for me. These chants, to youth and all its sports appealing, ...

— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... pressed; but reflecting, that it might be difficult, notwithstanding all his vigilance, to elude discovery or escape pursuit, he determined, upon farther consideration, to enter voluntarily into his majesty's service, and to take his future fortune in the royal navy. Perhaps he had some presage in his own mind, that by his activity and exertions he might rise considerably above his present situation. Accordingly, he went to a rendezvous at Wapping, and entered with an officer of the Eagle man of war, a ship of sixty guns, at that time commanded by Captain ...

— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... not the ravished glory thine; Nor think the flag shall scathless wave Whereon thou bidd'st its presage shine,— Land of the ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... glory in his pure Scottish descent is an innovation; it is an innovation ominous of revolution; it betrays a spirit of disintegration. If at the moment it flatters Scottish pride, Scotchmen and Irishmen would do well to recollect that it is a certain presage of a time when some Englishman will rise to power and obtain popular support on the ground of his staunch English sympathies and of his ...

— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... of students and lovers of either art this may perhaps appear no great discovery; but that it should at length have dawned even upon the race of commentators is a sign which in itself might be taken as a presage of new light to come in an epoch of miracle yet to be. Unhappily it is as yet but a partial revelation that has been vouchsafed to them. To the recognition of the apocalyptic fact that a workman can only be known by his work, and that without examination of his method and ...

— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... other appliances. By it we are led to share vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and enriching the experience of the present. We are enabled, symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In countless ways, language condenses meanings that record social outcomes and presage social outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal share in what is worth while in life that unlettered and ...

— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... sixty-fourth anniversary of the birth of General U. S. Grant, at the Metropolitan church in Washington on the 27th of April, 1886. The text given me was "Grant and the New South." As this brief speech expressed my appreciation of the character of General Grant soon after his death, and my presage of the new ...

— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... implied, of the projected sweeping of the English into the sea. This was a hugged delusion until some fool dispelled it by discovering the gun to be a "creuzot" which had been purchased in France by the Transvaal. But it mattered little where it had been purchased; it was a tangible reality, a presage of sanguinary import. It was a time for action; and maybe the picks and shovels did not rise to the occasion! Fort-making was the rage; the men worked with a will—the women acting as hod-carriers—to make ...

— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... or fool, Thou Stoic of the modern school; Columbus-like, his aim Points forward with a true presage, And nations of a later age May rise to ...

— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... eighty-gun ship Tonnant, in which, after some delay, occasioned by the general difficulty of procuring men, he joined the Channel fleet. Anxious to take part in the important naval operations to be expected, he wished to sail with Nelson, whose reputation gave a just presage that the most decisive blow would be struck where he commanded; but after he had been appointed to a station, his sense of naval obedience forbade any attempt to change it. With that care for the improvement of his young officers which was always a prominent ...

— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... disease, that is, in the one corresponding with the completion of maturation, and the absorption and drying away of the pus in the simple distinct form of small pox. After some experience, we were enabled, from the appearance of the eruption at the outset, to presage the event, which in the above described kinds, was ...

— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... the full brow turned blank, The right-hand, raised but now as if it cursed, Dropt, a mere snowball, (till the people sank Their voices, though a louder laughter burst From the royal window)—thou couldst proudly thank God and the prince for promise and presage, And laugh the laugh back, I think verily, Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage To read a wrong into a prophecy, And measure a true great man's heritage Against a mere great-duke's posterity. I think thy soul said then, "I do not need A princedom and its quarries, after ...

— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Badakhshan; his respect for Christians; subjugates Kutchluk Khan; his campaigns in Tangut; Rubruquis' account of; made king of the Tartars; his system of conquests; and Prester John; divining by twigs—presage of victory; defeats and slays Prester John; his death and burial-place; his aim at conquest of the world; his funeral; his army; defeats the Merkits; relations between Prester John's and his families; ...

— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... baptism on the day after her birth, in the church of St. Saturninus, and with it the name of Mary, a happy presage, as one of her biographers remarks, of her life-long, most tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin, as well as of the singular favours which that generous Mother reserved for her well-loved child. It was her happiness to be surrounded from earliest infancy with none but ...

— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... but always sensible. To secure for him his eight months, without let or hindrance from the full enmity of Cleigh; to give him his boyhood dream, whether he found his pearls or not. Her throat became stuffed with the presage of tears. The ...

— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... depths. On the uproar of the passions follows a delicious calm that descends like a heavenly vision (meno mosso, E flat major). But this does not last, and before long there comes, in the train of the first theme, an outburst of passion with mighty upheavings and fearful lulls that presage new eruptions. Thus the ballade rises and falls on the sea of passion till a mad, reckless rush (presto con fuoco) brings it to a conclusion. Schumann tells us a rather interesting fact in his notice of the "Deuxieme Ballade" (in F major), Op. 38. He heard Chopin play it ...

— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by sprinkling water upon ...

— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... consecrated to the Spheres and the Muses. It is the sign of every circumference; because a circle of 360 degrees is equal to 9, that is to say, 3609. Nevertheless, the ancients regarded this number with a sort of terror: they considered it a bad presage; as the symbol of versatility, of change, and the emblem of the frailty of human affairs. Wherefore they avoided all numbers where nine appears, and chiefly 81, the product of 9 multiplied by itself, and the addition whereof, 81, again ...

— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... knock Upon his chamber door. He threw the lock, And a boy page brought robes of ermine fur And Tarsic silk,—black, white, and lavender,— For his array, and with them a kind message, Which the good knight received with no ill presage: "Will brave Sir Gawayne spare an idle hour For quiet converse in my lady's bower?" The boy led on, and Gawayne followed him Through crooked corridors and archways dim, Along low galleries echoing from afar, And down a winding stair; then "Here we are!" The page cried ...

— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... now suddenly brought sharply into view by the flare of cannon, weary, glad of the General's thoughtfulness, without a suspicion that her present companion had suggested it, taking the rest that came to her and enjoying it as simply as a child would do, yet radiant at moments in the presage of national success, or pale with a glow of sublime faith at the efficacy of the sacrifice that was being offered up for her country. She seemed in harmony with the nature about her and the earnestness, perhaps tragedy, of her surroundings. Katie could not have been ...

— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... for the king and queen regent, began to be tumultuous. Reports were whispered about, like certain sounds which announce, as they whistle from wave to wave, the coming storm—and when they pass athwart a multitude, presage ...

— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... with the breeze it wantons round the brow Of one beloved on earth; or when at night In dreams it comes, and brings with it the DAYS And JOYS that are no more, Or when, perchance With power permitted to alleviate ill And fit the sufferer for the coming woe, Some strange presage the SPIRIT breathes, and fills The breast with ominous fear, and disciplines For sorrow, pours into the afflicted heart The balm of resignation, and inspires With heavenly hope. Even as a Child delights To visit day by day the favorite plant His hand has sown, ...

— Poems • Robert Southey

... himself in order that he may impress his correspondents with the idea that he is a master of the horrible jargon which all bright young fellows at that time innocently supposed to constitute eloquence. Thus, in February, 1800, he writes thus to his friend Bingham: "In my melancholy moments I presage the most dire calamities. I already see in my imagination the time when the banner of civil war shall be unfurled; when Discord's hydra form shall set up her hideous yell, and from her hundred mouths shall howl destruction through our empire; and when ...

— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... light of presage, unknown star, Whose tongue shall tell us what thy secrets are, What message trembles in thee from so far? Cry wellaway. ...

— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. ...

— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the springs, and paws the earth With ceaseless hoof: low droop his ears, wherefrom Bursts fitful sweat, a sweat that waxes cold Upon the dying beast; the skin is dry, And rigidly repels the handler's touch. These earlier signs they give that presage doom. But, if the advancing plague 'gin fiercer grow, Then are their eyes all fire, deep-drawn their breath, At times groan-laboured: with long sobbing heave Their lowest flanks; from either nostril streams Black blood; a rough tongue ...

— The Georgics • Virgil

... four in Theology, and has under its management the Provincial Protestant Normal School. Its buildings, like itself, have been growing by a process of accretion, and the latest, that in which we are now assembled, [the Peter Redpath Museum], is far in advance of all the others, and a presage of the college buildings of the future. We have five chairs endowed by private benefactors, fourteen endowed scholarships and exhibitions, besides others of a temporary nature, and eight endowed gold medals. More than this, we have sent out about 1,200 ...

— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... and hasty warning us away troubled us much; on the other side, to find that the people had languages, and were so full of humanity, did comfort us not a little. And above all, the sign of the cross to that instrument was to us a great rejoicing, and as it were a certain presage of good. Our answer was in the Spanish tongue; that for our ship, it was well; for we had rather met with calms and contrary winds than any tempests. For our sick, they were many, and in very ill case; so that if they were not permitted to land, they ran danger of their lives. ...

— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... Ploughman Emperor, Poetry, See Odes Poetry, classic, See Odes Police, Politeness, Political intrigue, Pope, comparison with the, Population, Population, non-Chinese, Posterity, importance of, Posthumous names, Posthumous titles, Powers, great, Prayer, Precedence, Premiers, See Ministers Presage, See Astrology Presents from Emperor, Priestly caste, no, Princesses, Principalities, (see Fiefs), Prisons, Prisoners of war, Proclaiming the law, Proclaiming the moon, Proclamation, Progress in China, Promontory, Shan Tung, ...

— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... they are a North-West Passage Unto the glowing India of the soul; And as the good ships sent upon that message Have not exactly ascertained the Pole (Though Parry's efforts look a lucky presage),[mc] Thus gentlemen may run upon a shoal; For if the Pole's not open, but all frost (A chance still), 't is ...

— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... facilitated by the setting in of a certain current in men's thoughts and feelings in that direction toward which a change is to be made. And, as lighter substances whirl about before the tempest and presage it, so words and deeds, ominous but not effective of the coming revolution, are circulated beforehand through the multitude or pass across the field of events. This was specially the case with Christianity, as became its high dignity; it came heralded and ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... recurring to him a haunting presage of the unprofitableness of the life, after which men have not "any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun." Where he speaks of resignation, after showing how the less impetuous and self-concentred natures ...

— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... setting sun descended on a blue stratus cloud which appeared along the edge of all other parts of the horizon, and eagerly watching any indication of a change, I drew even from this a presage of rain. Thermometer at sunrise, 88 deg.; at noon, 104 deg.; at 4 P.M., 106; at 9, 88 deg.;—with ...

— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... Damascus and the lands about Ruled Hidraort, a wizard grave and sage, Acquainted well with all the damned rout Of Pluto's reign, even from his tender age; Yet of this war he could not figure out The wished ending, or success presage, For neither stars above, nor powers of hell, Nor skill, nor art, nor ...

— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... the wings of Fame, Thine eclat sounding with thy name, Well pleased, I heard, ere 'twas my lot To see thee in thy humble cot. That genius smiled upon thy birth, And application called it forth; That times and tides thou could'st presage, And traverse the Celestial stage, Where shining globes their circles run, In swift rotation round the sun; Could'st tell how planets in their way, From order ne'er were known to stray. Sun, moon and ...

— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... the spirits by any influence of its own. All know the story of Caesar's accidentally stumbling in the act of landing on the African coast; and the presence of mind with which he converted the direful presage into a favorable one by exclaiming, "Africa, I embrace thee." Such omens, it is true, were often conceived as warnings of the future, given by a friendly or a hostile deity; but this very superstition grew out of a pre-existing tendency; the ...

— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... was called a hunch, a premonition, the presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred feet away. It was ...

— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... in this attire, but my mother did not wish her to wear any jewels. She believes that wearing them at such a time is a presage of misfortune, and said: 'She who wears jewels on her wedding day, will weep bitter tears all the rest of her life.' Poor Barbara needed no more, for she had already wept so much that her eyes were ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... instructed by his mother in the importance of seeking divine influence, his mind was prepared to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and he had a deep conflict to pass through, which he confided to his mother, and which he seemed to think was the presage to suffering. In performing some gymnastic exercises he received a fall on the head, which after some time was followed by a paralytic affection of the whole body, so that he became entirely helpless, and his speech was taken away. ...

— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... desire for spreading the gospel among the blacks and among the savage tribes on our borders has been rapidly increasing during the last year. The Assembly take notice of this circumstance with the more satisfaction, as it not only affords a pleasing presage of the spread of the gospel, but also furnishes agreeable evidence of the genuineness and the benign tendency of that spirit which God has been pleased to ...

— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... days according to some authorities, and eight according to others. It seized her one night at Odos whilst she was watching a comet, which it was averred had appeared to notify the death of Pope Paul III. "It was perhaps to presage her own," naively remarks Brantome, who adds that while she was looking at the comet her mouth suddenly became partially paralysed, whereupon her doctor, M. d'Escuranis, led her away and made her go to bed. Her ...

— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... mighty spirit, to whom you vow Faith of kin genius unrebukably, Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; When I presage that none shall hear the voice From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, That sullen envy bade the churlish choice Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh ...

— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... storm presage, They whisper peace, and tempests rise, And clouds obscure the brightest skies, And winds, and waves ...

— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie

... said nastily. (When people presage a remark by saying that they only say it because they love you, you may lay long odds that it's going to be disagreeable!) "It certainly sounds a gruesome prospect. Not even a choice between bankruptcy and mania, but ...

— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fear, that gives a check to my soft pursuit, and tells me that thy unhappy engagement in this League, this accursed association, will one day undo us both, and part for ever thee and thy unlucky Sylvia; yes, yes, my dear lord, my soul does presage an unfortunate event from this dire engagement; nor can your false reasoning, your fancied advantages, reconcile it to my honest, good-natur'd heart; and surely the design is inconsistent with love, ...

— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... ours refuses, collected in that box by a person certainly no friend to Mr. Rowan—certainly not very deeply interested in giving him a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am persuaded you do, you cannot be surprised, however you may be distressed, at the mournful presage with which an anxious public is led to fear the worst from your possible determination. But I will not, for the justice and honor of our common country, suffer my mind to be borne away by such melancholy anticipation. I ...

— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, with the presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become utterly distasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make out invoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, my mind now exalted ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... pool, and mingled incongruously with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it, with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory in the great game ...

— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... breath of sorrow My ardent spirit chill, The dark—dark presage of the morrow, The sense ...

— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... an automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of instinct and reaches ...

— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... renown, And then seek Zeus, but not with loosened zone For dalliance; entreat him to restore Me, Achilles, to the earth, to the black earth, The nourisher of men, not these pale shades, Whose shapes have learned the presage of thy doom; They flit between me and the wind-swept plain Of Troy, the banners over Ilion's walls, The zenith of my prowess, and my fate. Give me again the breath of life, not death. Would I could tarry in the timbered tent, As when I wept Patroclus, when, by night, Old Priam crept, kissing my ...

— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard

... years! To break the sceptre of tyrannic Rage; From Woe's wan cheek to wipe the bitter tears; Ye years, again roll round! Hark! from afar what desolating sound, While echoes load the sighing gales, With dire presage the throbbing heart assails! Murder, deep-roused, with all the whirlwind's haste, And roar of tempest, from her cavern springs, Her tangled serpents girds around her waist, Smiles ghastly fierce, and shakes her ...

— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... or the Indian country. The force of those bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they might soon precipitate ...

— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... quaking flesh unto the hook: The rout they follow with confused voice, Crying, they're glad, say, they could ne'er abide him, Enquire what man he was, what kind of face, What beard he had, what nose, what lips? Protest They ever did presage he'd come to this; They never thought him wise, nor valiant; ask After his garments, when he dies, what death; And not a beast of all the herd demands, What was his crime, or who were his accusers, Under what proof or testimony he fell? There came, says one, a huge long-worded letter ...

— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... was destined to a swift and sudden fulfilment. The red glare was scarcely out of the west when the wind began to howl and whistle through our rigging with a presage of the tempest that was to come. What was of worse omen still, the long streamer on the main-mast, which hitherto had spread due eastward, now suddenly flapped to south- east, showing that the gale was coming upon us ...

— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... delightful reveries that took possession of my fancy, I got up by times, and, flying to the place of rendezvous, had in a little time the pleasure of seeing Miss Williams approach with a smile on her countenance, which I interpreted into a good omen. Neither was I mistaken in my presage. She presented me with a letter from the idol of my soul, which, after having kissed it devoutly, I opened with the utmost eagerness, and was blessed with her ...

— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... occasions they form in an instant, and from a small speck increase to a prodigious size. This is particularly observable at the summit of Lebanon; and mariners have usually found that the appearance of a cloud on this peak is an infallible presage of a westerly wind, one of the "fathers of rain" in the ...

— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... right, Your noble Palamon had been the knight; And conquering Theseus from his side had sent Your generous lord, to guide the Theban government. Time shall accomplish that; and I shall see A Palamon in him, in you an Emily. Already have the Fates your path prepared, 40 And sure presage your future sway declared: When westward, like the sun, you took your way, And from benighted Britain bore the day, Blue Triton gave the signal from the shore, The ready Nereids heard, and swam before, To smooth the seas; a soft Etesian gale But just inspired, and gently swell'd the sail; ...

— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... limits. Knowledge has been diffused with a zeal and rapidity never before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that has ever ...

— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle."— Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents from his wounded side. "Then it was truth!" he said,—"I knew That the dark presage must be true.— I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs, Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone, Might bribe him ...

— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to step into a "living"—right in the line of promotion of which his beauty and intellect tokened a sure presage—he balked. ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... therefore, it would not be an omen of ill presage, a dreadful phenomenon in the land, if our great men should take it in their heads ...

— The Querist • George Berkeley

... the Africans for the ground it stood upon; and called Carthada,(572) or Carthage, a name that, in the Phoenician and Hebrew tongues, (which have a great affinity,) signifies the New City. It is said, that when the foundations were dug, a horse's head was found, which was thought a good omen, and a presage of the future ...

— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... quarter of the year, this is almost always a certain presage of a wedding, when all parties are agreed, and the parson in readiness; and then you must be sure to have money in readiness too, or your intended marriage may happen to prove a miscarriage. But those who are able to pay ...

— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... without first invoking God's blessing upon it; and seizing her by the hand he fell upon his knees and with the voice of one born to be obeyed commanded silence and began his prayer. The dance was immediately suspended, and a solemnity and horror, as if the presage of approaching doom, fell upon the startled assemblage. Above the agonizing sobs of the lately impenitent revellers was heard, as was that of the ancient prophet above the din of the worshippers of Baal, the voice of the man of God in earnest appeals to the throne ...

— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. "The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm." Such were the prognostics ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... space of time for a woman's memory? I do not know whether you recall our last meeting? Pardon, I meant to say the last but one, since we met last night. Do you concede that the manner in which we parted then did not presage the manner in ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... take care of; tend'ency; attend' (-ance, -ant); contend'; distend'; extend'; intend' (literally, to stretch to), to purpose, to design; portend' (literally, to stretch forward), to presage, to betoken; pretend' (literally, to stretch forth), to affect, feel; subtend', to extend under; ...

— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... himself is evidently reserved on the subject in his letter to his sister, though he was accustomed to make her his confidant in his ecclesiastical proceedings; he only speaks of his heart having burnt within him in presage of what was to happen. The digging commenced, and in due time two skeletons were discovered, of great size, perfect, and disposed in an orderly way; the head of each, however, separated from the body, and a quantity of blood about. That ...

— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... interview, which no one can read without passion, or think of without delight—that exquisite scene, in which the wife and mother pours out all her tenderness, her joy, her sadness, her pride, her terror, the memory of the past, and the presage of future sorrow, in an irresistible torrent of confiding love. Not less affecting is her husband's answer. Conscious of his impending doom, he replies, that "not the future misery of his countrymen, not that of Hecuba herself, and the royal Priam—not that of all his valiant ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot ...

— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... insensibly made her as wicked as herself. The day after the death of the younger not finding her at home, I asked her elder sister what was become of her; but she, instead of answering, affected to weep bitterly; from whence I formed a fatal presage. I pressed her to inform me of what she knew respecting her sister 'Father,' replied she, sobbing, 'I can tell you no more than that my sister put on yesterday her richest dress, with her valuable ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... As in all Malay countries, this bird is the object of curious superstitions. Its raucous cry, which may be faintly characterized as hideous, is said to mark the hours and, in the night-time, to presage death or ...

— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... white-winged gulls swept screaming over our heads, scaring away the gaudy, noisy parrots that had been our feathered companions for so long. The next morning the sun shot up for us, a golden ball of cheering presage, from out the glittering bosom of the Pacific. What a shout we raised! Weeks of toil and fever were forgotten, scars and bruises healed—or were felt no longer—when the glorious heave of ...

— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... to the fashion of that age, by a large stone) alone, among all the inferior deities, refused to yield his place to Jupiter himself. A favorable inference was drawn from his obstinacy, which was interpreted by the augurs as a sure presage that the boundaries of the Roman power would never recede. [22] During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. But though Terminus had resisted the Majesty of Jupiter, he submitted to the authority of the emperor Hadrian. [23] The resignation ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... Pericles, observing the pilot of his own galley to be frightened and confused, took his cloak and placed it before his eyes, asking him at the same time if he found any thing alarming, or of evil presage, in what he then did? and upon his answering in the negative: "Where then is the difference," said Pericles, "between this covering and the other, except that something of greater extent than my cloak deprives us of the light of the sun?" Nor can it be doubted that Alexander when, on a like occasion, ...

— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... under the command of General Wayne is a happy presage to our military operations against the hostile Indians north of the Ohio. From the advices which have been forwarded, the advance which he has made must have damped the ardor of the savages and weakened their obstinacy in waging war against the United States. And ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... throughout our country. Such an anticipation was not to be thought delusive, because the opposition made to the Society at its commencement still continued. On the contrary, this very opposition, properly considered, affords the fullest proof of the wisdom of our object, and the fairest presage of ...

— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown

... observed them to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections which under one or other name they toot to celebrate, I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to this task might with such diligence as they used embolden me, and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would ...

— Milton • Mark Pattison

... Rall and Donop seemed to invite attack. Their fancied security seemed also to presage success. An inexorable necessity called loudly for action before conditions so favorable should be changed by the freezing up of the Delaware when, if the enemy had any enterprise whatever, the river would no longer prevent, but assist, his marching ...

— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... so much," I said nastily. (When people presage a remark by saying that they only say it because they love you, you may lay long odds that it's going to be disagreeable!) "It certainly sounds a gruesome prospect. Not even a choice between bankruptcy and mania, but a certainty of both! And within ...

— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... italicized passage lies the secret of a tranquil soul. Learn by degrees to acquire power over your own imagination. By-and-by you will be surprised to find that you have formed a habit of reining it when it would presage disaster. It is not getting ready for house-cleaning to-day that terrifies you so much as the fancy that with the morrow will begin the actual scrubbing and window-washing. You do not mind ripping up an old gown while John reads to you under the evening lamp, but ...

— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... an instant, and from a small speck increase to a prodigious size. This is particularly observable at the summit of Lebanon; and mariners have usually found that the appearance of a cloud on this peak is an infallible presage of a westerly wind, one of the "fathers of rain" in the climate ...

— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... go: Though thy heart presage thee woe, Vales and many a wasted sun, Oread let thy laughter run, Till the irreverent mountain air Ripple ...

— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old a-ches[2] throb, your hollow tooth will rage; Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swill'd more liquor than it could contain, ...

— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... shadows on the spent tan this dark day! Over his shoulder he was forever glancing, hoping that Nate would presently appear from the woods. He saw only the mists lurking in the laurel; they had autumnal presage and a chill presence. He buttoned his coat about him, and the old mule sneezed as he jogged round the ...

— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... is an innovation; it is an innovation ominous of revolution; it betrays a spirit of disintegration. If at the moment it flatters Scottish pride, Scotchmen and Irishmen would do well to recollect that it is a certain presage of a time when some Englishman will rise to power and obtain popular support on the ground of his staunch English sympathies and ...

— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... bird of evil presage, To the lonely house on the shore Came the wind with a tale of shipwreck, And shrieked ...

— Poems • William D. Howells

... huge sea and swell, mountainous in calm or storm. Leaden-grey skies, with a brief glint of sunshine now and then—for it was nominally summer time in low latitudes. Days of gloomy calm, presage of a fiercer blow, when the Old Man (Orcadian philosopher that he was) caught and skilfully stuffed the great-winged albatross that flounders helplessly when the wind fails. Days of strong breezes, when we tried to beat to windward under a straining main-to'gal'nsail; ever ...

— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... replenishing the fire, and then walked out in the gloom and looked about. Everything was the same. The night was dark,—no moon being visible,—and an oppressive sultriness was in the atmosphere. It seemed as if some elemental disturbance were close at hand, but in looking to the sky no presage ...

— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my tears with his. Some incidents in reference to him in that early period, and some interesting and useful conversations I had with him, then deeply impressed on my mind, and which the lapse of near half a century has not yet obliterated, afforded no doubtful presage of his future greatness and celebrity. On my going into the family, as far as I can judge, he might be in his twelfth or thirteenth year, a boy in the rector's class. However elevated above the other boys in genius, though ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... young nobles, who were in attendance on the prince. Including the crew, the Blanche Nef was expected to carry full three hundred persons across the Channel. All were in high spirits, in that reckless state of mirth which the grave Scots deem as the absolute presage of a fearful catastrophe, as well as often its cause; and the young Etheling, with open-hearted, imprudent good-nature, presented the crew with three casks of wine to drink to his health and the success of the voyage. Such ...

— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... from the unconscious stranger, was regarding him with the gentle speculative look which Bowers knew to presage mischief. It was not difficult to interpret Mary's intentions, and Bowers was fully aware that it was his duty either to warn the sleeper or reprimand Mary. His eyes, however, had the fondness ...

— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... Answers? Waiting Absence Sleep Your Shadow The Full Tide Hands The Night Watch The Haunted Shadow Alone and Cold Inevitable Change Loneliness I heard a Voice upon the Window beat First Love The Call The Shade Happy is England Now The Stars in their Courses Sweet England Presage of Victory The Return English Hills Homecoming England's Enemy From Piccadilly in August Evening Beauty: Blackfriars Sailing of the Glory At the Dock "The Men who loved the Cause ...

— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... the sceptre of tyrannic Rage; From Woe's wan cheek to wipe the bitter tears; Ye years, again roll round! Hark! from afar what desolating sound, While echoes load the sighing gales, With dire presage the throbbing heart assails! Murder, deep-roused, with all the whirlwind's haste, And roar of tempest, from her cavern springs, Her tangled serpents girds around her waist, Smiles ghastly fierce, and ...

— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... cannon, weary, glad of the General's thoughtfulness, without a suspicion that her present companion had suggested it, taking the rest that came to her and enjoying it as simply as a child would do, yet radiant at moments in the presage of national success, or pale with a glow of sublime faith at the efficacy of the sacrifice that was being offered up for her country. She seemed in harmony with the nature about her and the earnestness, perhaps ...

— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... next letter, of the early part of August 1796, Mornington sends a quatrain of Latin Elegiacs which he had composed at Dundas's house, on the exploits of Wurmser in relieving Mantua, of Davidovitch at Roveredo, and Quosdanovitch at Brescia (not Verona), which seemed to presage the ruin of Bonaparte. ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... had crossed his face again; if there was a man in England whom at that time he cordially disliked, it was this man—Angela's brother—Rupert Vivian. He did not know why, but he always had a presage of disaster when he saw that high-bred, impassive face beside him, or heard the modulation of Vivian's quiet, musical voice. Hugo was superstitious, and he firmly believed that Rupert Vivian's presence brought ...

— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... waning night the liquid note of the adventurous meadow lark fell like the dropping of a silver stream into the pool below. Brave little heart, roused from slumber perchance by domestic care, perchance by the first burdening presage of the long fall flight waiting her sturdy careless brood, perchance stirred by the first thrill of the Event approaching from the east. For already in the east the long round tops of the prairie undulations are shining gray above the dark hollows and faint bars of light are shooting to the zenith, ...

— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... handsome in this attire, but my mother did not wish her to wear any jewels. She believes that wearing them at such a time is a presage of misfortune, and said: 'She who wears jewels on her wedding day, will weep bitter tears all the rest of her life.' Poor Barbara needed no more, for she had already wept so much that her eyes were all swollen. In the bouquet placed by my mother at Barbara's side were a gold ducat, ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle." Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents, from his wounded side. "Then it was truth," he said—"I knew That the dark presage must be true. I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone Might bribe him for delay. It may not be!—this dizzy trance - Curse on yon base ...

— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... bosoms the regrets and murmurs of the popish clergy; submission and a simulated loyalty were at present obviously their only policy: thus not a whisper breathed abroad but of joy and gratulation and happy presage of the days ...

— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... greatest consternation. Pericles observing that the pilot was much astonished and perplexed, took his cloak, and having covered his eyes with it, asked him if he found anything terrible in that, or considered it as a bad presage? Upon his answering in the negative, he said, 'Where is the difference, then between this and the other, except that something bigger than ...

— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... replied: "The coincidence of circumstances which led to this auspicious crisis, the confidence reposed in me by my fellow-citizens, and the assistance I may expect from counsels which will be dictated by an enlarged and liberal policy, seem to presage a more prosperous issue to my administration than a diffidence of my abilities had taught me to anticipate, I now feel myself inexpressibly happy in a belief that Heaven, which has done so much for ...

— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... his heart beat quickly. An uncontrollable presage of evil racked his nerve-centres. Something had gone wrong; and yet the whole thing was so absurd, trivial. In a crisis—well, he could always apologize. He smiled ...

— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... ages gone, By law impelled, by law restrained, Suns, planets, systems,—all sweep on Toward bourns still dark and unexplained; Some bright with youth, some dull with age, Their varied colors well presage Their ...

— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... Canadian hills or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew Gave the sad presage of his future years,— The child of misery, ...

— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... appliances. By it we are led to share vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and enriching the experience of the present. We are enabled, symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In countless ways, language condenses meanings that record social outcomes and presage social outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal share in what is worth while in life that unlettered and uneducated have ...

— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... management, a favorable death rate, and very low expenses, some of them have provided protection at very low rates for many years. Others have failed with disappointment and disaster to the older members. Still others are struggling with difficulties that presage dissolution. Many now have some form of reserve accumulations, and some have so improved their methods that they closely resemble reserve companies. The assets of all the assessment companies are now $1.37 per $100 of insurance in force, while the legal reserve companies have ...

— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... priority, antecedence, anteriority, precedence, pre-existence; precession &c. 280; precursor &c. 64; the past &c. 122; premises. V. precede, come before; forerun; go before &c. (lead) 280; preexist; dawn; presage &c. 511; herald, usher in. be beforehand &c. (be early) 132; steal a march upon, anticipate, forestall; have the start, gain the start. Adj. prior, previous; preceding, precedent; anterior, antecedent; pre- existing, pre-existent; former, foregoing; ...

— Roget's Thesaurus

... he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless ...

— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... a pale and delicate hue, which I afterwards found to be a presage of consumption; and the idea then occurred to me that she ...

— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... but also those of several others of my Acquaintance, who are as little pleased with the ordinary manner of spending one's Time as my self: And if a fervent Desire after Knowledge, and a great Sense of our present Ignorance, may be thought a good Presage and Earnest of Improvement, you may look upon your Time you shall bestow in answering this Request not thrown away to no purpose. And I can't but add, that unless you have a particular and more than ordinary Regard for Eleonora, I have a better Title to your Favour than she; since I do ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a very important old burgher ...

— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... thou hast reached thy wishes' goal, I trow: In happy presage then rejoice and fear not any woe. Treasures this very day, will I collect and neath escort Of horsemen and of champions, to Shamikh they shall go. Brocade and bladders full of musk I will to him despatch And eke white silver and red gold I'll send to him also. Yea, and a letter ...

— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... it were, a Presage in his own Breast, of the Misfortune impending from his accepting Laertes's Challenge, is beautiful; and we are to note, that our Author in several of his Plays, has brought in the chief Personages as having a sort of prophetick ...

— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... been stranded at Scheveningen, one of them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards gravely as they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of civil commotions. It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great war two whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt. Although some free-thinking people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a prevalence of strong westerly gales, while others found proof ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... who remember the revolution of 1789, are forcibly reminded of it by the late event, and from the catastrophe of the former struggle, are apt to draw a mournful presage of the present. It is not for human penetration to foretell, with certainty, the ultimate issue of such a movement. In a case so dependent on the capricious passions of man, there are too many contingencies ...

— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt

... as you would find if you had left youth behind and could see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of any controlling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you at the time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines, also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward it to form ...

— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... tidings when he frown'd; Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught, 205 The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar'd how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cypher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge. 210 In arguing too, the parson own'd his skill, For e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thund'ring sound Amazed the gazing rustics rang'd around, And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... Boccaccio's life of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence—begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it—continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the Vita Nuova. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already beholds ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... deeply skilled in divination. When he vanished from among mankind, the priests kept his staff just like any other sacred object. That at such a time, when all the other holy things perished, this should have been preserved, gave them good hopes of Rome, which that omen seemed to presage would ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... of solitude I will never disturb you by an unwelcome and ill-timed sympathy. I will tend upon you, watch over you, bear with you, with more than the love and tenderness of a brother. You shall see me only when you wish it. Your loneliness shall never be invaded. When you get better, as I presage you will, I will leave you to come back to England, and provide for the worst, by ensuring your sister a protector. I will then return to you alone, that your seclusion may not be endangered by the knowledge, even of Ellen, and you shall have ...

— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Vainly. He came indeed, but with him brought No wonted gratulations, no glad face, Nor happy omen. And the torch he bore Crackled in hissing smoke; nor gather'd flame From whirling motion. Still more dire th' event Prov'd, than the presage. As the new-made bride, Attended by a train of Naiad nymphs, Rov'd through the grass, a serpent's fangs her heel Pierc'd, and she instant dy'd. Her, when long-mourn'd In upper air, the Rhodopeian bard Ventur'd to seek in shades, ...

— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... events in which Washington was to play such an important part began to blow on the eastern horizon of New England." From the ocean-bordered shores were faint streaks of light that ere long began to deepen into hues of a sanguine color that seemed to presage a tempest. At first the sound was like the faint lisping murmur of pines along the shore or the sobbing surf as it retreated from the charge it made; but ere long it broke forth in loud, angry tones like the wailing of branches on a stormy night or the booming ...

— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain— Bent o'er the babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptized ...

— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings; for such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of his character; never were curious glances so well justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him a strikingly ...

— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... rays pointed. They could, moreover, explain the effects produced by the fixed stars whose rays were conjoined with the comet's. If a comet resembles a flute, then musicians are aimed at; when comets are in the less dignified parts of the constellations, they presage evil to immodest persons; if the head of a comet forms an equilateral triangle or a square with fixed stars, then it is time for mathematicians and men of science to tremble. When they are in the sign of the Ram, they portend great wars and widespread mortality, the abasement ...

— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... thou Wakeful? No trouble clung about thee? Nought Made the air of night heavier with presage felt As joy feels fear and withers? I am not Afraid: methinks I am ...

— The Duke of Gandia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to birth. Then first 'mong tented tribes men shuddering spake Dread tales of one that moved, an unseen shape, 'Mong chilling mists and snow. A spirit swift, That dwelt in lands beyond day's purple rift. Phantom of presage ill to babes unborn, Whose fast-sealed eyes ope not to earthly morn. "We heard," they cried, "the Elf-babes shrilly scream, And loud the Siren's song, when lightnings gleam." Then they that by low beds all night did wake, Prayed for ...

— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... modifications of their Government, effected with so much courage and wisdom by the people of France, afford a happy presage of their future course, and have naturally elicited from the kindred feelings of this nation that spontaneous and universal burst of applause in which you have participated. In congratulating you, my fellow citizens, upon an event so auspicious to the ...

— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... aroused within me a sense of impending evil regarding the very man of whom we were speaking. The sound of the name seemed to strike the sympathetic chord within my brain, and I at once became cognisant that the unaccountable presage of impending misfortune was connected with that rather incongruous household down ...

— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... was some consolation to us to know, amidst the disappointment which this new measure occasioned, and our apparent defeat in the eyes of the public, that we had really beaten our opponents at their own weapons, and that, as this was a victory in our own private feelings, so it was the presage to us of a ...

— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... infant received baptism on the day after her birth, in the church of St. Saturninus, and with it the name of Mary, a happy presage, as one of her biographers remarks, of her life-long, most tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin, as well as of the singular favours which that generous Mother reserved for her well-loved child. It was her happiness ...

— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... China, meanwhile, had been seething under the surface. An ill-starred reform movement, initiated by the Emperor, had failed, the government was discredited, and the Empress Dowager seized the throne for herself. All China interpreted the event to presage a return to the old order of things—a general anti-foreign movement. Economic distresses, bad crops, a disastrous flood and hatred of foreign missionaries, combined with a deep resentment at the European partition of their ...

— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... immortal weal! In vain for Constance is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle."— Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light as if he felt no wound; Though in the action burst the tide In torrents from his wounded side. "Then it was truth!" he said,—"I knew That the dark presage must be true.— I would the Fiend, to whom belongs The vengeance due to all her wrongs, Would spare me but a day! For wasting fire, and dying groan, And priests slain on the altar stone, Might bribe him for delay. It may not be!—this ...

— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... appointed to the eighty-gun ship Tonnant, in which, after some delay, occasioned by the general difficulty of procuring men, he joined the Channel fleet. Anxious to take part in the important naval operations to be expected, he wished to sail with Nelson, whose reputation gave a just presage that the most decisive blow would be struck where he commanded; but after he had been appointed to a station, his sense of naval obedience forbade any attempt to change it. With that care for the improvement of his young officers which ...

— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... attained the age in which you can judge of his character, he is respectable only from his rank, and valuable only from his wealth; if neither his head nor his heart will make him useful to our cause, suffer him to remain undisturbed in his prosperity here: but if, as I presage, he becomes worthy of the blood which he bears in his veins, then I conjure you, my brother, to remind him that he has been sworn by me on my death-bed to the most sacred ...

— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... know what has got into me to-day," said Melville to himself. "It's only three o'clock, yet the day seems very long. I wish Herbert would return. I feel uneasy. I don't know why. I hope it is not a presage of misfortune. I shall not be sure that something has not happened to Herbert ...

— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... its management the Provincial Protestant Normal School. Its buildings, like itself, have been growing by a process of accretion, and the latest, that in which we are now assembled, [the Peter Redpath Museum], is far in advance of all the others, and a presage of the college buildings of the future. We have five chairs endowed by private benefactors, fourteen endowed scholarships and exhibitions, besides others of a temporary nature, and eight endowed gold medals. More ...

— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it, with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory in the great game they ...

— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... had suddenly come that the mating of lives is not a light matter. Standing at a window, he had caught from the storm a vague presage of perils and pitfalls approaching, through and around which he must be guide for another. That other was very, very dear to him. The thought set him to quaking. It was the first responsibility he had had in ...

— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... sights appeared; the angry threatening gods Filled both the earth and seas with prodigies. Great store of strange and unknown stars were seen Wandering about the north, and rings of fire Fly in the air, and dreadful bearded stars, And comets that presage the fall of kingdoms; The flattering[634] sky glittered in often flames, And sundry fiery meteors blazed in heaven, Now spear-like long, now like a spreading torch; 530 Lightning in silence stole forth without clouds, And, from the northern climate snatching fire, Blasted the Capitol; ...

— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... flecked the waste round us; and insects without number whirred over our heads, or hung poised with their wings outspread on the tall stalks of marram grass. All at once a cloud hid the sun, and a summer whirlwind, presage of the thunderstorm, swept past us, carrying up with it a column of dry sand, and rattling the dry bents ...

— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... found him sitting upright in the bunk, with his great-coat on over the rest of his garments, and his hat between his knees. The weather was excessively hot, and, in the place where he lay, the heat was overpowering. I at once saw that he was delirious, a sure presage that the end was near. I took off his great-coat, and having folded and placed it under his head for a pillow, I laid him upon it, and went immediately to prepare him some tea. I was absent but a few minutes, and, on returning, ...

— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... vicegerent, such impression had these words on the mind and heart of Xavier. They inspired into him a divine vigour; and in his answer to his Holiness, there shone through a profound humility such a magnanimity of soul, that Paul III. had from that very minute a certain presage of those wonderful events which afterwards arrived. Therefore the most Holy Father, having wished him the special assistance of God in all his labours, tenderly embraced him, more than once, and gave him a ...

— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... of boyish friendships, the echoes of the river and the cricket field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field. Thus he wrote in "A Retrospect of ...

— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... of his mother's possessions. Plainly this was no flying visit. You do not pop over to London for a day or two with a steamer trunk, another trunk, a black box, a suit-case, and a small brown bag. Lady Underhill had evidently come prepared to stay; and the fact seemed to presage trouble. ...

— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... of the ancient palace of the Moorish kings. Many looked upon this as an omen of some impending evil; but Fray Antonio Agapida, in that infallible spirit of divination which succeeds an event, plainly reads in it a presage that the empire of the Moors was about to be shaken to ...

— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... the field of military operations found its exact counterpart in the political campaign. Several circumstances contributed to divide and discourage the administration party. The resignation of Mr. Chase had seemed to not a few leading Republicans a presage of disintegration in the government. Mr. Greeley's mission at Niagara Falls had unsettled and troubled the minds of many. The Democrats, not having as yet appointed a candidate or formulated a platform, were free to devote all their leisure to attacks ...

— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... livid stains, assumed such an expression of anguish that Gervaise, forgetting her own agony, joined her hands and fell on her knees near the bed. For the last month she had seen the girl clinging to the walls for support when she went about, bent double indeed, by a cough which seemed to presage a coffin. Now the poor child could not even cough. She had a hiccough and drops of blood oozed from the ...

— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... said — and oft renewed that say — He was reserved to flourish in an age, When most opprest the Roman empire lay, That he might free that holy heritage: But as some deeds of his I must display Hereafter, these I will not now presage. So spake that wizard, and renewed the story, Which told of ...

— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... who might have survived his wounds would succumb to exposure to the elements during the night, debarred the tardy succor that must needs await his turn. One of the surgeons at their hasty work at the field hospital, under the shelter of the cliffs on the slope, paused to note the presage of doom and death, and to draw a long breath before he adjusted himself anew to the grim duties of the scalpel in his hand. His face was set and haggard, less with a realization of the significance of the scene—for he was used to its recurrence—than simply with a physical reflection ...

— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to step into a "living"—right in the line of promotion of which his beauty and intellect tokened a sure presage—he balked. ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... scenes in which he figured before Marjory. The simple fact that there was no train away from Agrinion until the next daybreak had wrought a stupendous change in his outlook. He unhesitatingly considered it an omen of a good future. He was up before the darkness even contained presage of coming light, but near the railway station was a little hut where coffee was being served to several prospective travellers who had come even earlier to the rendezvous. There was no ...

— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... that I dread? "The parish aid withdrawn, I look'd around, And in my school a bless'd subsistence found - My winter-calm of life: to be of use Would pleasant thoughts and heavenly hopes produce; I loved them all; it soothed me to presage The various trials of their riper age, Then dwell on mine, and bless the Power who gave Pains to correct us, and remorse to save. "Yes! these were days of peace, but they are past, - A trial came, I will believe, a last; I lost my sight, and my employment gone, Useless I live, but ...

— The Borough • George Crabbe

... befalling still—what ever it might be—some evil was at work, and an evil that had Crispin for its scope. She had neither reason nor evidence from which to draw this inference. It was no more than the instinct whose voice cries out to us at times a presage of ill, and oftentimes compels our attention in a degree far higher than ...

— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... heads a film of dark, thread-like clouds, looking like immense cobwebs drifting under the stars, darkened the sky with the presage of the coming thunderstorm. From the invisible hills the first distant rumble of thunder came in a prolonged roll which, after tossing about from hill to hill, lost itself in the forests of the Pantai. Dain and Nina stood up, and the former looked ...

— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... walking down a street of modest homes; the bare trees groped into a sky clear and blue with the first chill presage of winter. A quick step fell unheeded by his side; the girl passed, hesitated, then ...

— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... of dismal legends and superstitions connected with the mansion, and every trifling circumstance that occurred was twisted into an omen or presage, whether of good or evil, by the highly wrought fancy of Miss Patricia. These absurdities, together with the past grandeur of their house, and the former glories of their religion, formed the staple subjects of conversation when the family was assembled; and as I became ...

— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... love and hatred, fear and hope, for as of old the great vaticinator, most famous and renowned prophet Proteus, was not able in his disguise or transformation into fire, water, a tiger, a dragon, and other such like uncouth shapes and visors, to presage anything that was to come till he was restored to his own first natural and kindly form; just so doth man; for, at his reception of the art of divination and faculty of prognosticating future things, that part in him which is the most divine, to wit, the Nous, or ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... maids interrupted him to tell the story of the swallows on the "Antonius," Cleopatra's admiral galley. He could scarcely report from Pelusium an omen of darker presage. ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... anxiously expected. The completion of the Britannia's voyage was also looked forward to as a desirable event, though to be expected at a somewhat later period; and every shower of rain, as it tended to the benefit of the Indian corn then growing, was received as a sort of presage that at least the seed wheat, the hopes of next season, would be safe. Some very welcome rain had fallen during this month, which considerably revived the Indian corn that was first sown, and improved the appearance of that ...

— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... son of a king; and when in conformity to the usage of the country he was, a few days after his birth, presented before the altar of a deity, the image is said to have inclined its head as a presage of the future greatness of the new-born prophet. The child soon developed faculties of the first order, and became equally distinguished by the uncommon beauty of his person. No sooner had he grown to years of maturity ...

— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Prophecy; Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity; which was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery: Sometimes in the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury: Sometimes in the ...

— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... loud thunder, taken to be the voice of the great god Tangaloa, is a good sign; the significance of lightning (which also is sent by the god) depends upon the direction taken by the flash. An eclipse is regarded as a presage of death. A similar system of interpretation of signs is found elsewhere. The Masai and the Nandi draw omens from the movements of birds.[1604] In Ashantiland the cry of the owl means death.[1605] When in Australia the track of an insect is believed to point toward the abode of the ...

— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... like a mushroom, but no presage of decay could be drawn from its hasty growth. Its edifices are of dusky brick, and of stone that will not be grayer in a hundred years than now; its churches are Gothic; it is impossible to look ...

— Sketches From Memory - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to the prisoners was kind. His purposes, however, were bloody and revengeful. With his own hands he painted every prisoner black! As they were conducted towards the town, the captives observed the bodies of four of their friends, tomahawked and scalped. This was regarded as a sad presage. In a short time, they overtook the five prisoners who remained alive. They were seated on the ground, and surrounded by a crowd of Indian squaws and boys, who taunted and menaced them. Crawford and Knight were compelled to sit down apart ...

— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... Performance of his free and gentle vow T' appear in greater light and make more plain His rugged oracle. I long to know How my dear mistress fares, and be inform'd What hand she now holds on the troubled blood Of her incensed lord. Methought the spirit (When he had utter'd his perplex'd presage) Threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds, His forehead bent, as it would hide his face, He knock'd his chin against his darken'd breast, And struck a churlish silence through his powers. Terror of darkness! O, ...

— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... and cause them to make search for the ring. It had then been five months in the water and no one believed it would be found. However, the divers plunged into the river and found the ring in the very place where he had thrown it in, whereat Haroun rejoiced with an exceeding joy, regarding it as a presage of ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... and the farms and merchandise of its citizens were seized as first-fruits of its plunder. The darkness which on that fatal morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as they sang in choir was but a presage of the gloom which fell on the religious houses. From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban's rose the same cry of havoc and rapine. But the plunder of monk and burgess was little to the vast sentence of confiscation which the mere fact of rebellion was ...

— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... it is certain that they experience no such pertinacious attendance of it, as to feel habitually a monitory intimation, that without great thought and care they will inevitably do something wrong. But what may we judge and presage of the moral fortunes of a sojourner, of naturally corrupt propensity, in this bad world, who is not haunted, sometimes to a degree of alarm, by this monitory sense, through the whole course of his life? What is likely to become of him, if he shall go hither and thither on the scene exempt ...

— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... For he declared he would not meddle with what it was probable he should never accomplish, tho the tables were ready drawn for it. About the same time, the first letter of his name, in an inscription upon one of his statues, was struck out by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage that he would live only a hundred days longer, the letter C denoting that number; and that he would be placed among the gods as AEsar, which in the remaining part of the word Caesar, signifies, in the Tuscan language, a god. Being, therefore, about dispatching ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... one beloved on earth; or when at night In dreams it comes, and brings with it the DAYS And JOYS that are no more, Or when, perchance With power permitted to alleviate ill And fit the sufferer for the coming woe, Some strange presage the SPIRIT breathes, and fills The breast with ominous fear, and disciplines For sorrow, pours into the afflicted heart The balm of resignation, and inspires With heavenly hope. Even as a Child delights ...

— Poems • Robert Southey

... reign, A. D. 945, two male children were brought from Armenia to Constantinople for exhibition. They were well formed in every respect and united by their abdomens. After they had been for some time an object of great curiosity, they were removed by governmental order, being considered a presage of evil. They returned, however, at the commencement of the reign of Constantine VII, when one of them took sick and died. The surgeons undertook to preserve the other by separating him from the corpse of his brother, but he died on the ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... ever in her thoughts, a sudden rush of joy overflowed her heart, which seemed to her the presage of seeing him, tho' how he should imagine she was in Paris was a mystery:—but she gave herself not much time for reflection, before she ordered the ...

— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... such a gruesome stare, Once beamed with laughter, innocent and bright; The morning gave no presage of the night; A smile may be the prelude ...

— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold melancholy, lest the fever alone should ...

— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot ...

— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... center of the circle blazing with light; Fouquet awaited his approach, unmoved and with a slightly mocking smile. Colbert smiled too; he had been observing his enemy during the last quarter of an hour, and had been approaching him gradually. Colbert's smile was a presage of hostility. ...

— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Andes. Originally the population was divided into savage and barbarous tribes, having no idea of civilization, and living in a perpetual state of warfare with one another. For many centuries affairs had continued in the same state, and there appeared no presage of the coming of a better era, when, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, there appeared to the Indians a man and woman, who pretended that they were the Children of the Sun. They called themselves Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello, ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... in superstitious fear, fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted on snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds. And the passing of the Wild Hunt, known as Woden's Hunt, the Raging Host, Gabriel's Hounds, or Asgardreia, was also considered a presage of such ...

— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... one of his letters, written a year after it was made, he thus balances the difficulties of the question—"The fires of civil war," says he, "are raging in Germany. Shall I then cross the sea whither Wotton invites me? I, a German, a lover of firm land, who dread the confinement of an island, who presage its dangers, and must drag along with me my little wife and flock of children?" As Kepler seems to have entertained no doubt of his being well provided for in England, it is the more probable that the British Sovereign had made him a distinct offer ...

— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... heroic completeness is touched with a stately life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote Balder Dead in his most fortunate hour, and that Merope is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective drama—the presentation ...

— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised his error, though he tried not to admit it. The extra subjects had exacted too much of him; there was ...

— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... have had. Brave as the Romans were, they were deeply superstitious, and a thrill of horror and apprehension ran through the city when it was reported one morning that the statute of Victory in the temple had fallen to the ground, and had turned round as if it fled towards the sea. This presage of evil created a ...

— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... December 23, 1786.[31] His inauguration occurred a year later and was a grand affair. Asbury presided on each of the three days of the ceremony, and his text on the second day, "O man of God, there is death in the pot,"[32] was looked on by the superstitious, in time to come, as a presage of disaster. The faculty was filled up and all seemed to bid fair for prosperity; but Mr. Heath remained in charge of the College less than a year, resigning because of certain charges of insufficiency, which seem rather trival. ...

— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner

... approaching decease of the head of the house. A picturesque example of this is the well-known story of the white bird of the Oxenhams, whose appearance has ever since the time of Queen Elizabeth been recognized as a sure presage of the death of some member of the family; while another is the spectral coach which is reported to drive up to the door of a certain castle in the north when a similar calamity is impending. A phenomenon of this order occurs in ...

— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... unseasonably with change, A cloud in one and billow of battle, a surge High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now The winter of this wind out of the deeps Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here, Here never shall the Thracian plant on high For ours his father's symbol, nor with wreaths A ...

— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... day Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala: Be thou my witness that, against my will, As Pompey was, am I compell'd to set 75 Upon one battle all our liberties. You know that I held Epicurus strong, And his opinion: now I change my mind, And partly credit things that do presage. Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign 80 Two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch'd, Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands; Who to Philippi here consorted us: This morning are they fled away and gone; And in their steads do ravens, crows, ...

— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... to be lightly spoken of,' said they, significantly; 'and this dispute is a sad presage of future events; and well will it be if the anger of the Most High is not provoked ...

— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... man turned back, without another word, springing away, over the graveled walks. Nadine's face grew ashen white, as the presage of coming ...

— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... jealousy of the gods; and so a ring of gold which he still retained was cast into the sea that his good fortune might not be unmixed with evil. Some time after, a fisherman brought to Polycrates an enormous fish and in its belly was found the ring. This was a certain presage of evil. Polycrates was besieged in his city, taken, and crucified. The gods punished him ...

— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... irreverent amusement, even in the form of a grotesque and grim flirtation here and there with the custodians of the temple, who have charge of the sacred fire that burns before the altar. About eighty-five years ago this fire went out. It was a calamity of direful presage, and thereupon all Siam went into a consternation of mourning. All public spectacles were forbidden until the crime could be expiated by the appropriate punishment of the wretch to whose sacrilegious carelessness ...

— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... He wears a flat, loose cap of yellow. There is a ruff about his neck, and a pair of fine buckles to his shoes, and he always dances. He has his back to the thunderclouds, but there is that in his eyes which tells us that he has seen them, and that he knows their presage. He is afraid. Yet he dances. Never, howsoever slightly, swerves he, see! from his right posture, nor fail his feet in their pirouette. All a' merveille! Nor fades the smile from his face, though he smiles through ...

— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... would not be an omen of ill presage, a dreadful phenomenon in the land, if our great men should take it in their heads ...

— The Querist • George Berkeley

... different general result; for the confidence in Magruder's ability at that time, and in the pluck of his troops, was perfect; but the ease and dash with which the victory had been achieved was looked upon as the sure presage ...

— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... Nature is not fixed, but is undergoing modifications—lives, in fact. The actual state of the universe is but a momentary phase in a development which supposes thousands of ages in the past, and seems to presage thousands more in the future. These conceptions are the result of solid and incontestable discoveries. They have disturbed men's minds, but what is their legitimate import? Why, Newton's argument receives new force from them. From a blind metaphysical necessity, ...

— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... accession of king James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament, being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war, and ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... enduring foliage was marked by the approach of early frosts, which had already seared their verdure, and left those rich and varied tints that charm the eye in an autumnal landscape, while yet too brilliant to seem the presage of decay. The river flowed on its still smooth course, receiving on its waves the reflection of nature, in her quiet but ever glorious array, and mingling its faint murmurs with the busy sounds which breathed from those countless ...

— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... not for nearly an hour after, that my father suddenly, after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, ...

— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... the innumerable pulses of his Chinese patient. This is the real criterion of his skill. The pulses of a Chinaman vary in a manner that no English doctor can conceive of. For instance, among the seven kinds of pulse which presage approaching ...

— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... event has been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. "The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the tonneau hung over the doors watching his progress; then once more springing to his seat, he started the car, and they went bumping unevenly along the road. No more singing now; no more laughing and telling of tales; deep in each breast lay the presage of coming ill; four pairs of eyes scanned the dreary waste of surrounding country, while four brains busily counted up the number of miles which still lay between them and their destination. Twenty miles at least, and not a house in ...

— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... then, while Gawayne dressed, there came a knock Upon his chamber door. He threw the lock, And a boy page brought robes of ermine fur And Tarsic silk,—black, white, and lavender,— For his array, and with them a kind message, Which the good knight received with no ill presage: "Will brave Sir Gawayne spare an idle hour For quiet converse in my lady's bower?" The boy led on, and Gawayne followed him Through crooked corridors and archways dim, Along low galleries echoing from afar, And down a winding stair; then "Here ...

— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... letters of fire before her eyes as the presage of coming misfortune, and telling her that the hour of retribution had now come, and that she must be prepared to suffer, as an atonement for her crimes. Then it was that she felt all was lost, and she must go to her husband for aid, unless she desired that copies ...

— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... tuberculous, was in the second period of the disease, that is, in the one corresponding with the completion of maturation, and the absorption and drying away of the pus in the simple distinct form of small pox. After some experience, we were enabled, from the appearance of the eruption at the outset, to presage the event, which in the above described kinds, was ...

— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... [This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 'tis!)] [W: presage 'tis] This emendation is ingenious, perhaps preferable to the present reading, yet since passage may be fairly enough explained, I have left it in the text. Passage is anything that passes, so we now say, ...

— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... me fayre flocke, (if so you can conceaue) The sodaine cause of my night-sunnes eclipse, If this be wrought me my light to bereaue, By Magick spels, from some inchanting lips Or vgly Saturne from his combust sent, This fatall presage ...

— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... bring me death, or life, I know not. But, if strict friendship, and remembrance past, May aught presage to my afflicted heart, Sure mercy only from those lips should flow, And grace be utter'd from ...

— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... and voluntary consents of so many distinguished communities from which the events resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the same seems to presage. The reflections arising out of the present crisis have forced themselves strongly upon my mind. You will join me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government are ...

— Washington's Birthday • Various

... Jakeman of the necessity in which he found himself of sending her to a distance, upon a business which would not fail to detain her several weeks; and, though the errand by no means wore an artificial or ambiguous face, the two friends drew a melancholy presage from this ill-timed separation. Mrs. Jakeman, in the mean time, exhorted her ward to persevere, reminded her of the compunction which had already been manifested by her kinsman, and encouraged her to hope ...

— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... doth presage his harm, See how he glories at his own decay, See how he triumphs at his proper loss; O fortune wild, unstable, ...

— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort of their poor neighbours, and use of the family, which wholesome ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... be an undeveloped one, and his prevision consequently very vague; in others he himself may see clearly, but may find his lower vehicles so unimpressible that all he can succeed in getting through into his physical brain may be an indefinite presage of coming disaster. Again, there are cases in which a premonition is not the work of the Ego at all, but of some outside entity, who for some reason takes a friendly interest in the person to whom the feeling comes. In the work which I quoted above, Mr. Stead ...

— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time, My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this ...

— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... of intermingled death and birth, as of withered leaves and dreaming seeds being blown about together on their errands of decay and resurrection by the same breath of the unseen creative spirit. Incidentally it meant a rain-storm by evening, and its mysterious presage had prompted Colin to the furnishing of our knapsacks with water-proof cloaks, which, as the afternoon wore on, seemed more and more a wise provision. But the rain still held off, contenting itself with threatening phantasmagoria ...

— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... was suddenly transfigured—radiant—with some great and glorious thought. I was glad at heart to see that the shadow had passed entirely away. Only for a moment could any presage of personal fear cloud the sweet serenity of the Maid's nature. And yet I went from her something troubled myself; for had I not reason to know what strange power she possessed of reading the future, and what did it mean, that confusion of battle, that intermingling of victory ...

— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... first time, for more than a year and a half, felt that we were free, and no longer subject to the oppressive yoke of the Burmese. And with what sensations of delight, on the next morning, did I behold the masts of the steam-boat, the sure presage of being within the bounds of civilized life. As soon as our boat reached the shore, brigadier A. and another officer came on board, congratulated us on our arrival, and invited us on board the steam-boat, where I passed the ...

— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage— 'Al scenery'—but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. 'There ought to be duck'—vague, very vague. 'If it gets cold enough' . . . cold and yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? 'Not the ...

— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers