"Drowse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gaunt-fingered boughs Before my window sweep and sway, And chafe in tortures of unrest. My chin sinks down upon my breast; I cannot work on such a day, But only sit and dream and drowse. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... on through Siberian gold chases and the prospecting of the placer benches of the upper Kuskokeem, to darker things that were mentioned only in whispers. And Captain Tom regretted the temporary indisposition that prevented immediate departure with them, and continued to sit and drowse more and more in the big chair. It was Polly, with a camaraderie distasteful to her uncle, who got these men aside and broke the news that Captain Tom would never go out on the shining ways again. But not all of them came with projects. Many made love-calls on their ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... limp When laid in his chest; Yea, limp; and why But to signify That the grave will crimp Ere next year's sun Yet another one Of those in that house - It may be the best - For its endless drowse!" ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... ere there was any variation of the monotonous quiet; and indeed the tall clock had just announced the usual bedtime of the family when Clarion's bark made the squire sit up from his drowse before the fire, and set all listening. Presently came the now familiar sound of hoof-beat and sabre-clank; springing to his feet and seizing a candle, Mr. Meredith was at the front door as a troop trotted in from ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and attempt to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm her. For I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done something. I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I look down and find Madam ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of the holy woman in the room above, the scent of hyacinths, the drowse of the fire, on which a cedar log had just been laid, the feeling of the port soaking down into the crannies of his being, made up a momentary Paradise. Then the music stopped; and no sound rose but the tiny groans of the log trying ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seemed to me, nearly the whole length of the road. After, perhaps, an hour and a half's driving, Brunow woke me by calling impatiently to the cabman, and I came to the full possession of myself in time to see the vehicle swerve suddenly to the right. My prolonged drowse half refreshed me, and the cold, wet air which blew up from the river through the window Brunow had opened fell freshly on my cheek. I could see the river gleaming ahead, with spaces of liquid blackness in it, and a red or green light burning here ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song— O you envy the blessed ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... Presently the drowse of utter weariness descended upon her. The dread of thought remained heavily overshadowing, but a certain distortion displayed the reaching of limits beyond which human power could not go, even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her eyes ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... a winter sleeping time; the wild animals all come more or less under its spell, and the dogs, the nearest creatures of all to man, as soon as snow covers the ground and they have their experience of ice-cut feet, drowse as near the fire as possible and in case of a stove almost under it. I wonder if nature did not intend that we also should have at least a half-drowsy brooding time, instead of making the cold season so ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and the early morning heat dries up the song birds' voices, the earth and the life of the palm trees drowse ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... your drowse by the Seven famed Hills, Thought you to find all just the same Here shining, as in hours of old, If ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... this proof of attachment, and felt interested in seeing his character develope itself in a new direction, displaying fresh life and strength, and unexpected resource in circumstances, in which statesmen of the most vigorous minds, and of the highest spirit, have been seen to "droop and drowse," to sink into indolence, sensuality, or the horrors of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... himself a personality. At this time but little over thirty, he had, some years since, come to the West Indies with a classical library and a determination to rescue the planters from that hell which awaits those who drowse through life in a clime where it is always summer when it is not simply and blazingly West Indian. He soon threw the mantle of charity over the patient planters, and became the boon companion of many; but he made ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Robert, when I drowse to-night, Skirting lawns of sleep to chase Shifting dreams in mazy light, Somewhere then I'll see your face Turning back to bid me follow Where I wag my arms and hollo, Over hedges hasting after Crooked smile and baffling laughter, Running tireless, floating, ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... still afford to drowse in the sunshine and smile over the past. It remembered the time when its hospitality was the boast of the countryside, when its stables held the best string of horses in the State; when its smokehouse, now groaning ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the passages and courses were caving in. By their watches they knew that the night was upon them. And they sat talking nervously through the night, fearing to sleep, dreading what each moment might bring. Lamp after lamp burned out in turn. And still they sat and talked. Here one would drowse—there another lose consciousness and sink to the ground, but always men were talking. The talk never ceased. They were ashamed to talk of women while they were facing death, so they kept upon the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the bright flame of the lamp, he listened to the silence. The clock chimed sharply, and the windows were growing grey. Hubert had begun to drowse in his chair; but he had promised to rewrite the young girl's part, Ford having definitely refused to intrust Rose with the part of the adventuress. He was sorry for this. He believed that Rose had not only talent, but genius. Besides, they were friends, neighbours; ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... hour later when Donald, just beginning to drowse before his little fire, heard someone approach and unlock his door, for the second time that night. In anticipation of any desperate emergency, the captive sprang to his feet, and retreated to a corner of the room farthest from the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Josiah and me got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin' into a drowse, I heered the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that roused Josiah up, and he thought he heered the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... comes there to speak to me . . . Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . . Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight, Dilate to a gorgeous size, blow delicate bubbles, Drowse among dark green weeds. On rainy days, You'll see a gas-light shedding light behind me— An eye-shade round my forehead. There I sit, Twirling the tiny brushes in my paint-cups, Painting the pale pink rosebuds, minute violets, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... Louis from his drowse in the cave's mouth. He had ridden down from Castle Raincy to see if he could help. The moment had come and Stair had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was given me to occupy. It was the beginning of the season of green maize; every morning an armful of luscious cobs was deposited at my door. An immense earthen pot of honey and a skin milk sack were placed at my disposal. All day long I would drowse under a tree which stood within a few yards of the hut door, with Indogozan or his companion waving a bough to keep off the flies. I only woke up to eat or to smoke. The prospectors were forgotten; so were MacLean and the Pessimist. I ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the woman's sharpened ear which caught the first answering cry, and her hands which steered the intricate course to the heaving berg where the sailor crouched, for, at their approach, Captain had yielded to the drowse of weariness and, in his relief at the finding, the blade ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... We must reflect that we have done our work, and that an attempt to galvanise ourselves into activity is sure to result in depression. So we must condense our energies, be content to play a little, to drowse a little, to watch with interest the game of life in which we cannot take a hand, until death falls as naturally upon our wearied eyes as sleep falls upon the eyes of a child tired with a long summer day of eager pleasure ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a dormered inn, The youth had gathered in high carouse, And, ranged on settles, some therein Had drunk them to a drowse. ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... and delicious air wherein I sit. A torrid drowse is in the receding landscape. The people move leisurely, as befits the world where there is no preparation for frost and no urgent need of laborious apparel. There are tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys, and men pushing vehicles. There ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... twain were together; and Love seemed that it had made a truce with Death in the air about us, that we be undisturbed; for there came a drowse of rest even upon my tense heart, that had known nothing but a dreadful pain through ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Arcadian: both stuff for dreams. The one excogitated in spring-time, when Nature was taking her break-of-day drowse, previous to getting up and going about business; the other suggestive of Nature indulging in a half-light reverie in a sort of crimson and scarlet dressing-gown, previous to putting on her night-cap ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... utter rendering of one's self up—to a good cigar. Is it not a place for reverie? Has not one with this most respectable weed, this prime havana, the concomitants of a thousand reveries? Will not one puff of that narcotic breath drowse deep all watching dragons, and make for him the sleeping beauties of his will? And, presto, there they are! and, oh! ye houris of the South, with what a smile and glance between the azure puffs! Well let me not forget myself. With a sterner morality he sees how the bending Bedouin fashions ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Those whose lips are set with care, Those whose brows are smooth and fair; Mourners whom the dawning light Shall grapple with an old distress; Lovers folded at midnight In their bridal happiness; Pale watchers by beloved beds, Fallen a-drowse with nodding heads, Whom sleep captured by surprise, With the circles round their eyes; Maidens with quiet-taken breath, Dreaming of enchanted bowers; Old men with the mask of death; Little children soft as flowers; Those who wake wild-eyed and start In some madness of the heart; Those ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... prophetic recoil from responsibility that clogged his resolve. His eyes roved uncertainly about the familiar domestic scene, darkening now, duskily purple beneath the luminous pearly and roseate tints of the twilight sky. The old woman was a-drowse on the porch of the rickety little log-cabin beneath the gourd vines, the paralytic grandfather came hirpling unsteadily through the doorway on his supporting crutch, his pipe shaking in his shaking hand, while he muttered and mumbled to himself—who ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the three remaining watchers chatted and looked hopefully at the stars. Eventually Chow propped himself against a tree and dropped off to sleep to the accompaniment of low-droning snores. Bud too began to drowse. ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... as a tree, whose wintry twigs Drink in the sun with fibrous joy, And down into its dampest roots Thrills quickened with the draught of life, I wake unto the dawn, and leave my griefs to drowse. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... won't," said Ewbert; and he kept his word, with the effect of remaining awake all night. Toward morning he did not know but he had drowsed; he was not aware of losing consciousness, and he started from his drowse with the word "consciousness" in his mind, as he had heard Hilbrook ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... aver They have caught horrid colds with her. Imagination's paper kite, Unless the string is held in tight, Whatever fits and starts it takes, Soon bounces on the ground, and breaks. You, placed afar from each extreme, Nor dully drowse nor wildly dream, But, ever flowing with good-humour, Are bright as spring and warm as summer. Mid your Penates not a word Of scorn or ill-report is heard; Nor is there any need to pull A sheaf or truss from cart too full, Lest ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... rain would be a capital excuse for lying in bed; for she still liked to cuddle and drowse in her cosey, warm nest. But she was curious to know where the curious place was; so she got up ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps, faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; The single crow a single caw lets fall And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... along the roadway and had remembered to keep up her strength with food and wine. After they had turned back she could not have swallowed anything, if she had thought to try, and the nearest she came to sleep was an uneasy drowse which seemed a long nightmare. The Cappadocians, famous for their strength, endurance and indifference to wakefulness, exertion, hunger or thirst, were also astute foragers. On their way from Rome the reliefs had invaded every inn they passed and, lavishly provided ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... o'clock Hitty came in to her, and roused her from the light drowse into which she had ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... It may be you may require to keep this up for many hours, but you will probably find that some signs of sense appear ere you have gone on very long, and you may see that natural sleep has succeeded the drowse that lay in the worn-out brain. If so, you will allow the head to lie still in the cold cloth, and change only when it gets very warm. If natural heat has been fully restored to the legs and feet, you will let these ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... his right arm, twisted by Hogarth, was in a sling, and he threw himself aside, and seemed to sleep, between the peak of his cap and his muffler hardly an inch of interval: so the treasurer, too, worn with travel, settled into a half-drowse. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... forward towards the customer, and talked to him in a soft confidential monotone, like a portrait painter, the razor would go slower and slower, and pause and stop, move and pause again, till the shave died away into the mere drowse of conversation. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... wealth, and wine, the hours of night In sombre Babylon may dispense delight. These revellers, slumber-scorning, Radiant and well-arrayed, will stop, and stop, Till waiters drowse. But then, yon slaves of Shop Must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... soft green mountains, hemming in and brooding over The Place as though they loved it. In the winter evenings there was the huge library hearth with its blaze and warmth; and a disreputable fur rug in front of it that might have been ordained expressly for tired dogs to drowse on. And there were the Mistress and the Master. Especially the Mistress! The Mistress somehow had a way of making all the world ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... baby was a quiet child. Apparently he shared his mother's apathy towards all things, and he lay by the hour in a sluggish drowse, leaving his mother free to allow her thoughts to wander at will. They did wander, too. Lying there, passive, in her luxurious room, Beatrix's mind scaled the heights of heaven, sounded the depths of hell. The one had lain within ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... glory of the sun, I would request you now to view with me, 'Twill cheer that smitten heart, thou grieved one, And lighter make your load of misery, When you can hear and see all nature's glee. Come friend arise, determin'd, drowse no more, But stroll away to yonder hill with me; And all the landscape round we shall explore, All nature slumbers now; its sleep ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... the night slipped along. After a while they began to drowse, until one by one the little groups became quiet and fell asleep. Only the glowing, flickering pine knots stayed awake to watch ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... of golden miles, a score of green, An hundred miles, eight hundred miles of foam, Rainbows and fire, ransacking as they went Ship after ship for news o' the chase and gold; Learning from every capture that they drew Nearer and nearer. At Truxillo, dim And dreaming city, a-drowse with purple flowers, She had paused, ay, paused to take a freight of gold! At Paita—she had passed two days in front, Only two days, two days ahead; nay, one! At Quito, close inshore, a youthful page, Bright-eyed, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... no house to play in. This lay us flat in our hopes, and set us again to our vagabond enterprise; and so for six months more we scoured the country in a most miserable plight, the roads being exceedingly foul, and folks more humoured of nights to drowse in their chimnies than to sit in a draughty barn and witness our performances; and then, about the middle of February we, in a kind of desperation, got back again to London, only to find that we must go forth again, the town still lying ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... at the hour when ignorant mortals Drowse in the shade of their whirling sphere, Heaven and Hell from invisible portals Breathing comfort and ghastly fear, Voices I hear; I hear strange voices, flitting, calling, Wavering by on the dusky blast,— 'Come, let us go, for the ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... Papa Dupont, coming from zinc and kitchen for their dinner, which meal they habitually consumed in the cafe when the evening rush was over, the tables undressed, and the establishment had settled down to drowse away the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... subjected to discipline by Col. Barlow. The evening before, on dress parade, I was named to take charge of a police detail from the Sixty-first, which was to report at brigade headquarters the next morning at five o'clock. I had slept but little during the night. Toward morning I fell into a drowse, and was awakened out of it by the reveille. I hurried out of my tent and was getting my detail together, hoping that the colonel would not notice my tardiness. I got to the place of rendezvous the first of any one in the brigade, and had to wait for an ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... the activity in the store of Stibbs with the drowse that hung over another shop in the North Country where, in earlier years, I used to buy my supplies. Doctor Mayhew kept the shop, which flourished until a pushing Scandinavian set up a more pretentious establishment; after which the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sword lies on the grass, Heavy with gold, and Time itself doth drowse; The little stream, too indolent to pass, Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... the twilight is creeping With shadowy garments, the wilderness through; All day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping, So echo the anthems we warbled to you; While we swing, swing, And your branches sing, And we drowse to your dreamy whispering. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said, quizzically, "Mr. ——, I see you have walked just half a mile in the last four hours." Of course, walking is not imperative, one may watch standing; but movement tends to wakefulness—you can drowse upon your feet—while to sit down, besides being forbidden by unwritten law, is a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a crimson crown Of glittering sunset glows; The roofs of brown in the distant town Are bathed in a blush of rose; The radiant ripples shine and shift In shimmering shreds of gold; The seaweeds lift and drowse and drift, And the jellies fill ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pussy, what a lazy cat, On such a pleasant day To sit and drowse beside the fire And sleep the hours away! A self-respecting dog would think Himself a sorry cur, If he did nothing all day long But ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... it but to submit with a sigh to the ensuing hullabaloo. Rateau, somnolent and pacific in his lodge, became a demon when he got a broom in his hand. In this sedentary being, who could drowse all morning in the stale basement atmosphere heavy with the cumulative aroma of many meat-stews, a martial ardour, a warlike ferocity, then asserted themselves, and like a red revolutionary he assaulted the bed, charged the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... quaint device, And sees, across the city's din, Afar its silent Alpine kin; I track thee over carpets deep To Wealth's and Beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors, 'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where drowse the hayfield's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; I dog thee through the market's throngs, To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green fringes of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer Curtsy their farewells ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... calm! O tired lark descending on the wheat! Lies it all peace beyond that western fold Where now the lingering shepherd sees his star Rise upon Malvern? Paints an Age of Gold Yon cloud with prophecies of linked ease— Lulling this Land, with hills drawn up like knees, To drowse beside her ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... stall alone. He used to drowse there for hours, recouping himself from the fatigue of his long rambles. He generally sat upon one chair with his legs resting upon another, and his head leaning against a little dresser. In the wintertime he took a keen delight in lolling there and contemplating the display of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the hot, aching months, which, in Merry England, go to make up the Spring of the year; and the King and his favourite concubines had betaken themselves up-river to snare turtle-doves, and to drowse away the hours in the cool flowering fruit groves, and under the shade of the lilac-coloured bungor trees. Therefore the youths and maidens in the palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for the storm, which it would be ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Italian was rather broken, so we talked mostly French. At Milan all my companions except one got out, and a new lot got in. But I was growing sleepy, and after the formal introductions I began to drowse. ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... lingering stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... soft, hazy October day and the ride to Des Moines was very beautiful. The landscape seemed to be in drowse, half-sleeping and half-waking. The jays flew from amber and orange-colored coverts of maples and oaks across the blue haze of the open, and quails piped from the hazel-thickets. Crows flapped lazily across the fields where the ploughmen were at work. The threshing machines hummed and ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... would have been for her to find her mother babbling in drunkenness; and this feeling that for Yaverland to know of her misery would be a culminating humiliation that she could not face seemed disgustingly mad. So she threw herself into a black drowse of misery unfeatured by specific ideas, until she began to think smilingly of the way his eyebrows grew; they were very thick and dark and perfectly level save for a piratical twist in the middle. But she became conscious that he was ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... evening, his absorption in other people, sometimes grew pettish and unresponsive and offended because he could keep neither eyes nor hands from her. And there were evenings when they seemed to have nothing to talk about, and Billy, too tired to do anything but drowse in his big chair, was confronted with an alert and horrified Susan, sick with apprehension of all the long evenings, throughout all the years. Susan was fretted by the financial barrier to the immediate marriage, too, it was ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... our own Saleve, which latter seems rather close behind our house, and yet takes a hard hour and a half to ascend—all this you can imagine since you know the environs of the town; the peace and quiet move me the most—And I fancy I shall drowse out the two months or more, doing no more of serious work than reading—and that is virtuous renunciation of the glorious view to my right here—as I sit aerially like Euripides, and see the clouds come and go and the view change in correspondence with them. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... out I say! (Pushes Simon to door.) Let him drowse out the day in the car shed! I tell you Damer ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... fades on Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... beautiful that Poole cast his eyes around in search of some fallen trunk, with the idea that nothing could be more delightful than to sit down there in the shade and drowse the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... higher they bound, the better is the luck in store for them. He who surpasses his fellows is the hero of the day and is much admired by the village girls. It is also thought to be very good for the eyes to stare steadily at the bonfire without blinking; moreover he who does so will not drowse and fall asleep betimes in the long winter evenings. On Midsummer Eve the windows and doors of houses in Silesia are crowned with flowers, especially with the blue cornflowers and the bright corn-cockles; in some villages long strings of garlands ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... say!"—They dally no more; Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, Pinion and cripple and hustle him in. Anon, under sentry, between twin guns, He slides off in drowse, and the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... 'er, you send at once for me. If you don't send,' 'e says, 'I won't be 'eld responsible for the consequences.' With that 'e goes, and pore mother she seemed to take a turn, and all that day and the next she seemed to drowse like and not take much notice o' things. The neighbours come in and look at 'er, but she didn't seem to know. We 'ad two quiet nights with 'er, and then all of a sudden in the middle of the afternoon ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... lout! in the shade of the hillock yonder; What a dog it must be to drowse in the midst of a time like this! Why, the horses might neigh contempt at him; what is he like, I wonder? If the smoke would but clear away, I have strength in me ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... now they would say a mass for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life: with the fussy, excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; with each ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... herself drew closer to Neale. She wondered if he had been awakened by Elly's voice, and the little stir in the room, and hoped he had not. He had been off on a very long hard tramp over mountain trails the day before, and had been tired at night. Perhaps if he had been wakened by Elly he would drowse off again at once as she felt herself doing now, conscious sleepily and happily of Elly's dear tender limbs on one side of her and of Neale's dear strong body on ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... briskly that he promised to know the sea-bottom between Kelsey Head and Godrevy Rock better than his own fields. As for me, after years of salt water and stumping decks, I asked nothing better than to steer a plough and smell broken soil, and drowse after supper in an armchair, with good tobacco and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... silver: sumptuous they stand In the retired quiet of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light.— "And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake! Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite: Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, Or I shall drowse beside thee, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat, Our helmets scorch our foreheads; our sandals burn our feet! Now in the ungirt hour; now ere we blink and drowse, Mithras, also a soldier, keep us ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... a Dobbin gray Had brought him here to spend the day. Now his old aunt and uncle drowse; No chick nor child is in the house— No cat, no dog, no bird, or mouse; No fairy picture-book to spell, No music-box of wonder, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... whispering through the blooms, and charm Of amorous songs and dreamy dances, linked By chime of ankle-bells and wave of arms And silver vina-strings; while essences Of musk and champak and the blue haze spread From burning spices soothed his soul again To drowse by sweet Yasodhara; ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... man as his name was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love story of an ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... pulled himself sharply together recognizing the fevered instinct to strip off all hampering clothing. It was as much a heat-death symptom as sleep forbodes frost death. He did not walk in a daze as the old man rode, half numbness, half drowse. He walked with a throb—throb—throb in his temples like the fall of water. He wanted to run; to strip himself as an athlete for a race; and all the time, he kept walking as if the heaving earth went writhing away ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the Blindworm. "You cannot keep awake. You will drowse in spite of everything. I shall yet find you asleep some night, ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... drop red leaves like coals into the grass. The golden arrows of the sunset fall; And on the vine-hung wall Great purple clusters in delicious drowse, Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst, Yet by the sun unkissed, Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass, Brimful of red, red wine Sweet as brown peasants glean along the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... grew weary of gazing at the same endless diversity of grain-fields, vineyards, rows of trees, &c., though the bright moon was now shining, and, shutting out the chill night-air, I disposed myself on my old great-coat and softest carpet-bag for a drowse, having ample room at my command if I could but have brought it into a straight line. But the road was hard, the coach a little the uneasiest I ever hardened my bones upon, and my slumber was of a disturbed and dubious character, a dim sense of physical ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... go on, as he did at some length, and began to drowse, while he amused himself with a gross parody of things she had said during the past four days. In those years while their wedded bliss was yet practically new, Colonel Kenton found his wife an inexhaustible source ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... sat looking out over the dizzying whirl of the motors they smoothed the tops of their sticks with their soft old hands, and were silent oftener than not. The elder seemed to drowse off from the time and place, but he was recalled by the younger saying, "It is certainly astonishing weather for this season ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... in your path, you think of these after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt your fancy while it lasts. The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances is so perfect that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, almost of security; and as you drowse upon the pallet of the sleeping car and feel yourself hurled forward through the obscurity, you are almost thankful that you can do nothing, for it is upon this condition only that you can endure it; and some such condition as this, I suppose, accounts ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the Great Pyramid, and over its apex hung the moon. Like a wreck cast ashore by some titanic storm, the Sphinx, reposing amid the undulating waves of grayish sand surrounding it, seemed for once to drowse. Its solemn visage that had impassively watched ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and generations of men live and die, appeared for the moment to have lost its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense disdain—its cold eyes seemed to droop, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... he lay in a delicious drowse, idly watching the old man as he hobbled deftly from stove to cupboard, and from cupboard ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... before the fire," said Tommie. "We're all tired to-night and it will be good to drowse and dream. Good-night, Charlemagne. The ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... along, the warm night which had fallen after the beautiful day breathed through the half-dropped window in a rich, soft air, as strange almost as the flying landscape itself. Mr. Erwin began to drowse, and at last he fell asleep; but Veronica kept her eyes vigilantly fixed upon Lydia, always smiling when she caught her glance, and offering service. At the stations, so orderly and yet so noisy, where the passengers were held in the same meek subjection ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... sense of the pathetic or he could never have done what he did—sell to the old gentleman, on the strength of the knowledge he had imparted to him, a house and lot upon terms so easy that he might drowse along for a little time and then wake to find himself both homeless and penniless. This was the promoter's method, and for so long a time had it proved successful that he had now grown mildly affluent ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... homeward passage a little drowse fell upon the two charter members. They had lunched more richly than was their wont. "Oh, these distressing, heavy lunches!" as Aldous Huxley cries in one of his poems. But Lawton was still of bright vivacity. At that time the club was perturbed by the coming Harding-Cox election. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... have I slept? How long have you been here, my darling? Heigho! Why did you wake me? I was in paradise with you but now. Where are you? I am minded to drowse, and go find you in ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... hear, In drowse or dream, more near and near Across the border-land of sleep The blowing of a blithesome horn, That laughed the dismal day to scorn; A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels Through sand and mire like stranding keels, As from the road with sudden sweep The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the golden-fruited boughs—"places of nestling green for poets made." Alas! the soil is bare and lumpy as a ploughed field, and all the leafage that hangs low is thick with a clayey dust. One cannot rest or loiter or drowse; no spot in all the groves where by any possibility one could sit down. After rambling as long as I chose, I found that a view of the orchard from outside was more striking than the picture amid the trees themselves. Senza nulla ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... these wires, and awoke a low aeolian murmur. The moon rose in the mean time, and painted on the uncarpeted floor the shape of the cherry bough that stretched across the window. It was two o'clock; Richard sat with his head bent forward, in a drowse. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... adequate explanation of the Teuton superiority. The clue is to be found in the psychological factor. Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually and psychically. And she lives in the present and future. We either drowse or vegetate in and for the past. She has the decisive advantage of possessing organization and organizers. Therein lies the secret of her sustained success. The Allies lack both, and are hardly conscious of the necessity of making good the deficiency. Therein lies their weakness. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... warm, noon-day drowse, he felt, like Abraham, the grace of God within him, and found even in the humblest sparrow enough to afford him an opportunity to discuss ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... the same conviction this morning, but a vague gypsying stirred his blood also, and a wayfaring urge swept him. The sky was indescribably blue, washed clean by a moist January that had drenched the hills to lush-green life. The bay lay in a sapphire drowse, flecked by idle-winged argosies, unfolding their storm-soaked sails to the caressing sunlight. Soaring high above the placid gulls, an airplane circled and dipped like a huge dragon fly in nuptial flight. Through the Golden Gate, shrouded in the delicate mists evoked ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the vastness and drowse myself with the peace, While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men, May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release, May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... sweep the buffalo out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand live where one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to drowse by the fire. I want to see the white men's cities grow, and the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the great factories, and the white woman's life spreading ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... whom fine clothes became, and glistering hair, Whom Cinara welcomed, that rapacious fair, As well you know, for his own simple sake, Who on from noon would wine in bumpers take, Now quits the table soon, and loves to dream And drowse upon the grass beside ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... lovely in summer to drowse on the deck that's all warm with the sun, and see the trees and the fields and the little houses slipping by on either side.... If there weren't so many old people.... All the boys go away to the cities.... I hate old people; ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... with the morning and watch its rose unfold; To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold; To lie with the night-time and dream the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Ireland dominates British politics, and the English members descend on her with a heavy flop of hatred or sympathy as it may happen. But at all other times the Union Parliament abdicates, or at least it "governs" Ireland as men are said sometimes to drive motor-cars, in a drowse. Three days—or is it two?—are given to Irish Estimates, and on each of these occasions the Chamber is as desolate as a grazing ranch in Meath. Honourable members snatch at the opportunity of cultivating ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... subdued demeanor—his melancholy—were all due to this condition of absolute exhaustion. He slept, not a refreshing sleep, but one in which the excited spirit kept up its exercises, so as totally to neutralize what nature designed as compensation in his slumbers. His sleep was the drowse of incapacity, not the wholesome respite of elastic faculties. It was actual physical imbecility, rather than sleep; and, while the mere animal man, lay incapable, like a log, the diseased imagination was at work, conjuring up its spectres ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... are content with a bowl of goldfish. Something a little more responsive is demanded where the peace and quiet of nature press so close. A cat to drowse on the hearth or catch an occasional mouse; a dog to accompany one on walks and greet the head of the house ecstatically each evening; these, of course, are the most obvious and popular pets. Both can be and are kept in city apartments and suburban homes but their natural ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley |
