Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Harbinger   Listen
noun
Harbinger  n.  
1.
One who provides lodgings; especially, the officer of the English royal household who formerly preceded the court when traveling, to provide and prepare lodgings.
2.
A forerunner; a precursor; a messenger. "I knew by these harbingers who were coming."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books



... interest. This unhappy result deeply affected the health of the poet, whose constitution had already been much shattered by repeated attacks of illness. He was seized with a complaint which proved the harbinger of pulmonary consumption. He died at Mount Pleasant on the 1st September ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... burning train Diffusive terror o'er the earth and main; What high behest dost thou perform Of Heaven's Almighty Lord? what coming storm Of war or woe does thy etherial flame To thoughtless man proclaim? Dost thou commissioned shine The silent harbinger of wrath divine? Or does thy unprophetic fire Thro' the wide realms of solar day Mad Heat or purple Pestilence inspire? Thro' all her lands, Earth trembles at thy ray; And starts, as she beholds thee sweep With fiery wing Air's ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... they both were, they knew well enough the Indian tradition that the bee is the harbinger of the coming of the white man. When he comes, the plow soon follows, and weeds grow where lately have been the flowers of the forest ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... way, however, he could exclaim, "Where I see anything at variance with the doctrines of Christ, I will not obey, though the stakes were staring me in the face." That was his maxim all through life; and in such an age such heroism in such a cause was the harbinger of death. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... The great harbinger of the new era was Galileo. There had been prophets before him, and after him came a greater one—Newton. They did nothing of note in electricity and magnetism, but they were filled with the true spirit of science, they introduced proper and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... gentle courtesy of the native; and the brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest peon. Hat in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an outside world which seemingly grows more hard and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... means. I should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... the cobbler means harbinger, an officer; who preceded the monarch during progresses, to give notice and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... of sky this little harbinger of spring appears, as we see him and his mate househunting in early March. Oftentimes he makes his appearance as early as the middle of February, when his attractive note is heard long before he himself is seen. He is one of the last to leave us, and although ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name, but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and he was interested, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... have got considerable money at command: we live frugally, and realize the blessings of health, comfort, and contentment. Our only disquietude is on your account, Alonzo. Your affair with Melissa, I suppose, is not so favourable as you could wish. But despair not, my son; hope is the harbinger of fairer prospects: rely on Providence, which never deserts those who submissively bow to the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... above, the Idylls and Canticles are the poles asunder in their moral attitude towards love and in their general literary treatment of the theme. Of course, poets describing the spring will always speak of the birds; Greek and Hebrew loved flowers, Jew and Egyptian heard the turtle-dove as a harbinger of nature's rebirth; sun and moon are everywhere types of warm and tender feelings; love is the converter of a winter of discontent into a glorious summer. In all love poems the wooer would fain embrace the wooed. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... the midst of a well-nurtured animalism. The Herod of a ruling selfishness seeks to obliterate the loftier ideal. But while he summons all his strength to prevent the embodiment of the new thought, there are other faculties that perceive the star of promise and follow it as a harbinger of truth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... return'd. Take courage; suffer not excessive dread 1000 To overwhelm thee, such a guide he hath And guardian, one whom many wish their friend, And ever at their side, knowing her pow'r, Minerva; she compassionates thy griefs, And I am here her harbinger, who speak As thou hast heard by her own kind command. Then thus Penelope the wise replied. Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010 Spectator of the cheerful ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... with his hundred men along the Zambesi, the country once densely populated, now desolate and still. The Bakota tribes, "the colour of coffee and milk," were friendly, and "great numbers came from all the surrounding villages and expressed great joy at the appearance of a white man and harbinger of peace." They brought in large supplies of food, and expressed great delight when Livingstone doctored their children, who were suffering from whooping-cough. As they neared the coast, they became aware of hostile forces. This was explained ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... largely depend,—as for explanations of modern revelations, miracles, and signs,—was preached to so extreme a point by Ohio Disciples that Alexander Campbell had to combat them in his Millennial Harbinger. An outcome of this literal interpretation was a belief in a speedy millennium, another fundamental belief of the early Mormon church. "The hope of the millennial glory," says Hayden, "was based on many passages ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth of immortal being; but divine Science wipes away ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... prodigies foretold it; A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking States. When publick villainy, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? When some neglected fabrick nods beneath The weight of years, and totters to the tempest, Must ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... of whom it is written, Want shall go before his face.[104] If I mistake not, Antichrist is he whom famine and sterility of all good both precedes and accompanies. Whether therefore it is the herald of one now present or the harbinger of one who shall come immediately, the want is evident. I speak not of the crowd, I speak not of the vile multitude of the children of this world:[105] I would have you lift up your eyes upon the very pillars[106] of the Church. Whom can you show me, even of the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... as the sky began to turn a deep red in the east, and the "chuck me" chameleon, the harbinger of the early dawn, began his morning challenge. Our progress was very cautiously made through the cane-fields, banana groves, and bamboo jungles, halting and investigating the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on death-beds ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... gave way. Tribulation and anguish had indeed set in upon them like a flood. The ring, so unaccountably brought back by the Red Woman, was beyond doubt the cause of all their misfortunes—its reappearance, as she anticipated, being the harbinger of misery. What should be the next arrow from her quiver she trembled to forebode. But in the midst of this fever of doubt and apprehension one hope sustained her, and that was the result of her husband's mission to Dr Dee, who would doubtless find out the nature of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... the heavy taxes they had not been able to raise. The whole caravan thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. But your griefs ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... are the days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... a cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, but the harbinger of tempest and terror. It yet remains to be shown what form that cloud assumed, and from what quarter the tempest came. The history of Charlotte Halliday has grown upon the writer; and the completion of that history, with the fate of John Haygarth's fortune, will be found under the title ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... as a man. I shall always be the friend of men, and keep near their dwellings. I shall ever be happy and contented; and although I could not gratify your wishes as a warrior, it will be my daily aim to make you amends for it as a harbinger of peace and joy. I will cheer you by my songs, and strive to inspire in others the joy and lightsomeness of heart I feel in my present state. This will be some compensation to you for the loss of glory you expected. I am ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of Gott sent this harbinger of good-will. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous

... 1789, was a little vol. containing 14 sonnets, which was received with extraordinary favour, not only by the general public, but by such men as Coleridge and Wordsworth. It may be regarded as the harbinger of the reaction against the school of Pope, in which these poets were soon to bear so great a part. B. pub. several other poems of much greater length, of which the best are The Spirit of Discovery ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... wretched little bed of his cell, on the salutary and evident effects of the divine grace which he had sought in the sacraments. He meditated also on the action of the Moro, on the ray of light that had shone into that dark conscience, harbinger, if nothing less, of better and lasting light. And in his mystic imagination he saw the design of Providence which recompensed him for a sacrifice which he had suffered for duty's sake. It was a blessing to think of that, to know that he was losing all his few earthly possessions ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... was somewhat allayed by the return of light. It gave way to more uniform but not less rueful and despondent perceptions. The image of Achsa filled my fancy, but it was the harbinger of nothing but humiliation and sorrow. To outroot the conviction of my own unworthiness, to persuade myself that I was regarded with the tenderness that Stevens had ascribed to her, that the discovery of my thoughts would not excite her anger and grief, I felt ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... the harbinger of better days to the various tribes of Europe. Without metals it is doubtful if man would ever have been able to raise himself from barbarism. His advance in civilization has been in direct proportion to his ability to work metals. As long as he knew how to work bronze only ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... entrance of the Euxine, that had the quality of closing upon every vessel which attempted to make its way between them and crushing it to pieces, a danger that could only be avoided by sending a dove before as their harbinger, they at ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... prosperity; the dance, the banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... sluggishness. I go to rest usually between eleven and twelve, and I am always up before seven. I was always instructed by my father to consider indolence as one of the greatest faults; it was, in fact, a sin of the first magnitude in his vocabulary.—Indolence, he always said was the harbinger of every vice, of every evil. And the Songs of Solomon and his Proverbs were on every occasion ready to support his opinion. He would say to the sluggard, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." He would forgive many a fault in a servant, but at habitual lyer in bed, he would ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in the world cannot ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... Fairie Lord, this must be done with haste, For night-swift Dragons cut the Clouds full fast, And yonder shines Auroras harbinger; At whose approach Ghosts wandring here and there, Troope home to Church-yards; damned spirits all, That in crosse-waies and flouds haue buriall, Alreadie to their wormie beds are gone; For feare least day should looke their shames vpon, They wilfully themselues ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... The Harbinger Mountains.—A remarkable group, north-west of Aristarchus, including some peaks as high as 7000 feet, and other ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... Sees at his feet the forky lightnings glow, And hears innocuous thunders roar below. ——Rife, great MONGOLFIER! urge thy venturous flight High o'er the Moon's pale ice-reflected light; High o'er the pearly Star, whose beamy horn. 50 Hangs in the east, gay harbinger of morn; Leave the red eye of Mars on rapid wing; Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring; Leave the fair beams, which, issuing from afar; Play with new lustres round the Georgian star; 55 Shun with strong oars the Sun's attractive throne, The sparkling zodiack, and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature. This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of priests, will never save mankind. ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... Imperialism written by Liang Ch'i-chao—the most brilliant scholar living—we have a Chinese of the New or Liberal China, who in spite of a complete ignorance of foreign languages shows a marvellous grasp of political absolutes, and is a harbinger of the great days which must come again to Cathay. In other chapters dealing with the monarchist plot we see the official mind at work, the telegraphic despatches exchanged between Peking and the provinces being ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... we always looked as the harbinger of good, was met with in every part of the interior—where there was water—and frequently at such vast distances from it, when migrating, I suppose, that vast numbers must ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... its inhabitants to institutions abhorrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... the handle of the Dipper; after which it grew apace until it extended nearly from the horizon to the zenith, with a tail millions of miles in length. This, however, did not take place until near the time of Hawthorne's departure from Florence. In his case it proved sorrowfully enough a harbinger of calamity. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... the best youth in England their dear pride, Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time In which worst losses easily might wean The best of names, when patriotic love 305 Did of itself in modesty give way, Like the Precursor when the Deity Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time In which apostasy from ancient faith Seemed but conversion to a higher creed; 310 Withal a season dangerous and wild, A time when sage Experience would have snatched Flowers out of any hedge-row to compose A chaplet in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... for him or his heirs to hold. It was indeed a miserable commencement of his ministry, to introduce such a strife with a people who really seem to have had an earnest desire to receive him with united hearts, and make his settlement and ministry the harbinger of a better day. But he alienated many of them, at the very start, by his sharp practice in negotiating about the pecuniary details of his agreement with the parish. When, after all their care to prevent it, it became known that somehow or other a vote ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... to cease, Sent down the meek-ey'd Peace; She, crowned with olives green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And, waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal ...
— Christmas Sunshine • Various

... Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus, harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals, Jove sent fierce Discord with the ensign of war in her hands to the ships of the Achaeans. She took her stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses' ship which was middlemost of all, so that her voice might carry farthest on either side, on the one ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... formal Daffodil, Though common, yet a favourite still; It seems such joyous news to bring, As harbinger of pleasant Spring. ...
— A Little Girl to her Flowers in Verse • Anonymous

... the house began to fill with company; and one that was acting as Groom of the Chambers, and marshalling the guests to their places, I heard whisper to the Harbinger, who first called out the names at the Stair-head, that Clarencieux king-at-arms (who was then wont to attend the funerals of the Quality, and to be gratified with heavy fees for his office; although in our ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... Vishnu's form, with circling cranes To trumpet him, instead of bugle strains, And garmented in lightning's silken robe. Approaches now the harbinger of rains. 3 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... much—I must have public knowledge and public opinion working with it. Well, it is God's cause, and I commit it altogether to him. I am, however, sadly disappointed, but how weak and short- sighted is man! This temporary failure may be the harbinger of success. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... border of the sea, south of the Harbinger Mountains, we find a most remarkable object, the mountain ring, or crater plain, called Aristarchus. This ring is not quite thirty miles in diameter, but there is nothing on the moon that can compare with it in dazzling brilliance. The central peak, 1,200 or 1,300 feet high, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... whimsical instrument, take it altogether! But what, thinkest thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into the state ought to have a triple proportion ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyd Peace, She crown'd with Olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphear His ready Harbinger, With Turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing, 50 And waving wide her mirtle wand, She strikes a universall ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing in ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up On freshen'd wing the air of May, and breathes Of fragrance, all impregn'd with herb and flowers, E'en such a wind I felt upon my front Blow gently, and the moving of a wing Perceiv'd, that moving shed ambrosial smell; And then a voice: "Blessed ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... At the sight of this splendid bird, our Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to admire the marvels of Nature, he turned hastily back to his uncle's abode, in search of a gun, with which to annihilate the luckless harbinger of spring. He soon found one, ready loaded, in the hall; and, with his heart full of hope and his legs full of precaution, he glided mysteriously from one tree to another, endeavouring, by all possible means, to conceal his approach from the wily cuckoo, which, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. The plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against Hadrach (765), perhaps under the walls of that city. An eclipse of the sun occurred in 763, in the month of Sivan, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt in the city ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the time of my Mother's death. He said that the thought that Rome was doomed (as seemed not impossible in 1857) so affected my Mother that it 'irradiated' her dying hours with an assurance that was like 'the light of the Morning Star, the harbinger of the rising sun'. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... called in Greek [Greek: arktos] or [Greek: helike], has her Warden behind her. Near him is the Virgin, on whose right shoulder rests a very bright star which we call Harbinger of the Vintage, and the Greeks [Greek: protrygetes]. But Spica in that constellation is brighter. Opposite there is another star, coloured, between the knees of the Bear Warden, dedicated there under the name ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger—whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute—was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably: ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... Stuttgart. The artists and the magistracy vied with each other in preparing happy days for the visitors—an emulation which was crowned with the most delightful results. The artists' festival, however, was but the harbinger to the the city of the great seventh centennial birthday festival of the Bavarian capital, which had been so long in preparation, and was waited for with such impatience. Concerts and theatres opened the festal series. Services in all the churches of both confessions consecrated the coming days, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... of Hamilton Island; the wind was unfavorable; hence it was necessary to go between Hamilton and Cornwallis Islands; five precious days were lost in vain attempts. The air grew colder, and, July 19th, fell as low as 26 degrees; the next day was warmer, but this harbinger of the arctic winter warned Hatteras not to linger longer. The wind seemed to blow steadily from the west and delayed his progress. And yet he was in haste to reach the point whence Stewart saw an open sea. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... deep tone of the Castle death-bell came swelling across the river from the other side. In an instant I knew it was the harbinger of death—of the Princess Charlotte? I was right—she was just ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... of Gregory VI was the harbinger of an epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke, proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterestedness with which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... witness!" sings this gent, as he goes skatin' stiff-laig about in a ring like I relates, arms bent, an' back arched; "let all the sons of men b'ar witness; an' speshully let a cowerin' varmint, named Sam Enright, size me up an' shudder! I'm the maker of deserts an' the wall-eyed harbinger of desolation! I'm kin to rattlesnakes on my mother's side; I'm king of all the eagles an' full brother to the b'ars! I'm the bloo-eyed lynx of Whiskey Crossin', an' I weighs four thousand pounds! I'm ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Lord will come, and not be slow; His footsteps cannot err; Before him righteousness shall go, His royal harbinger. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... of King Island had been found by the skipper of a sealing brig, named Reid, in 1799, but the name it bears was given to it by John Black, commander of the brig Harbinger, who discovered the northern part in January, 1801. Flinders was occupied for three days at King Island. On the 24th, the wind having moderated, he made for Cape Otway. But it was still considered imprudent to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... long sustain it. Her soul was a spirit in chase, pursuing something undefinable which she longed to obtain, that she might be for ever satisfied and her measure of happiness complete. A calm to her was like a summer day in winter-time, the harbinger of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their blandishments—tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are—are you a harbinger?" ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with haggard eyes this wretched prey, and seemed ready to dispute about it. Others ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... and better state than this world has yet ever known. The old adage 'It is always darkest just before dawn,' is beautifully applicable to the present state of the world. So I take courage and launch my book out upon the tempestuous sea of humanity, trusting that it may be welcomed as the harbinger of a better and happier era. I am sure that it bears to the world the olive ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... are so near a-kin as poets feign, for I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger of lust. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... colors almost touching the water—the captain, who was absent from his ship, found his flag upon his return. A harbinger as it proved of the issue that ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... the east, and, save for two of the number left behind, blown, spent and hopelessly out of the race, soon lost to view among the distant swales and ravines. Then everyone turned to welcome the coming harbinger, to congratulate him on his escape, to demand the reason for his daring essay. Gregg and his men were first to reach him, and while one of them was seen through the levelled glasses to dismount and give ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... crime, disease, and unhappiness step in." "The abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin more than a century ago (Political Justice, second edition, 1796, vol. i, p. 248), "will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." And Professor Lester Ward, in insisting on the strength of the monogamic sentiment in modern society, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the long journey they had attempted to make through a broad belt of wilderness was necessarily attended with danger, both uncle and niece well knew; though neither could at once determine whether the sign that others were in their vicinity was the harbinger ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... was clean and bright, waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... thee, lovely harbinger of spring! The varied radiance of thy opening flowers Is welcome to my sight. I bid thee hail, Sweet mango, soul ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... domestic faction, which gave vigour to the arm of power, and enabled the nation to check foreign interference abroad, while it annihilated anarchy at home. By that means the Protector himself laid the first stone of the Restoration. The division of a nation is the surest harbinger of success to its invaders, the death-blow to its Sovereign's authority, and the total destruction of that innate energy by which alone a country can obtain the dignity of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... pain thy father's joys, To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good. Minister of torment! Jealousy! Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal! Who steals and poisons others' good, Under thy cruel breath does languish The sweetest flower of all my hopes. Proud of thyself, unlovely one, Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill, The heart thou visitest by thousand doors; If entrance unto thee could be denied, The reign of Love would so much fairer be, As would this world were death ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... great nation." "O Lord of the world!" replied Moses, "If the three-legged bench has no stability, how then shall the one-legged stand? Fulfil not, I implore Thee, the prophecies of the Egyptian magicians, who predicted to their king that the star 'Ra'ah' would move as a harbinger of blood and death before the Israelites." [275] Then he began to implore mercy for Israel: "Consider their readiness to accept the Torah, whereas the sons of Esau rejected it." God: "But they transgressed the precepts of the Torah; one day ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... petticoat government—no Scotch minister—no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great DECLARATION, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... relations we have for so long maintained. We have never spoken of it, but you must have known the risk of coming here. He has seen it, says he has watched you closely, and you are an exception to all known law, or the harbinger of a new era ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... can now speak in no other manner, I may in this way utter one word to the young, to whom I have heretofore spoken from a more solemn place; I would remind them how almost prophetically, sixteen years ago, in the volume which was the unknown dawn and harbinger of the re-awakening of deeper truth, this was given as the watchword to those who should love the truth, 'In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.' There have been manifold tokens that patience is the one ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... we sat in the carriage on our way to R—sitten, well wrapped up in good fur coats, driving through a thick snowstorm, the first harbinger of the coming winter. On the journey the old gentleman told me many remarkable stories about the Freiherr Roderick, who had established the estate-tail and appointed him (V——), in spite of his youth, to be his Justitiarius and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... desire to stay and hear more and an urge to hurry forth and spread the unbelievable tidings. After the briefest of struggles the latter inclination won; this news was too marvelously good to keep; surely a harbinger and a herald were needed to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... I'll tackle that case of the missing pendants to-morrow," he continued, flicking the ash from his cigar and gazing up at the ceiling with that strange twist in his eye which I had learned to regard as the harbinger of a dawning idea in his mind. "There's ten thousand dollars for somebody in that job, and you and I might as well have it as any ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... making public amusements subservient to party, has, I doubt not, much contributed to the destruction of all against whom it has been employed; and theatrical calumny seems to be always the harbinger of approaching ruin to its object; yet this is not the greatest evil which may arise from these insidious politics—they are equally unfavourable both to the morals and taste of the people; the first ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... the star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he commanded the reinforcements sent to Spain in 1367), had scarcely begun to play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill. But his day was at hand, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... three first commissioners to Europe—Messrs. Yancey, Rost and Mann—sailed from New Orleans, on March 31, '61, their mission was hailed as harbinger to speedy fruition of these delusive thoughts, to which the wish alone was father. Then—though very gradually—began belief that they had reckoned too fast; and doubt began to chill glowing hopes of immediate recognition from ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... sunrise. The half-moon still cast our shadow on the dusty track. But not for long. The zone of yellow light in the east grows rapidly larger and brighter. The brilliant edge of the god of day tips the horizon; a burst of light follows; and now the morning sun, day's harbinger, "comes dancing up the east." The summits of the trees far away in the silent bush are bathed in gold. The near trees, that looked so weird-like in the moon's half light, are now decked in green. The chill of the night ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... and the roaring of the ice, as the fields were dashed against each other by its fury, rendered it truly terrific; while the fragments, as they were dispersing by the storm, struck violently against the vessel, and each blow sounded like the harbinger of instant fate. Such shocks were repeated every five or ten minutes and sometimes oftener; nor was there any possibility of avoiding them. In this awful situation they offered up earnest prayers to Him who alone is able to save, and ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... high is he, there is yet black night, hiding innumerable Cities, Towns, villages, and all those places where soon teeming multitudes of men shall awake, and by their unceasing toil and the spirit within them produce marvels of which the Aeroplane is but the harbinger. ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... a heavy cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... the Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book called Comenii Pansophiae Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio (Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers.] When the thing actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the date "1639" on ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... more than pleased to know that Prof. Buchanan at his age of life has taken upon himself such a broad, deep, beneficent task as publishing the JOURNAL OF MAN. We welcome it as a harbinger of knowledge that will send its light away down the corridors of time as a beacon of the nineteenth century....We believe that its future pages are destined to contain the vortex of questions, socially and morally, which are whirling through ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... phenomenon excited the fears and apprehensions of many people. Some considered it as a portentous omen of the wrath of Heaven in vengeance denounced against the land, others as the immediate harbinger of the last day, when 'the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... thy lamp, the flaming sun Thy harbinger; take thou my soul, Now bounding forth thy race to run, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... was the first igneous rock of more recent date, that we had met with since leaving Separation Creek, and the upper Lynd. Even my Blackfellows recognized at once the rock of Darling Downs; and we hailed it as the harbinger of western waters. The whole country up the creek had been lately burned, which induced me to follow it towards its head, in hope of finding the place where the natives had procured water. The bed was filled with basaltic boulders, as were also its dry holes, from ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... says nothing more. When he passes a shop-window in which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not only to envelop her, but to caress her. She thought neither of past nor future; she lived only in the present. She lay wide awake ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... fat, religious gentleman ... big enough to be a pope. His gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock's. His big belly walks in state before him, like a harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it. Never was such a tun of devotion seen.—Dryden, The Spanish ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... rock glares on the glaring tide. With mightier march and fiercer power It gained Arach'ne's neighboring tower— Thence on our Ar'give roof its rest it won, Of Ida's fire the long-descended son! Bright harbinger of glory and of joy! So first and last with equal honor crowned, In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round. And these my heralds, this my sign of Peace! Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece Stalk, in stern tumult through the halls ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... you out amid the snow? Perchance you've lost your way, rash Cupid. (C.) No. The harbinger of spring to lovers true, I started out while yet the ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren

... everything that had caught the rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again until when, in ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... endless leagues of shadowy forest. Thus he dwelt alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whithersoever he listed through the depths of the melancholy and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle against brute or human foe—a stark and sombre harbinger ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as "The Germ. Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art." ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... whose distinctive mission in the world was to serve as a harbinger for his race! A star of the first magnitude, he rose in the night of American slavery, attracted the admiring gaze of the civilized world, and so thrilled the hearts of men that they broke the chains of all his kind in the hope ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. One of the most tenacious and troublesome of the little visitors is the jigger, which has an uncomfortable ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... fair star! as first created shine, In never fading immortality! Like vice, from virtue's glance, yon clouds retire, Before the smile of one benignant ray, Sleepless and sad, my soul would fain aspire, Promethean like, to snatch ethereal fire, And draw relief from thee! bright harbinger of day! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... danger-line between the ideal and the absurd. Poe was the truer worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance of one whose vision beholds, ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... commander and every field officer except one fell. Lee and Longstreet had seen from the edge of the woods, with great exultation, the blue flag of Virginia waving over the crest occupied by the Union troops. It seemed the harbinger of great success to Lee. He thought the Union army was conquered at last. The long struggle was over, and peace would soon come, accompanied by the acknowledgment of the independence of the Southern Confederacy. It was but a passing dream; the flag receded, and soon the plain was covered with fugitives ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... nation from enjoying so much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice. Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after. During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which had been infected, and from ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered. Here, the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there, by a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and mauve—the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... joker up, Jack," he said then. "To me the mere mention of South America is like Mother Gary's chickens to a sailor, a harbinger of storm." ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... however, I won't. I might wound his feelings, for he is an exquisitely sensitive creature. As you have ingeniously discovered, he is a social reformer. At present he is only known to the public as the editor of the 'Humanitarian Harbinger;' but his select circle of friends are well aware that he is devoting his ripened genius to the production of a work called the 'Progressional Principia,' which will be in four volumes, and exhaust the whole subject ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... when the home journey was undertaken, and Winifred looked at her with apprehension. But they traveled comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited. But an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that night, and the doctor was hastily summoned. The chill was a harbinger of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of coming sorrow. Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but professional skill was needed also. The telephone rang frequent calls from the office during the anxious days ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through small, To greater liberty, until at last I shall ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... of some tropic night, a single drop is the refreshing harbinger of a slower that clears the heavens, so even this slight expression relieved in an instant the intensity of his over-burthened feelings, and warm, quick, and gushing flowed the words that breathed his fervid adoration. 'Yes!' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... could be improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... the accident. But although this seemed the only effect produced upon his bodily health, his mind had suffered a severe shock which was not equally obvious. Fancies, each gloomier than the preceding, took, henceforth, more and more possession of his imagination. He seemed the harbinger of misfortune to all connected with him. Frequently rose up the image of his dead brother, mingling with his dreams and obtruding itself even into his waking thoughts, at one time dripping with water as when taken from the pond—ghastly pale—livid—with scarcely distinguishable ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... next day, and perched upon the mast, as if to tell that we had yet a friend! Welcome harbinger of good! you bring us thoughts ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... way in which ripe age looks on at things which ought to amaze it. And yet any little one of its own concerns grows more important, perhaps, than ever as the shadow of the future dwindles. Major Hockin had found on the beach a pebble with a streak of agate in it. He took it as the harbinger of countless agates, and resolved to set up a lapidary, with a tent, or even a shop, perhaps—not to pay, but to be ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius—another and a brighter star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... Pagan Italy. The same omen announced to Lord Lindsay's Arab attendants in the desert the approach of some disaster, which partially happened in the morning. And a Highlander of the 42d Regiment, in his printed memoirs, notices the same harbinger of evil as having crossed his own path on a day of personal ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... only real harbinger of revival which I have been able to detect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the size of a man's hand for which a few saints here and there have been looking. It can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant wonder ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... wide-mouthed trumpets of ravine or rift On winding far to where in wooden cell The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud Storm-borne from crag to crag. Serener breeze, With alternation soft in Nature's course, Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger, Thus spake he: 'I must keep the Feast at home; My children there expect me.' Parting thence, He left his brothers three to consummate His work begun, Celin, and Cynabil, And Chad, at Lichfield Bishop ere he died. Thus Lastingham had ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... the harbinger of welcome and glad tidings, proclaimed by her own departure, that ours was at hand. On the 26th of November she sailed for England. It was impossible to view our separation with insensibility: the little ship which had so often agitated our hopes ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ears to the singing of birds, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... I have already said enough; but I must say a little more on that. Now, as grief proceeds from what is present, so does fear from future evil; so that some have said that fear is a certain part of grief: others have called fear the harbinger of trouble, which, as it were, introduces the ensuing evil. Now, the reasons that make what is present supportable, make what is to come very contemptible; for, with regard to both, we should take care ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love, Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; Though pale she lay when in the winter grove Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her And the red wings of frost-fire ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... somewhat abated. We could now hope to see the sun before long, and on the 8th of January we really perceived a faint glimmering in the sky, at which we rejoiced not a little. Eight days later we perceived a reddish tinge, which we hailed as the harbinger of the near approach of the sun. We perceived, also, a slight warmth in the wind, which, joined to the heat of our fire, partially melted the ice on the walls of the hut, which, until now, had remained perfectly solid. As the glimmering light grew stronger ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... the dweller of the desert; "and well hast thou merited death, for singing thy blasphemous hymns, not only to the praise of thy false prophet, who is the foul fiend's harbinger, but to that of the Author of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... Thus, therefore, did this harbinger of evil news resume the situation. Caligula was in his palace, surrounded by the slaves of his household and guarded by a few soldiers against a raging mob—an hundred thousand or more strong—who had formed a ring around ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... happy days, I and my mother, together. Then—the joy of hope fulfilled being sometimes a swifter harbinger to another world than the heaviest load of sorrow—she passed, without pain or sickness, smiling, in her sleep; she ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... leaped from her mighty bow. She was a great, lifeless thing. Waves lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... their property in security and repose. The assertors of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother country of freedom there were no less than three hundred thousand at one time in prison. I go no further. I instance only these representations of the party, as staring indications ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed from ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... N. precursor, antecedent, precedent, predecessor; forerunner, vancourier^, avant-coureur [Fr.], pioneer, prodrome^, prodromos^, prodromus^, outrider; leader, bellwether; herald, harbinger; foreboding; dawn; avant-courier, avant-garde, bellmare^, forelooper^, foreloper^, stalking-horse, voorlooper [Afrik.], voortrekker [Afrik.]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos [Fr.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... surrender of Burgoyne thrilled the whole land, for all felt it to be the harbinger of final triumph. The people went wild with joy; salvos of artillery, toasts, bonfires, illuminations, everywhere testified to the general exultation. The name of France was hailed with acclamations. At ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... the morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, expanding with her rosy fingers the gates of light, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... the night." "'Tis chanticleer the shepherd's clock announcing day." "The evening star love's harbinger appears." "The queen of night fair Dian smiles serene." "There is yet one man Micaiah the son of Imlah." "Our whole company man by man ventured down." "As a work of wit the Dunciad has ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the subject is commended to your consideration. It is an obvious duty to provide the means of postal communication which our commerce requires, and with prudent forecast of results the wise extension of it may lead to stimulating intercourse and become the harbinger of a profitable traffic which will open new avenues for the disposition of the products of our industry. The circumstances of the countries at the far south of our continent are such as to invite our enterprise and afford the promise of sufficient advantages to justify an unusual ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... writers, who have attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and token of an ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop



Words linked to "Harbinger" :   annunciate, indication, announce, indicant, forerunner, herald, predecessor, tell, precursor



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com