"Poised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stirr'd; The dull may waken to a humming-bird; The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find Congenial matter in the cockle-kind; The mind in metaphysics at a loss, May wander in a wilderness of moss;[427] 450 The head that turns at super-lunar things, Poised with a tail, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... through media and at a distance, as well as in contact; and it has an especial attraction for iron, the more so when the conducting medium is solid, such as a table; and so when the magnet is horizontally suspended, or poised, in the vicinity of iron, its tendency to point north and south is seriously disturbed. The disturbance of the bar, or needle, in such a case, is called its deflection; and it is corrected by so placing a piece of soft iron or another magnet in its neighbourhood as ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... snatched a baby here and there and drove a herd of children before her indoors, glancing around and behind her as she did so with the anxious look of a motherly barn-door fowl when the hawk hangs poised ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... ape-man, urging his fellows to attack. This man was the closest to Tarzan. But for him the ape-man could easily have reached Ta-den's side as the latter was urging him to do. Tarzan raised the body of the dead Waz-don above his head, held it poised there for a moment as with face raised to the heavens he screamed forth the horrid challenge of the bull apes of the tribe of Kerchak, and with all the strength of his giant sinews he hurled the corpse heavily ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... perched himself on his high writing-stool, and opening his books, attempted to go on as usual with the business of the day. But there was something unquiet tugging at his conscience, which did not allow him to do so. He paused frequently, with his pen poised over his inkstand, or paper, and fell into reveries, which ended with expressions which burst out like shots from a revolver. It was now "Pshaw!" then, "I hate it worse than I do the synagogue;" or, "it is not injustice! Have I not ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... enhancements of dress, the insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Poised there, high above the thoroughfare below, a great nausea attacked him. Glancing to the right, in the direction of the window through which he had come, he perceived Madame de Medici leaning out and beckoning to him. Her arm gleamed whitely ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... to trace Inspired perceptions of celestial grace, Th' ideal spirit, fugitive as wind, Art's forceful spells in adamant confined: Curved with nice chisel floats the obsequious line; From stone unconscious, beauty beams divine; On magic poised, th' exulting structure swims, And spurns attraction with elastic limbs. While ravish'd fancy vivifies the form; While judgment toils to analyze its charm; While admiration spreads her speaking hands; The ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... doggedly to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening—nerve-killing ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... traversed the spots which separated the field from the wood, there was always a stimulating uncertainty what sort of game was to be found, and the marksman, with his bow ready bent, or his javelin poised, and his good and well-bitted horse thrown upon its haunches, ready for a sudden start, observed watchfully what should rush from the covert, so that, were it deer, boar, wolf, wild cattle, or any other species of game, he might be ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to climb, Paula again chased him to the half-way platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste. His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, legs straight and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... to their bedrooms and close their doors. Mademoiselle, I depend upon you!" With one hand on the banisters and one foot poised for descent, the Principal pitted her will against ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... was a large and brilliant room, with the front-wall taken out. It was hung with mirrors and cretonnes, it was richly carpeted, and, of course, it was lighted by electricity. Carved and gilded tables bore a whole armoury of weapons. You shot at tobacco-pipes, twisting and stationary, at balls poised on jets of water, and at proper targets. In the corners of the saloon, near the open, were large crimson plush lounges, on which you lounged after ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... large proportion of imports. In 1988 manufacturing accounted for 35% of GDP, with other sectors contributing lesser amounts. The major economic problem in 1989 is persistent unemployment of over 8%. The FRG is well poised to take advantage of the increasing economic integration of the European Community. The dramatic opening of the boundary with East Germany in late 1989 poses new economic challenges that could ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... eyes glowed with a deep, quiet light, and his face, even grand at the moment, had a greater influence upon her than she knew. Instead therefore of interposing the door between them, she only kept it poised, ready to fall to the moment the sanity of the youth should become a hair's breadth more doubtful ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the convent thoroughly; they went out into the garden and beat the shrubbery, kicking through bushes and saplings, their cocked rifles poised ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... has an English rather than an American aspect,—being of stronger outline than most of our young ladies, although handsomer than English women generally, extremely self-possessed and well poised without affectation or assumption, but quietly conscious of rank, as much so as if she were an Earl's daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an Earl's daughter would do towards the merchants' wives and daughters who made up the feminine portion ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half awake, grasped their weapons and struggled to their feet in answer to his call. The lion's gaunt body shot through the air. In two bounds, he was upon the goat-hunter. Baldos stood squarely and firmly to meet the rush of the maddened beast, his long dagger poised for the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the middle of an open heath, is the celebrated Aggie Stone, or holy stone, though it is more generally known at present as the Devil's Nightcap. It is a long stone poised on a single point. We agreed that it was something like a giant mushroom. The country people say it was thrown from the Isle of Wight, with the intention of destroying Corfe Castle, but that, falling short, it descended where we found it, on the top of the hill, eighty or ninety feet ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... along hyar, Ben." The girl, in advance, paused, bareheaded, each uplifted hand holding out a string of her white sunbonnet, which, thus distended, was poised, winglike, behind the rough tangle of auburn hair and against the amber sky. She turned as she spoke, to face her companion, taking a step or two backward as she ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hand the steel enclosed, He poised his ruthless hand on high— But God in mercy interposed His shadow ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... balanced was the projectile, and so delicately poised was the machinery, that the terrifically fast rate of travel, rivalling that of the earth, was no more noticed than we, on this globe, notice our pace of nineteen miles a second ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... into a house; and Hal, having nothing to do but enjoy life, stood waiting for them to come out. They returned in the same procession, only now the man had a sack of something on his shoulder, while the little chap had a smaller load poised in imitation. So Hal grinned again, and when they were opposite ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... erect, his pike-pole poised in both hands, and we were all ready for action. We could hear the rattle of many hoofs on the road. As soon as the column showed in the firelight, Bill Foster up with his musket and pulled the trigger. I ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... two whilst the hammer was poised in mid air and Hun Rhavas' furtive glance darted on the praefect to see if he were still indifferent! Menecreta prayed with all her humble might to the proud gods enthroned upon the hill! she prayed that this cycle of agony might end at last for ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Mrs. Nash. "Well, I thought he looked 'most too wide-awake for that. He aint a bit offish. He seems re'l practical. What you hurryin' off so for?" she asked, as Marcia rose, and stood poised on the threshold, in act to follow her husband. "Why don't you set here with me, while he's at his writin'? You'll just keep talkin to him and takin' his mind off, the whole while. You stay here!" she commanded hospitably. "You'll just be ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... for further speech. Three ladders were reared against the rock. They were so poised and held below that Jenks could not force them backwards. A fourth appeared, its coarse shafts looming into sight like the horns of some gigantic animal. The four covered practically the whole front of the ledge save where Mir Jan cleared a little ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Brunhild poised her spear and flung it with such force that both heroes staggered; but before she could cry out her victory Siegfried had caught the spear and flung it back with such violence that the princess fell and was obliged ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... found in shady tropical forests; and the Trochilinae, comprising humming-birds which inhabit open sunny places—and to this division they mostly belong. In both of these purely arbitrary groups, however, the aerial habits and manner of feeding poised in the air are identical, although the birds living in shady forests, where flowers are scarce, obtain their food principally from the under surfaces of leaves. In their procreant habits the uniformity is also very great. In all cases ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... one eye and looked down the sights. He squeezed the trigger, the room echoed and there was blackness. Heidel held his pistol poised over ...
— The Eyes Have It • James McKimmey
... Downstairs appeared on the threshold of the Day Nursery, Robin—always having been freshly dressed in one of her nicest frocks—stood and stared with immense startled eyes and answered in a whisper the banal little questions put to her. The Lady appeared at such rare intervals and remained poised upon the threshold like a tropic plumaged bird for moments so brief, that there never was time to do more than lose breath and gaze as at a sudden vision. Why she came—when she did come—Robin did not understand. She evidently did not belong to the small, dingy nurseries which grew ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the woods, lances poised, for about ten minutes, when a general officer with dragoon escort came galloping down the road and through the meadow toward McDunn's battery. It was Claymore, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... for his wrists to meet around and be handcuffed again. There he stood in the blinding glare of thirty or forty cars, writhing and moaning, while one of the black-masked men stripped off his coat and got ready for action. He produced a long black-snake whip, and stood poised for a moment; then in a booming voice the man with the megaphone shouted, "Go!" and the whip whistled thru the air and was laid across the back of Michael, and tore into the flesh so that the blood leaped into sight. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... longed to throw against them; and his master, seeing his looks, bade him go and try what he could do. He took the stone and poised it well; and at the first effort he threw it twelve feet or more ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... behind her the next morning she paused in horror, with her hand poised above the dimple-holder. What had happened to her lovely Garden ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... was unusually tall and stalwart, deep chested and robust in appearance, with not a superfluous ounce of flesh on his body, hardened by the rigors of long months of camp-life. His head was large and shapely, well poised and carried high on a full neck that sprang from the great breadth of his shoulders. His face, smooth and sensitive, and large and regular in feature with high cheek-bones and slightly hollowed cheeks, was ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... sitting just outside the line of the sidewalk, in the street, exactly in front of his house. His head was bare, and his long white hair glistened in the sunshine. He sat in an arm-chair, with an immense double-barrelled shotgun poised quietly across his knees. He was carelessly reading a newspaper, and not a semblance of mourning was to be seen anywhere on his premises. As the head of the procession reached him hundreds of hands involuntarily sought their revolvers, and every man held his breath; even the music ceased, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Andy," she said. "I will tell him how thoughts of him almost deterred me from my purpose," and opening her little writing desk, which Richard gave her at Christmas, she took up her pen and held it poised a moment, while something said: "Write to Richard, too. Surely you can do so much for him. You can tell him the truth at last, and let him know how he ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... of it. He finds it hard to realise that this is a battle and that this is the General commanding. In all pictures of battles that he has seen from his youth upwards the General is seated on a horse poised on two legs, and waving a sword or pointing with a marshal's baton. And here is a General with a sandwich with a big bite out of it, who points with the sandwich-hand instead. And then he begins to wonder, with all this multitudinous whistling, that nobody seems to be hit. Then the order is given ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protection to the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents the head-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head and nape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds, portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnet composed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or three butterflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third represented by five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... this, he grew frantic, and without stopping to think more, he ran round to the side by the shaft, caught up a piece of fir-trunk some six or seven feet long, and ran back, poised it for a few moments over his head, and then dashed it, battering-ram fashion, with all his might against the rough fir-wood door, just where the bar went across, loosening it so that he was able to insert one end of the piece of timber, using it now as a lever; and with one wrench ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but noiselessly, took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old maid held her two plugs of cotton poised, filled ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... poised himself in the air, listening intently with his hand to his ear, and again he would stare down with eyes so bright that they seemed to bore two holes to earth. Having done these things, he ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... poised advantage against disadvantage; domestic ease and comfort against the false gaieties of fashion. I can withdraw into the country. I need no honours to make my tenants happy; and my heart will teach me to make their happiness my own. With such a wife as this, children who resemble her, ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... to the boat for my gun, which Ruston tried to get out for me; and at this moment, on casting my eyes upwards, I saw a native start up on the sandbank not more than fifteen yards from Ruston and myself; he poised his spear for one second, and it then came whistling at us. I dodged and the spear flew past without my seeing what became of it. I instantly gave the order to watch the bank and to fire at anything that showed itself above it; and Mr. Walker now had got hold ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Gloucestershire side of the Wye. The chief of them is "the Buck Stone," so called perhaps from the deer which sheltered beneath it, or else from its fancied resemblance to that animal when viewed from certain distant spots. It is a huge mass of rock poised on the very crest of Staunton Hill, which being of a pyramidal form, and almost 1000 feet high, renders the stone on its summit visible in one direction as far as Ross, nine miles off. A careful examination of the structure of the rock, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... brushed hair that thinned slightly at the temples. He was clean-shaven, and his light-brown eyes lay in a smiling setting of quizzical good-humour. He was of rather more than medium height, with well-poised shoulders; and though a firmness of lips and jaw gave a suggestion of hardness, the engaging youthfulness of his eyes and a hearty smile that crinkled the bridge of his nose left a pleasant impression of frankness, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... silver bracelets on her wrists and little anklets hung with bells about her slender ankles. Round and round and round galloped the white horse, the fairy figure on his back now standing, now lying, now on her knees, now poised on one small foot, or, again, dancing to the music on top of the broad saddle, keeping exact time, every movement graceful and light as that of a happy elf. Hoops, wreathed with roses and covered with silver paper, were raised across her path. She bounded through them easily, smiling ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest outlet in violence. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Woolson spent the latter years of her life in Europe, changing her residence frequently. Gracefully impulsive and independent, she had a gypsy instinct for the roving life of liberty out-of-doors; yet in character and demeanor she was so serenely poised, so self-contained, with such inviolable reserve and dignity, that she was, as Stedman put it, "like ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... for she leaned on his piano and improvised flatteries across the strings to him and turned full on him the luminous midnight of her ox-eyed beauty. A punster would say that he was oxidised, at once. The two lovers were strangely unlike—of course. She was masculine, self-poised, and self-satisfied; she had taken excellent care of herself at a time when the independent woman had less encouragement than now. So more than masculinely coarse she was in some ways, indeed, that Henry James once ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... slender support. He carried a man over on his shoulders; he wheeled a wheelbarrow across; he walked the rope blindfolded, and did many other things which would be very difficult to most people, even if they were standing on solid ground instead of being poised on a slender rope stretched high above the waters of a rapid river. In this country, however, the taste for out-door and dangerous rope-walking is not so general as it is in some countries of Europe, where it is quite common to see ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... human beings. Inexorably impelled by time, he will, with inavertible necessity, pass through all the stages of human life, from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom. Limited in vision, he will never see the next step which his unsteady foot, poised in the air, is in the very act of taking. Limited in knowledge, he will never know what the coming day will bring, or the coming hour, or the coming minute. In his unseeing blindness, troubled by premonitions, agitated by hope ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... physiognomy. But the nose was boldly cut, the mouth particularly humane, the forehead high, intelligent, and ploughed like a field that was never allowed to remain fallow. Lastly, a muscular body well poised on long limbs, muscular arms, powerful and well-set levers, and a decided gait made a solidly built fellow of this European, "rather wrought than cast," to borrow one of his ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... as I lay there, reading Shelley, or was it my Vergil that I was puzzling out line by line, with occasional glances at the great ship seeming to sail into me—myself poised outward in space— ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... trying to get away. But about four miles on our way, we met a large party of Miaki's men, all armed, and watching as outposts. Some were for shooting us, but others hesitated. Every musket was, however, raised and leveled at me. Faimungo poised his great spear and said, "No, you shall not kill Missi to-day. He is with me." Having made this flourish, he strode off after his own men, and my Aneityumese followed, leaving me face to face with a ring ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... to the group a tall warrior with a long, heavy spear. A cry was raised at his approach, and a space was cleared. He stood before the captive and poised his spear, swinging it backward and forward, to make his arm supple before he thrust, like a bowler before he delivers a ball at a cricket match. Feversham glanced wildly about him, and seeing no ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... when he attempts to run away, grows restive, or shies. The body should also be put in its proper balance for performing the defences: the shoulders should be thrown back, the waist brought forward, and the head well poised on the neck. Every part of the frame must be flexible, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... words left his lips when the Somali chief poised his spear and hurled it forward with such force and accuracy of aim that it passed through the Arab's body and the point came out at the back. With a cry he ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... head. I saw the fish dart and poise above me, the ribbons of sea-weed floating up, just swayed by the currents, shells crawling like great snails on the ooze, crabs hurrying about among piles of boulders. But something drew me back to my first station, I know not why; and there I poised, as a bird might have poised, and lost myself in a blissful dream. Then it darted into my mind that I was what I had been accustomed to call dead. So this was what lay on the other side of the dark passage, this lightness, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... decorations, harnessing, and horsing of any English or Parisian wheel equipage, I apprehend that we can from none of them form any high ideal of wheel conveyance; and that unless we had seen an Egyptian king bending his bow with his horses at the gallop, or a Greek knight leaning with his poised lance over the shoulder of his charioteer, we have no right to consider ourselves as thoroughly knowing what the word "chariot," in its noblest ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... hesitated for the moment, for he could not strike without endangering her life. Seeing this, with the wonderful quickness which sometimes comes over the youngest child in such a crisis, Inez persistently forced her body with amazing quickness in the way of the poised knife as it started to descend more than once—the other two holding back for their ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... room sat his aunt, reading her Bible. She was just turning a page when Time stopped. In the dining-room was his uncle, finishing his luncheon. His mouth was open and his fork poised just before it, while his eyes were fixed upon the newspaper folded beside him. Jim helped himself to his uncle's pie, and while he ate it he ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... middle heaven, then at length did Father Jove raise the golden scales, and placed in them two destinies of long-reposing death, [the destinies] both of the horse-breaking Trojans and of the brazen-mailed Greeks, and holding them in the middle, he poised them; but the fatal day of the Greeks inclined low. The destinies of the Greeks, indeed, rested on the bounteous earth, but those of the Trojans on the contrary were elevated to ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Storks, poised upon a single leg, Stood dreaming of the eternal Nile,— The Mecca of their winter flight, When lured by Egypt's sunny smile; While ducks and geese, in gabbling mood, Explored the muddy pond for food, Attended by their ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... of queen of French society, which she held for nearly half a century. The very name of Recamier has come to evoke a vision of beauty, a beauty so well known to every lover of art who has visited the Luxembourg and gazed upon the figure "so flexible and elegant, with head well poised, brilliant complexion, little rosy mouth with pearly teeth, black curling hair, soft expressive eyes, and a bearing indicative of indolence and pride, yet with a face beaming with good nature and sympathy." Her beauty has been ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the graceful evolutions of the contradanza as she did that night. Her supple slender body curved and swayed and glided; her round arms were like lazy snakes uncoiling; her exquisitely poised head moved in perfect concord with her undulating hips. Her eyes grew brighter, her lips redder. The young men who stood near gave as loud a vent to their admiration as if she had been dancing El Son alone on the floor. But the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... to twist his head round in a very unusual position, and look out under his arm. It was obvious that in doing this he was in imminent danger of falling, so unstable was the equilibrium in which he was poised upon ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house, her rounded young figure poised ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... The Eskimo poised his light spear, but hesitated to launch it. He shrank from killing a defenceless foe. The hesitation betrayed him, for at the moment the sharp ear of the red man heard, and his ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... side the ruins of the cathedral were covered with corpses burned black from the heat of the flames and exposure to the sun. One woman, by some freak of nature, had her arms poised above her head as she sat dead, shrivelled almost beyond human recognition. It was probable that the Boxers had pitched many of their victims alive into the flames and driven them back with their swords and spears whenever ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Frank calling out to his brother to make for the shore; while, instead of retreating, he poised himself upon his skates, until Harry had passed; and then dashed off, followed by the whole pack. Another slight turn brought him ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... flying down the windy sky, The swallow poised and darting in the sun, The guillemot beating seaward through the mist— We knew them every one, And heard from them of trumpets wakening war, Of steadfast beams that roofed our people warm, Of ships that blindfold through uncharted seas Triumphant ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... tower. "Come up and see, then!" One by one they went, And, though each laughed as he returned to earth, Their souls were in their eyes. Then I, too, looked, And saw that insignificant spark of light Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn, A swimming world, a perfect rounded pearl, Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed, I saw a miracle,—right on its upmost edge A tiny mound of white that slowly rose, Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear And swam in heaven above its parent world To greet its three bright sister-moons. A moon, Of Jupiter, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of Russian cuirassiers, Prussian lancers, and Hungarian hussars; Cossacks, old and young, from those whose beards were grey with age, to those who were yet beardless, cantering along after their singular fashion—their long lances poised on their stirrups, and loosely fastened to their right arms, vibrating over their heads; long files of Russian and Prussian foragers, and long trains of Austrian baggage waggons, winding slowly through the crowd; idle soldiers of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... of a small silver lamp which she carried in her hand—a beautiful lady, with rubies on her neck and in her hair. The lamplight, for a moment, concentrated on a face whose weariness was overborne by slumbering triumph, which poised her head like that of a newly ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... as it was apparent to Jordan—who poised his pencil over the pad of papers and did not move a muscle—that Lawler's wrath was struggling mightily within him. It was also apparent that Lawler's was a cold wrath, held in check by a sanity that forbade surrender to it—a sanity that sternly ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... great-uncle's malacca cane smoothly through her fingers, while her background was made up equally of lustrous blue-and-white paint, and crimson books with gilt lines on them. The vitality and composure of her attitude, as of a bright-plumed bird poised easily before further flights, roused him to show her the limitations of her lot. So soon, so easily, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... she struggled with the excited happiness that manifested itself in the rapid heaving of her bosom, and the transient smile on her lips, and a heavy frown gathered on his face. She looked up suddenly, the tiny cup poised in her hand midway ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... stood, staring over Brett's shoulder, holding a pen poised over a book. Brett reached out, took the pen. The man's finger curled stiffly around nothing. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... his hammer already poised in the air, paused in some surprise. A clean-shaven man in dark grey clothes and a bowler hat, a man who had somehow the air of being a little out of his element in this galaxy of pleasure seekers, caught ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... our Nation is poised for greatness. We must do what we know is right and do it with all our might. Let history say of us, "These were golden years—when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, when ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Larry took a nap, sitting in an old kitchen rocker. Poised on the arm of the chair, her father's head upon her tiny shoulder, Noreen sang ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Showed earth in time's keen youth When men with angels communed unaware. Above the sun's head, now Veiled even to the ardent brow, Rose two sheer wings of sundering cloud, that were As a bird's poised for vehement flight, Full-fledged with plumes of tawny ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... once obtained, the boy flung himself upon the box with the rapacity of a hawk upon its prey, after being long poised in the air, to fix its certain aim; thrusting his hands to the right and left, in order to secure the finest specimens of the coveted fruit, scarcely allowing himself time to breathe until he had filled his old straw hat, and all his pockets, with apples. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... winners and time to a hushed and eager throng, Nandy, not yet a year old, would begin to squeal at the top of his lungs for joy. Nobody could hear a word the official said. We were as distressed as any one—we, too, had pencils poised to jot ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... California. But loveliest and strangest of all things were the gardens chosen for their own by the mariposa lilies. The trembling winged flowers hovered airily just above the earth, like a flock of alighting butterflies; and overhead poised real butterflies, of the self-same delicate tints hardly strong enough to be named as colours; silvery white, faint lilac, and a sunrise-hint of rose. Ground butterflies and air butterflies seemed kin to one another, those rooted to ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... there looking down into the hole some one across from us tossed in a ball of paper. It seemed to hang poised a moment, then it shriveled up, turned black, and floated slowly down until it rested on ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... out a short knife which might be used to skin a beef or carve meat, though certainly no human being had ever used such a weapon against a five-foot rattler. He stooped and rested both hands on his thighs. His feet were not two paces from the poised head of the snake. As if marvelling at this temerity, the big rattler tucked back his head and sounded the alarm again. In response the cowboy flashed his knife in the sun. Instantly the snake struck but the deadly fangs fell a few ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... the hedgerow, catching the sunshine at every turn, and the marigolds drooped their heads at the sight of him. Close to the nest he dropped on a briar-leaf, like a floating petal. He was more than colour now—he was form. For a full minute he poised there motionless, the most exquisitely graceful, the most exquisitely coloured of all our butterflies, and, for a full minute, the dormouse ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... momentary; again she poised herself, uttered one or two sharp notes, as if telling them to a "lie still," balanced her body, spread her wings, and was away again for ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... why I am here, at this hour, beneath the sculptured steeds of Marly, more high-spirited than those aristocratic quadrupeds themselves; this is why I am setting foot in the avenue whose entrance is marked by their hoofs of stone perpetually poised in air. The carriages flow past endlessly, like a sombre scintillating stream of lava or molten asphalt, whereon the hats of the women seem borne along like so many flowers, and like everything else one sees in Paris, at once extravagant and pretty. I light ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... man turned a little and looked at her, with his crayon poised. "My dear Eugenia," he murmured, "were you ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... at first. What did this mean? Oh, well, the homes would miss it. They did, and the sophomores breathed again, but only for a moment. Then T. Reed jumped and the ball went pounding back toward the freshman basket. This time a home got it, passed it successfully to Rachel, and Rachel poised it for an instant and sent it cleanly into ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... a balloon it would be different. Poised in the air a moderate distance above the ground, I could shoot at tigers beneath me and laugh at their efforts to reach my height. Therefore it was that I determined to hunt my tigers in a balloon. Irene screamed ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... poised his weapon for deadly work. On the instant the rumble of wheels met the ears ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... the usual mad charge of porters. Percival indicated his bag to one of them with a distracted air, and followed him to the Customs House guiltily. The porter dumped the bag before an official, who had a piece of chalk hopefully poised between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... sighed Linda, rapt in praise, As with poised oars the two looked oceanward. Then, keeping time, they pulled out from the shore. "But you row well!" cried Charles. "I might return The compliment," said Linda. "See that duck! How near, how still he floats! He seems to know The holy time will keep him safe from harm." "Had I a gun," said ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... he came on like a young tiger, his eyes ablaze, his nostrils quivering, his arm poised, his full chest expanding, perfectly aware the officer was feeling for the pistol at his belt, when, quick and noiseless, a small hand, white and delicate as a woman's, reached out and drew the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... savages like a whirlwind towards them, led by a tall chief with a plume of dark feathers waving above his head, on a white horse, whooping and shrieking in the most diabolical manner. We could see their faces through our glasses, and fierce and terrible they looked, as they held their lances poised, or their bows bent ready to shoot as they got within range. Our rear-guard, who were acting as skirmishers, fired, and then fell back on the main body, with the exception of two or three, who as they were retreating fell pierced ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... approving and patronizing it, under the undenying impulse, no doubt, of a common human need. It little mattered that its location was usually the wreckage of some wind-swept barn; or that its furniture consisted of a barrel of water jauntily poised on the rafters; the spectacle of Buddie, bar of soap in hand, sporting and splashing in the limpid stream of that miniature Niagara, offered wealth of theme for the inspired artist, poet, and writer of ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... up—boys together—being mounted, and armed with a heavy sabre, dashed forward down a narrow street, (up which, a detached body of lancers were striving to escape,) and throwing himself between three poised lances and the person of Dr. Lamar, one of the surgeons, who would have been most inevitably torn to atoms, Dave raised himself in his saddle, and with a yell, and one fell swoop, the heroic fellow "chopped down" a lancer, clean ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... her beauty before she went down to dinner. She suggested that the fair hair should be dressed even higher and more lightly than usual, so that the silver butterfly should poise the more airily over the knot, with its quivering, outstretched wings. She herself poised the butterfly high ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with which the most difficult consensual movements can be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task, which requires such ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... you?" cried Mollie, still dramatically poised. "It is an angel, I tell you, come to help us ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... roll down to the base of that ridge, which is very steep on its western declivity. It is clear, therefore, that the propelling power, whatever it may have been, acted exclusively in a south-easterly direction. Professor Hall and I observed one of the green blocks—24 feet long, poised upon another about 19 feet in length. The largest of all on the west flank of m, or Dupey's Mount, called the Alderman, is above 90 feet in diameter, and nearly 300 feet in circumference. We counted at some points between forty and fifty blocks visible at once, the smallest ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... was that of Duncan of Camperdown. He stands in uniform beside a table, his feet slightly straddled with the balance of an old sailor, his hand poised upon a chart by the finger tips. The mouth is pursed, the nostril spread and drawn up, the eyebrows very highly arched. The cheeks lie along the jaw in folds of iron, and have the redness that comes from much ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my old skipper, much as I had expected. He was a middle-aged, placid, well-poised man, a pessimist in speech, but a bold man in soul. He was fond of an evening pipe, and he sat now smoking and looking down the illuminated lane made by our search-light. He turned toward me, a sudden curiosity upon ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... wall seemed to melt and he was gazing upon a green field, in the centre of which a man in a grey uniform was beginning a Salome dance. Watching this person with a cold and suspicious eye, stood another uniformed man, holding poised above his shoulder a sturdy club. Two Masked Marvels crouched behind him in attitudes of watchful waiting. On wooden seats all around sat a vast multitude of shirt-sleeved spectators, and the air was full ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Beaumonts and resume our reading of the bard, and these witless beings would confer happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... foot in her flight, raised themselves and trembled an instant before they became quiet, like water cut by the wings of a bird. Only on the place where she had been standing, her abandoned willow basket, empty and overturned, was still poised upon the leaves and ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... End, as the cars usually make it a halting-place. Even more famous, and perhaps more attractive to the conventional sight-seer, is the Logan Stone of Treryn, or Treen; but what makes this spot truly worth seeing is not the mass of poised rock, which certainly stirs clumsily when pushed, but the grand headland itself, on which there is a dinas, or old entrenchment. The coast here has more beauties than can be named, but this immemorial stronghold of a vanished ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... "in no other spot could a more magnificent view be found. Yonder river winding afar through the vast plain, that noble forest divided by hunting roads into squares, that Calvary poised high in air, those bridges placed here and there to add to the attractiveness of the landscape, those flowery meadows set in the foreground as a rest to the eye, the broad stream of the Seine, which seemingly is fain to flow at a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Karatoff to indicate to Errol what it was that he was to do. But a gasp went up from some one as he took another step and it was evident that it was Marchant whom he had singled out. For just a moment Errol poised the rubber dagger over his "victim," as if gloating. It was dramatic, realistic. As Errol paused, Marchant smiled at the rest of us, a sickly smile, I thought, as though he would have said that the play ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... Resting on nothing; poised in the night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves—none else was there—each with its muffled hand upon its ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... the clerk in blank astonishment. Place of residence? Why, heaven help him, he had none, none! For the first time since he left the Army the knowledge came home to him, and it struck rather deep. He caught up the pen, poised it an indecisive moment, then hastily scribbled Paris: as well Paris as anywhere. Then he took out his wallet, comfortably packed with English and French bank-notes, and a second wave of astonishment rolled ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... harp poised lightly on her arm, sweet Annot Lyle tripped by the side of the moody Allan, striving by her lively sallies to break the thrall of the dark fit which was about to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of those many ruined towers and castles in which the Apennines abound, and of which Canossa, far off and indistinguishable in the haze, was the chief example. It was called 'The Tower of Rugino'. Beyond the deep trench of the Enza, poised as it seemed on its southern bank (but really much further off, in the Secchia valley), stood that strange high rock of Castel-Nuovo, which the peasant had shown me that morning and which was the landmark of this attempt. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... ends of the pools are marked by Arthur Putnam's beautiful Mermaid Fountain, in duplicate. The crowning figure is by no means the conventional mermaid. She is free, full of grace, charmingly poised. The bifurcated tail is original and gives sculptural distinction as well as greater human appeal. The figure is instinct with a spirit of play but is not boisterous. Arthur Putnam is a Californian who has greatly influenced the development ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... friend's high courage as she looked at the eyes where fright barely fluttered under the poised suspense. She approved of the plan. It appealed to her by its sheer audacity. She murmured that, if there were anything that she could do, Milly had ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... o'clock in the evening. Tom Shandor glanced sourly through the port at the wet landing strip, saw the dim landing lights reflected in the steaming puddles. On an adjacent field he could see the rows and rows of jet fighters, wings up in the foggy rain, poised like ridiculous birds in the darkness. With a sigh he ripped the sheet of paper from the small, battered portable typewriter on his lap, and zipped the machine up ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... Alice poised her head disdainfully. "No doubt it amuses you to make yourself ridiculous," she said; "but I must say I do not see any occasion ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... boy replied, standing up and looking fearfully into the water. He lifted his hands above his head and drew in his breath. He moved forward, half shutting his eyes, and poised himself on the edge of the rock, ready for the plunge. Then he put his hands down again and lowering himself on to the sea-weed, slipped slowly into the water and struck out. "I'm coming, father!" ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine |
