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Swarm   /swɔrm/   Listen
Swarm

noun
1.
A moving crowd.  Synonyms: drove, horde.
2.
A group of many things in the air or on the ground.  Synonym: cloud.  "Clouds of blossoms" , "It discharged a cloud of spores"



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"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books



... explored in vain, And foes triumphant show but half my pain. Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave, And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave, Swarm'd in the sunshine of my happier days, Pursued the fortune and partook the praise, Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain, Insult my woes and triumph in ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... twitching, feeling as though pierced by millions of red hot needles, they went down. A swarm of pipe-like bodies smothered them, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... come across any signs of him, you know. I don't believe in one strong man appearing out of so many little men. All men are pretty big in an age, or in a movement, which produces a really big man. And Labour is a great swarm of hopelessly little men. That's how I ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence

... trade to disputation; Or make the busy rabble judges 485 Of all their secret piques and grudges; In which whoever wins the day, The whole profession's sure to pay. Beside, no mountebanks, nor cheats, Dare undertake to do their feats, 490 When in all other sciences They swarm, like ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... stores, but cooking-utensils, coverings, and the entire paraphernalia of the carpenters' and blacksmiths' shops necessary for repairing bows, lances, daggers, and chariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts drawn by asses or oxen. The army was accompanied by a swarm of non-combatants, scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians, servants, and women of loose life, who were a serious cause of embarrassment to the generals, and a source of perpetual danger to military discipline. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... he was free. There was no time for thanks or congratulations. Sax had stopped swinging the luringa; the voice of Tumana had ceased. Already the natives were reassembling, and it was only a matter of moments before they would swarm down on the rescue party, outnumbering it by fifteen to one. A flight of spears fell from the rocks above, doing no harm, but warning the white men of ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in the worst court on the Irk. The race that lives ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... is difficult to prevent many articles of food from becoming covered with mould; that fruit, sound enough to all appearance, often contains grubs at the core; that meat, left to itself in the air, is apt to putrefy and swarm with maggots. Even ordinary water, if allowed to stand in an open vessel, sooner or later becomes turbid ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... have!" answered Rebecca; "and they press the besieged hard on the outer wall. Some plant ladders, some swarm like bees and endeavor to ascend upon the shoulders of each other. Down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees on their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places. Great God! hast thou given men thine own image, that it should ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... before the large and expensive pictures of the street-parade, nor the large and expensive wild beasts did we linger. The swarm was thickest, sand the jabbering loudest, the "O-o-oh's," the "M! Looky's" the "Geeminently's" shrillest, in front of where the deeds of high emprise were set forth. Men with their fists clenched on their breasts, and their neatly slippered toes ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... at all easy from what you tell me of the Spaniards. I have now no hopes but in the winter, and what it may produce. I fear ours will be most ugly-the disgusts about Hanover swarm and increase every day. The King and Duke have left the army, which is marching to winter-quarters in Flanders, He will not be here by his birthday, but it will be kept when he comes. The parliament ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name for it ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... hopelessness of looking for any analogies between Mercury and the earth which would warrant the conclusion that the former planet is capable of supporting inhabitants or forms of life resembling those that swarm upon the latter. If we would still believe that Mercury is a habitable globe we must depend entirely upon the imagination for pictures of creatures able to endure its extremes of heat and cold, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid men rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching policemen passed, already ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... winter through, travel almost ceased on it except for those who could not avoid it, and whom desire or gain or urgence of business drove forth across stormy and perilous waters; with spring there came, year by year, a sort of breaking-up of the frost, and the seas were all at once covered with a swarm of shipping. From Egypt and Syria fleets bore the produce of the East westward; from the pillars of Hercules galleys came laden with the precious ores of Spain and Britain; through the Propontis streamed the long convoys ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... which are of large dimensions, seeming to grow literally out of the rock itself, earth surfaces being conspicuous by their absence. It is uninhabited by human beings, nor could any traces of animals be discovered, but seabirds swarm over every part of the island, and about four hundred wood pigeons were shot by the explorers while they remained there. No fruits or vegetable matter fit for consumption could, however, be found, nor the existence of any supply of fresh water, and the belief is that the vegetation ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... the moment he did feel it, he caught hold of it. Starting up, he swung it about for joy, and made the little silver bell of it tingle, then set it upon his head, and—O wonderful to relate!—that instant he saw the countless and merry swarm ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... admits of further illustration from the example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for posterity, after ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... lordship's boast that he never puts foot in stirrup but a thousand horse mount with him as his daily lifeguard, and I believe the monks of Aberbrothock will swear to the fact. Surely, with all the Douglas's chivalry, they are fitter to restrain a disorderly swarm of Highland kerne than I can be to withstand the archery of England and power of Henry Hotspur? And then, here is his Grace of Albany, so jealous in his care of your Highness's person, that he calls your Brandanes to take arms when a dutiful subject ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily, while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature. The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... swarmed with children, who seemed, for the most part, to be enjoying themselves very much. Charlotte May Pilgreen and Sary Denson were hunched amicably over one of the books, shuddering beatifically over a pictured skeleton. A swarm surrounded the drug store, the glass ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... surgeon, "who found his liver swollen, his heart as it were sodden, and his guts all fair." The corpse of one dead from yellow-fever displays very similar symptoms; and the muddy foreshore on which they were camped would, doubtless, swarm with the yellow-fever mosquito. The sick seem to have recovered swiftly—a trait observable in yellow-fever patients. This, says the narrative, "was the first and last experiment that our Captain made of anatomy in this voyage." The surgeon who made this examination "over-lived ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... the fact; and as the wealth of America increases every day, so will those who possess it swarm off as fast as they can to other countries, if there is not a change in the present society, and a return to something like order and rank. Who would remain in a country where there is no freedom of thought or action, and where ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... south, moving forward, found a swarm of skirmishers in his front, and presently the Acadians, sent in that direction by Jackson, opened up with a heavy fire on his vanguard. Shields drew back. He, too, feared that Jackson with his entire army was ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... been possible," returned the big headquarters man, "but no sane person would do it. They'd have to swarm up the face of the building in full view of anyone that might be passing ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... neither was so fond of the persons, nor of the methods of thought, which belonged to this new school, excepting two or three men, as of the old set, though I could not trust in their firmness of purpose, for, like a swarm of flies, they might come and go, and at length be divided and dissipated, yet I had an intense sympathy in their object and in the direction of their path, in spite of my old friends, in spite of my old life-long ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... to swarm up by the cable on to the bows, but three men who were stationed there disposed of them before enough could gain a footing to be dangerous. The captain had been keeping the guns in reserve in case the proa that had dropped behind at first should come on, but he ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... Victor, mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born? —Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded Vessel goes: Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm: ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... cottonwoods showered silken floss till the cabins and grass were white; the birds returned to the oasis; the sun kissed warm color into the cherries, and the distant noise of the river seemed like the humming of a swarm of bees. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... part of the Kingdom, by the facilities afforded in the transaction of all business over which the State had any control—which under existing conditions meant all important business—and by the favours of various sorts that were certain to reward devotion to the cause. Beside the steadily growing swarm of native parasites, profiteers, jobbers and adventurers who throve on the spoils of the public, marched a less numerous, but not less ravenous, host of foreign financiers, concession and contract hunters, to whom the interests of the State were freely bartered for support to the party ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... says Prussian Mythology, supported by Engraving. An old Engraving, which I have never seen; represents Friedrich reconnoitring those five-and-twenty miles of Elbe, which have so many redoubts on their side of it, and swarm with Croat parties on both sides: this is all the truth that is in the Engraving. [Rodenbeck, p. 188.] Fact says: Friedrich ("on the 8th," if that were all the variation) "was a mark for the Austrian sharpshooters for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... were now turned to the west. It is true the swarm had last approached from the west; but Von Bloom fancied that they had first come down from the north, and that the sudden veering round of the wind had caused them to change direction. He thought that by trekking westward ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... from a fire, and guessed tall minarets, and heard the rising and falling of chanting. Numerous small boats hovered near, floating in and out of the patches of light we ourselves cast, waiting for permission to swarm at the gang-plank for ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... leaned their elbows on the terrace wall, and looked down at the lawns sloping to the river. The earth was steaming; a soft mist was ascending to the sun; little rain-drops glittered on the grass; the smell of the damp earth and the perfume of the flowers intermingled; around them buzzed a golden swarm of bees. They were side by side, not looking at each other; they could not bring themselves to break the silence. A bee came up and clung awkwardly to a clump of wistaria heavy with rain, and sent a shower of water down on them. They both laughed, and at once they felt that they ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... myself: whilst he sought for proofs Rome would have been sacked, and you and Catiline have reigned over a heap of ruins. Legal proofs! And have you calculated the blood they will cost you to obtain? Now let us forestall our enemies, by adopting rigorous measures; let us rid the nation of this swarm of insects, greedy of its blood,—by whom it is pursued and tormented. But what should these measures be? In the first place seize on the property of the absentees. This is but a petty measure you will say. What matter its importance or its insignificancy, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... lots to do. I look after the pets in the morning. I feed the cats and the rooks, and I see that the canaries have fresh water and seed. And then the bees take up a lot of our time. We have twenty-two hives. Mrs. Norton says she ought to make five pounds a year on each. Sometimes we lose a swarm or two, and then Mrs. Norton is cross. We were out for hours with the gardener the other day, but we could do no good; we could not get them out of that elm tree. You see that long branch leaning right over the wall; well, it was on that branch that they ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... Teneriffe, where there are no northern forms, and scarcely any alpine. I expected the volcanoes of Hawaii would be a good case, and asked Dr. Seeman about them. It seems a man has lately published a list of Hawaiian plants, and the mountains swarm with European alpine genera and some species![68] Is not this most extraordinary and a puzzler? They are, I believe, truly oceanic islands in the absence of mammals and the extreme poverty of birds and insects, and they are within the tropics. Will not that be a hard nut for you when ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds himself. The latest of these, the famous Count Heiligenstern, who ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... had to cross, and, unfortunately for me, at the very hour in which the boys were coming out of school, a humpbacked lout of a fellow—I see him yet—soon made the discovery that I was without a shadow, and communicated the news, with loud outcries, to a knot of young urchins. The whole swarm proceeded immediately to reconnoitre me, and to pelt me with mud. "People," cried they, "are generally accustomed to take their shadows with them when they walk ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.

... a roar like that of a waterfall; I look again ... the battery has disappeared ... but the smoke rises and I see a long line of men come out of the far-off woods and burst upon the guns. The men of the battery flee, and the rebels swarm among the ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... at what is called the New(?) Inn, which has been built, and never repaired, three hundred years since; and here this swarm of old Jacobites, with no attachment to Government, assembles, and for half an hour you would be diverted with their different sentiments and proposals. There is one who has a knack at squibbs, as they call it, and he has a table and chair with a pen and ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... him!" she cried. "I wisht I had a gun—or a knife! I hate him—hate him—hate him! When he says he was ever in a deal with Dad, he lies. Dad stood for him and that was all. He purtended to be awful strong for Dad, purtended to be fond of me, jest to swarm 'round Dad, for some reason. Brought me a doll once. I was thirteen. What in hell did I want with a doll?" she panted. "I burned the damn thing that night in the fire. He kissed me an' Dad seemed to think I owed it him for the doll. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... columns concentrated on the station buildings, until the inartistic surroundings of the little centre became black with men and animals. In appearance it might well be likened to a swarm of bees in temporary possession of a window-frame. Amongst the troops waiting for rolling stock was a wild company of over-sea Colonials—men of independent character and fine physique, who had already done their year in the country, and to whom the sight of a permanent ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to plant ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... follows pleasure follows pain'; who follows God finds pleasure following him. There can be no surer way to set the world against me than to try to make it for me, and to make it my all They tell us that if you want to count those stars that 'like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid' make up the Pleiades, the surest way to see the greatest number of them is to look a little on one side of them. Look away from the joys and friendships of creatural things right up to God, and you will see these sparkling and dancing in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... a very mischievous sort.] There is a sixth sort called Vaeos. These are more numerous than any of the former. All the whole Earth doth swarm with them. They are of a middle size between the greatest and the least, the hinder part white, and the head red. They eat and devour all that they can come at; as besides food, Cloth, Wood, Thatch of Houses and every thing excepting Iron and Stone. So that the people cannot set any thing ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... regimental drills were going on, the afternoons to calls, wherein it is ever more blessed to give than to receive—and the evenings to hops at the assembly room, or to entertaining—charmingly entertaining the little swarm of officers with occasional angels of her own sex, sure to drop in and spend an hour. Cherry played and sang and "made eyes" at the boys. Mrs. Frank was winsome and genial and joyous to everybody, and when Garrison himself arrived from camp, generally late in the evening, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... those times come back again," said young Harden piously, "else shall we soon be turned into a pack of old wives. The changes that have come to Harden be more than I can stand, Willie. Not so many years past we were aye as busy as a swarm of bees. When we had a mind, and had nought else to do, we leaped on our horses and headed towards Cumberland. There were ever some kine to be driven, or a house or two to be burned, or some poor widow to be avenged, or some prisoner to be released. So things went ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... is surrounded by spies, detractors, and adversaries on every side. That clericalism dominates here, we need not be told. The booksellers' shops are filled with tracts about the miracles of Lourdes, rosaries, and rubrics; the streets swarm with nuns, Jesuits, and Freres Ignorantins. If you ask an intelligent lad of twelve if he can read and write, he shakes his head and says no. The town itself, which might be so attractive if a little attention were paid to hygienic and sanitary matters, is neglected and dirty. The ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a pure white rose the holy host was shown to me, which, in His own blood, Christ made His bride. But the other,[1] which, flying, sees and sings the glory of Him who enamours it, and the goodness which made it so great, like a swarm of bees which one while are among the flowers and anon return to the place where their work gets its savor, were descending into the great flower which is adorned with so many leaves, and thence rising up again to where their love always ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... Sanborn's school-house, watching his proceedings through the cracks in the boards, and finally arresting him at night, just as he was going to bed; but the alarm was quickly sounded, and the whole male population of the place, including Emerson, turned out like a swarm of angry hornets, and the marshal and his posse were soon thankful to escape with their bones in a normal condition. A few nights later, the barn, which was owned by a prominent official in the Boston Custom House, was burned to the ground (the fire-company assisting), as a sacrifice ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... haunted all winter by children,—clearing away the snow of many a storm, if need be, and mining downward till they strike the ice. I look this morning from the window, and the pond is bare. In a moment I happen to look again, and it is covered with a swarm of boys; a great migrating flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down from parts unknown to scream and sport themselves here. The air is full of their voices; they have all tugged on their skates instantaneously, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... advanced labor law he was now beginning to draft—"stiffest factory legislation ever passed in the South." And sometimes, when the condition of the sick permitted it, these two would slip away from the Dabney House for a welcome swim, with a growing swarm of boys behind; for Vivian had been the best swimmer on the river in his day, and still did things from the springboard which many lads with two sound feet could not copy. So diversion from the medical grind was not wanting. And once ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... his map, was surprised by the windings of the bed; we seemed ever within hearing of the sea. Where a holm of rock and bush splits the course its waters swarm with fish, as shown by the weirs and the baskets, large and small; some of its cat-fish (siluri) weigh 10 lbs. Every shoal bred oysters in profusion, young mangroves sprouted from the submerged mollusk-beds, and the 'forests of the sea' ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... had been located and mapped. German scientists had studied Roumanian weather conditions and von Mackensen attacked while the roads were at their best and the weather most favorable. As the Germans swept forward, spies met them giving them military information of the utmost value. A swarm of airplanes spied out the movements of the Roumanians and no Roumanian airplanes rose to ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... been marshy ground. Gnats are, however, less common generally—exclusive, of course, of those places where there is much water. All things are local, insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in summer are most trying; black flies swarm on the eyes and lips, and in the deep lanes cannot be kept off without a green bough. It requires the utmost patience to stay there to observe anything. In a place where the soil was sand, with much heath, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... laid in the year '45, and that the only use he makes of the rebellion is to throw a troop of soldiers in his hero's way." [35] And it is this background which is, after all, the important thing in Scott—the leading impression; the broad canvas, the swarm of life, the spirit of the age, the reconstitution of an extinct society. This he was able to give with seeming ease and without any appearance of "cram." Chronicle matter does not lie about in lumps on the surface of his romance, but is decently buried away in the notes. In his comments ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... animation and success. He attacked Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions. The Tale of a Tub is so much superiour to his other writings, that one can hardly believe he was the authour of it[934]: 'there is in it such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life[935].' I wondered to hear him say of Gulliver's Travels, 'When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.' I endeavoured to make a stand for Swift, and tried to rouse those ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... changed with the growth of the republic! Now Pigback has grown so that the name has been changed to Hogback, and the President avails himself of every funeral that he can possibly feel an interest in, to leave the swarm of jobless applicants who come to pester him to death ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... partisan. This gives the poet an admirable opportunity for the use of satire, which he improves excellently. Kutrulis pledges himself to each of these candidates for his support, but mean while his friends have spread the report that he has actually been appointed minister. Now the swarm of office-seekers and speculators of all sorts come to solicit his favor and exhibit their own corruption. This part of the drama is treated with keen effect. While the report of his appointment is believed by himself ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... fell upon the dishes like a swarm of bees and had them cleared up and washed in a twinkling. Then they gathered in the long parlor where the harp stood, and to please them Nyoda turned off the electric lights and lit the candles in their old-fashioned holders. The little twinkling lights multiplied themselves ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... Never did swarm of mice, spying Grimalkin afar, scamper quicker to their holes than do the youths of Templeton vanish before the distant view of Cresswell. Victor and vanquished, knowing and unknowing—all but one, fade to sight, and ere the monitor can stop the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... but explicit. Somebody in the swarm that overwhelmed the Narrow Gauge train the previous night had crept back to town after midnight and started the story that young Breifogle had been slugged by the gang. By early morning it got to the father's ears. With the sheriff and some friends ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... certainly more capable than those in the latter of producing brilliant and amusing, if incorrect, ideas and expressions. The history of the Emerald Isle swarms with Boyle-Rocheisms as the country itself has long been said to swarm with absentee landlords. ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... the Canon Hotel where the bears swarm—swarm like flies over the garbage. A remarkable sight. It was a very dark night—so dark, in fact, that I hesitated to go to my teepee, which was placed apart that I might not be disturbed by the others. I must have my rest, as ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... extent all art is controlled by fad and fashion; and all the fashions in the polite arts easily drifted from Italy into Spain. The works of Titian carried to Madrid produced a swarm of imitators, some of whom, like Velasquez, Zurbaran, Ribera and Murillo, having spun their cocoons, passed through the chrysalis stage, developed wings, and soared to high heaven. But the generations of imitators who followed these have usually ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... dark-skinned race, turbaned and scantly clothed, move through the meadows, splash in the river, and rest beneath the palm-trees, which meet in graceful clusters here and there, as if striving to get beneath one another's shadow. Dirty villages swarm and babble ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... victor, mighty lord! Low on his funeral couch he lies: No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the Sable Warrior fled? Thy son is gone; he rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born? Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the morn and soft the zephyr blows, While, proudly riding o'er the azure realm, In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... swarm'd haze, and thick Beat the hot pulse of the air; In the Helot, fierce and quick, All his soul sprang from ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... miles south of Vera Cruz. If Ned himself had been aware of it, he might have changed his plans and ridden right in among his own friends. As it was, however, in less than three minutes he had cantered in among a swarm of angry Mexicans and glittering spear-points. Their state of discipline was witnessed to by the fact that the captain in nominal command of them had some difficulty in obtaining from them permission ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard

... little portico, seeming to tell, among the rubbish heaps and onions, of Riario and Borgia suppers. And in this church and the neighbouring one the impression of the inscriptions recording succession of popes and cardinals, all the magnificent locusts who came swarm after swarm, to devour this land, leaving the broken remains of their hurried magnificence, volutes, plaster churches, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... swarm of hungry Roaches was satisfied, and, according to Neale's report, the dinner went off very well indeed, save that his mother feared she would have to grease and roll Patrick Sarsfield before the fire to keep him from ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas and ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... complaints, and hope you will expect me with the same delight that I anticipate meeting you. You can have no conception of Lord S.'s ecstasy when I informed him of my probable movements. The man is well enough and sensible enough by himself; but the swarm of attendants, Turks, Greeks, Englishmen that he carries with him, makes his society, or rather theirs, an intolerable annoyance. If you will read this letter to——, you may imagine in what ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... of unmistakable genius, and genius always carries a magnifying glass. In the terrible crystal of his lens we have seen the bees not as a little yellow swarm, but rather in golden armies and hierarchies of warriors and queens. Imagination perpetually peers and creeps further down the avenues and vistas in the tubes of science, and one fancies every frantic ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... make them musical. The laughter of the lookers-on didn't trouble him in the least; for he could laugh louder than any. But his sisters were ashamed, and Mr. Williams looked grave; for they were, actually, human! and I suppose they didn't like to be jeered at, and called a swarm of niggers, any more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... of neither reproach nor stain. I have seen the Saracen host of Spain, Over plain and valley and mountain spread, And the regions hidden beneath their tread. Countless the swarm of the foe, and we A marvellous little company." Roland answered him, "All the more My spirit within me burns therefore. God and his angels of heaven defend That France through me from her glory ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... thet dwells furthest back in ther sticks—air a doin' a heap of buzzin' an' talkin'. They're right sim'lar ter bees gittin' ready ter swarm. I've done seed ter that. I reckon when this hyar stranger starts in ter rob ther honey outen thet hive he's goin' ter find a tol'able nasty lot ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... instinctive dread of that liquid and avoid it whenever they can. Horses are less timorous, and the best way to get a camel through the ford is to lead him behind a horse and pound him vigorously at the same time. When the river is at all dangerous there is always a swarm of natives around the ford ready to lend a hand if suitably compensated. They all talk very much and in loud tones; their voices mingle with the neighing of horses, the screams of camels, the roaring of the river, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... the Fleece and mining and minting and bringing the Silver till the Song of Service filled the world and the poetry of Toil was in the souls of the laborers. Yet ever and always there were tense silent white-faced men moving in that swarm who felt no poetry and heard no song, and one of these ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Markham got the idea from them Yogis and adepts and things that she mixed with in India. Just like 'em. They've got the real thing, but they're little, crawling Dagoes with no more blood in 'em than a swarm of horseflies." ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... are breaking into leaves, and many plants are in blossom, where, but a short time ago, everything bore the aspect of winter. But this almost sudden and pleasing change has brought an unceasing torment: night and day we are perpetually persecuted with the mosquitoes, that swarm around us, and afford no rest but in the annoying respiration of a smoky room. They hover in clouds about the domestic cattle, and drive them (almost irritated to madness) to the smoke of fires lighted with tufts of grass for their relief. The trial of this ever busy and tormenting ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... disinclination to introduce poor laws arises less from actual ignorance, than from an illiberal selfishness. The facts of the case are these: In Ireland the whole support of the inconceivable multitude of paupers, who swarm like locusts over the surface of the country, rests upon the middle and lower classes, or rather upon the latter, for there is scarcely such a thing in this unhappy country as a middle class. In not one out of a thousand instances do the gentry contribute ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... was a low and ruddy tower,—last vestige of the thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged shores of the ocean and its eternal surf, the Breton sailors were marveling at this easy navigation, almost touching the coast whose inhabitants looked like a swarm of bees. Had the boat been directed by another captain, so close a journey would have resulted most disastrously: but Ferragut was laughing, throwing out gloomy hints to the officers who were on the bridge, merely to accentuate his professional ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... names buzzed in the ears of the listener at the window like the humming of a swarm of gnats. To understand and remember them was impossible, and she gazed in astonishment at the old man who so clearly comprehended the confused tangle and drew from it so readily just what he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... devoted victim. I, too, may ask, are these the harvest of the rich hopes excited by the classical learning, acute logical powers, and varied knowledge of William Allan, that he should sink to be the solitary drone of a cell, graced only above the swarm with the high commission of executing Roman malice on ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... And quite the rarest, but, unluckily, The weakest, as we know; for sin and pain And evils multiform, that swarm the earth, And poison all our joys and all our hearts, Remind us most of Eden's ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... muttered the little man, "my children are hungry, to-night." And, turning to Koerg, he continued: "Take the gift of Klaus and go down into the sea. A crowd will swarm upon you, as persistent and voracious as any in this upper world. Ask for the wonder-mill, and sacrifice your treasures only in its exchange. I will ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... calculated to enable them to carry out their perfidious ends, whilst at the same time providing a profitable market for the produce of their manufacturers. Another manner in which they torment the Spaniards of Peru is by despatching a swarm of pirates to these seas. During the last war very rich prizes were captured by simple whaling vessels, and you can judge what attacks of this kind will be like when they are directed and sustained by the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... no convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He turned strolling player; but his face and figure were ill suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... His grey eyes, under their strong black brows, challenged her. She perceived in them a whole swarm of unspoken ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... opened. Of course I had to make hurried engagements at any price, and consequently bad ones for me. Every householder is aware that should he change his abode he is surrounded in his new home by a swarm of local tradespeople and others anxious to get something out of him. Well, my experience upon entering the world of "business," hitherto strange to me, was precisely the same. All sorts of parasites try to fasten themselves on to you. Business houses regard you as an amateur, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... did not reach here, and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato cans and ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... people in. Going out about half a mile from the village he gave a peculiar yell, at which between three and four hundred Indians arose simultaneously from the ground, and in answer to his signal came out of the tall grass like a swarm of locusts and soon overran our camp in search of food, for like all Indians they were hungry. They too, proved to be Pit Rivers, and were not less repulsive than those of their tribe we had met before. They ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... general under the golden canopies of the Tuileries, where he dined in state. His table stood on a platform, beneath a canopy, and there were two chairs, one for himself, the other for the Empress. As he entered the banquet-hall, he was preceded by a swarm of pages, masters-of-ceremonies, and prefects of the palace; he was followed by the colonel-general on duty, the Grand Chamberlain, the Grand Equerry, and the Grand Almoner. The Grand Almoner advanced to the table and blessed the dinner. A general of division, the Grand Equerry Caulaincourt, offered ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... when empty, yet, by some incomprehensible witchcraft of construction, seeming to swarm with purple fish the moment ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... the reason why so many English inverts establish themselves outside England. Paris, Florence, Nice, Naples, Cairo, and other places, are said to swarm with homosexual Englishmen. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... tangled manes of the black horses, and wondering what could be done in the situation in which he found himself, when suddenly the scene changed, and Squire Wenzel Tronka, returning from hare-hunting, dashed into the courtyard, followed by a swarm of knights, grooms, and dogs. The castellan, when asked what had happened, immediately began to speak, and while, on the one hand, the dogs set up a murderous howl at the sight of the stranger, and, on the other, the knights sought to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... pyramid under the stars. The one thing visible below us in the blackness was a burning and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppose) was burning something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks went whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark. Above us also it was gloom; but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw vertical stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colossal facade of the Doric building, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... and one of fifty true! And you, O priest, the foreteller, foretell for yourself if you can, Foretell the hour of the day when the Vais shall burst on your clan! By the head of the tapu cleft, with death and fire in their hand, Thick and silent like ants, the warriors swarm ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Crnagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm Has breathed a race of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon



Words linked to "Swarm" :   plague, pour out, buzz, group, crawl, spill over, spill out, grouping, crowd together, hum, teem, insect, infestation, seethe, pullulate, crowd



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