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Rove   Listen
verb
Rove  v. i.  (past & past part. roved; pres. part. roving)  
1.
To practice robbery on the seas; to wander about on the seas in piracy. (Obs.)
2.
Hence, to wander; to ramble; to rauge; to go, move, or pass without certain direction in any manner, by sailing, walking, riding, flying, or otherwise. "For who has power to walk has power to rove."
3.
(Archery) To shoot at rovers; hence, to shoot at an angle of elevation, not at point-blank (rovers usually being beyond the point-blank range). "Fair Venus' son, that with thy cruel dart At that good knight so cunningly didst rove."
Synonyms: To wander; roam; range; ramble stroll.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rove" Quotes from Famous Books



... and Thomas Mugridge, whining and gibbering, his mouth flecked with bloody foam, was brought down to deck. Wolf Larsen rove a bowline in a piece of rope and slipped it under his shoulders. Then he was carried aft and flung into the sea. Forty,—fifty,—sixty feet of line ran out, when Wolf Larsen cried "Belay!" Oofty-Oofty took a turn on a bitt, the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... the letter T might be somewhere sewn or branded upon his own person, by degrees grew bolder. There wasn't any letter there, that was certain, and a slight sense of personal danger might even become a welcome sauce to such a great affair as this! His fright vanished, and his ferret eyes began to rove. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... warlike of the isles, The men of field and wave, Are not the rocks their funeral piles, The seas and shores their grave? Go, stranger! track the deep— Free, free, the white sail spread; Wind may not rove, nor billows sweep, Where ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... now, not for a moment losing his presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down the ladder, that the tiller ropes, which had been shot away, were not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove immediately:—then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars.—Had he but concealed these badges of honour from the enemy, England, perhaps, would not have had cause ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... seem all shining with light, and the other all to glow with ruddy fire. Now it came about in this wise. For Sir Percivale, after his escape from the demon lady, whenas the cross on the handle of his sword smote him to the heart, and he rove himself through the thigh, and escaped away, he came to a great wood; and, in nowise cured of his fault, yet bemoaning the same, the damosel of the alder tree encountered him, right fair to see; and with her fair words ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... city of the Tsar Saltan, she dismounted and turned her palfrey loose in the fields, saying: "Go your way, rove where you will, my trusty nag, until you find a good master!" Then she went to a brook, washed herself with the black powder, and became on a sudden dark-coloured and haggard; and thus she went her ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... a lot too blest Forever in thy coloured shades to stray; Amid the kisses of the soft south-west To rove and dream for aye; ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... lower deck, and looked down the hatch into the black darkness of the lower hold, he seems to have taken fright, and begun to climb up again. Meanwhile Nilsson had made a running bowline in the end of a loose halyard that was rove through a block aloft, and had been used for hoisting out the cargo. As the mandarin came up, he leaned over the coaming of the hatch, dropped the noose over the Chinaman's head, jerked it tight, and then he and Foucault hove on the fall of the rope. The unfortunate ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... he longs to rove In that fantastic scene, and thinks It must be some enchanted grove; And in he leaps, and ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... whom—with which I could wish book collectors, in general, to have a more intimate acquaintance—has obtained universal reputation.[140] Next to him, you may mark the amiable and expressive features of DAVID CLEMENT:[141] who, in his Bibliotheque Curieuse, has shown us how he could rove, like a bee, from flower to flower; sip what was sweet; and bring home his gleanings to a well-furnished hive. The principal fault of this bee (if I must keep up the simile) is that he was not sufficiently choice in the flowers which he visited; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about it—something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a time it seemed to him a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... Pere Hyacinth, go and found a free church in some corner of the republic, and rove through Europe, like him, to confer about morality, the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... engages in a mutiny at Jamaica; they embark with most of Columbus's erew in ten Indian canoes; are driven back; and with their companions rove about the island; refuses an offer of pardon; attacks the Admiral and Adelantado; taken prisoner: is set at liberty by Ovando; and sent to Spain to be examined by the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... wont to rove, And they knew well the trysting tree; The green sward was their bed of love, And the green leaves their canopie. But the love of the virgin heart is shy, And hangs between hope and fear; It is fed by the light of a lover's eye, And it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... who made ready erst war-gear of warriors. Likewise the battle-sark which in the fight endured Bites of the keen-edged blades midst the loud crash of shields Rusts, with its wearer dead. Nor may the woven mail After the chieftain's death wide with a champion rove. Gone is the joy of harp, gone is the music's mirth. Now the hawk goodly-winged hovers not through the hall, Nor the swift-footed mare tramples the castle court: Baleful death far has sent all living ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... complicated order, and yet I had a very tolerable notion of what was to be done. The unreeving might have been achieved by any one, and I got through with that without difficulty; and, the mate himself helping me and directing me from the deck, the new rope was rove with distinguished success. This was the first duty I ever did in a ship, and I was prouder of it than of any that was subsequently performed by the same individual. The whole time I was thus occupied, Rupert ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... perhaps less selfish than mine, for he had sacrificed his life uselessly for her that she might—be mine! Mine! I thought. And who was I that she should love me instead of him? All the years I had known him I had known but little of him. God only knows the hearts of these men who rove or drift, who, anchorless and rudderless, beat upon the ragged reels of life till the breath leaves them and they pass through the mystic channel into the serene harbor of eternity. A sudden wave of dissatisfaction swept over me. What had I done in the world to merit attention? ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... look into the depths of space beyond the reach of telescope and microscope, or backward and forward along the vistas of time, we shall find ourselves surrounded with an impenetrable mystery in which the imagination is free to rove. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.[217] Let our simplicity judge ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the sandy cove Beach-peas blossom late. By copse and cliff the swallows rove Each calling to his mate. Seaward the sea-gulls go, And the land birds all are here; That green-gold flash was a vireo, And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow Was ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... measure, the which sorrow grieved Balin passingly sore, and he went unto her for to have taken the sword out of her hand, but she held it so fast he might not take it out of her hand unless he should have hurt her, and suddenly she set the pommel to the ground, and rove herself through the body. When Balin espied her deeds, he was passing heavy in his heart, and ashamed that so fair a damosel had destroyed herself for the love of his death. Alas, said Balin, me repenteth sore the death of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... However, our host kindly requested we would call him, if they did, as he had "conquered them for us," and would do so again. We had also rather hard couches (mine was the supper-table); but we Yankees, born to rove, were altogether too much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetly as we would in the "bigly bower" of any baroness. But I think England sat up all night, wrapped in her blanket-shawl, and with a neat lace cap upon her head,—so ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... waited on the three. And seeing her so sweet and serviceable, Geraint had longing in him evermore To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb, That crost the trencher as she laid it down: But after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins, Let his eye rove in following, or rest On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, Now here, now there, about the dusky hall; Then suddenly addrest the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... through green Green Dorset winds his holy vale, Where the divine deep nightingale Heaps note on note and love on love, In ivy thick unseen, While goddesses with Dionysos rove. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... Exemplary in behavior, pious and humble, he kissed the crucifix, which Monsieur Bonnet held to his lips with a trembling hand. The unhappy man was watched and examined; his glance was particularly spied upon; would his eyes rove in search of some one in the crowd or in a house? His discretion did, as a matter of fact, hold firm to the last. He died as a Christian ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valor, the country of worth: Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands forever ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... the attachment Centered in a wife and children; Taking care that in this matter Mere convenience should not weigh More than his own taste and fancy: Let him choose his wife himself. Pleased in that, to rove or ramble Then will be beyond his power, Even were he so attracted, For a happy married lover Thinks of ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... es fer not lookin' back, I wouldn't like ter mek no brash promises. You're hyar an' hit mout prove right hard ter keep my eyes turned t'other way. I'm an easy-goin' sort of feller anyhow, an' I likes ter let my glance kind of rove hyar ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... pyramid constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep from side to side of the picture, recalled by the mass and interest of the side from which it moves. The swing of the pendulum is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones which ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... that this was no empty flourish, but a fact. Everywhere we met with it, and scarcely ever entered a village without finding a number of men cleaning, spinning, and weaving. It is first carefully separated from the seed by the fingers, or by an iron roller, on a little block of wood, and rove out into long soft bands without twist. Then it receives its first twist on the spindle, and becomes about the thickness of coarse candlewick; after being taken off and wound into a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and spun into a firm ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... hair, And the sea-blue eyes that rove and dare, And the open heart with never a care; With her strong brown arms and her ankles bare, God in heaven, but she was fair, That night the storm put in ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... her foamy track Against the wind was cleaving, Her trembling pennant still looked back To the dear isle 'twas leaving. So loath we part from all we love, From all the links that bind us, So turn our hearts as on we rove To those we've left ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, Which, wherever we rove, is not met with elsewhere. Home! Home! sweet, sweet home! There's no place ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Some country people in the winter time have, every now and then, told me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs, but, on considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are some stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes perhaps may rove so ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... rove aimlessly for a time, then they were off with a rush that bare gave us chance to escape the army of clicking hoofs. We were left unprotected in the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... solemn hemlocks drink the dew, Like that old Socrates they slew; The piny forests moan and moan, And in the marshy splutter docks, As if they grazed on sky alone, Rove airily the herds of ox. Then, like a narrow strait of light, The banks draw close, the long trees yoke, And strong old manses on the height Stand overhead, as to invite To good old ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... poplar grove, I waded, where my pets were wont to rove: And there I found the foolish mother hen Brooding her chickens underneath a tree, An easy prey for foxes. "Chick-a-dee," Quoth I, while reaching for the downy things That, chirping, peeped from ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... orders the oars were laid in, and the men prepared to get sail upon her. A sailor climbed up the mast and fastened the stays close to the point which was broken off. Then another joined him, and a block was lashed to the mast just below the stays, and the halliards were rove through it; then Edred brought out a small sail, and this was hoisted, and the vessel, which had before been rolling heavily, began to glide swiftly through the water. They had had the satisfaction of seeing ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... who love their country, love To look on thee—delight to rove Where they thy voice can hear; And, to the patriot-warrior's Shade, Lord of the vale! to Heroes laid In dust, that ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles solved years ago; And some words played between us to and fro - On which lost the ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... mound—the ridged scar with which the earth had closed the wound in her breast—and a stately shaft of white marble were all that remained to the world of "Rosa, wife of Frederic Chilton." But, while the mould was being heaped upon the coffin, he raised his eyes, and let them rove aimlessly over the crowd, neither avoiding nor courting observation—the cursory regard of a man who had no strong interest in any person or group there. They changed singularly in resting upon the family ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... about the boy's prowess, for he did not hesitate to give his permission. Neale went up to the roof and mounted the staff with the halyard rove through the block, and hooked the latter in place with ease. It took but a few minutes; but half the school stood below and held its breath, watching the slim figure swinging so ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... hall. The majority of them were unfortunates who, like Dolores, were to appear that morning before the tribunal; but all did not enjoy a serenity like hers. One, a young man, seated upon a chair, a little apart from his companions, allowed his eyes to rove restlessly around without pausing upon any of the objects that surrounded him. Though his body was there, his mind assuredly, was far away. He was thinking, doubtless, of days gone by, memories of which always flock into the minds of those who are about to die; not far from him, a venerable ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... wet sword he rove His breast in sunder, where it clove Life, and no pulse against it strove, So sure and strong the deep stroke drove Deathward: and Balen, seeing him dead, Rode thence, lest folk would say he had slain Those three; and ere three days again ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... you may find many in hay- time. And of worms; the dunghill worm called a brandling I take to be best, being well scoured in moss or fennel; or he will bite at a worm that lies under cow-dung, with a bluish head. And if you rove for a Perch with a minnow, then it is best to be alive; you sticking your hook through his back fin; or a minnow with the hook in his upper lip, and letting him swim up and down, about mid-water, or a little lower, and you still keeping him to about that depth by a cork, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... remember, if they told us. We saw no signs of a habitation in which they might have lived. The ferrying was done with what was really a raft of logs, rather than a boat. It was sustained against the current by means of a tackle attached to a block, rove on a large rope that was drawn taut, from bank to bank, and was propelled by a windlass on each bank. When a wagon had been taken aboard this cable ferry, the windlass on the farther side was turned by one of the men, drawing the raft across. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... know not now! Unseen, alone, I heave the heavy sigh, I draw the groan; And, madd'ning, turn to days of liveliest joy, When o'er my native hills I cast mine eyes, And said, exulting—"Freemen here shall sow The seed that soon in tossing gold shall glow! While Plenty, led by Liberty, shall rove, Gay and rejoicing, through the land they love; And 'mid the loaded vines, the peasant see His wife, his children, breathing out,—'We're free!' But now, O wretched land! above thy plains, Half viewless through the gloom, vast Horror ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... sacred lowe o' weel-placed love Luxuriantly indulge it; But never tempt th' illicit rove, Tho' naething should divulge it. I waive the quantum o' the sin, The hazard o' concealing, But och! it hardens a' within, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... were standing by me, and across the deck came the acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... 305 Unrev'rently reputed leachers, And disobey'd in making love, Have vow'd to all the world to prove, And make ye suffer, as you ought, For that uncharitable fau't. 310 But I forget myself, and rove Beyond ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... great things! He would love you with all his heart! And your life would be different then! No, you would not be a performing dog, as you call it; you would be a darling little wife. It's all very well to rove about the world, from theater to theater, riding round ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... so I pocketed the purse, went to my room, tied up three or four shirts in a pocket-handkerchief, put a dirk in my bosom, girt a couple of pistols round my waist, and felt like a knight errant armed cap a-pie, and ready to rove the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... pleasant to be playing in the fields, that she was unwilling to go promptly to school. She thought it would not be very wrong to play a little while. Thus she commenced. The next day she ventured to chase the butterflies farther, and to rove more extensively through the field in search of flowers. And as she played by the pebbles in the clear brook of rippling water, she forgot how fast the time was passing. And when she afterwards hastened to school, and was ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labor, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... men than to women. Yet had the crisis come quickly he might have met it. But he had to wait, and to wait with that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not prepared. A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man? His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither. Was it even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of the girl's silly persistence? Too late to—? Her eyes were closed, she hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know until afterwards. And afterwards she would thank him! Afterwards—meantime ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... no answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley allowed a sneer to twist at his lips ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... caused the disturbance was in the act of descending. Though no one was visible the nature of the noise could no longer be mistaken. It was evidently the tread of a human foot, for no beast of a weight sufficient to produce so great an impression, would have chosen to rove across a spot where the support of hands was nearly as necessary as that ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... associating at a certain season, and singing, as it were, in choirs. "During spring and summer," says Mr. Fowler, "they rove about in small flocks, and in July will assemble together in considerable numbers on a particular tree, seemingly for no other purpose than to sing. These concerts are held by them on the forenoon of each day, for a week or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... the ficklest husbands alive, after a while. Understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help it. The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. He spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. 'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never wish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed as my lawful wife, I can't help ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... all temptation fleeing, Hoped I long unchecked to rove, 'Till the fair Louisa seeing,— Who can see her, ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors

... rove the mainsail halliards, and then bent on the jib, stopping only now and then to fire a rifle at the village, just to let the natives know I was keeping my eyes skinned. Then I hoisted the mainsail and ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke

... reloaded—and went back home for good in the same cabin they had come out in! Not all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, forty-five years later—what were left of them by time and death and the disposition to rove. They were young and gay, then; they are patriarchal and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more. They talk of the Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... forecastle; and Newton, to ascertain the nation to which the privateer belonged, hoisted the French ensign and fired a gun. In a minute the privateer hoisted English colours; but as she continued to bear down upon them, Newton, not feeling secure, rove his studding-sail gear, and made all preparation for running before the wind, which he knew to be the brig's best point of sailing. The privateer had approached to within two miles, when Roberts, one of the seamen, gave his decided ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... and her behest Shall for the future also be my law. If thou canst hope in safety to return Back to thy kindred, I renounce my claims: But is thy homeward path for ever clos'd— Or doth thy race in hopeless exile rove, Or lie extinguish'd by some mighty woe— Then may I claim thee by more laws than one. Speak openly, thou know'st I ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... still with their irons on, were now conducted to the upper deck. Ropes were rove through the main, fore, and mizzen-yard-arms. The whole eight were thus standing, with the chaplains by their sides, giving them the last consolations of religion, when our captain appeared with a paper in his hand. It was a pardon for the three youngest. The other ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... the spicy perfume of lavender; there are rows upon rows of grape-vines, terraced downward; there are purple figs and white and ruby mulberries. Around and about, rising sheer from the waters, wherever the eye may rove, heaven-touching, salmon-tinted mountains abound, with scarfs of filmy cloud aslant their rugged profiles, and beauty-patches of snow. And everywhere the dark and brooding cypress, the copper beech, the green pine ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... gambol and frolic Enlivened the way; How they flirted with bubbles That danced on the wave, Or listened to mermaids That sang from the cave; Or slid with the moonbeams Down deep to the grove Of coral, where mullet And goldfish rove: How there, in long vistas Of silence and sleep, They waltzed, as if mocking The death of the deep: How, oft, where the wreck Lay scattered and torn, They peeped in the skull, All ghastly and lorn; Or deep, 'mid wild rocks, Quizzed ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... and new-descending rills Furrow the brows of all the impending hills. The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn, And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn. The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove, And round the plain in sad distractions rove: In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear, And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair. With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... interest and work for the love of working. There is drudgery in the learning of anything, but with verse one can at least make it interesting drudgery. Never give up; never be satisfied; and with all English literature to rove in, don't stick in ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... gone cold? Am I growing old, old? Grey and weary . . . let me dream, glide on the tranquil stream. Oh, what joyous days I've had, full, fervid, gay, glad! Yet there comes a subtile change, let the stripling rove, range. From sweet roving comes sweet rest, after all, home's best. And if there's a little bit of woman-love with it, I will count my life content, God-blest and well spent. . . . Oh but it is good to be Foot-loose and ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... agreed to take the usual oaths before Joss. Three or four of them refused to comply, for which they were punished in the following cruel manner: their hands were tied behind their back, a rope from the mast-head rove through their arms, and hoisted three or four feet from the deck, and five or six men flogged them with three rattans twisted together 'till they were apparently dead; then hoisted them up to the mast-head, and left them hanging nearly an hour, then lowered them down, and repeated the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... his heels and let his gaze rove four-square, permitting no object to escape. He saw a clothes pole leaning against the chimney. Evidently the former tenants had hung up their laundry here. There was no clothesline, however. Caught, jolly well, blooming ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... heavy wooden peg had been driven into the ridge-pole just above Jim Cardegee's head. Jacob Kent, working softly, ran a piece of half-inch manila over it, bringing both ends to the ground. One end he tied about his waist, and in the other he rove a running noose. Then he cocked his shotgun and laid it within reach, by the side of numerous moose-hide thongs. By an effort of will he bore the sight of the scar, slipped the noose over the sleeper's head, and drew it taut by throwing back on his weight, at the same time seizing ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... headland beneath us to the rolling prairie at the mouth of the valley, the earth swayed with giant forms. The great creatures were restless as caged tigers and already on the rove for the day's march. I suppose the vast flocks of wild geese, that used to darken the sky and fill the air with their shrill "hunk, hunk," when I first went to the north, numbered as many living beings in one mass as that herd; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... Bonaventura, Saint Francis, Saint Antony, the youthful majesty of Saint Louis, to keep for ever in memory—not the King of France however, in spite of the fleurs-de-lys on his cope of azure, but Louis, Bishop of Toulouse. A Rubens in Italy! you may think, if you care to rove from the delightful fact before you after vague supposititious alliances—something between Titian and Rubens! Certainly, Romanino's bold, contrasted colouring anticipates something of the northern freshness of Rubens. But while the peculiarity of ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... one, the easy lounge of the red one, the thoughtful attitude of the light one. The copper-faced men peered at the rifles hanging in the right hands of the newcomers, their knee boots, khaki clothing, and wide hats. The women let their eyes rove over the boxes and bundles reposing in the mud ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... know that when the priests are all saying mass, and the people are all praying, the devils cannot bear it, and are driven out to sea for the day. Very strange things happen then, I assure you. Some day I will tell you how the boatswain of a ship I once sailed in rove the end of the devil's tail through a link of the chain, made a Flemish knot at the end to stop it, and let go the anchor. So the devil went to the bottom by the run. We unshackled the chain and wore the ship to the wind, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gipsy blood, And they ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... was occupied in getting the boats ready; oars, masts, and sails were put into each; tackles were rove for hoisting them out; but Commander Newcombe was unwilling to give the order to lower them while there seemed a prospect of the ship floating and the sea ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... once in mid-ocean. All the big boats have been got in-board to-day, chairs have been stowed below, the top of the deck-house cleared of lumber and live-stock, cracked panes of glass replaced, battening-down boards looked out, new ropes rove, and all preparations made for real hard sea work. How I wish we were going down the east coast of Australia, inside the barrier-reef, instead of down the stormy west coast! I dread this voyage somehow, and begin even ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... daily votaries placed Their sacrifice with zeal and haste: The margin of a purling stream Sent up to thee a grateful steam; Though sometimes thou wert pleased to wink, If Naiads swept them from the brink: Or where appointing lovers rove, The shelter of a shady grove; Or offer'd in some flowery vale, Were wafted by a gentle gale, There many a flower abstersive grew, Thy favourite flowers of yellow hue; The crocus and the daffodil, The cowslip soft, and sweet jonquil. But when at last usurping Jove Old Saturn ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... dreadful blow quite through his target drove, And bored through his breastplate strong and thick, The tender skin it in his bosom rove, The purple-blood out-streamed from the quick; To wrest it out the wounded Pagan strove And little leisure gave it there to stick; At Godfrey's head the lance again he cast, And said, "Lo, there ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... deck of a brig of one hundred and eighty-two tons, fifty-two men were confined. The place itself was about twenty feet square, of course, low, and badly ventilated. The men were all ironed, and fastened to a heavy chain rove through iron rings let into the deck, so that they were unable, for any purpose, to move from the spot they occupied; scarcely, indeed, to lie down. The weather was also unfavorable. The vessel tossed and pitched most fearfully during a succession ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... land, or on the foam, I am still without a home; I hear through all the imperious call 'Wander, wander, rove and roam.'" ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous

... that delay would only make death more certain, so they hauled on the endless line as quickly as they could. Of course, being rove through the block before mentioned, the other half of it went out to the wreck with the gallant rescuer holding on. And what an awful swim that was! The line pulled him out, indeed, but it could not buoy him up. Neither could it save him from the ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne

... his bundle on his back, and went, He knew not whither, nor for what intent; So stole our vagrant from his warm retreat, To rove a prowler, and be ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... free, as sages tells us— Free to rove, and free to soar; But affection lives in bondage, That enthrals her more and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... nobleman, or of the Government, who possess in Hungary immense herds of wild horses. These herds range over a tract of many German square miles, for the most part some level plain, with wood, marsh, heath, and moorland; they rove about where they please, multiply, and enjoy freedom of existence. Nevertheless, it is a common error to imagine that these horses, like a pack of wolves in the mountains, are left to themselves and nature, without any care or thought of man. Wild horses, in the proper ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... Anne's relatives was brought forward at the dinner table by the child herself. Seeing her eyes rove shyly around the room, Miss Drayton said, "You look as if you were watching for somebody or something. What is ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... was that Cowperwood's continued propensity to rove at liberty among the fair sex could not in the long run fail of some results of an unsatisfactory character. Coincident with the disappearance of Stephanie Platow, he launched upon a variety of episodes, the charming daughter of so worthy a man as Editor ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... stopping to rest and carefully scan her labour for faults, her mind would rove far out into life. She was copying from two books the little "prof" had given her, the "Life and Letters of George Sand"; and "The Work of Susan B. Anthony." And as Ethel pounded on, each book in its own way revealed exciting vistas ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... O'er endless plains his flocks he led Still to new brooks and postures new. So strayed he till the white pavilions Of his camp were told by millions, Till his children's households seven Were numerous as the stars of heaven. Then he bade us rove no more; And in the place that pleased him best, On the great river's fertile shore, He fixed the city of his rest. He taught us then to bind the sheaves, To strain the palm's delicious milk, And from the dark green mulberry leaves ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to the dying youth. To sit in his easy-chair beside the low window of his loved chamber, and let his eyes wander over the greenness and glory of nature, while his thoughts went upward to the Paradise of immortal joys, or to rove languidly about the grounds of his patron, supported by the kind old man whose tenderness and care were ever ready, or to recline upon a couch beside the door while Kittie Fay talked to him in her pleasant sympathetic way, or read to him in a low ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... a novice, he will feel the responsibility of his position. His eyes will rove constantly from one instrument to another; as indeed, from habit, do those of a practised flyer. He will glance at the height recorder; then at the engine revolution indicator; then at the dial which tells him what his speed is relative to the air. There is a dial, also, showing the pressure ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... of his web. The rest of the mansion, however, was open to me, and I sauntered about it unconstrained. The damp and rain which beat in through the broken windows, crumbled the paper from the walls; mouldered the pictures, and gradually destroyed the furniture. I loved to rove about the wide, waste chambers in bad weather, and listen to the howling of the wind, and the banging about of the doors and window-shutters. I pleased myself with the idea how completely, when I came to the estate, I would renovate all things, and make the old building ring with merriment, till ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... There wends the Knight with modest mien; Pours through the galleries raised for all Above that Hero-council Hall, The crowd—And thus the Victor One:— "Prince—the knight's duty I have done. The Dragon that devour'd the land Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand; Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks— And free the idler's steps may stray— And freely o'er the lonely rocks, The holier pilgrim wends ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... Ladrones, if they agreed to take the usual oaths before Joss. Three or four of them refused to comply, for which they were punished in the following cruel manner: their hands were tied behind their backs, a rope from the masthead rove through their arms, and hoisted three or four feet from the deck, and five or six men flogged them with their rattans twisted together till they were apparently dead; then hoisted them up to the mast-head, and left them hanging nearly an hour, then lowered them down, and repeated the punishment, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... more contented than he had been for a long time. "Why did I ever leave the country?" he asked himself. "What life so free and happy as this?" Then the thoughts which had entered his mind the night before came to him once again. "Would it not be better to live in God's open, and rove at will?" he mused. "Why should I be a slave any longer, and conform to a dry ecclesiastical system? Better to follow nature and the dictates of my own heart. What is the use of striving to help others when they do not wish ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... anxious friends declar'd All future trouble might be spar'd: A heart thus pierc'd would never rove, Nor meanly seek a second love; No distance e'er could give him pain— No rivalry torment his brain. Self-love will bear a many knocks, A thousand mortifying shocks; One moment languish in despair, The next alert ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham

... the signal to disperse. Snout beetles galore can be found beneath piles of weeds near streams and the borders of ponds or beneath chunks and logs in sandy places. All are injurious, and the farmer by burning their hibernating places in winter can cause their destruction in numbers. Rove beetles, ground beetles, and many others live deep down in the vegetable mould beneath old logs, where they are, no doubt, as secure from the ice king as if they followed the swallow to ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... loafing around, in this fashion, on a lonely island, yet in plain sight of the sea that we long to rove over," nodded Captain Tom Halstead of the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... little stream of water been playing among the hills since He made the world, and none know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... question without much interest, and was again allowing his thoughts to rove when he caught the word "sahib," and then the word "Firangi" somewhat loudly spoken. Immediately afterwards there was a low hiss from the Gujarati, as of one warning another to speak lower. The experiences of the past year had quickened Desmond's wits; with reason he had become more suspicious ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... be under a dame. Now you are a bachelor, a man may soon win you, Methinks there is some good fellowship in you; We may laugh and be merry at board and at bed, You are not so testy as those that be wed. Mild in behaviour and loth to fall out, You may run, you may ride and rove round about, With wealth at your will and all thing at ease, Free, frank and lusty, easy to please. But when you be clogged and tied by the toe So fast that you shall not have pow'r to let go, You will tell me another lesson soon ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... They might rove far and long, but the end of each journey round that dull interior was ever in the Provost's pew, and, as if by some hint of the spirit, though Betty might be gazing steadfastly where she ought, I knew that she ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... members of which run away, unless he is wise enough to dispose of them (as usage permits) to his more youthful relatives. As a Krooman of sixty or seventy often has wives in their teens, it is not to be wondered at that they should occasionally show a disposition to rove. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... breeze moves slow with thick perfume From every mango grove; From coral tree to parrot bloom The black bees questing rove, The koil wakes the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... celebrated Viennese alienist, whom she met abroad. Your next-door neighbor is Sarah's son, born somewhere in Hungary, I believe. Both the young man's parents are dead, and I understand he has led a vagrant and irresponsible life, preferring to rove about rather than follow his father's profession, to ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... first laying two ropes on the ground about eighteen inches apart. On these at right angles he tied sticks until the affair resembled a carrier belt on a piece of machinery. A loop with a stick rove into it was arranged at each end and a blanket was thrown over the litter, which was then pronounced ready. None of them ever had seen anything like it. The girls feared the litter would sag so that no one could ride on it without being dragged along the ground. Janus said the advantage in a ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... silence. The young officer lay easily on the bank at her feet, holding Dolly's hand; sometimes bringing his eyes to bear upon her face, sometimes letting them rove ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... well: Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full Of the wars' surfeits to go rove with one That's yet unbruis'd: bring me but out at gate.— Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and My friends of noble touch; when I am forth, Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come. While I remain above ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... free—all free! As the winds in their ceaseless chase, When they rush o'er their airy sea, Thou mayst speed through the realms of space, No fetter is forged for thee! Rejoice! o'er the sluggard tide Of the Styx thy bark can glide, And thy steps evermore shall rove Through the glades of the happy grove; Where, far from the loath'd Cocytus, The loved and the lost invite us. Thou art slave to the earth no more! O soul, thou art freed!—and we?— Ah! when shall our toil be o'er? Ah! when shall we ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... their vicious living shamelessly increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed custom is so rooted and infested, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in apostacy than to conform them to the observation of true religion; so that without such small houses be utterly suppressed, and the religious persons therein committed to great and honourable monasteries of religion in this realm, where ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... the ring is not a role I have any wish to play; at all events none of the pretty women I have flirted with so far have had the power to hold me as her own. And until I meet a woman who can hold me, and keep me from a wish to rove, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... limbs were hard and stout as the trunk of an oak sapling. He wielded the longest sword and the heaviest battle-axe in Bute and Arran, and he was the best bowman in all the lands of the Clyde. His life among the mountains of Arran had given him a mighty power of endurance, for it was his habit to rove for many days over the craggy heights of Goatfell, climbing where none else could climb, slaying deer, spearing salmon, following the wild wolf to his lair, sleeping on the bare heather, drinking naught save the crystal water of the mountain burns, and eating the simplest food. His band ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... under a name that Louise electrically decided to be fictitious, seemed unable to find her voice at first in their mutual defiance, and she made a pretence of letting her strange eyes rove about the shop before she answered. Her presence was so repugnant to Louise that she turned abruptly and hurried out of the place without returning the good-morning which the German sent after her with the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... Knight of Dames," said the Earl; "here you rove gallantly, and at free will, through our dominions, fulfilling of appointments, and achieving amorous adventures; while we are condemned to sit in our royal halls, as dull and as immovable as if our Majesty was carved ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... without a word, and began to copy it at the writing-table; often reading over what she was allowed to read; often pausing, her cheek on her hand, her eyes on the letter, and letting her imagination rove to the writer, and all the scenes in which she had either seen him herself, or in which her fancy had painted him. She was startled from her meditations by Cynthia's sudden entrance into the drawing-room, looking the picture ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... to say. I've got two ideas I'm chasing after now. Give me just a little more time on that, will you, old fellow?" replied the visitor, as he dropped down on a cot, and let his eyes rove along the exhibit of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... of your little charge; Elder boys, let him not rove; The heath is wide, the heath is large, From your sight he must ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... has struck the letters of one word— Word of such high-born worth: triumphant Love, Give me thy canopy where'er I rove. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... encounter, Recover, rescue, Rede, advise, ; sb., counsel, Redounded, glanced back, Religion, religious order, Reneye, deny, Report, refer, Resemblaunt; semblance, Retrayed, drew back, Rightwise, rightly, Rivage, shore, Romed, roared, Roted, practised, Rove, cleft, Rownsepyk, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... took a chew of tobacco, rove a running noose, and proceeded leisurely to coil a few turns in his hand. He paused once or twice to brush particularly offensive mosquitoes from off his face. Everybody was brushing mosquitoes, except Leclere, about whose head a small cloud was visible. Even Batard, lying full-stretched on the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... flowers that bloom Beside his path, tempt him to rove, To bring the thoughtless wanderer back,— How earnest ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... would have to travel two hundred and six miles; but in 1851 he could perform his work by travelling only one hundred and forty-three miles. As the people were no longer serfs of the soil, but free to rove as their interests or pleasure dictated, a wonderful readiness to change the locality of their homes had displayed itself during the first half of this century, and especially the last decade of it. In this way large additions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... bade fancy rove, As mind its early charms display'd; Bade Shakspeare every passion move, And ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... pulleys, we were to reach her decks. Our upward movement immediately commenced. It was steady and gentle, not calculated to create alarm; and still the notion of quitting Mother Earth for an indefinite number of days, to rove in the blue unknown of space, was attended with some apprehensions and regrets. I gazed anxiously at the receding objects below; but my feelings underwent a change as we approached the "Flying Cloud" herself, were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... with his deep enjoyment of the whole spectacle of foreign life—its novelty, its picturesqueness, its light and shade—and with the infinite freedom with which he felt he could go and come and rove and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an awakening, a coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a little less of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he saw her often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit to myself, in spite of preconceptions, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... of the name of Kindama, possessed of ascetic merit. I was engaged in sexual intercourse with this deer, because my feelings of modesty did not permit me to indulge in such an act in human society. In the form of a deer I rove in the deep woods in the company of other deer. Thou hast slain me without knowing that I am a Brahmana, the sin of having slain a Brahmana shall not, therefore, be thine. But senseless man, as you ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... have got back my commission, which was not very likely. So I put soldiering out of the question; and yet, when I had done so, I was infernally puzzled to think of any thing better. I had no fancy to turn rook, and rove from place to place in search of pigeons—no uncommon resource with younger brothers of an idle turn and exhausted means. I had fallen in with a few birds of that breed, and had come to the conclusion that to save themselves work and trouble, they had adopted by far the most laborious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... doubtless, it exists, now, in the hearts of the men, who composed the two organizations. This feeling interfered in some degree with discipline, for most of the men of both were young and wild, and inclined, when they could evade the vigilance of camp guards, to rove nocturnally and extensively, and neither, when on picket, would arrest or stop their friends from the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... in other things besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She was too childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about her unknown father; for a long while it did not even occur to her that she must have had a father; and the first time that the idea of her mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas showed her the wedding-ring which ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... led Ogareff to act thus in regard to the two correspondents, they were free and could rove at their pleasure over the scene of war. Their intention was not to leave it. The sort of antipathy which formerly they had entertained for each other had given place to a sincere friendship. Circumstances having brought them together, they no ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Rove" :   gad, stray, travel, rove beetle, ramble, roll, tramp, gallivant, err, roam, drift, locomote, vagabond



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