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Thrall   Listen
verb
Thrall  v. t.  To enslave. (Obs. or Poetic)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thrall" Quotes from Famous Books



... to them, and added some regrets for their misfortune so sweetly that I wondered she could help responding in kind. But she merely said, "Oh!" and then she seemed to recollect herself, and frowning to a very gentle-looking old man to come forward, she ignored my husband in presenting me. "Mr. Thrall, Mrs. ——" ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... tradition it was Rolof, the dwarf, a thrall of Vulcan, who taught my forefathers the art of forging tools from iron ore, enabling them to battle successfully ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... guest the king gave answer: / "Than shame and scathe I've naught. The devil's dam I surely / into my house have brought. When as I thought to have her / she bound me like a thrall; Unto a nail she bore me / and hung me ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... single arm crushed wrong and thrall That grand good will we only dreamed, Two races wept around his pall, One ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... the still air, a cloud of heavy gray vapor. The cold felt even more intense than earlier in the day. It impressed the girl as if some tremendous force were bearing down mightily upon the world and holding it in thrall. With the lowering of the sun the shadows had grown longer. After a time the slight sound of the man's snowshoes over the crackling snow, of the scraping toboggan, of the panting dog, began to seem to Madge like some ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... a curious state of mind, and slight things easily impressed her. She was in love—and yet she was not in love. The handsome face and figure of the Marquis Fontenelle, together with many of his undoubted good and even fine qualities, attracted her and held her in thrall, much more than the consciousness of his admiration and pursuit of her,—but—and this was a very interfering "but" indeed,—she was reluctantly compelled to admit to herself that there was no glozing over the fact that he was an incorrigibly "fast", otherwise bad man. His life was a long record ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... transient. My spirit was very soon liberated from its thrall and I turned with alacrity to the study of a ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... a girl of dreams and phantoms. Even then I knew it; she was not a woman; not as we conceive her; she was some materialisation out of Heaven. Why do I talk so? Ah! this strange beauty that is woman! From the very first she held me in the thrall that has no explanation. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... them than to live with those who have caused their death? Their goodness was not acted for the sake of life, but purely for its own sake: virtue such as theirs does not make suit to Fortune's favours, nor build her trust in them; pays not her vows to time, nor is time's thrall; no! her thoughts are higher-reared; she were not herself, could she not "look on tempests, and be never shaken." And such characters as these, befall them what may, have their "exceeding great reward" in the very virtue that draws ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... me one of your drawings I want to drink absinthe, which changes colour like jade in sunlight and takes the senses thrall, and then I can live myself back in imperial Rome, in the Rome ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... in no wise cling To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing, A sun that sets not in death's false night Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... obtain, Or close in sleep thine eyes, Till thou has freed the lovely maid, In thrall for thee ...
— Young Swaigder, or The Force of Runes - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... with these, full many other Knights She through her wicked working did incense Her to demaund and chalenge as their rights, Deserved for their perils recompense. Amongst the rest, with boastfull vaine pretense, Stept Braggadochio forth, and as his thrall Her claym'd, by him in battell wonne long sens: Whereto her selfe he did to witnesse call: Who, being askt, accordingly ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... stood up before the mistress of the house and said, "O lady, I am thy slave, thy Mameluke, thy white thrall, a, thy very bondsman;" and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... lashes as she looked round at the familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept tryst since the day when they had first come there together, he a schoolboy and she but lately out of her teens. For the moment she felt herself in the thrall of a ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... its eager hope, strength and joyousness, filled Bart to the eyes, and his spirit in exultation breaking from the unnatural thrall that had for many months of darkness and anxious labor overshadowed it, went with a bound of old buoyancy, and he started with laughing, open brow, and springy step, over the spongy ground, to the poetry of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... what seemed all the prophetic days and years of Daniel, morning broke. The benevolent light entered the cell, soothing his frenzy, as if it had been some smiling human face—nay, the Squire himself, come at last to redeem him from thrall. Soon his dumb ravings entirely left him, and gradually, with a sane, calm mind, he revolved all the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... from afar and saw Kenric, he tarried a while that the cattle might begin to browse upon the lush grass that grew on the marshes beside the sea. Then he went forth to meet him, and threw himself on his knees before him, for Lulach was a thrall, and it was his custom thus to pay homage to the sons of the brave lord ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... said he, 'very unlike are red gold and clay, but more different are king and thrall. Thou didst promise to Olaf Stout thy daughter Ingigerdr, who is of royal birth on both sides, and of Up-Swedish family, the highest in the North, for it derives from the gods themselves. But now King Olaf has gotten to wife Astridr. And though ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... strange clairvoyance dwells in all, And webs the souls of human kind. I would that I could learn its thrall, And know the ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... love Need no blood at all. No trumpet's call can Bring back what you lived, and strove: The ashes know no thrall! ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... forth afresh In a new birth, immingled with my own, And still bewept my grief. Keeping unchanged The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets, Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind, Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro: For in the sudden anguish of her heart Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad, And onward floating in a full, dark wave, Parted on either side her argent neck, Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke, After my refluent health made tender quest Unanswer'd, for I spoke not: for the sound Of that dear voice so musically low, And now first ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... another, who had been concealing The pain of life's long thrall, Forsook their pleasant places, and came stealing Outside the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... endless years the body and soul of P. Sybarite had been thrall to that Smell; for a complete decade he had inhaled it continuously nine hours each day, six days each week—and had felt lonesome without it ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... instruction they will be fitter to emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many generations of them in thrall. Mr. Smith's idea is worthy the attention of legislators. It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war upon the unoffending barbarian abroad. The instincts and habits which have ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... magic night Holding every sense in thrall; World, which wondrous tales recall, Rise, in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he fights while the others run wide of him, Reefs at the bit that would hold him in thrall, Plunges and bucks till the boy that's astride of him Goes to the ground with ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... shape so vividly before me, that, inasmuch as it was a particularly cheerful subject, and not in the least likely to over-excite my nerves, I felt I must write it out in spite of the doctor's orders. I therefore proceeded to do this, and hoped it might free me from the thrall of the idea of Lohengrin; but I was mistaken; for no sooner had I got into my bath at noon, than I felt an overpowering desire to write out Lohengrin, and this longing so overcame me that I could not wait the prescribed hour for the bath, but when a few minutes elapsed, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking, "That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The dead ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall: But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... not love, you are under the thrall of the devil, into whose dark nature love never comes. "Herein the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil. Cain was of the wicked one, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... tired of perch and hood, 665 My idle greyhound loathes his food, My horse is weary of his stall, And I am sick of captive thrall. I wish I were as I have been, Hunting the hart in forest green, 670 With bended bow and bloodhound free, For that's the life ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... have loved, and many have rendered vivid pictures of the emotion, touched with insight of genius and universally proclaimed true to nature from general experience; but no two men love alike, and neither you nor another man can better say how a third feels under the yoke, estimate his thrall, or foretell his actions, despite your own experience, than can one sufferer from gout, though it has torn him half a hundred times, gauge the qualities of another's torment under the same disease. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... showed signs of discontent, and it had been found necessary to replace their king, Azuri, who had refused to pay tribute, by his brother Akhimiti; shortly after this, however, the people had risen in rebellion: they had massacred Akhimiti, whom they accused of being a mere thrall of Assyria, and had placed on the throne Yamani, a soldier of fortune, probably an adventurer of Hellenic extraction.* The other Philistine cities had immediately taken up arms; Edom and Moab were influenced by the general movement, and Isaiah was striving to avert ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... scholars—grammar keeps us close, The primers thrall us, and our eyes grow dim: When will old Master Science hear the call, Bid us run free with life in every limb To breathe the poems and hear the last red rose ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,— Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, "I died, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... and Hrollaug, were summoned to meet their father. At this meeting it was decided that neither of these should go to Orkney, Thorir's prospects in Norway being good, and Hrollaug's future lying in Iceland, where, it was said, he was to found a great family. Then Einar, the Jarl's youngest son by a thrall or slave woman, and thus not of pure Norse lineage, asked whether he might go, offering as an inducement to his father that, if he went, he would thus never be seen by him again. He was told that the sooner he went, and the longer he stayed away, the better his father would be pleased. ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... Williams was the predominating feature of the landscape; turn whichever way we might, still this purple mountain was before us. It seemed to pervade the entire country, and took on such wonderful pink colors at sunset. Bill Williams held me in thrall, until the hills and valleys in the vicinity of Fort Whipple shut him out from my sight. But he seemed to have come into my life somehow, and in spite of his name, I loved him for the companionship he had given me during those long, hot, weary and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... a faint realisation of the infinite power and the infinite patience of a great love, and with it a longing, half wistful, half eager, that she too might one day know its thrall. Francis Heathcote had loved, and his love had survived years of darkness and longing, but there had been plighted vows and lovers' sweet delights to weld the chain of his affection; but Isabella had known none ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... thy voice—the sterner one Which tells of crime in darkness done, Groans upward from thy prison gloom Like voices from the thunder's home. And men have heard it, and the might Of freemen rising from their thrall Shall drag their fetters into light, And spurn and trample on them all. And vengeance long—too long delayed— Shall rouse to wrath the souls of men, And freedom raise her holy head ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... boy from her side, And in his ruffian grasp he bore His victim to the temple door. "One moment!" shrieked the mother; "one! Will land or gold redeem my son? Take heritage, take name, take all, But leave him free from Russian thrall! Take these!" and her white arms and hands She stripped of rings and diamond bands, And tore from braids of long black hair The gems that gleamed like starlight there; Her cross of blazing rubies, last, Down at the Russian's feet she cast. He stooped to seize the glittering ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... Mary, glad to escape the shadowy Piper's thrall. "Carl and me watched that bed in the graveyard all Saturday afternoon. I never thought there was so much in bugs. Say, but they're quarrelsome little cusses—some of 'em like to start a fight 'thout any ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... dry with fear, although he was naturally a brave lad, as we know. A dreadful fascination seemed to hold him in thrall. He could not have moved a muscle if his life, as he believed it did, depended on his escape. The hideous head began to sway rhythmically in a sort of dance. Still Jack could not take his eyes from that swaying head and darting red tongue. A species of hypnotic spell fell over him. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... eyes appeared to search his. A strange shivering thrill shot along his nerves, and his quiet, well regulated heart so long the docile obedient motor, fettered vassal of his will, bounded, strained hard on the steel cable that held it in thrall. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... be sure, and a man should kick the brute in him into its kennel, though he cannot at times help hearing it whine. Her majestic beauty had dazzled him as a flame dazzles a moth, but at this stage, at any rate, it was not her beauty that made me her thrall. That I could have withstood. Because she was so beautiful, so stately, so compelling, she made no appeal to me. What I mean is, that I did not fall in love with her at first sight, simply because the mere stupidity of such a thing kept me from ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... he, "I wot not what thou sayest. I know a thrall, and he is his master's every hour, and never his own; and a villein I know, and whiles he is his own and whiles his lord's; and I know a free man, and he is his own always; but how shall he be his own if he have nought whereby to make his livelihood? Or shall ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... a somewhat younger man; "yet whiles it fareth ill with them at the hands of our women. To wit, my father's brother has even now come from the war to find his thrall all spoilt by his wife: and what remedy may he have against his wife? his money is gone, even as if she had houghed his horse ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... the victim of enchantment, he became palsied with terror, arid began to plead with the unseen tormentors who he believed held him in thrall. "Only leave me loose, dear good little people," he howled, "and I'll ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... that, while the petty surface of the world is crowded with living things, there is no life in the vast centre within the earth, and the immense ether that surrounds it? As the fisherman snares his prey, as the fowler entraps the bird, so, by the art and genius of our human mind, we may thrall and command the subtler beings of realms and elements which our material bodies cannot enter—our gross senses cannot survey. This, then, is my lore. Of other worlds know I nought; but of the things of this world, whether men, or, as your legends term them, ghouls and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... returned to his duties, tuned for labour, full of courage, and the spirit of enterprise and action. Discharged from the thrall which had hitherto borne hard upon his energies, and kept them down, he felt the blessed influence of perfect Liberty, and the youthful elasticity of mind and body that liberty and conscious strength engender. Devoted to the task that he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... pierce into the purest heart! O hands that hold the highest thoughts in thrall! O wit that weighs the depth of all desert! O sense that shews the secret sweet of all! The heaven of heavens with heavenly power preserve thee, Love but thyself, and give me leave to ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... deceive himself into the belief that Fanny was better, but when each morning's light revealed some fresh ravage the disease had made—when the flush on her cheek grew deeper and the light of her eye wilder and more startling, an agonized fear held the old man's heart in thrall. Many and many a weary night found him sleepless, as he wet his pillow with tears. Not such tears as he wept when Richard Wilmot died, nor such as fell upon the grave of his first-born, for oh, his grief then ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... greater and keener 'midst my soft marrow." As thus she said, Love, leftwards as before, with approbation rightwards sneezed. Now with good auspice urged along, with mutual minds they love and are beloved. The thrall o' love Septumius his only Acme far would choose, than Tyrian or Britannian realms: the faithful Acme with Septumius unique doth work her love delights and wantonings. Whoe'er has seen folk blissfuller, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... night and the silence, That held him in pitiless thrall, Came a gleam and a song of glory, And his spirit ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page

... Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham The Fairy Thrall Mary C. G. Byron Farewell to the Fairies Richard Corbet The Fairy Folk Robert Bird The Fairy Book Abbie Farwell Brown The Visitor Patrick R. Chalmers The Little Elf John Kendrick Bangs The Satyrs and the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... that ladies bend On whom their favors fall! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall; But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair through faith and prayer A virgin ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... inside a world, and this inside world was complete in itself. It had everything in it—beauty, wealth, force, power; it could be anything, it could do anything. But it was held by an evil enchantment as though a wicked magician had it in thrall, and everything slept as in Tchaikowsky's Ballet. But one day, he told me, the Prince would come and kill the Enchanter, and this great world would come into its own. I remember that I was so excited that I couldn't ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... henceforth was ours, Inspiring each youth's individual powers. His pictures made pregnant our creative desire, His wit was our testing in an ordeal of fire, His wisdom was our balance, to weigh things great and small, His pathos told of passions, burning, but held in thrall, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... God raise up a million, Of our Carrie Nation minds, That they may fight for freedom, from the thrall. Let's join our hands with Carrie And do not let us tarry, Oh, let us toil for Jesus one ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Wherethrough the knight forth faring found A knight that on the greenwood ground Sat mourning: fair he was to see, And moulded as for love or fight A maiden's dreams might frame her knight; But sad in joy's far-flowering sight As grief's blind thrall ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... go walking in a dream, Led on in safety by the starry gleam Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall; Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day, Startled to find how far I've gone astray, I dash my life out in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... are all much less exceptional; they are necessary parts of the action, more closely and organically related to the destiny of the hero. There, in the final scenes, although there is witchcraft practised against Grettir, it is not that, but the common and natural qualities of the foolishness of the thrall and the heroism of Grettir and his young brother on which the story turns. These are the humanities of Drangey, a strong contrast, in the art of narrative, to the moonlight spell of Glam. The notable ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... wilful loon, hersir, and of no account to any man. As to his feat with the knives, had I my will I'd have it instant death to any thrall who should so much as touch a ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... high devotion graced With lovelier dwelling, loftier throne, Than thus the limner's art hath traced From the time-honored stone? The spirit here of worship seems To hold the heart in wondrous thrall, And heavenward hopes and holy dreams, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... walked on. He paid the man and followed her to the empty seat. Opposite, some illuminated advertisements blazed their unsightly message across the murky sky. Between the two curving rows of yellow lights the river flowed—black, turgid, hopeless. Even here, though they had escaped from its absolute thrall, the far-away roar of the city beat upon their ears. She listened to it for a moment and then pressed her hands to the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... living things; Of poverty and proper mirth, Of rags and rich imaginings; Of cock-a-hoop, blue-heavened days, Of hearts elate and eager breath, Of wonder, worship, pity, praise, Of sorrow, sacrifice and death; Of lusting, laughter, passion, pain, Of lights that lure and dreams that thrall . . . And if a golden word I gain, Oh, kindly folks, God save you all! And if you shake your heads in blame . . . Good friends, God love ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... death and thine." "What say'st thou?" "Hush! now I will tell thee all; Thou knowest that I lov'd this maid, Pascal. For her, like thee, I would have shed my blood; I dreamt that I was loved again; she held me in her thrall. Albeit my prayer was aye withstood; Her elders promised her to me; And so, when other suitors barr'd my way, In spite, Saying, in love or war, one may use strategy, I gave the wizard gold, my rival to affright, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... my guide, my light, my all; It bade my dark forebodings cease; And through the storm and danger's thrall, It led me to the port of peace. Now safely moored, my perils o'er, I'll sing first in night's diadem, Forever and forever more,— The Star, the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... unique, Cost underpaid industry many a week Of arduous labor of eye, and heartache, Its starving inadequate pittance to make; There were mischievous maidens and cavaliers bold, Whose blushes and glances and coquetry told A tale of the monarch who held them in thrall— Who met, as by ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... no maid for all men to admire, Mere body's beauty hath in me no thrall, And noble birth, and sumptuous attire, Are gauds I crave not—yet shall have withal, With a sweet difference, in my heart's own She, Whom words speak not but eyes know when they see. Beauty beyond all glass's mirroring, And dream and glory hers for garmenting; Her birth—O ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... if any judge deserve your blame Have you no courage, or has he no name? Upon his method will you wreak your wrath, Himself all unmolested in his path? Fall to! fall to!—your club no longer draw To beat the air or flail a man of straw. Scorn to do justice like the Saxon thrall Who cuffed the offender's shadow on a wall. Let rascals in the flesh attest your zeal— Knocked on the mazzard or tripped ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... life, their hope ending with life, and their object was to make the best and happiest of it. The hereafter was not pleasant to contemplate. Achilles, when he meets Odysseus in the netherworld, declares that he would rather be a poor labouring thrall on earth than a king among the dead. Had the Hellenes been shown the modern doctrine of evolution, it is easy to fancy how eagerly they would have sprung at it. To the Hebraic spirit it would have been flat, stale, and unprofitable. In a word, while to the best ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... flew the nimble fingers of the devoted laborers in the good cause; and could the poor heathen have known what mighty exertions this band of benevolent, self-denying females, who basked in the noontide glory of the sun of righteousness, were making for their liberation from the thrall of pagan darkness and superstition, we doubt not that they would have prostrated themselves by millions before the shrine of their great idol, Juggernaut, and devoutly invoked him to pardon and forgive the poor, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... the bald-coot[725] bully Alexander! Ship off the Holy Three to Senegal; Teach them that "sauce for goose is sauce for gander," And ask them how they like to be in thrall? Shut up each high heroic Salamander, Who eats fire gratis (since the pay's but small); Shut up—no, not the King, but the Pavilion,[726] Or else 't will cost us all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... penalties of Fate. And oh ye loved ones! that already sleep, Hushed in the noiseless bed of endless rest, For whom, while living, I could only weep, But never help in all your sore distress, And ye who still your lonely burthen bear, Spilling your blood beneath life's bitter thrall, A little while and we shall all meet there, And one kind Mother's bosom screen us all; Oppression's harness will no longer tire Or gall us there, nor Sorrow's ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... home and friends, nor the cheerful expectancy of the adventurous upon reaching a long-sought land of promise, nor the fresh sensation of the inexperienced when first beholding a new country; it was the relief of enfranchised men, the rapture of devotees of freedom, loosened from a thrall, escaped from surveillance, and breathing, after years of captivity, the air where liberty is law, and self-government the basis of civic life. These were exiles; but the bitterness of that lot was forgotten, at the moment, in the proud consciousness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... darkness. Perhaps he saw in that great black gulf the pictures of these happenings which his companion had prophesied. Perhaps, for a moment, he saw the panorama of a city in flames, the passing of a great country under the thrall of these new ideas. At any rate, he turned abruptly away from the side of the vessel, and taking Peter's arm, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Gorman, "they keep an iron grip upon industry. They fatten on the fruits of other men's brains. They hold the working man in thrall, exploiting his energy for their own selfish greed, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... Friendship's call, Calmly resign the little all (Trifling, I grant, it is and small) I have of gladness, And lend my being to the thrall Of gloom ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... to ask Where popes are born; and from long suffering, You, Romans, before heaven, should have learnt That priests can have no country.... I know this man; his father was a thrall, And he is fit to be a slave. He made Friends with the Norman that enslaves his country; A wandering beggar to Avignon's cloisters He came in boyhood and was known to do All abject services; there those false monks He with astute humility cajoled; He learned their ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... Hath left the realms of doubt behind, And wondrous things which finite thought In vain essayed to solve, appear To thy untasked inquiries, fraught With explanation strangely clear. Thy reason owns no forced control, As held it here in needful thrall; God's mysteries court thy questioning soul, And thou may'st search and know ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... and very beautiful. Witness the legion of men who were once young and unfettered and now eat out their souls in dustbins, because, having erstwhile known and loved the Wilderness, they broke from her thrall and ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... and the impregnable influence of the Church on the other. Small heed was to be given to the pamphleteers, whose brilliant satire, biting sarcasm, and pointed logic afforded amusement at the Louvre, rather than struck dismay to the hearts of those who fondly believed that the Church still held in thrall the brain of the masses, and that as for centuries the people had been content with slavery and vassalage, it was absurd to imagine they had now come to man's estate, had, Phoenix-like, arisen from the ashes of old-time ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... though she never had known, never could know fear—that only a merciless, tigerish, unbridled fury had her in its thrall. And she went on up, step after step, as ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... birds, and watching them as they hopped from branch to branch, preening themselves in the early sunshine and twittering to their mates. And as he watched he envied the birds, and wondered why he should be a thrall ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... crushed, it will not turn again and sting? And say! ye tyrants in your boasted halls, Read ye no warnings on your darkened walls? Hear ye no seeming mutterings of the cloud Break from the millions which your steps have bowed? Think ye, ye hold in your ignoble thrall, Mind, soul, thought, taste, hope, feeling, valor, all? No; these unfettered scorn your nerveless hand, Sport at their will, and scoff at your command, Range through arcades of shadow-brooding palms, Snuff their free airs and breathe their ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... living. And unconsciously his spirit Rose in quest of Might Supernal, Which should rule both dead and living, Leaving naught to chance or magic; Which should seize the throbbing pulses Ebbing from a dying mortal, And create a higher being Free from thrall of earthly nature; Almost grasping in his yearning Knowledge of the God Eternal, In whose hand the earth lies helpless, In whose ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... feeling and security that it is certain it could not have existed in the first stage of the jealous patriarchate; rather it must have developed at a subsequent period with the growth of the social-tribal spirit, and the liberty of women from the thrall of sexual ownership. In these particulars my opinion differs from all other writers who have sought to establish a theory of matriarchy. I venture to claim that the position of the mother-age has been strengthened, and, as I hope, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... But no, he cannot live! I am distracted! My only hope is in you, my cousin—you whom I had once thought to salute by a STILL FONDER TITLE, my dear George Poynings! Oh, be my knight and my preserver, the true chivalric being thou ever wert, and rescue me from the thrall of the felon caitiff who holds me captive—rescue me from him, and from Stycorax, the vile ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... now only on the outer man, and not, as before, on the heart. Tom stood perfectly submissive; and yet Legree could not hide from himself that his power over his bond thrall was somehow gone. And, as Tom disappeared in his cabin, and he wheeled his horse suddenly round, there passed through his mind one of those vivid flashes that often send the lightning of conscience across the dark and wicked soul. He understood full well that it was GOD who was standing ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... strange intoxicating effect from the odour of the lamp, round which there now played a dazzling vapour. The room swam before me. Like a man oppressed by a nightmare, I tried to move, to cry out, feeling that to do so would suffice to burst the thrall that bound me: ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... model newer races, Statelier forms and fairer faces; To carry man to new degrees Of power and of comeliness. These presents be the hostages Which I pawn for my release. See to thyself, O Universe! Thou art better, and not worse.'— And the god, having given all, Is freed forever from his thrall. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... these disparagments, Much greater mischiefes issues from their minds, Grinuile, thy mountaine honour it augments Within their breasts, a Meteor like the winds, Which thrall'd in earth, a reeling issue rents With violent motion; and their wills combinds To belch their hat's, vow'd murdrers of thy fame, Which to effect, thus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... bridegroom of his type is bound to have regrets, unless in the thrall of an engrossing passion; and to-night Wilson felt these misgivings more acutely than he had done since his engagement—perhaps because the loss of bachelor freedom was getting so near. Therefore his dance with Caroline—though ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... him and saw signs of sorrow in his face. So he said to him, "O Al-Din, whence cometh this sorrow wherein I see thee? Hast thou not gone in unto Kut al-Kulub?" He replied, "O Commander of the Faithful, what befitteth the lord befitteth not the thrall. No, as yet I have not gone in to visit her nor do I know her length from her breadth; so pray quit me of her." Quoth the Caliph, "I would fain see her and question her of her case;" and quoth Ala al-Din, "I hear and I obey, O Commander of the Faithful." So the Caliph went ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... owned to being a dog in the manger. That would be her only revenge—and what a paltry one! She felt that—and was ashamed of herself; but all human beings are paltry when their self-love is wounded and the passion of jealousy has them in its thrall, and Sabine was no better nor worse than any other woman probably. Once more she made resolutions, firm resolutions to think no more of Michael either good or bad. It was perfectly sickening—the humiliation and degradation of his so frequently ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... through the tan upon Flamby's cheeks and she was aware of a delicious little nervous thrill. Paul Mario's fascinating voice had laid its thrall upon her and his eyes were far more beautiful even than she had supposed, when, confronting Fawkes in Bluebell Hollow, she had suddenly looked up to find Paul watching her. That easy self-possession which she had learned from her father and which deserted her rarely enough, threatened ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... answered. "I have been too long absent from them, and my name is half forgotten. Yet, were they free of this prophet, I think I might sway them, for I know their ways, and I am the son of their ancient kings. But for the present his magic holds them in thrall. They listen in fear to one who hath the ear ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... "behold the season fit To war, for which thou waited hast so long, Now serves the time, if thou o'erslip not it, To free Jerusalem from thrall and wrong: Thou with thy Lords in council quickly sit; Comfort the feeble, and confirm the strong, The Lord of Hosts their general doth make thee, And for their chieftain ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... vainly![15] He All bounds and marks, the world's dull wonder, Calmly o'erleaps, and snaps asunder All reverend ties that be! The soldier carries in his sword The primal right by bridge or ford To pass. Shall kingly Caesar fall And kiss the ground—the Senate's thrall And boastful Pompey's drudge? Forthwith, with one bold plunge, is pass'd The fateful flood—"the DIE is CAST; Let Fortune be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... in our great hall at Bures, and I remember how the strands of leather thong fell in my hand; I remember how my mother's spinning wheel stopped short with a snapping of broken threads; how the thrall who was feeding the fire stayed with the log in his hands; how the sleepy men at the lower end of the hall sprang up with heavy words checked on their lips before the lady's presence; how the maidens screamed—aye, and how the draught ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... all, Because the poet is a bird,— Oh! but a sorry bird, and thrall To a great lack, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... and there, imposes a strain on the interior economy that is greater than this will stand. After an interview with the First Sea Lord you suffered from that giddy, bewildered, exhausted sort of feeling that no doubt has you in thrall when you have been run over by a motor bus without ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... homes, starving families, and universal desolation, were shadows which fled before the legions of hope pressing so gladly and gayly to the front. Here in one corner laughing girls bewitched and held in thrall young soldier boys,—willing captives,—yet meeting the glances of bright eyes with far less courage than they had shown while facing the guns upon the battlefield. Thrilling tales of the late battle ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... little thing, Tho to oblivion it fall, For I shall strive to it thro all That can imperil or appal. So at each morning's trumpet-ring I mount again, less slave and thrall, And at the barriers gladly fling A fortitude ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall? ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling



Words linked to "Thrall" :   thralldom, serf, slavery, villein, bonded labor, servitude, vassalage, bondage, serfhood, bond servant, serfdom, subjection, helot



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