"Aslant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a quick motion in going out made me a slight gesture. I followed her into a small office or ante-chamber adjoining. The furniture was very simple; the indicator, with a figure for every bell, decorated the wall in its cherry-wood frame; the keys, hanging aslant in rows, like points of interrogation in a letter of Sevigne's, formed a corresponding ornament; and a row of registers on the desk completed the furniture. One of these books she drew forward, opened and presented for my signature, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... child on his arm the faithful saint Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy; His brows and his heavy beard aslant Under the dimpled chin of ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... expert swimmer; and aided by the stream, which was as swift as a mill-race, he soon managed to get within reach of Lady Merivale. With a great effort he grasped her firmly, and, turning slowly and painfully, swung aslant the stream to ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the whole row of houses is now in the shade,—they looking towards, I should say, the southwest. Later in the day, they are wholly covered with sunshine, and continue so through the afternoon; and at evening the sunshine slowly withdraws upward, gleams aslant upon the windows, perches on the chimneys, and so disappears. The upper part of the spire and the weathercock of the Park Street Church appear over one of the houses, looking as if it were close ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up. He did not move till he heard the door of the drawing-room close behind the greatest of feminists returning to his painted Egeria. Then he walked down slowly into the hall. The door stood open, and the shadow of the house was lying aslant over the greatest part of the terrace. While crossing it slowly, he lifted his hat and wiped his damp forehead, expelling his breath with force to get rid of the last vestiges of the air he had been breathing inside. He looked at the palms of his hands, and rubbed them gently ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... upon the tailboard to ride, the dogs chased the cow and calf to the crossing. The wheels grated ominously against great submerged boulders; the surging waves rose almost to the wagon-bed; the wind struck aslant the immense, cumbrous cover, threatening to capsize it; and, suddenly, in the midst of the transit, a sound, as clear as a bugle in the rare icy ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden, So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... action of the winds, and the conformation of continents and islands, have a powerful influence on currents, so that some flow at the bottom of ocean, some on the surface, some from east to west or west to east, or aslant in various directions, while, where currents meet there is deflection, modification, or stagnation, but there is no confusion; all goes on with a regularity and harmony which inconceivably excels that of the most complex and ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... bridal bells distantly chiming, The stout, jolly boatmen prolong, beating time with the stroke of their paddles; And Winona's ear, turned to the breeze, lists the air falling fainter and fainter, Till it dies like the murmur of bees when the sun is aslant on the meadows. Blow, breezes,—blow softly and sing in the dark, flowing hair of the maiden; But never again shall you bring the voice that she ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... that, sailless and with masts pitifully aslant, was fixed on the sand among the surf, and the movement of the water made her appear to labour forward as if in dying throes making ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... but clean and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... With sea-drawn lights The turned wing of a gull that glows Aslant the violet, the profound Dome of the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the gray and yellow backs of the dogs rose and fell with a rhythmic movement that was almost music. Their ears aslant, their crests bristling, their bushy tails curling like plumes over their hips, they responded with almost automatic precision to the low words that fell from the lips ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... as I leave the shrines, and in their place are picturesque masses of black and red lacquer and gold, gilded doors opening without noise, halls laid with matting so soft that not a footfall sounds, across whose twilight the sunbeams fall aslant on richly arabesqued walls and panels carved with birds and flowers, and on ceilings panelled and wrought with elaborate art, of inner shrines of gold, and golden lilies six feet high, and curtains of gold brocade, and incense fumes, and colossal bells ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... down behind the copse, through which his beams came aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling by him, sleepily swaying the masses of weed, under the surface and on the surface; and the trout rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming beetle fell into the stream; here and there one more frolicsome than his brethren would throw himself ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze: The light has left the summit of the hill, 205 Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful, Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell, Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot! On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill, Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled 210 From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me, I find myself upon the brow, and pause Startled! And after lonely sojourning In such ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... light shot aslant the dark. Softly the door of Rebecca's house opened. A frail figure was silhouetted against the light. The wick above snuffed out. The figure drew in without a single look, leaving the door ajar. But an hour ago, the iron righteousness of bigots had filled my soul with ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... all—for her! She had ravished his heart! From my stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I watched him from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat cross-legged, with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his prau. The barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red face. The broad river was stretched under him—level, smooth, shining, like a plain of silver; and his prau, looking very short and black from the shore, glided along the silver plain and over into the blue ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... small low room, belonging to the old part of the house—dark with the sombre covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... chord resounded. The old man cast upon him an eagle glance, struck his breast with his hand, and saying deliberately, in his native language:—"I made that, for I am a great musician,"—he again played his wonderful composition. There was no candle in the room; the light of the rising moon fell aslant through the window; the sensitive air trembled resonantly; the pale, little room seemed a sanctuary, and the head of the old man rose high and inspired in the silvery semi-darkness. Lavretzky approached and embraced him. At first, Lemm did not respond ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... plan grew a slender birch-tree. Thither went the little party, wandering up the stream: the valley was sheltered; no wind but the south could reach it; and the sun, though it could not make it very warm, as it looked only aslant on its slopes, yet lighted both sides of it. Great white clouds passed slowly across the sky, with now and then a nearer black one threatening rain, but a wind overhead was carrying them ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... amost as Summer-time; yet what a blessed breeze Is a-whiffing round the corners, and a-whoostling through the trees! And the sunlight on the roof-slates, all aslant to the blue sky, Seems to twinkle like the larfter in a pooty gurl's blue eye, When you swing in the dance, and she feels you've got 'er step: And the trees—ah! bless their branches!—through the winter weeks they've slep', When the worrying winds would let 'em, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... forward toward the light, or receded with little jerky steps, so rapid that one constantly expected to hear the crash of glass and see her glide backward up the slope of the broad moonbeam that shone aslant into the studio. There was one fact that imparted a strange, poetic charm to that fantastic ballet, and that was the absence of music, of every other sound than that of the measured footfalls, whose effect was heightened by the semi-darkness, of that quick, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the werwolf's eye, sank deep into its brain, but the second blow missed—missed, and falling aslant, alighted ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... something of a gymnastic masterpiece, since I was lying—or, rather, standing aslant—on the rough sea-wall, with crannies of brick for foothold and the water plashing below me; but then I had not lived in the Dulcibella for nothing. My chain of thought, I fancy, was this—the tug is to carry my party; I cannot shadow a tug in a rowboat, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... not an Oriental; he was a full-blooded Cockney, but his eyes were such little accidental slits aslant in his round, flat face, that his first name was forgotten in the highly descriptive title of "Jap." He was not especially unkind to the birds and beasts whose sales were supposed to furnish his living, but his eye was on the main ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells—but I ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... be the death of me—you will—you will!" gasped Mrs. Squallop, almost black in the face, and the water running out of the kettle, which she was unconsciously holding aslant. After a while, however, they got reconciled. Mrs. Squallop had fancied he had been but rubbing chalk on his eyebrows and whiskers; and seemed dismayed, indeed, on hearing the true state of the case. He implored her to send out ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... circumstances, when he wished to show energy in fulfilling a duty. Thus Lord Byron allowed his pen to jest, to mark the follies of men: sometimes attacking them boldly in front, sometimes aiming light arrows aslant, ridiculing, chastising, as humor or fancy prompted; and he gave himself the same liberty of language in private conversation, according to the character of those with whom he conversed. On all these occasions his genius undoubtedly gave itself ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... shades. For them there was an eloquent voice in all The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sketch of a man, random, rakish, with head aslant and shifty eyes forever dropping away from a questioner's face. He abounded in inhuman angles and impossible lines. It seemed that he must have been rather dashingly done in the first place, then half obliterated and badly mended with ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... with his silk pocket-handkerchief, held it suspended, flat side downwards, between his finger and thumb. Then, when he had poised it as nearly horizontal as he could guess at, he let it go. It wavered about in the air as a thin sheet of paper would have done, and finally sailed aslant and very gently to the ground, amid the astonished exclamations of the beholders, by whom it was immediately examined with ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his head on his breast and his lips touched her hair. Across the sodden floor of the prison, suddenly, came the first rays of dawn falling aslant, touching the shadows, the two figures crouching, the rats ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... of green caraway carries me there. To the old village church, and the old village choir, Where clear of the floor my feet slowly swung, And timed the sweet pulse of the praise that they sung, Till the glory aslant from the afternoon sun Seemed the rafters of ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... level, and this could only be attempted on calm days or when a southerly wind blew from the high land well over the workmen's heads, leaving the inshore water smooth. On such days Taffy, looking up from his work, would catch sight of a small figure on the cliff-top leaning aslant ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and ground-inhabiting birds bathe with the utmost frankness and a great deal of splutter; and here in the heart of noon hawks resort, sitting panting, with wings aslant, and a truce to all hostilities because of the heat. One summer there came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and prying, and he had never any patience with the water baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral; and whenever ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... hanging-knee, applied to the under side of the lodging-knee; it is placed out of the perpendicular to avoid a port-hole. Anything placed aslant or obliquely, now generally termed diagonal, of which, indeed, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... car superimpending Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales; Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament. For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon- fire, And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of glass-houses. Then embarkation on board the boat for Caen; a gentle sea-rocking; soldiers, men in blouses, women in various patterns of caps; the mouth of the Orne; fringes on the coast of fashionable resort for sea-bathers. Miles up the stream, dreary, dreary; poplars leaning aslant from the wind, low mud-banks, beds of osiers, reeds, rushes, willows; poplars standing erect as a regiment in line, as many regiments, a gray monotony of poplars; the tide flowing higher, laving the reeds, the sallows, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... filleting of purple round the brow, Lo, gotten from the cruel rock with craft and toil enow, 270 With missing oars, and all one board unhandy and foredone, His ship inglorious and bemocked, Sergestus driveth on. —As with an adder oft it haps caught on the highway's crown, Aslant by brazen tire of wheel, or heavy pebble thrown By wayfarer, hath left him torn and nigh unto his end: Who writhings wrought for helpless flight through all his length doth send, And one half fierce with burning eyes uprears a hissing crest, The other half, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... time ago, Prince Cuglas,[7] master of the hounds to the high King of Erin, set out from Tara to the chase. As he was leaving the palace the light mists were drifting away from the hill-tops, and the rays of the morning sun were falling aslant on the grinan or sunny bower of the Princess Ailinn. Glancing towards it the prince doffed his plumed and jewelled hunting-cap, and the princess answered his salute by a wave of her little hand, that was as white as a wild rose in the hedges ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... thin-lipped, cadaverous individual, his soft hat cavalierly aslant, his black hair combed flatly in a curve down upon his damp forehead, a pair of sloe eyes, and a flannel shirt open upon his bony ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... black-fishers. Heavy rains, however, swell it much more quickly than most rivers into a turbulent rush of water; the part of it affected by the black-fishers being banked in with rocks that prevent the water's spreading. Above these rocks, again, are heavy green banks, from which stunted trees grow aslant across the river. The effect is fearsome at some points where the trees run into each other, as it were, from opposite banks. However, the black-fishers thought nothing of these things. They took a turnip lantern with them—that is, a lantern hollowed out of a turnip, with a piece of candle inside—but ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones,—like mine, I was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear me say it isn't so, if you like,—was perhaps better than to be remembered a few hundred years by a few perfect stanzas, when your gravestone is standing aslant, and your name is covered over with a lichen as big as a militia colonel's cockade, and nobody knows or cares enough about you to scrape it off and set the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... crushed or swallowed up at once in the broken ice. He could perceive, from the increasing commotion of the ice around her, that her hitherto level and unbroken support was growing every moment more insecure and uncertain. And as it rose and fell, or was pitched forward and thrown up aslant, in the changing volume, he could plainly hear her piteous shrieks, and see her flying from side to side of the plunging body, to avoid being hurled into the frightful chasms which were continually yawning to ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... their heels watching the emigrants as they bartered for supplies. Trappers in fringed and beaded leather played cards with the plainsmen in shady corners or lounged in the cool arch of the gateway looking aslant at the emigrant girls. Their squaws, patches of color against the walls, sat docile, with the swarthy, half-breed children playing about their feet. There were French Canadians, bearded like pirates, full of good humor, filling the air with their patois, and a few Mexicans, who ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... hear them splash on the ground. The whistle again: It is double and loud! The leaves are splashing, And water is dashing Over those creepers, for they are shrouds; And men are running up them to furl the sails, For there is a capful of wind to-day, And we are already well under way. The deck is aslant in the bubbling breeze. "Theodore, please. Oh, Dear, how you tease!" And the boatswain's whistle sounds again, And the men pull on the sheets: "My name is Hanging Johnny, Away-i-oh; They call me Hanging Johnny, So hang, boys, hang." ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... ringing through the air like a silver trumpet. The travellers, halting in the midst of the plain, selected a spot for their night encampment, made a fire, and hung over it the kettle in which they cooked their oatmeal; the steam rising and floating aslant in the air. Having supped, the Cossacks lay down to sleep, after hobbling their horses and turning them out to graze. They lay down in their gaberdines. The stars of night gazed directly down upon them. They could hear the countless myriads of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... living that their imaginations dwell with a kind of horrid fascination upon the ugly things that thwart them. Hence in a novel like "Main Street," the interest slackens as one begins to feel that the very vividness of the story comes from a vision strained and aslant, unable to tear eyes from the things that have cramped life instead of expanding it. The things that these writers love in life often they never reach until the last chapter, and about them they have little to say, being exhausted by ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... banks, and had its stress of little breakers. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the boiling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore, with towers and buildings. . . The people came to their doors all aslant, and with streaming hair." David dreams of a cannonade, when at last he "fell—off a tower and down a precipice—into the depths of sleep." In the morning, "the wind might have lulled a little, though ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... fancy—and gazing round with a feeling of awe, tempered with a calm delight, felt that now she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible from the shelf, and read; then, laying it down, thought of the summer days and the bright springtime that would come—of the rays of sun that would fall in aslant, upon the sleeping forms—of the leaves that would flutter at the window, and play in glistening shadows on the pavement—of the songs of birds, and growth of buds and blossoms out of doors—of the sweet air, that would steal in, and gently wave the tattered banners overhead. What if the spot ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I must not have the window-shutters opened, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Francisco on that brilliant April morning of 1806, Rezanov forgot the bitter humiliations, the mental and physical torments, the deprivations and dangers of the past three years; forgot those harrowing months in the harbor of Nagasaki when the Russian bear had caged his tail in the presence of eyes aslant; his dismay at Kamchatka when he had been forced to send home another to vindicate his failure, and to remain in the Tsar's incontiguous and barbarous northeastern possessions as representative of his Imperial Majesty, and plenipotentiary of the Company his own genius had created; forgot the year ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... why at me Looking aslant with thy eyes, Dost thou cruelly flee, And think that I know nothing wise? Know I could well Put the bridle on thee, And holding the reins, turn Round the bounds of the course. But now thou browsest the meads, And gambolling lightly dost play, For thou hast no skilful horseman ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pose, which left nothing visible but the smile, she advanced quickly towards the light or fled away with little rushes so rapid that you were constantly expecting to hear a slight shivering of glass and to see her thus mount backward the slope of the great moonbeam that lay aslant the studio. That which added a charm, a singular poetry, to this fantastic ballet was the absence of music, the sound alone of the rhythmical beat the force of which was accentuated by the semi-darkness, of that quick and ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... then turning, paced to the sound of chanting up the rough steps and laid their offerings on the shrine. Thrice at each new offering rang out a clattering gong, and the worshipper stepped reverently back to make way for another; while all the time the newly-risen sun blazed aslant on their robes ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... agreed with him. None the less it seemed well to join the excursion to Gorinchem; and thence we steamed on a fine cloudy Sunday, the river whipped grey by a strong cross wind, and the little ships that beat up and passed us, all aslant. At Gorinchem (pronounced Gorcum) we changed at once into another steamer, a sorry tub, as wide as it was short, and steamed to Woudrichem (called Worcum) hoping to explore the fortress of Loevenstein. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... starfruit, had purchased some powdered lizard and, with the package in his left hand, had opened the door to go out. As he stood there with his right hand upon the knob and facing the afternoon sun four shadows fell aslant the window and a man whom he positively identified as Sui Sing emptied a bag of powder—afterward proved to be red pepper—upon Quong's face; then another, Long Get, made a thrust at him with a knife, the effect of which he did not ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... seized with both hands, the feet being placed in the middle. The board should be considerably aslant when first attempted, and gradually brought ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... wedding, a betrothal, a coming of age, a levee—without this outward and visible mark of respect. Nor was it sufficient that you should wear it. It must be properly draped and must fall to the right point, which, in front, was aslant over the lower part of the shin, while behind it fell to the heel. Your wardrobe slave must see that it has been kept properly folded and pressed. If you claimed to be a gentleman, and were not in mourning and not an official, it must be simply and scrupulously ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... hampers. It was a lovely day, in a lovely spot—a good example of the miniature forests which grew naturally from time immemorial in favored locations on the Iowa prairies—half a square mile of woodland, all about which the green corn-rows stood aslant in the cool ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... to the door, opened it, and stood studying the gale that beat upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold silk in the shine of the wreckwood fire. Meanwhile by the same firelight I examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that Katrina was right. The hut was built of old lumber and stood aslant on a poor foundation. Small and cramped it certainly was, but just the same it seemed as if all would be over for them if they lost it. Jan, for his part, could not think for a second it would be as bad as that. Was not his Glory Goldie there? And could he not see how her eyes were beginning to ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... highest point his railway was to reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the white field lying aslant against the west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... dreams that filled my fancy, and kept it incessantly employed till it was dusk, and the moon began to show herself; the same moon which, but a few days ago, had seen me so happy at Fiesso. Her soft light reposed upon the meads, that had been newly mown, and the shadows of tall poplars were cast aslant them. I left my carriage, and running into the dim haze, abandoned myself to the recollection it inspired. During an hour, I kept continually flying forwards; bounding from enclosure to enclosure ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... bedroom. A door gave at the farther side on a tiny verandah, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... country's fight Beneath the stripes and stars,— All thronging at the windows stood, And gazed between the bars. The little boys that stood behind (Young thievish imps were they!) Displayed considerable nous On that eventful day; For bits of broken looking-glass They held aslant on high, And there a mirrored gallows-tree Met their delighted eye. {49} The clock is ticking onward; Hark! hark! it striketh one! Each felon draws a whistling breath, "Time's up with Colt! ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... straight for the big open fish-hole. Farther away from the Little Cabin, and nearer the bank, was the small well-hole. Between the two they noticed, as they raced by, the water-bucket hung on that heavy piece of driftwood that had frozen aslant in the river. Mac saw that the bucket-rope was taut, and that it ran along the ice and disappeared behind the big funnel of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of races, since their birthplace was in Armenia, which in turn is credited with having the Garden of Eden within its boundaries. The Chinese also can advance very substantial claims that primeval man was born with eyes aslant. They at least have a fixed date for the invention of the loom. This was in 2640 B. C. by Lady of Si-Ling, the wife of ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... and along the outside of his well muscled arms and legs, and was tawny-yellow, blue-gray or white. To Terran eyes the broad faces, now all turned in their direction, lacked readable expression. The eyes were large and set slightly aslant in the skull, being startlingly orange-red or a brilliant turquoise green-blue. They wore loin cloths of brightly dyed fabrics with wide sashes forming corselets about their slender middles, from ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... together in his hand and walked to the window. The sun was now aslant through the trees. It was late and they must have all gone their ways from across the street; only the major would be alone and appreciative. Andrew smiled quizzically as he regarded the pages in his hand—but it was all so to the good to read the stuff to the old fellow with his Immortals ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "I will see nothing till the car of the Zecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with and without cowls, to last me for ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... paper aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly with the thin, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... times. And I must tell you,' he added, 'of my enjoyment in looking on your pastures in autumn,—the sun shining aslant upon them of an afternoon,—and in noticing what shades of scarlet and crimson were given to the picture by the whortleberry leaves, which, I found, contributed most to the coloring of the landscape. I also saw ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... whining round the house, and the snow beat aslant upon the windows. Sometimes the coal in the stove settled with a crumbling sound, and the four panes of mica flashed a sudden new crimson. As he sat holding her head on his shoulder, Trescott found himself occasionally trying to count the cups. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... hands had been steady when he tied on his May-fly, they trembled enough now as he hurriedly put up his tackle and disjointed his rod: and still, and again while he hastened across to the cottage above the rocky spit—the cottage with the larch plantation above and in the garden a laburnum aslant and in bloom—his eyes sought the beach ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Somewhere in the trees by the fence a pair of wakeful birds was chirping. From the swamp below the hill came the hoarse croaking of bull-frogs. Above the summit of the wooded slope that lay toward Chestnut Hill the full moon was climbing, and, aslant the road, the maples cast long ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... coffee and cigarettes, pillows had been adjusted to bare shoulders, stools moved under slippered feet, and easy lounges pushed nearer the fire. Greenough, his long body aslant, his head on the edge of a chair, his feet on the hearth rug, was blowing rings to the ceiling. Bayard, the African explorer, and the young Russian Secretary, Ivan Petrovski, had each the end of a long sofa, with pretty Mme. Petrovski ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in a conspicuous place upon the brow of the acclivity stands a row of tombstones several rods in length. These mark the graves of an ancient and honorable family of townsfolk. At one end, a thick slab of red sandstone, of uncouth shape and rude appearance, leans aslant, partly buried in the mellow soil. The moss and lichens, with which its roughly cut back and edges are overgrown, have been removed from its face, and the quaint inscription is distinctly legible, whereby the curious idler is informed that "Here lies, in y'e ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive through darkness to ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a bantering air: a light, half-caressing, half-ironic, shone aslant in his eye. Ah, Graham! I have given more than one solitary moment to thoughts and calculations of your estimate of Lucy Snowe: was it always kind or just? Had Lucy been intrinsically the same but possessing the additional advantages of wealth and station, would your manner to her, your value ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it stands aslant; the slightest push would make it go with a crash, and there would be no getting out alive if ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... harvesters falleth the grain, As when the strong stormwind is reaping the plain, And loiters the boy in the briery lane; But yonder aslant comes the silvery rain, Like a long line of spears brightly ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... striking feature is the kicking of the beam of the ceiling. In the story of Nils the fiddler, in his novel Arne, Bjoernson has given this account of the hailing: "The music struck up, a deep silence followed, and he began. He dashed forward along the floor, his body inclining to one side, half aslant, keeping time to the fiddle. Crouching down, he balanced himself, now on one foot, now on the other, flung his legs crosswise under him, sprang up again, and then moved on aslant as before. The fiddle was handled by skilful fingers, and ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... granaries and storehouses and cattlesheds. But it all looked awfully poor and dilapidated. The houses had gray, moss-grown, leaning walls, which seemed ready to topple over. In the roofs were yawning holes, and the doors hung aslant on broken hinges. It was apparent that no one had taken the trouble to drive a nail into a wall on this place for ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... then for Cologne water. Matilda brought the one and the other, and sat by the bedside wiping her mother's brow and cheeks with the Cologne. Nobody came to interrupt or relieve her for some time. The light of the afternoon began to fade, and the sunbeams came aslant from the western sky; and still the child sat there passing the handkerchief gently over her mother's face. And while she sat so, Matilda was thinking what possible ways there might be by ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... after a scrutiny of the group in the gloom of the stage he chirped to his horses. They began a slow and thoughtful trotting. Dust streamed out behind the vehicle. In front, the green hills were still and serene in the evening air. A beam of gold struck them aslant, and on the sky was lemon and pink information of the sun's sinking. The driver knew many people along the road, and from time to time he conversed with ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... overshadowed by an unusually strong, bushy pair of eyebrows, black hair flowing in uncombed profusion over the forehead, an old-fashioned coat, a white cravat carelessly tied, as often behind or on one side of the neck as in front, a shabby hat set aslant, jack-boots reaching above the knee; think of him thus either as sitting at home, surrounded by books on the shelves, on the table, on the few chairs, and all over the floor; or as walking unter den Linden, and in the Thiergarten of Berlin, leaning on the arm of his sister Hannchen, or a faithful ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... luxury, not dreaming that they were doing anything unusual or undignified. As a fact, they were not. Other couples were perched on other ledges, and still others on the cold steam-pipes. A girl with a big face and heavy red lips sat alone, lounging, her head aslant. She had an open copy of Home Notes in one hand. Elgar had sent the simple creature into an ecstasy, and she never stirred; probably she did not know anyone named Enwright. Promenaders promenaded in and out of the corridor, and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... "Quite useless, sir. I tell you we have no room. And—I wish you good-morning." On the word she turned from him with a curt gesture of dismissal, and kneeling beside the embers began to occupy herself with the cooking pots; stirring one and tasting another, and raising a third a little aslant at the level of her eyes that she might peer into it the better. He lingered, watching her, expecting her to turn. But when she had skimmed the last jar and set it back, and screwed it down among the embers, she remained on her knees, staring absently ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward; we three apprentices slung our hammocks in a bulkheaded part of the run or steerage, a gloomy hole, the obscurity of which was defined rather than illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from the hatch. Here we stowed our chests, and here we took our meals, and here we slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below. I very well remember my two fellow apprentices. One was named Corbin, and the other Halsted. They were both of them smart, honest, ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... tumble went the bandy, a springless construction with a mat roof; bang over stones and slabs of rock, down on one side, up on the other; then both wheels were sharp aslant. But this is usual. On that particular First Afternoon the water was out, which is the South Indian way of saying that the tanks, great lake-like reservoirs, have overflowed and flooded the land. Once we went smoothly down a bank and ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... under a rose-tree (Gloire de Dijon), flanked by a Yucca in bloom, the bed underneath consisting of deep blue lobelia, is a touching little memorial to a favourite canary. This consists of a narrow little board, made like a head-stone, and set aslant, on which is painted in neat letters the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... straight into the darkness to the north and west, slinking low under the bushes, his tail drooping, his ears aslant—the wolf as the wolf runs on the night trail. The pack had swung due north, and was traveling faster than he, so that at the end of half an hour he could no longer hear it. But the lone wolf howl to the west was nearer, and three times ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. The air became quite still, the flag above the waggon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... a blue police sits still on his horse Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh, And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant In tedium, and mouth relaxed as if ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... walking up with perfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder where the other had dodged to, was come upon so suddenly that the first warning he had of his danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a footfall on the soft ground between ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... representatives, protruded slowly from Sapps archway, announcing that his scaffold-poles were going back to the sphere from which they had emanated on hire. It came slowly, and gave a margin for a stampede of Dave and his accomplices, leaving the truck very much aslant with the handle in the air; whereas we all know that a respectable hand-barrer, that has trusted its owner out of sight, awaits his return with the quiet confidence of horizontality; or at least with the handle on the ground. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... world from our little boat. The waters moved in from the outer with the ease of certain conquest, and the foundering shores vanished under each uplifted send of the ocean. We rounded the buoy. I could see the tide holding it down aslant with heavy strands of water, stretched and taut. About we went again for ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... jauntily as his check shirt and pea-jacket (his only suit of apparel at hand) would permit, to be speedily followed by Mrs. Rose, who with one set of finger-tips held up the light folds of a sweetly blue lawn skirt, and with the other bore aslant before her a bewitching pink parasol. Undoubtedly there was a great indulgence in sly winks and suppressed titterings on the part of such of us as chanced to be witnesses of this at once festal and sentimental sally; but the twain heeded ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... woven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his horse plunges, and all its villages nestling themselves into the new windings of its glens, and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and sweeping ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... The deck was aslant, and in the windy blackness of the night nothing was to be seen for a moment; but the darkness was terrific with voices, voices from forward of the bridge and voices from alongside as though a hundred drunken sailors were yelling and blaspheming ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; Therewith fantastick garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples;[51] There, on the pendent boughs her cornet weeds Clambering to hang, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... glide out into the bay. The far-off steamer is wrapped in darkness, the lamps are all extinguished in the staterooms, for it is long past eleven, but the waves flash every attack of the oar, and the Southern Cross shines aslant the sky. ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... evidently been working in clay, of which his loose blouse bore abundant marks. A paper cap, not unlike that of a pastry-cook in an English picture, was stuck a little aslant over his iron gray locks, giving him a certain roguish air, with which the occasional twinkle in his ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... short and of a jaundiced hue, his soft brown eyes set slightly aslant. Although lame, he had an alertness and poise unusual in the sea's spawn of these beaches. In Tahitian, Marquesan, and French, with now and then an English word, he explained that he, a Tahitian marooned on Hiva-oa from a schooner because ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... this reputation, he was always free of the handsome salons wherein the Friends of Humanity devoted themselves to roulette, auction bridge, baccarat and chemin-de-fer: and of this freedom he now proceeded to avail himself, with his hat just a shade aslant on his head, his hands in his pockets, a suspicion of a smile on his lips and a glint of the devil in his eyes—in all an expression accurately reflecting the latest phase of his humour, which was become largely one of contemptuous ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide; And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan, Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... figure and erect deportment, engendered such an involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... stubborn. So her sot down for two days more, an' did all a hen cud do to hatch that chick. No good; 'twudn' budge. You niver seed a fowl that hurted in mind; but niver a thought o' givin' in. No, sir. 'Twasn' her way. Her jes' cocked her head aslant, tuk a long stare at the cussed thing, an' said, so plain as looks cud say, 'Well, I've a-laid this egg, an' I reckon I've a-got to hatch et; an' ef et takes me to th' aluminium, I'll ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... impassioned, hopeful, as Lucretia Clavering,—under the old cedar-trees, which, save that their vast branches cast an imperceptibly broader shade over the mossy sward, the irrevocable winters had left the same. Where, through the nether boughs the autumn sunbeams came aslant, the windows, enriched by many a haughty scutcheon, shone brightly against the western rays. From the flower-beds in the quaint garden near at hand, the fresh yet tranquil air wafted faint perfumes ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no more a man. Then all the heroes drew sharp breath, and gazed, And smote not; but Meleager, but thy son, Right in the wild way of the coming curse Rock-rooted, fair with fierce and fastened lips, Clear eyes, and springing muscle and shortening limb— With chin aslant indrawn to a tightening throat, Grave, and with gathered sinews, like a god,— Aimed on the left side his well-handled spear Grasped where the ash was knottiest hewn, and smote, And with no missile wound, the ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with loops of ribbon and sprays of grass, or flowers that fall aslant, may give a laughably tipsy air to the long face of a saintly matron of ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes confirming the existence of the mystery ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... name is Outis,[34] Outis I am call'd At home, abroad; wherever I am known. So I; to whom he, savage, thus replied. 430 Outis, when I have eaten all his friends, Shall be my last regale. Be that thy boon. He spake, and, downward sway'd, fell resupine, With his huge neck aslant. All-conqu'ring sleep Soon seized him. From his gullet gush'd the wine With human morsels mingled, many a blast Sonorous issuing from his glutted maw. Then, thrusting far the spike of olive-wood Into the embers glowing ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... same year, shows precisely the same style. Both ladies also wear low-cut bodices with kerchiefs arranged in the same manner. The finishing touch of Miss Bingham's costume is the big straw hat worn aslant on the back ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... inland sea that washes the shores of the home of his adoption. It is a fitting resting place. The tempestuous waters of the great lake reflect his own stormy career. Yet they have their milder moods. There are hours when sunlight falls aslant the subdued ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to the conservatory. Distant masses of plants and flowers, mingled in ever-varying forms of beauty, are touched by the melancholy luster of the rising moon. Nearer to the house, the restful shadows are disturbed at intervals, where streams of light fall over them aslant from the lamps in the room. The fountain is playing. In rivalry with its lighter music, the nightingales are singing their song of ecstasy. Sometimes, the laughter of girls is heard—and, sometimes, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... on down the white hillside. The hunter, tawny and light of tread, scarce older to the eye, for all his wanderings, than the man beside him, glanced aslant with his sea-blue eyes. "When are ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... surveyor or navigator might say, the man moved his eyes slowly along its visible length and at a distance of a quarter-mile to the south of his station saw, dim and gray in the haze, a group of horsemen riding to the north. Behind them were men afoot, marching in column, with dimly gleaming rifles aslant above their shoulders. They moved slowly and in silence. Another group of horsemen, another regiment of infantry, another and another—all in unceasing motion toward the man's point of view, past it, and beyond. A battery ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce |
