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Wrack   /ræk/   Listen
Wrack

verb
1.
Smash or break forcefully.  Synonyms: bust up, wreck.



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"Wrack" Quotes from Famous Books



... shuddering ice Shivers. It cracks! Like a wild beast in pain, it cries to the wrack Of the storm-cloud overhead. The sea answers back— Dread Lilith ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach—as leaden, indeed, as the heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides acting as the avant courier of a fresh squall—the wind just ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black— A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... of the net were curious; and as the cork line was drawn back flat on the sands, there was plenty of work for the men to pick off the net the masses of tangled fucus and bladder-wrack which had come up with the tide. Jelly-fish—great transparent discs with their strangely-coloured tentacles—were there by the dozen; pieces of floating wood, scraps of rope and canvas, and a couple of the curious squids with their suckers ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... dust!—trees going end over end in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!—and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession! Laws bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... shell-fish and serpents. They used to go into caves to catch hyenas alive, and amuse themselves by making them run in the evening on the sands of Megara between the stelae of the tombs. Their huts, which were made of mud and wrack, hung on the cliff like swallows' nests. There they lived, without government and without gods, pell-mell, completely naked, at once feeble and fierce, and execrated by the people of all time on account of their unclean food. One morning the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... to the realms which he coasted! for there Was shedding of blood and rending of hair, Rape of maiden and slaughter of priest, Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast; When he hoisted his standard black, Before him was battle, behind him wrack, And he burned the churches, that heathen Dane, To light his band to their ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... The wrack and ruin of three score years; and it's a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and skelping them, ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... and the author he has not understood. Carlyle believed in himself, but he could not have believed in himself more than Ruskin did; they both believed in God, because they felt that if everything else fell into wrack and ruin, themselves were permanent witnesses to God. Where they both failed was not in belief in God or in belief in themselves; they failed in belief in other people. It is not enough for a prophet to believe in his message; he must believe in its acceptability. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... his fortune felt a wrack, Had that false servant sped in safety back? This night his treasured heaps he meant to steal, And what a fund ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... on the summit of these cliffs were smugglers to the extent of their power, only partially checked by the coast-guard distributed, at pretty nearly equal interspaces of eight miles, all along the north-eastern seaboard. Still sea-wrack was a good manure, and there was no law against carrying it up in great osier baskets for the purpose of tillage, and many a secret thing was lodged in hidden crevices in the rocks till the farmer sent trusty ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... crowded back Of Queen Gunhild's wrath and wrack, And a hurried flight by sea; Of grim Vikings, and their rapture In the sea-fight, and the capture, And the life ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... wants of three kings.' But is this any reason you should not apply Your superfluous wealth to ends nobler, more high? You so rich, why should any good honest man lack? Our temples, why should they be tumbling to wrack? Wretch, of all this great heap have you nothing to spare For our dear native land? Or why should you dare To think that misfortune will never o'ertake you? Oh, then, what a butt would your enemies make you! Who will best meet reverses? The man who, you find, Has by luxuries pampered both ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... in New Brunswick, and will pay toll to that province. The capitalists of Nova Scotia treat it like a hired house, they won't keep it in repair; they neither paint it to preserve the boards, nor stop a leak to keep the frame from rottin'; but let it go to wrack sooner than drive a nail or put in a pane of glass. 'It will sarve our turn out,' ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... banner, for a scout comes breathless and pale, With the terror of death upon him; of failure is all his tale: "They have fled while the flag waved o'er them! they've turned to the foe their back! They are scattered, pursued, and slaughtered! the fields are all rout and wrack!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... heart seemed to make Jemima's brain grow dull; she laid her head on her arms, which rested on the window-sill, and grew dizzy with the sick weary notion that the earth was wandering lawless and aimless through the heavens, where all seemed one tossed and whirling wrack of clouds. It was a waking nightmare, from the uneasy heaviness of which she was thankful to ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... a great storm this morning, and I went up on the cliff to sit in the shanty they have made there for the men who watch for wrack. Soon afterwards a boy, who was out minding sheep, came up from the west, and we ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... behind it. I thought how any traveller who chanced to pass that way would envy in his heart the tenant of that magnificent building, and how little they would guess the strange terrors, the nameless dangers, which were gathering about his head. The black cloud-wrack was but the image, I reflected, of the darker, more sombre storm which ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was ugly in the other act comes on very beautiful (but hideously dressed, why don't they get Worth or Doucet, I wonder, to help them?) and she sings a great deal and very loud, and kisses Parsifal, and then everything goes suddenly to wrack and ruin. I shall never dare kiss any very good young man again—not after that! In the last act, this same creature, looking more like Act I., washes Parsifal's feet. I should hate to play that part, but it's ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch

... than two-thirds of the distance without espying a single living creature. As the afternoon wore on the weather improved. The sun, soon to drop behind the cliff-summits on the left, asserted itself with a last effort and shot a red gleam through a chink low in the cloud-wrack. The shaft widened. The breakers—indigo-backed till now and turbid with sand in solution—began to arch themselves in glass-green hollows, with rainbows playing on the spray of their crests. And then—as though the savage coast had become, at a touch of sunshine, habitable—our travellers spied ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... a wrack behind," moaned Anne Linton, closing her eyes. "But you are wrong, Miss Arden—I shall not eat it, I shall gulp it—the way a dog does. I always wondered why a dog has no manners about eating. I know now. He is so hungry his eyes eat it first, so his mouth has no chance. ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... breast, And, with still panting rocked, there took his rest. So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft. Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe

... Deschamps, the jailer, led Archie through the musty corridors and cells the boy perceived that the old building had long ago gone to wrack. It was a place of rust and dust and dry rot, of crumbling masonry, of rotted casements, of rust-eaten bars, of creaking hinges and broken locks. He had the impression that a strong man could break in the doors with his fist and tumble the walls about his ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... running before the tempest. Another wild day passed, and it was not till the evening that the weather moderated. Little by little the great seas began to calm, and the drifts of stinging rain ceased. In their wake the stars struggled through the cloud wrack, and towards morning the ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... time, and, upon looking again, we find that she has not moved, and impart the fact to Sandy, who looks steadily through his long spy-glass, evidently made up of several others; then, gazing intently over the top, he brings all hands to their feet by the cry of "Wrack!" For ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... stabbed in the throat one second before the fatal hug. He told of the melting of the snows in forest rivers; of the flood that swept away the lonely traveller's encampment, and bore him, astride on a log of driftwood, five miles amid wrack and boulders on its whirling current; of deliverance through a pious Indian and his canoe, which he entered as by a miracle in mid-stream, and without upsetting any of the three. He told of long wanderings ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... such a miracle not impossible. I wish I could think it at all probable, but, alas! it has so much the appearance of castle-building that I think it will soon disappear like the "baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a wrack behind." ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... and listened. Then rest, deep and placid, came over her, as over one who, escaped from a stormy wrack and tempest, falls asleep amid the murmur of "quiet waters," in a ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... But the wind falling contrary, he was forced the next morning to put into Falmouth Haven, in Cornwall, where such and so terrible a tempest took us, as few men have seen the like, and was indeed so vehement that all our ships were like to have gone to wrack. But it pleased God to preserve us from that extremity and to afflict us only for that present with these two particulars: the mast of our Admiral, which was the Pelican, was cut overboard for the safeguard of the ship, and the Marigold was driven ashore, and somewhat bruised. ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty

... sun's warmth so long as we were cruising among the ice-wrack. Some of the passengers, having been forewarned, were provided with heavy overcoats, oilskin hats, waterproofs, woolen socks, and stogies with great nails driven into the soles. They were iron-bound, copper-fastened tourists, thoroughly ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... about, old fel? Why, everybody dies here nights at nine o'clock; there's not a thing doing after that. It's the most forsaken, dismal place imaginable after that hour. I'm dying of dry rot, that's what's the matter." He finished with a cough that seemed to wrack him ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... careful limits which Christian people nowadays set to their work for Jesus! They are not afraid of being tired in their pursuit of business or pleasure, but in regard to Christ's work they will let anything go to wrack and ruin rather than that they should turn a hair, by persevering efforts to prevent it. Work to the limit of power if you live in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... and mead, The rounding noon hangs hard and white; Into the gathering heats recede The hollows of the Chelsea height; But under all to one quiet tune, A spirit in cool depths withdrawn, With logs, and dust, and wrack bestrewn, The ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman

... but still, Edward, you know we cannot tell what a day may bring forth, and I might fall sick, or something happen which might prevent my attending to anything; and then, without you or Pablo, everything might have gone to wrack and ruin. Certainly, when we think how we were left, by the death of old Jacob, to our own resources, we have much to thank God for in having got ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... that flyes faire under saile, An hidden rocke escaped hath unwares, That lay in waite her wrack for to bewaile, The Marriner yet halfe amazed stares At perill past, and yet in doubt ne dares 5 To joy at his foole-happie oversight: So doubly is distrest twixt joy and cares The dreadlesse courage of this Elfin knight, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... flash to the sunset Reels to the wrack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long" — Maybe I'll tell you then — ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... handsome chariot, incidentally accompanied by the Bridegroom; and after rolling for a few minutes smoothly over a fair pavement, had begun to jolt through a Slough of Despond, and through a long, long avenue of wrack and ruin. Other nuptial carriages are said to have gone the same road, before ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... higher rose the barometer, the higher rose the norther; the latter being a cold dry wind is, consequently, a heavy wind. And when the sky was comparatively clear and blue, the display of cirri was noticeable. In some places they formed filmy crosses and thready lozenges; in others the wrack fell into the shape of the letter Z; and from the western horizon the curl-clouds shot up thin rays, with a common centre hid behind the mountains of Sinai, affecting all the airs ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... not attached to you I should be the most ungrateful wretch going. Here you have stayed away from home all these weeks, and worked like a servant making me all those lovely lemon-squashes and things, and letting your own affairs go to wrack and ruin, and you never seemed to remember that you had any affairs, or that there was such a thing as getting tired,—never seemed to remember anything except to take care of me. You are an angel—there ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... a kraken huge and black, She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, With a sudden shudder of death, And the cannon's breath For ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... Spanish Armado to wrack, And Travell'd all o'er the old World, and came back, In his old Ship, laden with Gold and old Sack, Like an ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... ideal—a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. Their ultimate self-government may not take the shape of American constitutionalism, but Russian self-government must in time come out of the very wrack of foreign and internecine war. And every American soldier who fought the Bolshevik Russian in arms or stood on the battle line beside the Archangel Republic anti-Bolshevik Russian, might join these returned captives from Bolshevikdom in wishing that ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... crossed the cove, the western sky was brilliant with the reflected dawn. Above the cliffs behind, morning had edged the flying wrack of indigo clouds with a glittering line of gold, while the sea in front still heaved beneath the pale yellow light, as a child sobs at intervals after the first gust of passion is over-past. The tide was at the ebb, and the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... not forbear but say so. To my best remembrance, he lay crying out all one night for fear; and at times he would so tremble that he would make the very bed shake under him. But O! how the thoughts of death, of hell-fire, and of eternal judgment, did then wrack his conscience. Fear might be seen in his face, and in his tossings to and fro; it might also be heard in his words, and be understood by his heavy groans. He would often cry, I am undone, I am undone; my vile ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... there stands the little transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are spent. We have two dwelling-places. By the body we are brought into connection with this frail, evanescent, illusory outer world, and we try to make our homes out of shifting cloud-wrack, and dream that we can compel mutability to become immutable, that we may dwell secure. But fate is too strong for us, and although we say that we will make our nest in the rocks, and shall never be moved, the home that is visible ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... every wind-sheared crest, and blowing, soft as wool, in rolling masses far inland. It was easy to see the greatest crests rear and draw back, showing the roots of the ledges among boulders brown with weed and sea wrack, then swing forward with seemingly irresistible might, to be shattered as if their crystal was that of glass and to fly skyward a hundred feet, scintillant white star drift of comminuted sea. The crash of such waves ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... and martyrs of Christ.... Besides which, he industriously gathered the histories of their martyrdom, together with other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a large and noble library." Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near Exeter, where Boniface was first instructed. At the monastery of Nursling he was taught grammar, history, poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there also manuscripts were copied. Books ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... FOR SHAKESPEARE'S TEMPEST.—WILLIAM STRACHEY, a contemporary of Shakespeare and secretary of the Virginian colony, wrote at Jamestown and sent to London in 1610 the manuscript of A True Repertory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas. This is a story of shipwreck on the Bermudas and of escape in small boats. The book is memorable for the description of a storm at sea, and it is possible that it may ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... again. A broad band of pale clear light was shining into the room, and when he looked out of the window he saw the road all brightened by glittering pools of water, and as the last drops of the rain-storm starred these mirrors the sun sank into the wrack. Lucian gazed about him, perplexed, till his eyes fell on the clock above his empty hearth. He had been sitting, motionless, for nearly two hours without any sense of the passage of time, and without ceasing he had murmured those words as he dreamed an endless ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... rage rather than pity. Such wrack and waste of human life, moral and physical! for what? For the protection of a hateful sport which demoralised the rich and their agents, no less than it tempted ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... waies whereby many have sought to gain, and hold them, it remains now that I speak in general of the offences and defences, that may chance in each of the forenamed. We have formerly said that it is necessary for a Prince to have good foundations laid; otherwise it must needs be that he go to wrack. The Principal foundations that all States have, as well new, as old, or mixt, are good laws, and good armes; and because there cannot be good laws, where there are not good armes; and where there are good armes, there must needs be good laws, I will omit to discourse of the laws, and speak ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was indeed cooler, with a sighing wind, and in the west a thickening wrack of clouds. It was very dark. The restless and multitudinous flicker of the fireflies but emphasized the shadow, and the stars seemed few and dim. It was near midnight, and the wide landscape below the mountain lay in darkness, save for one ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their lameness, and feel that they are really ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... name; Some in huge masses, some that you may bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow. Involved in sea-wrack, here you find a race Which science, doubting, knows not where to place; On shell or stone is dropp'd the embryo-seed, And quickly vegetates a vital breed. While thus with pleasing wonder you inspect Treasures the vulgar in their scorn reject, See as ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... A formless wrack of clouds streams across the awful sky, and the rain sweeps almost parallel with the horizon. Beyond, the heath stretches off into endless blackness, in the extreme of which either fancy or art has conjured up some undefinable shapes that seem riding into space. At the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its pleasures and all its pains, will have effected nothing. They will all have faded like an unsubstantial pageant, and not left a wrack behind. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... began once more to scout through the smoke. No one met them, though distant shapes rushed athwart the gloom, yelping to each other, and near by, legs of runners moved under a rolling cloud of smoke as if their bodies were embedded and swept along in the wrack:—all confused, hurried, and meaningless, like the uproar of gongs, horns, conches, whistling bullets, crackers, and squibs that sputtering, string upon string, flower upon rising flower of misty red gold explosion, ripped all other noise ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... mention, there was a beach, though this extended no great distance along the shore, the remainder being composed of the black rock of which the hills were formed. And now, having a closer regard to the beach upon the weed-side of the island, I discovered amid the wrack that had been cast ashore, a portion of the lower mast and topmast of some great ship, with rigging attached; but the yards were all gone. This find, I pointed out to the bo'sun, remarking that it might prove of use for firing; but he smiled at me, telling me that the dried weed ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... came— The cannon's tongues of quick red fire licked all the hills aflame! Mad whistling shell, wild sneering shot, with devilish glee went past, Like fiendish feet and laughter hurrying down the battle-blast; And through the air, and round the hills, there ran a wrack sublime As though Eternity were crashing on the shores of Time. On bayonets and swords the smile of conscious victory shone, As down to death we dashed the Rebels plucking at our Throne. On, on they came with face of flame, and storm of shot and shell— Up! ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... decoys were of pine wood, rudely carved out and burnt to something like the natural coloring of the bird they were intended to represent; but a large proportion of them were "sea-weed" or "spruce" decoys; that is, bunches of the weather-bound sea-wrack, or bundles of evergreen twigs, made about the shape and size of the body ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... barren place, tasting of powder, smelling of smoke, now lit, now darkened, but vacant of human life, and now he was in a press of men, grey forms advancing and retreating, or standing firing, and now he was where fighting had been and there was left a wrack of the dead and dying. He reached the centre and gave his message, then turned toward the left again. A few yards and his horse was killed under him. He disengaged himself and presently caught at the bridle and stayed another. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... ceased, the wind abated its rage and the thunder pealed faint with distance, while ever and anon the gloom gave place to a vague light, where, beyond the flying cloud-wrack, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... what care we for war and wrack, How kings and heroes rise and fall; Look yonder,* in his coffin black, There lies ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wife had about two thousand francs a year from twenty-seven lots of land in the neighborhood of Provins, and from the sale of their inn for twenty thousand. Old Auffray's house, though out of repair, was inhabited just as it was by the Rogrons,—old rats like wrack and ruin. Rogron himself took to horticulture and spent his savings in enlarging the garden; he carried it to the river's edge between two walls and built a sort of stone embankment across the end, where aquatic nature, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back; This scorn methought was crueller than shot; The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... little mate, coolly, "since you've worked yourself up so much over the matter, and as we're a-goin' along on our course agin, as I suggested to the skipper afore we raised the wrack"—here he went to the pantry and brought out a bottle, and held it ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... it but also of the doings of previous generations. For since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... they saw that the woman was fair, and that about her neck was a chaplet of gems that shone in the moon, and they had a longing both for the jewel and the woman: but before they laid hand on her they asked her of whence and whither, and she said: From ruin and wrack to the Well at the World's End, and therewith turned on them with a naked sword in her hand; so that they shrank ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... women, playing fifes and horns. One was carrying a tattered flag. Behind the musicians came a motley crowd. Old women, young women, half-grown children, and dozens of old men. All were armed. And they came forward like the wrack of a surviving ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... all patiently Abiding wrack and scaith! O Faith that meets ten thousand cheats Yet drops no jot of faith! Devil and brute Thou dost transmute To higher, lordlier show, Who art in sooth that lovely Truth The ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... slightly above water that at two leagues' distant it was not visible from the look-out, was discovered in latitude 15 degrees 50 minutes, and 148 degrees 10 minutes longitude. The constant recurrence of breakers, trunks of trees in large quantities, fruits and sea wrack, and the smoothness of the sea, all indicated the neighbourhood of extensive land to the south-east. It was New Holland. Bougainville determined to leave these dangerous latitudes, where he was likely to meet with nothing but barren lands, and a sea strewn ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... hurl'd As templed vaults are splinter'd wide; And fearful fancies cleave the night When reeking gores pierce hollows black, Smite vandals that in sleep are curl'd: And naiads that the vapours hide In shadows vague—Unholy light! (Spectres to each soul on a wrack) Dank caverns of each vaulted soul With spiral thoughts of fevered haste, 'Mid the throb of murderous life In haunted zones of vandals gyte, Squirm at the pulse of this blind shoal Where blood-veined dreams and acrid waste Cut thro' the senses like a knife And ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... said na, for I looked for Jamie back; But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack; His ship was a wrack! Why didna Jamie dee? Or why was I spared to cry, Wae ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... gasped for words, he felt like a drunkard who clutches the air as he reels over a precipice, and the shades of his ancestors seemed to crowd menacingly around him. He strove against his fears until a thin face with luminous eyes shone through the drifting wrack like a stars. ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... boy, since thou hast been so slack To wound her heart whose eyes have wounded me And suffered her to glory in my wrack, Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee! By hellish Styx, by which the Thund'rer swears, By thy fair mother's unavoided power, By Hecate's names, by Proserpine's sad tears, When she was wrapt to the infernal bower! By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires Spent on thine altars flaming up to ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... stood at equipoise. A formless moon soared through a white cloud wrack, and broken gold lay in the rising tide. The sonorous steps of the policeman on the bridge startled him, and obeying the impulse of the moment, he gave the officer the letter, asking him to post it. He waited for some minutes, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... wind among the spars. A thick cloud was coming up from the northwest, and the ragged tentacles which it threw out in front of it were drifting across the face of the moon, which only shone now and again through a rift in the wrack. The Captain paced rapidly backwards and forwards, and then seeing me still dogging him, he came across and hinted that he thought I should be better below—which, I need hardly say, had the effect of strengthening my resolution to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the moral far more strongly than Eden could do. As by a lightning flash, the purblind politicians of Vienna could now discern the storm-wrack drifting upon them. The weakness of the Piedmontese army, their own unpreparedness in the Milanese, the friendliness of Genoa to France, and the Jacobinical ferment in all parts of Italy, portended a speedy irruption of the Republicans into an almost defenceless land ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... fire-drama of his recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs—his picture of their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats' pleasures—and then consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found immediate object ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... so accustomed to think of Nell in every situation that now he was occupied, above all, in ascertaining whether she was not in danger of falling, whether she had sufficient room and whether she could lie down comfortably. Satisfied in this respect, he began to wrack his brains as to how to protect her from the rain. But for this there was no help. It would have been easy to construct during the daytime some kind of roof over her head, but now they were enveloped in such darkness that they could not see each other at all. If the storm at last ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Columbus that he had seen birds flying westwards and expected to sight land before night. They therefore sailed cautiously lest they should run aground, but all their apprehension ceased when a sounding-line two hundred fathoms long, lowered through the floating sea-wrack, failed ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... I walked along in no very happy frame of mind, the more so, as the rising wind and flying wrack of clouds above (through which a watery moon had peeped at fitful intervals) seemed to presage a wild night. It needed but this to make my misery the more complete, for, as far as I could tell, if I slept at all (and I was already very weary), it must, of necessity, be beneath ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... he believes there will be no such turning out of great men as is talked of, but that it is only to fright people, but I do fear there may be such a thing doing. He do mightily inveigh against the folly of the King to bring his matters to wrack thus, and that we must all be undone without help. I met with Cooling at the Temple-gate, after I had been at both my booksellers and there laid out several pounds in books now against the new year. From the 'Change (where I met with Captain Cocke, who would have borrowed ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... be gardener now, too: yaaes I be, to save the wages. And he's gone clean mazed about that garden—yaaes, I think. Would yue believe this, Maaester Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed strawberries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he said it wued be as good for them as for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... make themselves think it was the old time back again they took each other's hands and swung them to the tune. He felt her clasp like milk coursing through his body, and a great wave of tenderness swept up his hard resolve as sea-wrack is thrown up after a storm. "She is here; we are together; why trouble about anything more?" and the time ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... CAUSE goes to wrack, Sedition mauger cloath in black Do greatly dread the triple tree, Whilst we rejoyce in ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... desaster still Pursues us to all places, but of all Enter Myldew and Sarlaboys to her. This, this the greatest, and to this one compard All that are past but trifles. Oh that grand maister Of mechall[90] lusts, that bulke of brothelree, That stillary of all infectious sinnes, Hath scapt the wrack, and with his fellowe guest And partner in corruption makes this waye, And with no tarde pace. Where shall I hyde mee! Whether shall I fly to Palestra back And with this sadd relation kill her quite That's scarce recovered! ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... the air, for the afternoon was hot and windless. Great wrath rose in their hearts thereat, and many a strong man trembled for anger, though none for fear, as Otter raised his right hand and stretched it out towards that token of wrack and ruin; yet they made no stay, nor did they quicken their pace much; because they knew that they should come to Bearham before night- fall, and they would not meet the Romans way-worn and haggard; but they rode on steadily, a ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... discredit might his credit be. And hath my father from his tender youth Vouchsaf'd to bring thee up? did I therefore Believe so earnestly thy perjur'd truth, Advancing still thine honour evermore, That, not contented with a common wrack, Thou shouldst intend the ruin of us all; And when thou seemd'st afraid to turn thy back, To make a glory of our greater fall? Before thou triumph in thy treachery, Before thou 'scape untouched for thy sin, Let never Fates nor Fortune favour me, But ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... peace and plenty, and the quiet we've sought so long; He hath thwarted the wily savage, and kept him from wrack and wrong; And unto our feast the Sachem shall be bidden, that he may know We worship his own Great Spirit, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... chanced the run through Concepcion Strait, or even weathered Duke of York Island. He nodded to his junior, whose presence on the bridge was a mere matter of form, owing to the powerless condition of the ship and the impenetrable wrack of foam and mist that barred vision ahead, and strode off on a tour of inspection. As wind and sea were now beating more directly on the port side, there was some degree of shelter along the covered-in deck to starboard. He found ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... they wondered, The battle-wrack was sundered; To Victory they thundered, But . . . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... never thresh your rigs, Nor kick your rickles aff their legs, Sendin' the stuff o'er muirs an' haggs Like drivin' wrack; But may the tapmast grain that wags Come ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... out all one night for fear, and at times he would so tremble, that he would make the very bed shake under him. {143c} But, Oh! how the thoughts of Death, of Hell-fire, and of eternal Judgment, did then wrack his conscience. Fear might be seen in his face, and in his tossings to and fro: It might also be heard in his words, and be understood by his heavy groans. He would often cry, I am undone, I am undone; my vile life has ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... Porges a cheery "Good-night"—Bellew went out to walk among the roses. And, as he walked, he watched the flying wrack of clouds above his head, and listened to the wind that moaned in fitful gusts. Wherefore, having learned in his many travels to read, and interpret such natural signs and omens, he shook his head, and muttered to himself—even as ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... slain the children she has borne to Jason and in her fury refuses to let him gather up their dead bodies, when Jason in utter inconsolable despair, casts himself upon the earth, out of all this wrack and torture the chorus raises the audience into a contemplation of the ordered eternity by which these things come to be. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... find herself wondering if, after all, the barque of her life had been steered by a guiding Hand, which, although it had taken her over storm-tossed seas and stranded her on lone beaches, had brought her safely, if troubled by the wrack of the waters she had passed, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... And wild was the work within it, and oft and o'er again Forth brake the sons of Volsung, and drave the foe in vain; For the driven throng still thickened, till it might not give aback. But fast abode King Volsung amid the shifting wrack In the place where once was the forefront: for he said: "My feet are old, And if I wend on further there is nought more to behold Than this that I see about me."—Whiles drew his foes away And stared across the corpses that before ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... to an order. There was that in Forsythe's voice which stung. The weather had cleared somewhat, though scudding wrack still blew across them to the westward. The ship rolled heavily. Of the sea naught was visible except the arching waves, but in the sky they beheld again, with a sickening sense of disaster, that pale and lovely glow which had so bewildered them two ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... mine had been sprung beneath the spot upon which had been dumped her emotions of the last two months, blowing some to atoms, bringing to light others that had lain buried. Out of the wrack, joy, shame, fear fell at her feet—and a sentence out of a letter was staring her ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... office, half-rising from the wrack of many things that had been and were now no more, her startled eyes beheld the figure of a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... was on the seaport towns, The weight of his hand held hard the downs. And the merchants cursed him, bitter and black, For a red flame in the sea-fog's wrack Was all of their ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... years a section boss, he worked upon the track, And be it to his cred-i-it he niver had a wrack. For he kept every j'int right up to the p'int wid the tap of the tampin-bar-r-r; And while the byes was a-swimmin' up the ties, It's "Jerry, wud yez ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... till the Judgment Day, Each night ere the cock should crow, Where the thunders boom and the lightnings play In the wrack of the battle-glow. They swore by Drake and Plymouth Bay, The men of the Good Hope's crew, By the bones that lay in fierce Biscay, And they swore ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... rest. So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft: Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer'd wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world been black. Amorous Leander, beautiful and young, (Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung,) Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none For whom succeeding times make greater moan. His dangling ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... part of Sherwood Forest, and these were ancient trees that had been spared when others fell. Centuries old some of them, with vast trunks and huge gnarled, twisted branches which seemed to have suffered from terrible convulsions of nature, been put on the wrack, as it were, and come forth mutilated ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... resident in each piece, so it seems to have been conceived that karma might be transmitted from one phenomenal association to another by a sort of induction. However this may be, Gautama doubtless had a better guarantee for the abolition of transmigration, when no wrack of substance, either of Atman or of Brahma, was left behind; when, in short, a man had but to [68] dream that he willed not to dream, to put ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... to-morrow After life's fitful fever they sleep well And like this insubstantial bourne from which No traveller returns Leave not a wrack behind. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... thrying all ways of spelling the name of the blamed thing so as to get the same right wunst any way—is played wid the feet. You slide the sheet wid the holes punched into 'em into the wrack over the keeze and then wurrk the feet up and down like yer husband Tana used to do at home ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... Santo Domingo it was the old story of political factions, each faction having its own little gang of fighting men till our fellows came in and ran most of them into the hills. When the marines took charge they found that pretty much everything on the island had gone to wrack. As, for instance, under the old French regime there had been some splendid roads in Haiti, but now they were hardly more than sewers in the towns and a drainage for the hill slopes ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... a few evenings ago, I found the young ones had flown, and as there was a cock-nest in some wrack left by the river in a bush a few yards off, I gave it a shake to see if the old ones had taken possession of it for another brood; and I was surprised to see one, and then a second young one come flying out, and a third putting ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... have felt something of the same thing for another,—a longing for his welfare, a delight to hear him praised, a charm in his presence,—so strong a feeling for his interest, that were he to go to wrack and ruin, I too, should, after a fashion, be wracked and ruined. But it ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... let her drive before it till in great fear of quicksands they unloaded the ship of some cargo. And next day, the wind rising still higher, they threw overboard all they could lay hands upon, and for several days and nights the wrack was so thick and black overhead that they were driven on and on through unknown wastes of water, Paul exhorting all to be of good cheer, for an angel of God had exhorted him that night, telling that ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... met my cousin Sasha. To see her going to wrack and ruin shocked me terribly. Moreover, it has reached me, through a side wind, that she has been making inquiry for me, and dogging my footsteps, under the pretext that she wishes to pardon me, to forget the past, and to renew our acquaintance. Well, among other things she told me ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... and was now running higher than I had ever seen it before. Our little craft was tossed about on its angry surface lightly as a withered leaf; now rising up as though about to take flight into the midst of the rushing storm-wrack overhead, and anon plunging down the steep sides of the watery hills as though intent on reaching the very ocean's bed itself. It was very exciting, as well, it must be confessed, as somewhat trying to the nerves, to stand ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... the stunned soul can first lift tired eyes On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack, Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise Brings all sweet memories of the lost past back, With wild self-pitying grief of one betrayed, Duped in a land of dreams ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind'; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat, Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet; But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black, And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... It really seemed as though that frantic hyperbole, "blown to atoms," had for once realised itself. There was not a visible particle of Plattner to be seen; not a drop of blood nor a stitch of clothing to be found. Apparently he had been blown clean out of existence and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression! The evidence of his absolute disappearance as a consequence of that ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... up early to a fair dawn. The cloud-wrack was blown off, leaving the sky a lake of burnt yellow, pure, sweet, and cool. Thus the world entered upon the summer of Saint Luke, to a new-risen sun, to thin mists stealing off the moor, to wet flowers hearted anew, to blue air, and hope left for those who would go gleaning. While ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... They say ' A crafty knave does need no broker;' Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last Hume's knavery will be the duchess' wrack, And her attainture will be Humphrey's fall. Sort how it will, I shall have ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... case,—vast quantities of material substances, both vegetable and animal, are drifted together; where they are held, to a certain extent, stationary; or circling around in great ocean eddies. The wrack of sea-weed,—waifs from the distant shores,—birds that have fallen lifeless into the ocean, or drop their excrement to float on its surface,—fish that have died of disease, violence, or naturally,—for the finny tribes are not exempt from the natural laws of decay and death,—all these organisms, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... you? Who trotted up and down California Street last fall, soliciting campaign contributions for the Republican nominee from the lumber and shipping interests? Wasn't it Alden P. Ricks? Who thought the country was going to wrack and ruin—" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... was getting low, but he decided that did not matter either. Even so, Ross got to his feet, moving over to the drifts of storm wrack to gather more. Why should he stay here by a useless beacon? But somehow he could not force himself to move on, as ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... conquering eyes Love owes its chiefest victories, And borrows those bright arms from you With which he does the world subdue; Yet you yourselves are not above The empire nor the griefs of love. Then wrack not lovers with disdain, Lest love on you revenge their pain; You are not free, because you're fair, The boy did not his mother spare: Though beauty be a killing dart, It is no armour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various

... you lay out your lusts to overwhelm me, Hell never hated good, as I hate you, Sir; And I dare tell it to your face: What glory Now after all your Conquests got, your Titles, The ever-living memories rais'd to you, Can my defeat be? my poor wrack, what triumph? And when you crown your swelling Cups to fortune, What honourable tongue can sing my story? Be as your Emblem is, a g[l]orious Lamp Set on the top of all, to light all perfectly: Be as your office is, a god-like Justice, Into all ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... storm has tossed the barque Since first it had its maiden trip, Full many a conflagration's spark Has scorched and seared the laboring ship; And yet it ploughs a straightway course, Through wrack of billows; wind-tossed, spent, On sails the troubled Ship of State, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... for love Buried beneath the dust of life and death, Would wait for centuries of centuries, Ages of ages, until God remembered, And, through that perishing cloud-wrack, face looked up Once more to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... vivid lightnings played around the rocks near the camp: a storm came up and seemed to part in two, one half going north and the other south; but just before daybreak we were awakened by a crash of thunder that seemed to split the hills; and we heard the wrack as though the earth and sky would mingle; but only a few drops of rain fell, too little to leave any water, even on the surface of the flat rocks close to the camp. This is certainly an extraordinary climate. I do not believe a week ever passes without a shower of rain, but none ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... have plucked me with a strong hand out of the swirling drift of cares, anxieties, ambitions, hopes; and I see now that I could not have rescued myself; that I should have gone on battling with the current, catching at the river wrack, in the hopes of saving something from the stream. Now I am face to face with God; He saves me from myself, He strips my ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He made me, unashamed, nestling close to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... alike are lost: 10 Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack 15 All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! 20 You shall look long enough ere you come to ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... mildness brings us back, Now th' equinoctial heaven's rage and wrack Hushes at hest of Zephyr's bonny breeze. Far left (Catullus!) be the Phrygian leas And summery Nicaea's fertile downs: 5 Fly we to Asia's fame-illumined towns. Now lust my fluttering thoughts for wayfare long, Now my glad eager feet grow steady, strong. O fare ye well, my comrades, pleasant throng, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... "blood red"; "rack" or "wrack" is broken or floating cloud. What is the "morning star"? What is meant by its "shining dead"? What are the "burning plumes" and what the "meteor eyes" of the sunrise? What becomes of broken clouds ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... Sat Horrour plumed; nor wanted in his grasp What seemed both spear and shield: Now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn With violence of this conflict, had not soon The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, The pendulous round ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... apparent; for upon the night of the 11th we fairly entered upon that por- tion of the Atlantic which is known as the Sargasso Sea. An extensive tract of water is this, inclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's vessel on his ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... they threw their lives away as a man throws away a trifle, and to meet new conditions they developed new qualities with which they have not previously been credited, qualities of stubborn scientific stolidity. They out-Germaned the Germans in the way their organization withstood the shock and wrack of battle. It was the German machine which broke down first. On that field a new France was born. Let no German ever again say that she is effete. It was purely a French victory. This is no aspersion upon the Belgians ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... said na, and I looked for Jamie back, But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack, His ship was a wrack—why didna Jamie die, Or why am I spared ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... maidens' hearts, of the nature of an intermittent fever. The tide of Solway flows, but the more rapid his flow the swifter his ebb. The higher it brings the wrack up the beach, the deeper, six hours after, are laid bare the roots of the seaweed upon the shingle. Now Winsome Charteris, however her heart might conspire against her peace, was not at all the girl to be won before she was asked. Also there was that delicious spirit of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... Smooth mildness looks too many ways to thrive. Wherefore, since Mordred's crimes have wrong'd the laws In so extreme a sort, as is too strange, Let right and justice rule with rigour's aid, And work his wrack at length, although too late; That damning laws, so damned by the laws, He may receive his deep deserved doom. So let it fare with all that dare the like: Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end. Severity upholds both realm ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... The Mari- ners.] maners, thy choise, and thy eleccion. The Mariner that pas- seth the daungerous Seas, and by dreadfull tempestes, and huffyng waues is alwaies in perille, and many often tymes [Sidenote: The Mar- chauntes.] drouned. The Marchaunt lesyng his marchaundise by ship- wrack, shall thei impute the daunger and losse, to their wife at home? Or doe the Mariners leaue for all these tempestes, their arte of Nauigacion? Or the owner breake his shippe? Or the Marchaunt proue no aduentures, because of his losse, and many haue been ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... done. In the tempest's wrack the stars are dim and faith 's the only compass. Now or hereafter, what matters it? The sun will gild the meadows as of yesteryear. The moon will fee the world with silver coin. And all across the earth men will traffic on their little errands until nature calls them home. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... keep it straight. Now, Mr. Morrow, wasn't he an unfortunate man? for whoever would go down to Squire Dickson's hagyard, would see the same Larry's handiwork so beautiful and illegant, though his own was in such brutheen.* Even his barn to wrack; and he was obliged to thrash his oats in the open air when ther would be a frost, and he used to lose one-third of it; and if there came a thaw, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... somewhat lest his mind should fail him through grievous wrack of pain of body, but that trouble was set ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... And there was none to call to but himself. So, compassed by the power of the King, Enforced was she to wed him in her tears, And with a shameful swiftness: afterward, Not many moons, King Uther died himself, Moaning and wailing for an heir to rule After him, lest the realm should go to wrack. And that same night, the night of the new year, By reason of the bitterness and grief That vext his mother, all before his time Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born Delivered at a secret postern-gate To ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... that wrecks a summer day, With funeral blackness and with leaping fire And boiling roar of rain, more real than they That, when the warring heavens begin to tire, With tender fingers on the tumult paint; Spanning the huddled wrack from base to cope With soft effulgence, like some haloed saint,— The rainbow bridge ...
— The Silk-Hat Soldier - And Other Poems in War Time • Richard le Gallienne

... have said of them; I mean the Capital Offenders, in their Confessions. We professing law must speak reverently of kings and potentates. I perceive these honourable lords, and the rest of this great assembly, are come to hear what hath been scattered upon the wrack of report. We carry a just mind, to condemn no man, but upon ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... the open country. A wan, watery line of light lay under the brooding clouds in the west, tinged with a lurid hue; and all the great field of sky stretching above the level landscape was overcast with storm-wrack, fleeing swiftly before the wind. At times the train seemed to shake with the Wast, when it was passing oyer any embankment more than ordinarily exposed; but it sped across the country almost as rapidly as the clouds across the sky. No one in the carriage spoke. Then came over ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... good order for some time," said Miss Mattie, "but what with the money I had to spend for this and that, and not being able to get Mr. Joyce to come in for a day's work when I wanted him, it's gone on, until there is a good deal of wrack to it." ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... and water, London, the while, kept herself in her smudgy convent, her ear tuned only to the jolting music of her streets, the rough syncope of wheel and voice. Since then what countless winds have blown across the world, and cloud-wrack! And this older century is now but a clamor of the memory. What mystery it is! What were the happenings in that pin-prick of universe called London? Of all the millions of ant hills this side Orion, what about this one? London ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,— Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake On the leafage overbowed,— Often the King and his love-lass Let the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various



Words linked to "Wrack" :   wipeout, demolition, ruin, destroy, seaweed, destruction



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