Bight

“ I have but one hour with thee— Sceptre and crozier clashing, and the mitre Grappling the crown—and when I flee from this For a gasp of freer air, a breathing-while To rest upon thy bosom and forget him— Why thou, my bird, thou pipest Becket, Becket— Yea, thou my golden dream of Love's own bower, Must be the nightmare breaking on my peace With 'Becket.' ROSAMUND. O my life's life, not to smile Is all but death to me. ”

“ Survey’d the gulf down which the corpse would pass,
And lined its edges with resplendent moss:
Most modest, and most generous soul,
She’d oft contributed to Bacchus’ bowl,—
Prolong’d his life in most abundant ease,
Until decrepitude besought release;
And still regarded him as one of those
Whom she, herself, could least afford to lose:
“But he is gone! and with his corpse a tear
Shall stray,” said she, “upon the sinking bier;
And when regenerated he shall rise,
Earth shall be first, for joy, to dim her eyes.” ”

“ Beware of old doctors and their puny messengers of but one cubit high: distrust their pious frauds; and, instead of eating their melons, empale on a spit the bearers of them, Shouldest thou be such a fool as to visit them, the portal of the subterranean palace will shut in thy face with such force, as shall shake thee asunder: thy body shall be spit upon, and bats will nestle in thy belly. ”

“ O Beast of God, wherever thou art, may no harm come unto thee forever! May the grass of the valleys and of the desert be always green for thee! May the spear-point be blunted and the bow be broken of him who would hunt thee, or do thee harm! ”

“ And thus, from beginning to end, the elves at whom we laugh, help us toward larger knowledge, and a more chivalrous code of behavior. How shall we say, then, that there never was a fairy?
A miner, hearing the drip of subterranean water, took it to be a Duergar or a Bucca, swinging his tiny hammer over the shining ore. His notion of the Bucca, askew as it was, was one at bottom with our knowledge of the dark brooklet. You, the young heirs of mighty Science, can often outstrip the slow-gathered wisdom of dead philosophers. ”

“ Since you have evinced, by the most practical means within your power, the undoubted preference which you cherish for the form of a bat, a bat you shall remain for ever, and, once for all, quit that human shape which you have so foolishly despised. ”

“ Sanctity has its straight line also, darting from the centre, and with these arrows the many-coloured serpent, theme of all our poetry, is maimed and hunted. He that finds the white arrow shall have wisdom older than the Serpent, but what of the black arrow. How much knowledge, how heavy a quiver of the crow-feathered ebony rods can the soul endure? ”

“ Now, O Bhikkhus, if such is the forbearance and mildness of kings who wield the sceptre and bear the sword, so much more, O Bhikkhus, must you so let your light shine before the world, that you, having embraced the religious life according to so well-taught a doctrine and a discipline, may be seen to be forbearing and mild. ”

“ The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. ”

“ The negresses, full of joy at the behests of their mistress, and promising themselves much pleasure from the society of the Gouls, went with an air of conquest, and began their knockings at the tombs; as their strokes were repeated a hollow noise was heard in the earth, the surface hove up into heaps, and the Gouls on all sides protruded their noses, to inhale the effluvia which the carcases of the wood-men began to emit. ”

“ I have not been pursued as a lion is pursued; I have not been pursued even as wolves and foxes. I have been pursued as if I were a maggot in a rotten corpse. And do you suppose that it is in human nature to go through that, through months and through years, and not feel it? ”

“ Didst bend the rose-red bow,
Betokening wrath was no more Thine
With man's Cain-branded brow—
What now, O Lord, shouldst Thou accord
To such a shameful brood?
A bow as crimson as the sword
Which men have soakt in blood. ”

“ Sure enough as I slipped down by the hedge close to which I had been standing, I heard the harsh twang of the bow-strings, one, two, three, almost together, from the road, and even the whew of the shafts, though that was drowned in a moment by a confused but loud and threatening shout from the other side, and again the bowstrings clanged, and this time a far-off clash of arms followed, and therewithal that cry of a strong man that comes without his will, and is so different from his wonted voice that one has a guess thereby of the change that death is. ”

“ He felt inside. “Only two, after all, but big ones, and no mistake. Wrapped in cloth, too! I wonder—Hell and Furies! what’s this?”—as his fingers came in contact with something that felt like a human eye. ”

“ Know, miserable prince! thou art now in the abode of vengeance and despair. Thy heart, also, will be kindled like those of the other votaries of Eblis. A few days are allotted thee previous to this fatal period: employ them as thou wilt; recline on these heaps of gold; command the infernal potentates; range, at thy pleasure, through these immense subterranean domains: no barrier shall be shut against thee. ”

“ They cannot string the bow. Only the true lord and master can string it, and in due time he comes, and the cord is stretched once more upon the notch, singing to the touch of the finger with the sharp note of the swallow ”

“ There, almost at our feet, lay the dead body of a man, the face upturned and white in the moonlight! A sword whose hilt sparkled with gems stood fixed and upright in the breast; a pool of blood had collected on the stones of the sidewalk. ”

“ If but a single arrow be discharged against us, the tender flesh of this thy babe shall be the clout that shall receive it—and if but one burning brand be thrown, this shall be the very first food given to the conflagration. It is thy child. I hate it as being thine. ”

“ Then I went and I put my legs in place of his legs, and my hands in place of his forelegs, and my head in place of his head, and the horns on top of my head, so that the brute might think that it was the buck. I went out. When I was going out the giant laid his hand on me, and he said, 'There thou art, thou pretty buck; thou seest me, but I see thee not.' When I myself got out, and I saw the world about me, surely, O king! ”

“ In the meantime an arrow struck the king’s forehead with such force that he reeled and fell, and one of them came up and out off the king’s head. When the queen and princess saw the king dead, they took their way back to the jungle weeping and beating their breasts. ”

“ So I tell thee, when thou deemest thy need and thy grief to be as great as it may be, hie thou to the little dale where first we met, and call on me by the token of the bow I gave thee then, and presently thou shalt have tidings: now farewell. ”

“ What says our proverb, ‘The anger of the arrow-stricken man is kindled not against the bow but against the archer.’ Osman Bey, we shall meet again, and, Inshallah! with some weapon in our hands better than a jereed. ”

“ BECKET and HERBERT wait upon them. 1ST BEGGAR. Swine, sheep, ox—here's a French supper. When thieves fall out, honest men—— 2ND BEGGAR. Is the Archbishop a thief who gives thee thy supper? 1ST BEGGAR. Well, then, how does it go? When honest men fall out, thieves—no, it can't be that. 2ND BEGGAR. Who stole the widow's one sitting hen o' Sunday, when she was at mass? 1ST BEGGAR. Come, come! thou hadst thy share on her. Sitting hen! Our Lord Becket's our great sitting-hen cock, and we shouldn't ha' been sitting here if the barons and bishops hadn't been a-sitting on the Archbishop. ”

“ A FIGHT FOR THE BREECHES.
Sung by Mr. Potts, Theatrical Pavilion, Glasgow.
I’ve often heard Will’s wife declare,
That she the breeches, Sirs, would wear;
And though her husband would resist,
For them she'd fight with nails and fist,
⁠To gain, to gain the breeches.
One day as they were at it driving,
(Who would he master they were striving)
A single rap came to the door,
And for a while they did give o’er
⁠Fighting, fighting, fighting for the breeches.
Will ope’d the door, the business asked;
When he who knocked poor Will thus tasked,
“The master of this house I want!” ”

“ Coming to the Bell (more dead than alive) about eight, and pitch dark, we were greatly surprised that we could make no one hear to take our horses, and further, having turned the brutes into the stable ourselves, to find never a soul in the common room or parlour, so that the place seemed quite forsaken. ”

“ Do you know that frayed sparrow that comes and sits on your window ledge and waits for some one? Do you know that lightness that steals over your heart of a morning when you seat yourself at your desk amid the smell of dusty lawbooks? Well, there comes a time when the breeze and the sparrow and the leap of the heart unite to tell you that something is happening to old Mother Earth—and at the same time something happened to Bat. ”

“ A tall, light-skinned, muscular people, the men with long, straight, black hair, coiled up in a knot at the back, and the women—the descendants of those who sailed with broken Fletcher Christian and his comrades of the Bounty in quest of a place where to die—soft-voiced, and with big, timorous eyes. ”

“ For my own part, while admitting that in close observation of nature our early forefathers were probably supreme, I prefer to think that the innate concept of the bow was latent in the human mind and only waited some fortunate accident of observation to start it into being. ”

“ It is quite possible there may have been a crew of imps and disimbodied spirits jumping among the graves as before; but, as I had the good fortune to be frightened before I caught sight of them, I did not stop to look for them; and, for the same reason, I heard no more awful voices shrieking in my ears. I reached the Owl-roost and the memorable beech-tree, where the necessity of acting with all speed helped me to get rid of my terror. ”

“ For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds
are true;
And low at the shrines where my brothers bow,
there will I bow, too;
For no form of a god, and no fashion
Man has made in his desperate passion
But is worthy some worship of mine;—
Not too hot with a gross belief,
Nor yet too cold with pride,
I will bow me down where my brothers bow,
Humble—but open-eyed! ”

“ Now that most of the imaginary inhabitants of Man and its coasts have been rapidly passed in review before you, I may say something of others whom I regard as semi-imaginary, real human beings to whom impossible attributes are ascribed; I mean chiefly the witches, or, as they are sometimes called in Manx English, butches. [8] That term I take to be a variant of the English word witch, produced under the influence of the verb bewitch, which was reduced in Manx English to a form butch, especially if one bear in mind the Cumbrian and Scotch pronunciation of these words, as wutch and bewutch. ”

“ By hook or by crook I have ever been forced to win a living, though confronted at every step by wiles and temptations and traitorous enemies and despoilers. So much has this been so that my life has, throughout, resembled a barque tossed by tempestuous waves, a barque driven at the mercy of the winds. ”

“ Your most obedient servant——said I, making him a low bow——
The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding—made me one, as low again.——I never was more disconcerted with a bow in my life.
——The devil take the serious character of these people! ”

“ It is better in these days to mend a bow than to bend one. You who never looked a Frenchman in the face are pricked off for ninepence a day, and I, who have fought five stricken fields, can earn but fourpence. ”

“ Du. boeg, ‘ship’s bow,’ AS. bôg, bôh, ‘armus, ramus,’ E. bough (‘the joint of a tree,’ as it were) . The Goth. word may have been *bôgus (from pre-Teut. bhâghú-s) ; comp. Sans. bâhus (for bhâghú-s) , ‘arm, fore-arm, fore-feet,’ also Gr. πᾶχυς, πῆχυς (for φᾶχυς) , ‘elbow, fore-arm, bend of the arm,’ Armen. bazuk, ‘arm.’ On account of the Aryan base bhâghú-s the derivation of ModHG. Bug from biegen (root bug, pre-Teut. bhuk) , is impossible. The ancient terms for parts of the body, such as Arm, Bug, Herz, Nase, Niere, &c., are based upon obscure roots, of which we find no further trace anywhere ”

“ And because He brought all things to bear on the discipline of the soul, He said, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” [521] And the meek are those who have quelled the battle of unbelief in the soul, the battle of wrath, and lust, and the other forms that are subject to them. ”

“ And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns, and seven heads, and on his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads names of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as [the feet] of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority.
3 And [I saw] one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole earth wondered after the beast ”

“ Yet, the breeze is but a rover, When he wings away, Brook and poplar mourn a lover Sighing, "Well-a-day!" Men Well-a-day! Major-General Ah! the doing and undoing, That the rogue could tell! When the breeze is out a-wooing, Who can woo so well? Men Shocking tales the rogue could tell, Nobody can woo so well. Pretty brook, thy dream is over, For thy love is but a rover ”

“ A Knight, riding by on the day of her birth, discovers, by consultation of the Book of Fate, that she was destined to marry his son. He offers to adopt her, and throws her into the River Ouse. A fisherman saves her, and she is again discovered after many years by the Knight, who learns what Fate has still in store for his son. ”

“ We may believe there are no Battling Burrows, striking the helpless with brutal whip—but do we not ourselves use the whip of unkind words and deeds? So, perhaps, Battling may even carry a message of warning. ”