Fathom

His face was long, with a high forehead, he had deep darkling eyes, hard to fathom, though the look that they now bore was grave and benevolent, and a little weary.

The commissioners say there is a spell upon him that makes him hopeless—yes, and that it is shut up in a mystery which they cannot fathom.” “I know the mystery,” said Joan, with quiet confidence; “I know it, and he knows it, but no other but God.

After a thousand mazes overgone, At last, with sudden step, he came upon A chamber, myrtle-wall’d, embower’d high, Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy, And more of beautiful and strange beside: For on a silken couch of rosy pride, In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth, Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach: And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach, Or ripe October’s faded marigolds, Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds— Not hiding up an Apollonian curve Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light; But rather, giving them to the fill’d sight Officiously.

She could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or apprehension and distrust—but the expression on all the faces was identical.

For reasons he could not fathom, they were actually coming.

Every afternoon when the light changes, though—he can sense it to the instant, by some canniness that Iris can’t fathom—he throws down his brushes and sends Iris from the room.

I wish I could fathom his mind.

After all, if a chickenhead could fathom Latin he would cease to be a chickenhead.

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.

If he was helping Black, why didn’t he just finish me off then?”“Don’t ask me to fathom the way a werewolf’s mind works,” hissed Snape.

I believe that this singular man, who appears to fathom the motives of everyone, has purposely arranged for me to meet M. and Madame de Villefort, and sometimes, I confess, I have gone so far as to try to read in his eyes whether he was in possession of the secret of our love.” “My good friend,” said Valentine, “I should take you for a visionary, and should tremble for your reason, if I were always to hear you talk in a strain similar to this.

We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.

One old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made the following remark, the depth of which it is impossible to fathom:— “I am not sorry.

I cannot fathom why he was so insistent and so convinced.

Others have gone down from the village with a “fifty-six” and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the “fifty-six” was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers, We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us, We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also, You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your “unselfishness.” The Thou is older than the I; the Thou hath been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.

was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.

He could not fathom why his God Emperor spoke of hidden tracks, the Duncan and Nayla in the same breath.

“I thought of them, as a matter of fact, but in the end I plumped for a gold mine in Western Australia.” My neighbour was regarding me with a strange expression which I could not fathom.

And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight; O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again.

Yes; she was there too.” They looked at each other, and up and down, and they wondered; for the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom.

This shorten'd of its top, I gave my train A fathom's length, to shape it and to plane; The narrower end I sharpen'd to a spire, Whose point we harden'd with the force of fire, And hid it in the dust that strew'd the cave, Then to my few companions, bold and brave, Proposed, who first the venturous deed should try, In the broad orbit of his monstrous eye To plunge the brand and twirl the pointed wood, When slumber next should tame the man of blood.

At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity: all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft; that fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land—nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.

In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong.

The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’s inmost thoughts.

But as a measure of quantity, such as the natural foot, fathom, or handful, which is continually varying in its own quantity, can never be an accurate measure of the quantity of other things; so a commodity which is itself continually varying in its own value, can never be an accurate measure of the value of other commodities.