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hapless
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  • You also want to save this hapless creature.†   (source)
  • Instantly half a dozen bolts of lightning from the nearest tesla arced to the hapless animal.†   (source)
  • That Prendergast might one day shape the destiny of the World's Columbian Exposition would have seemed ridiculous to these boys, for Prendergast to them was about as hapless and sorry a human being as they could imagine.†   (source)
  • This is not an age of tragic grandeur, Prufrock suggests, but an age of hapless ditherers.†   (source)
  • On February 5, 1958, the hapless Vanguard team tried again for orbit and failed, although this time their rocket managed to at least clear the gantry before it blew up.†   (source)
  • A black car, alive with nasty lights, whines past her the other way, closing in on the hapless Hiro Protagonist.†   (source)
  • Four months ago, Madeleine randomly asked to be Andie's friend, and Andie, like a hapless puppy, accepted, so I know the little girl fairly well, along with all her minutiae-enthralled friends, who take many naps and love Greek yogurt and pinot grigio and enjoy sharing that with one another.†   (source)
  • Although the air coming through the window had purified the atmosphere, there still remained for the one who could identify it the dying embers of hapless love in the bitter almonds.†   (source)
  • She was a stern, no-nonsense dog trainer who subscribed to the theory that there are no incorrigible dogs, just weak-willed and hapless owners.†   (source)
  • Groans from the hapless radiators, coupled with the slamming of the wind against their windows, had kept them awake through the dark hours.†   (source)
  • We are only hapless victims of that irony.†   (source)
  • For eons, it seemed, I had accepted my plight as the hapless, put-upon victim of fate and the Furies, but this time I had to face the fact that I had brought my new catastrophe upon myself.†   (source)
  • And I also knew, I hope, that it wasn't about how I felt or how the hapless Haitian doctor felt.†   (source)
  • For all Patrick knew, Ed McCabe-who'd been just a hapless victim a half hour ago-could have been the reason Peter started shooting.†   (source)
  • Mr Dark loomed closer, magnificent in his picture-gallery flesh, his eyes, the eyes of all his beasts and hapless creatures cutting through his shirt, coat, trousers, fastening the old man tight, biting him with fire, fixing him with thousandfold attentions.†   (source)
  • Expert tournament-goers will conduct this exercise while also carrying a cup of coffee, which sloshes onto their wrists and forearms, while other hapless souls will do so while also chasing toddlers.†   (source)
  • He imagined some hapless monster terrorizing a random demigod in Kansas, only to find itself surrounded by several dozen carloads of heavily armored Romans.†   (source)
  • … That had been part of the definition of the incubus—the ability to father children with his hapless prey.†   (source)
  • All the more dimensional, the rarer and sweeter when the narrator allows an element of foolery to attach itself to his sober persona, some hapless-ness or slippery shame.†   (source)
  • The colt spent three years plunging around the track in devil-possessed rages and nurturing a vendetta against the hapless assistant starters assigned to hold his head in the doorless starting gate.†   (source)
  • When the spring was released, the fist shot out at a hapless puppet.†   (source)
  • "A particularly loud crash of pots and pans and a volley of catcalls directed at the hapless potboy who had dropped them blotted out some of the rest; then the boys heard the Guard finish: "… poisoned meat" "Risky."†   (source)
  • "Look who's talking," Jack said, pointing at the hapless Steward, who was beginning to awaken.†   (source)
  • And in entertaining visitors at Pointe du Lac-those hapless travelers who came up the river road by horseback or carriage begging accommodations for the night, sporting letters of introduction from other planters or officials in New Orleans.†   (source)
  • He was in a despicable cage, caked with his own excrement and urine, and had the lost look of a hapless, utterly defenseless prisoner; but the regal carriage of his head and the size of his frame bespoke the legendary giant he would become.†   (source)
  • Thank you," I mumbled haplessly, while inside I was screaming in terror.†   (source)
  • Cesar hit spanking grounders directly at the hapless two.†   (source)
  • That oaf Mace Tyrell left the defense of the Reach in the hands of a hapless weakling.†   (source)
  • His hapless head was made to taste The knuckles of my friend the Mallam: 'If you were then reciting the Koran Would you have ears for idle noises Darkening the trees, you child of ill omen?†   (source)
  • Felicity turns to a hapless shopkeeper sweeping his walk.†   (source)
  • He complied because he thought we were hapless fools.†   (source)
  • Incensed, Jerry heaved the glass, catching a hapless dresser in the shoulder.†   (source)
  • The hapless mutton, but his tegument; Yet what, transmuted, swart and silken flows Between, was neither plucked nor harshly flayed.†   (source)
  • I had come to Brooklyn ostensibly "to write my guts out," as dear old Farrell had put it, not to play the hapless supernumerary in some tortured melodrama.†   (source)
  • Then a minstrel and loremaster stood up and named all the names of the Lords of the Mark in their order: Eorl the Young; and Brego builder of the Hall; and Aldor brother of Baldor the hapless; and Frea, and Freawine, and Goldwine, and Deor, and Gram; and Helm who lay hid in Helm's Deep when the Mark was overrun; and so ended the nine mounds of the west-side, for in that time the line was broken, and after came the mounds of the east-side: Frealaf, Helm s sister-son, and Leofa, and…†   (source)
  • Confounding the curses that came his way-and there were many, for his usury was harsh beyond necessity-he continued to prosper, squeezing the life from those hapless creatures who were driven to borrow from him, and gaining his strength from their weakness.†   (source)
  • It became in his imagination his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a man he had read about somewhere, whose curse it was to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant who guarded the hill roll the boulder down again? and so on, forever, throughout eternity; he was still out there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of the earth, pushing his boulder up the hill.†   (source)
  • In those troubled days before the Civil War, great courage in opposing sectional pressures—greater perhaps even than that of Webster, Benton and Houston—was demonstrated by Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the bold if tactless fighter who in 1868 was saved from a humiliating ouster from the White House by the single vote of the hapless Edmund Ross.†   (source)
  • If I let him get back in out there …"He shrugged and seemed hapless for a moment.†   (source)
  • Marley was the incorrigible student and Kathy the hapless substitute teacher.†   (source)
  • The Winter King barely bothered to glance back at his hapless servant.†   (source)
  • Flames leap from the windows, and two hapless people fall to the rocks below.†   (source)
  • Tuk confessed that he had never penetrated the full width of the flame forest-nor known anyone who had in this season-and announced that, now that the tesla trees were becoming fully dozen bolts of lightning from the nearest tesla arced to the hapless animal.†   (source)
  • For while he had seen her husband all those years ago in the lobby of the Metropol, Nina had not married the handsome captain—she had married the hapless young fellow with the sailor's cap who had so eagerly retrieved her coat.†   (source)
  • Hiro enters the limousine and gets a look at the 'IV just in time to see Bruce Lee himself, as seen from the point of view of the hapless gargoyle spy, approaching down some dank corridor on a Raft ghost ship.†   (source)
  • Perhaps an unwed mother sounded merely hapless; whereas a divorcée implied intent— a woman who was out to snare their dear underachiever, Dan.†   (source)
  • Without our ingrained expectations about roads, however, none of this works: our hapless duo become nothing more than two guys stranded in desolate country.†   (source)
  • When the Count arrived at the Shalyapin at six o'clock that night, the denizens of the bar were celebrating the misadventures of "Pudgy" Webster, a gregarious if somewhat hapless American who had recently arrived in the capital.†   (source)
  • Yes, but we recall that Hamlet is himself a hapless ditherer, and it's only circumstance that saves him from his own haplessness and confers on him something noble and tragic.†   (source)
  • But all of this was more than twenty years ago now, so that as he approached Hisao Imada in the South Beach Drive, Ishmael saw the man in another light: hapless, small in the storm, numb with the cold and ineffective with his shovel while the trees threatened to come down around him.†   (source)
  • And wouldn't his excitement to find himself there, with her—not to mention his fever—have contributed to his readiness to remain wide-eyed and wide awake, alert for the next intruder, be it angel or ghost or hapless family member?†   (source)
  • We had it all: the hapless, weak-willed masters; the mentally unstable, out-of-control dog; the trail of destroyed property; the annoyed and inconvenienced strangers and neighbors.†   (source)
  • He had encouraged some of my other teammates and their families to sit with him—among them, the hapless Harry Hoyt, who'd received a base on balls with two outs, who'd made his own, small contribution to Owen Meany coming to the plate.†   (source)
  • For one thing, it has neither a thee nor a thou in sight, not an e'er nor an o'er, so we eliminate some of that ball of confusion that older poetry slings at hapless modern readers.†   (source)
  • On a foggy night his pursuers had to run in close and were more apt to lose their quarry altogether, in which case they turned to their radios, checking in with various compatriots whom they invariably found to be checking in with them: hapless voices tuned to one another in the hope of some shred of knowledge.†   (source)
  • Hardy doesn't call it that, but he has great fun describing, in his ironic and detached tone, the rain lashing down on hapless wayfarers, forcing them to seek shelter where they can; hence the appearance of our three gentlemen callers.†   (source)
  • The most poor Prufrock could aspire to would be Bernardo and Marcellus, the guards who first see the ghost of Hamlet's father, or possibly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the hapless courtiersused by both sides and ultimately sent unknowing to their own executions.†   (source)
  • We never know what the old man is, and speculation among the townspeople is hilarious as well as occasionally bizarre (his green eyes suggest to one character that he's a Norwegian sailor), but his hapless, shabby appearance and long-suffering silence clearly benefit the family in a nearly miraculous fashion.†   (source)
  • Yes, but we recall that Hamlet is himself a hapless ditherer, and it's only circumstance that saves him from his own haplessness and confers on him something noble and tragic.†   (source)
  • Petyr might be a whisker on the hapless side, but he wasn't as cold as Edwyn, nor as hot as Black Walder.†   (source)
  • Cesar always knew he would return to the States, but he never envisioned it would be on foot, following in the shadow of a band of hapless Mexican children.†   (source)
  • The best team in the league was none other than the Fugees themselves, who were undefeated in five games and who had delivered a 9–0 drubbing to one of their hapless rivals a few weeks before.†   (source)
  • She looked about her like that hapless victim on the stage of the Theatre des Vampires who did not know where she was.†   (source)
  • He didn't trust his translator to carry it—if Magwich were to drop it over the edge, accidentally or otherwise, he'd have to kill him, and as it was, he was merely planning on forcing the hapless Steward to look into Pandora's Box and become a Shadow-Born.†   (source)
  • Janaki and her family, the hapless chakkli Kaman, Kunthi even…… Yet I must be honest, as my husband and sons have always been: the tannery cannot be blamed for every misfortune we suffered.†   (source)
  • Racked with misery, I recalled how my first knowledge of Sophie and Nathan had come like this: Stingo, the hapless eavesdropper.†   (source)
  • The day of judgment is not yet, "and voices reached him, the voices no doubt of the hapless man and the evil woman, and he raised his eyes helplessly and watched the screen.†   (source)
  • Floating on an absolute tidal wave of desire, I fell into a daydream through which there rushed back sharp flickering impressions of my hapless eavesdrop of the day before.†   (source)
  • And I watched while the crazy Polack took a gulp of whiskey straight from the bottle and with her other hand—the one which had wrought upon me such mixed mortification and pleasure—gently massaged into the skin of her face my hapless exudate.†   (source)
  • In truth, I hoped that in his mature state he had not allowed himself to be sacrificed on the altar of Onan, like his hapless offspring; or could it simply be that just now I had misinterpreted his glance and that he was mercifully free of that fever at last?†   (source)
  • Furthermore, it appeared that in all likelihood if I played my cards right, remained the cool exotic Cavalier squire whom Leslie had found so maddeningly aphrodisiacal at our first encounter, if I committed no hapless blunders, this God— or perhaps Jehovah-bestowed gift would become part of a steady, even daily functioning arrangement.†   (source)
  • At the time of which I write, that hectic summer of 1947, when she told me so many things about her past and when I was fated to get ensnared, like some hapless June bug, in the incredible spider's nest of emotions that made up the relation between Sophie and Nathan, she was working in an out-of-the-way corner of Flat-bush as a part-time receptionist in the office of Dr. Hyman Black-stock (ne Bialystok).†   (source)
  • …shelves jammed with books), had the enormous good fortune to inhabit a world populated by writers and poets and critics and other literary types; and thus on these evenings as the twilight softly fell and the terrace began to fill with chattering, beautifully dressed sophisticates, I discerned in the shadows the faces of all the impossible heroes and heroines I had ever dreamed of since that moment when my hapless spirit had become entrapped by the magic of the printed world.†   (source)
  • If I could honestly invest the hapless actor in this fateful drama with feelings of a loftier cast, my task would be easier and I would feel confident of the outcome.†   (source)
  • Gwion Bach, who, having tasted three drops from the poison kettle of inspiration, was eaten by the hag Caridwen, reborn as an infant, and committed to the sea, was found next morning in a fish trap by a hapless and sorely disappointed young man named Elphin, son of the wealthy landholder Gwyddno, whose horses had been killed by the flood of the burst kettle's poison.†   (source)
  • Out yonder, on the juniper-spotted plateau in front of the village, the Spaniards had camped, exacting a heavy tribute of corn and furs and cotton garments from their hapless hosts.†   (source)
  • He hurled at the hapless animal the most potent swearwords in the English language.†   (source)
  • "I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.†   (source)
  • And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?†   (source)
  • Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and to her hapless orphan state.†   (source)
  • Go, brave men, we owe you too much already; let us no longer involve you in our hapless fortunes!†   (source)
  • What wonder the hapless youth found the phrases but the darkening of a riddle?†   (source)
  • Tread silently round the hapless couch of the poor prostrate soul.†   (source)
  • She is always having stalls at Fancy Fairs for the benefit of these hapless beings.†   (source)
  • Society must manage to get on without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it—except indeed for such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who, if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden ….†   (source)
  • It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave.†   (source)
  • It could not have been love, for she loved brother, sister, parents, friends; it could not have been consideration for the poor, the unfortunate, the hapless; she had expressed her sympathy for these by giving freely; it could not have been pleasure, culture, travel, society, wealth, position, fame, for these had been hers all her life.†   (source)
  • Once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim.†   (source)
  • Its many and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and the hapless those who had their fortune yet to make and those fortunes and affairs had reached a disastrous climax elsewhere.†   (source)
  • "A penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature,"—and he fumbled in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out.†   (source)
  • He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay bound and helpless in his web.†   (source)
  • A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.†   (source)
  • He forced wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their natural products in 'exchange,' as this form of robbery was called, and thereby he 'created new wants,' to supply which (that is, to be allowed to live by their new masters) the hapless, helpless people had to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they might have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of 'civilisation.'†   (source)
  • The hapless Dantes was doomed.†   (source)
  • From that hapless moment the graces, the attachment, the fidelity of the young Indian, had lost their power to please.†   (source)
  • I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.†   (source)
  • The taste for large fortunes subsists, though large fortunes are rare: and on every side we trace the ravages of inordinate and hapless ambition kindled in hearts which they consume in secret and in vain.†   (source)
  • He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenceless child,—like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or steel,—as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,—he was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism.†   (source)
  • And this hapless Lizaveta was so simple and had been so thoroughly crushed and scared that she did not even raise a hand to guard her face, though that was the most necessary and natural action at the moment, for the axe was raised over her face.†   (source)
  • On the smooth sand we searched carefully for any trace of our hapless companions, but not the mark of a footstep could we find.†   (source)
  • The reader, carrying the suggestion forward, will see the necessity which governed the Roman when, in such emergencies, he locked the hapless wretches to their seats.†   (source)
  • I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands.†   (source)
  • --------_ A sympathizing friend sends the following gem: A LAMENT (FOR S. B. PAT PAW) We mourn the loss of our little pet, And sigh o'er her hapless fate, For never more by the fire she'll sit, Nor play by the old green gate.†   (source)
  • It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;—this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.†   (source)
  • But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race.†   (source)
  • The first generous impulse of Duncan was to rush to the rescue of the hapless wretch; but he felt himself bound to the spot by the iron grasp of the immovable scout.†   (source)
  • Whatever the range of its flight, however evasive its trajectory (even up and over the Nautilus), the hapless flying fish always found a dolphin to welcome it with open mouth.†   (source)
  • Dantes from his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the fragments the floating forms of the hapless sailors.†   (source)
  • 'The aspect of the coast now began to change: the shores were sandy, while further inland lay dense forests, from whose gloomy depths I could ever and anon hear the fierce roar of beasts of prey, the yell of apes, the fiendish laugh of the hyaena, or the despairing death cry of a hapless deer.†   (source)
  • It was most probably owing to the former circumstance that the body had escaped the rapacity of the carrion birds, which had been seen hovering above the thicket, and the latter proved that life had not yet entirely abandoned the hapless victim when he entered the brake.†   (source)
  • Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.†   (source)
  • But in the midst of these evidences of natural weakness, there were at times such an air of pious resignation, such gleams of meek but holy hope lighting her countenance, as might well have rendered it a question whether the hapless captive was most a subject of pity, or of admiration.†   (source)
  • No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that makes the voyage, and if you take the…†   (source)
  • The crowd without gave way, and several warriors entered the place, bringing with them the hapless conjurer, who had been left so long by the scout in duress.†   (source)
  • Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.†   (source)
  • At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a letter of tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta, imploring him not to withdraw the support which he had granted to their parents and painting in terms of artless pathos their lonely and hapless condition.†   (source)
  • But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic female character which ladies admire is a more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship—yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this consolation—that the men do…†   (source)
  • Hapless Aegeon, whom the fates have mark'd
    To bear the extremity of dire mishap!   (source)
    hapless = unlucky or unfortunate
  • perhaps a hapless gain   (source)
  • Hapless child   (source)
  • Unless these were the hapless remains of merchants accused of short-weighting the customers, it seemed a bit unsanitary to be burying people in the marketplace.†   (source)
  • I bound up some fumble-foot who had managed to slash himself trying to dance between swords, I set the broken leg of a hapless victim who'd got in the way of a carelessly thrown hammer, and I doled out castor oil and nasturtium syrup to countless children who had overindulged in sweeties.†   (source)
  • Woe betide any maiden, or any man, for that matter, who met a fine horse by the water's side and thought to ride upon him, for a rider once mounted could not dismount, and the horse would step into the water, turn into a fish, and swim to his home with the hapless rider still stuck fast to his back.†   (source)
  • My Days I sing, and the Lands—with interstice I knew of hapless War.†   (source)
  • A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot.†   (source)
  • All the hapless silent lovers, All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers!†   (source)
  • I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons, I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil'd faithfully and long and then died, I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd Bacchus, I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head, I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov'd, saying to the people Do not weep for me, This is not my true…†   (source)
  • Hapless wretch! how can I brook On thy misery to look?†   (source)
  • Here hapless Icarus had found his part, Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art.†   (source)
  • O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve, Of thy presumed return! event perverse!†   (source)
  • Hapless child of hapless sire, Didst thou recklessly conspire, Madly brave the King's decree?†   (source)
  • O tearful Guadiana, and ye O hapless daughters of Ruidera who show in your waves the tears that flowed from your beauteous eyes!†   (source)
  • Green altars, rais'd of turf, with gifts she crown'd, And sacred priests in order stand around, And thrice the name of hapless Hector sound.†   (source)
  • Others, more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall By doom of battle, and complain that Fate Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.†   (source)
  • But of all I saw and observed down there, what gave me most pain was, that while Montesinos was speaking to me, one of the two companions of the hapless Dulcinea approached me on one without my having seen her coming, and with tears in her eyes said to me, in a low, agitated voice, 'My lady Dulcinea del Toboso kisses your worship's hands, and entreats you to do her the favour of letting her know how you are; and, being in great need, she also entreats your worship as earnestly as she…†   (source)
  • Hapless Valentine!†   (source)
  • This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured, And to rebellious fight rallied their Powers, Insensate, hope conceiving from despair.†   (source)
  • Think of his mother-wife (ill sorted names) Done by a noose herself had twined to death And last, our hapless brethren in one day, Both in a mutual destiny involved, Self-slaughtered, both the slayer and the slain.†   (source)
  • Again, woe is me, hapless that I am! it was not verses that conquered me, but my own simplicity; it was not music made me yield, but my own imprudence; my own great ignorance and little caution opened the way and cleared the path for Don Clavijo's advances, for that was the name of the gentleman I have referred to; and so, with my help as go-between, he found his way many a time into the chamber of the deceived Antonomasia (deceived not by him but by me) under the title of a lawful…†   (source)
  • Now, spent, the goal they almost reach at last, When eager Nisus, hapless in his haste, Slipp'd first, and, slipping, fell upon the plain, Soak'd with the blood of oxen newly slain.†   (source)
  • I see thy fall Determined, and thy hapless crew involved In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread Both of thy crime and punishment: Henceforth No more be troubled how to quit the yoke Of God's Messiah; those indulgent laws Will not be now vouchsafed; other decrees Against thee are gone forth without recall; That golden scepter, which thou didst reject, Is now an iron rod to bruise and break Thy disobedience.†   (source)
  • When Troy with Grecian arms was closely pent, Old Priam, fearful of the war's event, This hapless Polydore to Thracia sent: Loaded with gold, he sent his darling, far From noise and tumults, and destructive war, Committed to the faithless tyrant's care; Who, when he saw the pow'r of Troy decline, Forsook the weaker, with the strong to join; Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth, And murder'd, for his wealth, the royal youth.†   (source)
  • But rise;—let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere; but strive In offices of love, how we may lighten Each other's burden, in our share of woe; Since this day's death denounced, if aught I see, Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil; A long day's dying, to augment our pain; And to our seed (O hapless seed!†   (source)
  • But when, with blood and paleness all o'erspread, The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead, He griev'd; he wept; the sight an image brought Of his own filial love, a sadly pleasing thought: Then stretch'd his hand to hold him up, and said: "Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid To love so great, to such transcendent store Of early worth, and sure presage of more?†   (source)
  • Such were his looks, so gracefully he spoke, That, were I not resolv'd against the yoke Of hapless marriage, never to be curst With second love, so fatal was my first, To this one error I might yield again; For, since Sichaeus was untimely slain, This only man is able to subvert The fix'd foundations of my stubborn heart.†   (source)
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