As to the how or the wherefore they might rack their brains without guessing.

how this racks my heart!

Blind or dubious conditions racked his soul, but real danger found him not only prepared, but even eager.

" Then he was seized with a fit of coughing that racked his feeble body from head to foot.

A grisly troop are seen, The painful family of Death, More hideous than their Queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage: Lo, Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with icy hand, And slow-consuming Age.

Therefore she began to rack her mind trying to remember some gate, or any gap in the hedge that should obviate the necessity of climbing it.

The appetite is extinguished or depraved, and intense headache racks the frame, the whole system is prostrated, as from a partial paralysis (all these results being the voice of Nature's sharp warning of this great wrong), and a rest of some days is needed before the system fully recovers from the injury inflicted.

The poor sleeper beneath could not hear it, it is true; his slumber, henceforth, was sound; the full tide of human population pressing fast beside the spot where he lay buried, should never wake him more: no human sorrow should rack his breast, no dream disturb his repose; yet cold, changed, and senseless as he was, the first sound of the falling clods jarred strange and harsh upon my ear, as if it must perforce awake him.

Now she clung to her first hope, believing that time, patience, kindness, would soften Mildred's resolution; then, seeing the blank indifference with which she treated Hugh, she racked her invention to provide other means of attaining her end.

I perceive all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into a kind of sport and diversion, for the image of past sorrows rejoices me.

Then came another long period of waiting, which racked the nerves until the silence grew well-nigh insupportable.

The dramatists racked their inventive powers to introduce surprises to interest the audience.

For my own part, I have racked my Fancy to the utmost; and sometimes, with the greatest Warmth of Imagination, have told him, That Night was made before Day, and many more fine Things, tho without any effect: Nay, last Night I could not forbear saying with more Heat than Judgment, that the Devil ought to be painted white.

Sharp pains racked his head; his right arm burned and twinged as though he had thrust it into pricking flames.

Not an ordinary headache, to disappear with a little cold water and fresh air; but a splitting, racking affair, which made him feel all head and dulness.

And there were wagons from the shopsgreat trucks, carrying supplies, going along at a pace that racked their engines and their bodies, and that boded disaster to whoever got in their way.

You restless islanders, who are continually racking imagination to perfect the art of moving from one place to another, and who can drop asleep in a carriage and wake at an hundred mile distance, have no notion of all the difficulties of a day's journey here.

What racking fear, what painful grief Ensue a pleasant sin!

Jack exclaimed, in racking horror.

Childlike and yet rashly bold, deeply spiritual, yet intensely human, "a simple creature, unlettered," yet presenting solutions of problems which have racked humanity, she inherits the true paradoxical nature of the mystic, to which is added a beauty and delicacy of thought and expression all her own.

But it is just as easy to bribe or rack a Jew into Mahometanism as into Christianity.

Yet each one racks This land with evil manifold; Unhappy wives of Troy, behold, They bear the dead Astyanax, Our prince, whom bitter Greeks this hour Have hurled to death from Ilion's tower. TALTHYBIUS.

Let thy bloody lictors press Round me, racking every limb, Let me only die with him, Since I openly confess That the gods are false whom we Long have worshipped, that I trust Christ

Wept the Alruna wife; Kissed her fair Freya: 'Far off in the morning land, High in Valhalla, A window stands open; Its sill is the snow-peaks, Its posts are the waterspouts, Storm-rack its lintel; Gold cloud-flakes above Are piled for the roofing, Far up to the Elfin-home, High in the wide-blue.

Ah, such discourse as we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of,we three; it expanded and racked my little home;"to say nothing of the universe, which doubtless felt the strain.