> as lemmas

1679 A. C. Eng. Oracle 7 I come later than I intended, to speak of the universal Slaughter that shall be committed upon all Sexes, and all Ages by that pale Monster which the Evangelist saw in the Apocalypse, arm'd with a sharp Sythe, and mounted on a rawbon'd Horse, that went more swift than March Winds, or Summer Lightning.

1779 tr. J. W. von Goethe Sorrows of Werter I. x. 58 The lightning, which had for some time been seen on the horizon, and which I had declared to be only summer lightning, and proceeding entirely from heat, became much more violent, and the thunder was heard through all the noise of the fiddles.

1832 Ld. Tennyson Miller's Daughter iii, in Poems (new ed.) 34 Gray eyes lit up With summer lightnings of a soul So full of summer warmth.

1872 Daily News 7 Nov. When a pheasant is flushed you only catch a summer-lightning glimpse of him.

1902 Jrnl. Polynesian Soc. 11 32 It [sc. rua koha] is the play of summer lightning as seen upon mountain peaks and high ranges, and also upon the horizon.

1941 E. R. Eddison Fish Dinner xiv. 253 You are all firishness and summer lightnings this afternoon.

2003 D. M. G. Sutherland French Revol. & Empire ii. 43 What popular violence that had taken place was more or less peripheral to the struggle, flashes of summer lightning on the horizon.