"Bleak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the castle of the Duke, its ruler, lay beside a lake that was bluer than the deepest indigo. A long time ago the Knight Wendelin and his squire George chanced upon this lake, but they found nothing save waste fields and bleak rocks around it, yet the shores must formerly have borne a different aspect, for there were shattered columns and broken-nosed statues lying on the ground. Against the hillside there were remains of ancient ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Gone were the laughing vales, the pale-green hills, the luring, feminine guise of nature, the soft-lapping waves upon a peaceful, shining shore. The spirit that rides the thunder had claimed these bleak and desolate ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... how These flow'rs with hasty, stretch'd heads grow And strive for heav'n, but rooted here Lament the distance with a tear! The honeysuckles clad in white, The rose in red, point to the light; And the lilies, hollow and bleak, Look as if they would something speak; They sigh at night to each soft gale, And at the day-spring weep it all. Shall I then only—wretched I!— Oppress'd with earth, on earth still lie?" Thus speaks he to the neighbour trees, And many sad soliloquies To springs and fountains doth ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... on, if the future of toil and dreary misery developed itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation. He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little Ulysse ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... objects of the world but the bearing of such objects upon their will and person. With objects which have no such bearing there sounds within them a constant note: It is nothing to me, which is the fundamental base in all their music. Thus all things seem to them to wear a bleak, gloomy, strange, hostile aspect. It is only for their will that they seem to have any perceptive faculties at all; and it is, in fact, only a moral and not a theoretical tendency, only a moral and not an intellectual ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... were obliged to send word to this effect to our Portland patrons. The next morning Addison and I rode home on old Jim and Buckskin, with their harness tied up in a bundle before us. The wind was piercing and bleak; we were both so chilled as to be ill of a cold for several days afterward. The story that we had to tell at home was far from being an inspiriting one. Not only had we lost our load, traverse sleds and rack, but in due time we had ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... because they refused to submit to a king called Harold Fairhair, and when he pursued them to the Orkney and Faroe Islands they took refuge on the coasts of Iceland. There they settled, built themselves wooden houses, planted such crops as would grow in that bleak land, and founded a commonwealth. Little by little they left the old Viking life, and it lived only in their ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... shivering and blue, will tell you it is not cold at all, for he will permit no reproach to lie on his beloved land; but the traveller frequently becomes discouraged, and the American contingent, especially, blames those misleading English writers who, finding relief from their own bleak island in Italian climes, exaggerated the conditions by apostrophizing the country as "Sunny Italy" and for more than a century uttered such rhapsodies in its praise that the whole world credited them—until it acquired personal ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... in, were comforted by the news that the man who shot Larry Byrne was swinging for it in the county jail at Ballinscreen. But you never made such a mistake in your born lives. That man was out on the mountains in the bleak, bitter winter weather, was in hiding all day in the caves up there in the clouds on top of Croghan, and by night was coming down to the lonely mountain farmhouses to beg what would keep the life in his big hungry body. The man that swung for the murder was as innocent as yourself, and more betoken, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... afterwards, and we are surprised to find that the farmer is safely housed, and that he has not been robbed upon a bleak moor on a dark stage. But we soon feel a sensation of awe, when we learn that before us is the interior of the very farm-house that is going to be murdered. The farmer and his wife go through the long-standing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... gentlemanlike than he had ever felt in his life or should doubtless ever feel again. It might have been enough—but somehow as they stood there with this immense clearance between them it wasn't. The clearance was like a sudden gap or great bleak opening through which there blew upon them a deadly chill. Too many things had fallen away, too many new rolled up and over him, and they made something within shake him to his base. It upset the full vessel, and though she kept ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... on the bleak seabeach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... deodar and round the first bare boulder that marked the beginning of the Ladies' Mile. It lay rolled out before them, the Ladies' Mile, sinuous and grey and empty, along the face of the cliff; they could see from one end of it to the other. It was the bleak side of Jakko; even tonight there was a fresh springing coldness in it blowing over from the hidden snows behind the rims of the nearer hills. Madeline held up her face to it, and gave herself a moment of ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?— A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... But such bleak thoughts were short-lasting. For as soon as the tunnels and the stairway were cleared of smoke, Grim Hagen's army came pouring into the room. Grim Hagen had mustered at least two-thousand men. He had divided these into ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... Italian, one in Dutch occupation. In all, at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million, some fourscore distinct posts of observation were provided; among them such inhospitable, and all but inaccessible rocks in the bleak Southern Ocean, as St. Paul's and Campbell Islands, swept by hurricanes, and fitted only for the habitation of seabirds, where the daring votaries of science, in the wise prevision of a long leaguer by the elements, were supplied with stores for many months, or even a whole year. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... prospective history of the World from that event down to the Millennium. Considered as a narrator, Michael is very subject to dullness; were it not for the unfailing dignity and magniloquence of his diction, his tale would be merely a bleak compendium of the outlines of Scripture history; but to Raphael is committed the story of the war in Heaven and its amazing sequel,—a story containing passages so brilliant, and so little necessary to be narrated at length, that there is some flavour of inconsistency in Milton's apology ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... which, if nothing more, are at least delightful souvenirs. They form the golden thread in the tangled web of our existence, ever appearing amid the darker surface around, and throwing a fair halo of brilliancy on what, without it, were cold, bleak, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Furthermore, the turning point in the war had been reached. Even before Washington's forces went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Burgoyne[153] had surrendered at Saratoga, on October 17, 1777; and, before the cold bleak winter at Valley Forge was over, the treaty of French alliance was signed on February 6, 1778. The torments at Valley Forge proved to be the birth of a new ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... While her husband was absent Marian made the country house on the Hudson her residence, but in many ways she sought opportunity to reduce the awful sum of anguish entailed by the war. She often lured Estelle from the city as her companion, even in bleak wintry weather. Here Strahan found her when on a leave of absence in the last year of the war, and he soon learned that he had another heart to lose. Marian was discreetly blind to his direct and soldier-like siege. Indeed, she proved the best ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... luxuriant green tracery all through the months of blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untiring ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... who are very numerous, were content to reside in their castles and houses, in that bleak and barren climate; and although some of them made frequent journeys to London, yet I do not remember any of their greatest families, till very lately, to have made England their constant habitation, before the Union: Or, if they did, I am sure it was generally to their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... of the day I went into Emily's room. She had been growing worse for some time, and had been removed to the westerly room to be rid of the bleak winds. David was sitting on a low stool by her bedside, his head resting upon the bed, looking up in her face. She smiled as ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... some people whom already we have met, and to others whom thus far we have not met, were transacted in a lofty and rather bleak looking room at Scotland Yard between the hours of nine and ten A. M.; that is, later in the morning of the fateful day whose advent we have heard acclaimed from ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... seconds, unless the shadows upon the hills and the mountain eagles answered for such. Ian was the highly trained fencer, adept of the sword. Glenfernie's knowledge was lesser, more casual. But he had his bleak wrath, a passion that did not blind nor overheat, but burned white, that set him, as it were, in a tingling, crackling arctic air, where the shadows were sharp-edged, the nerves braced and the will steel-tipped. They ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... great London property came into the possession of the Grosvenor (Westminster) family. The house was rebuilt, and renamed Grosvenor House. Strype says: "The Earl of Peterborough's house with a large courtyard before it, and a fine garden behind, but its situation is but bleak in winter and not over healthful, as being too near the low meadows on the south and west parts." The house was finally ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... duel continued with long lapses of silence while the moon grew to a disk of pale, liquid silver in the west, enduring through the bleak, chill time preceding the end of night, finally fading and disappearing as the far eastern distance began to glow with the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... operating expenses and public investment. In 2000-01, the World Bank approved a structural adjustment loan of $105 million to help support fiscal reforms. However, reforms could prove difficult given the government's bleak financial situation. The IMF approved a $73 million poverty reduction and growth facility for Niger in 2000 and announced $115 million in debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the spring the swallows all return, And the bleak bitter sea grows mild once more, With all its ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... own very successful Washington Irving. He drew largely upon the common stock of ideas, and dressed them up in a new, and what has proved to be a most attractive form. So, again, with Mr. Dickens. Read his "Bleak House" and you will find that he has been a most careful observer of men and things, and has thereby been enabled to collect a great number of facts that he has dressed up in different forms, but that is all he has done. He is in the condition of a man who had entered a large garden and collected ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... padrone has relations at Sant' Agata, as I have told your eccellenza, and his vessel has lain on the beach near the castle many a bleak winter." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... have given Venice an appreciation that will live in my mind with every delight of that dearest place in the world. But all the same you remain for me a dearest of friends, whether I see you framed by your Venice, or brightening up our bleak London, should you come there. In Venice, however, should I live and you be there next autumn, it will go hard with me if I do not meet ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... February, and it was a very bleak walk over the mountain; but Winthrop took it many a time. His mother now and then said when she saw him come in or go out, "Don't overtry yourself, my son! —" but he answered her always with his usual composure, or with one of those ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Under these circumstances the wet soon found its way through Abe's boots and clothes. "Ne'er moind," he said to himself, "I'll find some dry claathes when I get there." So on he went over the rough bleak hill that wouldn't afford shelter for a rabbit, much less for a man, down the steep slope, through the running gutters of water. "Aye dear," said he, "I'm weshing my feet withaat taking my booits off." At the bottom of the hill, known as Stone's Wood Bottom, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... and pointed to the men, sturdy toilers starved out of bleak Dakota and axe-men farmers from the forests of Michigan. "Of these, and the rest who are coming by and by," he said. "Still, I don't want to go into that; and you seem angry. You haven't offered to shake ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... feelings which one never does talk of—there is no language that I ever learned which will express them. But I have never heard any music that could reach my soul like that which God gives us in the blossom season—the summer, the fall of late fruit—and the bleak, hard winter, when the clash of ice against ice has a sound that no man or ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the sheep, which went drifting past Hidden Water like an army without banners. But alas for Hidden Water and the army of sheep!—in this barren Winter the torrential rains did not fall, the grass did not sprout, and the flowers did not bloom. A bleak north wind came down from the mountains, cold and dry and crackling with electricity, and when it had blown its stint it died down in a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... atmosphere, and also, as regards the landscape, in a completely different country, which latter fact we only fully appreciated with the morning light, as we drew near to Pretoria. The stranger landing at Delagoa Bay, and travelling through those bleak and barren mountains, might well ask himself the reason of the late prolonged and costly war; but as he approaches the Rand, and suddenly sees the rows and rows of mining shafts and chimneys, which are the visible ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... looks so odd to have to celebrate Christmas with a warm sun shining and all the trees in full leaf!" said Joyce. "That is why it never feels Christmas to me. I miss the home aspect,—frost and snow, and landscapes bleak and bare." ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... the villa of my valued hostess, and my consequent migration at very short notice to Cannes. I started at night, and in the small hours of the morning I had to change trains at Genoa. As I paced the dark platform, the air was bleak and wintry, and, looking back with regret to the shining suns of Cyprus, I took my place at last in another train, shivering. For a few hours I slept. When I woke I was less uncomfortable. The air, unless this was mere fancy, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... imagine to ourselves His Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every churchyard and every grave: the mausoleums of the great—the grassy sods of the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious slumbering under fretted aisle and cathedral canopy—the myriads whose requiem is chanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The child carried away in the twinkling of an eye—the blossom just opening, and then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock of corn in its season, falling withered and seared like the leaves of autumn; the young exulting in the prime ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... all the good days in the year, upon a Christmas eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting, foggy weather; and the city clocks had only just gone three, but it was ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... night the scheme was divulged to Dorothy, and she was in ecstasies. London had always sounded bleak and distant and terrible to her; and her heart had misgiven her at the idea of leaving her aunt. If only this thing might be arranged! When Brooke spoke the next morning of returning at once to his ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... fabric melts away; Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone, And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone; And lingering last, deception dear, The choir's high sounds die on my ear. Now slow return the lonely down, The silent pastures bleak and brown, The farm begirt with copsewood wild, The gambols of each frolic child, Mixing their shrill cries with the tone Of ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... by the Gulf and River St. Lawrence and Canada, and W. by James' Bay and Hudson's Bay. Its area is estimated at 420,000 sq. miles. The vast interior, inhabited by a few wandering Nascopie Indians, is little known; the coast, mainly but sparsely peopled by Eskimoes, is rugged, bleak and desolate. Seals abound, and the sea is well stocked with cod and other fish. The wild animals include deer (caribou), bears, wolves, foxes, martens, and otters. The Eskimo dogs are trained to draw sledges, to which they are attached in teams of ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... his sister's arrows, through soft dells of dreamy dew. Vext with gleams of Ladon's daughter, dashed along the son of Jove, Fast upon flower-trammelled Daphne fleeting on from grove to grove; Flights of seawind hard behind him, breaths of bleak and whistling straits; Drifts of driving cloud above him, like a troop of fierce-eyed Fates! So he reached the water-shallows; then he stayed his steps, and heard Daphne drop upon the grasses, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... exclusive demesnes shimmered before Andrew's vision as remote as some radiant planetary choir. The stir on the field, however, excited him. The sun shone through a clear air on this late meeting of the season, investing it with an air of innocent holiday gaiety which stultified Bakkus's bleak description. And Andrew's great height overtopping the crowd afforded him a fair view ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the last proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to part with the ancient family seat, and to remove himself to a lonely and sea-beaten tower, which, situated on the bleak shores between St. Abb's Head and the village of Eyemouth, looked out on the lonely and boisterous German Ocean. A black domain of wild pasture-land surrounded their new residence, and formed ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... "her colour is remarkably good: it is not subject to any variation like ours. The bleak sea air does not dim the roses on her cheeks; while these young ladies look as blue and as cold as figures carved out of stone. Of course, Miss Leigh will think me very uncharitable in saying that Mrs. D. paints; ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's gale in an old barn at home. "Don't you let him start his hollering, mister," hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... ordered off to a new life, from which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he saw two pictures with uncanny vividness—himself in bleak lodgings raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies, laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They would be ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... begin their real un-understood life. At times it seemed impossible that it was the same world. Surely the sun that struck like a hammer in Jamaica could not be the gracious warm planet that gilded the gorse of the Antrim glens. And up the Baltic in mid-winter it was bleak as a candle, and even then in Antrim it had a great kindliness. Nor were the winds the same. The hot puffs of the Indian Ocean, the drunken, lurching flaws of Biscay Bay, the trades that worked steadily as ants, had not the human quality of the winds of the Nine Glens, that were ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... for something else from him, some warming, comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating encouragement along that stark, bleak way. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... picture-galleries, and then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in the Palace garden—for which crime I was nearly run through the body by a rascally sentinel—I was driven, perforce, into the great bleak lonely place before the Palace, with its roads branching off to all the towns in the world, which Louis and Napoleon once intended to conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite pursuit at leisure, and was meditating whether I should go back to "Vefour's" for dinner, or patronise ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stain appeared in Warden's cheeks as his thoughts reverted to Lawler's return to Willets, after disposing of his cattle to the Red Rock buyer. And Warden's shoulders sagged a little, the smile faded and he glared malignantly at the bleak, gray clouds that sailed over town on the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... blighted by drought, avoiding the great cracks which had opened in the dry earth and lay gaping like thirsty mouths for rain. The crops were burnt, and the land which had seemed so fertile looked bleak and sterile. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... tradesman's cart; and, as it was winter, there were no children playing in the garden. It was a rainy afternoon. A gray cloud of fog and soot hung from the whole sky. About a score of yellow leaves yet quivered on the trees, and the statue of Queen Anne stood bleak and disconsolate among the bare branches. I am afraid I am getting long-winded, but somehow that afternoon seems burned into me in enamel. I gazed drearily without interest. I brooded over the past; I ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... ruined castle loomed darkly, a ghastly monument of evil deeds. I looked about for the madman but saw him not. The weirdness of the place, the horror of its secret, crept into my blood. I became afraid. Down the bleak road I picked my way, glancing fearsomely over my shoulder. I fain would have ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... show me what she thought. But granting that our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be, this mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not live there. But in that case where did she come from? It could not be anyone of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs. Stevens. The visitor must ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through it for the first time; and now, in strong contrast with that day, the heavy sky above him was a leaden gray, there was no greenness about the hills, which were still waiting for the cloak of winter snow that invests them with a certain beauty of its own. There was something painful in all this bleak and bare desolation for a man who was traveling to find a grave at his journey's end; the thought of that grave haunted him. The lines of dark pine-trees here and there along the mountain ridges against the sky seized ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... in the Westervelt, the reading took place on the open stage, which was bleak and draughty. The company sat in a funereal semicircle, with the author, the star, and the manager in a short line facing them. All the men retained their overcoats, for the morning was miserably raw, and at Helen's positive command kept their heads covered; ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was not seasoned for such work, and considered not that a mind which had once been opened by knowledge, could ill endure the contraction of dark and perpetual ignorance. The approach, however, of winter, brought me acquainted with my mistake. It grew cold, it grew bleak; little guarded against the inclemency of the ——, I felt its severity in every limb, and missed a thousand indulgencies which in possession I had never valued. To rise at break of day, chill, freezing, and comfortless! no sun abroad, no fire at home! to go out in all weather ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Cephissus winds his tortuous way to flow under grey willows, at the foot of barren stony hills, till his turbid waters lose themselves, no longer in the vast reedy swamps of the now vanished Copaic Lake, but in the darkness of a cavern in the limestone rock. Eastward, clinging to the slopes of the bleak range of which the hill of Panopeus forms part, were the ruins of Chaeronea, the birthplace of Plutarch; and out there in the plain was fought the disastrous battle which laid Greece at the feet of Macedonia. There, too, in a later age East and West met in deadly ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... journey westward," said they, "beyond the green Isle of Erin, is our father's hall. Seven days' journey northward, on the bleak Norwegian shore, is our father's hall. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... us, chill and bleak and ravaging. The smoke from our chimneys went up in tall columns that lost themselves in the gray sky. The snow shut us in, and presently the wind lay in wait to blast us when we ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... in the throes of a blizzard. The wind howled and shrieked, heralding the approach of March, the Wind King's month of the year. Mrs. Davenport stood at a second story window of a room of the Gilsey House, and looked down idly on the bleak thoroughfare. She was a young-looking woman for her thirty-five years, and had an extremely sweet face, denoting kindliness ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... would also imagine that she lives in a solid well-repaired square brown stone house with a cupola used as a conning tower and equipped with periscope and telescope and wireless. Furthermore, her house is situated on a bleak hill so that nothing impedes her view and that of her two pets, a magpie and a jackal. And the business in life of all three of them is to track down and destroy the good name of every woman who comes within range, especially if she is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... flying was hilly, and he kept at a fairly high altitude. The map showed him that the great Taurus range lay between him and the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean. Within an hour and a half after leaving Constantinople he came in sight of its huge bleak masses stretching away to right and left, but still a hundred miles or more distant, although, on the right, spurs of the Cilician part of the range jutted out much nearer to him. On the right, too, he descried from his great height a broad and glittering expanse of water, which the map ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Thames. The high road from the bridge over the Wey runs between double ribands of water; on one side lies the sunny, slow canal, edged with iris and forget-me-nots, and banked up higher than the road; on the other, a shady stream, dun and bleak-haunted. Before the road turns into Addlestone there is a field-path, breaking off at right angles, which leads to a wooden bridge crossing the clear, brown little Bourne, and beyond the bridge lies Chertsey Mead, one huge hayfield, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... ploughed up by the wheels of the artillery and waggons; everything like herbage was trodden into mire; broken carriages, arms, accoutrements, dead horses and men, were strewed over the heath. This was the third day after the battle: it was the beginning of November, and for three days a bleak wind and heavy rain had continued incessantly. There were still remaining alive several hundreds of horses, and of the human victims of that dreadful fight. I can speak with certainty of having seen more than four hundred men still living, unsheltered, without food, and without any human assistance, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... solitary, lonesome, dreary-looking spot on that bleak winter day; and life inside those tiny houses was restricted and full of limitations. Denas thought of them all, but she weighed and measured the life without taking into account the love that sat on each hearthstone—the ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the man's divinest part Ruled triumphant in the heart, And, with shrinking, sudden start, The bleak old world ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... and seen the edge of our island home, but have you ever thought of that long line which runs away and away from your seaside place? Have you followed the smooth sandy bays and the outlines of the towering cliffs; have you passed the mouths of mighty rivers and so gone steadily on northward to the bleak coasts of Scotland where the waves beat on granite cliffs; have you rounded stormy Cape Wrath, and sailed in and out by all the deep-cut inlets on the west of Scotland, and thus come back to the very place from whence you started? If you can even imagine this ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... system led to, disorder which was not fully known until after his departure from France. Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;—not to the smiling and fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... McDonald Islands: Heard Island - bleak and mountainous, with a quiescent volcano; McDonald Islands - ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... reviving Molly's fire, which had almost gone out. She felt as she had felt only once before in her life, and that had been ten years previously, when her only child had died suddenly. She wished passionately that she were back in Calcutta with her husband. She hated the bleak English ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... in due time was felled, cut up, and carted to the station, and we removed our camp to the site of the operations. It was a bleak, wild place, three miles from the south mail track, and consisted only of a small slab hut or two with a wool shed and sheep yards. The owner, Mr. T. Moorhouse, had lately purchased the run, and was about to ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... blew strong and shattering, bleak and dreary, against the windows of the bedchamber at the back of the house. The complaint of the cedar tree, as the branches sawed upon one another, was long-drawn and loud. These sounds reached Iglesias in the sitting- room, where he sat, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... on the left, looking as if "Hollis" and "Stoughton" had been transplanted from Cambridge,—carried there in the night by orthodox angels, perhaps, like the Santa Casa. Away to my left again, but abreast of me, was the bleak, bare old Academy building; and in front of me stood unchanged the shallow oblong white house where I lived a year in the days of James Monroe ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see LEAH tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the Lily of Killarney? Elster ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... shucking corn and tossing the bright golden ears into wagons that were placed between the rows for that purpose, while others were hauling the grain to their barns to store it away for the winter's use. The broad corn leaves rustling in the wind seemed to whisper, "Winter is coming with his cold, bleak storms to rob the earth of her summer splendor; but he will bring his beautiful coverlet of snow to protect her fields and to prepare them for the ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... the breezes that blow Through the gardens and walks of thy home, To murmur my love as I go And play with thy locks as I roam! For changeful the breezes and bleak— Now balmy, now chilly they blow— Yet they, love, are kissing thy cheek, O heart of my heart, not changeful my love towards thee— Eternal my ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... The bare trees showed but dimly through the gathering dusk. It was a bleak, cold outlook. Presently down the street came a man with a lighted torch and set the gas-flames to flickering in every ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge Down to your valley: you may rest you there: The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge That your gross weight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... The sea lay dappled with light and shade as the sun and vagrant breezes played with it, while for miles along the coast the great cliffs were wrapt in a soft, quivering haze so that the lines and curves of their vari-coloured strata, and the bleak, sheer menace of their height, as they overhung the blue water lapping on the sands below, were screened ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... evening was full of eerie sounds—the creaking of fir boughs, the whistle of the wind in the tree-tops, the vibrations of strips of dried bark on the rail fences. But we carried summer and sunshine in our hearts, and the bleak unloveliness of the outer world only ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... delighted, 'you could provide us with a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you; for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills of Nepal; and we are all fond ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... be the Rattler camp, and inspected its display of tall smokestacks, high hoists, skeleton tramways, and bleak dumps. Before they could make any reply, the gate behind them slammed shut with a vicious bang that attracted their attention. They turned to see the watchman hurrying back up the road. Fixed to the barricade was a sign, crudely lettered, but ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of late years been roofed over, and formed a portion of a dwelling-house and offices, the main portion being in the keep itself. The appearance of the tower from the outside, though highly picturesque, was bleak and comfortless, and gave a stranger the idea that it was more fitted for the habitation of sea-gulls and other wild fowl, than for the abode of man. But those who had once entered within its portal came out with a very different notion. And on a stormy, ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... Birmingham, now part of the modern town, lies Soho, in the suburb of Handsworth, which, in 1762, was a bleak and barren heath. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... reefs and broken by the estuaries of brawling rivers. In the southern portion the district known as 'the Emerald Coast' presents an almost subtropical appearance; the air is mild and the whole region pleasant and fruitful. But with this exception Brittany is a country of bleak shores and grey seas, barren moorland and dreary horizons, such a land as legend loves, such a region, cut off and isolated from the highways of humanity, as the discarded genii of ancient faiths might seek as a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... was so anxious that the inspection of the boat should not be delayed, that an expedition to the Cove was arranged for the same afternoon. Accordingly the five young people walked across the bleak tableland together. Huge white clouds were rolling up from the south-west, obscuring every now and then the burning sun. A gentle breeze blew gaily across the bleak upland—a very different breath from that which twisted and gnarled the strong ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the mountain and rock, Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind— Thou land of the torrent, the pine, and the oak, Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind: Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens, Though bleak thy dun islands appear, Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans, That roam ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to seek for trade the whole year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven schooners were lost on the New England coast, most of which were unfit ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of the Coast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it in a severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottages of the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts of towns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by graceful degrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hasty marriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting the inevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enter into an appreciative and exhaustive ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... flee from a maid in the pride of her purity," laughed Bertie. "But, Miss Leigh, must we positively go shivering across this bleak desert again?—isn't there some sheltered way ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the direction of the cemetery, an owl sent out a mournful cry, and a furious baying from the dog behind the house sounded. He rose, walked to the window, and surveyed the bleak view through the curtains. He again noted the tall trees threshing in the wind, and the looming monuments. Still under the spell of pleasant day-dreams, Everett silently contemplated the gloomy aspect. He had forgotten the owl ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... disposed, sang to our hearts' content. Some of the songs were appropriate to the scene; others strikingly the reverse. Bastard doggrel of the music-hall, such as, 'Around her splendid form, I weaved the magic circle,' sounded bald, bleak, and pitifully silly. 'We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,' was in some measure saved by the vigour and unanimity with which the chorus was thrown forth into the night. I observed a Platt-Deutsch ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the flickering mirage the familiar forms of the Tihmah range, a ridge now broken into half a dozen blocks. I had ordered the caravan to march upon the Tuwayl el-Sk; but, after one hour and fifteen minutes, we found the tents pitched some three miles short of it, on a bleak and ugly wave of the Wghir. The Shaykhs swore, by all holy things, that this was the veritable Tuwayl; and a Bedawi, who declared that he knew where water lay in the neighbourhood, refused to show ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... the old town, with its red roofs, its quaint architecture, its crowded, narrow, picturesque streets. But this time they seemed almost deserted, and the whole effect of the place was bleak and dreary. The leaves had dropped from the trees, the flowers had faded, the vines that covered the cottage walls were brown and bare. He was pleasantly conscious of the warmth of a sable-lined coat he had brought from Russia two years before. He thrust his gloved hands deep into its capacious ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... rather a perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an individual. He read Phoebe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her as if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, to warble through the house. She was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home to his conception; so that ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enthusiastic devotees throw themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the infatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of the numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs, jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able to see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and to realize more fully the necessity of a revelation from God, for the preservation ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of Peter. But no arguments protected anyone who clung to the old-fashioned ways of the vendetta or of brigandage or theft from being placed before a file of the Prince-Bishop's men. Tales are still recited in the primitive, bleak homes of Montenegro touching the great number of his subjects whom the poet put to death. But that was not the only penalty, for of the two European institutions with which he had embellished his capital one was a prison. The other was a printing-press, in which he had a childish ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... commanded the man to stand firm. In those days Martin found comfort in religion and became a power at the camp meetings; his prayers were renowned far and near, but the evil clutched him in an unguarded hour and one bleak, dreary springtime he met the Woman Mary and—let go! That was when Sandy was seven. He brought Mary to the cabin and almost shamefacedly explained, to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... a small church called KINGSTON, posted on a knoll, and surrounded by a few trees which bespeak their bleak ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... we were on the top of a rock, without food or water, and with only so much powder and shot as each man carried in his pouch. Still, we had saved our lives and our horses, and had reason to be thankful. The spot was a bleak one to camp in, but we had no choice. To protect ourselves from the wind, we built up a hedge of brushwood, and lighted a fire. Food we could not hope to obtain until the morning, but Pierre and one of the ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... the sparse ornaments were the offerings of kindred intellects, the steel engravings by Raphael Morghen marked the Via Sacra of a European tour, and the black-walnut desk with its bronze inkstand modelled on the Pantheon was the altar of this bleak temple of thought. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among themselves. Radbourn looked back after awhile but the bare little hive had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and hot as a furnace on the naked plain in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... all, but thou! For thou art single as the northern pole; As cold, as distant, and unreachable To what hath passion's warmth; and, though Thy life be at its summer solstice—bright With day—thy heart still turns to barren ice, More bleak than ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... she wrote a few days later, "and my horizon looks bleak and lonely. I want to be alone where I can collect my thoughts, but, even when Katie is out, I cannot think, but sit by the window staring at the old women hanging up the clothes which everlastingly flap on the lines tied between ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... were neither frequent nor sumptuous; "all the delicacies of the season" hardly found their way to her table; and in her bleak little nest, for it was now winter, a thin and scanty shawl but coldly did the office ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... McDonald Islands Heard Island - 80% ice-covered, bleak and mountainous, dominated by a large massif (Big Ben) and an active volcano (Mawson Peak); McDonald Islands - ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... tears gush unbidden, when breathing adieu,— With the change of our years, our hearts are changed too! And, haply, the world, with its coldness, will chill My feelings at length, as bleak winter the rill. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... raw the north wind doth blow, Bleak in a morning early; All the hills are covered with snow, And winter's ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... pigeons, I plucked and tore apart The weeping, wailing daisies, And broke my lady's heart. At length I grew to manhood, I scarcely could believe I ever loved the lady, Or caused her court to grieve, Until a dream came to me, One bleak first night of Spring, Ere tides of apple blossoms Rolled in o'er everything, While rain and sleet and snowbanks Were still a-vexing men, Ere robin and his comrades ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... bristle-bearded face confronted her. "No, it ain't much of a fire yet, but our hired girl she joined a movin'-picture outfit, so us two he-things are doin' the best we can chasin' a breakfast." And the tramp, Overland Red, ragged, unkempt, jocular, rose from his knees beside a tiny blaze. He pulled a bleak flop of felt from his tangled hair in an over-accentuated ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... his funeral testified to the love which his neighbours bore him. He had never willingly been absent for long from his native town. His life, compared with that of Disraeli or Gladstone, seems almost bleak in its simplicity, varied as it was by so few excursions into other fields. But two strong passions enriched it with warmth and glow, his family affections and his zeal for the common good. These filled his heart, and he was content ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... on a military bridge, twisting in and out of valleys and speeding through villages, one saw who were guarding the army's secrets, but little of the army itself and few signs of transportation on a bleak, snowy day. At the outskirts of every village, at every bridge, and at intervals along the road, Territorial sentries stopped the car. Having an officer along was not sufficient to let you whizz by important posts. He must show his pass. Every sentry was a reminder ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... "Blake and bare, videtur ex contextu prorsus Nuda, sort. q. d. Bleak and Bare, dum enim nudi fumus eoque aeri expositi, prae frigore pallescimus. Ch. sol. 184. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... handful we were—but she joined the Tertiary or Third Order of Franciscans, and wore always the grey habit, the girdle, and the cross. She went among the Indians christianizing them, remaining a long while at Soledad, a bleak and cheerless place, where she was also a great solace to the wives of the soldiers and settlers, whose children she taught. The Indians called her 'La Beata,' and by that name she was known in all California until she took the veil, and that was more than forty years later. And she was ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... across the street and after several ineffectual attempts the rusty lock was made to turn. I entered. Cold, bare and bleak was the sight of those empty rooms. The old lady had a touch of rheumatism, so she waited for me on the doorstep as I climbed the stairs to the third floor. The noise-proof back room where "The French Revolution" was writ, twice over, was so dark that I had to grope my way across to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... islands, where the beauties of nature contend for pre-eminence with the glorious traditions of the past that centre round them. What spot on earth can surpass, or even be compared with, Amalfi in the perfect lustre of its setting? What loftier or bolder cliffs than those of Capri can the wild bleak headlands of the North Sea exhibit? The fertile lands of France cannot vie with the richness of the Sorrentine Plain, nor can any mountain on the face of the globe rival in human interest the peak of Vesuvius; ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was cold and bleak, but full of stars. He had already mastered the local topography, and he knew now exactly where all the bombs that had been showered upon the place had fallen. Here was the corner of blackened walls and roasted beams where three ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... things. One gazing at the other isles of the group from a softly rocking caique out a little way on the sea divines instantly that she meant them for summer retreats, but these two, Oxia and Plati, off by themselves, bleak in winter, apparently always ready for spontaneous combustion in the heated months, for what were they designed? No matter—uses were found for them—fitting uses. Eremites in search of the hardest, grimmest places, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... he came to the shore. The sea was quite black and thick, and it was breaking high on the beach; the foam was flying about, and the wind was blowing; everything looked bleak. The fisherman was chilled with fear. He stood ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... his gaze, the white-fleeced clouds wavered, shifting about uncertainly. As if loath to leave the devil-island they had guarded throughout the long night, they contracted slowly, niggardly exposing a line of rugged cliffs which shone bleak and gray in the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... watched him putter, and she helped him; stayed late, and powerfully exhorted her successor. Mr. Wilkins revived and hoped that she would stay another week, but stay she could not. Once she knew that she was able to break away from the scrub-rag, that specter of the wash-room, and the bleak, frosted glass on the semi-partition in front of her desk, no wage could have helped her. Every moment ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... at different periods of the year. Each variety has a value of its own, and answers to some special requirement in its proper season under glass or in the open ground. In the darkest winter days we prize the glow of Tulips and Hyacinths for brightening our homes. And bleak days are not all past when Aconites and Snowdrops sparkle in beds and borders. The Anemones follow in March, and during the lengthening days of spring there are sumptuous beds of Hyacinths, Narcissi, and Tulips. When high summer begins to ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... intelligence, the firm union of sovereign states. This is all he has to sustain him now. He has laid up this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul. All souls must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the winter of life, for the bleak bright hours ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... only knew where to find the lonely grave where strangers laid you, I would stretch myself upon it and die!" she sobbed, the tears in her cheeks mixing with the melting snow, as it flew into her pale face, driven by the bleak December gale. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... The spring of 1805 came in cold, bleak and stormy, and along with it the malady returned. On May 9 the end came. Schiller died at the age of forty-five years and a few months, leaving a widow, two sons and two daughters. The news of his death fell cold on many a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Iona's isle. As in popular belief, with each returning eve of the nativity the miracles of the first Christmas happen again, so in these tales the thorn-tree blossoms anew and wonderful roses bloom in the bleak forest. ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... son; a hard, blond giant; high cheeks, raw ruddied; high bleak nose jutting out with a steep fall to the long upper lip; savage mouth under a straight blond fringe, a shark's keen tooth pointing at the dropped jaw. Arched forehead drooping to the spread ears, blond eyebrows drooping over ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... remember yet These you have lost, but you can never know One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... was falling, and the terminus looked bleak and cheerless as the train slowed down the long platform. Mason, still haggard, roused herself to step to the platform and look around as if expecting to see a familiar face, and in the midst of collecting her own impedimenta ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
