"Carven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out into the night, and when at last he fell into an uneasy slumber his dreams were haunted by two faces which struggled ceaselessly to crowd each other from his mind. One was the young and passionate countenance of the gypsy, and the other was that of his beautiful mother with her pale, carven features, her snow-white hair, her pensive and unearthly expression. They both looked at him, and then gazed at each other. Now one set below the horizon like a wan, white moon, and the other rose above it like the glowing star of love. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... does not show you Chinatown. To some the ivories will always be but crudely carven bone, the jades the potter's sham, the musk and aloes the product of a soap factory, the joss but a cigar-store Indian, and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets, ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... I clenched my hands and hasted from the place. Past sombre trees, mighty of girth and branch, I hurried; past still pools, full of a moony radiance, where lilies floated; past marble fauns and dryads that peeped ghost-like from leafy solitudes; past sundial and carven bench, by clipped yew-hedges and winding walks until, screened in shadow, I paused to look upon a great and goodly house; and as I stood there viewing it over from terrace-walk to gabled roof, I heard a distant clock ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Egypt, as the Egyptians often call it—still adhered to the stone. This hall, dignified, grand, but happy, was open on all sides to the sun and air. From it I could see tamarisk- and acacia-trees, and far-off shadowy mountains beyond the eastern verge of the Nile. And the trees were still as carven things in an atmosphere that was a miracle of clearness and of purity. Behind me, and near, the hard Libyan mountains gleamed in the sun. Somewhere a boy was singing; and suddenly his singing died away. And I thought of the "Lay of the Harper" which is inscribed ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... tusker, my foe, wrought me trouble When targe upon targe I had carven: For the thin wand of slaughter was shattered And it sundered the ground of my handgrip. Loud bellowed the bear of the sea-king When he brake from his lair in the scabbard, At the hest of the singer, who seeketh The sweet hidden ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... great pistols ornamented with carven silver, from the carriage holsters. The marquis tossed one upon the table near David's hand. "To the other end of the table," he cried; "even a shepherd may pull a trigger. Few of them attain the honour to die by the weapon ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... beautiful head bearing aloft its tower of long white feathers. Yet with most of her life passed at the great lonely country-house by the bright river: qazing wistfully out of the deep-mullioned windows of diamond panes; flitting up and down the wide staircase of carven oak; buried in its library, with its wainscoted walls crossed with swords and hung with portraits of soldierly faces: all of which pleased him best, he being a home-lover. So that when facts were lacking, sometimes he would kindle true fancies of her young life in this ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... my wrists long ropes of coral and of jade, And beaten gold that clung like coils of kisses love-inlaid; About my naked ankles tawny topaz chains you wound, With clasps of carven ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... father's side. Woe's me for the boughs of the Branstock and the hawks that cried on the fight! Woe's me for the tireless hearthstones and the hangings of delight, That the women dare not look on lest they see them sweat with blood! Woe's me for the carven pillars where the spears of the Volsungs stood! And who next shall shake the locks, or the silver door-rings meet? Who shall pace the floor beloved, worn down by the Volsung feet? Who shall fill the gold with the wine, or cry for the triumphing? Shall it be ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... bed, Varney lay at his ease, as quiet as a statued man. Over the bed, industriously at work, hung the keen-faced town doctor, whom Hare had gotten with a speed which passed all understanding. At the foot of the bed stood Peter Maginnis, his face like the face of a carven image. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... carven stone To watch with still approving eyes My thoughts like steady incense rise; I dream ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... silver fountain played In a bowl of carven jade, And pink and white in a crystal pond the waterlilies swayed. But never a flower that grew In the garden of Prince Choo-Choo Was half so fair as his daughter there, the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... facade, and are rectangular at the base, dwindling to a smaller polygon, which is flanked with corner belfries and pierced by a tall lancet in the central structure, showing a wonderful lightness and open effect. A curious and unique feature of these towers is the addition of four oxen in carven stone perched high aloft in the belfries. These sculptured animals may be merely another expression of symbols of superstition, and if so are far more pleasing than some of the hideous and monstrous gargoyles ofttimes ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... sat staring at him, still as a carven image, with his hand halfway to his mouth, as he raised his horn from the table; and Ragnar looked wide-eyed, for he knew him again, and I saw a little smile curl the corners of his lips and pass; and then Havelok was at the step of the high place, and there ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... was real or earthly about it; so much that was beautiful, mysterious, full of repose and saintly influence. The far east end was lost in obscurity, and we could barely trace the outlines of the splendid roof. Far down, near a confessional, knelt a small group of hooded women, motionless as carven images. Their heads were bowed, their whole attitude betrayed the penitential mood. There might have been eight or ten at most, and they never stirred. But every now and then a fair penitent issued from the confessional ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... which the Red One was made to send his call singing thunderingly across the jungle-belts and grass-lands to the far beach of Ringmanu. Simple and primitive was it as was the Red One's consummate artifice. A great king-post, half a hundred feet in length, seasoned by centuries of superstitious care, carven into dynasties of gods, each superimposed, each helmeted, each seated in the open mouth of a crocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted of climbing vegetable parasites, from the apex of a tripod of three great forest trunks, themselves carved into grinning and grotesque adumbrations ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... sitting, looking at the dark old beauty of the Broodhuis, or at the wondrous carven fronts of other Spanish houses, or at the painted stories of the cathedral windows, or at the quaint colors of the shipping on the quay, or at the long dark aisles of trees that went away through the forest, where her steps had ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... Christmas tree come after Lent— Espousals? pledges? by our childish love? Pretty words for folks to think of at the wars,— And pretty presents come of them! Look, Guta! A crystal clear, and carven on the reverse The blessed rood. He told me once—one night, When we did sit in the garden—What was ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Southern, Northern, or Western, nothing betrayed; on the surface at least, the provincial, as far as the ironworker could see, was wholly bred out of her. He noted also the unimpaired excellence of her erect and girlish slightness and, under her pretty hat and early whitened hair, the carven fineness of her features. Her whole attire pleasantly befitted her years, which might have been anything short of fifty; and yet, if Scipion was right, she might have ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... this sanded arena westwardly still, there is a pedestal of marble supporting three low conical pillars of gray stone, much carven. Many an eye will hunt for those pillars before the day is done, for they are the first goal, and mark the beginning and end of the race-course. Behind the pedestal, leaving a passage-way and space for an altar, commences a wall ten or twelve feet in breadth and five or six in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... to the end his grievous plague he shall see once more his home, and at Apollo's fountain[19] joining in the feast give his soul to rejoice in her youth, and amid citizens who love his art, playing on his carven lute, shall enter upon peace, hurting and hurt of none. Then shall he tell how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow for Arkesilas, when of late he was the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... forward, leaving Lanyard alone. The voice of the leadsman was stilled. By the wheel the captain stood absolutely motionless, his body vaguely silhouetted against the glow of the binnacle. The hands that gripped the wheel so savagely were as steady as if carven out of stone. An atmosphere of suspense enveloped the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... I stood within the carven door Of some cathedral at the close of the day, And seen its softened splendors fade away From lucent pane and tessellated floor, As if a parting guest who comes no more,— Till over all silence and blackness ...
— Songs of Two • Arthur Sherburne Hardy
... David Ellis, uxor Ellis, John Frogmorton, Robert Marshall, Thomas Snow (orig. Swnow), John Smith, Lawrance Smalpage, Thomas Crosse, Thomas Prichard, Richard Crouch, Christopher Redhead, Henry Booth, Richard Carven, uxor Carven, John Howell, William Burtt, William Stocker, Nicholas Roote, Sara Kiddall, infants { Kiddall, { Kiddall, Edward Fisher, Richard Smith, John Wolrich, Mrs. Wolrich, Johathin Giles, Christopher Ripen, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... difficult way through the clinging swarm, who seemed friendly enough in a weird, inhuman way, but I could not pass through. Dimly through the swinging water I could see others coming from every carven doorway down the silent street. I thought then of the weights attached to me, and I decided to cut them loose at once and rise from the ghostly place, of which I had seen quite enough to suit me. But I determined to take with ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... age-worn, in Rome the eternal Stands the arch of Titus' triumph, With its carven Jewish captives ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky glass peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, he might be able to infer ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... "What finely carven features! Yes, but carved From some clear stuff, not like a woman's flesh, And colored like half-faded, white-rose leaves. 'Tis all too thin, and wan, and wanting blood, To take my taste. No fulness, and no flush! A watery half-moon in a wintry sky Looks less uncomfortably ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of the following notes of the violin fainted and died among the carven angels of the roof. It was done, and Morris ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... regular intervals along the frowning walls, to right and left, were spiral, slender pillars, gilded and gleaming. They supported an archwork of fancifully carven wood, which curved gently outward to the center of the ceiling, forming, by conjunction with a similar, opposite curve, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... without, it is delightful within. Its polished stairway and balconies are speckless, reflecting like mirror-surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid down. The carven pillars of the alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and flowers chiseled in some black rich wood, are wonders; and the kakemono or scroll-picture hanging there is an idyl, Hotei, God of Happiness, drifting in a bark down some shadowy stream into evening mysteries of vapory ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the gift and looked it over with real admiration. It was a flimsily beautiful and costly thing; whose ivory handle was deftly carven and set with several uncut stones; and whose deep fringe of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees, The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly And sway like ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Hexenlicht und Elfenschein Vhere blooty Druids omens trew From grin und screech of shaps dey slew; Or vhere der Norseman long of yore Vas carven eagles on de shore, As o'er him yell de Valkyr broot Und crows valk round knee teep im ploot, Vhile rabens schkreem o'er ruddy bay; Dere - ten pottles troonk - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... carven box which the shrieking oracle commended to me. "Take this," it said, "take this, and it will turn the blackness of exile ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... mind? Or do they come to earth, their birth Rupturing the memory of previous being? Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours. But in any case why not plant willows for them, As well as for us? Marie Bateson You observe the carven hand With the index finger pointing heavenward. That is the direction, no doubt. But how shall one follow it? It is well to abstain from murder and lust, To forgive, do good to others, worship God Without graven images. But these are external means after all By which you chiefly ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... he sat like a carven thing on his haunches. Then the wind shifted, and the scent grew less and less, until it ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... and the ruby shed A glory from his ears and head. His arching neck was proudly raised, And lazulites beneath it blazed. With roseate bloom his flanks were dyed, And lotus tints adorned his hide. His shape was fair, compact, and slight; His hoofs were carven lazulite. His tail with every changing glow Displayed the hues of Indra's bow. With glossy skin so strangely flecked, With tints of every gem bedecked. A light o'er Rama's home he sent, And through the wood, where'er he went. The giant clad in that strange dress That took ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... audience in his power while he told the simple story of his Western work; but she could hear the voice, and it went straight to her lonely, sorrowful heart. Straightway the church with its mass of packed humanity, its arched and carven ceiling, its magnificent stained-glass windows, its wonderful organ and costly fittings, faded from her sight, and overhead there arched a dome of dark blue pierced with stars, and mountains in the distance with a canyon opening, and a flickering fire. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... that they join me for a great feast in honor of my two daughters.' And when the northern tribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace. They brought their women and their children: they brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long pleasurable nights of dancing ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... ruined temple In solitude decays, With carven walls still hallowed With prayers of bygone days, Here, where the coral outcrops Make "flowers of the sea," The olden Peace yet lingers, In ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... stairway leading to that room.—Then all The terror of that night of blood and crime Passes before me.— It is Catherine's time: The house De Herancour's. On floors, splashed red, Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed. Down carven corridors and rooms,—where couch And chairs lie shattered and black shadows crouch Torch-pierced with fear,—a sound of swords draws near— The stir of searching steel. What find they here, Torch-bearer, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Skipper gazing darkly at his carven runes, Mr. Bill Hen still puffing and wiping ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... fabric stood, Even as Love, that trusteth bravely In its own exceeding good To be better than the waste Of time's devices; grandly spaced, Seriously the fabric stood. But over it all a pleasure went Of carven delicate ornament, Wreathing up like ravishment, Mentioning in sculptures twined The blitheness Love hath in his mind; And like delighted senses were The windows, and the columns there Made the following sight to ache As the heart that did them make. Well I ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in his path, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When he called to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love words across the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of metal. When he was athirst and shouted to his cupbearer for drink, the red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the pulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... which had several times started up in his mind. Somehow he had expected a fresh sight of the fellow to dispel and disprove what had been haunting him, had expected to find him just an outside phenomenon, not, as it were, a part of his own life. And he gazed at the carven immobility of the judge's face, trying to steady himself, as a drunken man will, by looking at a light. The regimental doctor, unabashed by the judge's comment on his absence the day before, gave his evidence like a man ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... advanced in walls, and the leeward scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk. Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from its bottom nothing was ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... I say you wear two," says Patteson, "one at your girdle, and one that nobody sees. We alle wear the unseen one, you know. Some have theirs of gold, alle carven and shaped, soe as you hardlie tell it for a cross ... like my lord cardinall, for instance ... but it is one, for alle that. And others, of iron, that eateth into their hearts ... methinketh Master Roper's must be one of 'em. For me, I'm content with one of wood, like that our deare Lord bore; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... device and imagery, At anchor in the quiet waters lie. And presently he came unto a gate Of massy gold, that shone with splendid state Of mystic hieroglyphs, and storied frieze All overwrought with carven phantasies. And in the shadow of the golden gate, One in the habit of a porter sate, And on the Prince with wondering eye looked he, And greeted him with reverent courtesy, Saying, "Fair sir, thou art ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... traced a good many to museums in Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; and some few to the private houses of rich collectors. At last, in the shop of an old watchmaker and jeweller at Hoorn, I found what he considered his chiefest treasure; a great ruby, carven like a scarab, with seven stars, and engraven with hieroglyphics. The old man did not know hieroglyphic character, and in his old-world, sleepy life, the philological discoveries of recent years had not reached him. He did not know anything of Van Huyn, except ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... are great, my wife lies dead, But yester week these hands Closed her sweet eyes, and now I bring Her body to your lands." Then was the arras drawn aside And girt with wake lights drear, Beneath the archway's carven vault, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... carven stuff; Some sneer, but others smile and buy; And these light smiles are quite enough To make the wistful ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... stood in the same place like a carven woman. She waited for him with wide, harassed eyes. As he came ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... 'How great Was he, our Founder! In that ample brow, What brooding weight of genius! In his eye, How strangely was the pathos edged with light! How oft, his churches roaming, flashed its beam From pillar on to pillar, resting long On carven imagery of flower or fruit, Or deep-dyed window whence the heavenly choirs Gave joy to men below! With what a zeal He drew the cunningest craftsmen from all climes To express his thoughts in form; while yet his hand, Like meanest hand among us, patient toiled In garden and in bakehouse, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... little scarlet cloak from out the carven chest, and as Ezra came past the door, leading the little gray donkey, she flung it across her ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... way to tender memories of the dedication of Minerva's temple in her old home. Inside the spacious Roman portico, with its columns of African marble and its wonderful images of beasts and mortals and gods, and in front of the gleaming temple, with its doors of carven ivory and the sun's chariot poised above its gable peak, she had been conscious chiefly of a longing to see once more the homely market-place of Assisi, to climb the high steps to the exquisite temple-porch which faced southward toward the sunbathed valley, and then ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... all my flesh Freezing, and half in mind to fly; for, sirs, The door was locked already, and—from within! I drew the key forth quietly and stepped back Into the Churchyard, where the graves were warm With sunset still, and the blunt carven stones Lengthened their homely shadows, out and out, To Everlasting. Then I plucked up heart, Seeing the footprints of that mighty Masque Along the pebbled path. A queer thought came Into my head that all the world without Was but a Masque, and I was creeping back, Back from ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... confessional is! Man needs it so, that it seems as if God must have ordained it." And he dwells upon the idea with remarkable elaboration and persistence. Those who have followed the painful wanderings of heart-oppressed Hilda to the carven confessional in the great church, where she found peace, will recognize the amply unfolded flower of this seed. What I supposed to be my notion of St. Peter's looking like the enlargement of some liliputian edifice is also there, though I had forgotten it till I ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... they have of joining into one. But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled, The mighty main is wont to scatter wide The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow, The masts and swimming oars, so that afar Along all shores of lands are seen afloat The carven fragments of the rended poop, Giving a lesson to mortality To shun the ambush of the faithless main, The violence and the guile, and trust it not At any hour, however much may smile The crafty enticements of the placid deep: Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true That certain seeds are finite ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... how divine The art that reared thy costly shrine! Thy carven columns must have grown By magic, like a dream ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... mother had understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory. Still there had been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane's life. . . . But Diane was like that—a flash of fire and then bewildering sweetness. There was the spot Starrett's glass had struck; there the ancient carven chair in which Diane had mocked his mother; there was red—blood-red in the dying log—and gold. Blood and gold—they were indissolubly linked one with the other and the demon of the bottle had danced wild dances with each of them. A mad ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... not know why I shook my head at my accusers with stupid complacency. My denial of guilt seemed to me a trivial lie. I had become a man of wood. I went through my trial like a carven image. I seemed to myself to be a puppet, a jointed figure, a manikin. In a dull, insensate way I had learned to hate the Judge as a superior being who showed loathing for me on his face. The jury foreman and all the rest there in the court-room day after day were as little to me as ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... From carven walls above me, smile lovers; many a pair. "Oh, take this rose and love me!" she has twined it in her hair. He advances, she retreating, pursues and holds her fast, The sculptor left them meeting, in a ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... O hundred shores of happy climes, How swiftly stream'd ye by the bark! At times the whole sea burn'd, at times With wakes of fire we tore the dark; At times a carven craft would shoot From havens hid in fairy bowers, With naked limbs and flowers and fruit, But we nor paused for fruit ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... about him to feel that he was dealing with a giant. "I will not compare Shakespeare," he said, "to the Belvedere Apollo, nor to the Gladiator, nor to Antinous"—he had compared Terence to the Medicean Venus—"but to the Saint Christopher of Notre Dame, an unshapely colossus, rudely carven, but between whose legs we could all pass without our brows touching him."[273] Not very satisfactory recognition perhaps; but the Saint Christopher is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... alarmed by what a quick glimpse of his face had shown her. She had never seen a human face so—not whitened by his fear, but greyed—greyed as if seared with fire and turned to carven ashes. She could tell, by that, that he would never, really, forgive her. Too firmly had his hopes been fixed upon the plans which he had built in many long hours of reflections going back along the years, no doubt, to that ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... and lord of all lands near by, commanded for the closer knowledge of the gods that Their images should be carven in Runazar, and in all lands near by. And when Althazar's command, wafted abroad by trumpets, came tinkling in the ear of all the gods, right glad were They at the sound of it. Therefore men quarried marble from the earth, and sculptors busied themselves in Runazar to obey the edict ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... a rigid carven statue in the midst of a barren sandy waste in the vast cup of a towering volcano top—sand that was in reality coarse pumice and ash. This was a place of death, a place where raging fires had left nothing for plant or animal life. And, over all, the desert stars shone down coldly and added to ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... you know, Millicent, I believe I don't care. That carven block of stone has had a curious effect upon me. It has made me think as I have never done before. I want to take the clearest picture away with me—I ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... crept, and cast me starving on the floor Facing the Holy Place, and made my cry: "Lord Phoebus, here I am come, and here will die, Unless thou save me, as thou hast betrayed." And, lo, from out that dark and golden shade A voice: "Go, seek the Taurian citadel: Seize there the carven Artemis that fell From heaven, and stablish it on Attic soil. So comes thy freedom." [IPHIGENIA shrinks.] Sister, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... almost inconceivably numerous. The river front is nine hundred feet in length, with an elaborately decorated facade with carven statues and emblems. By 1860 the cost had exceeded by a considerable ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... from my fool's talk," cried the archer; "for being a man of no learning myself, my tongue turns to blades and targets, even as my hand does. Know then that for every parchment in England there are twenty in France. For every statue, cut gem, shrine, carven screen, or what else might please the eye of a learned clerk, there are a good hundred to our one. At the spoiling of Carcasonne I have seen chambers stored with writing, though not one man in our Company could read them. Again, in Arles and Nimes, and other towns that I could name, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... frown down upon our littleness in their sombre splendour. This was so even in the sunshine, but when the storm-clouds gathered on her imperial brow Milosis looked more like a supernatural dwelling-place, or some imagining of a poet's brain, than what she is — a mortal city, carven by the patient genius of generations out of the red silence of the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the enemy's attack forced the Hopkins line back to the sidewalk. There the conflict raged; the pacific wooden Indian, with his carven smile, was overturned, and those of the street who delighted in carnage pressed round to view ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... that peculiar desolateness of lifeless things which have been associated with man. The house at Laurel Creek was a fine mansion, finer than Drake Hill, and the hall made me think of England. Great oak chests stood against the walls, hung with rusting swords and armour and empty powder-horns. A carven seat was beside the cold hearth, and in a corner was a tall spinning-wheel, and the carven stair led in a spiral ascent of mystery to ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... shrine flew open, and from the crystal of the many-rayed monstrance shone a marvellous and mystical light. He stood there in a king's raiment, and the Glory of God filled the place, and the saints in their carven niches seemed to move. In the fair raiment of a king he stood before them, and the organ pealed out its music, and the trumpeters blew upon their trumpets, and the singing ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... were all in Troy that day, And girt them to the portal-way, Marvelling at that mountain Thing Smooth-carven, where the Argives lay, And wrath, and Ilion's vanquishing: Meet gift for her that spareth not[29], Heaven's yokeless Rider. Up they brought Through the steep gates her offering: Like some dark ship that climbs the shore On straining cables, up, where stood ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... palace, dim and rich, Dim as a dream, rich as a reverie, I knew it all of old, surely I knew This floating twilight tinged with rose and blue, This moon-soft carven niche Whence the calm marble, wan as memory, Slopes to the wine-brimmed bath of cold dark fire Perfumed with old regret and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... I looked upon these carven images with contempt, and spat as I looked. I knew not what they were, whether forgotten gods or unremembered kings. But to me they were representative of the vanity of earth-men ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... sweetness of Dean Stanley's exquisite eloquence; or to the thunder of the organ mingled with the voices of the white-robed choristers, as the music rose and fell, as it pealed up to the arched roof and lost itself in the carven fretwork, or died away softly among the echoes of the chapels in which kings and saints and sages lay sleeping, enshrining in themselves the glories and the ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... safety, but the famous mosaics, the ancient windows, and the splendid carvings it is impossible to remove, and they are the most precious of all. The two pulpits of colored marbles and the celebrated screen with its carven figures are now hidden beneath pyramids of sand-bags. The spiral columns of translucent alabaster which support the altar, are padded with excelsior and wrapped with canvas. Swinging curtains of quilted burlap protect the walls of the chapels and ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... feeling too that those deliberate, searching dark eyes saw the end of this fight, this battle of the strong. The face fascinated him, though it awed him. He admired it, even as he detested the ardent strength of Detricand's face, where the wrinkles of dissipation had given way to the bronzed carven look of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walking some little distance she sat down in a corner close to Cleopatra's Needle—that mocking obelisk that has looked upon the decay of empires, itself impassive, and that still appears to say, "Pass on, ye puny generations! I, a mere carven block of stone, shall outlive you all!" For the first time in all her experience the child in her arms seemed a heavy burden. She put aside her shawl and surveyed it tenderly; it was fast asleep, a small, peaceful smile on its thin, quiet face. Thoroughly worn out herself, she leaned ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... pine, Mixed with old alphabets, and faded lore Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood, Or gathered by the daughters when they walked Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous. Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead; Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road; And feebler than the doting knees of eld, His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... allotted to him Robin found new and gay clothes laid out upon a fair, white bed, with a little rush mat beside it. A high latticed window looked out upon the court, and there was a bench in the nook, curiously carven and filled with stuffs and naperies the like of which Robin had ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... turned toward the stately pillar of white granite that sparkled in the sunlight like an immense carven jewel, ... great Heaven! ... It was tottering to and fro like the unsteadied mast of a ship at sea! ... One look sufficed,—and a frightful panic ensued—a horrible, brutish stampede of creatures without faith in anything human or divine save their own wretched personalities,—the King, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain's guidance they selected many hideous presents and mementoes—florid little picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded pastry; other little frames, more severe, that stood on little easels, and were carven out of oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap mosaic brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from real; pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and Psyche in alabaster; St. Peter to match—all of which would ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... glass, the right relation of tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights—the sombre blazoned shields which cluster along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, Veit Stoss's masterpiece, the Annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these things ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... but its sad picturesqueness to repay the artist, within it is a dream and a delight. A Norman nave of round, red stone piers and arches, a delicate choir of the richest flamboyant, a High Altar of the time of Francis I., form only the mellow background and frame for carven tombs and dark old pictures, hanging lamps of iron and brass, and black, heavily carved choir-stalls of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... and clean-wrought ankles and feet, which are with thee as full of thine heart and thy soul and as wise and deft as be thy wrists and thine hands, and their very fellows. Now as to thy face: under that smooth forehead is thy nose, which is of measure, neither small nor great, straight, and lovely carven at the nostrils: thine eyen are as grey as a hawk's, but kind and serious, and nothing fierce nor shifting. Nay, now thou lettest thine eyelids fall, it is as fair with thy face as if they were open, so ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... She raised her hand, and her fingers looked carven white in the moonlight, though by daylight they were brown. "Monsieur, you watched the star. It went into the unknown,—a way so wide and terrible that we may not follow it even in thought. We live alone with majestic ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the tongue of flooring ended. Here, upon a stage, flanked with huge carven figures, a group was gathered. At first he was unable to discern what was being enacted there, so brilliant was the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral, Four angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders, The first with reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume Of beard that twinkled with frost, and hung to the icicled ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... architects and masons and plasterers and painters, and when all came between her hands she said to them, "Do ye take a long look at my semblance and mark well my features for I desire that you make me a carven image[FN33] which shall resemble me in all points, and that you fashion it according to my form and figure, and you adorn it aright and render it to represent my very self in all proportions, and then bring it to me." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... On a carven couch in slumber lay the Lady Gwineth Grey, Traces of a smile yet lingering on a cheek of rosy May— On the softest velvet slumbering, in a mist of golden hair, Trembling on her heaving bosom, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... but no sooner had he done so than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a horrible specter, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round, and fat, and white; and hideous laughter seemed to have writhed its features into an eternal grin. From the eyes streamed rays ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... and quaintly carven balconies were noisy with shrill voices. Every self-respecting house was plastered with fresh mud; every window and doorway garlanded with marigold and jasmine buds; every brain, absorbed in the paramount speculation, as to how ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in a little minute, I did see it again; but whether it did be the shape of some utter monster of eternity—even as the Watchers about the Mighty Pyramid—or whether it did be no more than a carven mountain of rock, shaped unto the dire picturing of a Monster, I did have no knowing. But I made that I should get hence very quick, and I did turn me about in the bushes, and went upon my hands and knees; and so came at last a great ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the valley's gloom Where the rabbits pattered near, Shone a temple and a tomb With the legend carven clear. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... were like waves of ice, which froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows; now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each other through the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... tarnished halberd. He abhorred the fashions of our century, and wore those of an earlier epoch; his wife, who shared his prejudices and opinions, fantastically appareled herself to look like the portrait of some gentlewoman of as remote a date. Halls hung in damask, vast mirrors in carven frames, and stately furniture of antique form attested throughout the palace "the splendor of a race which, if its fortunes had somewhat declined, still knew how ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... came into the hall again, and stood for a moment like a carven statue looking at the maidens who wrought at packing what they might. She had not wept, but in her face was written sorrow beyond weeping. Yet almost did she weep, when I stood beside her and spoke, putting my hand ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... with the desert, with the burning heaps of carnation and orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilderness, the first brown villages glowing in the late radiance of the afternoon like carven things of bronze, the first oasis of palms, deep green as a wave of the sea and moving like a wave, the first wonder of Sahara warmth and Sahara distance. She passed through the golden door into the blue country, and saw this face, and, for a moment, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... carven form of grief There the poor black Mumma stands On her hind feet, with her paws Pleading with the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once Far down beneath a winding wall of rock Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead, From roots like some black coil of carven snakes Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' mid-air Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... The eternal struggle of art is to utter these unutterable things; the immortal thirst of the soul will lead it again and again to these ancient fountains, whence it will bring back its handful of water in vessels curiously carven by the hands of imagination. But no cup of man's making will ever hold all that fountain has to give, and to those who are really athirst these golden and beautifully wrought vessels are insufficient; they must drink of ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... armed. Involuntarily Blake shrank back; his hand groped for his hip, but, half-way, encountered the pile of silken cushions upon which Margherita had been lying; his fingers sank into them nervously, his other hand gripped the carven footboard of the couch. He had no weapon. He had not dreamed ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe—and that very briefly—a few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street there are several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious halls and carven staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist's best manner are to be found here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... itself not only the affection of all those who dwell beneath its shadow, but also their glory and their pride. Some believe it was built by King David of Scotland: others by one Robert de Rede, since his name may still be seen carven upon the stone by him who has skill to look. But in truth the architect hath carried both his name and his secret with him, and the craftsmen of many another larger and more famous city have sought in vain to build such another ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... their handsomely-furnished room in the old-fashioned house in old-fashioned Hackney, where there were traces of the captain's wanderings in the shape of stuffed birds of gorgeous plumage, shells of iridescent tints, masses of well-bleached corals, spears and carven clubs from New Zealand, feather ornaments from Polynesia, boomerangs and nulla-nullas from Australia, ostrich eggs from the Cape, ivory carvings from China, a hideous suit of black iron armour from Japan, and carpets and rugs from India and ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... against King Harry," returned Robert, "no more than against a carven saint in a church, and he is about as much of a king as old stone King Edmund, or King Oswald, or whoever he is, over the porch. He is welcome to reign as long as he likes or lives, provided he lets our Duke govern for him, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me forth the minster to knowen And awayted a wone wonderly well y-built, With arches on every hall & belliche [beautifully] y-carven With crochets on corners, with knots of gold, Wide windows y-wrought, y-written full thick, Shyning with shapen shields to shewen about, With marks of merchants y-meddled between, Mo than twenty and two, twice y-numbered; There is none herald ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... illumines with splendour a silent chaos of granite, which is not that of the slipping of mountains, but that of ruins. And of such ruins as, to our eyes unaccustomed hereditarily to proportions so gigantic, seem superhuman. In places, huge masses of carven stone—pylons—still stand upright, rising like hills. Others are crumbling in all directions in bewildering cataracts of stone. It is difficult to conceive how these things, so massive that they might have seemed ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti |
