"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desirable to bury the dead close to the habitation of the surviving members of the household. Some Japanese authorities declare that in the very earliest ages there was no burial, and that corpses were merely conveyed to desolate places, and there abandoned to wild creatures. Be this as it may, we have documentary evidence, of an unmistakable sort, concerning the early funeral-rites as they existed when the custom of burying had become established,—rites weird and strange, and having nothing in common with ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... I found on a gravel walk a poor little unfledged birdie, sitting calmly looking up into the air, as if he hoped that some help would come to him, some pitying hand and heart have compassion upon his desolate condition. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... am so minded, being a maid forlorn and desolate, a poor wanderer destitute of kith, of kin, of hope, of love, and all that maketh life sweet. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... tangle at my feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot that had once worn that buckle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... difficult and stony path, winding through bleak wastes of gray rock, till we reached a lofty pass in the mountain range. The wind swept through the narrow gateway with a force that almost unhorsed us. From the other side, a sublime but most desolate landscape opened to my view. Opposite, at ten miles' distance, rose a lofty ridge of naked rock, overhung with clouds. The country between was a chaotic jumble of stony hills, separated by deep chasms, with ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... superstitious as to think that the glorious Virgin would leave her seat at her Son's right hand to come and dwell in a desolate country, but she was desirous to see the hallowed spot of which she had so often heard, and further she was sure that if there were a means of escaping from a danger, the monks would certainly find it out. At last ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... clearness, the afternoon that Rose had come into her kitchen to say in a quiet, toneless voice, "They think, Anna, that they will have to take off his foot." She saw, as clearly as if her nursling were there in this whitewashed little cell, the look of desolate, dry-eyed anguish which had ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigen-puttock. It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... the propriety of having remained in that desolate territory when, as spring approached, the shrunken cows died one after another in giving birth to the calves which had matured in their slowly perishing bodies, but he made no sign or ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... woods that lined the trail gave a desolate air to the bleak, white prospect. The whole of that northern world offered little promise to the traveler, little inducement to leave the warmth of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... humanity to prevent its growth where it can grow without wrong to others, or to plant an inferior stock where the superior can take root and flourish.' 'By Africans,' said the missionaries; 'this is African soil; and if mission stations are established on its desolate tracts, people will be drawn to them from the far interior, the community will grow rapidly, those enlightened by Christianity here will desire in their turn to enlighten their friends beyond, and thus the Gospel teaching will spread until all Africa stretches out its hands to God.' Coupled ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... followed winding valleys, and at length limped into sight of a lonely camp at the foot of a crag. The light was fading when he reached it, though a lurid sunset glowed behind the black firs on the crest of a ridge, and the place had a desolate look. Most of the shacks were empty, there were rings of branches with a litter of old cans about them where tents had been pitched, but a few toiling figures were scattered about a strip of track. It was comforting to see them, but Prescott ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... remains of Brambanam as "stupendous monuments of the science and taste belonging to a long-forgotten age, crowded together in the former centre of Hindu faith." A rough country road leads from the little white railway station, perched on a desolate plain, to these far-famed temples. A brown village, shaded by the dark foliage of colossal kanari-trees, shows the usual fragility of structure in basket-work walls and roofs of plaited palm-leaves, but the humble dwellings, destroyed and rebuilt myriad times on the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... of the living—is first a great surprise, and then a ridiculous comfort. It follows you about. When you miss it, you go back to look for it—to find the miserable object racing frantically to meet you. Lonely? The Poles are not more desolate. There is no place as forlorn as that where man once was established and busy, where the patient work of his hands is all round, but where silence has fallen like a secret so dense that you feel that if it were ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... thankful that it was only early summer the Fourth of July, the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this mass of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no living human being would be left in the valley, that it would ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with the Arctic ice, offers for his redemption a series of pictures of self-sacrifice, tenderness, honor, courage, and piety. No hope of profit drew the seamen of all maritime nations into the dismal and desolate ice-floes that guard the frozen North. No lust for gold impelled them to brave the darkness, the cold, and the terrifying silence of the six-months Arctic night. The men who have—thus far unsuccessfully—fought with ice-bound nature for access to the Pole, were impelled ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... his postman's knock on the shut oak door, heard it reverberate through the silent house, saw the grim elder man and his gristly hand, gave up the green letter from China, and strode away. There is a clump of trees growing all alone in the wold, desolate, mournful, by day, by night full of ill omen, far off from all other trees as wold-hut from other houses. Near it stands wold-hut. Not today did Amuel stride briskly on with all the new winds of autumn ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... vast sums to restore this edifice; which will probably be soon as desolate as the Castle of Heidelberg, with which, however, it could never stand a comparison, either in point of situation or architecture. There are some handsome walks near the palace, which extend along ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... would never be realised. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 1836; the performances are vaudevilles, little melodrama, and farces. The admission is from 6d. to 2s. 6d. It contains 1,226 places. The Place de la Bastille is now before us, and still may be seen the desolate remains of the great plaster cast of the enormous elephant, intended by Napoleon to have been placed on this spot, which is now decorated with what is called the Column of July. The capital is said to be the largest piece of bronze ever cast, the height is 163 feet, and it is surmounted by an ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... a long time it seemed as if there was not, and I was ready to say, "Anything will do," when we cautiously entered another door; a light was struck, and though the place was deplorable enough, it did not look so desolate, and it had evidently lately been occupied, for there was a half-burned candle standing on a rough stool, and to this candle Brace applied ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... shall all those prophecies hold true, except they be coincident with Rev. xvii. 16, 17, and that time is yet to come, when God shall put it in the hearts of kings to "hate the whore (of Rome), and they shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire"? It is foretold that God shall do this great and good work even by those kings who have ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... right-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but it had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding of bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and ferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in its desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the Bay, it had become a ready-made ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... country like England, with six or eight shillings a week, and no cow, no pig, no fruit for the market, no house, garden, or field of their own; but, on the contrary, constant anxiety, the fear of a master on whom they are constantly dependent, and the desolate prospect of ending their days in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was not much inferior,[*] besides that they were more hardened against such extremities, it was but a melancholy reflection, that the two nations, while they continued their furious animosities, should make desolate that fertile island, which might serve to the subsistence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... end of his journey, Malcolm came upon a bare moorland waste, on the long ascent of a low hill,—very desolate, with not a tree or house within sight for two miles. A ditch, half full of dark water, bordered each side of the road, which went straight as a rod through a black peat moss lying cheerless and dreary on all sides—hardly less so where the sun gleamed from the surface of some stagnant pool filling ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... hunted in the woods my dear Mus-kin-gum would stand and wave to me, tomorrow night 'neath the light of the moon, with my son's hand in mine—together he and I will leap from that rock into the valley below,—the once lovely valley now so desolate. Do not refuse me,' she cried, as many protested suggesting others not so young. 'No, I will gladly make the sacrifice for my dear ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... perished in the icy waters? No, my friend, no; and if there had been no wine served at your board that night, three human lives which have, alas! been hidden from us by death's eclipse would be shedding light and warmth upon many hearts now sorrowful and desolate. Three human lives, and a fourth just going out. There is responsibility, and neither you nor I can escape it, Mr. Birtwell, if through indifference or design we permit ourselves to become the instruments ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... heart, stopped since my mother's death, burst out in fresh and terrible torrents, and I could have fallen at her feet and worshiped her. They were singing the second act, but I did not hear the music. Slowly the desolate loneliness of my position became clear to me. I knew that I could not speak, but I would have given a part of my life to touch her hand with mine and call her "sister." I sat through the opera until I could stand it no longer. I felt that I was suffocating. Valentine's love seemed like ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... blotted out. Fifty-eight myriads of men were slaughtered in the course of the invasions and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine and disease and fire was past all investigating. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, an event of which the people had had indications even before the war. The tomb of Solomon, which these men regarded as one of their sacred objects, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... the desolate couple with the deepest emotion, and I kissed the girl on taking our departure. Soubise and I did not exchange a word on our journey to the railway station, but we were both preoccupied with the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the little Swedish town of Carlscrona, and the desolate island Hveen, on which Tycho de Brahe passed the greater portion of his life, occupied with stellar observations and calculations. Now came a somewhat dangerous part, and one which called into action all the careful ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... for hundreds of them were at the point of starvation. The police courts were constantly crowded, and often overflowed and filled the morgue. Misery, disappointment, want, and hunger made men commit crimes the very thought of which would have caused them to shudder a year ago. One day a desolate looking striker was warming his feet in a cheap saloon when a well-dressed stranger came and sat near him and asked the ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... priests," said the young Jewess. "We had sons of Aaron, and a temple, and an altar, and a holy oracle, whereby the Blessed One made known His will in all matters of doubt and perplexity to His people. But where are they now? The mountains of Zion are desolate, and the foxes walk upon them. The light has died out of the sacred gems, even if they themselves were to be found. We have walked contrary to Him,— ah! where is the unerring prophet that shall tell us how we did it?—and He walks contrary to us, and is punishing us seven times for our sins. We ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... two, she thought. In the dusky depths of the great chancel gleamed the white marble of the beautiful altar, guarded by St. Peter with his keys and St. Paul with his naked two-edged sword; and above the altar was the dead Christ on Calvary, with His desolate mother and the despairing Magdalene and ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... came driving by. The huge gates of the prison opened slowly and swallowed it. It was the van containing the meat for the prisoners. The child followed it with a desolate expression. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... forego pride when I look on thee, and think that thou lovest me. Sweet Prince, tell me again of thy palace by the Lake of Como; it is so pleasant to hear of thy splendors since thou didst swear to me that they would be desolate without Pauline; and when thou describest them, it is with a mocking lip and a noble scorn, as if custom had ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... expecting to see his companions. He saw no one. He was absolutely alone in that desolate brooding land. Something dreadful had happened! Was he the only one to be safely transported from the third dimension? Had some horrible accident occurred? ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... of his life came to him in the death of his dearly loved mother in 1818. The boy mourned for her as few children mourn even for the most loving parent. Day after day he went from the home made desolate by her death to weep on her ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... "We are all desolate that you cannot go with us, Surigny," declared Dalny, also holding out his hand. Dan, too, shook hands with Surigny. Then the international plotter led the two Americans to ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... gave me leave Sir, will it pass for a seizable Story in future Ages. That Lewis XIV should make War in order to Restore James II and keep above 40000 Men in constant Pay, and never employ any of them that way. Twenty thousand Horse would have laid the Three Kingdoms desolate in a few Weeks, but was there so much as one single Dragoon employ'd that way? Was not King James forced to melt his Canon and debase the Coin with it, whilst Lewis XIV could send vast Remittances to Constantinople to Support the Turk? Were not 300000 ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... a picture too—not the less vivid because only her own imagination had painted it. Her deep, dreamy eyes passed over the landscape actually before them without catching one of its details: they were looking on a desolate stony plain, cracked and calcined by a fierce Indian sun—a few plumy palms in the background, and the rocky bed of a river half dried up—in the foreground a crowd of wild barbaric soldiery, with savage, swarthy features, bareheaded or white-turbaned; mingled with these were horsemen ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... sack-cloth, strewn with ashes, Seated on a desolate throne 'Mid the spectral walls of stately domes And the skeletons of regal homes, Francisco weeps while westward thrashes Through the wrecks of mansions, stricken prone By the rock of earth and sweep of flame Which, unheralded and unbidden, came In the greatness ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Sonne, Alonso They haue bereft; and doe pronounce by me Lingring perdition (worse then any death Can be at once) shall step, by step attend You, and your wayes, whose wraths to guard you from, Which here, in this most desolate Isle, else fals Vpon your heads, is nothing but hearts-sorrow, And a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... world than to see it in hell fire, for he must see it there or here: now if he sees it here, this is the place of prayer; here is the preaching of the word, which is God's ordinance, to beget faith. Besides, here God applieth promises of mercy to the desolate, and Christ also hath protested that he that cometh to him he 'will in no wise cast ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... been buried, and long lines of kings, wrapping stately robes about them, have lain down to die. Thrones have been overturned, armies and navies have been mustered and scattered, land and sea have been peopled and made desolate, as the thronging tribes and races have lived their little life and passed away. Babylon and Assyria, India and Arabia, Egypt and Persia, Rome and Greece,—each of these has had its lands and conquests, its song and story, its wars and tumults, its wrath ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... rustic seat, and a Latin motto on a marble slab. The spring at once reminded me of a greater body of water—a river, at some little distance farther on, which ran between the trees on one side, and the desolate open country on the other. Ascending from the glade, I found myself in one of the narrow woodland paths, familiar to me ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... the true spirit of prophecy in these words? Solomon has passed away, and all his magnificence; the pleasant land is to this day desolate under the power of the Turk; but the LORD has loved Israel for ever, and soon a King shall reign in Mount Zion "before His ancients gloriously." But meanwhile this KING, all unseen to human sense, is reigning, and to those who come to Him in no sordid spirit, but ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... Rollant great loss of his men sees, His companion Olivier calls, and speaks: "Sir and comrade, in God's Name, That you keeps, Such good vassals you see lie here in heaps; For France the Douce, fair country, may we weep, Of such barons long desolate she'll be. Ah! King and friend, wherefore are you not here? How, Oliver, brother, can we achieve? And by what means our news to him repeat?" Says Oliver: "I know not how to seek; Rather I'ld die than shame come of this ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... stood was isolated by deep ravines from the other hills of desolate gray and scanty green. Beyond the western range lay the Valley of Aijalon, and beyond that the rich Plain of Sharon with iridescent hues of green and blue and silver, and beyond that the yellow line of the sand-dunes broken by the white spot of Jaffa, and beyond that the azure breadth of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... scene, that word, is a condensed volume of consolation for yearning and desolate hearts. What a majesty in those tears! He had just been discoursing on Himself as the Resurrection and the Life—the next moment He is a Weeping Man by a human grave, melted in anguished sorrow at ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the pedestrians reached, after an hour's walk since parting with Rufus, was a desolate looking spot. Some fallow fields were covered with thistles, docks, fire-weed and stately mulleins, with, here and there, an evening primrose, one or two of which the lawyer inserted in his flower-press. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... No; that would not make me unhappy. It would make me very happy, Patty, to see you married to a man you would love;—very, very happy; though my days would be desolate without you.' ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... husband loves me no longer!" she cried in more than the bitterness of death. "He loves that false siren in place of me, his true wife. He gives her all the tender words, all the warm caresses he used to lavish on me. His heart is won from me. I am desolate! I am desolate, and I shall die! I shall die! But oh, how much I must suffer before I can die, for I am so strong to suffer! Ah, how I wish I might die at once, or that suicide were ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... said. "I arrived in this desolate, God-forsaken spot just ten days ago. Until now I've hunted and fished every day, but I didn't get anything but a cold. It was very good, of its kind—I couldn't speak above a whisper ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Prince was traversing the Long Island in poverty and danger, a desolate wanderer wanting the common necessaries of life, but still patient and cheerful ever hoping once more to assemble his faithful Highlanders,—living at one time four days in a desert island, then putting to sea ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... its purified doctrine had been preached, and its reasonable worship offered, under the same roofs that had protected priest and people in the days of Romanist error. Is the cause of pure and undefiled religion stronger in the land because Melrose and Crossraguel and Pluscarden are desolate; St. Andrews a roofless ruin; Iona as yet open to the Atlantic winds? Is the voice of praise and prayer sweeter in the North because Mortlach is effaced and Fortrose shattered, and the bells are silent which men on the mainland ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... offered, Queen Elizabeth herself, moved by hope of treasure, coming to his help with a hundred and eighty-ton craft, the "Ayde," to which two smaller vessels were added. These being provisioned and manned, the bold navigator, with "a merrie wind" in his sails, set out again for the desolate north. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... former pirates, of putting an offender on shore on some desolate cape or island, with a gun, a few shot, a flask of powder, and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of Tyre were already light, but empty: as though they had got up early to meet some one who had not arrived. I sped through them like a seagull that has the harbour to itself, and was not long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the playbills looked that had been so companionable but two or three hours before. And there was her photograph! Surely it was an omen. Ah, my angel! See, I am bringing you my heart in a song 'All my heart ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now. Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion, the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach is like when you do not ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... talkers had said—but of this he had been already aware, for the chief Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a little over six weeks. Escape? Nothing short of a miracle could effect that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer formidable, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... I want to burst out upon her and say, 'You silly, tiresome woman! you have had your dream of love and your husband; you have still four dear children; you have a home, plenty of money, hosts of friends, besides youth and good looks; while I am—oh, how desolate!'" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... by: but, however excited and fierce a ewe may be, she never offers any resistance to mankind, being perfectly and meekly passive to them. The weather grew fine and warm, and the dead lamb soon decayed, which the body of a dead lamb does particularly soon: but still this affectionate and desolate creature kept hanging over the poor remains with an attachment that seemed to be nourished by hopelessness. It often drew the tears from my eyes to see her hanging with such fondness over a few bones, mixed with a ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... to anchor and refitted; and on the 19th of August we sailed from this uninhabited extremity of the world, where the inhospitable climate affords neither food nor shelter, and not a tree or shrub of any kind grows amongst its barren rocks; but all is one desolate and expanded waste of ice, which even the constant beams of the sun for six months in the year cannot penetrate or dissolve. The sun now being on the decline the days shortened as we sailed to the southward; and, on the 28th, in latitude 73, it was dark by ten ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... faithful old servant Katoda came out, and bowing himself to the ground before his master, poured out the long tale of wrong, telling him all that had happened, and how it was that he found his daughter in such a wild and desolate spot with only two old servants to take care ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... between them and us. Not one shot broke the stillness of the night. As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... our iniquities is justice far from us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind; we stumble at noon day as in the night: we are in desolate ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... mother away at last; and then for a moment Lilias' strength and courage forsook her. The cry of her desolate heart ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... main agent in the conversion of St. Augustine. Hilarion (a remarkable personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried their report and their example likewise into Palestine; and from that time Judaea, desolate and seemingly accursed by the sin of the Jewish people, became once more the Holy Land; the place of pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil, were kept sacred by hermits, the guardians of ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... passing through the canal, the search-light of the 'Fulvia' sweeping the path ahead of it and glorifying everything it touched. Mud barges were fairy palaces; Arab punts beautiful gondolas; the ragged Egyptians on the banks became picturesque; and the desolate country behind them had a wide vestibule of splendour. I stood for half an hour watching this scene, then I went below to Roscoe's cabin and relieved the bookmaker. The sick man was sleeping from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... its winter-day journey, did it shine into any cabin in an Irish bog more desolate than these Cherry Street "homes"? An army of thousands, whose one bright and wholesome memory, only tradition of home, is that poverty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are herded in such barracks to-day in New York. Potatoes they have; yes, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... evil spirit. The crashing of a falling tree in the forest is the struggle of mighty giants. The rumbling of thunder, the flash of lightning, the tempest's blast, and all the other phenomena of nature are the operations of unseen agencies. The darkness is peopled with hosts of spirits. On the desolate rocks, in the untrodden jungle, on the dark mountain tops, in gloomy caves, by mad torrents, in deep pools, dwell invisible powers whose enmity he must avoid or whose good will he must court, or whose anger ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... solitary contadini,—wherever the influence and sentiment of the Roman Campagna is felt. The moment we get into Tuscany, on the one side, or over into Naples, on the other, it begins to be lost. It was only the other day, at nightfall, that I was sauntering out on the desolate Campagna towards Civita Vecchia. The shadows were deepening and the mists beginning to creep whitely along the deep hollows. Everything was dreary and melancholy enough. As I paused to listen to the solitude, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... proud, cold, selfish man, whose will had seldom been crossed, and who found himself in a tight place from which he could not wholly extricate himself. He was sorry for Eudora, for he guessed how desolate she would be when he was gone, and there was nothing left but that home in the clearing, with old granny and Mandy Ann. He had not seen Jake, of whom Eudora now spoke, saying, "Our house never seemed so poor to me till I seen you in it. It will be better when Jake comes, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... as many of one of my brother's children. I found no provision had been made for me, they concluding I had been long since dead; so that I was but in a very slender station. Indeed the Captain did me a great kindness, by his report to the owners, how I had delivered their ship on the Desolate Island, upon which they made me a present of 200L. sterling. I next went to Lisbon, taking my man Friday with me, and there arriving in April, I met the Portuguese Captain who had taken me on board on the African coast; but, being ancient, he had left off the sea, and resigned all his ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... next day I will tell you nothing, for the best of all reasons, that I remember no more than that we continued through desolate and desert scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. But some time after I had fallen asleep that night, I was awakened by one of my companions. It was in vain that I resisted. A fire of enthusiasm and whisky burned in his eyes; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... closing in upon a stormy March day; rain and sleet falling fast while a blustering northeast wind sent them sweeping across the desolate-looking fields and gardens, and over the wet road where a hack was lumbering along, drawn by two weary-looking steeds; its solitary passenger sighing and groaning with impatience over its slow progress and her ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... puzzled. I have read Phillips' War Speech, marked the tenor and spirit of the Liberator, seen the stars and stripes paraded in the Standard, perused James Freeman Clarke's sermon, and I feel more desolate and solitary than ever. Mrs. Stanton, too, is for War for the Union, and I say to myself: "How will Susan Anthony and Parker Pillsbury and all the other old comrades be affected by these signs of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... bad Indians go to an island in the Bitter Waters, an island naked and barren and desolate, covered only with brine-spattered stone, swept with cold winds and the biting sea-spray. Here they live always, breaking stone upon one another, with no food but the broken stones and no drink but the salt ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... widely distributed. Although the natives have doubtless long been subject to the disease caused by this parasite, the recent influx of whites to these regions and the consequent movements of the natives have caused a great spread of the disease so that whole regions are now made desolate, the inhabitants dying or fleeing to ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... ill-treat children. It is only women, who adore them, that kill them and ill-use them accordingly. She will be my little benefactress, God bless her! I may love her more than I ought, being yours, for my home is desolate without her; but that is the only fault you shall ever find with me. There is my hand ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... replaced by snow. In truth, the climate of the Alps was colder at that period than now, and snow lay on the higher passes all through the year. The soldiers were disheartened by cold and fatigue. The scene around them was desolate and dreary. New perils awaited their onward course. But no such feeling entered Hannibal's courageous soul. Fired by hope and ambition, he sought to plant new courage in the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... comes: Again—and yet again! on every gale, America! from thy great battle field! Our hearts are hushed, and desolate our homes— Our lids are heavy, and our cheeks are pale— While thus we yield Our loved ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... spires that rose as high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... be so," said the girl, with tremulous anxiety, "what universal ruin! What is there on earth that could fill its place? If the empire falls into the power of the barbarians, Rome will be made desolate, and all the provinces laid waste which thrive under ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... birthplace of the painter Millet. It is at the tip of Cape La Hague, which juts abruptly from the French coast into the English channel. The cape is a steep headland bristling with granite rocks and needles, and very desolate seen from the sea. Inland it is pleasant and fruitful, with apple orchards ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... away one by one. One hour, two hours, I remain alone. I pace the room in one direction and another, then I look, and shiver. My aunt is no more. There is only left of her something indistinct, struck down, of subterranean color, and her place is desolate. Now, close to her, I am alone! Alone—magnified by my affliction, master of my future, disturbed and numbed by the newness of the things now beginning. At last the window grows pale, the ceiling turns gray, and the candle-flames wink in the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... for she was staring with wide eyes out at the desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home: the home that was, that used to be till such a little while ago, the home that now seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably beautiful and blest, with its daily life of love and laughter and of easy confidence that to-morrow was ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Valois liked Suzanne immensely, but did not allow himself to be caught in this trap. Suzanne went to Paris and speedily became a fashionable courtesan. Shortly thereafter she reappeared at Alencon for a visit to attend Athanase Granson's funeral. She mourned with the desolate mother, saying to her on leaving: "I loved him!" At the same time she ridiculed the marriage of Mlle. Cormon with M. du Bousquier, thus avenging the deceased and Chevalier de Valois. [Jealousies of a Country Town.] Under the name of Mme. du Val-Noble ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... sacrifice for the darling she has brought into the world. She shines, a star in the midnight sky, giving comfort to the sorrowing heart; she, who has languished in grief, pours balm into the wounded souls of the desolate and bereaved, and gives health and refreshment to the suffering. When nature pines in winter cold or in summer drought and lacks power to revive, when the sun is darkened, when lies and evil instincts alienate the soul from its pure first cause, then ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... resistance which that island made to English rule. By the use of military power, backed up by an Act of Parliament, his generals forced the people to leave their houses and emigrate to the province of Connaught on the west coast. Part of that district was so barren and desolate that it was said, "it had not water enough to drown a man, trees enough to hang him, or earth enough to bury him." Thousands were compelled to go into this dreary exile, and hundreds of families who refused were shipped to the West Indies and sold to the planters as slaves for a term of years,—a ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... him no more; she defied him; and yet he did not kill her. She lay weeping, moaning, at intervals, repeating that desolate phrase, "What's the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... large majestic birds. One is the courlan, called "crazy widow" from its mourning plumage and long melancholy screams, which on still evenings may be heard a league away. Another is the graceful variegated ypicaha, fond of social gatherings, where the birds perform a dance and make the desolate marshes resound with their insane humanlike voices. A smaller kind, Porphyriops melanops, has a night-cry like a burst of shrill hysterical laughter, which has won for it the name of "witch;" while another, Rallus rythyrhynchus, is called "little donkey" from its ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the desolate Rizpah said, As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead. The sons of Michal before her lay, And her own fair children, dearer than they: By a death of shame they all had died, And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side. And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all That bloomed and smiled ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... side of the clearing to the other, were on their way toward the headquarters of the gang. And Dick, leading them, though his head was reeling, felt as if his own reason was slipping from him. Had he only dreamed all this? Was it possible that the headquarters of the Invisible Emperor existed on this desolate prairie? If it was true, why had they suddenly become silent, inert? Why had they not long ago wiped out these few Marines? And the gale—was it now sweeping northward on its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... looked in as he usually did, since Mr. Audley, sleeping out of the house, never came in till after early church. The nurse, who still slept in the room, was gone to dress; there was only a flickering night-light, and the room looked very desolate and forlorn, still more so the voice that called out to him, 'Felix! ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which when Deucalion beheld to be empty, and how the desolate Earth kept a profound silence, he thus addressed Pyrrha, with tears bursting forth:—"O sister, O wife, O thou, the only woman surviving, whom a common origin,[63] and a kindred descent, and afterwards the marriage tie has united to me, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... It was a desolate part, with nothing but the poorest huts for shelter, dirty and verminous, so that the discomforts of the land were almost equal to the perils of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... of the sky strange gigantic enemies, armed with mysterious weapons, and began to slay and burn and make desolate. Our forefathers could not withstand them. They seemed like demons, who had been sent from the abodes of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... was empty, and no man dwelling therein, save a few priests only, and their wives, and their children, who are drawn to and fro in little carriages dragged by women. But the priest told me that during half the year the city was desolate, for that there came somewhat called "The Long," or "The Vac," and drave out the young priests. And he said that these did no other thing but row boats, and throw balls from one to the other, and this they were made to do, he said, that the young priests might learn to be humble, for they are the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... one another—all at last dying a miserable death. Not only did the customary enemies of the voles arrive on the scene: Nature called to her great task a number of unexpected destroyers—sea-gulls from the distant coast, a kite from a wooded island on a desolate, far-off mere, and a buzzard from a rocky fastness, rarely visited save by keepers and shepherds, near the up-country lakes. Food had gradually become scarce even for the few hundred voles that yet remained. No longer were they to be seen at play together, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... early workmen trooping to their destinations, added to his troubles as day brightened. People stared at him in surprise as he went by with scared look and soaked hat and muddy clothes. For a long while he sought refuge against palings and among scaffoldings, his desolate brain haunted by the single remaining thought ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Death, no appeal to thy frozen sympathies? Canst thou suffer thy better nature to resume its deep and trance-like sleep again, and rob that poor widowed mother of her only hope on earth, that bright, glad creature, who carries sunshine to her otherwise desolate home, but to pinion her free and fetterless spirit beneath the iron rule and despotic sway ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... not only social and professional disgrace, but financial ruin which confronted the broken officer as he bade good-bye to his regiment at its desolate quarters in California, after fifteen years of service to the army. He was absolutely without money and, at the age of thirty-two, it was by no means easy for him to begin life all over again and earn his own living at a new calling. His fellow ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... into his grandmother's parlour, shutting the door behind him. He followed, not doubting that the man must have a right to go there, but questioning very much his right to shut him out. When he reached the door, however, he found it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone, in the desolate remainder of the house, till Betty ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... charm Stiffens the sinews of the Nation's arm. What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow And hurl its legions on the rebel foe? Lo! for each town new rising o'er our State See the foe's hamlet waste and desolate, While each new factory lifts its chimney tall, Like a fresh mortar trained ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... in the morning, and to being forced to mingle with the commonest Irish girls. She was in every respect a lady, and had been accustomed to have a servant at her command, even in the midst of the typhus-fever in the desolate districts of Silesia; while here she was not even treated with humanity. This soon grew unbearable; and she returned to us on the 16th of October, after having been only ten days in the institution. So eager ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... to the preservation and order of its own system, just at those precise periods of time when their effects, whether salutary or hurtful to many, may serve as instruments for the government of the moral world: for example, that a foreign enemy, amidst our intestine broils, should desolate all the flourishing works of rural industry,—that warring elements, in the suited order of natural government, should depopulate and tear in pieces a highly-viced city, just in those very moments when moral government required a warning and example to be held out to a careless ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... beautiful, but almost entirely desolate. All was ghastly in the raw, hard gleams of moonlight coming fitfully through the masses of flying cloud. The wind was rising, and the air was damp and cold. I looked round the room instinctively, and noticed that the fire was laid ready for lighting, and that there were small-cut logs of ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... scintillating gray, and seemed ground to powder beneath our feet. At our right, along a long and irregular course, roared a tumultuous torrent. And we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning, arid, desolate valley cut by this torrent of turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without fertilizing the rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up without being saturated or refreshed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... believing that it might be postponed till her marriage would make all things easy. Her future mode of living had often been discussed between her and her lover, and she had been candid enough in explaining to him that she could not leave her father desolate. He had always replied that his wife's father should want for nothing, and she had been delighted to think that she could with joy accept that from her husband which nothing would induce her to accept from her lover. This thought had sufficed to comfort her, as the evil ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... to our misfortunes, it was rumoured that the various Royalist armies, having united, were marching to attack us; so for days together we were kept on the alert, riding for hours over the desolate country and ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed—as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth—to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping and climbing toilfully against ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the couch with out-stretched arms, where she stood, such a slender and beautiful mother, looking down; and her silken veils filled the air with a gentle whispering as she moved to his head—such a desolate mother,—looking down at the little crimson mark which showed like a rose above ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and desolate—and frightening?" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his heart; he presses her closely to his breast. Leaning on each other, they grope cautiously along through the dark, desolate chamber to the divan at the upper end, and there, both locked in a happy embrace, they ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... in the strike. When Daylight, with his heavy outfit of flour, arrived at the mouth of the Klondike, he found the big flat as desolate and tenantless as ever. Down close by the river, Chief Isaac and his Indians were camped beside the frames on which they were drying salmon. Several old-timers were also in camp there. Having finished their summer work on Ten Mile Creek, they had come down the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... not see his face, and that troubled her. She bore him no ill-will. She was not discontented with him, but with herself. Robert went straight on, without turning his head, far, and still farther, until he was only a black point in the desolate wood. She thought that perhaps she had been capricious and harsh in leaving him without a word of farewell, without even a letter. He was her lover and her only friend. She never had had another. "I do not wish him to be unfortunate because ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... whose feeling for him was more one of simple disgust than disdain—oppressed him ... and parting with David could not have caused him much regret. I, of course, was utterly crushed by the separation; I was utterly desolate at first and lost all support in life and all ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile—a feast without a welcome Are not flowers the stars of the earth? and are not the stars we see at night ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon shone clear, and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both at least, I was; tired as I never was before that night; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... - I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wandering, such of the survivors as had courage enough returned to the desolate scene of their former prosperity; but the progress of resettlement was slow and painful. Fortifications were built, old and young trained for soldiers, watch and ward kept night and day, scouts ranged the surrounding forests, and all were constantly on the alert. All hunting or fishing, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... end of July they have managed to press on out of the track of all the whaling vessels, and make for Lancaster Sound, westward. The desolate coast of North Devon is skirted, and subsequently Beachey Island is reached. From hence they move northward again, and to Wellington Channel, only to be turned back ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... a whitish, desolate sky, stretched the white, empty leagues of snow, unbroken by rock or tree or hill, to the straight, menacing horizon. Green-black, and splotched with snow that clung here and there upon their branches, along the southward limits ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts |
