"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our lyric Galaxy, I hear Of faded Genius with supreme disdain; As when we see the Miser bend insane O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin'd want;—and thus appear To me those moody Censors, who complain, As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign, That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere." Whence may the present stupid dream be traced ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Columbia sing to future time, Of her centennial union sublime But ever with the memorable year, Will mingle memories of this history drear. ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... been married about a year and a quarter. Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring. That drear spectre of drought hung ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a moor, Barren, and wide, and drear, and desolate, She roam'd a wanderer thro' the cheerless night. Far thro' the silence of the unbroken plain The bittern's boom was heard, hoarse, heavy, deep, It made most fitting music to the scene. ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... heart, were dark and drear, Without their wonted light; The little star had left its sphere, That ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... One drear autumnal afternoon, when the sky was dull, a dense white mist overspread the valley. As Ike plodded up the steep mountain side, the vapor followed him, creeping silently along the deep ravines and chasms, till at length it overtook ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would not work, leaving us without ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... and plain, When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. But now the season of rain is nigh, The sun is dim in the thickening sky, And the clouds in sullen darkness rest Where he hides his light at the doors of the west. I hear the howl of the wind that brings The long drear storm on its heavy wings; But the howling wind and the driving rain Will beat on my houseless head in vain: I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare The beasts of the desert, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... salt, From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk! There is no answer: seed of black defeat She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom. See since that Seaman's epicycle sprite Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white With mother's tears of France, that he may meet Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea; Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume; Victorious army crown o'er Victory's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the prairie country, billowed like the sea, and from off the crest of its higher ridges, the wide level sweep of the plains was visible, extending like a vast brown ocean to the foothills of the far-away mountains. Yet the actual commencement of that drear, barren expanse was fully ten miles distant, while all about where he rode the conformation was irregular, comprising narrow valleys and swelling mounds, with here and there a sharp ravine, riven from the rock, and invisible until one drew up startled at its very brink. The general trend ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the Dale of our love; There the ox and the steed Fed down the mead; The grapes hung high 'Twixt earth and sky, And the apples fell Round the orchard well. Yet drear was the land there, and all was for nought; None put forth a hand there for what the year wrought, And raised it o'erflowing with gifts of the earth. For man's grief was growing beside of the mirth Of the springs and the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Mohawk, the drone-like boats on the canal, the beautiful Cayuga, and the silvery water so famed in song; but, in contrast to all this, she was shut up in a dingy car, whose one dim lamp sent forth a sickly ray and sicklier smell, while without all was gloomy, dark, and drear. No wonder, then, that when toward morning Maude, who missed her soft, nice bed, began to cry for Janet and for home, the mother too burst forth in tears and choking sobs, which could ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... deeds, Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved. And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast, And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout Of all-unarmed Achilles, aegis-crowned And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores And seas and forests drear, island and dale And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st Or ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an exotic ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... party where the wine had not been spared, and the guests had but just separated, in a state of tolerable elevation. It was a drear and stormy autumn night. On reaching the door of my abode, I first became aware that I had forgotten the key. As I could not imagine that any one would be awake at this late hour,—for it now drew near ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... it? Is it howling wind? The tram-car rattling o'er the stony street? The groans of M.P.'s wearily confined To the dull House when night and morning meet, Dragged to Divisions drear with dawdling feet? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... that her savage heart, Would show such love to her loved father's foes; But love like this, will act no selfish part; Over drear earth, diffusing joy, it goes, Its breath the fragrance of the earliest rose, Its voice the sound of an unearthly thing, Its form an Angel's, and as pure as those, Who come to gladdened man on shining wing, Which scatters round the sweets of ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... felt the Gallic, traveller, When far in Arab desert, drear, He found within the catacomb, Alive, the terrors of a tomb? While many a mummy, through the shade, In hieroglyphic stole arrayed, Seem'd to uprear the mystic head, And trace the gloom with ghostly tread; Thou heard'st him pour the stifled groan, Horror! his soul was ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... (November 29th) a friend and I went into the 'Dorp and got a few stores (alas! the Field Force canteen is almost empty and the prospects of its being replenished are drear). Afterwards we strolled up to the station to see if there were any mails, and to see a train again. The Johannesburg train came in while we were there, and a sergeant-major of Kitchener's Horse shot an officer ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... art these lines now reading, Think not, though from the world receding I joy my lonely days to lead in This Desart drear, That with remorse a conscience ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... sun graying the low clouds, from which fell a cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent, drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the sons of men are sad, Oppressed with grief and care? How is't that some of this world's goods, Have such a scanty share? Why should the orphan's piercing cry, Assail so oft our ear, And thousands find the world to be All desolate and drear? ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... done, finished, as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of the city crowd struck on her view as aimless and fruitless, and so very drear to look at? What was it all for?—seeing life was such a thing as she had found it. The wrench of coming away from Pleasant Valley had left her with a reaction of dull, stunned, and strained nerves; she was glad ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... they led, To save from dungeon drear; Then sighing to my wife I said, I leave my ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear; An' forward, tho' I canna ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... crushed and hearts are bleeding; Drear the fireside now, and alone; She, the best loved and the dearest, Far away to ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... whose words of wisdom rare Inspire my soul to do and dare, Across the distance wide and drear I will not reach to bring you near. Why cast ideal grace away To find you only common clay? The best of life and thought and speech Is that which lies—just out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... seemed to grow short and drear with deeper shadows than common, as the last were to see the boys go off for Shagarack. The fingers that knitted grew more tremulous, and the eyes that wrought early and late were dim with more than weariness; ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... ruddy light, and to Ruby, who had just escaped from a scene of such drear and dismal aspect, it appeared, what it really was, a place of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... at night—oh, but fell very far, so much farther than one usually falls even when one wakes with the sensation of dropping from a great height, that I went bumping down, down from century to century, until I touched earth in a strange, drear land, to find I had gone back in ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... whose originality finds vent in the different coloured ribbons with which she adorns her dogs and her lingerie; whose passions—oh well! who bothers about the little placid stream flowing without a ripple between the mud flats of that drear ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... pressing coldly around, The windows shake with a lonely sound, The stars are hid and the night is drear, The heart of silence throbs in thine ear, In thy chamber thou sittest alone, Alone, alone, ah ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the darkness, sailor, day is at hand! See o'er the foaming billows fair Haven's land; Drear was the voyage, sailor, now almost o'er; Safe in the life-boat, sailor, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,— So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face What shall be said,—which, like a governing star, Gathers and garners from all things that are Their silent ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... none. Not a speck on the ocean, save the long-boat ahead. And by-and-by the sun set, and a little fog crept up. And the night came on as black as pitch and very drear. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... me, this dungeon still I see, This drear accursed masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... in a darker tide, Who dare those dangers drear. Their breasts have burst through the battle's worst, And why should they ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the brilliant sky, Cloudy and dark and drear; They were breaking the snow on high, And ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the air, As when the tempest breaks Upon the peaks, while sunshine fair Is dreaming in the lakes. The birds shrieked on their wing; When rose a wind so drear, Its troubled spirit seemed to bring The shades of darkness near. We looked towards the windows old, Calm was the eve of June, On the summits shone the twilight's gold, And on Pilate shone ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... never will smile All the lonesome while. Oh the mile after mile, And never a stile! And never a tree or a stone! She has not a tear: Afar and anear It is all so drear, But she does not care, Her heart is ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... "A drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the hand of the Prince. When he had made an end of all the nine he let himself down by the fir-tree into the city, which he explored in every direction. No sound of human voice reached his ear. All was a drear, horrible desolation. "Has the whole population been robbed and murdered by the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... perseverance. As soon as I was out of sight of Mr. Smith and Coles I sat down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... world is drear Outside; there is no rest. But what can Ida fear, Shelter'd upon my breast? Heed not the storm-blast, beating wild, I ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Gregory's office, Eddie at the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, that they were all astonished when Christmas ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... camped at midday things were no better. They had seen nothing more to disturb them, but the thoughts of both had turned upon the night, so long and drear, which was to come; and the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... for him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, Never sunder hearts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... The country folk said there were two of them, one the semblance of a woman; the other the specter of a man. Their haunt is in the remote land, in the crags of the wolf, the wind-beaten cliffs, and untrodden bogs, where the dismal stream plunges into the drear abyss of an awful lake, overhung with a dark and grizzly wood rooted down to the water's edge, where a lurid flame plays nightly on the surface of the flood—and there lives not the man who knows its depth! So dreadful is the place that the hunted stag, hard driven by the hounds, will rather ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... part;—for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and home ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... mourned through one wide hemisphere Silence and darkness held their cheerless sway, Save in the haunts of riotous excess; And half the world in dreamy slumbers lay, Lost in the maze of sweet forgetfulness. When lo! upon the startled ear, There broke a sound so dread and drear,— As, like a sudden peal of thunder, Burst the bands of sleep asunder, And filled a thousand throbbing ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dark, how drear, how lone, Would seem the brightest world of bliss, If, wandering through each radiant one, We failed to meet the loved of this! If there no more the ties shall twine Which death's cold hand alone could sever, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... many books,' 'twas said, 'There is no end;' and who thereon The ever-running ink doth shed But proves the words of Solomon: Wherefore we now, for Colophon, From London's City drear and dark, In the year Eighteen-eighty-one, Reprint them ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... drear dark close to my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed! Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's. Oh, lark, be day's apostle To mavis, merle and throstle, Bid them their betters jostle ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... serpent now began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. The colours all inflam'd throughout her train, She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain: A deep volcanian yellow took the ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... eagle, through the air a queen, And one far different, I ween, In temper, language, thought, and mien,— The magpie,—once a prairie cross'd. The by-path where they met was drear, And Madge gave up herself for lost; But having dined on ample cheer, The eagle bade her, "Never fear; You're welcome to my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... was a knight-errant, in its literal sense, [150] roving over seas on which no bark had ever ventured, among islands and continents where no civilized man had ever trodden, and which fancy peopled with all the marvels and drear enchantments of romance; courting danger in every form, combating everywhere, and everywhere victorious. The very odds presented by the defenceless natives among whom he was cast, "a thousand of whom," to quote the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled Where thou, O seer! art set; Thy realm of thought is drear and cold— The world ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and where the pungent air poisons the blood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from a high roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends, all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor. Misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinions had overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails all the hope from her breast with which she had defied it. A wretched old man on the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... upon those drear cliffs that had so nearly proved her monumental pile and shuddered. It ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... bring not back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... old man, we're wealthy now, it's sad beyond a doubt; We cannot dodge prosperity, success has found us out. Your eye is very dull and drear, my brow is creased with care, We realize how hard it is to be a millionaire. The burden's heavy on our backs—you're thinking of your rents, I'm worrying if I'll invest in five or six per cents. We've limousines, and marble halls, and flunkeys by the score, We play the part . . . but say, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... lone forest, dark and drear, Stood wrapt in grief a maiden fair; Her flowing locks were wet with dew, Her life was sad, her friends ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the thin shoulder like a child, and tried to comfort her. It crossed Mrs. Trimble's mind that it was not the first time one had wept and the other had comforted. The sad scene must have been repeated many times in that long, drear winter. She would see them forever after in her mind as fixed as a picture, and her own ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a vast, still plateau. The sky was like a great grotto of ice. The land lay in a wan apathy of suffering, dumb, hopeless, drear. Icy land and icy sky met in a trap, a trap that held him fast; and over all, vast, titanic, terrible, the Spirit of the Wild seemed to brood. It laughed at him, a laugh of derision, of mockery, of callous gloating triumph. Locasto shuddered. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was of thee imprest Thereon[261] her image for whose sake I sigh, Sans hope of succour aye, So full of virtue didst thou her pourtray, That every torment light accounted I That through thee to my breast Grown full of drear unrest And dole, might come; but now, alack! I'm fain To own my error, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I would sing To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom. Find me the harbor of the roaming storm, Or end of souls whose doom is life itself! So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,— Unending chord of horror for a woe We but half ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Trinity! be near Through the hours of darkness drear. When the help of man is far Ye more clearly present are. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Watch o'er our defenceless heads, Let your angels' guardian host Keep all evil from our beds, Till the flood of morning rays Wake as to ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... did not fail her. She remembered distinctly, or rather, she saw clearly the forlorn creature, who on that drear November day, nearly three years ago, stood looking down on the ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... taverns spent, While his affairs in ruin went. Once as insensible he lay, She dress'd him in a corpse's array, And with the undertaker's aid, Into a burying vault convey'd. The fumes dispersed, the man awakes; All for reality he takes. When by the glimmering of a lamp He saw his mansion drear and damp, Reflecting how his life had pass'd, A forced repentance came at last. The wife, with suited voice and dress, Presented an infernal mess: "Good Trap, pray take away your meat; I have no appetite to eat," He cried, "but faith I'm devilish dry: Can't you ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... meadow sere, The dull and leaden skies, Join with the mournful wind and drear In dirges for the passing year, Which ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... them dictate, Without control of king, or state, Or Papal "bull," or legate's rod— Only accountable to God. On Sunday night he reached Dunbar. From darkened sky gleamed not a star; The way he travelled o'er was drear, Made doubly so by Scotchmen's fear. At his approach like sheep they fled, Made frantic by an awful dread Of red-hot irons, spear, and sword, Of breasts thrust thro', and bodies gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They bore ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... there shot into this prison drear A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught My look upon four faces mirrored clear; Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought. Then suddenly they rose as if they thought I did it hungering; 'Less our misery,' They cried, 'Should'st ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... sky what glory streams! 'What majesty attends night's lovely queen! 'Fair laugh our vallies in the vernal beams; 'And mountains rise, and oceans roll between, 'And all conspire to beautify the scene. 'But, in the mental world, what chaos drear! 'What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien! 'O when shall that eternal morn appear, 'These dreadful forms to chace, this chaos dark ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... through all the snow To find my door, I should like to know? Or did you ride with the fairy team Of Santa Claus, of which children dream, Tucked all up in the furs so warm, Driving like mad over village and farm, O'er the country drear, o'er the city towers, Until you stopped at this house of ours? Did you think 'twas a little girl like me You were coming so fast thro' the snow to see? Well, whatever way you happened here, You are my pet and my treasure dear— Such a Christmas present! O such a joy! Better than ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... grows bright That was so dark and drear, Till in the tender morning light I find ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Heaven's vengeance: at such solemn hours, Demons and goblins through the dark air shriek, While Hecat, with her black-browed sisters nine, Bides o'er the Earth, and scatters woes and death. Then, too, they say, in drear Egyptian wilds The lion and the tiger prowl for prey With roarings loud! The listening traveller Starts fear-struck, while the hollow echoing vaults Of pyramids increase ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... again exhibit under the equator its original base development. As he continued his journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second time this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in the drear antarctics, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... "Drear was the scene—a dark and troublous time— The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime; Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will. Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows, And black night flickers with the driving snows, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sudden sadness falls on Molly. She forgets all the cruel words that have been said, while a terrible compassion for the loneliness, the utter barrenness of his drear old age, grows ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... way up a steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... forth her last; and drear despair Spoke in a shriek; but ere its echo wild Had ceased to thrill; restored to light and air— He climbs, he gains the rock, and holds ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... gale. Ever they wait the winter's hate as the thundering boorga calls, Where northward look they to St. George, and westward to St. Paul's. Ever they greet the hunted fleet—lone keels off headlands drear— When the sealing-schooners flit that way at hazard year by year. Ever in Yokohama Port men tell the tale anew Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light And the Stralsund ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... darling, strayed so far Into the realm of fantasy, - Let thy dear face shine like a star In love-light beaming over me. My melting soul is jealous, sweet, Of thy long silence' drear eclipse; O kiss me back with living lips, To life, love, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... dark, dank, and drear, They found him, on the floor - It leads from Richmond Buildings—near The Royalty stage-door. With brandy cold and brandy hot They plied him, starved and wet, And made him sergeant on the spot - The ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... her knight in slumber lay; And in her lily hand was seen A band that seemed of the moonlight sheen. "We are one," she sang, as about his hair She twined it, and over her tresses fair. Beneath them the world lay dark and drear: But he felt the touch of her hand so dear, Uplifting him far above mortals' sight, While around him were shed her locks of light, Till a garden fair lay about him spread— And this ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... wave rolled o'er the night clouded sea, And the sailors were fearful as e're they could be, The vessel lay tossing, the north wind blew drear, Said the wave, "I will rock you to sleep, never fear," But a brave tar looked up, with a light in his eye, And a swift prayer was sent thro the threatening sky To his heart came the answer, in voice, sweet and clear, "Ye shall weather the tempest true ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... canoe floated almost of its own volition into a dead and distorted strip of country. Black water which gave off an evil odor covered almost half an acre of ground. From this arose the twisted, gaunt gray skeletons of dead oaks. To complete the drear picture a row of rusty-black vultures sat along the broad naked limb of the nearest of these hulks, their red-raw heads upraised as they croaked and sidled ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... on this drear Thanksgiving-Day despondent beside his hearth. With a hundred hard lines furrowing his pale face, telling of the work of time and struggle and misfortune, he looked the incarnation of silent sorrow and hopelessness, waiting in quiet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my bosom, and the dart of death ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... displayed a passion For dolls, e'en from her earliest years, And gossip of the town and fashion She ne'er repeated unto hers. Strange unto her each childish game, But when the winter season came And dark and drear the evenings were, Terrible tales she loved to hear. And when for Olga nurse arrayed In the broad meadow a gay rout, All the young people round about, At prisoner's base she never played. Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed, Their giddy sports ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... came to the dark ravine where the icicles hang from the rocks—for Love and Life must pass through strange drear places—there, where all is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands and held them against his beating little heart, and warmed them—and softly he ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... from home, for sake of faith held dear, To distant shores the Pilgrim Fathers turned. Their grief-stung hearts for Freedom's blessing yearned, Where persecution's lash they need not fear. In stately ships they sailed the ocean drear, And more of trial and of hardship learned; But in their loyal bosoms still there burned Religious ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... even in the perishing of the fruit thereof it yet giveth token of that it was; whether at the last it come even to the winter fire, or whether with upright pillars in a master's house it stand, to serve drear service within alien walls, and the place thereof knoweth ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near? Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... Love can quench Life's Light, my dear, Drear, dark, and melancholy; Seek Light and Life and jocund cheer, And mirth and pleasing folly. Be thine, light-hearted folly, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to his yearly toil! Though thick the clouds, and bare the maple bough, With what gay song he guides the cumbrous plough! In him there stirs, like sap within the tree, The joyous call to new activity: The outward scene, however dull and drear, Takes on a splendor from the inward cheer. Prophetic month! Would that I might rehearse Thy hidden beauties in sublimer verse: Thy glorious youth, thy vigor all unspent, Thy stirring winds, of spring and winter blent. Summer brings blessings of enervate kind; Thy joys, O March, are ecstasies ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... it was—no living thing Moves in the iron landscape far or near, Saving, in raucous flight, the winter crow, Staining the whiteness with its ebon wing, Or silver-sailing gull, or 'mid the drear Rock cedars, like a summer soul astray, A lone red squirrel makes believe to play, ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... the size of respectable peas, from the ground, and scattered them in a hail about us. I despair of giving any idea of that glacial blast: it was as if one stood, deprived of clothing, of skin and flesh—a jabbering anatomy—upon some drear Caucasian pinnacle. And I thought upon the gentle rains of London, from which I had fled to these sunny regions, I remembered the fogs, moist and warm and caressing: greatly is the English winter maligned! Seeing that this part of Tunisia is covered with the forsaken cities ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to do her bidding, the three Scots conducted the Lady Sybilla with honour and observance to her white palfrey, and like a spirit she vanished into the sea mists which had sifted up from the west, going back to the drear Castle of Machecoul, but bearing with her the burden of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... walked over to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... yet, and cannot come Out of the drear and desolate place, So full of ruin's solemn grace, And haunted ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... upon the wind, In dreamland you appear; But do you wonder that I find The day so long and drear? Lentis adhaerens brachiis come Once more my life to crown; Without thee 'tis too burdensome. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... winds Through regions drear and dismal, and through pain, Emerging soon in beatific ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... mistake. The furniture indeed was changed, there was no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square beams intersecting the low ceiling,—all were impressed vividly on my memory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on the spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was no common sound, born of that drear loneliness! No cavalryman can mistake the jingle of accoutrements or the dull thud of horses' hoofs. The road here must have curved sharply, for they were already so close upon us that, almost simultaneously ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... mountain land There rode a cavalier. "Oh ride I to my darling's arms, Or to the grave so drear?" The Echo answered ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at last, Heaven is ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... and not the drear shadow, The gentle and fortunate peace: But he who thus revels in rhyming Has shadows that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... consecrated earth And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar Power forgoes his ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But, och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, I ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... had sat staring out at the drear stretches of desert dripping under the dismal rain that streaked the car windows. The clouds hung leaden and gray close over the earth; the smoke from the engine trailed a funereal plume across the grease-wood covered plain. Away in the distance a low ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... days remaining only! and she took a vow severe Of triratra, three nights' penance, holy fasts and vigils drear! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... The last grave fop of the last age— In a superb and feather'd hearse, Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse, 640 Which, to beholders from afar, Appear'd like a triumphal car, She rode, in a cast rainbow clad; There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid, Naked, as when (in those drear cells Where, self-bless'd, self-cursed, Madness dwells) Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape, Frenzy had perfected a rape, First brought her forth, before her time, Wild witness of her shame and crime, 650 ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... enlightened the child concerning sin and the Vicarious Sacrifice. This was when the leaves were falling from the trees in the park—a drear, dark night: the wind sweeping the streets in violent gusts, the rain lashing the windowpanes. Night had come unnoticed—swiftly, intensely: in the curate's study a change from gray twilight to firelit shadows. The boy was squatted on the hearth-rug, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... winds are sometimes sad to me; The starry spaces, full of fear: Mine is the sorrow on the sea, And mine the sigh of places drear. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... admiration of his conduct of that will case. Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out—like the poverty and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more shadowy. And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... delight to roam In distant countries, far away from home; And frequently has dropped a silent tear O'er PARK'S great trials in the desert drear. Oh! who can read of all his heart-felt woes— His frequent sufferings, and his dying throes— And fail to drop a sympathetic tear For his sad end—without a friend ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... with heaven fraught Into a sterile plain, Whose atmosphere is dank and drear— A wild ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Ailrik, two of his monks, On the mission drear he sped To search for the corse on the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the slate-hued clouds hung low, and the valley was dark and drear with its dense leafless forests, when the mountains gloomed a sombre purple and no sound but the raucous cawing of crows broke upon the sullen air, Lillian's paroxysms of grief seemed to reach a climax. Their intensity alarmed her two companions, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... burning waste and lonely wild Received her as she went; Hopeless, she clasp'd her fainting child, With thirst and sorrow spent. And in the wilderness so drear, She raised her voice on high, And sent forth that heart-stricken prayer "Let ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... compelled the girl to hang on closely to keep her seat. The man beside her bounced about, and swore, but made no effort to touch her, or open conversation. The uncertainty, the fear engendered by her thought, the drear silence almost caused her to scream. She conquered this, yet could remain speechless ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... note hath a chime all cannot hear, And none can love him better than I; For he sings to me when the land is drear, And makes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... they journey for that inspiring spell which turns the man of means into a wanderer upon the earth's surface, driving him out of glittering London, with its twinkling lights and its tinkling cabs, out of St. James's, and out of the club arm-chair—out of all this, and wins him into the vast, drear, and inhuman world, where men of our blood wage a ceaseless war with savage nature. And it is when Baden-Powell packs his frock-coat into a drawer, pops his shiny tall hat into a box, and slips exultingly into a flannel shirt ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... fall, When summer beams have ceased to play; And may not sorrow spread her pall, When joy, and hope, and love decay? Earth's loveliest scenes; The boons of heaven most cherished; Fields dressed in gladdening greens, Are drear, when hope has perished: Spring's beauteousness, Followed by summer's glory, May fade without the power to bless, As doth a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... mother and brother, yeo ho! He warred with the Cannibals drear, in forests where panthers pad soft to and fro, And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear, Yeo ho! And the ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... art blest, compared with me! The present only toucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear; An' forward, though I canna see, I guess ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... presented itself between the interior and the exterior of the House on the following day (February 23rd). Inside, there was for the most part a desert, yawning wide and drear, except on the benches which were occupied by the sons of Wales; while outside in the outer lobbies surged a wild, tumultuous, excited crowd, eagerly demanding admission from everybody who could be expected to have the least chance of giving it. Every Welshman in the world seemed to have ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... was most requisite, she fell a prey to mental alienation. She died, and was entombed in a neighboring cemetery, but her poor boyish admirer could not endure to think of her lying lonely and forsaken in her vaulted home, so he would leave the house at night and visit her tomb. When the nights were drear, "when the autumnal rains fell, and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he lingered longest, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... of it caused me to gasp suddenly, and filled me with a sense of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar mental experience, when the drear fact of death ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... good for the Christian soul to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the heathen smiles And it weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white With the name of the dear deceased; And the epitaph drear—'A fool lies here Who tried to ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... thou, who makest guilt to disappear, My help, my hope, my rock, I will not fear; Though thou the body hold in dungeon drear, The soul has found the palace ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... days after that, while the skirt of winter still trailed the world, the days being drear and gray, with ice at sea and cold rain falling upon the hills, John Cather kept watch on Judith and me. 'Twas a close and anxiously keen surveillance. 'Twas, indeed, unremitting and most daring, by night and day: 'twas a staring and peering and sly spying, 'twas a lurking, 'twas a ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... innocent of all intent of evil—of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sincere, But still, when all is said, We have to grant they're rather drear, — And maybe, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the trail had left a fever in his blood. He was smitten with the disease of Ishmael. Then, before all, and above all, he counted the northland his home. So, when everything the world could yield him lay at his feet, the drear, silent north trail only knew him. His interests in the golden world of Leaping Horse were left behind him, while he satisfied his passion in the far hidden back countries where man is a mere incident in the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... what's right, and what's wrang, in the matter," said the mother, gravely. "I hae nae doubt the Lord will go with him; but it will be a drear day ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... case confronted Wade and gripped his soul. He seemed to feel himself changing inwardly, as if a gray, gloomy, sodden hand, as intangible as a ghostly dream, had taken him bodily from himself and was now leading him into shadows, into drear, lonely, dark solitude, where all was cold and bleak; and on and on over naked shingles that marked the world of tragedy. Here he must tell his tale, and as he plodded on his relentless leader forced him to tell ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... you to take me in like this. What I want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't wait till morning. You'll ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson |
