"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... blue-bells; mossy banks, overhung with wild roses, honeysuckle, and traveller's-joy; the indescribable greenness and soft fragrance of England in early summer; and, as she watched, a responsive light shone in her sweet grey eyes. The drear sadness of autumn, the deadness of winter, the chill uncertainty of spring—all these were over and gone. "Flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come," murmurs the lover of Canticles; and in Myra Ingleby's ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... 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
... midnight moon shone drear and cold, Upon a stately tow'r; Whose ramparts high and turrets ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... night were drear But for the tender grace That with thy glory comes to cheer Earth's loneliest, darkest place; For by that charity we see Where there is ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... snatching up one of the Indian's rifles, Burl ran to the brow of the hill, and taking deliberate aim at the rolling body far down there, fired. Up came ringing a cry—a death-yell, so it would seem, so fierce it was, and wild and drear. The moment thereafter, now rolling with frightful rapidity, over the river ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the rights of Britons true To worship God in desk and pew As conscience may to 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 away ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... know what a warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains came ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... but of love the name. Wherefore to succour and augment the fame Of that pure, virtuous, wise, and lovely may, Who like the star of day Shines mid the stars, or like the rising sun, Forth from my burning heart the words shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the game 'neath April skies Went forth in raiment strange apparelled, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... men with speed, And saddled straight his coal-black steed; Down the yawning steep he rode, That leads to Hela's drear abode." ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... mild delegate of God, Whose words of balm, and guiding light. Would lead us, from earth's drear abode, To worlds with bliss for ever bright,— What have the spoils of mortal fight To do with themes 'tis thine to teach? Faith's saving grace—each sacred rite Thou know'st to practice as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... ever passed that way, and the shepherds were afraid of it. And now it seemed an unkind place for an unarmed man to venture through, especially after an armed one who might not like to be spied upon, and must have some dark object in visiting such drear solitudes. Nevertheless John Fry so ached with unbearable curiosity to know what an old man, and a stranger, and a rich man, and a peaceable could possibly be after in that mysterious manner. Moreover, John so throbbed with hope to find some wealthy secret, that come what would of it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the prize before the gaze of one who had also hailed it in the bleak, drear dawn. This was not the gardener;—and there was neither man, woman, nor child in sight, during the swift run;—no freeman; but a prisoner in an upper room of the prison. Through its grated window, the only one on that side of the building, he had that morning for the first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... was spent in playing with Rosemary. She became dearer to me with each succeeding day. I knew I should miss her tremendously. I should even miss Jinko, who didn't like me but who no longer growled at me. The castle would be a very gloomy, drear place after they were out of it. I found myself wondering how long I would be able to endure the loneliness. Secretly I cherished the idea of selling the place if I could find a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... on the continual lookout for rewards of merit. On the contrary, the day of reckoning meant with him the day of punishment. He had heard recounted an unpleasant superstition that when the red sunsets were flaming round the western mountains, and the valleys were dark and drear, and the abysses and gorges gloomed full of witches and weird spirits, Satan himself might be descried, walking the crags, and spitting fire, and deporting himself generally in such a manner as to cause great apprehension to a small ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... fires. They have a dreadful, stern, metallic look about them, and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as they are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides, and dive into Pluto's drear domains—the iron-works—a god who, in the present state of railway speculation, might easily be confounded with Plutus; and with this and many other good resolutions, we returned to the hospitable care of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... so much that she was now able to distinguish the pains peculiar to the different varieties of sorrow. This particular grief took the shape of a piteous, persistent heart hunger which nothing could stay. Joined to this was a ceaseless longing for the lost one, which cast drear shadows upon the bright hues of life. The way in which she was compelled to isolate her pain from all human sympathy did not diminish ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... was in the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... live on beggar's bread With those we love alive, Than taste their blood in rich feasts spread, And guiltily survive! Ah! were it worse-who knows?—to be Victor or vanquished here, When those confront us angrily Whose death leaves living drear? In pity lost, by doubtings tossed, My thoughts-distracted-turn To Thee, the Guide I reverence most, That I may counsel learn: I know not what would heal the grief Burned into soul and sense, If I were earth's unchallenged chief— A god—and ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I wander round, Amidst the grassy graves: But all I hear Is the north wind drear, And all I see ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... that one almost saw the impressure of the fingers of some Titanic sculptor; and they hung low down, overwhelming, so that James could scarcely breathe. The sombre elms were too well-ordered, the meadows too carefully tended. All round, the hills were dark and drear; and that very fertility, that fat Kentish luxuriance, added to the oppression. It was a task impossible to escape from that iron circle. All power of flight abandoned him. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... 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
... words sank thro' the silence drear, As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea: Sudden I heard a voice that cried, "Come here, That ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... friend," I said,— "Be patient!" Overhead The skies were drear and dim; And lo! the thought of him Smiled on my heart—and then The sun ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... you will have to do if you penetrate far into the interior. They hunt and fish, saving their canned supplies for the winter, for the winter months are long and drear up ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... godless past, in which passion, inclination, whim, anything but conscience and Christ have ruled, your remembrances can scarcely be tranquil; nor your hopes bright. If you have only 'prospects drear,' when you 'backward cast your eye,' it is not wonderful if 'forwards though you cannot see,' you will 'guess and fear.' Such lives, when they come towards an end, are wont to be full of querulous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... 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. Come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... 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 see,[8-15] I guess ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... prelude 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 know, ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... this vision that thus confounded me? was it a latent error in my moral constitution, which this new conjuncture drew forth into influence? These were all the tokens of a mind lost to itself; bewildered; unhinged; plunged into a drear insanity. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... length the drear and long Time soothed thy fiercer woes, How plaintively thy mournful song Upon the still ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... decks, biting and cutting like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... "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
... lofty hill, no glittering colleges everywhere striking the eye. The god of slavery-the god we worship, has no use for such temples; public libraries are his prison; his civilization is like a dull dead march; he is the enemy of his own heart, vitiating and making drear whatever he touches. He wages war on art, science, civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples reared for the enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a cotton-bag his judgment-seat. But we pride ourselves that we are a respectable people-what ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the parting year, Another's come to Nature dear. In every place, thy brightening face Does welcome winter's snowy drear. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... without my aid, How would thy weary days have flown? Thee of thy foolish whims I've cured, Thy vain imaginations banished, And but for me, be well assured, Thou from this sphere must soon have vanished. In rocky hollows and in caverns drear, Why like an owl sit moping here? Wherefore from dripping stones and moss with ooze embued, Dost suck, like any toad, thy food? A rare, sweet pastime. Verily! The doctor ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the vast arched 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' of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... discern the canoe which led the way, over which De Artigny held command, but it was hidden by a wall of mist too far away to be visible. Yet the very thought that the young Sieur was there, accompanying us into the drear wilderness, preserved me from utter despair. I would not be alone, or friendless. Even when he learned the truth, he would know it was not my fault, and though he might question, and even doubt, at first, yet surely the ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... 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 ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... of magic gifted, To warm the hearts of chilly mortals Who stand without these open portals. The touch shall draw them to this fire, Nigher, nigher, By desire. Whoso shall stand on this hearth-stone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone. Whose home is dark and drear and old, Whose hearth is cold, This is his own. Flicker, flicker, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866. To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought, through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see his wretched and guilty ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... manner, He, and He only, deals with sin, considered as guilt. Here is the living secret and centre of all Christ's preciousness and power—that He died on the Cross; and in His spirit, which knew the drear desolation of being forsaken by God, and in His flesh, which bore the outward consequences of sin, in death as a sinful world knows it, 'bare our sins and carried our sorrows,' so that 'by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... start. She had not heard King go, yet she knew that she was alone in the cave. Alone! She sat up, clutching her blankets about her. Objects all around her were plunged into darkness, but where the canvas let in the morning she saw a patch of drear, chill light. Full morning. Then by now Mark King was ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... of the forest that to these two babes was as desolate, dark, and drear as any of which they had heard in fairy tale or nursery rhyme, they raised their clear, tremulous voices in pathetic appeal to that unseen Presence whom from their cradles they had been taught to look upon ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... 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 guess ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the waters, dark and drear, and thick and misty. How unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love! Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable youth! What could possibly have induced you to be so very rash? And all from that unlucky ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... delights and 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 ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... house, her heart, were dark and drear, Without their wonted light; The little star had left its sphere, That there had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... time I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom, and holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she would discourse to me ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... forsake upon this day, As we have seen doves mount with joyous grace, Escape an instant from their prison drear, Their coming brings us no repellent fear. Their mien is dreamy, passing sweet their face, Their fixed and ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... hastened through the palace on his way to his new quarters to obtain his arms and order his horse saddled, he came suddenly upon a girlish figure gazing sadly from a window upon the drear November world—her heart ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served. And officers looked at one another and shook their heads knowingly, out of the drear, hard experience in spade approaches, when they thought of that brilliant uniform as a target and of frontier tactics against massed ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... song to cheer All poor rogues that languish here, Doomed in dismal dungeon drear, Doomed in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... night-birds, like nearly all the general superstitions relating to witchcraft, mingles itself and is lost in a throng of figures more august.[110] Diana, Bertha, Holda, Abundia, Befana, once beautiful and divine, the bringers of blessing while men slept, became demons haunting the drear of darkness with terror and ominous suggestion. The process of disenchantment must have been a long one, and none can say how soon it became complete. Perhaps we may take Heine's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... drawing their skirts aside lest they come in contact with the tawdry finery of females whom these lawless satyrs have debauched. Of course when a woman learns that her reformatory work has proven a failure, drear and dismal, she complains bitterly, may even demand a divorce; yet she could count upon the fingers of one hand the hubbies whom she would trust behind a sheet of paper with a wayward daughter. She doesn't believe a little bit in the virtue of the genus male, yet insists that her ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Admiring PROSERPINE through dusky glades Led the fair phantom to Elysian shades, Clad with new form, with finer sense combined, And lit with purer flame the ethereal mind. —Erewhile, emerging from infernal night, 590 The bright Assurgent rises into light, Leaves the drear chambers of the insatiate tomb, And shines and charms with renovated bloom.— While wondering Loves the bursting grave surround, And edge with meeting wings the yawning ground, 595 Stretch their fair necks, and leaning o'er ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... lady, come and share All my care; Oh how gladly I will hurry To confide my every worry (And they're very dark and drear) ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... to be a supper of piping hot stuff, too," declared Greg. "It's warm here in the tent, but the surrounding world is chill and drear. Nothing but ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 - ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... 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 ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,— "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... 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
... doleful death lament. Four days and nights the dismal song was heard, beyond the blue wood smoke of Indian fires. Weeks of mourning passed, and all but one were comforted, but she sat all alone, and every morning she squatted on the sea grass at the shore, chanting that drear and mournful song. ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the moon as I tread the drear wild, And feel that my mother now thinks of her child As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door Thro' the woodbine whose fragrance shall cheer me no more. Home, home, sweet, ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd
... disposition toward the people they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... that adventurous wood has hied For many a mile Montalban's cavalier, Of lonely farm or lordly castle wide, Where the rude place was roughest and most drear, The sky disturbed he suddenly descried, He saw the sun's dimmed visage disappear, And spied forth issuing from a cavern hoar A monster, which a ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... It is a cold, drear March where the north star shines high overhead; but here, where it seems suddenly to have lost its balance and to have dropped low in the brilliant night, March is like June. It is June indeed, June with its wealth of grasses, its noble avenue of ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... How long the wind had been blowing we did not know; but we did know we were some miles out to sea in a cockle-shell of a boat, and rapidly drifting farther from the land. No lights could be seen in any quarter; but all around was dark and drear. We supposed that as a matter of course the wind blew from the land, and therefore got out our oars and pulled dead to windward, thus preventing further drift, and lessening our danger by laying the boat head to the sea, which was now ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... desolate appearance of the land near which we were now lying: rocks, of a primitive character, massed together in all the variety of an irregularity, that rather reminded the beholder of Nature's ruin than her grandeur, rose, drear and desolate, above the surrounding waters; no trees shaded their riven sides, but the water-loving mangrove clothed the base of this sterile island, and a coarse, wiry grass was thinly ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... chariot, and to others gave The splendid arms in charge, who into Troy Should bear the destined trophy of his praise, But Ajax with his broad shield guarding stood 160 Slain Menoetiades, as for his whelps The lion stands; him through some forest drear Leading his little ones, the hunters meet; Fire glimmers in his looks, and down he draws His whole brow into frowns, covering his eyes; 165 So, guarding slain Patroclus, Ajax lour'd. On the other side, with tender grief oppress'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma 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
... from youth's enchanting realm. Only—and the word shadows so wide a space—can he do anything to make good the birthright he has unwittingly taken? She is rich, accomplished, and pretty, worth a dozen like Polly, it seems to him. Must her life be drear and wintry, except as she rambles into the pleasaunce of others? He could give up the seductive delights that have never been his, yet he has come to a time when home and love, wife and child, have a sacred meaning, and are the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... mine own! art gone From young life's happy places, To the dark grave and lone— Death's cold and drear embraces! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... thou art blest, 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
... paused. The face seemed to turn to the drear, blank sky—was it in appealing, or a desperate daring? an impotent resistance, or a wild, agonizing prayer? The hands were thrown up: he had come gradually nearer, and could see them, ghostly white in the long ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Sea 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
... year the seasons shifted,—wet and warm and drear and dry; Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval asceticism into something very like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... turn out stormy. Vast masses of clouds were continually driven across the sky: and the increasing agitation and deep furrows of the ocean foretold a night fraught with peril and disaster to the seaman. Drear December seemed about to assume his wildest garb. This day of the week always brought the county paper. A solitary copy of this journal was taken by Mrs. Teague, and it formed the sole channel (alas! for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... 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
... gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from the main building and lowering above the massive walls, struck him with a feeling of gloom. It seemed like a prison that he was entering. The Hospitals were drear to him, and the dull, heavy atmosphere seemed full of contagion. He looked at the poor creature thus unconsciously brought there, perhaps to die, and his heart swelled ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the lowered shades, a gray, drear light gave warning of coming day. The effect of Larry's last drink was wearing off—he looked near ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... sere, The woods are drear, The breeze that erst so merrily did play, Naught giveth save a melancholy lay; Yet life's great lessons do not fail ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,— "Pe-ree! pe-ree! peer!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and drear the world has grown as I wan-der all a-lone, And I hear the breezes sob-bing thro' the pines. I can scarce hold back my tears, when the southern moon ap-pears, For 'tis our humble cottage where ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... and sad that lady grieved, In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear, And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... slave-master speak bitter words, Voiding his bile on us: 'Behold the mate Of Ajax, once the hero of our host, Fallen from her pride of place to menial toil.' So will they say. For me, where fate may drive I drift; but shame will be on thee and thine. Think of thy father, in his drear old age Bereft of thee; think of thy mother, too, With her grey head, who puts up many a prayer That she may welcome home her son alive. Have pity on thy child, who will be left In infancy, uncherished, and the ward Of unkind guardians; lay to ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... would stand still and look up at the solemn pines and listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the corner of the house above me, with a dull thud, and then I saw Plummer plunge down into the flood beneath. I remembered that he had been at the wheel. The next instant, the water had leapt to my feet; there came a drear chorus of bubbling screams, a roar of waters, and I was going swiftly down into the darkness. I let go of the winch, and struck out madly, trying to hold my breath. There was a loud singing in my ears. It grew louder. I opened my mouth. I felt I was dying. And then, thank God! I was at the surface, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... she never had felt in her life before. Her life seemed 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 she had come away, glad she was no longer there; and that was the only thing ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... But contrary orders came, and so, entering Wellington Harbour, they dropped anchor towards evening. A gale came down in gusts from the hills around, bringing furious squalls of rain; and Mac, in heavy oilskins, again paced the boat-deck. Dawn broke grey and drear, and the troops were in the depths of depression. It was not the ill weather which distressed them, but at the eleventh hour, in the middle of the night, a picket boat had brought unwelcome despatches and now all hope was gone, all faith lost. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... most miserable. So, too, was the later poet wrong when he listened to the waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from otherwhere, some region outside our planet, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... I wander round Amidst the grassy graves: 15 But all I hear Is the north-wind drear, And all I ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... a sigh, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief, That finds no natural outlet, no relief, To word, or ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... see, It hath manors a dozen, and royalties three, With right of free-warren (whatever that be); Rich pastures in front, and green woods in the rear, All in full leaf at the right time of year; About Christmas or so, they fall into the sear, And the prospect, of course, becomes rather more drear; But it's really delightful in spring-time,—and near The great gate Father Thames rolls sun-bright and clear. Cobham woods to the right,—on the opposite shore Landon Hill in the distance, ten miles ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... my pleasure?" exclaimed Rosamund in the same drear voice, still staring at her father, who lay ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... lay on a grassy bank, And the sun shone warm and clear; I wakened on a desert isle, And the sky was black and drear.' ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen |
