"Gaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were near by a flock of sheep Whose sad, gaunt looks bespoke the pasture bare, While they have left scarce strength enough to creep, From having lacked too long good food and care. Suppose that these were brought to pasture fair, The gate of which was opened wide to them. Would they wait for command to enter there? ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... something strange and unfamiliar about the river to-night. It had a voice, too, which allured and repelled him—a voice at the sound of which the grim despair within him stirred ominously at first, and then began slowly to rise up gaunt and terrible; began to move stealthily, but with ever-increasing swiftness through the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Manor, and its light was thrown upon faces bright with good-humored merriment, yet not without some touch of deeper and more earnest feeling. That party would of itself have made an interesting picture. There was Col. Donaldson, tall, gaunt, his figure slightly bent, yet evincing no feebleness, his curling snow-white locks, his broad bold forehead, and shaggy brows overhanging eyes beaming with kindness. Beside him sat Mrs. Donaldson, still beautiful in her green old age. Her face was usually pale, yet her clear ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... portray Richard as even more detestable than history and tradition had presented him. In Holinshed Richard is not accused of the murder of Gloster, whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that his uncle, John of Gaunt, is "grievous ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... den of thieves as well as of wolves. Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed: who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts— why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild uses ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... will grow in thin soil. Just compare the delicate drooping boughs of birch—they could not have been more delicate if sketched with a pencil—compare these with the gaunt planes! ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... they do have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised—for I can assure you that the Monroe doctrine, whatever it is, is nothing to tie to, with Woodrow Wilson behind it. The Huns, Dr. dear, will never be brought to brook by notes. And now," concluded Susan, tucking Jims in the crook of her gaunt arms and marching downstairs, "having cried my cry and said my say I shall take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will look as pleasant ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its poor little glimpse of the sea. Although larger than the Cedars, it was noticeably smaller and meaner than any house on the promenade, and whereas the Cedars was detached, No. 59 was not even semi-detached, but one of a gaunt, tall row of stuccoed and single-fronted dwellings. It looked like a boarding-house (which the Cedars did not), and not all the style of George Cannon's suit and cane and manner, as he mounted the steps, nor the polish of his new brass-plate, could redeem it ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... sprites did not do—and the coloured terra-cotta bust called Niccolo da Uzzano, so like life as to be after a while disconcerting. The sensitiveness of the mouth can never have been excelled. The other originals include the gaunt John the Baptist with its curious little moustache, so far removed from the Amorino and so admirable a proof of the sculptor's vigilant thoughtfulness in all he did; the relief of the infant John, one of the most animated of the heads (the Baptist ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... hours passed on, as he threaded the streets of the proud old Swiss burgher city. He had known its every turn in brighter days, and, though the year of ninety-one was a brilliant Alpine season, and he was in the very flower of youth and manly promise, gaunt care walked as a viewless warder at ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... which she noted was built in the form of a square, when, happening to look into it, she saw something that for the moment caused her heart to stop beating and paralysed her with fear. It was a great gaunt cinnamon bear, which, seated on its haunches, was watching her with a look of comical surprise upon ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... doors troubles. Those within were still worse. His sound, strong horses perished one after another—till at last he had nothing left in his stables but one old gaunt mare called Blaessel. A distemper broke out amongst his horned stock, and before a month passed, destroyed every thing in his stalls, with the exception of an old goat and a gormandizing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... had perished in the flames. All day he had sat beside the smoking ruins, unable to weep, unable to think, unable almost to suffer, except dumbly, for as yet he could not understand it. But when the drums were heard they roused the tiger in him, and gaunt with sleeplessness and hunger he joined his countrymen and ranged like Ajax on the field. Every cry for quarter was in vain: to every such appeal he had but ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... unsympathetic temperament, and disposed to take sarcastic views of life, might perhaps wonder what possible object these two battered and weather-beaten old bodies proposed to themselves in this process,—whether Miss Roxy's gaunt black-straw helmet, which she had worn defiantly all winter, was likely to receive much lustre from being pressed over and trimmed with an old green ribbon which that energetic female had colored black by a domestic recipe; and whether Miss Roxy's ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... which was again opening. Do what I would I could not repress a start, for, to my surprise, I saw my travelling companions enter with Miss Temple—Gertrude Forrest looking more charming and more beautiful than ever, and beside her Miss Staggles, tall, gaunt, and more forbidding than when ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... I could see that it was desolate. Visible now that the water had gone down, the pillars supporting it rose gaunt and skeletal. Towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. It was a city of the dead, under an Earth leprous-looking with black spots where ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... having the price of corn kept artificially above a certain point, and further "protected" by a prohibitory tax upon foreign corn, all in order that the landlord might collect undiminished rentals from his farm lands. But, alas! there was no "protection" from starvation. Is it strange that gaunt famine was a frequent visitor in the land?—But men must starve ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... verging on friendship was ended by our close approach to the main road. We had been travelling, heedless of roads and tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top of Yarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poor cover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces from the top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, while I crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which here climbed the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... assailed him in the house of the Square du Roule when first he had heard of Jeanne's arrest. The open place facing the gate had transformed itself into the Place de la Revolution, the tall rough post that held a flickering oil lamp had become the gaunt arm of the guillotine, the feeble light of the lamp was the knife that gleamed with the reflection of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Sickness and failing strength found him with but little, and had left him penniless. An oppressive embargo upon the shipping business had been the first weight upon his head, and other misfortunes came in painful succession. Jacob and his wife were all alone, and gaunt poverty looked them coldly in ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... was down in a instant upon his knees with his gaunt hands outstretched. "Send me, sire! Me!" he cried. "I have never asked a favour of you, and never will again. But I am the man who could break this people. Send me with your message to the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tortoises that crawled slowly about, shaking their heads and nibbling at the young leaves. Yes, she must certainly come to the forest and play with him. He would give her his own little bed, and would watch outside the window till dawn, to see that the wild horned cattle did not harm her, nor the gaunt wolves creep too near the hut. And at dawn he would tap at the shutters and wake her, and they would go out and dance together all the day long. It was really not a bit lonely in the forest. Sometimes a Bishop rode through on his white mule, reading out of a painted book. Sometimes in their ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... aware of it, a feeling of despondency as to the fate of himself and his companions, had more than once occurred to me, which each day's delay much increased, and which this agreeable rencounter at once effectually removed. Poor fellow! gaunt misery had worn him to the bone; and I believe, that in any other part of the world, not myself alone, but Lieutenant Grey's most intimate friends, would have stared at him without the least approach to recognition. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... on his way from Father M'Mahon's to the Mitre, was met in a lonely part of the road, near the priest's house, by a man of huge stature and savage appearance. He was literally in rags; and his long beard, gaunt features, and eyes that glared as if with remorse, distraction, or despair, absolutely constituted him an alarming as well as a painful spectacle. As he approached the stranger, with some obvious and urgent purpose, trailing after him a weapon that resembled the club of Hercules, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... replied Kate, softly. (She had called him "Mr. Gaunt" in public till now.) "But money and lands do not always bring content. I think I was happier a minute ago than I feel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... floated like colored vapor over the fields, glistening in the warm sunlight. Wild peacocks were seen feeding near the rails, but not in populous districts. In the early gray of the morning, more than once on the lonely plains, a tall, gaunt wolf was observed coolly watching the passing train, or loping swiftly away. Camels were seen in long strings, with their loads protruding on either side, slowly moving over the country roads; while an occasional elephant, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... as though saturated with oil, their flickering blaze lighting up a weird scene; the gaunt, bare, white trees, ghosts of a departed forest, the miry ground strewn with eggs of all sizes, shapes and colors, and dead birds of many kinds, in amongst which writhed and twisted dirty-looking, repulsive water moccasins and brilliant ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the afternoon the hunters returned with their spoil—three gaunt, fierce-looking wild pigs; and then after a meal had been cooked and eaten, the white man and woman bade each other good-bye for ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... once. Then Horace looked round. He saw a tall and very pale young man, neatly though poorly dressed in dark trousers and a thin loose black coat that might have been made of alpaca, and fitted badly. This man's face was gaunt and meagre, the features were pointed, the mouth was piteous. His eyes blazed with some terrible emotion, it seemed, and when Horace looked round a sudden patch of scarlet burned on his white and bony cheeks. Horace's attention was pinned by his appearance, which was at the same time ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Clarissa, don't be rude," came in a soft voice from behind the elderly lady, and Deck saw a dainty hand placed on one of the gaunt shoulders. ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... down near the friars, crossed myself, and cut a piece of bread from the loaf before me. The innkeeper and his wife, a gaunt, extraordinarily tall woman, served, running from table to table. The place was all heat and noise. Presently the soldiers, ending their meal, got up with clamor and surged from the court to their waiting horses. After them ran the innkeeper, appealing for pay. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... rags as if he were going to be crowned king in the city; with his head lifted as if he saw apocalyptic stars in heaven, and a gesture at which the towers might fall. This man was ragged beyond all that moving rag-heap; he was as gaunt as a gallows tree, and the thing he was uttering with arms held up to heaven was evidently a curse. The lady sent an inquiry by her German servant, whom also I can see in a vision, with his face of wood and his air of still trailing ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... a heavy silence; gaunt weeds through windows pry, And down the streets of Liang old ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... limped up and stopped in the sandy road before the sagging gate, the trio saw that their refuge was a windowless and abandoned structure that looked as gaunt and ghostly as ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... a huge gaunt man clad in shirt and jeans arose and confronted us. Our first impression was of a vast framework stiffened and shrunken into the peculiar petrifaction of age; our second, of a Jove-like wealth of iron-gray beard and hair; our third, of ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... her, and she turned her head. A gaunt dog, of no particular breed, had been following her stealthily, but at her movement he stopped short, apparently ready to take to flight at any indication of hostility on her part. He was by no means a handsome ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... hiss and to pant be hind him. A big viper came gliding. Its tongue dripping venom hung far out of its mouth, and its bright body shone against the withered leaves. Beside the snake pattered a wolf, a big, gaunt monster, who was ready to seize fast in his throat when the snake had twisted about his feet and bitten him in the heel. Sometimes they were both silent, as if to approach him unperceived, but they soon betrayed themselves by hissing and panting, and sometimes the wolf's ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... authority I was subjected at the Metropolitan—the most austere tyrant that ever oppressed a traveler. That grim White Woman might have paired with the Ancient Mariner—she was so deep-voiced, and gaunt, and wan. On the few occasions when I ventured to summon her, she would "hold me with her glittering eye" till I quailed visibly beneath it, utterly scorning and rejecting some mild attempts at conciliation. I am certain she suspected me of meditating ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... she was taking a last long gaze, while her mother, in the utmost anxiety, was striving to make up her mind to draw her away, when suddenly a tall gaunt figure was among them—his face ghastly pale, and full of despair and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A gaunt hound came rushing from the underbrush beyond the house, and with hair bristling in anger, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... in the Plays where this happens. Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but the Stratford Shakespeare has to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "I fain would show Thee what thou hast not seen in the warm glow Of thy glad home. This blighted shore of mine No verdure hath, nor bloom, nor fruits that shine 'Mong drooping boughs. Far inland gloom lone peaks O'er blackened meads; or from their bare cones leaps Gaunt, crackling flame; or crawl like ashen veins The smouldering fires across the stricken plains. Deep in these yawning caves black shadows lie That shall be lifted never more. Come, I Enter! Know thou what treasure by the sea I gathered ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... May—we struggled slowly up the incline of snow, lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we must have looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet over the dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that there was much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did not accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... A gaunt figure met him almost on the threshold, and he recognized his messenger with a sharp sense of coming disaster. The man ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... were the day of the mass meeting in Trafalgar Square. I was tall, and so thin and gaunt that, with my uniform and my arm in its sling, it was easy to get close to the front, straight under the speakers. And no sooner had I got there than I was seized with a restlessness, an uncontrollable desire to see my godfather—Kitchener. Only to ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... illustrating the great red ears that stood out at right angles above it. But Obed was only a boy. He was not expected to be more than clean and speechless; and, to tell the truth, Eben, being in the hobbledehoy stage of boyhood—gaunt, awkward, and self-sufficient—rather surpassed his small brother in unpleasant aspect and manner. But who would look at the boys when Dolly stood beside them, as she did now, tall and slender, with the free grace of an untrammelled figure, her small head erect, her eyes dark and soft as a deer's, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and silent and lonely the house looked, rising gaunt and dim in the uncertain light! Who would choose such a spot for a home? Surely only those whose deeds would not bear the light of day. And why that deadly silence and torpor in a house inhabited by human beings? It seemed unnatural and uncanny, and as a great white owl swept by on silent ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... began his exile, and of the better thoughts into which these gradually cleared. The first child's name expresses his father's discontent, and suggests the bitter contrast between Sinai and Egypt; the court and the sheepfold; the gloomy, verdureless, gaunt peaks of Sinai, blazing in the fierce sunshine, and the cool, luscious vegetation of Goshen, the land for cattle. The exile felt himself all out of joint with his surroundings, and so he called the little child that came to him 'Gershom,' which, according to one explanation, means 'banishment,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... skimpy pollard lilacs. The student whose state of mind is in the majority of cases created by his surroundings, ought in the place where he is studying to see facing him at every turn nothing but what is lofty, strong and elegant.... God preserve him from gaunt trees, broken windows, grey walls, and doors ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the rest. Of them all, my favorite was Whittier. He had been present at my graduation from the theological school, and now he often attended our suffrage meetings. He was already an old man, nearing the end of his life; and I recall him as singularly tall and thin, almost gaunt, bending forward as he talked, and wearing an expression of great serenity and benignity. I once told Susan B. Anthony that if I needed help in a crowd of strangers that included her, I would immediately ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... The match flaring upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt features made her hideous. Poor little Fanny, who ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder, and begged to go to her mother. The old woman puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... intangible something which marked him out as a child of the same parents. The brother on whom Margot was now gazing was considerably the younger of the two, and might have been handsome, given a trifle more flesh and animation. As it was, he looked gaunt and livid, and his shoulders were rounded, as with much ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tall and gaunt, with lean face, sunken eyes, white hair and beard, and a complexion between the hue of cinnamon and bronze. He, too, was unarmed. His costume was Hindostani; over the skull-cap a shawl was wound in great folds, forming a turban; his body garments were in the style of the Egyptian's, except that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a small boy, and I had always admired it as a fine example of that kind of architecture which is the most suitable to London's atmosphere. Though I must have passed it thousands of times, I had never passed without an upward smile of approval that gaunt and sombre facade, with its long straight windows, its well-spaced columns, its long straight coping against the London sky. My eyes deplored that these noble and familiar things must perish. For sake of what they had sheltered, my heart deplored ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as you ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... dwelling, situated in the midst of smiling plantations, and Captain Copeland is well to do, and much respected by his neighbours. One summer evening, however, the Captain is disturbed at his supper, and his family frightened from their propriety, by the appearance of a tall gaunt Indian, who enters the room unannounced, and is recognised by a missionary there present as Tokeah, the miko or king of the Oconees, the principal tribe of the Creek Indians. This Tokeah is one of the most deadly and persevering enemies of the white men, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... crazed creature, known as Marguerite, "La Folle", stood before him, her long black hair streaming over her bare chest and gaunt arms, her eyes dilated, and glowing with the mingled light of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the hungry Hierarchy Devouring all the Squirearchy. Lollards Lollards in thirteen-seven arose 1307 Popish rituals to oppose; John Wycliffe gives to old and young The Bible in the vulgar tongue. With John of Gaunt's protection strong He dared to preach 'gainst cleric wrong; Precursor of the Reformation To ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... the wood-cutter, tall and gaunt and fierce-eyed, coming home with his fagots on his shoulder in the gloam of the evening, when the fireflies twinkled low among the marshes, saw Nicanor on the side of the hill against the sky, sitting with ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... York, he hoped that Ellas Droom—who knew too much—might refuse to go into the new territory with him, but the gaunt, old clerk took an unnatural and malevolent delight in clinging to his employer. He declined to give up his place in the office, and, although he hated James Bansemer, he came like an accusing shadow into the new offices near the Chicago ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... gaunt-looking woman, with a child in her arms, stood in the twilight on the opposite side of the street, looking up at ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... impatiently rapped on the door with the heavy oak butt-end of his whip. Still there was no response. Again he knocked, this time louder than before, and was preparing for an even more vigorous assault upon the unhospitable entrance, when the door swung back and the landlord, a tall, gaunt ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... King David of Scotland and the King of Cyprus met at King Edward's grand entertainments. The later years of his life were spent by this great warrior-king in partial retirement from public affairs, and under the influence of his mistress, Alice Perrers, while John of Gaunt took a leading part in the government of the state. In 1376 Edward the Black Prince died, and the same year King Edward III. kept his last Christmas at Westminster, the festival being made memorable by all the nobles of the realm attending to swear fealty to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore Meant in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the gaunt spectre of murder invades the cloistered calm of academic life. Yet such a strange and unwonted tragedy befell Harvard University in the year 1849, when John W. Webster, Professor of Chemistry, took the life of Dr. George Parkman, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... days must come and go without distinction. Their fleeting beauty leaves them imperceptibly; they grow fat, they grow thin, wrinkled, and gaunt; the years pass and their life proceeds without change. They do not think, they do not live: they merely exist, and they die, and that is the end of it. I suppose they are as happy as any one else. After all, taking it from one point of view, it matters ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the gaunt, travel-worn dogs galloped through the driving snow, and, eager for the shelter of the trading room, bolted pell-mell through the gathering at the doorway, upsetting several spectators before the driver could halt the runaways by falling headlong upon the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Club with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures. He listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with laughter on hearing that ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was, that old Public Letter-Writer, more like a great, gaunt bird than a human being, with those spectacles of his, and his long, very sparse and very lanky fringe of a beard which fell from his cheeks and chin and down his chest for all the world like a crumpled grey ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the door opened and into the room came a player, tall, lanky, with a pale, gaunt face, plastered over the forehead with damp wisps of straight, black hair. His deep-set, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That night,' ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... unnumber'd scenes of woe, 50 What if the lion in his rage I meet!— Oft in the dust I view his printed feet: And, fearful! oft, when day's declining light Yields her pale empire to the mourner night, By hunger roused, he scours the groaning plain, 55 Gaunt wolves and sullen tigers in his train: Before them Death with shrieks directs their way, Fills the wild yell, and leads them to their prey. 'Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... from Edward III., but a bar sinister marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of England to the canons of ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the thought of concealing it. He was therefore about to make the disagreeable confession, when the thoughts of the whole party were suddenly diverted to another channel, by the opening of the door and the entrance of one of those gaunt sons of the forest who were wont to hang on the skirts of civilisation, as it advanced to wrest from ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... stone among the hills, and of a mixture of brick and stone in the vale. Examples of cottages can be seen in the village of Great Habton. They are dated 1741 and 1784, and are much less picturesque than those of the seventeenth century, though village architecture had not then reached the gaunt ugliness of the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Arden, wait till I die. I feel it won't be long. What have I to live for but you and Rosy? And if you, my pride and joy, go away after what has happened, it will be worse than death," and a tempest of grief shook her gaunt frame. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... of the 28th of August King Edward sat on the deck of his flagship listening to Sir John Chandos, who was singing while the minstrels played. Beside him stood his eldest son, the famous Black Prince, then twenty years of age, and his youngest son, John of Gaunt, then only ten. Suddenly the lookout called down from the tops: "Sire, I see one, two, three, four—I see so many, so help me God, I cannot count them." Then the King called for his helmet and for wine, with which he and his knights drank to each others' ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... from among the trees were two tall gaunt figures. They were blackened and tattered and bandaged; the hind-most one limped and had his head swathed in white, but the foremost one still carried himself as a Prince should do, for all that his left arm was in a sling and one side of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... gaunt; and without any delay, both he and his people were ushered into the hollow square, where they all stuck their lances in the ground ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... up, and her eye fell upon a letter lying on her bureau. Back she sank with a sigh, and lay staring at the ceiling—a gaunt, flat, sad-eyed creature, with wisps of gray hair half-covering her baldness, and a face furrowed with care ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form—all this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the emigrants ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... sxtrumpligilo. Gas gaso. Gaseous gasa. Gash trancxadi. Gasometer gasometro. Gasp spiregi. Gastric stomaka. Gate pordego. Gather kolekti. Gather together kolekti. Gathering kolekto. Gaudy luksema. Gauge mezuri. Gaunt malgrasa. Gauntlet ferganto. Gauze gazo. Gawky mallerta. Gay, to be gaji. Gay gaja. Gaze rigardegi. Gazelle gazelo. Gazette gazeto. Gear (machinery) ilaro. Gehenna Geheno. Gelatine gelateno. Gem brilianto, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that, nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid new mansion over the cellar ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... though he was esteemed to be, could not help being struck dumb by the unexpected sight of the gaunt foreigner. Indeed, having so long held supposed intercourse with familiar spirits, it is not improbable that he imagined that one of them had at last come, without waiting for a summons, to punish him because of his deceptive practices, for he turned ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... from a new press. Here, too, his whole bearing and conversation were so uniformly hopeful, hearty, and light-hearted, that they deceived all his associates into confidence that the new home had instilled new life into our friend's gaunt frame. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... squinted at the sky line, which was jagged, and at his immediate surroundings, which were barren and lonely and soothing to his soul that hungered for these things. Great, gaunt "Joshua" trees stood in grotesque groups all up and down the narrow valley, hiding the way he had come from the way he would go. It was as if the desert had purposely dropped a curtain before his past and would show him none of his future. Whereat Casey ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... and wise woman may give to timid merit, what support to uncertain virtue, what wings to noble aspirations." Chaucer was thus patronized by Philippa, queen of Edward III; by Anne of Bohemia, for whom he composed his "Legend of Good Women;" and most of all by Blanche of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, whose courtship he celebrated allegorically in the "Parliament of Birds," whose epithalamium he sang in his "Dream," and whose death he lamented in his "Book of the Duchess." The beautiful and kindly ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, 80 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... same trick on me; and others, on catching sight of me, beat a retreat. Thus I perceived, that in the ranks of this class also deceivers existed. But these cheats were very pitiable creatures: all of them were but half-clad, poverty-stricken, gaunt, sickly men; they were the very people who really freeze to death, or hang themselves, as we learn from ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... houses on either side of the street were dilapidated and gaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements. Screaming children swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing, and out on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... stands out like a bastion from the imposing mass of the Cordillera, through the very heart of which runs the mysterious waterway we have just traversed. Two thousand feet or more below is a broad plain, bounded on the west by a range of gaunt and treeless hills ribbed with contorted rocks, which stretch north and south farther than the eye can reach. The plain is cultivated and inhabited. There are huts, fields, orchards, and streams, and about a league from the foot of the bastion is ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... "You wouldn't care much about seeing her again. She is a tall, gaunt, disagreeable looking woman; while Ida is fair, and sweet looking. I didn't fancy this Mrs. Hardwick when I first set eyes on her. Aunt Rachel was ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... a broken team crawled over the snow to the Moravian Mission, urged by two men gaunt from the trail, and blistered by the cold. From the sledge came shrieks and throaty mutterings, horrid gabblings of post-freezing madness and Dr. Forrest, lifting back the robe, found Orloff ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... A gaunt and relentless wolf, possessed Of a quite insatiable thirst, Once paused at a stream to drink and rest, And found that, bound on a similar quest, A lamb had ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... if it had been day he saw a man standing below in the deluge. It was not Mooie. It was not Kedsty. It was no one that he had ever seen. Even more like a ghost than a man was that apparition of the lightning flare. A great, gaunt giant of a ghost, bare-headed, with long, dripping hair and a long, storm-twisted beard. The picture shot to his brain with the swiftness of the lightning itself. It was like the sudden throwing of a cinema picture on a screen. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... from us, Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach; Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home; Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech; Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam, Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, His equal friendship crave: And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech Of Athens, Florence, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... tent, made of mud, thatched with furze, and consisted of a single room, on whose floor of beaten dung huddled a family of starving wretches—hollow-eyed, pale, gaunt, and almost naked; a round dozen of them. There were a man, bright and peaked with hunger; a poor drudge of a woman, worn to a rag before her time, with a dying child upon her empty breast; a grown son and seven children—all crouched there close together like pigs in a ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... and a very large one: for it required a good-sized quadruped of the kind to make an appropriate roadster for the ex-grenadier of the Imperial guard. It was not a very fat mule, however, but raw-boned and gaunt as a ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... French people are there already, preparing to be ill—(I never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)—a few Frenchmen are there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the sight of his long, gaunt figure, clad in a full suit of pink pajamas, dashing madly about the camp, would have excited the lads to uproarious merriment. But laughter was far from their ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... with no abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt Flemish graciousness, murmured names. "Mrs. Rankin—" Mrs. Rankin nodded insolently and turned away. "Miss Bartrum—" Miss Bartrum, the rather charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet eyes. "Dr. Donald McClane—" As he bowed the Commandant's stare arched up ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... take the liberty of calling this person, was so long a part of my life that I must pause to describe her. She was tall, rather gaunt, with high cheek-bones; her teeth were prominent and very white; her eyes were china-blue, and were always absolutely fixed, wide open, on the person she spoke to; her nose was inclined to be red at the tip. She had a kind, hearty, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... an allegory even without the key; and they knew when a crisis had come, when they did not know what it was. And somehow they knew subconsciously that the whole tale had taken a new and terrible turn, when they saw the prince stand in the gap of the gaunt trees, in his robes of angry crimson and with his lowering face of bronze, bearing in his hand a new shape of death. They could not have named a reason, but the two swords seemed indeed to have become toy swords and the whole tale ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... hideously purple, when the short gasps were little dry sounds, speaking piteously of agony and suffocation, when still the relentless grip at his throat was unshaken, men began for the first time to guage the strength which lay in the great, gaunt ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... a quilt was thrown in a fantastic manner, under which appeared a long night-gown, from which thin bare legs protruded, with bare, gaunt, skeleton-like feet. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... been cleared away to make room for the art of man, and art has not yet got beyond the inchoate unloveliness of bare utilitarianism. The beautiful woods have given place to a charred, stumpy, muddy waste, on which stand the gaunt, new frame-houses. Gardens, orchards, cornfields, and meadows are things to come; until they do the natural beauty of the place is killed and insulted. But what have we to do with sentimental rubbish? This is ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... their theatre and laughing at their games—as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses protested—crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine, whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus, and flinging the altars ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would be a tall, gaunt, swarthy, raw-boned, swearing man of the sea. He was a sleek, silent, modest little man, with delicate hands and features. He wished to be alone with the Doctor, and so I did not hear their talk. I know that he needed money and that Franklin, having no funds, provided ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... saw that he must lose the marked bill after all. Regretfully he took it from his pocket. The woman had disappeared from the window, and now she came to the door and stood behind her husband. Wrapped in an old blanket, she made a gaunt figure, not unlike a squaw. As Orme walked up the two or three steps, she stretched her hand over her husband's shoulder and snatched the bill, examining ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... warm luxuriantly furnished room, Is an antidote to the wild night storm, Lamplight and firelight banish the gloom, No poverty stalks there with cold gaunt form. ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... himself again, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that there were no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him; and his heart awakened to a mighty love, which never wavered once in its fidelity while ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... long been a custom of the Canipers to spend each warm Sunday evening in the heather, and there, if Daniel were not already with them, they would find him waiting, or they would watch for his gaunt, loose figure to come across the moor. This habit had begun when his father was alive, and the stern chapel-goer's anger must be dared before Daniel could appear with the light of a martyr on his brow. In those days, Zebedee, who was working under the old doctor, sometimes ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... he was standing in a long, low attic, amidst the whir and clatter of many looms. The meagre daylight peered in through the grated windows, and showed him the gaunt figures of the weavers bending over their cases. Pale, sickly-looking children were crouched on the huge crossbeams. As the shuttles dashed through the warp they lifted up the heavy battens, and when the shuttles stopped they let the battens fall and pressed the threads together. Their faces ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... bits of moral teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His own importance and His relation to men and to God; but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other side of the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown across the black gulf, and the Cross remains 'dead, being alone.' You must have a Resurrection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... gaunt, yellow spectre of a man, reduced to his last chemise, and that a sad spectacle of ancient purity, starting from Lincoln's-Inn, and making all haste for Waterloo-bridge, the inference is rather natural, that he is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... days in April, Abner, gaunt and tottering, went home to Flatfield. Leverett Whyland's own carriage took him to the station and Medora Giles's own hands arranged ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... was mostly short and easy—"bull's fell" heather as it was named. Tall cotton grass flaunted up suddenly through the slaty haze of the night of pursuit. The plant called "Honesty" with its flat, white seed vessels, gaunt and startling, swished past them, the dry pods crackling among their ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... grasping cactus and brush. Clumsy home-made leather shields covered the front of his forelegs and ran up well to his wide breast. What otherwise would have been muscular symmetry of limb was marred by many a scar and many a lump. He was lean, gaunt, worn, a huge machine of muscle and bone, beautiful only in head and mane, a weight-carrier, a horse strong and fierce like the desert that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... living-room of the cabin, for at this season, at such an altitude, the shadows were always cold, and around the fire they gathered, each of the men with half a huge pie before him. They were such as one might expect that mountain region to produce, big, gaunt, hard-muscled. They had gone unshaven for so long that their faces were clothed not with an unsightly stubble but with strong, short beard that gave them a certain grim dignity and made their eyes seem sunken. They were opposite types, which ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... dug-outs were having their finishing touches, some to be used as dressing-stations for the wounded whom to-morrow might bring in, others for storing ammunition. In a nearby wood, where trees had been reduced to little more than gaunt trunks barren of leaf and twig, observation posts were built with many tons of branches hauled from the rear, and so artfully wired in place that the stricken giants seemed almost ready to live again. This work in itself constituted reason enough ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Both men were gaunt and weakened by famine. They had just returned to camp from an unsuccessful hunt, and the latter, being first to return, had kindled the fire, and was about to put on the kettle when McKay ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... dreamer, however, I did not care to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat, after several strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse—a skeleton horse almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain, as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... grow old so quickly nowadays," he said. "You are 57 years old, Roger. Ann is 53." He leaned back in his chair, his gaunt smile fading. "The Dictator has not been without opposition. You, his parents, opposed him at the very start, and he cast you off. People wiser than the crowds were able to rebuff his powerful personal ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... of the scattered mesquite growth Carmena edged off to the left, down a shallow wash that brought them around to the west side of a ridge. Under cover of the gaunt earth-rib of worn rock she headed north, straight for the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern, a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shoulders now and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder looking beast, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... there, gaunt in frame, famished of soul, driven by the torments of an ambition to see the right, to do it, it seemed to him as though the final burden had been heaped upon him, and that he must break under the weight on ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... now noon and the day Monday—Mrs. Y's washing will be out to dry. Observe her gaunt replica, cap-a-pie, as immodest as an advertisement! In her proper person she is prodigal if she unmask her beauty to the moon. And in company with this, is the woolen semblance of her plump husband. Neither of them is shap'd for sportive tricks: But look upon ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... little burg of Zell, where the people, in the time of their emperor's peril, came out with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their priest, and all prayed on their knees underneath the steep gaunt pile of limestone, that is the same to-day as it was then, whilst Kaiser Max is dust; it soars up on one side of this road, very steep and very majestic, having bare stone at its base, and being all along its summit crowned with ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... Anthony's best furniture, they were clean, new, and, in a blonde and sanitary way, not unattractive. Bounds had gone abroad to enlist in the British army, and in his place they tolerated rather than enjoyed the services of a gaunt, big-boned Irishwoman, whom Gloria loathed because she discussed the glories of Sinn Fein as she served breakfast. But they vowed they would have no more Japanese, and English servants were for the present hard to obtain. Like Bounds, the woman prepared only breakfast. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... within the influences of the sun, and ever-changing shape. On another, when the turbulent Foehn is blowing, streamers of snow may be seen flying from the higher ridges against a pallid background of slaty cloud, while the gaunt ribs of the hills glisten below with fitful gleams of lurid light. At sunrise, one morning, stealthy and mysterious vapours clothe the mountains from their basement to the waist, while the peaks are glistening serenely in clear daylight. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... corral for a flock of Angora goats. There was no gate for the passage of teams; the road ended there, and a rough sign nailed to a hingeless wicket warned the wayfarer to "Keep Out." On a rocky knob near this entrance a gaunt, hard-featured woman sat knitting. She measured the trespassers with a furtive, smouldering glance and clicked her needles with ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... and opening out of this same chamber, are dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms: each with a multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers other gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are also some half- dozen small ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Hepsey was a tall, gaunt woman, bearing the tragedy of her race written in her face, with its melancholy eyes, subdued expression, and the pathetic patience of a wronged dumb animal. She received Christie with an air of resignation, and speedily bewildered her with an account of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the buildings, the people and the soldiery with deep interest. From the head of the main street,—Castle Avenue,—they could plainly see the royal palace, nearly a mile away. Its towers and turrets, gray and gaunt, ran up among the green tree-tops and were outlined plainly against the yellow hills. Countless houses studded the steep mountain slope, and many people were discerned walking and riding along the narrow, ledge-like streets which wound toward the summit, far up in the clouds. Clearly and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sir John Richardson, "may be seen by the side of every stream, and a traveler can rarely pass the night in these wilds without hearing them howling around him."[1] These wolves burrow, and bring forth their young in earths with several outlets, like those of a fox. Sir John saw none with the gaunt appearance, the long jaw and tapering nose, long legs and slender feet, of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... course be distinguished from such a play on words as John of Gaunt makes with his own name in ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... with a start, rubbing her eyes. Gaunt and grey in the first dim light of morning, Aunt Matilda stood over her, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... was just beginning to stir among the deepest layers of all, shut down suddenly with a snap, and he followed his companion over fields and down sweet-smelling lanes where the air was fragrant and cool, till they came to a large house, standing gaunt and lonely in the shadows at the edge of a wood. It was wrapped in utter stillness, with windows heavily draped in black, and the clerk, as he looked, felt such an overpowering wave of sadness invade him that his eyes began to burn and ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... days of unseasonable and depressing warmth, with lowering but not rainy sky, I woke this morning to find the land covered with a dense mist. There was no daybreak, and, till long after the due hour, no light save a pale, sad glimmer at the window; now, at mid-day, I begin dimly to descry gaunt shapes of trees, whilst a haunting drip, drip on the garden soil tells me that the vapour has begun to condense, and will pass in rain. But for my fire, I should be in indifferent spirits on such a day as this; the flame sings and leaps, and its red beauty is reflected ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing |
