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Sepulchral   Listen
adjective
Sepulchral  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to burial, to the grave, or to monuments erected to the memory of the dead; as, a sepulchral stone; a sepulchral inscription.
2.
Unnaturally low and grave; hollow in tone; said of sound, especially of the voice. "This exaggerated dulling of the voice... giving what is commonly called a sepulchral tone."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books



... just in time," said Amelia behind her mask, and in a supposed-to-be-sepulchral voice. "The sawney is all prepared to don her costume. Hither, slave! and see that she dons the costume ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... conceive disdain, Hearing the deed unblest Of wretches who have dar'd profane His dread sepulchral rest? ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... with the hair outward, which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the Roman Campagna. In this garb, they look like antique Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might have represented the last survivor of that vanished race, hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over his lost life of woods ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... beholding the emaciated countenances of the Doctor and Hepburn, as they strongly evidenced their extremely debilitated state. The alteration in our appearance was equally distressing to them, for since the swellings had subsided we were little more than skin and bone. The Doctor particularly remarked the sepulchral tone of our voices, which he requested us to make more cheerful if possible, unconscious that his own partook of ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... fifteen bloody corpses of my shipmates who had been murdered. We stood aghast; the hair rose straight up from our heads, as we viewed the supernatural reappearances. After a pause of about five minutes, during which we never spoke or even moved, one of the corpses cried out in a sepulchral voice, "Come, every man his bird!" and held up ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... for church—"Sis Moriah, look ter me like you'd be 'feerd dem black shimmies 'd draw out some sort o' tetter on yo' skin," to which bit of friendly warning Moriah had responded, with a groan, and in a voice that was almost sepulchral in its awful solemnity, ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... said Max Graub, in a cautious sotto voce to Leroy, "at the end of your adventures! Behold the number Thirteen! Six lights at one end, six lights at the other,—that is twelve; and in the centre the Thirteenth—the red Eye looking into the sepulchral urn! It is all up ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... thou art a fool of the first water!" he said to himself as he realised the ignominy of his situation. For he was in the most dismal of dungeons, furnished as scantily as a cellar, fireless, damp, and almost in sepulchral darkness, for what light might have entered by a little window over the door was obscured by ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... one half sovereign, seven shillings in silver, and tuppence in bronze,' said the sepulchral policeman, as though he thought 'tuppence' was usually 'in' marble, or lignum vitae, or something of the sort. 'Also one silver watch with leather guard, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... on one of the blocks of stone surrounding a tumulus in the island of Laaland. In both cases the soles of the feet are represented as being covered; and in all probability they belong to the late stone or earlier bronze age. With these sepulchral marks are associated curious Danish legends, which refer them to real impressions of human feet. The islands of Denmark were supposed to have been made by enchanters, who wished for greater facilities for going to and fro, and dropped them in the sea as stations or stepping-stones on their way; ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... a pretence of falling in a chair and fainting, but he immediately recovered, and said in a sepulchral whisper— ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... hateful to me, and the thought of the great, innocent, bold sunrise unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to do, and to which I cared not to find the key ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... be preceded by these reflections. Nothing could be more sad than the nocturnal aspect of the vast ward of the hospital, where we will introduce our readers. Along the whole length of its gloomy walls were ranged two parallel rows of beds, vaguely lighted by the sepulchral glimmering of a lamp suspended from the ceiling; the narrow windows were barred with iron, like a prison's. The atmosphere is so sickening, so filled with disease, that the new patients did not often become acclimated without ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving, and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but by different tribes as clearly distinguishable ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... making his escape. Rodin, stretched upon the carpet, his limbs twisted with fearful cramps, was writhing in the extremity of pain. The violence of his fall had, no doubt, roused him to consciousness, for he moaned, in a sepulchral voice: "They leave me to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... companion was relating this story, my eyes wandered, from time to time, about the dusky church. Methought the burly countenances of the monks in their distant choir assumed a pallid, ghastly hue, and their deep metallic voices had a sepulchral sound. By the time the story was ended, they had ended their chant; and, extinguishing their lights, glided one by one, like shadows, through a small door in the side of the choir. A deeper gloom prevailed over the church; the figure opposite me on horseback grew more and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... sunshine. Fields are red with a scarlet white-edged poppy, or blue with a flower like larkspur. Wheat fields half covered with this unthrifty beauty! But alas! the elasticity is in Nature's works only. The works of man breathe over us a dismal, sepulchral, stand-still feeling. The villages have the nightmare, and men wear wooden shoes. The day's ride, however, was memorable with novelty; and when we saw Mont Martre, and its moth-like windmills, telling us we were coming to Paris, it was almost ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney, with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... the first thing to be done was to build huge piers, which partly encroach on the small sepulchral chapels between the larger apses. These piers now rise nearly to the level of the central aisle of the church where they are cut off unfinished; they must be about 80 or 90 feet in height. On the outer side they are covered with many circular shafts which are banded together by ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... importance. The subterraneous passages and foundations of ancient buildings, scattered over a wide extent of ground, attest a place of no small size. The remains of a theatre,[151] added to abundance of vases, cinerary urns, sepulchral lamps, and coins and medals, both of the upper and lower empire, which have been from time to time dug up here, prove it to have been occupied by the Romans during a considerable period. But no records remain, either of its greatness ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... Saxon aera; and it is evident that the name of almost every vilor or farm within the district is derived from them." The church build at the end of the village, was erected at the formation of the parish by bishop Ralph in 1230. It has a nave and north aisle with a small sepulchral chapel appendant. In this portion of the church which belongs to the manor of Dedisham, is a curiously sculptured female figure, destitute of any inscription, but traditionally said, to belong to a member of the family of Tregoz.—There are also two other mural monuments, with ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley

... alone and inexplicable, like a defiant ghost. 'It is remarkably interesting,' he observed coldly, when somebody asked him what he thought of the Apologia: 'it is like listening to the voice of one from the dead.' And such voices, with their sepulchral echoes, are apt to be more dangerous than living ones; they attract too much attention; they must be silenced at all costs. It was the meeting of the eagle and the dove; there was a hovering, a swoop, and then the quick beak and the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... receded until out of sight. After a time Perkins began to get his voice, when suddenly his tormentors appeared in terrible guise. Each white, ghostly face was lighted up as by a tongue of fire; terrible eyes gleamed from under wide-crowned cavalry hats and a voice was heard, in a sepulchral whisper, "Nex' time we come fer you, we ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped about—after its habit—for something cheerful, something that would break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In a flash she remembered the primroses; ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... behold a stranger at the same water-hole. He's alone—he's looking for something. He rides in circles. He's off his horse and bending over—What? A skeleton! Yes, it's the skeleton of one of them other Mexicans." Strange's voice became positively sepulchral as his spirit control took fuller possession of his earthly shell and as his visions resolved themselves into clearer outline. "See! He swears an oath to avenge. And now—the scene changes. Everything dissolves. I'm ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... the club after I had left Claridge's, and stayed playing bridge till unusually late. It was early in the morning when I reached the Milan, and the hotel had that dimly lit, somewhat sepulchral appearance which seems to possess a large building at that hour in the morning. As I stood for a moment inside the main doors, four men stepped out of the lift on my right, carrying a long wooden chest. They slunk away into ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the plumage of his companions, waved the crest of the gigantic del Pulgar; and, as Moor after Moor went down before his headlong lance, his voice, sounding deep and sepulchral through his visor, shouted out—"Death ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stress upon the second trial, all the anxiety, all the expenditure, saying, "The first is nothing, the last is everything." Give the race assurance of a second and more important trial in the subsequent life, and all the preparation for eternity would be post-mortem, post-funeral, post-sepulchral, and the world with one jerk be pitched off into impiety ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... where the rose scent did not come at all, and only a pungent smell of wattle was in the thin, hushed air. More gum trees, and more white, ghostly arms; then a sharp movement near the fence, a thick, sepulchral whisper, and a stifled ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... which they have in their names, and we will make unto thee the divine offerings which we are bound to make, and offer sacrifices in thy name for ever. Acclamations are made in thy name, libations are poured out to thy KA, and sepulchral meals [are brought unto thee] by the spirits who are in thy following, and water is sprinkled ... on each side of the souls of the dead in this land. Every plan for thee which hath been decreed by the ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... he'd have every mother's son of us sent to jail or hanged, if he could," growled another voice on Snell's right, while from a mask on the left there came in sepulchral tones, the words, "It had better be hands off with you then, man," the speaker pointing significantly to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... were the precipice and the river; on the other, the plain extending to the city, which in the present day is in great part divided by walls and dotted with gardens; while a square enclosure of moderate size, shaded by dusky cypresses, honeycombed with tombs, and adorned with urns and other sepulchral monuments, surrounds the church. This is a public cemetery, laid out toward the end of the eighteenth century, and fearfully filled in three weeks by the dire pestilence which devastated Sicily in 1837. On the Tuesday following Easter, at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... and the woman who was impure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns, stand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek, and hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping with fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and infernal ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... of the fanatic's presence, and he merely bowed his head as a signal for him to proceed. Mr. Parris, in his deep sepulchral voice, continued:[B] ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... the cathedral of his native city of Lichfield, a smaller one is to be erected. To compose his epitaph, could not but excite the warmest competition of genius[1282]. If laudari a laudato viro be praise which is highly estimable[1283], I should not forgive myself were I to omit the following sepulchral verses on the authour of THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY, written by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... to lament or to envy the touching and simple burial rite of soldiers? To me, nothing could be more beautiful than such a last resting-place. Why should we desire richer tombs, sepulchral stones, and sculptured monuments? We are all equal upon that field of death, the battlefield at the close of day. And there can be no fitter shroud for him who has fallen on that field than his soldier's cloak. A little earth that will be grass-grown and flower-spangled again in the spring, ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... a shawl one cool evening as if it were my death-warrant, and I said, in the sepulchral tone that wins confidence, "Pedro, do you always say your prayers when you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... that form in virtue of these? Lies there not within the man and the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable,—slowly fading, it may be,—dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness—but there? Shall that divine something, which, once awakened to be its own holy self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we loathe them now—shall this divine ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... the brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By mine be punish'd; on their funeral biers "His must be laid; one ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... dream," said Skippy sulkily. Then he remembered that all through the hideous phantasmagoria, in the smoky mists of low gambling dens, in the drizzle of midnight conclaves, across the sepulchral silences of leaden prisons, there had flitted the beatific vision of an angel with velvety eyes and the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as memorials of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... through great temples swelled the dismal moaning Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... themselves behind the Beguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead. Could it be that l'Intruse of whom she had just been reading, that fatal, unseen visitor, was even now crossing the sepulchral city; could it be that the short ripples upon the face of the dark water were her shadow, while she herself had reached the threshold of the villa, bringing with her the coveted gift of eternal sleep! The church bells chimed the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... clearly the roar and snarl and rending thunder of the great fields of ice as they swept down with the arctic current into Hudson's Bay. Over him hovered a strange night. It was not black but a weird and wraith-like gray, and out of this sepulchral chaos came strange sounds and the moaning of a wind high up. A little while longer, Keith thought, and the thing would have driven him mad. Even now he fancied he heard the screaming and wailing of voices far ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... stand aghast, As on we hurry through the dark; The watch-light blinks as we go past, The watch-dog shrinks and fears to bark; The watch-tower's bell sounds shrill; and, hark! The free wind blows—we've left the town— A wide sepulchral ground I mark, And on ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... would often dispute the necessity of a country living for a London minister to retire to in hot summer time, out of the sepulchral air of a churchyard, where most of them are housed in the city, and found for his own part that by Whitsuntide he did 'rus anhelare', and unless he took fresh air in the vacation, he was stopt in his lungs and could not speak ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... chiefly, however in the evening, of course. Now the good old orthodox idea of a ghost is, of a very long, cadaverous, ghastly personage, of either sex, appearing in white draperies, with uplifted finger, and attended or preceded by sepulchral sounds—whist! hush! and sometimes the rattling of casements and the jingling of chains. A bluish glare and a strong smell of brimstone seldom failed to enhance the horror of the scene. This ghost, however, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... are scattered with indiscriminate extravagance—skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles, sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of Rookwood is too complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to strike home. The only part of the book ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... in the traditional salutation; the sheet was enclosed in an envelope as sepulchral of aspect as itself, and with much misgiving I put Frank's birthday letter into the first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... pilasters, some even from the vaulting. These mocking spectres moved slowly along the pavement, mounting the opposite pillars and losing themselves in the darkness; those rays of cold and diffused light made the shadows seem even darker as they brought out of the darkness here a chapel, beyond, a sepulchral stone or the outline of some pilaster; and the great Christ, who crowned the railings of the high altar, glowed against its background of shadow with the brilliancy of its old gilding, like some miraculous apparition floating in space in a ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the thing was only too apparent. One had only to look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing suggestive of her own personality in that ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... mortuary chapels, gloomy and ugly. An exception to this dull magnificence in death was a marble slab, newly set against the wall, in memory of a Lucifero—one of that family, still eminent, to which belonged the sacrilegious bishop. The design was a good imitation of those noble sepulchral tablets which abound in the museum at Athens; a figure taking leave of others as if going on a journey. The Lucifers had shown good taste in their choice of the old Greek symbol; no better adornment of a tomb has ever been devised, nor one that is half so moving. At the foot of the ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... The sepulchral Pyramid, a little way out of the town, has an order for its basement, the pedestal of which, from point to point of its cap, is twenty-four feet, one inch. At each angle, is a column, engaged one fourth in the wall. The circumference of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... ever," assented Mr. Potter, in a sepulchral voice, as he squeezed the hand of Miss ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... had risen, and was shining into the room. By its light he could see the outline of the beds. Around him there ascended a choral harmony composed of snores of every degree, reaching from the mild, mellow intonation of Clive, down to the deep, hoarse, sepulchral drone of Uncle Moses. In spite of his vexation about his wakefulness, a smile passed over Bob's face, as he listened to those astonishing voices of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... the sound of a wheeled chair coming toward the living room and he made a pretense of staring aimlessly into the street. Presently a sepulchral voice broke the silence. He turned—Mrs. Hilmer was leaning forward in her chair, regarding him attentively, while the maid stood a little to one side. He had expected to come upon a huddle of blond ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... There sleeps King Roger—'Dux strenuus et primus Rex Siciliae'—with his daughter Constance in her purple chest beside him. Henry VI. and Frederick II. and Constance of Aragon complete the group, which surpasses for interest all sepulchral monuments—even the tombs of the Scaligers at Verona—except only, perhaps, the statues of the nave of Innspruck. Very sombre and stately are these porphyry resting-places of princes born in the purple, assembled here ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... avenue for about four miles, the first symptoms of war met our eyes in the shape of a dead horse, whose ribs glared like a cheval-de-frise from a tumulus of mud. If the ghosts of the dead haunt these sepulchral groves, we must have passed through an army of spirits, as our driver, who had visited the scene three days after the battle, described the last four miles as a continued pavement of men and horses ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... know, but Miss Darrow began to sing "In the Gloaming" in a deep, rich contralto voice which seemed fraught with a weird, melancholy power. When I say that her voice was ineffably sympathetic I would not have you confound this quality either with the sepulchral or the aspirated tone which usually is made to do duty for sympathy, especially in contralto voices. Every note was as distinct, as brilliantly resonant, as a cello in a master's hand. So clear, so full the notes rang out that I could plainly feel ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... I sent him the plan for the journey, also a second copy of the translation which I had made of the hieroglyphical inscription on the Osiris or sepulchral figure. He acknowledged the receipt of the same in two letters, one written in Mrs Montefiore's handwriting, the other in his own. Mr Montefiore subsequently told me that his wife now commenced to take a special interest in antiquities, enriching her cabinet with ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... placed them in Ireland; that every stone was washed with juices of herbs, and contained a medical power; and that Merlin, the magician, at the request of King Arthur, transported them from Ireland, and erected them in circles on the plain of Amesbury, as a sepulchral monument for the Britons treacherously slain by Hengist. This fable is thus delivered, without decoration, by Robert ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... it told the story of the overwhelming of one of the chiefs of the old primeval people of Holland, amid all his gala array, in a great storm. But it was another view which Sebastian preferred; that this object was sepulchral, namely, in its motive—the one surviving relic of a grand burial, in the ancient manner, of a king or hero, whose very tomb was wasted away.—Sunt metis metae! There came with it the odd fancy that he himself would like to have been dead and gone as long ago, with a kind of envy of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... pottery, and various other implements of a rude housewifery. The minister found for me, under one family heap, the pieces of a half-burned, unglazed earthen jar, with a narrow mouth, that, like the sepulchral urns of our ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand, without the assistance of the potter's wheel; and to one of the fragments there stuck a minute pellet of gray hair. From under another heap ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... from her chair to say to Mrs. Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't it?" And another remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... upon whom the greed of gold was stronger than on Ezekiel, yet he hesitated now that his spectral friend had spoken so plainly, and trembled in every limb as the ghost slowly delivered himself in sepulchral tones of this ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... Hoopdriver, in a sepulchral voice. "Lies from beginning to end. 'Ow I came to tell 'em I ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,—ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... imagination grew to be all graveyards, sepulchral urns, skeletons. How beautiful it would be to die young and a poet, to die like the young English poet, Henry Kirke White, whose works I was so enamoured of. The wan consumptive glamour of his career led me, as he had done, to stay up all night, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... surface of every country in Europe may be found sepulchral monuments, the remains of pre-historic times and nations, and of a phase of life will civilisation which has long since passed away. No country in Europe is without its cromlechs and dolmens, huge earthen tumuli, great flagged sepulchres, ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... were heard, which, as they approached, resounded with a sepulchral distinctness on the marble pavement. Presently a young man entered breathlessly, holding his hat in one hand and a white ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... shed a tear when passing by O'er the mean tombs insulting Britons tread, Spurn at the sand, and curse the rebel dead. When to your arms these fatal islands fall— For first or last, they must be conquered, all, Americans! to rites sepulchral just With gentlest footstep press this kindred dust, And o'er the tombs, if tombs can then be found, Place the green turf, and plant the ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... meads, no changes ye are mourning; 'Tis to the hopeless every star appears Like lamps in dark sepulchral vistas burning— And every dew-tipp'd flower is gemm'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... gazed at this sepulchral-looking personage, then at each other interrogatively, and began to feel very uncomfortable. The magpie, perched upon the hanging shelf, suddenly flapped his wings, and repeated, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... taking up my lamp, and peering cautiously about me, I proceeded to the shop. The light flickered,—flickered on something tall and white,—something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... valley widens a little. On its western side are several sepulchral caves hewn in the chalky rock. Another quarter of an hour brought us to the Ain Beit el Djanne, a copious spring, with a mill near it; and from thence, in half an hour, we reached the plain on the eastern side of the mountain. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes—one is called the Powder Lake—and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough [Symbol: T] and set in a heap of loose stones. It is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel proper; the long lines of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... Sepulchral silence! And Connie knew that this was the dreadful Skull and Bones. Her teeth chattered as she stood there, irresolute in ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... and separated from it by a narrow valley, there was a steep hill, that was covered, in every part, with tombs, and monuments, and sepulchral enclosures. The hill was two or three hundred feet high, and there was a very tall monument on the top of it. There was a bridge across the valley behind the ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... the British stage, Great Anarch! spread thy sable wings; Not fired with all the frantic rage, With which thou hurl'st thy darts at kings. As thou in native garb art seen, With scattered tresses, haggard mien, Sepulchral chains and hideous cry By despot ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... foggy; and we could see very little; conjecture, however, was busy as we caught, through an occasional gleam of light, the shadows of outlying monuments and ruins. As we crossed the silent-rolling Tiber, and the reverberations of the railway bridge smote on our ears with a hollow, sepulchral sound, we felt, almost with a shiver, that we were entering a city of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... the wood, There stands a white sepulchral rood, Beneath whose shadow, wayfarers Would pause to offer up their prayers. There is no house for miles around, No sound of beast, no human sound, Only the trees like sombre dreams From whose bare boughs the water drips; And the pale memory of death. The haze hangs heavy without breath, ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... into its former place, and then hastened to sprinkle his child with holy water which always stood ready in the oratory. Anastasia revived, and when she saw herself surrounded by her father and brother, in a dark, narrow, sepulchral place, she uttered a wild cry, and turned her dim eyes around. 'My life, my darling child, my dove! what aileth thee?' cried the father. 'Recollect thyself: thou art in the oratory. 'Tis plain some evil eye hath struck thee. Pray ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... articulated with astonishing success. It was interesting to watch their countenances, which were alive with eager attention, and to see the apparent efforts they made to utter the words. They spoke in a monotonous tone, slowly and deliberately, but their voices had a strange, sepulchral sound, which was at first unpleasant to the ear. I put one or two questions to a little boy, which he answered quite readily; as I was a foreigner, this was the best test that could be given of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... wise?' demanded Roger in a voice that was almost sepulchral, as soon as the lady was out ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... pulpit are among their joint products. The tombs of Pope John XXIII. in the Baptistery, that of Aragazzi the Papal Secretary at Montepulciano, and that of Cardinal Brancacci at Naples, are noteworthy landmarks in the evolution of sepulchral monuments, which attained their highest perfection in Italy. In discussing them it will be seen how fully Michelozzo shared the responsibilities of Donatello. Baldassare Coscia, on his election to the Papacy, took the title of John ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... has published some Notices of Sepulchral Monuments in English Churches, a work which is not intended for professed antiquaries, but for that large class of persons who, although they have some taste for the subject of which it treats, have neither time nor inclination to enter deeply into it, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... great hall of generations dead Has something more sepulchral and more dread Than lurid glare from seven-branched chandelier Or table lone with stately dais near— Two rows of arches o'er a colonnade With knights on horseback all in mail arrayed, Each one disposed with ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... in a pious recognition of our mortality that Dublin is built around the Irish grave-yard. Most of its windows look out upon the sepulchral monuments and the pretty constant arrival of the funeral trains with their long lines of carriages bringing to the celebration of the sad ultimate rites those gay companies of Irish mourners. I suppose that the spectacle of such obsequies is not at all depressing ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... be a curious historical problem to trace the families of emperors and kings, of heroes and conquerors, from the era of their decline and fall to their ultimate extinction. Some 'Old Mortality' might find as congenial employment in this field of sepulchral research as did the original in clearing up the decayed and moss-grown tombs of the Covenanters. The genealogist makes it his business rather to flatter the great by blazoning the antiquity of their pedigrees, than to teach the world a moral ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

... close that I could hear its breathing, and then it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it had come upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke the sepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on the part of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and I felt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and down until it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then, subdued, but filled with ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones. The corpse's head ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... DRACAENA DRACO.—The Dragon's Blood tree of Teneriffe. This liliaceous plant attains a great age and enormous size. The resin obtained from this tree has been found in the sepulchral caves of the Cuanches, and hence it is supposed to have been used by them in embalming the dead. Trees of this species, at present in vigorous health, are supposed to be as old as ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... call her not a phantom form, Of deep sepulchral spells; Her maiden lips with life are warm, And thought within her dwells— Thought, holy as the light that lies In the rapt martyr's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

... hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. "What," she said, at last, in a faltering voice,—"what wild words do you ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... at the Hindu High School was fast approaching. This interrogatory period, like the sepulchral haunts, inspires a well-known terror. My mind was nevertheless at peace. Braving the ghouls, I was exhuming a knowledge not found in lecture halls. But it lacked the art of Swami Pranabananda, who easily appeared in two places at one ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... to the "sepulchral Spencer Perceval," as he is called in another place, with his enormous emoluments from the public purse, his dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism, and his fantastic policy of the Orders ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... that met our eyes on looking around. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees and we were accustomed to the contemplation of each other's emaciated figures, but the ghastly countenances, dilated eye-balls, and sepulchral voices of Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could bear.' Franklin, on his part, was equally dismayed at the appearance of Richardson and Hepburn. {104} 'We were all shocked,' he says in ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... at Beaulieu in Hampshire, two of which are here shewn (fig. 24), may have been used for a like purpose[186]. There is a similar series of arches at Hayles, a daughter-house to Beaulieu; and in the south cloister of Chester Cathedral there are six recesses of early Norman design, which, if not sepulchral, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... The laws of Moses pronounced the penalty of death against all those who by bad treatment or any act of violence caused a woman to abort. Lycurgus compared women who died in pregnancy to the brave dead on the field of honour, and accorded to them sepulchral inscriptions. In ancient Rome, where all citizens were obliged to rise and stand during the passage of a magistrate, wives were excused from rendering this mark of respect, for the reason that the exertion and hurry of the movement might be injurious to them in the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... yet really assailed it; but one of the peculiar properties of the preservative used by Doctor Pormont, is its pervading sepulchral odour. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... a knock at the door And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, Where belated travelers would hear me hammering Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. And often I wondered who would go with me To the distant land, our names the theme For talk, in the same week, for I've observed Two always go together. Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; And Editor Hamblin ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... still commenting on the Trinity. The Paraclete, having been sold and demolished, LENOIR, with all the sensibility of an admirer of genius, withdrew the bones of ABELARD and HELOISE from that monastery, and placed them here in a sepulchral chapel, partly constructed from the remains ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... because they are enacted? If Providence, which gives wine and oil, had blessed us with that tolerant spirit which makes the countenance more pleasant and the heart more glad than these can do; if our Statute Book had never been defiled with such infamous laws, the sepulchral Spencer Perceval would have been hauled through the dirtiest horse-pond in Hampstead, had he ventured to propose them. But now persecution is good, because it exists; every law which originated in ignorance and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... mine own, I would have turned and fled: But ah! my limbs were chilled to stone, As in a low, sepulchral tone The sheeted ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... of Cleopatra appear, in fact, to have been much disposed, at this time, to flow in gloomy channels, for she occupied herself a great deal in building for herself a sepulchral monument in a certain sacred portion of the city. This monument had, in fact, been commenced many years ago, in accordance with a custom prevailing among Egyptian sovereigns, of expending a portion of their revenues during their life-time in building ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... sex, without any other provocation or incitement than brutal lust and wantonness of barbarity. They even violated the sepulchres of the dead, which have been held sacred among the most savage nations. At Camin and Breckholtz they forced open the graves and sepulchral vaults, and stripped the bodies of generals Schlaberndorf and Ruitz, which had been deposited there. But the collected force of their vengeance was discharged against Custrin, the capital of the New Marche of Brandenburgh, situated at the conflux of the Warta and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... want you to understand that it will be all right to laugh tonight. Let me hear you laugh heartily, laugh right out, just as much as ever you want to, because" (and here his voice assumed the deep sepulchral tones of the preacher),-"when we think of the noble object for which the professor appears to-night, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... through that sepulchral city, taking pictures of everything. And then—" Jarvis paused and shuddered—"then I took a notion to have a look at that valley we'd spotted from the rocket. I don't know why. But when we tried to steer Tweel in that direction, he set up such a squawking and screeching that ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... if ye'd have some cider?" a sepulchral voice asked presently; "but I don't know now's I can get at it. I told John I shouldn't want any whilst he was away, and so he ain't got the spiggit in yet," to which Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin both replied that they were no hands for that drink, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... up, and inquires in a sepulchral voice if I am ready for Sabbath school. It is time to go. I like the Sabbath school; there are bright young faces there, at all events. When I get out into the sunshine alone, I draw a long breath; ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... it would have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stood gazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silence of the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that the grilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did not know; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, eerie feeling. It seemed like a place ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... light. When sugar burns in spirits, a sepulchral light appears on everything: living faces look like faces of the dead; all color disappears from them, the ruddiness of the countenance, the brilliance of the lips, the glitter of the eyes,—all turn green. It is as if phantoms rose ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral tone. "I sha'n't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though I know I'm past help. I will go up ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger

... and covered on the summit with evergreens in the manner of a hanging garden. On the summit was a bronze statue of Augustus himself, and beneath the tumulus was a large central hall, round which ran a range of fourteen sepulchral chambers, opening into this common vestibule. At the entrance were two Egyptian obelisks, fifty feet in height, and all around was an extensive grove divided into walks and terraces. The young Marcellus, whose ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... understand, it is one of those Hibernian wakes. Poor thing!' and I began to pardon Susan, feel sorry for the coachman, and made up my mind to give $10 towards the sepulchral expenses. As I entered the house, surcharged with benevolence and overcome by a repentant feeling, I caught sight of Susan and a strapping man whirling round the floor to the tune of the Irish Washwoman. I approached her and said, ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis

... are not dated. From the time of Smetius it was usual to divide them into classes, that is, a distinction was made, resting solely on the contents of the inscription, and having no regard to their place of origin, between religious, sepulchral, military, and poetical inscriptions, those which have a public character, and those which only concern private persons, and so on. Boeckh, although he had preferred the geographical arrangement for his Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, was of opinion ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... Hannibal once stood and hurled his javelin at the walls of Rome. The long lines of tombs went on till in the distance it was terminated by the lofty pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the whole presented the grandest scene of sepulchral magnificence that could be found ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... golden lizard, the very genius of desolate stillness, had stopped breathless upon the threshold of one cabin; a squirrel peeped impudently into the window of another; a woodpecker, with the general flavor of undertaking which distinguishes that bird, withheld his sepulchral hammer from the coffin-lid of the roof on which he was professionally engaged, as we passed. For a moment I half regretted that I had not accepted the invitation to the river-bed; but, the next moment, a breeze swept up the long, dark canyon, and the waiting files of the pines beyond bent ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... door of the mill, as from a sepulchral tavern, blew a cold wind like the very breath of death upon me, just when that pang shot, in absolute pain, through my heart. For a wind had arisen from behind the mill, and we were in its shelter save where a window behind and the door beside me allowed ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... as I know him,' said Mrs. Meeker, in a tone so sepulchral, that it made her daughter start. 'He ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... missing," echoed Mrs. Spruce in sepulchral tones, "then the Lord knows what we'll do, for it'll be all over, so far as we're consarned! Beggars in the street'll be kings to us. Passon, I reckon ye doesn't read the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... of the Dean to deliver it. The present writer once heard a very eminent Churchman, who was also a great poet, preach his last sermon, at the age of ninety. This was the Danish bishop Grundtvig. In that case the effort of speaking, the extraction, as it seemed, of the sepulchral voice from the shrunken and ashen face, did not last more than ten minutes. But the English divines of the Jacobean age, like their Scottish brethren of to-day, were accustomed to stupendous efforts of endurance ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... a round tower. The word Sithbhein is also given in both, but explained a fort, a turret, and the real meaning of the word as still understood in many parts of Ireland is a fairy-hill, or hill of the fairies, and is applied to a green round hill crowned by a small sepulchral mound. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... mold a shape for it. Its face—what is the look which rots crushed in the dark depth of the earth at the top of these remains? Ah, one catches sight of what there is under the battlefields! Everywhere in the spacious wall there are limbs, and black and muddy gestures. It is a sepulchral sculptor's great sketch-model, a bas-relief in clay that stands haughtily before our eyes. It is the portal of the earth's interior; yes, it ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in English literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but pyramidally extant'—'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful voices'—'predicament of chimaeras'—'the irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'—are examples of this consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of others, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... summer stay at Castle Mona. The chief literary productions of mine in that modern Trinacria, whose heraldic emblem, like that of ancient Sicily, is the Three legs of Three promontories, are some antiquarian pieces, principally one on the sepulchral mound of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Don't run away! Listen to me. Are you all crazy? JULIA (in affected terror). What would you with me, spectre? Oh, ain't his eyes sepulchral! And ain't his voice hollow! What are you doing out of your tomb at this time of day—apparition? ERN. I do wish I could make you girls understand that I'm only technically dead, and that physically I'm as much alive as ever I was in my life! JULIA. Oh, but it's an awful thing ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... this earth—that of digging a grave. Measuring a space adjusted to the proportions of his person, he inquired anxiously for any loose fragments of marble, such as might suffice to line it. He requested also to be furnished with wood and water, as the materials for the last sepulchral rites. And these labors were accompanied, or continually interrupted by tears and lamentations, or by passionate ejaculations on the blindness of fortune, in suffering so divine an artist to be thus violently snatched ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... tragic picture, and listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... of Grecian genius in this direction, both in the regularity and size of their public and private buildings, and in their external and internal adornment. This period was also distinguished for its splendid sepulchral and other monuments. Of these, probably the most exquisite gem of architectural taste is the circular building at Athens, the Cho-rag'ic Monument, or "Lantern of Demosthenes," erected in honor of a victory ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... remarkably good; perhaps the sky and distance is a little out of harmony with the rest. There are three pictures by Mr Mueller, two very effective—"Prayers in the Desert"—but we are more struck with his "Arabs seeking a Treasure." The sepulchral interior is solemnly deep; the dim obscure, through which are yet seen the gigantic sculptured heads that seem the presiding guardians; the light and shade is very fine, as is the colour; the blue sky, seen from within, wonderfully assists ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... Egyptian antiquities in Berlin is a sepulchral tablet representing the Tree of Life. This emblem figures the trunk of a tree, from the top of which emerges the bust of a woman—Netpe. She is the goddess of heavenly existence, and is administering ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... Egyptians, whose chief aspiration was that of everlasting repose for the dead. See the trouble they took to achieve it. Think of the Great Pyramid, or that of Amenemhat the Fourth with its labyrinth of false passages and its sealed and hidden sepulchral chamber. Think of Jacob, borne after death all those hundreds of weary miles in order that he might sleep with his fathers, and then remember Shakespeare and his solemn adjuration to posterity to let him rest undisturbed in his grave. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... dark. No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and close beside it pale light spread out upon the road as from ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... off," replied the other, in what seemed to Gerard a most sepulchral tone of voice. At length, after a drive of perhaps half an hour, but which seemed to the Abbe double that time, Pomerantseff murmured in a low tone, and with a profound sigh which sounded almost like a sob, "Here we are," and at that moment the Abbe felt ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... befits these sepulchral dwellings, and the dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes the vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high, access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage built of white ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... angels in abodes where devils dwell. So the dead Prophet and the erring King, By Heaven's own will, not by the witch's craft, Confront each other in the dark retreat. The dreamy shadow speaks: "Wherefore," it saith, "Dost thou disquiet me!" (h) And from the earth Came the sepulchral tones, which, floating up, Joined the weird meanings of the hollow wind, And swept in ghostly cadences away Like exiled souls in pain. And Saul replied; "I'm sore distressed: Alas! the living God "Averts His face and answers me no more; "What"—and the pleading ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... divine providence had seen fit to try him; and finally the Signal uttered its absolute conviction that his native town would raise a cenotaph to his honour. Mr. Critchlow, being unfamiliar with the word "cenotaph," consulted Worcester's Dictionary, and when he found that it meant "a sepulchral monument to one who is buried elsewhere," he was as pleased with the Signal's language as with the idea, and decided that a cenotaph should come ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... into the country by narrow tracks covered with moss and strewed with shining pebbles; to the right and left, broad masses of luxuriant foliage, chestnut, bay, and ilex, that shelter the ruins of columbariums and sepulchral chambers, where the dead sleep snug amongst rampant herbage. The region was still, save when a cock crew from the hamlets, which, as well as the tombs, are almost concealed by thickets. No parties of smart Englishmen ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... of all Mr. Coleridge's self-upbraidings, is that, in which he thrills the inmost heart, by saying, with a sepulchral solemnity, "I have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being, such as is the soul of man!" And yet, is this, and such as this, to be devoted to forgetfulness, and all be sacrificed, lest some friend, disdaining utility, should prefer flattery to truth? A concession ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... mournful aria ("In des Lebens Fruehlingstagen"), which has a rapturous finale ("Und spuer' Ich nicht linde"), as he sees his wife in a vision. Rocco and Fidelio enter and begin digging the grave, to the accompaniment of sepulchral music. She discovers that Florestan has sunk back exhausted, and as she restores him recognizes her husband. Don Pizarro enters, and after ordering Fidelio away, who meanwhile conceals herself, attempts to stab Florestan. Fidelio, who has been closely watching ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... had the blue light already, expecting to be called on to use it, and the next instant a lurid glare illumined the whole ship; the sails, the spars, and the countenances of the people, all assumed a sepulchral hue, which gave her the appearance of some phantom bark, such as has appeared to the excited imagination of many a seaman in his wandering through those distant and torrid climes, whose pestilential vapours, rising from the overteeming earth, fever his blood ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... unanimously accepted. Not only would the resident members go—so the original resolution ran —but the non-resident and outside members would also be on hand to do honor to Miss Euphemia and her distinguished chaperone. This amendment being accepted, McFudd announced in a sepulchral tone that, owing to the severity of the calamity and to the peculiarly painful circumstances which surrounded their esteemed fellow-skylarker, the Honorable Sylvester Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, his fellow-members would ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was talking into the microphone. In a most solemn, sepulchral voice he repeated, "Let the slayer of Rena Taylor beware. She will be avenged! Beware! It will be a life for ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing had been suggested in the pure ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... wanted the agitation, the drooping, the timidity. She looked a living statue. She spoke with the solemn tone of a voice from a shrine. She stood more the sepulchral avenger of regicide than the sufferer from its convictions. Her grand voice, her fixed and marble countenance, and her silent step, gave the impression of a supernatural being, the genius of an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... chambers, in which the bodies are deposited, are about eighty feet square, and six in height. The whole of the sides are covered with strange figures, cut and painted; and wooden images are placed against them. At the top of these sepulchral chambers, and on poles attached to them, brass-kettles are hung, old frying-pans, shells, skins, and baskets, pieces of cloth, hair, and other similar offerings. Among some of the tribes, the body is laid in one canoe and covered with another. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... symptoms of rebellion or mischief which would occasionally arise within the nursery precincts, in spite of iron rules and severe penalties, she was wont to detach the bag from its hiding-place and, retiring to a corner, would count the gold and read over the future epitaph, murmuring in sepulchral tones, befitting such a lugubrious subject, that she should soon have need ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... some intaglio supposed to be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present aesthetic craze, an honest penny when ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... the subterranean vast, Dark catacombs of ages, twilight dells, And footmarks of the centuries long past, Which look on us from their sepulchral cells. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... also"Chapter" or category. See vol. i., 136 and elsewhere (index). In Egypt "Bb" sometimes means a sepulchral cave hewn in a rock (plur. Bbn) from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... the machine, with Hector beside him. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the sepulchral chamber. Leoh stopped at ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... in tones sufficiently sepulchral to be appropriate, "and, Joe, he's one of those bones I ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... his forehead to shake off the drowsiness, and felt a cold breath of air as an unknown furry something swept past his cheeks. He shivered. A muffled clatter of the windows followed; it was a bat, he fancied, that had given him this chilly sepulchral caress. He could yet dimly see for a moment the shapes that surrounded him, by the vague light in the west; then all these inanimate objects were blotted out in uniform darkness. Night and the hour of death had suddenly come. Thenceforward, for a while, he lost ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... the droning continued ("Having a good look at us," said the Brigade-major in a sepulchral whisper) and then suddenly ceased with what I can only describe as an appalling snort. Almost simultaneously a tousled head was thrust out of a dug-out almost into the great man's face, and Gilbert's cheerful roar was heard by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... "Sepulchral Monuments," informs us that gloves formed no part of the female dress till after the Reformation.[71] I have seen some as late as the time of Anne richly worked ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... reigned an almost sepulchral silence, and when the morning broke, the City of Boston, at a scarcely reduced speed, was ploughing her way through great banks of white fog. The decks, the promenade rails, every exposed part of the steamer, were glistening with wet. Up on the bridge, three ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... undergrowth of long rank grass and stunted shrubs, among which an outrageously prickly variety of the cactus made itself conspicuously apparent to the touch; while, more than half hidden by the undergrowth, there were dotted here and there a few sepulchral stones and monuments in the very last stage of irretrievable dilapidation. Add to these sombre surroundings the melancholy sighing of the night-wind through the branches of the trees overhead, and the occasional weird cry of some nocturnal bird, and it will not be wondered at if I confess ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... asked in a sepulchral whisper. "Gome, den." It was like King Charles summoned to execution. Mr. Sieppe preceded them into the hall, moving at a funereal pace. He paused. Suddenly, in the direction of the sitting-room, came the strains of the parlor melodeon. Mr. Sieppe flung ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... pass the greater part of the day in contemplation and self-communion. In the public cemeteries alms are distributed at the graves of the pious: even the winged wanderers of the air find refreshment there, for on each sepulchral stone a small receptacle is hollowed out to collect the dews of heaven, where the birds, as they flutter past, may slake their thirst. On each succeeding Sabbath fresh green branches adorn the headstones, and vailed mourners, seated by them, keep ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... them all with his severe but tolerant eye. He knows all the tram-drivers who go by, and his nicely graduated wink rewards the glances of the rubicund, jolly drivers of the hackneys and the decayed Jehus with purple faces and dismal hopefulness who drive sepulchral cabs for some reason which has no acquaintance with profit; nor are the ladies and gentlemen who saunter past foreign to his encyclopedic eye. Constantly his great head swings a slow recognition, constantly his serene finger ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... zenith of his strength, when his eye had not become dim, nor his natural force abated. He was buried in the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus the tower, which is the chief grace of his native city, may be regarded as his own sepulchral monument. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... that they were also used in the ceremonies of the Mysteries, for we see their forms represented on the vases themselves: Bacchus frequently holds a cantharus, Satyrs carry a diota. A few seem to have been expressly for sepulchral purposes. Some have supposed that these vases were intended to hold the ashes of the dead; but this could not have been their use, for they are only found in tombs in which the bodies have been buried without being burnt. The piety ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... followed them through the street door, and hovered about the staircase, charging the air with a moist sepulchral odour. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... I hear your deep sepulchral tones in the exclamation of, "All that 'ere is rubbage—cut it short!" and it is my intention, my dear Smith, to cut it short at once. When the drama's time was come, the whole of civilized Europe saw the glorious birth. In Spain and in England the soil was found most congenial; and the theatre ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... said Jack, in a sepulchral tone. "That's true. I made the appointment, and, Macrorie—I was ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille



Words linked to "Sepulchral" :   funereal, ghastly, offensive, joyless, sepulchre, charnel



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