"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... troops, ambulances, and batteries, sped along the line of railway, toward the rendezvous at Alexandria. A wagoner, looking forlornly at his splintered wheels; a slovenly guard, watching some bales of hay; a sombre negro, dozing upon his mule; a slatternly Irish woman gossiping with a sergeant at her cottage door; a sutler in his "dear-born," running his keen eye down the limbs of my beast; a spruce civilian riding for curiosity; a gray-haired ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... field lessens upon which they must encounter in the great struggle for existence. Though neighbors in every substantial respect, the four fabrics were most uncharitably remote, and stood frowning gloomily at one another—scarcely relieved of the cheerless and sombre character of their rough outsides, even when thus brightly illuminated by the glare thrown upon them by the several blazes, flashing out upon the scene from the twin lamps in front of the tavern, through whose wide and unsashed windows an additional ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... wind, the noise of the waves rushing past, the roll of the breakers and the groaning of the cordage all blended together and filled the air with a prolonged minor note, lamentable beyond words. The atmosphere was cold and damp, the spray flying like icy bullets. The sombre light that hung over the sea reflected itself in long blurred streaks upon the wet decks and slippery iron rods. Here and there about the rigging a tremulous ball of orange haze showed where the ship's lanterns were swung. Directly under him in the stern the screw snarled incessantly in a vortex ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... his sombre face a smile crept and deepened, like the yellow ray, that, after a long, dark day of driving rain, suddenly gilds the tree-tops and brims the sky; and though, when it went, the gloom shut drearily down again, still it bore the promise of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the "happy mean;" in the case of another, flight from distasteful memories. The life of the cosmopolite can conceal all beneath the vulgarity of its whims, from snobbery in quest of higher connections to swindling in quest of easier prey, submitting to the brilliant frivolities of the sport, the sombre intrigues of policy, or the sadness of a life which has been a failure. Such a variety of causes renders at once very attractive and almost impracticable the task of the author who takes as a model that ever-changing society so ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... recovered from the shock it then received, and, considered from this point of view, the careless attitude of the American people toward General Grant's administration, when in 1871 it obtained the reversal of Hepburn v. Griswold by appointments to the bench, assumes a sombre aspect. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... notice that the tug is moored in its accustomed place. Here I judge it prudent to walk behind the first row of pillars and approach the laboratory laterally—which will enable me to see whether anybody is with him. When I have gone a short distance along the sombre avenue I see a bright light on the opposite side of the lagoon. It is the electric light in Roch's laboratory as seen through a narrow window in ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... aspect, sombre for the moment, but bright by anticipation, which was contemplated in the Mysteries: the human sufferer was consoled by witnessing the severer trials of the Gods; and the vicissitudes of life and death, expressed by apposite ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... tame cattle browsing upon them, or reclining in luxuriant ease, very unlike the wild herd. The river was flowing westward over a gravelly bottom, its scenery being highly embellished by the lofty casuarinae, whose sombre masses of darkest green cover the water so gracefully and afford both coolness and shade. Now we could trace the marks of horsemen on the plain; and as we travelled up the river horses and cattle appeared ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the right breast of the statue of clay, cannot thus be kept hidden in the chill shadow of the gynaeceum. Were I to die, then the secret of this beauty would for ever remain shrouded beneath the sombre draperies of widowhood! I feel myself culpable in its concealment, as though I had the sun in my house, and prevented it from illuminating the world. And when I think of those harmonious lines, those ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... her, glancing furtively now and then at Aniela, who remained with the Suiatynskis. Clara was in rapture with the woods, which are indeed at their best now, the fresh green of the leafy trees forming a perfect canopy over the more sombre ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... before me. Under a glowing sky of summer, this air of the uplands has still a life which spurs to movement, which makes the heart bound. The dale is hidden; I see only the brown and purple wilderness, cutting against the blue with great round shoulders, and, far away to the west, an horizon of sombre heights. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of the ridge they had climbed, the man and the pup alone looked down on the camp, for the weary little "Injun" had fallen asleep. Had he been awake, the all to be seen would have been of little promise. Great, sombre mountains towered darkly up on every side, roofed over by an arch of sky amazingly brilliant with stars. Below, the darkness was the denser for the depth of the hollow in the hills. Vaguely the one straight street of Borealis was indicated by the lamps, like a thin Milky Way in a meagre ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... in at a rear door and took her seat upon the platform. Martha was dressed in white; for once she had laid aside the sombre garb in which alone she had been seen since her arrival at Patesville. She wore a yellow rose at her throat, a bunch of jasmine in her belt. A sense of responsibility for the success of the exhibition had deepened the habitual seriousness ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... spread before us. Far down below the river winds through a broad valley, the greater expanse of which, being low and swampy, is covered with a dense thicket of luxuriant vegetation. In parts we see great masses of dark, sombre forest, but even in the distance this is relieved by variety of colouring, flowering trees, perhaps, or the brilliant emerald of clusters of tree-ferns. Right out on the western boundary a line of hills shuts out the sea, and their summits glisten with a strange ruddy and golden ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... especial occupation, seeing his bedroom opened out of it. Next, he looked from all the windows, to discover into what kind of a furrow on the face of the old earth he had fallen. All he could see was trees and trees. But oh! how different from the sombre, dark, changeless fir-wood at Turriepuffit! whose trees looked small and shrunken in his memory, beside this glory of boughs, breaking out into their prophecy of an infinite greenery at hand. His rooms seemed to occupy the end of a small wing at the back of the house, as ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... were speaking, he stroked his short grey beard and looked down at the ground in sombre gravity, as it might have seemed to the careless observer; but any one who looked closer might quickly perceive that not seldom a pleased smile, though not less often a somewhat bitter one, played upon the lips of the prudent and judicious man. He was one of those who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... distances that lured with fair promises that the eye might not seek to measure. The gorgeous tints were gone, and in their stead were soft grays and indefinite blurring browns, and every suggestion of silver that metal can show flashed in variant glitter in the moon. The mountains were majestically sombre, with a mysterious sense of awe in their great height There were few stars; only here and there the intense lustre of a still planet might withstand the ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... through those glorious primeval forests, where the girth of the grand old oak-trees and their widespreading branches are in themselves a sight to see: the beech, too, are very fine. Climbing farther, the deciduous woods give place to sombre pine-trees—the greybeards of the mountain. A great charm in this part of the country, at least from a picturesque point of view, is the affluence of water. Every rocky glen has its gurgling rill, every ravine its stream, which, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... attention than before to agriculture proper and the raising of crops which would directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... can remember distinctly events which transpired when I was but two years old, while I have forgotten thousands of incidents which have occurred within the past two years. While it is true that in early childhood a dark shadow fell athwart my pathway, making everything sombre and painful with an impression of desolation, yet was my condition happy in comparison with the rayless and pitchy blackness which subsequently folded its curtains close about my very being, seeming to make ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... the avenue presents a continuous line of magnificent mansions. There are a few marble, yellow stone, and brick buildings, but the prevailing material is brown stone. The general appearance of the street is magnificent, but sombre, owing to the dark color of the stone. Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... abhorrence of evil: all other sources of emotion were subordinate to these: love, hate, resentment, resignation, self-devotion, are but transitory agents on this lurid and stormy stage, which pass away and leave only the sombre fire of meditative indignation still burning among the ruins of shattered hopes and lives. More splendid success in pure dramatic dialogue has not been achieved by Shakespeare or by Webster than by Cyril Tourneur in his moments of happiest invention or purest inspiration: ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... country, too, often steadily cultivates his national peculiarities. James Lorimer was a Scot of this type. As far as it was possible to do so in that sunshiny climate, he introduced the grey, sombre influence of the land of mists and east winds. His household was ruled with stern gravity; his ranch was a model of good management; and though few affected his society, he was generally relied upon and esteemed; for, though opinionated, egotistical, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Laura Ormsby nursed the thought of the talk with the strange man on the train. In her mind he became something romantic and daring, a streak of light across what she was pleased to think of as her sombre life. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... friends, becomes really dreadful. Indeed, it would seem to have been reserved for the European nations to put the final touches of gloom and horror upon the canvas. It may be sufficient to refer this to the more sombre imagination of Western peoples. But we ought not to overlook the influence of the Catholic Church in darkening the general tone of the imagination, and particularly the tone of the fairy sagas, by ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... to you the vivid and yet sombre impression this made upon me. It was as if a chilled and weary bird, having winged its way from the winter's midnight into a warm room, had been heartened and invigorated, had rushed away confident and swift to the sun-lands of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... him in the newspapers, and had studied them with some care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you doing here?" were his ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... severity. But truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... as he rode back to Guestwick, fell again from that animation, which Mrs Dale had described, into his natural sombre mood. He thought much of his past life, declaring to himself the truth of those words in which he had told his sister-in-law that his heart had ever been kinder than his words. But the world, and all those nearest to him in the world, had judged him always ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... kings foolish, kings able and kings incapable, kings rash and kings slothful, kings earnest and kings frivolous, kings saintly and kings licentious, kings good and sympathetic towards their people, kings egotistical and concerned solely about themselves, kings lovable and beloved, kings sombre and dreaded or detested. As we go forward and encounter them on our way, all these kingly characters will be seen appearing and acting in all their diversity and all their incoherence. Absolute monarchical power in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had grown strangely radiant. Miss Stone, as she looked at it again, was almost startled at the change. The sombre look had vanished. Quick lights ran in it, and little thoughts that met the child's and laughed. "They are two children together," thought Miss Stone, as she watched them. "I have never seen the child so happy. She must see him again." She sat with her hands folded in her grey lap, a little ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... attempted it. They, in fact, rowed us, in a few moments, masts standing, into a most extraordinary and gigantic cave, under the loftiest part of the coast. I thought of the rotunda in the Capitol at Washington, as giving some idea of its vastness, but nothing of its dark and sombre appearance; its vast side arches, and the singular influence of the light beaming in from the open lake. I took out my note-book and drew a sketch ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... swooned, or from weakness had become unconscious, she did not know, when, considerably later, she roused herself from what seemed like a heavy and unrefreshing sleep. Her dress was damp with dew, the sun had sunk so low as to fill the forest with a sombre shade; the happy life that had sported around her was hushed and hidden, and the wind now sighed mournfully through the trees. Gloom and darkening shadows had taken the place of the light and joyousness she first ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits, of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny—more powerful than sportive—found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The sky was overcast and threatening. We were travelling directly west again, and no sunlight entered here, even when the sun shone. The walls had lost their brighter reds, and what colour they had was dark and sombre, a dirty brown and dark green predominating. The mythology of the ancients, with their Inferno and their River Styx, could hardly conjure anything more supernatural or impressive than ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded terrain, ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... there I could see two men, both approaching the bridge along the path from opposite directions. One was tall, dressed in light tweeds, a good-looking fellow—looked like one of your country squires except that he was a little on the thin side. The other was a sombre-looking person, dressed in dark clothes, about your height and build, I should say, Mr. Romilly. Well, they both disappeared under that bridge at the same moment, and I don't know why, but I leaned forward to see them come out. The train was there ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... find them. When I came to the spot, however, those I hoped to find were nowhere to be seen, and so, guiding the horse up to the dark waters, I stood and looked at the little lake that bore such a sombre name. It was indeed a dreary place. On one side was wild moorland, and on the other a plantation of firs edged the dismal pond. It might be about a quarter of a mile long, and perhaps one-sixth of a mile wide. There were no houses near, and the high-road was some distance away. It was not an attractive ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... etui and lit another cigarette, sinking his sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned upon ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... effect of her singing as we were drifting along in the sombre twilight, better than by quoting Buchanan Read's charming lines, which I dare say you have ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... round the bright glow of this Yule log in a far-off land. The flames danced on the wide circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks.... The songs ranged from gay to grave; the former mood in the ascendency. But occasionally there was sung a ditty, the associations with which brought it about that there came something strangely like a tear into the voice of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... an endless vista of death, a sea of rusting corpses of space ships, and worn-out mining machinery, and of those of my race whose power packs burned out, or who simply gave up, retiring into this endless, corroding limbo of the barrens. A more sombre sight ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... he pointed at was a sombre-looking chasm, the mouth of which opened into the little valley where they were, at a distance of ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... forgotten by the two gentlemen, had been left standing at the foot of the steps, and his sombre eyes were now fixed upon the girl in a look so strange and intent as fully to explain her perturbation. Through his parted lips the breath came hurriedly, in his eyes was a mournful exaltation as of one who looks from ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Avery always wore dark sombre dresses. But one day Jims found her in a pretty gown of pale primrose silk. It was very old and old-fashioned, but Jims did not know that. He capered round her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is this belief which occurs in Spinoza, which is properly denominated Pantheism, where the Creator is forgotten in creation. The former line of Pantheism noticed in Averroes approaches more nearly to theism. Bruno's unbelief was not gay and flippant, but sombre and earnest. With a fantastical conceit which can hardly be explained, he travelled as the missionary to propagate his own views like a knight errant tilting at all opinions, with a soul especially embittered against the Christian priesthood.(327) On his return to ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... secluded, shady, even somewhat sombre and solemn. The transparent stream of water wound its way between the trees. The nenufars, touched by the light movement of the water, swayed gently backward and forward, leaning toward each other ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... top of Badger's Street he paused. The street was still; the sky was pale green on the horizon, purple overhead. The light was still strong, but, to the left beyond the sloping fields, the woods were banked black and sombre. From the meadow in front of the woods came the sounds of an encampment—women shouting, horses neighing, dogs barking. A few lights gleamed like red eyes. The dusky forms of caravans with their thick-set chimneys, ebony-coloured against the green sky, crouched ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... a sober truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to escape the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting houris who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how absurdly) of the Duesseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how warm the room was, and how pleasant the party ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... is a full-length figure swathed in lilac drapery, seated with her legs crossed, on a chair, her chin supported by her left hand, and gazing out of the picture. Beside her are scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. Invocation, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a Portrait of Mrs. F. Lucas, were also shown; but Greek Girls playing at Ball is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of Lord Leighton's ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... residence,—the house occupied by the Duke of Kent when a young man in the army here, long I suppose before the throne of England placed itself at the end of his vista. Did the Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, sending away his retinue, walk slowly alone under the shadows of these sombre trees, striving to bring back that far-off past, and some vague outline of the thoughts, the feelings, the fears and fancies of his grandfather, then, like himself, a young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, poor and an exile, with no foresight probably ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... jurors laughed. Against a sombre background humor shows high lights. Soldiers in the intervals of battle laugh easily, and a jest in the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... have learned all that history and tradition has to tell us about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul that sinned and suffered and passed to its appointed place so long ago? A few "facts," some "circumstances"—which, if we may believe the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... of another encounter between the troops of Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... they will adore thee. They ask only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Cotenoir, thou? It is somewhat sad, perhaps—the grave old chateau with the long sombre corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced Thou wilt ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... had ever heard. A procession was issuing from the gateway with much pomp. There were venerable, white-bearded priests, and there were girls, too, arrayed in festive garb, their hair bedecked with flowers. Their gay ranks, amid which the slow-pacing patriarchs struck a sombre note, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... appetite for things unseen and eternal. It may teach you your own helplessness, and turn you to trust more implicitly in the provision of Christ. It is clear that Christians have often to toil all night in vain, that Christ may have a background black and sombre enough to set forth all the glories of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Smoke Law, by which any production of visible smoke with or without excuse was punishable by a fine, had already ceased to be the sombre smoke-darkened city of the Victorian time; it had been, and indeed was, constantly being rebuilt, and its main streets were already beginning to take on those characteristics that distinguished them throughout the latter half of the twentieth ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... was slowly making the circuit of the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... lighthouse gleam over his head faintly outlined the swells, as one by one they tossed their spray up to where he stood; back of him the welcome glow of Uncle Terry's home, and all around the wide ocean, dark and sombre. What a change from the busy hive of men he had left that morning! Only a brief space was he left to contemplate it, when he heard a voice ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... distances. Brown madder also is a subdued red, which, when in combination with the former, produces a neutral orange, partaking of the character of soft light. As a general rule, yellow ochre is to predominate in broad daylight, and brown madder in that which is more sombre and imperfect: hence the pigment can be yellowed or reddened, by the addition of one or the other. For a clear sunset, the neutral orange must be repeated, with a preponderance of ochre at the top, assisted by a little cadmium yellow near the sun; ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... for the time being a sombre aspect. Sir George was its life and soul, and now that he was away and exposed to the machinations of enemies who were hungering and thirsting after a share of his riches, a gloom settled down upon the place and enveloped it in an ill-befitting aspect of dreariness. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... In her eye was the last flash of an expiring star, and her face had the pallor of an heroic death-struggle. She was dressed in a drapery of a thousand changing colors of the brightest and the most sombre hues, and held a withered garland ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... or laughing behind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who always accompanied her, he thought of the young Queen, her mother, who but a short time before—so it seemed to him—had come from the gay country of France, and had withered away in the sombre splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after the birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom twice in the orchard, or plucked the second year's fruit from the old gnarled fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass- grown courtyard. So great had been ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... a very sombre smile. "If any of them should come this way," he said, "it is possible that they might not think it worth while to cease their search along the beach and come up to this particular spot, were it ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture- fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... traveller may see the ruins of the temple of Serapis[203] at Pozzuoli, and that of Isis at Pompeii. The gods of Greece, as we have seen, took some hints from Egypt, but the Greek Olympus, with its bright forms, was very different from the mysterious sombre ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... to love me as I am, faulty, imperfect, human, so I would not cheat your inward being with untrue hopes nor confuse pure truth with a legend. This only I have: I am true to my truth, I have not faltered; and my own end, the sudden departure from the virile earth I love so eagerly, once such a sombre matter, now appears nothing beside this weightier, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... about him from the hilltop he could see nothing but open sea around the island with an expanse of desolation beyond—snow, snow everywhere, from the water's edge to where the rugged mountains to the south and east held their cold heads into the gray clouds that hid the sky and sun. The sea was sombre and black. Not a breath of air stirred, not a sound broke the silence, and it seemed almost as though Nature in anxious suspense watched the outcome of it all. But Bob's faith was renewed—the simple, childlike faith of his ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... long-forgotten peoples, which catch the soil that the rain brings down, and support crops of barley and maize. The rice fields along both banks of the stream display a broad, winding strip of vivid green, which gives the eye its only relief from the sombre colours of the mountains. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... man, with thick hair crowned by a little jockey cap, and was enveloped in a kind of overcoat which might have been black once but which was now of a greenish hue, the result of the inclemency of the weather; he gnawed his heavy moustache in silence and turned sombre, uneasy looks on all, including his companion in misfortune. He wore hobnailed shoes and carried a stout cudgel. He was more like a piece of the human wreckage one sees in the street corners of great cities than a ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Coeur-de-Lion; with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;—indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety break through. He ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... forming the western boundary of Waveland, was a lovely inland lake, by the margin of which Clemence had been accustomed to spend many sad hours, since she had become a resident of the little village. A narrow foot-path, that led through the sombre woods, brought her to a sheltered spot upon the sloping shore, where she often came alone to pass an idle hour. She had come to regard this place as her own peculiar property, for no one had ever come here to interrupt her, or claim any portion ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Begum attracted great attention at the time before Delhi was under the English dominion, by her intelligence, enterprise, and bravery. She was a Hindoo by birth, and became acquainted in her youth with a German named Sombre, with whom she fell in love, and turned Christian in order to marry him. Mr. Sombre formed a regiment of native troops, which, after they were well trained, he offered to the emperor. In the course of time, he so ingratiated himself with the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... streets a great deal in the dull November days, and always take a certain pleasure in being in the midst of human life,—as closely encompassed by it as it is possible to be anywhere in this world; and in that way of viewing it there is a dull and sombre enjoyment always to be had in Holborn, Fleet Street, Cheapside, and the other busiest parts of London. It is human life; it is this material world; it is a grim and heavy reality. I have never had the same sense of being surrounded by materialisms and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... day she would be merry, or feign merriment, rallying him on his sombre air and formal compliments, professing that for her part she soon grew weary of such wooing, and loved to be easy and merry; for thus she hoped to sting him, so that he would either disclose more warmth, or forsake altogether his pursuit. But he made many apologies, ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... with sombre wings O'er this world his shadow flings And thou, dear love, doth sleep, Then do I send my soul to thee Thy guardian till the dawn to be ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... into a stately room packed with masterpieces of art; gleaming marbles and sombre bronze in groups of bewildering beauty, with every inch of wall-space crowded with canvases in massive gold frames glowing with the soft radiance ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... from fitful slumbers to happy waking, when she lay and stared into the dark, and painted for herself on its sombre background Creed Bonbright's figure, the yellow uncovered head close to her knee as he stood and talked at the foot of the mountain trail. And the voice of the tree in the eager spring airs said to her waiting heart—whispered it softly, shouted and tossed it abroad so that all ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startle the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him make Masses and moving shapes ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... disturb him so profoundly: to her mind, these men had done nothing so monstrous after all. But to him, their offense swallowed up all the other indignities suffered during the years of his Ishmaelitish wanderings. A sombre lust for vengeance upon them took root in his very soul. He hated nobody else as he hated them. How often she had heard him swear, in solemn vibrating tones, that to the day of his death his most sacred ambition ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... head of the column there rode a score or more of grave ironfaced men, clad in sombre homespun garments and armed with rifles. On reaching the base of the bluff they halted, and held a short council ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... older building that the Vicomte made the following remarks:—"The church of the Holy Sepulchre, composed of several churches erected upon an unequal surface, illumined by a multitude of lamps, is singularly mysterious; a sombre light pervades it, favourable to piety and profound devotion. Christian priests of various sects inhabit different parts of the edifice. From the arches above, where they nestle like pigeons, from the chapels below and subterraneous vaults, their songs are heard at all hours both of the day and ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... independent, self-reliant business woman, she earned the money which she gave so liberally in the good cause, or to help the poor and distressed, through the whole period of a long life. Some still living have seen Mary passing along the streets of Belfast, an aged woman, clad in sombre gown, to whom Catholic artisans raised their caps reverently, remembering how in '98 she had walked hand in hand with her brother to the steps of the scaffold, and how, in 1803, she had aided Thomas Russell in his escape from the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... day wore on, and the little girl and her cat remained unnoticed in their corner of the large field. There was a right of way through the field, and foot-passengers came and went, but Daisy in her sombre little black dress failed to attract any attention. She was quite in the shade under her hedge-row, and it is to be doubted if any one saw her. At last from utter weariness she sank down on the ground and fell asleep. The Pink curled herself up by her little mistress's ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... slopes were of a tawny hue, the color of grass when burned up by drought. Except scattered waving cocoanut palms which grew even on these hill-sides, no green thing was apparent, save in the ravines, where trees seemed to thrive, and so broke the monotony of tint with streaks of sombre verdure. Farther up, the peaks were thickly covered with a forest, which looked impenetrable. The abrupt contrast of the yellow lower land with this cap of tanglewood, itself at times covered, at times only dotted, with fleecy clouds, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... difficult to be in contact with such a mood as hers was that night and not catch something of its infection. Reason protests, but imagination falls a ready prey. I had no fear, but a sombre apprehension of evil settled on me. I seemed to know that our season of thoughtless, reckless merriment was done, and I mourned for it. There came over me a sorrow for her, but I made no attempt to express what she certainly would not have understood. To feel for others what they do not feel for ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... south and east looked rather melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds here were more confined, the flower-beds showed no very careful tendance, and large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten yards from the windows. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... from the car to watch them pacing up and down between their fires, which glowed upon their red cloaks and white robes and their grave, bearded Arab faces. They looked miserably cold as the wind flapped their loose garments, but about these men in the muddy field there was a sombre dignity which took one's imagination back to the day when the Saracens held ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... that direction, however, was not cheering. Mountain succeeded mountain in irregular succession, rugged and bleak—the dark precipices and sombre pine-woods looking blacker by contrast with the newly-fallen snow. Some of the hills were wooded to their summits; others, bristling and castellated in outline, afforded no hold to the roots of trees, ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... colonel's household. There was strange Spanish furniture upholstered in perforated leather and again displaying much gilt. There were suits of black armour and a great number of Moorish ornaments. The pictures were fine but sombre, and all of ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... the forest and the hills, and peer into her son's face. And as she did so, even the mist begotten of tears of suffering could not dim the wonderful brilliancy and clearness of her eyes. For with the sombre fire of inexhaustible love were those ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... generations the race had been dogged by crime and punishment; and in choosing for his theme the murder of Agamemnon the dramatist could assume in his audience so close a familiarity with the past history of the House that he could call into existence by an allusive word that sombre background of woe to enhance the terrors of his actual presentation. The figures he brought into vivid relief joined hands with menacing forms that faded away into the night of the future and the past; while above them hung, intoning doom, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... characteristics. "You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic a design! It would hardly have entered your head, when we first met. Pray do not,—if I may take the freedom of a somewhat elder man to advise you," added he, smiling,—"pray do not, under a notion of improvement, take upon yourself to be sombre, thoughtful, and penitential, like all the rest ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coming from the crowded and inconvenient little court within. The vaulted roof, with its quaintly carved angels, was for the most part dim and shadowy, but here and there a ray of sunshine, slanting in through the clerestory windows, changed the sombre tones to a golden splendor. Erica, very susceptible to all high influences, was more conscious of the ennobling influence of light, and space, and beauty than of the curious eyes which were watching her from below. But all at ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... dusk, and Jocelyn sat musing beside the corpse of Mrs. Pierston. Avice having gone away nobody knew whither, he had acted as the nearest friend of the family, and attended as well as he could to the sombre duties necessitated by her mother's decease. It was doubtful, indeed, if anybody else were in a position to do so. Of Avice the Second's two brothers, one had been drowned at sea, and the other had emigrated, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... men and women become too lifeless for much enterprise. There is no society. There are a few Germans and a few Englishmen in the place, who see each other on matters of business during the day; but, sombre as life generally is, they seem to care little for each other's company on any other footing. I know not to what point the aspirations of the Germans may stretch themselves, but to the English the one idea that gives salt to life is the idea of home. On some day, ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... and he saw the violet eyes grow sombre, and a certain hardness settle about the lines of the well-shaped mouth ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher |
