"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Music stable yard was an immense square, with buildings round its four sides, and a high, ivy-covered battlemented wall surrounding and overlooking all. In the middle of the yard was an island of grass, on which grew three wide-armed and sombre Irish yews, dating, like the walls, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Weeds were growing in the gravel of the wide expanse; more than one stable-door dropped on broken hinges under its old cut-stone pediments; the dejection ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... at the inn, and prepared to return. It was at the latter end of the month of May, and nature was adorned in the bridal ornaments of spring; the sun was sunk behind the groves, which cast their sombre shades over the valley, while the retiring beams of day adorned the distant eastern ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... isolated streams, which must have been frozen in the midst of their course. From the different colours of the lava, and their transitions from light grey to black, we can judge of the eruptions which have taken place at different periods. The mountains surrounding this valley are mostly of a sombre hue; some are even black, forming a striking contrast to the neighbouring jokuls, which, in their large expanse, present the appearance almost of a sea of ice. I found one of these jokuls of a remarkable size; its shining expanse extended ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... For several days he would see nobody, and hid himself from view. Later, he returned to his capital and entered upon a long period of mourning, to the sincerity of which his heartfelt sorrow bore even plainer testimony than his sombre garb of woe. His royal neighbours all sent ambassadors with messages of condolence, and when the ceremonies proper to these occasions were at length over, he proclaimed a period of peace. He released his subjects from military service, and devoted ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... and I sat together in the jutting window, where, as the night darkened and the curtains of the clouds drew down to meet the sombre tree-tops, a kind of black despair came over me. Would "King George" really do any good? Would I prove myself stout and brave when the moment came? Would the beacon we had prepared really burn, and, supposing it did, would any one see it, drowned in woods as ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... first sight the negatives seem for the moment the more numerous. They include many groups, which I shall not enumerate here. I range with them the charming uncertain ones, like M. Renan and his melodious disciples, the sombre and nihilistic Buddhists; all those to whom the law of the completion of man through the good is indeed foolish and chimerical, since their lives imply the negation of it: I mean to say the immense multitude of those who live in any kind of way, good ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the west, reflected the clear amber of the horizon they faced; the oaks behind were black; the cedar was blacker. Under its dense, raven boughs a glimpse of sky opened gravely blue. It was full of the moon, which looked solemnly and mildly down on Caroline from beneath that sombre canopy. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... years before with such solemn and affectionate words of parting. The funeral train left Washington on the 21st. Its passage through the principal Eastern States and cities of the Union was a most mournful and impressive spectacle. The heavily craped train, its sombre engine swathed in black, moved through the land like an eclipse. At every point vast crowds assembled to gain a tearful glimpse as ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to repair the wrong inflicted had been done. Here Lionel's words, though brief, were cordial, and almost joyous; but then came a few sentences steeped in gloom. There was an allusion, vague and delicate in itself, to the eventful conversation with Waife in reference to Sophy—a sombre, solemn farewell conveyed to her and to hope—a passionate prayer for her happiness—and then an abrupt wrench, as it were, away from a subject too intolerably painful to prolong—an intimation that he had succeeded in exchanging into a regiment very shortly to be sent ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flood Of rushing water mixt with blood. The monarch's steeds, though strong and fleet, Stumbled and fell: and yet their feet Passed o'er the bed of flowers that lay Fresh gathered on the royal way. No gleam of sunlight struggled through The sombre pall of midnight hue, Edged with a line of bloody red, Like whirling torches overhead. A vulture, fierce, of mighty size. Terrific with his cruel eyes, Perched on the staff enriched with gold, Whence hung the flag in many ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... single-file, Sylvia just ahead of Harley. By-and-by their cares returned. Harley glanced towards the southwest and saw there the same cloud, but now much bigger, blacker, and more threatening. The sunshine was gone, and the wrinkled surface of the mountains was gray and sombre. The air had grown cold, and down among the clefts there was a weird, moaning wind. Harley glanced at the guide, and noticed that his face was now decidedly anxious. But the correspondent said nothing. Part of his strength ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Chester paused before the gates at Bellevue. The gloomy and prison-like buildings loomed in heavy and sombre masses before the stranger, as he leaned from the carriage to deliver his order to the gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... remaining seven could do now. Sadly we set about repairing the ship, so that we could bear the awful tidings back to Diskra. And as we sped again toward our beloved planet, a sombre pall fell upon us. The interchange of thoughts were brief and tinged with ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... rested on her in a long sombre glance; he seemed annoyed but not indignant, like a lawyer whose formal plea is brushed aside somewhat contemptuously by ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... vapour, like a cloud, which surrounds one. These are all in different colours, and the colours change with the thoughts we think. Black and purple are the gloomy, morose colours; deep blue and the paler shades show a sombre outlook on life; green is more cheerful, though still serious; yellow and orange show ambition and envy, and red and white are emblematic of all the virtues—red of the noble, martial qualities of man and white of the angelic ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... light plays on the varying surface of the tree-tops, one sombre and little-varied hue colors the earth. Dead and moss-covered logs; mounds covered with decomposed vegetable substances, the graves of long-past generations of trees; cavities left by the fall of some uprooted trunk; dark fungi, that flourish around the decayed roots of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... her without hearing her. He heard the music of her voice rather than the sense of her words; one of those large tears which are the sombre pearls of the soul welled up slowly ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... mocking the pitiful grasp of these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every inch of ground with the wilderness, became invested ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the basset horn is extremely reedy and rich, especially in the medium and low registers; the tone colour is similar to that of the clarinet without its brilliancy; it is mellow and sensuous, but slightly sombre, and therefore well adapted for music of an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... we soon afterwards entered a forest of magnificent cork trees, festooned with wild vines, relieving the sombre tints of the forest by the bright colours of their fading leaves. It hung on a mountain's side, and the gloomy depth of shade became deeper and deeper, as, after a while, the dusk of evening came on, and we began to thread the gorges which led to ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... aristocratic barrooms. Fancy what an attraction and even fascination the gin palace with lovely girls behind the bar must have to the youth of a great city. Many of them strangers, busy during the day, but with nothing to do at night, with the choice of the street or a sombre room, but sure of a sweet smile of welcome from a fascinating woman in the barrooms. How easily and how naturally, too, does a young man become ensnared. But how if he has no money? No smiles and no welcome for him! And then what a temptation ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... mother's pride, your comrades' praise— All that romance that seemed so fair Grows dim, and you are left to bear The prose of duty's sombre ways And labour of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... As Paul, engaged in sombre thought, made no reply, Silas turned away, his hands uplifted in supplication, and prayed aloud. He had sinned in giving way to his anger. He prostrated himself before the divine vengeance. If this was his apportioned ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... taken charge of our mules and horses, and led them to a shed adjoining the grey and moss-grown tambo, we entered the building. The interior was sombre in the extreme; everybody and everything wore a subdued look; and even the dogs slunk about as if their spirits were depressed. The smoke of ages was on the walls and roof, and the tables and benches at one side had a sadly ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... cliffs had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the pines—like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... they resumed their way through a beautiful drive—the carefully-kept sward, the venerable trees, and the light and elegant ha-has on either side, testifying that they were within the boundaries of an estate of some pretensions. Half a mile brought them to the portal of a sombre and venerable mansion, which rose up darkly and majestically in front of an extensive plantation of forest-like appearance. Facing it was a large, level lawn, having in the centre the pedestal and sun-dial so frequently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... October 19, 1896, in memory of Christian Martyrs in Turkey. The Bishop of Rochester presided. The hall was packed with an audience of 2,600, while nearly 7,000 applied for admission. Many prominent persons were present. The large audience was in sombre funeral attire. About thirty front seats were occupied by Armenians. It was stated that 60,000 Armenians so far had been murdered with tortures and indignities indescribable. To this meeting Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter which was greeted with the wildest enthusiasm. He said ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... the sombre character of the Count's report, and in the midst of the merriment, he was dismissed. The prisoner was then brought in, and put to question; next day the final preparation for the reception of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... out clear. Along its nearer edge the vivacious waves tumbled noisily. The steady pines were welcoming the fresh early foliage of such companions as dressed and undressed in accord with the calendar; the wrecked trunks which had given up life and its leafy pomps seemed somehow less sombre and stark; and in the threatened woodlands behind the hills a multiplicity of small new greeneries stirred the autumn's dead leaves and brightened up the thickets of shrubbery. The arbutus had ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... at the dense and sombre wilderness, upon which this little clearing and humble log-cabin were but meagre suggestions of that strong, full-pulsed humanity that has elsewhere subdued nature, and achieved progress, and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes a minute and insignificant person for whom perhaps the readers of this story have now some slight solicitude. Of him there remains to be told just one single and miraculous thing. Through a world darkened and lost, through a civilisation in its ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... moments the door was thrown open, and a spruce, dapper looking gentleman, clothed in sombre colored garments, irreproachable linen, and carrying a small merino bag in his ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree. A long-legged knave was he, pinched and something doleful of visage yet with quick bright eyes that laughed 'neath sombre brows, and a wide, up-curving mouth; upon his escalloped cape and flaunting cock's-comb were many little bells that rang a silvery chime as, up-starting to his elbow, he ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Senate was the irreconcilable enemy of the French Republic. Excitement was carried to such a point that in many places the people complained that they were not permitted to arm against the French. The Austrian generals industriously circulated the most sinister reports respecting the armies of the Sombre-et-Meuse and the Rhine, and the position of the French troops in the Tyrol. These impostures, printed in bulletins, were well calculated to instigate the Italians, and especially the Venetians, to rise in mass to exterminate the French, when the victorious army should penetrate ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare the greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, "Le Chateau du Souvenir," which he fills, not exactly with Charles Lamb's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of the C.O.'s eyes, which were bent on the table; and little enough could he read in his face, save that it was sombre with thought and at the same time abstracted to a degree that gave the boy a sudden uncanny feeling. It was like watching a man in the travail of second sight, and all the queerer because he had never seen an expression even remotely resembling it on the face of this ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... road made of bound sapling-bundles we took our way into the centre of the marsh. Here all was quiet and sombre; the marsh-world seemed to be lamenting over some ancient wrong. At times a rat would sneak out of the grass, slink across our path and disappear in the water, again; a lonely bird would rise into ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... left were outlined in light, up to the last high line of roof against the dark starlit sky; and upon the spaces in between lay the soft glow from the tens of thousands of torches that the crowds carried beneath. Above the grotto the precipitous face of the cliff showed black and sombre, except where the zigzag paths shone out in liquid wandering lines, where the folks stood packed together, unseeing, yet content to be present. In front, at the foot, over the lake of fire where the main body of worshippers ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... prisons I fancied myself in the times of the martyrs, and gladly would I have chosen this sombre abode for my dwelling if there had been any question of confessing my faith. Presently the guide's voice roused me from my reverie, and I crossed the "Bridge of Sighs," so called because of the sighs uttered by the wretched prisoners as they passed ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... the need Of loving hearts to strengthen and to lead, When first are opened to her wondering eyes The world's fair fields and seeming paradise. She only sees the beauty—hears the song, Knows not the hidden snares, nor dreams of wrong. 'Tis woman's happiest time, and yet 'tis true A sombre tinge may mar its brightest hue. For girlhood too will have its doubts and fears, Will lose the past and long for coming years, And sad indeed when youth is left alone To face the coming future all unknown. The eyes see not that should ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance That wrap mankind Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not be, Whate'er be shaped and fixed within Zeus' ruling mind— Dark as a solemn grove, with sombre leafage shaded, His paths of purpose wind, A marvel ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... sort of lisping of battle, those hermits by day and cut-throats by night, that clumsy mill which turns in the wind, the hoisting-wheels of the quarries, the tea-gardens at the corners of the cemeteries; the mysterious charm of great, sombre walls squarely intersecting immense, vague stretches of land inundated with sunshine and full ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... slow saunter, philosophic fancies coming to interweave themselves with his thoughts; and, when he awoke again from a long reverie, the road had grown narrow, rough and stony. He stumbled along till at length he again made out the castle in the distance, perched on its sombre eminence, just a flat silhouette against ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... were blossoming in the grass of the year before, which was still green in patches, and the bright sun and the blue sky made the study seem to me, entering, dark and sombre. It was characteristic of my father, I thought with a flash of fancy, to sit there and look out into a warm, gay world where springtime was quickening the blood and sunshine lay warm on the flowers; he always had lived in old Salem, and as he ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... side ways and a gloomy one by night that backs up north of Les Halles: old Paris, taciturn and sombre, steeped in its memories of grim romance. But for infrequent, flickering, corner lamps, the street that welcomed them from the doors of the warm and cosy restaurant was as dismal as an alley in some ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... from America. The narrow pavements of Bond Street were thronged, women getting out of their carriages, intent on their shopping, bowing to the men as they ran into the shops, making amends for the sombre black of the men's coats by a delirium of feathers, skirts, and pink ankles. And nodding to their friends, bowing to the ladies in the carriages, Harding and Owen edged their way ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... of the window was blue and the edges red. Upon this sombre richness of colouring, the personages, whose flying draperies allowed their limbs to be seen, stood out in relief in clear light on the glass. Three scenes of the Legend, placed one above the other, filled the space quite to the upper arch. At the bottom, the daughter of the king, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... see the clerics fight might make the sourest laugh! They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown, So keep us good St. Genevieve, Umslopogaas is down! About the mace of David Grieve his blood is flowing red, Alas for ancient chivalry, le brave Bussy is sped! Yet where the sombre Templar rides the Modern caitiffs fly, The Mummer (of The Mummer's Wife) has got it in the eye, From Felix Holt his patent Colt hath not averted fate, And Silas Lapham's smitten fair, right through his gallant pate. There Dan Deronda reels and falls, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... youth means buoyancy. With an effort—increasingly difficult—he is able to shake off this sombre fit for awhile; and he makes use of the simplest means to that end. "Whenever I feel vapourish," he has said, "I rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt; brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... he said. "The proof is a terrible one, but I require this proof. I must descend into the tomb to obtain it: well, then, I will descend into the tomb. I must consult the sombre oracle of death concerning the mysteries of life: well, then, I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... keen glance at the young officer, who sat gazing ahead in sombre thought. "Fancy how a naval man feels," he said. "We are told that our ships are going to the Pacific, and any hour the safety of the nation may depend upon them! And they are covered with rotten armour plate that was made by old Harrison, and ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... smiling, triumphant, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her before. A sombre fire burnt in her eyes, and he, who had expected that she would meet him with blushes and down-cast eyes, was crushed. She was the triumphant seducer, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... was a fine old mansion, partaking more of the character of a castle than a Court, with its keep and towers, battlements, heavily grated mullioned windows, and machicolated gallery. It stood, sombre and grey, in the midst of gigantic but now leafless sycamores—trees that had to thank themselves for being sycamores; for, had they been oaks, or other marketable wood, they would have been made into bonnets or shawls long before now. The building ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... his unnatural fit had passed away. He stretched out his hand and struck a silver gong which had been left within his reach. Almost immediately a man, pale-faced, with full dark eyes and olive complexion, dressed in the sombre garb of an indoor servant, ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spirit is serene; For here no stranger can intrude To view this last, pathetic scene, Or mar its sombre solitude; Prone on the lonely mountain crest, Confronting the resplendent west, The dying lion ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... host a little curiously. He was slightly built and without an atom of colour. His black hair was closely cropped, his eyes of sombre darkness, his demeanour almost sullen. At Selingman's words, however, he nodded rapidly and seated himself more firmly upon his chair. It was apparent that although his face ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... smacked of "Killaloe," The contagious wrath of Buskin and of Sock Hath abated for awhile, And no more the Emerald Isle On the stage and in the green-room seems to shock. The curtain is rung down, The comedian and the clown, With the sombre putter-on of tragic airs, Are gone, with all the cast, And the Theatre, at last, Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... eyeless toad croaks from a well. Then cosmic force forsakes each dale: 'Mis Cyclopean pulse of hell Giant cauldrons vomit vapours green And skirr thro' bristling lanes and halls: Whilst beacons die and shrood each soul, Dank tears drop on a fatal bell, Wrought by a Titan's sombre queen, Where graven vypers soop the walls With blood from maidens scourged as toll. Sentinel silence then holds gloom! Vile squats curse roaring pools inflame, A swarthy gump leers at the damn'd, A sultry storm invades ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... gifted mortal, to whom the triple portal Of Music, Art, and Poesy had opened years before, With a look of sombre feeling, depths within his soul revealing, Leaving room for no appealing, he decided o'er and o'er The old, old vexing questions of the why and the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... loss of years, and thereby of kindred and 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 absolute and unquestioned supremacy she demanded, and the frightful penalties, temporal and ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... dear, whom you like"—that was what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to people's doing as they liked, had replied; and it bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were many explanations, and they were all amusing—amusing, that is, in the line of the sombre and brooding amusement, cultivated by Kate in her actual high retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday; but Mrs. Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as to make it possible to her niece to see him alone. She saw him, however, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife, it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young heir was celebrated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I am gled to see that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... was hanging just above the tallest trees of the swamp when Miss Taylor, weary with the day's work, climbed into the buggy beside Bles. They wheeled comfortably down the road, leaving the sombre swamp, with its black-green, to the right, and heading toward the golden-green of waving cotton fields. Miss Taylor lay back, listlessly, and drank the soft warm air of the languorous Spring. She thought of the golden sheen of the cotton, and the cold March winds of New England; of her brother ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... look, and never for one moment did he relax his gaze. He seemed absolutely absorbed by his music, and as the queer old figure—a sort of Moses with his long beard—played his native instrument, amid the quaint trappings of the museum for background, we felt enthralled by the sombre surroundings and curious apparition, who might have been Winminen himself, the mythological ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... and more restless for want of some excitement. A mad gallop, a visit to Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had taken such a fancy to him, or a chat with the Widow Rowens, who was very lively in her talk, for all her sombre colors, and reminded him a good deal of same of his earlier friends, the senoritas,—all these were distractions, to be sure, but not enough to keep his fiery spirit from fretting itself in longings for more dangerous excitements. The thought of getting a knowledge of all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... attention, neither the beautiful Decorated tomb of Bishop Walter de Merton (1278) nor that of Bishop John de Sheppey (1360). The best thing left to us in the Cathedral and that which gives it its character is the great western doorway with its sombre Norman carving of the earlier part of the twelfth century. The nave is also beautiful and the crypt is undoubtedly one of the most interesting monuments left in England. Of the Priory practically nothing remains but a ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Persians only speak of themselves as Aryans) laid the foundation of the Grecian and Roman Mythology, the dark and more sombre legends of the Scandinavian and the Teuton; and all derived from the various names grouped round the Sun god, which in the lighter themes the Aryans associated with the rising and the setting of the sun, in all ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... returned downcast from Wayfarer's Tickle: having for three days sought his daughter, whom he could not find; nor was word of her anywhere to be had. Came, then, the winter—with high winds and snow and short gray days: sombre and bitter cold. Our folk fled to the tilts at the Lodge; and we were left alone with the maids and Timmie Lovejoy in my father's house: but had no idle times, for the doctor would not hear of it, but kept us at work or play, without ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... The sheriff relapsed into sombre silence. There was a troubled look in the keen eyes that the Texan did not understand. Fraser waited for the officer to develop the object of his visit, and it was set down to his credit. A weaker man would have rushed at once into excuses and explanations. But in the prisoner's quiet, steely ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... was a big, broad shouldered man, reddish haired and ruddy cheeked, with cool grey eyes; his sandy mustache was closely cropped and turned up ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. Despite his colouring, his face was somewhat sombre—even stern—when in repose. It was his fine, enveloping smile that made friends for him wherever he listed, with men and with women. More frequently than otherwise it made more than friends ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in, "a sombre background brushed in to throw your figures into more vivid relief. Are you ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... fruits of the necklets branching wide, Pearls of the breasts in gold enchased and beautified With running fountains of liquid silver in streams And cheeks of rose and beryl, side by side. It seemeth, indeed, as if the violet's colour vied With the sombre blue of the eyes, with ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... The assembly resumed the sombre demeanour which had never left it during the three preceding days. The king entered without guards, and only attended by his brothers. He was received, at first, in profound silence; but when he told them he was one with the nation, and that, relying on the love ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... whole cultural movement, the resultant of the various forces within it, was headed towards the healthy progress of Judaism. The most substantial product of this movement was the Neo-Hebraic literary renaissance which had already appeared in faint outlines on the sombre background of external oppression and internal obscurantism during the preceding period. The Haskalah, formerly anathematized, was now able to unfold all its creative powers. What in the time of Isaac Baer Levinsohn had been accomplished stealthily by a few isolated ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... rather tall, well-built man, with long brown beard and slouch hat. He had wide brown eyes, with a sombre gaze in them. In fact, his whole countenance was sober and ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... wintry sea—a sky loaded with heavy clouds—the wind cold and piercing—the whole line of the coast one mass of barren rocks, without the slightest appearance of vegetation; the inland part of the country presented an equally sombre appearance, and the higher points were capped with snow, although it was not yet the winter season. Sweeping the coast with his eye, Philip perceived, not four miles to leeward of them (so little progress had they made), the spot where they ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... 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, more ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... sphinxes, and found it locked. Butting his shoulder against the panel with impatient force, the hinges broke from their rotten fastenings, and the door gave inwards. Balder stepped past it, and found himself in the sombre lamp-lit interior ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a space gazing at the sombre covers, but making no attempt to dip into their pages; then a sudden look of comprehension sprang into his eyes. The oddly built stone chapel took on a new and more personal meaning. With a quick gesture he thrust the books back into ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... on fire by the bright sun, Which slowly, slowly to extinction goes, The while she, girt with splendour burning lies; Yields to her star antagonistic fief Through that which towards the sky to Heaven ascends. Black smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes, And veiling that which makes her burn and shine. And so my soul, illumined and inflamed By radiance divine, would fain display The brightness of her own effulgent thought; The lofty concept of her song sends ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... please me; the heathen gods, goddesses, Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited every body she saw. The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but, not fine enough, and there are few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great jet d'eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses wear a tiresome resemblance. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... bloated, pimpled women at the doors,—with a new disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... short unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout stream between its sedgy ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... smoke of the snow blown over the steppes. In the hurrying clouds a great space clears, and along the south-west runs a great rosy fleece of sunset. It is rapidly darkening. The sea in the western corner is crimson, but all the vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seen from a balloon—pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where clouds and sky mingle, one sees fantastically as it were the sides ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... sir?" asked Jabez, bewildered, and suddenly realizing that their sombre faces and manner meant something ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and spread out into over-arching canopies above, while, with the gathering darkness of the night, that forest seemed gradually to take the form of a distant burning city in the manifold tapering pillars of fire which everywhere rose from the field, fiercely illuminating the dark and sombre wood-wall of the surrounding forest, and dimly glimmering over the sleeping waters ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a winding path along the wooded slope of the hill. Here and there granite boulders, bare and blasted, broke through the grey verdure of the dwarf oaks, and the sombre purple mountain with its bluish ravines formed an impassable barrier about ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... at my little parlour window and watched the pale moonbeams darting amidst the sombre and venerable yew-trees that shed their solemn shade over the little garden! How often have I strolled down the woody paths, spangled with the dew of morning, and shaken off the briery branches that hung about me! How tranquil did ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry—a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold frame; dark-hued rugs on the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... [quarter-note]-138, and it is very short and very wild. Throughout, the grief is the grief of a strong soul; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the tread of an AEschylean choros, its allegro movements are wild with anguish, and the occasional uplifting into the major only emphasizes the sombre whole, like the little rifts of clearer harmony in Beethoven's "Funeral March on ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the habit of talking to Jerrold in a gloomy depressing manner, presenting to him only the sad side of life. "Hang it!" said Jerrold, one day, after a long and sombre interview, "she wouldn't allow there was a bright side to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... again unfortunate. Ill-luck seems to have pursued the girl. The games came to an end, and the young people were about to disperse when, at this unlucky moment, the door was burst open and a sombre apparition appeared. It was the Black Forest sorcerer, the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered spectrally among the sombre foliage. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... had been so sweet in the dreaming, and leveling ruthlessly the very foundations of the fair castle he had builded in the air for Dill and himself—and one other, with the fairest, highest, most secret chambers for that Other. And as he rode, the face of him was worn and the blue eyes of him sombre and dull; and his mouth, that had lost utterly the humorous, care-free quirk at the corners, was bitter, and straight, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... he grew graver, sad was his look, sombre the tone of his voice, and half an hour's conversation with him was a very serious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... the bay. No cross or symbol marks their resting-place, but old Madge puts wild flowers upon it at times, and when I pass on my daily walk and see the fresh blossoms scattered over the sand, I think of the strange couple who came from afar, and broke for a little space the dull tenor of my sombre life. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eventful voyage changed almost with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope, but was ever fascinating and full of pleasant surprises. The flaming autumnal foliage of the forest-lined banks through which the first hundred miles or so were made, gave way to masses of sombre browns or rich purples, and these in turn to the flecked white of cotton-fields, the dark green of live-oaks, and the silver gray of Spanish moss. The picturesque cliffs of the upper river, rising in places to almost mountainous heights, were merged into the lowlands of canebrakes ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... of Nora's eyes; the sombre thing at the back of them came at once to the surface; and Ashton-Kirk saw her hand, as she lifted ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... which the Cabinet seems to possess for the aboriginal Indian. This child of nature appears to materialize with remarkable facility, and, having apparently doffed his characteristic phlegm in the happy hunting grounds, enters with extreme zest on the lighter gambols which sometimes enliven the sombre monotony of a seance. Almost every Medium keeps an Indian 'brave' in her cohort of Spirits; in fact, there is no Cabinet, howe'er so ill attended, but has some Indian there. It is strange, too, that, as far as I know, departed black men, who might ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... AEgir's kingdom. Then, when the harp came to him, he sang the wondrous song of the shaping of the earth. And all who heard were charmed with the sweet sound and with the pleasant words. He sang of the sunlight and the south winds and the summer-time, of the storms and the snow and the sombre shadows of the North-land. And he sang of the dead Ymir, the giant whose flesh had made the solid earth, and whose blood the sea, and whose bones the mountains, whose teeth the cliffs and crags, and whose skull the heavens. And he sang of Odin, the earth's preserver, the Giver of life, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... first of the Moghuls to reside in the Mahomedan atmosphere of Delhi throughout his long reign. But, begun in usurpation at the cost of his own father, it ended in misery and gloom. His sons had revolted against him, his sombre fanaticism had estranged from him the Rajput princes of whom Akbar had made the pillars of the Moghul throne, and though he had reduced to subjection the last of the independent Mahomedan kingdoms of India, he had exhausted ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... which, out of the entire body of tradition concerning him, was accepted as central by the Athenian imagination. For the people of Attica, he comes from Boeotia, a country of northern marsh and mist, but from whose sombre, black marble towns came also the vine, the musical reed cut from its sedges, and the worship of the Graces, always so closely connected with the religion of Dionysus. "At Thebes alone," says Sophocles, "mortal women bear immortal ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... still did some work in the fields. The older farmers who had employed him for many years past gave him a little to do; he also had his old-age pension, and his children helped to keep him in comfort. He was quite well off, he said, compared to many. There was a subdued and sombre cheerfulness in him, and when I questioned him about his early life, he talked very freely in his slow old peasant way. He was born in a village in the Vale of Aylesbury, and began work as a ploughboy on a very big farm. He ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... round his waist displaying armouries of knives and pistols, on his head a fez wound round with a huge turban cloth, mounted, or leading a pack-horse; his wife in coarse black trousers; the Hercegovinans, with breastplates of silver ornaments, exquisite in workmanship and of great antiquity; sombre Servians, and white-clad Albanians, whose trousers are embroidered with black braid in fantastic tracing; fez, head-cloth, and neat little Montenegrin cap; trousers of red, pink, blue and black; gigantic Albanians in high riding-boots, sitting their horses like Life Guardsmen; Macedonians, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... and epic beginning succeeded a long and sombre tragedy, to this Iliad worthy of a Homer an Inferno worthy of a Dante. So we cannot wonder that the wounded of 1918 differed from those of 1914, and that their faces, like the face of the Florentine poet returning from hell, reflected ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... said to Kennedy, catching sight of her familiar figure, clad in sombre black, as she came down the steps. "I wonder ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... to contemplate. Perhaps the occupant of the coffin came out, and walked with my lady, and held ghostly converse with her on such occasions. I fancied that even now I could hear him breathing heavily, and turning over uneasily in his narrow bed. There seemed a rustling, too, among the folds of the sombre curtains as though someone were in hiding there; and that low faint sobbing sigh which quivered through the room, like an accent of unutterable sorrow, whence did it come? Others than myself were surely there, though I might not be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... tactless prelate made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... but little idea where we were, or how far we had come, when we entered a quarter where the ways became narrower, passed into a dingy alley, thence plunged through a still darker court, from that to another alley, and the next moment our porter was ringing at the door of a tall, sombre house. I truly hoped that we should not find rooms here, and was turning to Annie to advise a cab and an attempt in a more civilized-looking locality, when the bell was answered and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... elle est representee avec la gerbe de ble; elle est Persephone, la graine de semence; comme cette deesse, elle a sa faucille: c'est la demi-lune qui repose sous ses pieds. Enfin, comme la deesse d'Ephese, la triste Ceres et Proserpine, elle est belle et brillante, et cependant sombre et noire, selon l'expression du Cantique des Cantiques: 'Je suis noir, mais pleine de charmes, le soleil m'a brulee' (le Christ). Encore aujourd'hui, l'image de la mere de Dieu est noire a Naples, comme a Einsiedeln en Suisse. Elle unit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... living-room to conservatory, sits the shadow of the once great and powerful Minister, State Secretary for the Colonies. To the dark, sombre tones of the heavily furnished chamber the gorgeous colours of the orchids, hanging in trails and festoons under their luminous dome of glass, offer a vivid contrast. Yet even greater is that which they present ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... the gig hauled up into shelter; for will you not want it when the gale abates, and the seas are smooth, and you have to go away, to Dare, you and your comrades, with silent tongues and sombre eyes? Why this wild lamentation in the darkness of the night? The stricken heart that you loved so well has found peace at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk: there is an end! And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other's terrified ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of the little creature which had excited our admiration shone with the most brilliant tints, though the rest of the body was of a more sombre hue. The upper parts of the body were of a pale, dusky green, except the wings, which were of the purple-brown tint common to humming-birds in general. The head and throat were of the most resplendent hue, with an emerald green triangular patch on the throat, while a broad collar of velvety black ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the meeting and green interlacing Of clear-flowing waters and far-winding glens, Lovely inlaid in the mighty embracing Of sombre pine forests and ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... when I had left behind me the baker's boy who was on his way to Hutton with a heavy basket of bread and cakes. Hutton, which is somewhat of a model village for the retainers attached to Hutton Hall, stands in a lovely hollow at the edge of the moors. The steep hills are richly clothed with sombre woods, and the peace and seclusion reigning there is in marked contrast to the bleak wastes above. When I climbed the steep road on that autumn afternoon, and, passing the zone of tall, withered bracken, reached the open moorland, I seemed to have come out merely to be the plaything ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... never brook offence, nor challenge fit decline; How dared ye thus provoke a man whom only Heaven may, And not another' while the son lives to avenge the day! Ye cast about his noble face dishonor's sombre pall, But I am here to strip it off and expiate it all; For only blood will cleanse the stain attainted honor brings, And valid blood is that alone which from the aggressor springs; Yours it must be, Oh tyrant, since by its overplay ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... monotonous (excepting a few points in some of the small lakes, which are picturesque), till you reach the Company's post, Norway House; when a fine body of water bursts upon your view in Lake Winipeg. We found the voyage, from the Factory to this point, so sombre and dreary, that the sight of a horse grazing on the bank greatly exhilarated us, in the association of the idea that we were approaching some human habitation. Our provisions being short, we recruited our stock at this post; and I obtained ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. The upper windows of the great house flamed so as to make your eyes wink; the little river ran off noisily westward and was lost in sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old abbey church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Clavering St. Mary's to the present day) rose up in purple splendour. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's cast long blue shadows over the ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... etymology into Manes, the good and beautiful, was looked upon as the giver of good luck, who protects men after death as well as in life. This religion, evolved from so many diverse elements, possessed a character of sombre poetry and sensual fanaticism which appealed strongly to the Greek imagination: they quickly adopted even its most barbarous mysteries, those celebrated in honour of the goddess and Atys, or of Sauazios. They tell us but little of the inner significance of the symbols and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... would, Mr. Bib," the Idiot agreed. "And that's what we want. If there's anything in this world that I hate more than another it is a sombre comic opera. I've been to a lot of 'em, and I give you my word of honor that next to a funeral a comic opera that lacks gaiety is one of the most depressing functions known to modern science. Some ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... with me, my good friend," said Ellieslaw to the sombre baronet; "I have something for your private ear, with which I know you ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... with a solid backing of the United States. Their footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud—and some ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... of it now as he went down into L'Houmeau; and when he took his way towards Marsac, with the last sombre thoughts gnawing at his heart, it was with the firm resolve to hide his death. There should be no inquest held over him, he would not be laid in earth; no one should see him in the hideous condition of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... were away other men, strangers, inhabitants of desert Nephi, came into camp and stalked about. They were white men, like us, but they were hard-faced, stern-faced, sombre, and they seemed angry with all our company. Bad feeling was in the air, and they said things calculated to rouse the tempers of our men. But the warning went out from the women, and was passed on everywhere to our men and youths, that there ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into the sombre texture ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... called Dimples, because she dimples so when she laughs, is a baby of character. She early discovered her way to the bungalow, and scorning assistance or superintendence found her way over as soon as she could walk. Afternoon tea is never a sombre meal, for the middle-aged babies attend it in relays of four or five; and Dimples and her special chum, Lulla, like to arrive in good time for the full enjoyment of the function. Dimples sits down properly in a high chair close ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... of ours at this time, a worthy old merchant of the name of Mitchell, who was my brother John's godfather, and to whose sombre, handsome city house I was taken once or twice to dinner. He was at one time very rich, but lost all his fortune in some untoward speculation, and he used to come and pay us long, sad, silent visits, the friendly taciturnity of which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of these sombre and terrible Eastern autocrats—the strange sentimental chinks in their armour—are seen in the very characteristic story which follows. "Secret information having been given to Al-Mutawakkil that the imam, Abu ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... find the promise of our own day. Everything wears a new face in the light of our Lord's resurrection. I once watched the dawn on the East Coast of England. Before there was a grey streak in the sky everything was held in grimmest gloom. The toil of the two fishing-boats seemed very sombre. The sleeping houses on the shore looked the abodes of death. Then came grey light, and then the sun, and everything was transfigured! Every window in every cottage caught the reflected glory, and the fishing-boats glittered ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... blood my heart distils; and what passions often rage in that part of my nature which the rebel angels rule! There are nights when I suffer so much that in the delirium of my dreams I seem to be plunging a dagger into your heart, and thus, by some sombre magic, to be forcing you to love me as I love you. When I awake, in a cold sweat, bewildered, beside myself, I feel tempted to go and kill you, so as to destroy the cause of my anguish. If I refrain from this, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... main road on which the church is situated. It is a simple, unpretending structure of brick, shaded on all sides by handsome live oaks. Near by is the small cemetery, and the drooping moss from the oaks hangs in sombre beauty over the graves. Under the trees is a group of superintendents discussing the news and the last order of General Hunter. As we ride up, a party of officers comes galloping in from camp, while from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of one story, clothe the sides of the hill, standing generally on small terraces, wherever the ground has allowed their formation. The houses are of plain unpainted wood, which gives them a somewhat sombre and dilapidated appearance. The interiors are, however, very comfortable, and admirably ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... that in the great battle whose results yet trouble Europe, here, on the soil where the great questions are fought out, Puritanism was already killed. The epicurean in them both, glad and ready in Ronsard, sombre and Lucretian in Du Bellay, jarred indeed in youth against their vows; but that it should have been tolerated, that it should have led to no excess or angry revolt, was typical of their moment. It was typical, finally, of their generation that all this mixture ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men, he appears no longer to me as I saw him last—a white speck catching all the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea—but greater and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for her who loved him best a cruel and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... attracted to a small densely grown swamp, hedged in with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns and brambles, and, looking around me from ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... The brilliant sunshine seemed to be turning into sombre night before my eyes; everything ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... rushing water came up. How like strange distant voices calling him to go back or go on, or warning him, or giving mystic portent of something that would happen to him there! A cold chill crept over him and he seemed enveloped in a sombre menace of the future. But he shook it off. He had many battles to fight, not the least of which ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... 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 I felt a strong desire to get beyond the precincts of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Witness the invention of the "soft" pedal, which is intended not solely to reduce the intensity of tone in the pianoforte—that may be accomplished by a modification of force in striking the note—but to give the tones a darker, more sombre quality, or colour. To vary the tone-colour, a violinist or 'cellist draws the bow across the strings close to, or distant from, the bridge, in accordance with his desire for a reed-like or flute-like quality of tone. Anyone who has listened ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... tall and angular, with a certain nobility and haughtiness of carriage inherited from her fisherman father. Her sallow skin, sombre grey eyes and heavy mouth, looked the personification of night beside the sunny beauty of Blaisette's blue eyes and yellow hair. The girl of the cottage was an excellent foil to the girl of Colomberie Farm. Did Blaisette realize, all ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... my mirror at night before I go to bed and admire my own sombre beauty. I let my hair fall in a black cloud over my shoulders, then I braid it slowly with bare arms lifted in graceful poses. I sway my hips like Carmen, I thrust red flowers into my bosom. I move my head languidly, letting my white teeth gleam between ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of Max's merry eyes, but the proposal chanced to be what he most wished to do. Very gladly he followed Max through the gardens to a side entrance to the house, where they went up to Max's room, a high oak-paneled chamber that would have been sombre were it not for three sunny mullioned casements overlooking the sea. Cases crowded with books stood by the fireplace, fishing rods, cricket bats and oars decorated ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius. I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the cooing doves; your kisses are like those you ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... gay as a truant schoolboy. This was the lark of a lifetime. The two lads, however, were uneasy and depressed. To them this sombre region was haunted, if not by ghosts then by memories as unhappy. They would not have been surprised to see Blackbeard skulking in the tall grass, his head bound in red calico, his pistols cocked to ambush ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... who could pay but little, and among them some of the luckless ones who are always to be found in such groups—stranded folks, who for the most part have lost hope in life. The quiet, pretty woman who kept the house was of an ancient Quaker stock which had come over long ago in a sombre Quaker Mayflower, and had by and by gone to decay, as the best of families will. When I first saw her and some of her inmates it was on a pleasant afternoon early in September, and I recall even now the simple and quiet picture of the little back parlor where I sat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... popularity was representative and it was deserved; but his presence among the great Whig families marks an epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... change the tone of one's feelings and the humor of the occasion. As a few drops of oil, cast upon the surface of the waters, will quiet the troubled waves, so did the glad voice of this merry bird suddenly dispel all those sombre feelings which had been fostered by dismal scenes and a lonely journey. Nature never seemed so lovely as when the rising dawn, with its tearful beams and purple radiance, was greeted by this warbling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... preceded by a number of men who proclaimed his virtues and power in loud voices. He was seated in a chair carried by sixteen men; his guards, the officers of his household, standard and umbrella bearers, and musicians accompanied him. He was clothed in a robe of sombre-coloured silk, and wore a velvet cap, very similar in shape to that of Scotch mountaineers. A large pearl was conspicuous on his forehead, and was the only ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Tower. So the princess gave orders for all to leave her save her maids, and to scatter to their own apartments, and remain quiet there. As soon as we reached my mother's room we besought her to put on that sombre dress, and prayed her similarly to attire Aline, so that they might pass with us unnoticed through the crowd. While they were doing this we went up to the platform above, and there witnessed the murder of the archbishop, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... mushroom season came in, the market assumed an aspect of half-subdued brilliancy with the many sombre and high-colored varieties of that fungus. The poorer people indulge in numerous kinds which the rich do not eat, and they furnish precious sustenance during fasts, when so many viands are forbidden by the Russian ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... sombre and tortuous times, which the people of Israel bore with heroic patience,—have fortunately come to an end, owing to the progress of civilization among the Christians, and this progress is the best shield under which we can ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein |
