"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remembered lay, And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; 5 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear Murmur, between their songs, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... swashing billows, clouded the decks, biting and cutting like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... still plateau. The sky was like a great grotto of ice. The land lay in a wan apathy of suffering, dumb, hopeless, drear. Icy land and icy sky met in a trap, a trap that held him fast; and over all, vast, titanic, terrible, the Spirit of the Wild seemed to brood. It laughed at him, a laugh of derision, of mockery, of callous gloating ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... part;—for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... I ought never to have indulged my wishes, but have grown gray in the same dull manner in which I was brought up! Because I once venture a step beyond the drear monotony of my past life, and look around me to see whether there be not some new source of enjoyment ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Oh, my heart Seems a cavern deep and drear, From whose dark recesses start, Flatteringly like birds of night, Throes of passion, thoughts of fear, Screaming in their flight. Wildly o'er the gloom they sweep, Spreading a horror ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... God, my pleasure?" exclaimed Rosamund in the same drear voice, still staring at her father, who lay before her on ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... wag—O you are so dear! Did you come trotting through all the snow To find my door, I should like to know? Or did you ride with the fairy team Of Santa Claus, of which children dream, Tucked all up in the furs so warm, Driving like mad over village and farm, O'er the country drear, o'er the city towers, Until you stopped at this house of ours? Did you think 'twas a little girl like me You were coming so fast thro' the snow to see? Well, whatever way you happened here, You are my pet and my treasure dear— ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... ladies remarked it. Meanwhile the wheels of the carriage were no longer rattling over paving stones; the streets and houses of the city were left behind; a grey country, with houses scattered over it and trees here and there standing, desolate and drear enough, was to be seen from the carriage windows; but Wych Hazel hardly saw it. At last the houses began again to stand apparently in some regular order and took a more comfortable air; gardens and trees and shrubbery lay between the houses and around them; then suddenly ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the auld man, breaking his silence. "But we'd no be wi'oot them. They brichten up the hoose it'd be dull' and drear wi'oot them. I'm hoping that daft lad never comes back, for all ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... frame of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again there came to him that odor of mustiness—of all smells the most eerie and drear—which he had noticed on his arrival. Somehow, as long as Nur-el-Din had been there, he had not remarked the appalling ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... tongue; for now were all transformed Alike, to serpents all, as accessories To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters head and tail, Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime, Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed Above the rest still to ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... seest thou here To court thy anxious eyes? Earth is beneath thee, lone and drear, Above, thy native skies! Beneath, the wreck of faded bloom, The shadow, and the clod, The broken reed, the open tomb,— Above ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... graying the low clouds, from which fell a cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent, drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered figure that ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... had left a fever in his blood. He was smitten with the disease of Ishmael. Then, before all, and above all, he counted the northland his home. So, when everything the world could yield him lay at his feet, the drear, silent north trail only knew him. His interests in the golden world of Leaping Horse were left behind him, while he satisfied his passion in the far hidden back countries where man is a mere incident ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from the main building and lowering above the massive walls, struck him with a feeling of gloom. It seemed like a prison that he was entering. The Hospitals were drear to him, and the dull, heavy atmosphere seemed full of contagion. He looked at the poor creature thus unconsciously brought there, perhaps to die, and his ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a piece of canvas was stretched as a screen. The firing party stood at a little distance in front with their backs towards us. It was just daylight. A drizzling rain was falling and the country looked chilly and drear. The prisoner was seated on the box and his hands were handcuffed behind the post. He asked the A.P.M. if the helmet could be taken off, but this was mercifully refused him. A round piece of white paper was pinned over ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... The poor slatternly woman roused up a little to meet his words of cheer and look of sympathy; and Sarah came and stood by his shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with his new ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... to reach the understanding of this Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed the way of Life conquered also the drear ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... flight of rickety stairs the old gentleman sees a shabbily dressed woman, and as he glances at the surroundings his soul sickens. All is drear and desolate. The apartment is cold, and a few coals seem trying to keep a little glow that the poor creature may not succumb to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... beggar's bread With those we love alive, Than taste their blood in rich feasts spread, And guiltily survive! Ah! were it worse-who knows?—to be Victor or vanquished here, When those confront us angrily Whose death leaves living drear? In pity lost, by doubtings tossed, My thoughts-distracted-turn To Thee, the Guide I reverence most, That I may counsel learn: I know not what would heal the grief Burned into soul and sense, If I were earth's unchallenged chief— A god—and ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Gregory's office, Eddie at the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and devastating, he came at length into the valley of the Genesee. This he made 'a scene of drear and sickening desolation. The Indians were hunted like wild beasts, till neither house nor fruit-tree, nor field of corn, nor inhabitant, remained in the whole country.' One hundred and twenty-eight houses were razed in the town of ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... was very sultry, and not a breeze stirred to refresh the atmosphere. No inhabitant of Brussels need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and trackless round the capital of Brabant. Having gained the summit of the hill, and having stood and looked long over the cultured but lifeless campaign, I felt a wish to quit the high road, which I had hitherto ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Hindostan: O climax to this age's wondrous story, Full of new hope to India, and to Man In heathendom's dark places! For the light Of our Jerusalem shall now shine there Brighter than ever since the world began:— Yet by a way chaotic, drear and gory Travelled this blessing; as a martyr might Wrestling to heaven through tortures unaware: Our Empress Queen! for thee thy people's pray'r All round the globe to God ascends united, That He ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as the day, There where her knight in slumber lay; And in her lily hand was seen A band that seemed of the moonlight sheen. "We are one," she sang, as about his hair She twined it, and over her tresses fair. Beneath them the world lay dark and drear: But he felt the touch of her hand so dear, Uplifting him far above mortals' sight, While around him were shed her locks of light, Till a garden fair lay about him spread— And this ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... All the lonesome while. Oh the mile after mile, And never a stile! And never a tree or a stone! She has not a tear: Afar and anear It is all so drear, But she does not care, Her heart is as ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... he who lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My glory out of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... crags, dark pools and mountains drear, The wild-wood's silence, and the billow's roll, Great Nature rules, and claims with brow austere, The shudd'ring ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... bleak, drear month. Aviators of all the armies made daily scouting trips, but wasted little time in attacking each other. Few raids of importance took place on any of the fronts. But British airmen descended upon German positions in Belgium ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures[124] moan with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the flamens[125] at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... a traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at last, Heaven ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Leaped there a vision to me — Oh, how far! A face, Her face . . . through all my stormy fate A joy, a strength, a glory and a star. Beneath the pines, where lonely camp-fires gleam, In seas forlorn, amid the deserts drear, How I had gladdened to that face of dream! And never, never had it seemed so dear. O silken hair that veils the sunny brow! O eyes of grey, so tender and so true! O lips of smiling sweetness! must I now For ever and for ever go from you? ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for the witch scene in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light to stretch across the drear, from east to west—a sort of lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea—a hushed and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven. In the west lightning flickered, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... wander round, Among the grassy graves, But all I hear Is the north wind drear, And ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... that the guardians of the night not only watch, but pray for the souls of the inhabitants. Mr. Brooke, in his recent travels, says, "as each hour elapses, they are prepared with a different kind of exhortation or prayer; which, forming a sort of tune or chant, is sung by them during the drear hours of the night." Of one of these pious songs, he gives ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... in compassion tender With this bell, instead of words, Wakens souls from life's illusions, Lightens this world's darkness drear. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... to be weak dost not disdain, Dost choose the things the world deems vain, Art poor and needy, and dost come, By love impell'd, to want's drear home! Hallelujah! ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... like, not forgetting an abundance of fire to warm him, lest even her love would prove insufficient for one of so fiery a nature. Then she dismissed her attendants and sat down alone to wait his coming. The day seemed long and drear and weary; but she had seen him watching her, and he was coming at last. Down the slope he glided, holding his fiery steeds in check. There was joy for the desolate one, for her lover was coming; ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... gravitation sways the worlds. What could be expected of the men of '76 when the air was electric with patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... wanders down, On foot, a-horse, by night and noon: His lands are bleak and drear, O; Forsook his dales Of nightingales, Forsook ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... there shot into this prison drear A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught My look upon four faces mirrored clear; Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought. Then suddenly they rose as if they thought I did it hungering; 'Less our misery,' They cried, 'Should'st ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... in guileless youth, Flies tow'rds her Love with trusting wing, Bruises her heart 'gainst broken truth, And falls, like thee, a crippled thing. How man in bacchanalian sphere Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun, Then, by gradations dark and drear, Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one: How hearts from proud Ambition's height Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell— From blazing noon to pitchy night, With pangs a demon-tongue may tell: How aspirations glory-fraught Have gained the goal in dark despair; How golden hopes have come to nought ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... when these dull eyes will give No response to another's heart, The world to them a void will be, Each day become more full of misery, How then, will this, my wish appear In those dark hours, that dungeon drear? My blighted youth, my sore distress, Alas, will ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... very middle of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, as he had told her he often did, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... aimless marching, Knowing scarcely where or why, Crossed they uplands drear and dry, That an unprotected sky Had ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... have a dreadful, stern, metallic look about them, and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as they are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides, and dive into Pluto's drear domains—the iron-works—a god who, in the present state of railway speculation, might easily be confounded with Plutus; and with this and many other good resolutions, we returned to the hospitable care of our friend Mr Morgan, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... said, there is to me an indescribable pathos in these sombre pictures of Nature in our old Beowulf here, — these drear marshes, these monster-haunted meres, that boil with blood and foam with tempests, these fast-rooted, joyless woods that overlean the waters, these enormous, nameless beasts that lie along on promontories ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... air, and shook the Olympian height; Then terror seized the monarch of the dead, And springing from his throne he cried aloud With fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunder By Neptune's mighty arm, forthwith reveal To mortal and immortal eyes those halls So drear and dank, which e'en the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... his latest discovery and calculated to what principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... sombre shades of evening dim Upon the rock so lone, so drear, Scorning weak frame and sinking limb, My heart grows bright and bold of cheer; Out of the depths of stormy night My hope looks up with cloudless eyes, And to the one true deathless light, Its joyful ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thou art blest, compared with me! The present only toucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear; An' forward, though I canna see, I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dim-lit chamber, where, Beside her mother's bier, Her heart might break. So frail her bark to stem life's sea so drear. She fain would die, yet live for his dear sake. But then "He might not live!" ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... at once to the habitation of the witch. Here he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but supported by a long staff, the drear and sharp ascent. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... grow dark, oh! drifting cloud, And thy misty shapes grow drear, Thou hang'st in the air like a shadowy shroud, But I am of lighter cheer; Though our future lot is a sable blot, Though the wise ones of earth will blame us, Though our saddles will rot, and our rides be ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... gentleman with a delicate face, who wore his own white hair, was bending over a book at a desk. The room was warmly furnished, the door of the stove stood open, and Wogan could see the logs blazing merrily. A chill wind swept across the lawn, very drear and ghostly. Wogan crept closer to the window. A great boar-hound rose at the old man's feet and growled; then the old man rose, and crossing to the window pressed his face against the panes with his hands curved about his ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... flame sinks down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,— "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of you to send me back," the doctor said gruffly. "I started out all right, but it was a drear walk across the marshes." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see a meaning in it, but no word is good that startles one at first, and then you have to make it out: "drear," perhaps. Then why "to minstrel's glance"? "To fancy's eye," you would say, not "to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... clouds above; The cock scream'd, somewhere far away; In sleep the matrimonial dove Was crooning; no wind waked the wood, Nor moved the midnight river-damps, Nor thrill'd the poplar; quiet stood The chestnut with its thousand lamps; The moon shone yet, but weak and drear, And seem'd to watch, with bated breath, The landscape, all made sharp and clear By stillness, as a ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... months from Poland, when, upon a drear October evening, the Archbishop of Bloomsbury, my Lady Sarah, the flower girl, and "Betty," the half-witted boy, made their way about half-past nine o'clock to the deserted stage of the Regent Theatre, and there by the courtesy of the watchman, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... sorrow's hour When life seems dark and drear; I'll shield thee from the tempter's power; Dear child, thou ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... month that followed Cromwell Biron pressed his suit persistently, unintimidated by Cecily's antagonism. October drifted into November and the chill, drear days came. To Cecily the whole outer world seemed the dismal reflex of her pain-bitten heart. Yet she constantly laughed at herself, too, and her laughter ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Thou art these lines now reading, Think not, though from the world receding I joy my lonely days to lead in This Desart drear, That with remorse a conscience bleeding Hath ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and dance! ah, sun and snow! Glad life, sad life we did forego To dream of quietness and rest; Ah, would the fleet sweet roses here Poured light and perfume through the drear Pale year, and ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... and tower, to down and dale, To tell red Flodden's dismal tale, And raise the universal wail. Tradition, legend, tune, and song, Shall many an age that wail prolong: Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear. Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, And ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... sometimes sad to me; The starry spaces, full of fear: Mine is the sorrow on the sea, And mine the sigh of places drear. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... fury of winter is lowering, And leafless and drear is the tree; But the vertical sun of the south appears pouring Its fierce, killing heats upon me: Without, all the season's chill symptoms begin— But the fire ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... hapless people, doomed by John Adair's decree? Some linger in the drear poor-house—some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch—back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high. None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the bosom of the moor Seem doubly dark and drear, Frowning still sterner than before Did that false ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... word of cheer That may light the pathway drear, Of a brother pilgrim here, Let him know. Show him you appreciate What he does, and do not wait Till the heavy hand of fate Lays him low. If your heart contains a thought That will brighter make his lot, Then, in mercy, hide it ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wouldn't be a pigeon And live in an old red barn, I'd rather be here when the weather is drear And watch ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... whose summit is crowned by the castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows and vines shroud the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... I wander round Amidst the grassy graves: 15 But all I hear Is the north-wind drear, And all I see ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... merchandize,— The style and folly of the court Not now requiring such a sort. His agents, factors, fail'd;—in short, The man himself, from pomp and princely cheer, And palaces, and parks, and dogs, and deer, Fell down to poverty most sad and drear. His friend, now meeting him in shabby plight, Exclaim'd, 'And whence comes this to pass?' 'From Fortune,' said the man, 'alas!' 'Console yourself,' replied the friendly wight: 'For, if to make you rich the dame denies, She can't forbid you to ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, And I ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Saint-Germain—no less foolish any of those afternoons in the forest or the park to which a long drive by train, or tram, had carried us. And I am prepared to admit the folly to-day as I sit at my elderly desk and look out to the London sky, grey and drear as if the spring had gone with my youth. But if I never again can be so foolish, at least I am thankful that once I could, that once long ago I was young in Paris, "the enchanted city with its charming smile for youth,"—that once I believed in folly and, in so believing, had learned more of the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... mourn'd the chief—and no relief his regal state could bring. O'er such a drear unpeopled waste, oh! who would be a king? And still, when desolate a land, and her sons all swept away, "The waste domain of Syloson," 'tis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... been married about a year and a quarter. Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring. That drear spectre of drought hung over ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Mrs. Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. But there grew up in Owen's silent, lonely breast a great and overmastering ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Through all the netted labyrinth of his brain The fever shot its pent malignant fire. 'Twas evening when to passing consciousness He woke and saw his father by his side: His guardian form in every vision drear That followed, watching shone; and the healing face Of his true sister gleamed through all his pain, Soothing and strengthening with cloudy hope; Till, at the weary last of many days, He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness, Enfeebled much, but with ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... lingered at "the Hive" some sweet faces and loving hearts besides those of my kin. The greenhouse, where I had spent so much of my time, was closed—the plants all gone. Up the rafters ran the vines I helped to plant, but when the winter came, drear and cold, only a few persons remained on the domain. The dining hall echoed to my voice in its emptiness, and the little reading room at the Hive was where ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... well the freshness that in later spring and early summer brightens the bracken, nurtures the moss, and cherishes the starry flowers that spangle for a few weeks the pasture of the moor-sheep. Unless that light and freshness are innate and self-sustained, the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor will be found as barren of poetic as of agricultural interest: where the love of wild nature is strong, the locality will perhaps be clung to with the more passionate constancy, because from the hill-lover's ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... reached a starry height Majestically calm? No monster, drear And shapeless, glares me faint at night; I am not in the sunshine checked for fear That monstrous shapeless thing is ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... you will have to do if you penetrate far into the interior. They hunt and fish, saving their canned supplies for the winter, for the winter months are long and drear up in this ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... wander In woodlands dark and drear, For who is there to harm me When not a soul is near? The birds, the trees and flowers Are kind as kind can be, I'm sure that not a single one Would do ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... his own creations, were denizens together of some fairy and ethereal world, wandering through the fascinating maze of imaginative life. It was almost an intoxication, this wonderfully stimulating contact with a mind so receptive, so brilliant, so sympathetic. He forgot his garret, Cicely, the drear past, the passionate warnings of Drexley and Rice. As a weaver of stories he was in his first youth. He had peopled but few worlds with those wonderfully precious creations—the children of the brain. They were ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a fibrous ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... between the interior and the exterior of the House on the following day (February 23rd). Inside, there was for the most part a desert, yawning wide and drear, except on the benches which were occupied by the sons of Wales; while outside in the outer lobbies surged a wild, tumultuous, excited crowd, eagerly demanding admission from everybody who could be expected ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... he not return to me, Drear, drear must be life's night! And, mother, I can almost see Even now the gathering blight—my soul Faints, stricken by ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Thunder had flung him away sheer over the brink of the steep. Hastily snatching up one of the Indian's rifles, Burl ran to the brow of the hill, and taking deliberate aim at the rolling body far down there, fired. Up came ringing a cry—a death-yell, so it would seem, so fierce it was, and wild and drear. The moment thereafter, now rolling with frightful rapidity, over the river ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... glad that your family is not among those who favor this establishment with its patronage. I am very happy in this, as it is good to think that your dear shoes are but a part of you, are incidental to your being, and not a consequence of drear barter ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... on a grassy bank, And the sun shone warm and clear; I wakened on a desert isle, And the sky was black and drear.' ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... visible, but it gave forth no lustre: a ring of watery and dark vapor girded the melancholy orb. Far at the entrance of the valley the wild fern showed red and faded, and the first march of the deadly winter was already heralded by that drear and silent desolation which cradles the winds and storms. But amidst this cheerless scene the distant note of the merry marriage-bell floated by, like the good spirit of the wilderness, and the student rather paused to hearken ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... portals open wide To the great tide That from the dense-thronged mother country flows. New homes arise By rivers once unknown, among whose reeds The wild fowl fed, but now no longer dwells. No more the bison feeds Upon the prairie, for the once drear plain Laughs in the sun and waves its golden grain. By a slender chain Ocean is linked to ocean, and the hum Of labor in the wilderness foretells The greatness of a nation yet to come. In Southern seas Another nation grows by slow ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... snows!" cries the Belle, "Dear, how lucky!" and turns From her mirror to watch the flakes fall, Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns! While musing on sleigh ride and ball: There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth, Floating over each drear winter's day; But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth, Will melt like the snowflakes away. Turn, then thee to Heaven, fair maiden, for bliss; That world has a pure ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... death lament. Four days and nights the dismal song was heard, beyond the blue wood smoke of Indian fires. Weeks of mourning passed, and all but one were comforted, but she sat all alone, and every morning she squatted on the sea grass at the shore, chanting that drear and ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... outrageous crimes That wake Heaven's vengeance: at such solemn hours, Demons and goblins through the dark air shriek, While Hecat, with her black-browed sisters nine, Bides o'er the Earth, and scatters woes and death. Then, too, they say, in drear Egyptian wilds The lion and the tiger prowl for prey With roarings loud! The listening traveller Starts fear-struck, while the hollow echoing vaults Of pyramids increase the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... continued, "for which we've pawned our lands, our relatives, and some of us our liberty. Please God there isn't one here that won't see a free Ireland! We've hammered it into their dull Saxon brains. It's been a long, drear night, but the ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thine oaks in the drear Red eve of December are wind-swept and sere, Where a king by the stream in his agony lies, And the life of a land ebbs ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... had long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beside the door. And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men: Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest his deed make ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... moon as I tread the drear wild, And feel that my mother now thinks of her child As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door Thro' the woodbine whose fragrance shall cheer me no more. Home, ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd
... camp was beautiful beyond description, and lay near the edge of the mesa, whence we could look down upon the lovely lake. It was a complete surprise to us, as points of scenery were not much known or talked about then in Arizona. Ponds and lakes were unheard of. They did not seem to exist in that drear land of arid wastes. We never heard of water except that of the Colorado or the Gila or the tanks and basins, and irrigation ditches of the settlers. But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies above us. We feasted our eyes and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... radiant plain? I stumble now in miry ways; Dark clouds drift landward, big with rain, And lonely moors their summits raise. On, on with hurrying feet I range, And left and right in the dumb hillside Grey gorges open, drear and strange, And so I come ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thank heaven for that, Madeline, else your way would have been far more drear, else your life might have known never a ray of sunlight, in the long days ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... stood in the middle of the room, hesitating, the priest who had admitted me passed by and took up his station at the foot of the bed. He motioned me to stand a little nearer, and suddenly the drear silence of the room was broken by the low, monotonous chant of prayers. I bowed my head, and kneeling by the bedside I took up the responses, and once for a moment clasped the white, cold hand which lay upon the coverlet, and which was all ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... remaining only! and she took a vow severe Of triratra, three nights' penance, holy fasts and vigils drear! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... ethereal way, And thus the Sibyl doth the Dardan warn: "Night lowers apace; we linger but to mourn. Here part the roads; beyond the walls of Dis There lies for us Elysium; leftward borne Thou comest to Tartarus, in whose drear abyss Poor sinners purge with pains the lives ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... o'er his eyes; severe As was the pain he'd borne from wave and wind, The dubious warning of that being drear, Who met him in the lightning, to his mind Was torture worse; a dark presentiment Came o'er his soul with paralyzing chill, As when Fate vaguely whispers her intent To poison mortal joy with sense of coming ill. He searched about the grove with all the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the night were drear But for the tender grace That with thy glory comes to cheer Earth's loneliest, darkest place; For by that charity we see Where there is hope for ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... when winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate in the Seven Dials, as most feather-fanciers ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and once more there was a solemn silence, a drear stillness. And now fear took possession of every one of us, and a desire to flee away somewhere—anywhere. This had almost amounted to panic, when Moncrieff himself ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... and from her trembling head she tore the snow-white hair, And scratched her cheeks: her eyes shed floods of tears. As when a torrent headlong rushes down the valleys drear, Its icy fetters gone when Sprint appears, And strikes the frozen shackles from rejuvenated earth So down her face the tears in torrents swept And wracking sobs ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... audience shake; And yet to this, as all experience shows, No small amount of skill and talent goes. Your style must he concise, that what you say May flow on clear and smooth, nor lose its way, Stumbling and halting through a chaos drear Of cumbrous words, that load the weary ear; And you must pass from grave to gay,—now, like The rhetorician, vehemently strike, Now, like the poet, deal a lighter hit With easy playfulness and polished wit,— ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... if she hath not that serene decline Which makes the southern Autumn's day appear As if 't would to a second Spring resign The season, rather than to Winter drear,— Of in-door comforts still she hath a mine,— The sea-coal fires,[677] the "earliest of the year;"[678] Without doors, too, she may compete in mellow, As what is lost in green is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... this drear Thanksgiving-Day despondent beside his hearth. With a hundred hard lines furrowing his pale face, telling of the work of time and struggle and misfortune, he looked the incarnation of silent sorrow and hopelessness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Plympton, but that was from a kindly desire to reassure her. In reality, she was overwhelmed with loneliness and melancholy. The aspect of the grounds below and of the drawing-room had struck a chill to her heart. This great drear house oppressed her, and the melancholy with which she had left Plympton Terrace now became intensified. The gloom that had overwhelmed her father seemed to rest upon her father's house, and descended thence upon her own spirit, strong ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... fro; while an owl shrieked his twit-to-hoo to the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; and cold grey twilight covered the mountain-side. There still sat the lone old woman, crouching over the mocking fire. Dark and drear was the hovel— floor it had none, save the damp, cold earth—nor was there a chimney or other outlet for the smoke, except a hole which a branch of the ill-favoured pine-tree had made in the roof, in one of his most restless moods. ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... feather'd hearse, Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse, 640 Which, to beholders from afar, Appear'd like a triumphal car, She rode, in a cast rainbow clad; There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid, Naked, as when (in those drear cells Where, self-bless'd, self-cursed, Madness dwells) Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape, Frenzy had perfected a rape, First brought her forth, before her time, Wild witness of her shame and crime, 650 Driving before an idol band Of drivelling Stuarts, hand ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the "Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the arrival of the teamster with the chests the night before. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beetles, flies, Nooks and corners dark and drear, That is where my pathway lies, Month by month and year by year; Buckets, boxes, brushes, boots, Near to me for ever dwell; No one lets me share the fruits Of the work I do so well; Boys and girls will often play In some clean and pleasant room, Making ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Roland's mouth is the bloody stain, Burst asunder his temple's vein; His horn he soundeth in anguish drear; King Karl and the Franks around him hear. Said Karl, "That horn is long of breath." Said Naimes, "'Tis Roland who travaileth. There is battle yonder by mine avow. He who betrayed him deceives you now. Arm, sire; ring forth your rallying cry, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... seen her as a young girl—gentle, undeveloped, easily led, and rather stupid. She returned a gray-haired woman of thirty-four, who had lost youth, fortune, child, and husband; whose aspect, moreover, suggested losses still deeper and more drear. At first she wrapped herself in what seemed to some a dull and to others a tragic silence. But suddenly a flame leaped up in her. She became aware of the position of Madame d'Estrees in London; and one day, at a private view of the Academy, her former step-mother went up ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
