"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple-branches, mute: With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,— "Pe-wee! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... high in his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakwa himself is there; And round the feast in the Sacred Ring, [48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their teepee alone and fasted, Their faces turned ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... vicomte a sword. As the majority of the colonists were ignorant of what lay behind this remarkable quarrel, they naturally took sides with the man whose laugh was more frequent than his frown. Thus, the vicomte still shuffled the ebon dominoes of a night and sang out jovially, "Doubles!" Whenever the man he had so basely wronged passed him, he spat contemptuously and cried: "See, Messieurs, what it is to be without a sword!" And as for ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of laughter—brim full with it, and ready to overflow, like a goblet of Bohemian glass filled with the "foaming draught of eastern France," if we may be permitted to make so unworthy a comparison. Her merry black eyes were now dancing, and her ebon curls rippled from her smooth dark ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... of the distant thunder-clouds, which cast a deeper, more sombre shade upon the pines that girded the northern shores of the lake as with an ebon frame. Insensibly her thoughts wandered far away from the lonely spot whereon she sat, to the stoup [FN: The Dutch word for verandah, which is still in common use among the Canadians.] in front of her father's house, and in memory's eye she beheld it all exactly as she had ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... road, a pair, A lady and a cavalier, Were riding side by side. And she was young and "passing fair," With crimson lips and ebon hair— She was the gallant's bride! And he was cast in manly mould, His port was high, and free, and bold— Fitting a cavalier! But now bent reverently low His crest's unsullied plume of snow Play'd ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... FULKERSON, glass in hand, comes to the nearer side of the counter. He swallows his drink greedily, singing to himself between the gulps.] "Oh, the gals! Oh, the gals! I am awfully fond of the gals! [Putting his empty glass upon the counter and making for the door on the left.] Be they ebon or blond, Of the gals I am fond; I am dreadfully ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound. I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We were silent as figures in a mirror. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... proprietorship of the British Empire, khaki-clad Tommy Atkins comes down the pier, attended by the inevitable fox terrier. Following close on his heels is a towering man of ebon complexion, with three stripes of ashes and the wafer of humility on his forehead. He is barefooted, and his solitary garment is a piece of cotton with which he has girded his loins; he is abundantly lacquered with cocoanut oil, to protect him from contracting a cold from the too rigorous ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the park with a princely air; I filled my crop with the richest fare; I cawed all day 'mid a lordly crew, And I made more noise in the world than you! The sun shone forth on my ebon wing; I looked ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... beautiful, and by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... figures standing as if in silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin. One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding to him, I pushed without ceremony ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of legend or history—these and a hundred other details are enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colourless in comparison. The Englishman ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... misty green fire darted from the blackness and thrust its point into the heart of the zenith; following it, leaped into the sky a host of the sparkling spears of light, and now the blackness was like an ebon hand, brandishing a ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... for the Seychelles Islands, the nearest place at which negroes could be landed without the risk of again being enslaved. There were upwards of three hundred of these poor creatures on board, of all tints, from yellow and brown to ebon black. Some few, chiefly Gallas, were fine-looking people, with nothing of the negro in their features, and of a dark copper colour; but the greater number, according to European notions, were excessively ugly specimens of the human race. Many were in a deplorable condition, ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... the temples of the therns and the garden of Issus, other thousands sailed into the north at the call of the great man they all had learned to respect, and, respecting, love. Pacing the flagship of this mighty fleet, second only to the navy of Helium, was the ebon Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born, his heart beating strong in anticipation of the coming moment when he should hurl his savage crews and the weight of his mighty ships upon the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... himself upon his couch of ebon and carved ivory with the air of a man whose work has been well done. Midnight was long gone, the great house was quiet, and the desire of his heart stood forth in fulfilment. He had a son; his dying ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... under the white spread of the mountain tops like big black horns, do they long for the azure sea and lemon groves? No wonder they call the peaks the 'Horns of The Old One'; or that when my light falls upon them I think of ebon fangs protruding from white guns, and call the place 'The Mouth of Hell.' If those boys but show their heads above the crest the awful silence is broken by the roar of guns. What a life! Always under potential fire ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Cerberus, and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy, Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There under Ebon shades and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Then, as I look down to the damned fiends, Fiends, look on me! and thou, dread god of hell, With ebon sceptre strike this hateful earth, And make it swallow both of us ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... pressed the blue back, back! Now in turn the blue drove the grey. The walls of the white church were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But the shells came too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... listened to the narration of the terrible overthrow of those gorgeous cities, and the rescue of her brother's household, and beheld in the distance the seething and silent grave of millions, sending up a swaying column of ebon cloud, like incense, to God's burning ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre through the obscurity of the night, they easily fancied they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush, and ready to spring on them. But it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the purest pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... have said that the condescension was all on the other side. Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did a credit to his side of the Church. But our friend the parson was discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie could hardly have been clean during the last forty-eight hours, and was tied in a knot, which ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a very solemn sort of life. It has a very serious ending. A great universe whirls away with its ebon-faced mysteries piled from central caves to highest heavens—a universe, with all its mysteries, of hardest reality and baldest truth. A man, looking up to the cold, clear, unswerving stars, out yonder in the wintry night, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... I'd fondly woo Those merry, dark-eyed girls, With faces of ebon hue, And teeth like eastern pearls! One vowed my love she would repay— Her heart my song had won— When winter snows had passed away, And smiled the summer ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black dress of crepe de—crepe de—oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth knot low on her neck. Her ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Ember led his beloved to the King. Never had the Shadow Witch looked more beautiful. Her ebon hair fell like a rich cloak over her grey robes; her cheek was mantled by a crimson flush; her dark eyes gleamed with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... after that, a long silent rest. When Nathaniel slowly climbed up out of the ebon shadows again the first consciousness that came to him was that the word-demons had stopped their beating against his brain and that he no longer heard the voice of the king. His relief was so great that he breathed a restful sigh. Something touched him then. Great God! were ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... have seen when on the breast of Thames A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames, In some calm ev'ning of delightful May, With music give a farewell to the day, Or as they would, with an admired tone, Greet Night's ascension to her ebon throne, Rapt with their melody a thousand more Run to be wafted from ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... forth my dear! Heavens, hear my prayers, nor thus me waking keep! For this were heaven, if thus I sleeping were. For in that dark there shone a princely light; Two milk-white hills, both full of nectar sweet, Her ebon thighs, the wonder of my sight, Where all my senses with their objects meet,— I pass these sports, in secret that are best, Wherein my thoughts did seem alive to be; We both did strive, and weary both did rest; I kissed her still, and still she kissed me. ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... king that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne? Or by what reason or what right divine, Can ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... halted. I had risen, and we stood facing each other. I felt that I was right here playing for that greatest of all stakes, my self-respect, the loss of which to any man, I had long before discovered, means ebon failure. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... ebon-faced giant he uttered some rapid words in his own language and told him my name, whereupon he snapped fingers in true native fashion, the negro showing an even set of white teeth as an expression of pleasure ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... most friendly way, led Jack into his house. It was very neatly built of bamboo, of considerable size, oblong in shape, and divided into four or five rooms. In one was a table, with some chairs; and the negro, having given some orders in a loud voice to several ebon-hued damsels, who appeared at the door, in a short time several dishes of meat and grain were placed on it. "Come you eat," said the host. Jack stuck his fork into the meat. It was not a hare, or a rabbit, or a pig, or a kid. He could not help thinking ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... greatest attention to dressing their ebon-black hair. None are so poor or humble as to forget this inexpensive ornamentation. Nature has endowed them with a profusion of covering for the head, and they wear no other. It is not very fine, to be sure, but always ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... above and pattered upon the dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside was illuminated wildly ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... fallen completely, and not a leaf was stirring. I could see across the creek and note the hard line where the battlements of the Castle cut the sky, and where the keep towered above the line of black rock, which in the shadow of the land made an ebon frame for the picture. When I had seen the same view on former occasions, the line where the rock rose from the sea was a fringe of white foam. But then, in the daylight, the sea was sapphire blue; now it was an expanse of dark blue—so dark as to seem almost black. It had not even the relief ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Melancholy Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy. Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister Graces more To Ivy-crowned Bacchus ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... between the two men thus claiming ownership in the body of Old Bill. One was a little wizen-faced individual, whose yellow complexion and sharp, angular features proclaimed him of the Arab stock, while his competitor showed a skin of almost ebon blackness—a frame of herculean development—a broad face, with flat nose and thick lubberly lips—a head of enormous circumference, surmounted by a mop of woolly hair, standing erect several inches ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... footsteps—statue-like they stood, As worshipp'd forms, the Genii of the Wood! But see, the regal plumes, the couch of state! [o] Still, where it moves, the wise in council wait! See now borne forth the monstrous mask of gold, [Footnote 1] And ebon chair [also Footnote 1] of many a serpent-fold; These now exchang'd for gifts that thrice surpass The wondrous ring, and lamp, and horse of brass. [p] What long-drawn tube transports the gazer home, [Footnote 2] Kindling ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... Mandy, his hitherto ebon flame, "yer comes in like a turkey gobbler. Doesn't yer ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Is sitting in the sun; Her day of work is almost o'er, Her day of rest begun. Her face is black as darkest night, Her form is bent and thin, And o'er her bony visage tight Is stretched her wrinkled skin. Her dress is scant and mean; yet still About her ebon face There flows a soft and creamy frill Of costly Mechlin lace. What means the contrast strange and wide? Its like is seldom seen— A pauper's aged face beside The laces of a queen. Her mien is stately, proud, and high, And yet her look is kind, And the calm light within ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... dotted tribe with ebon heads That climb the slender fence along, As black as ink, as thick as weeds, Ye little Africans ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... are occupied in discussing these matters, the females engage in a narration of family occurrences, such as births of children, marriages, deaths, etc., not omitting a sprinkling of gossip and scandal, from which, even these ebon sisters of a fairer race, are not ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rapidly, because, from one of the swirling eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... I swore my selfe thy sacrifice By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes, Which now are alter'd white, And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the gellie's left. Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you, Then swearing to a saint that ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... soldiers; Jamaica negroes with conical heads and brown Barbados negroes with Cockney accents; English engineers in lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island pineapples. Carl gapes at Panamanian nuns and Chilean consuls, French peasant laborers and indignant Irish foremen ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the stable-yard, by day, unless the mare went with him, by night he slept so that he could, by reaching out a wrinkled, ebon hand, actually touch her glossy hide. He fed her himself with oats and hay which he examined with the utmost care before they found her manger or her rack; he watered her himself with water from a well within the stable and guarded by locked doors, drawn in a pail which, invariably, he ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... when. Now for the ground which; which I mean I walked upon: it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where I mean I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... to themselves. The colored folks had their parties and festivities as well, their mistresses superintending the suppers and decorating the tables with their own hands, while ladies and gentlemen from the mansion came to look on, an attention which was considered a compliment by the ebon guests. And the Christmas season rarely passed without a colored wedding, the holidays being specially chosen for this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that had already started, and, anticipating an immediate invasion of British East Africa by the Germans, was hurrying homeward to fetch his wife to a place of greater security. With him were a score of his ebon warriors, but far too slow for the ape-man was the progress of these trained and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to-night; Let him who wills prefer his right, And unto the most worthy hand We will commit the ebon wand." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Out of the ebon west came presently another flare of light, a quick, spreading flush, like a flicker from a monster candle; it was followed by a long, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name; and in truth Lola Montez justified ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] 60 To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... granite elephants 'neath a dome to stoop, Shapeless, giant forms to view arise, Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties! Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries: O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon-trees; Temples, where seated on their rich tiled thrones, Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones; Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare, Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees Great gods of bronze, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... more! thro timeless hours my eyes Without intent have watched the slowing flight Of ebon crows across quiescent skies Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird, Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd That flow far eastward to the coming night. And as I turn again to foiling thought My spirit leaves me—as faint zephyrs leave The trees ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... seeks,—the blind old king, And asks from him permission straight. "My daughter, night with ebon wing Hovers above; the hour is late. My son is active, brave, and strong, Conversant with the woods, he knows Each path; methinks it would be wrong For thee to venture where he goes, Weak and defenceless as thou art, At such a time. If thou wert near Thou ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... princes caused to lose their life In seeking to obtain her as a wife. Her beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect form, and noble, easy grace, Her flowing ebon locks and radiant face. Her charms defy all portraiture: no hand Can reproduce her air of sweet command. Yet e'en such counterfeits, from foreign parts Attract fresh suitors,—win all hearts. But she, whose outward semblance thus appears ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... the merchant guide, turning round to Hassan Subah, who, surrounded by his officers, led the van. The whole of the great way of the city was filled with the Seljukian warriors. Their ebon steeds, their snowy turbans, adorned with plumes of the black eagle and the red heron, their dazzling shawls, the blaze of their armour in the sunset, and the long undulating perspective of beautiful forms and brilliant colours, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... twenty-five degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A work ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... twenty-four-pounders on the main-deck offered some promise of a hiding-place to the box; and, accordingly, it was often tucked away behind the carriages, among the side tackles; its black colour blending with the ebon hue of the guns. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... time, the Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning. The hush of the immense armament—the glare of the torches, lighting the ebon faces and giant forms of their bearers—the majestic appearance of the king himself—the heroic aspect of Muza—the bare head and glittering banner of Almamen—all combined with the circumstances of the time to invest ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting, with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous people whose names one does not know. Members of the Institute of the great learned ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... drove past the cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had turned into ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form, Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Larbi's melodies were, they created an atmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled up out of the heart of the Eastern world and, when the player was invisible as now, suggested an ebon faun couched in hot sand at the foot of a palm tree and making music to listening sunbeams and amorous spirits of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... child of want and woe! A brilliant meteor in an ebon sky! Thy soul's weird music all did flow From ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... rods above our camping ground, which tore off the top and splintered its massive trunk to the ground. The awful crash frightened me nearly out of my wits. I screamed with all the power of voice I possessed, for I thought the ebon paw of Satan was upon me. The panther then set up the most unearthly scream I had ever heard leaped from the rook, and seemed to make the forest jar at every scream, until he was far away on the lake shore. The clap of thunder awoke my father and mother. The ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... on th' uuburthen'd air, Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, And nursled the young mountain in its lair. Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall [16] Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall Of their own dissolution, while they die— Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down, Sat gently on these columns as a crown— A window of one circular diamond, there, Look'd out above into the purple air ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Rally," and a red fez was served out to the Levy (which in the end amounted to 860 men) as a British uniform. The glory of this "kit," however, was somewhat obscured by a commissariat load which each warrior carried on his head; but there was no heart under those shiny ebon skins which did not beat quicker for the possession of the red fez. The Levy, of course, had its band—a few men who made a tremendous din on elephant-hide drums, and a few more who produced two heart-breaking notes on elephants' hollowed tusks garnished ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... better far that you should wed And Antoine keeps his first love still, And Antoine is so well to do, You may be happy if you will His pleading eyes ask leave to woo" 'Twas a relief to steal away, And tell her ebon rosary, And to the Virgin Mother pray, Thinking that she in Heaven above, Remembered all of earthly love, And human sympathy, And having suffered human pain— Known what it was to grieve in vain— Might bend to listen to ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... urn with fragrant wreaths be drest, By tender hands the flow'ry tributes prest; And wending westward, from oppressions far, Shall pilgrims come, led by our freedom-star; While bending lowly, as o'er friendly pall, The silent tear from ebon cheeks shall fall. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... resplendent, fair. So warm her bloom, sublime her air, Her ebon tresses formed to grace And heighten while ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... sun was losing much of its blinding magnificence as it receded into the ebon background of the firmament. The Earth was but one of the countless worlds visible through the stern ports, distinguishable by its slightly greenish tinge. They had reached the vicinity of the phenomenon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... fruits of mellow autumn glow'd Upon the ebon board; The blood that grape of Burgundy In other days had pour'd, Gleam'd from its crystal vase—but all Untasted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of ebon blackness, laced with lustres From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat, Where wan rills warble over glistening marble; Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet— These for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of the ape-man came a weird, uncanny sound, and in answer to it there leaped from the blackness of the hut's farthermost corner a bolt of fur-clad death. Full upon the breast of the painted savage the great beast struck, burying sharp talons in the black flesh and sinking great yellow fangs in the ebon throat. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... verdure smil'd; Flowers and soft herbage sprung. Medea sees, And with her weapon ope's the senior's throat; His aged blood exhausted sees, and pours Her juices copious: part his mouth receives; And part the wound. When AEson these had drank, Their hoary whiteness lost, his beard and hair, An ebon tinge receiv'd; his leanness fled; His pallid ghastly face no more was seen; His hollow veins with added blood were fill'd; And all his limbs in lusty plumpness swell'd. The wondering AEson, such himself beheld, As the last forty years ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the grave That now o'er care-worn temples wave, Oh! what change hath pass'd since ye O'er youthful brows fell carelessly! In silken curls of ebon hue That with such wild luxuriance grew, The raven's dark and glossy wing A richer shadow scarce could fling. The brow that tells a tale of Care That Sorrow's pen hath written there, In characters too deeply traced Ever on earth to be effaced, Was then a page of spotless white, Where Love ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... sails high in his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle-spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle-plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakawa himself is there; And round the feast, in the Sacred Ring,[48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their teepee alone and fasted, Their faces turned ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon |
