"Somber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and comfortable, although the yielding upholstery appeared at first sight hard and brittle as metal sheets. The room was perfectly bare, and the color scheme a dull silver and black. To me it seemed extremely somber, but it pleased ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... at dusk Geoffrey rode home. In forecast of winter, a bitter breeze sighed across the heather and set the harsh grasses moaning eerily. The sky was somber overhead; scarred fell and towering pike had faded to blurs of dingy gray, and the ghostly whistling of curlew emphasized the emptiness of the darkening moor. The evening's mood suited Geoffrey's, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... diversion was to take up and pursue some genealogical thread, to follow its mazy meanderings down the generations, dropping in curious bits of unwritten history—some of it spicy enough, some of it boisterously funny, some of it somber and gruesome, but all of it alive with the very color and savor of the land that was a part of himself, his inheritance from the generations of sturdy pioneers. Possibly Westbury's history was not always authentic, but if at times he drew on his imagination he tapped a noble source, for ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... attractive, but the style may be as simple as one pleases. Lilac is a pretty color for the older woman, and sunset yellow is becoming both to age and youth alike, when it is appropriately combined with some more somber shade. ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son m. sound. sonar to sound. sondear to sound. sonreir(se) to smile. sonrisa smile. sonar to dream. soplar to blow. soplo blowing, puffing. sordo deaf; secret; silent. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... loneliness, a maddening desolation, a lifeless world that reached for hundreds of miles farther than his eyes could see. To the north and east there was nothing but ice, piled-up masses and grinning mountains of it, white at first, of a somber gray farther off, and then purple and almost black. There came to him now the low, never-ceasing thunder of the undercurrents fighting their way down from the Arctic Ocean, broken now and then by a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife, through one of the ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... in a relief which died quickly down to a somber hopelessness. He faced his uncle doggedly. "Not much, Uncle Jehiel!" he said heavily, "I ain't a-goin' to hear to such a thing. I know all about your wantin' to get away from the valley—you take that money and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... to overwhelm him with my sense of the whole mighty interior, the rich gloom, the Gothic exaltation, which I made such shift as I could to feel in the company of those picture-postal amateurs. It was like, say, a somber afternoon, verging to the twilight of a cloudy sunset, so that when I came out of it into the open noon it was like emerging into a clear morrow. Perhaps because I could there shed the harassing human environment the outside ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... things went on much as before, but with a new heaviness. Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so cheerless and somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd's tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... chill. There had been a good deal of snow, and, except where it was brushed away from the foot-path, it lay white and unbroken, the black trunks of the trees among it looking like pillars of ebony in the ivory-paved courts of a temple. Up in the sky winter was passing with all his somber train, the clouds flying rapidly in great grotesque masses, and seeming to touch the tops of the trees like ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... another. The poisoned chalice, the glittering dagger suspended over the head of the sleeper; wizards and phantoms with terrific masks, those half-dim shadows more alarming than the approach of fire or the somber face of midnight, these, and such as these, he had made the companions of his more pleasing pictures. No sooner had the king entered his room than a cold shiver seemed to pass through him, and on Fouquet asking him the cause of it, the king ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... passenger homeward bound from a holiday visit; and the fifth was Father Charles. The priest's pale, serious face lit up in surprise or laughter with the others, but his lips had not broken into a story of their own. He was a little man, dressed in somber black, and there was that about him which told his companions that within his tight-drawn coat of shiny black there were hidden tales which would have gone well with the savage beat of the storm against the lighted windows and the moaning ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... not answering. It would be better he should not go. On the third day she appeared again, in the middle of the afternoon, and said she had just come from Mountain Brook and everything was——That she did not finish, Tenney's somber eyes waited upon her with such a dumb expectancy. What was going to be done, she wondered. Tenney couldn't stay in the hut, keeping Raven there with him, as Billy Jones had kept Old Crow. Yet she wasn't sure Raven wouldn't stay. But while she thought it, Tenney was ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... forth into the open world, the first faint touch of red was appearing upon the soft maples. Buds upon the other trees had not started and there were yet suggestions of the chill of melting snow-banks upon the air. The tones of the forest were still somber, light gray-green or ash color, suggesting the funeral ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Archimandrite of Cappadocia—a counter demonstration; and after him, forty Free Churches divines, all in black gowns, silkened for the occasion, but unenlivened by the moral emblems of their domesticity; a queer somber tail they seemed to that great eastern bird of Paradise under whose wing they would presently acquire the right to wear feathers ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... somber libertine of insatiable appetites, prey to a sinister, mysterious inebriation, was tossing in a last whirlwind of tempestuous desire, as though the blaze of sunset had set fire to what remained ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... here and there on the heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that painted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from diseases which could be ascribed only to the will of God and met with resignation instead of skill, the succession of funerals as depressing as they were public and pervading—were well calculated to deepen the somber cast of the Puritan temper and accentuate the critical and introspective tendency of his mind. Inspection of one's own and one's neighbor's conduct was, indeed, always a Puritan duty; shut within the restricted horizon ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... through the somber night, giving courage to the faint of heart and keeping the searching party's spirits up. Stealthily the charm boy crept around the edge of the clearing, examining every possible opening; cautiously he peered ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... of the Mountain up to an altitude of about 4,000 feet is covered by a somber forest of evergreens composed of the white and black pines; Douglas, Lovely and Noble firs; the white cedar; spruce, and hemlock. There are found also several deciduous trees—large-leafed maple, {p.130} ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... small, black and beady; her nose somewhat fleshy and her lips red and full as those of a young girl. The age of Madame Cerise might be anywhere between fifty and seventy; assuredly she had long been a stranger to youth, although her dark hair was but slightly streaked with gray. She wore a somber-hued gown and a maid's jaunty apron ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... a picture of court life where the cavalier is attired in richly colored velvet, silk, lace, and jewels, and surrounded by the luxuries of the court, and compares it with another of the same period which portrays a Puritan in his somber-hued, severe suit, stiff linen collar and cuffs, broad-brimmed, plain hat and not a single jewel or ornament used for mere decorative or esthetic value, realizes the vast difference in the types and character of the two men. He is furnished ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... had come to New York to perform a carefully-planned last act in his life-drama, one that would send the curtain down amid tears and plaudits for Mr. Feuerstein, the central figure, enwrapped in a somber and baleful blaze of glory. He had arranged everything except such details as must be left to the inspiration of the moment. He was impatient for the curtain to rise—besides, he had empty pockets and might be prevented from his climax by a vulgar ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... had never been known to human thought, or language, and some such term as "Passing to the New Life," had been adopted, crepe would have been a drug on the market, painful funeral discourses unheard of, and long, somber funeral processions unknown. ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... group of Hunters coming toward him. There were five in the group, and with them was Tem Rend, looking somber and proud ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... comfortable pace lest the "beasties" should suffer, and every now and then a merry party would fly past us scattering snow in our faces and yelling like Comanches. We had a lovely moon then and the snow was so beautiful! We were driving northward, and to the south and back of us were the great somber, pine-clad Uintah Mountains, while ahead and on every side were the bare buttes, looking like old men of the mountains,—so old they had lost all ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... to keep up hope in spite of the paleness which came to her lovely face, darted down both paths, glancing as she went at every bush and shrub. But she returned in a moment, and as she shook her head, her great eyes were somber. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... looked slowly from the somber-faced clergyman, to the fidgeting medico, to the burly captain, still staring impassively at the general, to, finally, the quiet, smiling warden. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "it occurs to me that the situation hasn't actually registered on you. The earth is really doomed, ...
— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas
... a country road white with dust, and, pausing outside a farmhouse, had told the farmer's daughter, with elegant indifference, that the local police were in pursuit of him. The girl's name was Bridget Royce, a somber and even sullen type of beauty, and she looked at him darkly, as if in doubt, and said, "Do you want me to hide you?" Upon which he only laughed, leaped lightly over the stone wall, and strode toward the farm, merely throwing over ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... faster and on ever wider fronts. The role of Jeremiah is not an agreeable one in a traditionally optimistic and forward-thrusting society, but those of us who care about the health of the world around us seem to be forced into it often in these times. Therefore let us look at somber matters. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the oppression of war more and more each day. There have been so many "morts pour la patrie" that everywhere there are families who have been stricken by the loss of a member. This leaven of sorrow gives to the population as a whole a somber tone. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... construction as for the light color effect of the marble. Only the light color play of its exterior would do against a placid blue sky to relieve the otherwise exceedingly simple rigidity of its massive forms of construction. To make an imitation of this great building in uncouth, somber, almost black pine logs of dubious proportions is hardly ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... her wardrobe was supplied for years to come from that of the deceased aunt. There were stored away in the garret of the Ackley house enough voluminous black silks and satins and bombazines to keep her clad in somber richness ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... the end of his days he was haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he was the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the Church of God. But these somber sentiments are only partially justifiable. God's purposes are very deep, and even in those who know Him not He may be sowing seeds which will only ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over. Paul would never have been the man he became ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... sewing-machine needle or set up a saw-mill; receipt for gas bills and water rates or fit out a general store. Under one roof it held the resources of a city. Henry was startled by its immensity, and as he followed Witherspoon through labyrinths of bright gauzes and avenues of somber goods, he perceived that a change in the tone of the hum announced the approach of the master. And it appeared that, no matter what a girl might be doing, she began hurriedly to do something else the moment she spied Witherspoon coming toward her. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... new fortune taking shape, Lambert said he would "hang around." They all applauded his resolution, for they all appeared to like him in spite of his appearance, which was distinctive, indeed, among the somber colors ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... nearly as I can draw it: a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy—Jim and I; one of them complacent—Aunt Selina; one puzzled—Mr. Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful. Add one sick Japanese butler and grind in the ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... man was shaving. His feet rested upon a broad plank embedded in mud, and the tiny glass in which he saw himself hung upon a wall of raw, reeking earth. A sky, somber and leaden, arched above him, and now and then flakes of snow fell in the sodden trench, but John Scott went on placidly with ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... would have approved of her. One day there appeared a pair of lovesick lavenders, but they never again bloomed. Evidently she was the kind of a girl who would be firm about those. Then, for a time—for two long weeks—E. G.'s hose were black; somber, mournful, unrelieved black. They had quarreled. After that they brightened. They became numerous, and varied. There was about them something triumphant, ecstatic. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... than all, the mark that reached down to their hearts' core was that of their faith, for in them dwelt the fear of God. Their religion may have been narrow, but no narrower than the moulds of their lives. It was the biggest thing in them. It may have taken a somber hue from their gloomy forests, but by reason of a sweet, gracious presence dwelling among them it grew in grace and ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... through fertile bottoms, according to whether the river approaches or recedes from its inclosing bluffs; of hillside fields, tipped at various angles of ascent, sometimes green with springing grain, but oftenest gray or brown or yellow, freshly planted,—charming patches of color, in this somber-hued world of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... to Foligno in order to take a train in to Rome for Easter morning. I followed a white road that wound around the hills, through silent clusters of cottages tightly shut up with only a slit of light visible now and then, meeting not a human being along the way save three somber figures accompanying an ox cart, a man at the head of the oxen and a man and a woman at the tail of the cart—a theme for Millet. (I asked in broken Italian how far it was to Foligno, and the answer was, "Una hora"—distance in time and not ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... feet, the water swirling at its foot in a black and angry maelstrom. It is a spot whence lovers might easily step into eternity, were they so disposed, and the name fits delightfully into the wild and somber scene; but ask any good villager thereabout to relate the legend of the place and he ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of Lawrence with Governor Shannon did, however, have a somber and awful background. While this had been going on a boy had been murdered in the vicinity of Lawrence. Some young men rode out to see about it, and one of them was shot and killed. But a still more ghastly crime threw its baleful shadow over the people. It was perpetrated ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the man, breaking the silence abruptly, his somber eyes upon Betty, "there is but one thing left for me now to do. I shall surrender to the authorities—a thing which I should have done long ago. Or," he added grimly, "you might rather go with me now. If you left me I might attempt to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the cold night wind reminded Pan that he had not yet rolled in his blankets, which he had intended to do until Mac New's significant statement had roused somber misgiving. He went to bed, yet despite the exertions of the long day, slumber was a contrary thing that ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... was tolerably plain to both of them. The little cleared space formed a natural amphitheater walled in by somber ranks of pines; and, standing higher, they could see over the heads of the clustering men. There was no difficulty in identifying the victim, the persecutor and the champion, for Weston stood stripped ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... at this life-size, moving image of George Prince. He stood somber in the black detention uniform. A dark, almost a girlishly handsome fellow, well below medium height—the rod beside him showed five feet four inches. Slim and slight. Long, wavy black hair, falling about his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... raised himself on his elbows and looked over the little grassy dip of the land to where the stream from the hills sparkled in the warm sun; and then away beyond to where the evergreens raised their dark heads along the heights, looking like somber guardians keeping ward over the sunny valley of the twin springs. Over them all his gaze wandered, and then up into the deep forest above him—a forest unbroken from there to the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... chiefly the sea and the plunging boats, battles, adventure, brave deeds, the glory of warriors, and the love of home. Accent, alliteration, and an abrupt break in the middle of each line gave their poetry a kind of martial rhythm. In general the poetry is earnest and somber, and pervaded by fatalism and religious feeling. A careful reading of the few remaining fragments of Anglo-Saxon literature reveals five striking characteristics: the love of freedom; responsiveness to nature, especially in her sterner moods; strong religious convictions, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Sol sprang into the boat. Each seized a man by the shoulders and lifted him in his powerful arms. It was a chance that one of the sleepers was Luiz, and, when he was snatched suddenly from blissful dreams to somber fact, he opened his eyes to see bending over him the same grave, tanned being who had rescued him from the ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Before this somber pile, the two dismounted. The little boy was filled with awe and his childish imagination ran riot as they approached the crumbling barbican on foot, leading the horse after them. From the dark shadows of the ballium, they passed into the moonlit inner ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had felt that Pheeny was watching him from one of the windows or from all the windows; for when, at last, he achieved the rude victory of breaking away from Luella and turned toward the porch, every window was a somber eye of reproach. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... promontory, that was considerably aside from any dwelling or building. The place was just at the commencement of the hill country, and where the shores of the Seneca cease to offer those smiling pictures of successful husbandry that so much abound farther north. A somber, or it might be better to say a sober, aspect gave dignity to the landscape, which, if not actually grand, had, at least, most of the elements that ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... bend in the river was quickly passed, and a body of Mexican cavalry dashed at full gallop across the plain, nor slackened their pace till secure behind the somber walls of ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... incoherently, scarcely knowing what he said, and she, half lying on her couch of roses, looked at him curiously, with somber, meditative eyes. A smile of delicate ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... as Ravdin walked down the ramp to the shuttles. At the desk he checked in with the shiny punch-card robot, and walked swiftly across the polished floor. The wall panels pulsed a somber blue-green, broken sharply by brilliant flashes and overtones of scarlet, reflecting with subtle accuracy the tumult in his own mind. Not a sound was in the air, not a whisper nor sign of human habitation. Vaguely, uneasiness grew in his mind as he entered the shuttle station. Suddenly, the ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... the way grows darker still, Shadowed by Sorrow's somber wing, With glad defiance in my throat, I pierce the darkness with a note, And ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... of the Hotel de Ville, which was hung with red velvet and gold, and ornamented with the royal arms. This was for the king. Half-past one had just struck when this window was filled. First came Henri III., pale, almost bald, although he was at that time only thirty-five, and with a somber expression, always a mystery to his subjects, who, when they saw him appear, never knew whether to say "Vive le Roi!" or to pray for his soul. He was dressed in black, without jewels or orders, and a ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... somber autumn day. The sky was banked with dark gray clouds, and a high wind swept through the trees, tearing away the last leaves and whirling ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... same way that we had come. What time was it? I had no idea. We had walked for hours, a long, long time, and so slowly. Perhaps it was midnight or one o'clock. The sky was still a somber blue, without moon, and with but few stars, and the few that had appeared seemed to me to be smaller than usual. The wind had increased; the snow beat in our faces; the houses that we passed were closed for the night. It seemed to me that if the people who slept there, warmly ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... very tired. After walking about, vainly waiting for a terrific snowstorm to pass over that I might go on with my work— the frozen fall of Montmorenci, framed in the dark pines and somber rocks that made such a back ground for its glittering thread of ice, I gave it up, chilled in every limb, and began to consider whether I was not a fool for pains. Although I started quite early in the afternoon ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... German's reflections at this time were of a peculiarly subtle and somber character. What was this thing—life? What did it all come to after the struggle, and the worry, and the grieving? Where does it all go to? People die; you hear nothing more from them. His wife, now, she had gone. Where had her ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... sufficiently imposingly somber funeral of Horace Carwell, for since the adjourned inquest—adjourned at the request of the prosecutor—it was not considered necessary to keep the poor, maimed body out of its last resting place any longer. It had been sufficiently viewed and examined. In fact, parts of it were ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... aptness in detecting the facetious, even in things that are serious; his laughing soul that places a bouquet of joy and sunshine where the somber draping of woe would so often be found, is his God-given stock in trade upon which he can do business for generations to come. This secret is being discovered by him. This discovery will yet furnish the great world of letters with men and women of this race, who ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... anything solid within reach. He did not look much like the very self-assured, healthy specimen of young manhood whom Mary V could bully and tease and talk to without constraint. She felt as though she scarcely knew this thin, pale young man with the bandaged head and the somber eyes. He seemed so aloof, as though his spirit walked alone in dark places where ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... labor, and he walked Dick along, drinking in once more with genuine joy the grandeur of the forests robed in silver light. Just beyond Mike Hennessy's, as he turned into the main road, clouds obscured the moon and a somber pall fell over the road. He felt to see that his treasure was safe, and urged Dick into ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... came to pass that there was not a mouthful in the house, not even a radish. Lantier sat by the stove in somber discontent. Finally he started up and went to call on the Poissons, to whom he suddenly became friendly to a degree. He no longer taunted the police officer but condescended to admit that the emperor was a good fellow ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... cautiously around the dark and somber cave, and the first thing his eyes rested on were the forms of two dead wolf cubs, evidently belonging to one of the mothers he had slain the week before, and undoubtedly ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... "Do they?" The somber pain in Arkwright's eyes deepened. Alice Greggory did not know it, but he was thinking of another story he had once told in that same room. Billy was his listener then, while now—A little precipitately ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... and rode swiftly out into the spectral light. There he halted. Horse and rider stood for a moment silhouetted against the sky. The horse chafed at his bit. He stretched his head restively into the north, his rider sitting motionless, a somber flat hat crowning his spare figure. For barely a moment the man sat thus immovable. Then he turned slightly in the saddle and the horse ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and curiously rigid trees. They were not large, and though from a distance they looked much the same, Nasmyth recognized some as spruce and supposed the other ragged spires to be cedars. In one spot there were some that resembled English larch, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... its somber mantle of clouds; the hills, the rivers that crawled across wide plains, and the oddly stunted forests all looked as though they had been modeled in a great mass of greenish-gray putty. It was a ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... ally, weapon, tool, leaped high before the naked stone of the mountain side. Men sat cross-legged about it, fifteen of them. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were the women. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members were plainly all of the same racial stock, of medium height, stocky yet fined down to the peak of stamina and endurance, their skin brown, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... nothing but the foliage bending before the wind and the chill sheets sent down by the clouds. The somber sky and the desolation would not have made him feel lonely, even had he been without his comrades. He had faced primeval nature too often and he knew it too well to be overcome or to be depressed by any of its dangers. Yet his heart would have leaped had he beheld the shiftless and the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Jones making some noise, incoherently suggestive of gratification, for he was as bad as any of us about the signorina, and then I was left to my reflections. These were less somber than the reader would, perhaps, anticipate. True, I was putting my head into a noose; and if the President's hands ever found their way to the end of the rope, I fancied he would pull it pretty tight. But, again, I was immensely in love, and equally in debt; and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... sun had not yet risen high enough to cast its rays upon the lake, and the mountain that threw somber shadows over the face of the lake, still hid the shining of the orb of day. The expectancy and hush that always precedes the bursting forth of shining light, enthralled all the ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... out, and scarcely had remounted when the minister rode slowly up over the ledge. He dismounted at the door and greeted the youngsters. They replied with cat-calls. Fowler stared at the group of robust young riders, his gray-bearded face somber, then he shook his head and ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... ground back of the tent, the boys made their way some little distance from it before they hardly dared breathe freely. Then as they were aware of the silence of the night, wrapping everything in its somber robe, slashed here and there with insertions of gleaming moonbeams, their hearts beat higher ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated? The old controversies have passed away, or they have subsided, and have been covered up by one dark pall of somber hue, which increases with every passing year. Why is it, then, I say, that you are thus agitated in relation to the domestic affairs of other communities? Why is it that the peace of the country is disturbed in order that one people may judge of what ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the magnitude of the forces surging about her. Suddenly she felt very lonely and very cold and very little. Hurriedly, therefore, she rose until presently her craft broke through into the glorious sunlight that transformed the upper surface of the somber element into rolling masses of burnished silver. Here it was still cold, but without the dampness of the clouds, and in the eye of the brilliant sun her spirits rose with the mounting needle of her altimeter. Gazing at the clouds, now far beneath, the girl experienced the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pitch our talk or our writing in almost any I key we choose. Our mood may be dreamy or eager or hilarious or grim or blustering or somber or bantering or scornful or satirical or whatever we will. But once we have established the tone, we should not—except sometimes for broadly humorous effects—change it needlessly or without clear ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... transfigured in the language of the New, must have been like a glow of sunlight breaking in upon a gray and cloudy day. Few pages of biography can be found more vividly illustrative of the times and the men than the page in which Samuel Hopkins recites the story of the sufferings of his own somber and ponderous mind under the rebuke of his college friend David Brainerd. He walked his solitary room in tears, and (he says) "took up Watts's version of the Psalms, and opened it at the Fifty-first Psalm, and read the first, second, and third parts in long meter with strong ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Most of Sherman's army had but just arrived, and were dusty and travel-worn; while the army of the Potomac had been resting for some time, and looked fresher and more sprightly. The latter wore caps, and the former hats, which gave them a more somber appearance. I was also of the impression that there were more young men in our army ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... in Africa, and yet it is a child of the north. The sunlight banishes it like the mist. Consider this fact, gentlemen. Among the Orientals life has no value; resignation is natural. The nights are clear and empty of the somber spirit of unrest which haunts the brain in cooler lands. In the Orient panic is ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... honorably. Mindful of the fame of the departed one, that wretched fame that had cost her so many tears, and now grew day by day, like a magnificent flower nourished by the black earth of the tomb, she was to be seen draped in her long somber veils holding interviews with theatrical managers and publishers, busying herself in getting her husband's operas put again on the stage, superintending the printing of his posthumous works and unfinished manuscripts, bestowing on all these details a kind of solemn ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... a funereal black coat, despite the heat, and a somber dark Stetson hat. He must have been fifty or more. His skin looked bloodless, and his eyes still had that hard, pale look. It was difficult to trust eyes like those. He ambled, rather than walked, and his lean, lanky legs would have made him a fortune on the stage. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... was almost dark, but the light that managed to creep in showed a gloomy black mantelpiece, with vases of immortelles, and somber walnut chairs with crocheted tidies that made little white patches here and there in the dusk. Everything smelled of camphor, and from one of the corners came the slow, solemn tick of ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... laughter and bird-like grace and gaiety, as she masqueraded in the quaint dress of olden time, had made the dull old mansion bright as a dream of Paradise for a single night. It had seemed to him, then, that nothing so bright and pure had ever flitted through the somber apartments of the gray old mansion. He remembered the delight of his boy—that boy whom he loved more than he had ever loved any one, unless it were his invalid mother—and he could not forget the same slight form, with serious shadowed face and earnest eyes moving softly about the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no conventionalities. As the two men sat in the hush of the coming night, their faces turned toward the somber group of trees, they felt ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... that seemed to stab deep the earth. Lorraine ran awkwardly, her hands over her ears, crying out at each lightning flash, her voice drowned in the thunder that followed it close. Then, as she neared the somber group of buildings, the clouds above them split with a terrific, rending crash, and the whole place stood pitilessly revealed to her, as if a spotlight had been turned on. Lorraine stood aghast. The buildings were not ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... slightest belief in Alec's innate nobility of character. Beliani likened him to Bayard, it is true, and Marulitch had scoffingly adopted the simile; but that was because each thought Bayard not admirable, but a fool. The somber history of the Kosnovian monarchy, a record of crass stupidity made lurid at times by a lightning gleam of passion, justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, and Ferdinand, and Ivan, and Milosch to their ruin. Each of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the trail, Watson's Peak, 8500 feet high, with its basaltic crown, looms before us. At our feet is a big bed of wild sunflowers, their flaring yellow and gold richly coloring the more somber slopes. Here I once saw a band of upwards of 2000 sheep, herded by a Basque, one of that strange European people who seem especially adapted by centuries of such life to be natural shepherds. Few of them speak much American, but they all know enough, when you ask them ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... when Mrs. Hawkins entered. She was clad in somber black now, and her cheeks flamed ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... when the filleuls of their mistresses come home on their six days' leave they at least can provide the afternoon wine and entertain them royally in the kitchen. Old maids, still sewing in their attic for a few sous a day, have found a gleam of brightness for the first time in their somber lives in the knowledge that they give a mite of comfort or pleasure to some unknown man, offering his life in the defence of France, and whose letters, sentimental, effusive, playful, almost resign these poor stranded women to the crucifixion ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... this Negro insolently stride Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, Lie heaps of smoldering daisies, somber-eyed, Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, Hot with a superfluity of heat, Like a great brazier borne along the street By captive leopards, black and ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... elements that speak to the heart of every reader. The hand of fate clutches hold of all the characters. When Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit her husband's mother she sets in motion events that bring swift ruin upon her as well as upon others. At every turn of the story the somber Egdon heath looms in the background, more real than any character in the romance, a sinister force that seems to sweep the characters on to their doom. Tess is more appealing than any other of Mr. Hardy's works, but it ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... ease the chafing or perhaps the chill of the iron. Joined two by two, scorched in the sun, worn out by the heat and fatigue, they were lashed and goaded by a whip in the hands of one of their own number, who perhaps consoled himself with this power of maltreating others. They were tall men with somber faces, which he had never seen brightened with the light of a smile. Yet their eyes gleamed when the whistling lash fell upon their shoulders or when a passer-by threw them the chewed and broken stub of a ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... people among whom he lived and the things which concerned them—lively portraits of contemporary burgomasters, happy pictures of popular amusements, stern scenes from the Old Testament. His Lesson in Anatomy and his Night Watch in their somber settings, are wonderfully realistic products of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Sally was the brightness, the deliverance withheld. The corridor was wide and deserted and the black tiles with their gold borders seemed to converge upon her, hemming her into a cool magnificence as structurally somber as the architectural ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... His somber mind refused to believe that they would not rise. Even now he was sure they were mobilizing in a sheltered mountain gorge. Before noon he would hear the roar of their coming and see the terror-stricken faces of the whites fleeing ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Lydia, horror in her blue eyes and her parted lips. She looked at him in utter dismay. No longer was he the debonair favorite of the High School. In his somber eyes, his thin cold lips, his tense shoulders, the young girl saw the savage. She looked from Charlie to the familiar garden, to Adam, scratching fleas, and beyond to the quiet herds in the Norton meadows. Surely Charlie's tale of killings had ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... down at her with somber eyes. Quite unreasonably he hated her for her defense of him. If all women defended men who wouldn't fight, what kind of a world would it be? Women who were worth anything girded ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... afraid I have nothing in stock without diamonds; of course, I have both necklaces and bracelets of almost any stones that you might select, but I have no complete set without diamonds; the effect would be somber, and few ladies would ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... the framework. "Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree! Of your balsam and your resin, So to close the seams together That the water may not enter, That the river may not wet me!" And the Fir Tree, tall and somber, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with pebbles, Answered wailing, answered weeping, "Take my balm, O Hiawatha!" And he took the tears of balsam, Took the resin of the Fir Tree, Smeared therewith ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... sitting with the moonlight waking her dark hair into a somber luster and a gossamer shimmer on the white of her evening gown. Her hands lay unmoving in her lap and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... some occasion—I forget what—to step into the courtyard as I settled this account; and remember I walked down-stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the somber pencil, said I vauntingly, for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a coloring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. "'Tis true," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... to a close, and the high walls, rising up on each side, so shut out the rays of the sun, that a somber twilight gloom filled Devil's Pass; a deep, oppressive heaviness was in the atmosphere, that seemed in keeping with the place which had been the scene of so many tragedies, which was now entered with more or less misgiving upon the part of the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... thrown down and the grassy inclosures thrown open to the public. Of course the edges of the turf would be worn, and the paths would not keep their exact shapes. But the prison look would be banished, and the somber sadness of the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... her by an angle in the wall. It appeared that the third member had chosen to dally a few moments over his tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood could see him plainly, lounging in his chair and fumbling the stem of a glass: a heavy man, of somber habit, his black and sullen brows lowering and thoughtful above a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... sensitive," then He should have been very close to the timid, irresolute lad in Seville, in whom the softer traits of character, so unexpectedly developed in the adventurous founder of the Rincon family, now stood forth so prominently. Somber, moody, and retiring; delicately sensitive and shrinking; acutely honest, even to the point of morbidity; deeply religious and passionately studious, with a consuming zeal for knowledge, and an unsatisfied yearning for truth, the little Jose ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... them obliquely, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Misses Verjoos." A tall girl, dressed in some black material which gave John the impression of lace, recognized his salutation with a slight bow and a rather indifferent survey from a pair of very somber dark eyes, while her sister, in light colors, gave him a smiling glance from a pair of very blue ones, and, rather to his surprise, put out her hand with the usual declaration of pleasure, happiness, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... midway of the autumn fields, appeared, as he approached it, to reflect the golden light that filled the east. Never had the place seemed to him more desirable than it did as he went slowly toward it along the desolate November roads. The somber colours of the landscape, the bared majesty of the old oaks where a few leaves still clung to the topmost boughs, the deserted garden filled with wan specters of summer flowers, were all in peculiar harmony with his own mood as with the stern gray walls wrapped in ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Lord Farquhart that fills your heart," he asked, "or is it your wound that still hurts? Or—or has Mistress Judith some place in your thoughts? You seem so somber, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... show white, even teeth, was wide enough for comfort in a kiss, and turned up strongly at the corners, so that her face seemed always sunny and carefree, were it not for the recurrent grave, almost somber look of the wide-set eyes ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... works, we must conclude that he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of his creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness, this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms, colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... somber little hall, then found herself in a very large room draped with ivory colored cretonne patterned with butterflies in vivid shades. The furniture was ivory colored wood, and the carpet gray, with clusters of wild flowers, primrose, ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... night was studded with innumerable stars that gleamed like points of silver sprinkled over a canopy of somber velvet some infinite hand had flung, in a great arch, from rim to rim of a sleeping world. The call of a night bird shrilled softly from the cottonwood trees along the Cimarron. A hint of a breeze ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... morning when Hal and I took the ferryboat for Sausalito, then by train to Mill Valley. It was just cool enough to make walking a pleasure, and after the clamor of the city the somber shadows of the forest, with its solitude, seemed like a benediction. On every side the giant redwoods tower hundreds of feet in air, straight and imposing, while the ground, on which the pine needles and crumbling ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... sang no more. She became a somber girl and a drudge. The birds could not understand. They followed her through the woods, but she was silent, as if she had been stricken dumb, and her eyes always seemed eager to be shedding tears. Also, she was too busy to ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Dark, somber forests of luxuriant tropical vegetation. It was now nearing dawn; the auroral lights were dropping low in the sky; the great Venus Cross of Dawn was rising, its first two stars already above the line of hills ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... their immunity from the ills incident to life at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to observe them. As I leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... archway's somber shade, Where once the huge portcullis swung sublime, 'Mid ivied battlements in ruin laid, Sole, sad memorials of the olden time, The Phantom held its way,—and though afraid Even of the owls that sung their vesper chime, Pale Nicholas pursued, its steps attending, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of the valley itself was particularly exquisite. There was just enough light, just enough of sunbeams struggling through the sodden clouds to illuminate, here and there, an alfalfa field, or here and there a grove of trees, so as to bring them out in startling contrast to the somber colors of the shaded portions of the valley. But with it were signs of the dying year, a premonition of storms to come, storms unpleasant while they last, but revivifying in ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... directed their gaze out upon the churning, black sheet of water before them. The lake, lying amid those frowning, wooded hills, was somber enough at all times, and a quiet gloom pervaded it which imparted a rare charm. But now, in the grip of the rain and wind, the enshrouding night made the lake seem like a place haunted, and the enclosing ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... first dress of Belvidera, I remember, was a point of nice discussion between them. Plain black velvet and a lugubrious long vail were considered my only admissible wear, after my husband's ruin; but before the sale of our furniture, it was conceded that I might relieve the somber Venetian patrician's black dress with white satin puffs and crimson linings and rich embroidery of gold and pearl; moreover, before our bankruptcy, I was allowed (not, however, without serious demur on the part of Lawrence) ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Harry felt a little chill, but it soon passed, as the red edge of the sun showed over the eastern border of the Wilderness. Then the light spread toward the zenith, but the golden glow failed to penetrate the somber thickets. ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler |
