"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appear to hear the heart-break in his voice; she stood like one wrapped in sombre thought; no blaze, no tear, nothing in her eyes; no hardness, no tenderness about her mouth. The wind was blowing her cloak aside, and the only visible human life in her whole body was once when he spoke the muscles of her brown ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... or so before daybreak I lay down on some dead fern at the foot of a huge and sombre red mahogany tree, where the track forked. It was partly that I wanted a rest, and partly that I was uncertain which track led to the township of Milton, where I purposed buying some food before any chance word of my flight from ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... proper and the raising of crops which would directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the case with ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... high, narrow, solid streets, dominated by a sombre Spanish cathedral, upon the side of the acropolis of the antique Agrigentum. I can see from my windows, half-way on the hillside towards the sea, the white range of temples partially destroyed. The ruins alone have some aspect ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the foot of the scaffold brought tears of pride to her eyes. In the first row of the crowd that quietly and respectfully filled the place, ladies in sombre dresses were grouped as close as possible to the scaffold, as if to take a voluntary part in the punishment of the old Chouanne; and during the six hours that the exhibition lasted the ladies of highest rank and most ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... eyes were cold and hard as she regarded her own reflection in the glass. There was a fire in their depths which could have attracted no man, and which would have repelled all alike, for it was threatening and sombre. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... procession of solemn-visaged, sombre-clad academic maidens, who approached the divan where Kit sat, and each presented her with some sage advice, in couplets. Amy explained later that she got the idea from ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... me, he said, and I followed him out through the yard on to the soft road that climbs the hill to westward. The evening was falling slowly and mournfully; it was dark already in the folds of the sombre downs. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... through a maze of cypress "knees." Unwittingly, you are sure to gather on your clothing a colony of ravenous ticks from some swaying branch. Redbugs bent on mischief scramble up on you by the score and bury themselves in your skin, while a cloud of mosquitoes waves behind you like a veil. In the sombre shadows through which you move you have a feeling that there are many unseen things that crawl and glide and fly, and a creepy feeling about the edges of your scalp becomes a familiar sensation. Once we came upon the trail of a bear and found ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... intensity if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice-cream. All this Cuthbert had to witness while still endeavouring to retain the possession of his faculties sufficiently to enable him to duck and back away if somebody suddenly asked him what he thought of the sombre realism of Vladimir Brusiloff. It is little wonder that he tossed in bed, picking at the coverlet, through sleepless nights, and had to have all his waistcoats taken in three inches to ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... this picture, he almost seems to hear the old familiar strains, and homesickness steals over him. . . . In these ballads one feels the beating of the German popular heart. Here is revealed all its sombre merriment, all its droll wit. Here German wrath beats furiously the drum; here German satire stings, here German love kisses. Here we behold the sparkling of genuine German ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... reached that town many hours, when they learned that Nat's sombre predictions had been fulfilled. The council of war in the fort agreed that further resistance was impossible, and Lieutenant Colonel Young went out, with a white flag, to arrange the terms of surrender with Montcalm. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... the First and Eleventh Corps, exhausted and bleeding with the previous day's losing battle, and the countenance of the Second, Third, and Twelfth Corps, getting into position to meet the next onset, which everybody knew was immediately impending, you would have said that it was a sombre community—that Army of the Potomac—with a good deal of grimness in the face of it; with a notable lack of the playful element, and no fiddling or other fine arts ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Rockies, the soul of man, with all its complex impulses, is but so much plastic material which it shapes to its own inscrutable ends. For the man whose lot is cast in the heart of these wilds, the drama of life usually moves with a tremendous simplicity toward the sudden and sombre tragedy of the last act. The titanic world in which he lives closes in upon him and makes him its own. For him, among the ancient watch-towers of the earth, the innumerable interests and activities of swarming cities, the restless ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... upon whom the sombre-robed, grim-visaged stranger did not make a favorable impression, broke from his hold and took refuge in the skirts of the Countess, as the most ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... intelligence that glowed in his dark eyes, and of a body so slight and fragile as to seem almost misshapen. His age was not above thirty, yet indifferent health, early privation, and misfortune had so set their mark upon him that he had all the appearance of a man of fifty. He was dressed with sombre magnificence, and a jewel of great price smouldered upon the middle finger of one ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... There could be no need for that, yet the idea made me shiver. At every yard of my progress I raised my head, and the black spots were larger—and not less black. They were very silent and very motionless—the sombre night-picture of skirmishers on extreme duty; whoever they were, they felt strongly the presence of ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not seem to appeal to my uncle any more than prize-fighters. He looked very sombre indeed, so much so that I was quite impressed, but I had taken this job in hand and really had to see it through. So I talked, and I won in the way all my few triumphs have been won, by talking until the other man wanted to ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... nocturnal grasshoppers commence their autumnal dirge, and fill the mind with a keen sense of the rapid passing of time. These sounds do not sadden the mind, but deepen the tone of our feelings, and prepare us for a renewal of cheerfulness, by inspiring us with the poetic sentiment of melancholy. This sombre state of the mind soon passes away, effaced by the exhilarating influence of the clear skies and invigorating breezes of autumn, and the inspiriting sounds of myriads of chirping insects that awake with the morning and make all the meadows resound with the shout ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... not keep up a town and country establishment and be a rich woman on four thousand a year. There was a flower garden and small shrubbery within the so-called moat; but, otherwise, the grounds of Portray Castle were not alluring. The place was sombre, exposed, and, in winter, very cold; and, except that the expanse of sea beneath the hill on which stood the castle was fine and open, it had no great claim to praise on the score of scenery. Behind the castle, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... home, according to her wishes, for it was a perfect night, and she a robust young creature who loved to give her energy a fling. She walked with a peculiar effect of hope and buoyancy, in spite of her habit of sombre sayings, and Rokeby found a pleasure in noting her. She looked what she was, a woman who had never yet ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... but he soon got going again. Ireland, he declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we don't trust you," came the swift reply from Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... garden two men clad in mourning robes so long and flowing that they trailed upon the ground. As they marched they beat two great drums which were likewise draped in black, and beside them came the fife player, black and sombre like the others. Following these came a personage of gigantic stature enveloped rather than clad in a gown of the deepest black, the skirt of which was of prodigious dimensions. Over the gown, girdling or crossing his figure, he had a broad baldric which was also black, and from which hung a huge ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a dark, sombre day, with a steady downpour of rain. Only a dim light pervaded the courtroom, and the spectators caught a very indistinct view of the prisoner when the guards brought him in. But his heavy, shambling walk, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little incident to change the tone of one's feelings and the humor of the occasion. As a few drops of oil, cast upon the surface of the waters, will quiet the troubled waves, so did the glad voice of this merry bird suddenly dispel all those sombre feelings which had been fostered by dismal scenes and a lonely journey. Nature never seemed so lovely as when the rising dawn, with its tearful beams and purple radiance, was greeted by this warbling salutation, as from some messenger of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... is that you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I am gled to see that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... Melancholy, linger here awhile! O Music, Music, breathe despondingly! O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle, Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh! Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile; Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, Tinting with silver ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... tall and tawny men were these, As sombre, silent, as the trees They moved among! and sad some way With tempered sadness, ever they, Yet not with sorrow born of fear, The shadows of their destinies They saw approaching year by ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... that were measured, one was sombre brown, darker than the rest, and three harelips were observed. A man may have from one to three wives, who sometimes fight, but all ends well. In each family there are at least two children, and often as many as seven, while ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Virgil's line, facilus descensus averni, in coming down the stairway by the run, on the top of a "comber;" and, although the steward had lit one of the swinging lamps over the cuddy table, it only served, with its feeble flickering light, to "make the darkness visible" and render the scene more sombre. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... it seemed that his unnatural fit had passed away. He stretched out his hand and struck a silver gong which had been left within his reach. Almost immediately a man, pale-faced, with full dark eyes and olive complexion, dressed in the sombre garb of an indoor ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tropical colonies. The morning was fine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer white misty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed with Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind, and the heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared over the rail; some, drawing water over ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Except scattered waving cocoanut palms which grew even on these hill-sides, no green thing was apparent, save in the ravines, where trees seemed to thrive, and so broke the monotony of tint with streaks of sombre verdure. Farther up, the peaks were thickly covered with a forest, which looked impenetrable. The abrupt contrast of the yellow lower land with this cap of tanglewood, itself at times covered, at times only dotted, with fleecy ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... romantically situated. Taking our departure from the town on the following morning, we observed that the fog, covering the surrounding landscape with a thick, impenetrable veil, increased in density until it seemed as if from moment to moment additional tints of sombre gray were united to the haze. In fact, after a while we were unable to discern the outline of the coast, having to pursue our ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he would have ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty pink of their frocks to a sombre brick hue. I was thankful when the crowd began to drop in, and I was able, by threats of taking them home before the races began, to reduce them at least to the nine seats for which I was responsible. How I wished I had some sweets, in order to ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... certainly gone too far," he said in his usual grave and sombre tones, "for either ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... virtues and power in loud voices. He was seated in a chair carried by sixteen men; his guards, the officers of his household, standard and umbrella bearers, and musicians accompanied him. He was clothed in a robe of sombre-coloured silk, and wore a velvet cap, very similar in shape to that of Scotch mountaineers. A large pearl was conspicuous on his forehead, and was the only jewel or ornament ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... was worthy of a Watteau's brush—the sun just sinking behind the orchard trees gilding the edge of each leaf, shone on the dark red of John Johnstone's dress, warmed the sombre hue of fair Betty's lincoln green, and played on the blue and primrose of Mistress Mary's flower-like costume. It was a fair picture, and no eye could rest on a goodlier couple than the tall lithe young man, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... aspect of the most profound gravity— the reflection, as it were, of the sombre countenance of the austere and relentless Grand Master. The lower part of the hall was filled with guards and others whom curiosity had drawn together to witness the ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, but ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... doleful, piteous, lugubrious, rueful, mournful, dismal, funereal, gloomy, melancholy, disconsolate, dejected, touching; calamitous, deplorable, grievous, dire, afflictive, wretched, saturnine, grave, sober; dull, sombre, subdued; (Colloq.) bad, naughty, troublesome, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... grew louder, nearer. The revealed brilliance became swift sword-thrusts of blinding light 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 sombre 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. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... him, and together they rattled their feet on the floor with dexterity and precision, whilst the girls sang the words of the dance. The officers gave genuine applause, delighted with this picturesque fragment of life on the edge of the Pacific. Don Fernando listened to their demonstrations with sombre contempt on his dark handsome face; Benicia indicated her pleasure by sundry archings of her narrow brows, or coquettish curves of her red lips. Suddenly she made a deep courtesy and ran to her mother, with a long sweeping movement, like the bending and lifting of grain in the wind. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... In his eyes glowed the fire of an intense and honest, but fierce and narrow piety, and with that expression was mingled another, not of anger nor of sorrow, but of reproach, of judgment and of sombre triumph. His hands were strapped in front of him with a stirrup leather, and his head was bare. As the moon shone more clearly, Claverhouse saw other stains than those of peat upon his chest, and while he looked the red blood seemed to rise from wounds that pierced ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... lastly ladies in black velvet, who sat at their work, with a chaplain reading to them. One of these, the Countess of Poitiers, whom Grisell had known at the Grey Sisters' convent, rose, graciously received her obeisance, and conducted her into the great State bedroom, likewise very sombre, with black hangings worked and edged, however, with white, and the window was permitted to let in the light of day. The bed was raised on steps in an alcove, and was splendidly draped and covered with black embroidered with ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... compassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the indifferent—are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously evil liver, those who have suffered at his hands or been violently scandalised by his conduct may perhaps find a sombre pleasure in consigning him to Hell, which, indeed, might otherwise have to put up its shutters. But though the doors of Heaven may be closed against a few exceptional scoundrels, they are nowadays thrown open to all the rest of Mankind; and the maxim, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... amid the shadows looming, Stands grim and sombre in the dying light; The trees with leafless branches shiver, moaning, As the sad winds sigh softly ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... were a dozen darting searchlights winking back and forth across the sombre sky. And below the searchlights were hundreds of tiny ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... and secluded valleys, containing within their hoary ramparts of gray limestone fertile fields and pleasant pasturages,—its wide-spreading moors, covered with the different species of moss and ling, and fern and bent-grass, which variegate the brown livery of the heath, and break its sombre uniformity,—its crystal streams of unwearied rapidity, now winding a silent course "in infant pride" through the willows and sedges which fringe their banks, and now bounding with impetuous rage over the broken ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... honest woman in the world, but I've nevertheless done for you what was necessary." And then as her now quite sombre gravity only made him stare: "To start you it was necessary. From me it has the weight." He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. "Don't you understand me? I've told the proper lie for you." Still he only ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... out on the garden dreamy, And knew not that it was old; Looked past the gray and the sombre, And saw but ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... cypress and trailing feathery vines. Some vines had fallen and been caught in long loops from bough to bough, like funeral garlands, and here and there the tops of isolated palmettos lifted a cluster of hearse-like plumes. Yet in spite of this dominance of sombre but graceful shadow, the drooping delicacy of dark-tasseled foliage and leafy fringes, and the waving mourning veils of gray, translucent moss, a glorious vivifying Southern sun smiled and glittered everywhere as through tears. The balm of bay, southernwood, pine, and ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for was it not that which lured him, by its irresistible power, towards the icy steppes where his power and glory sank beneath the snow? If at times a swift and sombre anticipation of evil crowned his mind, what was that presentiment by the side of the terrible reality? What would the conqueror have said if, in the misty future, he had seen anything of his own fate? ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... world; here in the evening of its days it came trailing in all its panoply in the pathway of the three kings. For it came following not only a falling but a fallen star and one that dived before them into a birthplace darker than a grave. And the lord of the laurels, clad in his sombre crimson, looked down into that darkness, and then looked up, and saw that all the stars in his own sky were dead. They were deities no longer but only a brilliant dust, scattered down the vain void of Lucretius. The stars were as stale as they were strong; they would never ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... length the brighter lamps struggled. It was like the gradual resolution of a nebula into stars. As the intervening depth became gradually less, the mist vanished more and more, and finally all the lamps shone through it They formed a bright foil to the sombre mass of rock above them. The sea was so calm and the scene so lovely that Mr. Huggins and myself stayed on deck till near midnight, when the ship was moored. During our walking to and fro a striking enlargement of the disk of Jupiter was observed, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the likeness of certain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same look—as of thunder asleep, but ready—neither a dog nor a man to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sombre in the shadow of the wooded hill—I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... which was a naturally concealed channel, out into one of the loveliest little lakes eye ever rested upon. No fire had touched its shores, which were wooded down to the sandy margin, the bright green foliage of the hardwood in the foreground contrasting with the more sombre hues of the pines and hemlocks beyond. In little bays there were patches of white and yellow water lilies, alternating their orbed blossoms with the showy blue spikes of the Pickerel weed, and, beyond them, on the bank itself, grew many a crimson banner ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... bonnet and shawl, startled a little by the white face that looked at her from the glass. The things she had worn when she left Paris were the darkest and plainest in her wardrobe. They had grown shabby by this time, and had a very sombre look. Even in these garments the tall slim figure had a certain elegance; but it was not a figure to be remarked at nightfall, in the London streets. The mistress of Arden Court might have been easily mistaken for a sempstress going ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the avenue presents a continuous line of magnificent mansions. There are a few marble, yellow stone, and brick buildings, but the prevailing material is brown stone. The general appearance of the street is magnificent, but sombre, owing to the dark color of the stone. Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and has not its equal ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... to yonder hill would hie, Like her, to watch the setting sun, Or see the stars born, one by one, Out of the darkening sky. Nor would she leave that hill till night Trembled from pole to pole with light; Even then, upon her homeward way, Long—long her wandering steps delayed To quit the sombre forest shade, Through which her eerie pathway lay. You ask if she had beauty's grace? I know not—but a nobler face My eyes have seldom seen; A keen and fine intelligence, And, better still, the truest sense Were in her speaking mien. But ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... Spanishtown has increased in population to about five thousand, and in its palmy days of slaveholding prosperity exhibited doubtless much pomp of vice-regal splendor. But this has long fled, and its sandy streets are now almost as silent and sombre in the glittering sunshine as if traversed only by the ghosts of the Spanish colonists who dwelt here in peace until ruthlessly thrust ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... away weary and sombre, and Fyne said "Yes" impulsively, and then qualified the affirmative by the quaint ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... "Too sombre Spirit, hath the opening year No scenes of gayer hope and gentler cheer? Is all beneath night's curtain In this vast city void of promise glad? Are all the guests of midnight spectres sad, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... room with its whitewashed wall and its rows of bodices, petticoats and shiny caps hanging on lines stretched from one side to the other. A grey tom-cat lay purring on a corner of the table; and, near it, in a well-scrubbed pot, a pink geranium displayed its sombre leaves and its ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... he? For him to-morrow would be but the repetition of to-day; the same dragging hours, the same apathetic poring over books, the same half-hours at the organ with the music-books, playing sad melodies which accorded well with his own sombre feelings. He looked up at the portrait and sighed; remembered the dear one's dying words, and thought, "I might have found Him once; but it's too late now. All that passed away a long time ago, and now,—it's only to plod on and on, year ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... and had studied them with some care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you doing here?" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Lord Henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... peer to a god doth seem, he, if such were lawful, to o'er-top the gods, who sitting oft a-front of thee doth gaze on thee, and doth listen to thine laughter lovely, which doth snatch away from sombre me mine every sense: for instant falls my glance on thee, Lesbia, naught is left to me [of voice], but my tongue is numbed, a keen-edged flame spreads through my limbs, with sound self-caused my twin ears sing, and mine eyes ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... that, hearing of your arrival, they have come thither in the name of themselves, and the other eleven ladies of his late highness's harem, to know when it will be your princely pleasure to bid them cast aside the sombre weeds of widowhood, and——" ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... in his heart, and made his ears deaf to the wild music of the falls. That fragrance, imperceptible to nostrils less sensitive than his, was the breath of his native wilderness, a message from the sombre solitudes of the Squatook. He did not know that the lonely peak of Sugar Loaf was but thirty or forty miles away. He knew only that something, in the air and in his blood, was calling him ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sessions a psychological conflict broke out between the deputies of different social conditions and (therefore) different mentalities. The magnificent costumes of the privileged deputies contrasted in a humiliating fashion with the sombre fashions of the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... sergeant's face underwent an extraordinary change. It filled with wonder, and then a grim alertness sprang to life all over him. He dropped his hand to his holster, and whipped out a big regulation 455 revolver, blue and sombre. The boys formed behind as under cover of a tower of strength, and the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... went tramping through the primeval forests, tearing down the branches of gigantic trees for food, and died in the dismal swamps of an unknown age. For a long time these strange creatures haunted my dreams, and this gloomy period formed a sombre background to the joyous Now, filled with sunshine and roses and echoing with the gentle ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... head, and looked where she pointed. A dull, grey light topped the waters, and the sky above held a faint tinge of crimson. The wan glow accented the loneliness, and for the moment left him depressed. Was there ever a more sombre scene than was presented by that waste of tumbling waves, stretching to the horizon, arched over by a clouded sky? It grew clearer, more distinct, yet remained the same dead expanse of restless water, on which they tossed helplessly and alone. Nothing broke the grimness ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... season came in, the market assumed an aspect of half-subdued brilliancy with the many sombre and high-colored varieties of that fungus. The poorer people indulge in numerous kinds which the rich do not eat, and they furnish precious sustenance during fasts, when so many viands are forbidden by the Russian Church and by poverty. One ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Even the bright stars were hid by the thick clouds. The darkness cast a sad gloom over the scene, which a few hours before had been "leaping in light, and alive with its own beauty." The yellow bank rose high on either side of the river, and formed a sombre wall, which seemed to keep the sojourner on the tide a prisoner ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... large margin, but the duodecimo, it seems to me, is much the best size and shape of volume for the proper display upon a printed page of this miniature poem, and a handsome old-style or Elzevir letter is the fittest type, instead of the sombre modern ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... there"—Hamilton waved his hand towards the dark green forest, sombre in the shadows of the evening—"a palaver I don't quite get the hang of. If I could only ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... them as lives in the 'ighest style is orfen the biggest demmycrats. Yer never know! Or p'raps this Sir NORMAN NASEBY ain't made his mind up yet, and I can tork him over to our way o' thinking. (The doors are suddenly flung open by two young men in a very plain and sombre livery.) Two o' the young 'uns, I s'pose. (Aloud.) 'Ow are yer? Father in, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... then turned sadly to his proper business. This was the end of a very old song, and his heart cried out at the thought. He heaped more wood on the blaze from the little pile collected, and soon a roaring, boisterous fire burned in the glen, while giant shadows danced on the sombre hills. Then he rummaged in the tent till he found the rifles, carefully cleaned and laid aside. He selected two express 400 bores, a Metford express and a smooth-bore Winchester repeater. Then he filled his pockets with cartridges, and from a small box took a handful for his revolver. All ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... happy, but I think Mrs. Campbell is the most so of any. At a little distance from this last small circle stands our old friend, Girly, now grown beyond all recognition into a pleasing and promising womanhood; and away in the misty background a long-forgotten trio loom out in sombre sullenness; they are Mrs. Hampden, and Fred and the 'solicitous brother.' Fred is a hopeless dyspeptic, who can give his mind to nothing else but his digestion, which unfortunate circumstance frets his new disenchanted parent and provokes his ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... of which has little that can peculiarly recommend it. To exhibit the repentance of a lovely but erring woman, to show us how her soul may be restored to its primitive nobleness, by sufferings, devotion and death, is the object of Maria Stuart. It is a tragedy of sombre and mournful feelings; with an air of melancholy and obstruction pervading it; a looking backward on objects of remorse, around on imprisonment, and forward on the grave. Its object is undoubtedly attained. We are forced ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of that day her uncle ordered the camp to be pitched on a little meadow backed by a sombre forest of spruce. And after the evening meal, in company with Gerald Ainley, she walked towards the timber where an owl was hooting dismally. The air was perfectly still, the sky above crystal clear, and the Northern ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... blew against flesh. Yet the huge railway station was as full of people as ever. One could see no difference between this dreariest of days and the sunniest, so far as the crowd was concerned, except that fewer of the people wore fine clothes; perhaps, also, that their faces looked a little more sombre and weary ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the national repertory there are Ballads Satirical, Polemical, and Political, and even Devotional and Doctrinal, of as early date as many of the songs inspired by the spirit of Love, War, and Romance. Among them they represent the diverse strands that are blended in the Scottish character—the sombre and the bright; the prose and the poetry. The one or the other has predominated in the expression of the genius of the nation in verse, according to the circumstances and mood of the time. But neither has ever been really absent; they are the opposite sides of the same shield. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... stateliest conifer of the New England forest, ordinarily from 50 to 80 feet high and 2-4 feet in diameter at the ground, but in northern New England, where patches of the primeval forest still remain, attaining a diameter of 3-7 feet and a height ranging from 100 to 150 feet, rising in sombre majesty far above its deciduous neighbors; trunk straight, tapering very gradually; branches nearly horizontal, wide-spreading, in young trees in whorls usually of five, the whorls becoming more or less indistinct ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... bleak territory. Robber-chieftains and knighted free-booters carried on their guerilla raids backward and forward, under the counterfeited banner of patriotism. Scotch and English armies led by kings marched and counter-marched over this sombre boundary. Never before was there one apparently more insoluble as a barrier between two peoples. Never before in Christendom was there one that required a longer space of time to melt. Never before did the fusing of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... A sombre two-storey house; a light burning in one of the windows, a dim light, almost subdued and uncanny. I had never seen anything so lonely as that light; it was grey, uncertain, scarcely a flicker. Perhaps it ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... scene, though sombre and sad, was far from depressing, but they all felt the change. John Hislop seemed to feel it more than all the rest; for besides being deeply religious, he was deeply in love. His nearest and dearest friend, Heney—happy, hilarious Heney—knew, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... all'Agra Dolce and wine of Orvieto. The Falcone was another accident of our tramps, though we afterwards found it starred in Baedeker. It looked the centuries old it was said to be, such a shabby, sombre crypt of a restaurant that I accepted without question the tradition it cherished of itself as a haunt of the Caesars, and was prepared to believe the waiters when they pointed out the mark of the Imperial head on the greasy walls, just as the waiters ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... indulged in far other thoughts had the wedding been of a different character, or had he perceived any suggestion of a romantic mood in the woman at his side. Quick to feel an atmosphere, he found that he had caught from her a sombre view. How deeply she thought or felt he could only guess, but hers was a personality that suggested depth, and the far sadness of her gaze shut the door between them which he had supposed about to open wider. The ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Under the sombre vaultings of the great Florentine Cathedral, the impression was not weakened. The austere gloom of it chimed more nearly with his state of unrest. Then there are the galleries, the painted ceilings,—angels, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... played and swam and romped without restraint, but beneath all of their abandon there lurked the ever-present pathos of the jail, the asylum, the detention ward. The blue sky seemed streaked with the bars of their prison; the green earth clanked as with the sombre tread of ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... trodden down. Following this trail, they struck back into the woods, where in places the gloom cast by the thick foliage was so dense that there was a mere twilight, startling as they went numbers of birds of grey and sombre plumage, whose necks and heads, and the sounds they uttered, were so reptilian that the three terrestrials believed they must also possess poison fangs. "The most highly developed things we have seen here," said ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... are older links existing between America and Europe than this of the Norseman. Of these the first is indeed buried in mystery—leading us back into that sombre twilight of 'symbolism,' as the Germans somewhat obscurely call the study of the early ages whose records are lost, and which can only be traced by reflection in the resemblances between mythologies which argue a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Jane's face grew sombre. "Yes—I suppose so," said she. "The people would rather have one of us than one of their own kind. They do look up to us, don't they? It's ridiculous of them, but they do. The idea of choosing you, when ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... forest which lay before them was in its gayest autumn dress, but in the sombre light of the approaching storm, its brilliant leaves looked faded and faint. The deep reds and many tinted yellows of the foliage formed a beautiful picture, but these were the colors of decay and death, and told that the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... tell the gazer 'twas a cricket helped his crippled lyre; that when one string which made "love" sound soft, was snapt in twain, she perched upon the place left vacant and duly uttered, "Love, Love, Love", whene'er the bass asked the treble to atone for its somewhat sombre drone? ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... much larger inside than out. A gas-jet burnt in the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of rooms. I could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over a fire, and of a child crying. Then a tall, straight, wellmade, energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick from behind ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... in a fine drizzle of rain, through a gray landscape; and surely no landscape can be more perfectly gray than that of France when it is pleased to put on sombre tints, and no other could have been as well suited to the shade of ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... is arrayed in a sublimity which belongs to the sombre and passionate genius of the nation. Calderon's Justina resists all the temptation of the Demon, and raises her lover, with her, above the sweet lures of mere temporal happiness. Their marriage is vowed at the stake; their goals are liberated ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... her own eyes answered. Her foot rested in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the saddle. Without speaking, without further looking at each other, they turned the horses' heads and took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre redwood aisles and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The trail became a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined with a hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California hills to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... flitted silently about. The brass crosses pendent over their breasts relieved with a single glitter the sombre folds of their robes. Snowy coifs, which had cost the industrial schoolgirls of a sister house hours of labour and many tears, shone, glazed and unwrinkled, round their heads. Even the youngest of them had acquired the difficult art of walking gracefully with her hands folded ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... in which Bardo lived was situated on the side of the street nearest the hill, and was one of those large sombre masses of stone building pierced by comparatively small windows, and surmounted by what may be called a roofed terrace or loggia, of which there are many examples still to be seen in the venerable city. Grim doors, with conspicuous scrolled hinges, having ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... house of your friends," laconically responded the voice, now quite familiar. Her eyes swept the room in search of the priest. His robes lay in a heap across her feet. "Where is Father Paul?" she demanded. "He is no more," said the man, in sombre tones. "I was he until an ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... dull despair in human form, dressed in a black coat and trousers with shining seams that recall the zinc on an attic roof, a glistening satin waistcoat, a hat preserved like a relic, a pair of old gloves, and a cotton shirt. The man is the incarnation of a melancholy poem, sombre as the secrets of the Conciergerie. Other kinds of poverty, the poverty of the artist—actor, painter, musician, or poet—are relieved and lightened by the artist's joviality, the reckless gaiety of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... muffled in a thick coat with a fur collar. He wore a silver helmet with an eagle atop of it, and kept his left hand resting on his sword. Below the helmet was a face the colour of grey paper, from which shone curious sombre restless eyes with dark pouches beneath them. There was no fear of my mistaking him. These were the features which, since Napoleon, have been ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... bend above that land are hung With clouds of various hues; some dark and chill, Surcharged with sorrow, cast their sombre shade Upon the sunny, joyous land below; Others are floating through the dreamy air, White as the falling snow, their margins tinged With gold and crimson hues; their shadows fall Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes, Soft as the shadows of an angel's wing. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... learned men, an independent judgment about creed and life, a judgment which was contrary to his own convictions. There came the gloomy years of the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Peasant Wars, the regrettable dissensions over the sacrament. How often at this time did Luther's form rise sombre and mighty over the contestants! How often did the perversion of mankind and his own secret doubts fill him with anxious care ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... corrugated course of true love, step by step up to its climax, where, a week before, she had given him his choice of her new pack of assorted visiting-cards. He rose at the end of five minutes' sombre meditation, holding the curling gelatine card of his choice in his warm hand. After venting a heavy sigh, he checked a motion to throw away the token of his undoing and put it back into his pocket. While he was plotting dark things against ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... minute he stood very still, gazing with sombre eyes at the kindly face which seemed to be smiling back at him even in death; then he knelt down, and, with infinite gentleness, smoothed the ruffled hair, arranged the collar so as to hide the bullet hole in the bronzed throat, and crossed the hands on the breast. When he got up again his face ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Emily think and feel in this sombre season, the passionate force of her imagination making itself the law of life and the arbiter of her destiny. She could not take counsel with time; her temperament knew nothing of that compromise with ardours ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... stood erect and stately behind her mistress, permitted herself also to regard them for a moment with something like a smile relaxing her sombre yellow face; then she too turned her turbaned ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... by the westerly road as it descends into Tregarrick is a sombre pile of some eminence, having a gateway and lodge before it, and a high encircling wall. The sun lay warm on its long roof, and the slates flashed gaily there, as Farmer Lear came over the knap of the hill and looked down on it. He withdrew ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... le sais bien que Cythere est en deuil! Que son jardin, soufflete par l'orage, O mes amis, n'est plus qu'un sombre ecueil Agonisant sous le soleil sauvage. La solitude habite son rivage. Qu'importe! allons vers les pays fictifs! Cherchons la plage ou nos desirs oisifs S'abreuveront dans le sacre mystere Fait pour un choeur d'esprits contemplatifs: Embarquons-nous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... remained wrathful and distinct from her, unchanged outwardly to her, but underneath a solid power of antagonism to her. Of which she became gradually aware. And it irritated her to be made aware of him as a separate power. She lapsed into a sort of sombre exclusion, a curious communion with mysterious powers, a sort of mystic, dark state which drove him and the child nearly mad. He walked about for days stiffened with resistance to her, stiff with a will to destroy her as she was. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and singular spot in the blaze of the rotunda. So sombre was his look, so intent his gaze. Youths in high hats and shining shirt-fronts stood in groups conversing loudly, and in the resplendent dining-hall bediamonded women and their sleek-haired, heavy-jewelled partners were eating leisurely, attended by swarms of waiters so ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... a lifeless capital, with narrow streets all running at right angles with each other, of sombre, monastic aspect. It had no popular cafes, no opera-house or theatre; indeed absolutely no place of recreation. Only the numerous religious processions relieved the uniformity of city life. The whole (walled) city and its environments seem to have been built solely with a view to self-defence. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I am proposing anything too sombre, Chamilly: It is an agreeable life. There is no demand for your being shut up in the place; and one can surround himself very ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... upward fire-hills there rose up from the earth vast mountains of ash and burned stuff, that had been cast forth by these perched volcanoes, and had poured downward unto the earth throughout Eternity, and so to build grey and sombre monuments unto the dreadful glory ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... to hear him play. I forged a pious lie, declaring it would give me the greatest pleasure. Surely that sin has been atoned for; I have suffered for it as no tongue can tell. The world needeth a new Dante, to write a new Inferno, with the bagpipes thrown in. Then will that sombre picture of future suffering be complete. I make no reckless charge against those aforesaid instruments of music, facetiously so called. The bagpipes are a good thing in their place, but their place is with Dante and ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had scorned ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... reveries, yet going forth from dreary cells to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and still more, to give spiritual consolations to the poor and miserable. It was a great scheme of philanthropy, as well as a haven of rest. It was always sombre in its attire, ascetic in its habits, intolerant in its dogmas, secluded in its life, narrow in its views, and repulsive in its austerities; but its leaders and dignitaries did not then conceal under their coarse raiments either ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to escape the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting houris who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how absurdly) of the Duesseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how warm the room was, and how pleasant the party was, facts upon which we had already ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... of a higher order, stood Like an extinct volcano in his mood; 140 Silent, and sad, and savage,—with the trace Of passion reeking from his clouded face; Till lifting up again his sombre eye, It glanced on Torquil, who leaned faintly by. "And is it thus?" he cried, "unhappy boy! And thee, too, thee—my madness must destroy!" He said, and strode to where young Torquil stood, Yet dabbled ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... knowing every passenger to be properly ticketed; she even laughed at his joke. She weeded out the Whitechapel Jewesses at the Bank, and introduced them to the Mile End 'buses. She handed out to them their sombre and insolent-looking babies, and when one mother thanked her profusely in Yiddish, she replied, "Bitte, bitte...." Yet all the while the wind blew to her old remembrances of the low chimneys and the bending roofs of the ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, And white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expanded the colonel, "you are doing the right and proper thing—the right and proper thing. Of all the avocations of youth, I conceive the pursuit of the sombre goddess of learning to be the most profitable—entirely the most profitable. I myself, though a young man,—being still on the right side of forty,—have reaped the richest harvest from my labours in the classic shades. Twenty years ago, young gentlemen, I, like you, left my ancestral ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White |
