"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hemisphere Silence and darkness held their cheerless sway, Save in the haunts of riotous excess; And half the world in dreamy slumbers lay, Lost in the maze of sweet forgetfulness. When lo! upon the startled ear, There broke a sound so dread and drear,— As, like a sudden peal of thunder, Burst the bands of sleep asunder, And filled a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... her knight in slumber lay; And in her lily hand was seen A band that seemed of the moonlight sheen. "We are one," she sang, as about his hair She twined it, and over her tresses fair. Beneath them the world lay dark and drear: But he felt the touch of her hand so dear, Uplifting him far above mortals' sight, While around him were shed her locks of light, Till a garden fair lay about him spread— And this ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... glittering colleges everywhere striking the eye. The god of slavery-the god we worship, has no use for such temples; public libraries are his prison; his civilization is like a dull dead march; he is the enemy of his own heart, vitiating and making drear whatever he touches. He wages war on art, science, civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples reared for the enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a cotton-bag his judgment-seat. But we pride ourselves that ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... The woods are drear, The breeze that erst so merrily did play, Naught giveth save a melancholy lay; Yet life's great lessons do not ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... good for the Christian's health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... distant realm, That land of ice and snow, Where the winter nights are long and drear, And the north winds fiercely blow, From many a low-thatched cottage roof, On Christmas eve, 'tis said, A sheaf of grain is hung on high, ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... at a rate which compelled the girl to hang on closely to keep her seat. The man beside her bounced about, and swore, but made no effort to touch her, or open conversation. The uncertainty, the fear engendered by her thought, the drear silence almost caused her to scream. She conquered this, yet ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... and not the drear shadow, The gentle and fortunate peace: But he who thus revels in rhyming Has ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his expression of it—as if the very fact that fate forced him to remain a looker-on had made him the more sensitive to the beauty, the joy, the challenge in everything life gave him to look at. He could wrest romance even out of the drear, drab hospital—there is another characteristic glimpse in one of Stevenson's letters, a picture of Henley sitting up in his hospital bed, his hair and beard all tangled, "talking as cheerfully as if he ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... her tresses sweet: But spoke no word, yea, rather, wearily Turned from the yearning face and pitying eye Of any maid who seemed about to speak. Now through the garden trees the sun 'gan break, And that inevitable time drew near; Then through the courts, grown cruel, strange, and drear, Since the bright morn, they led her to the gate. Where she beheld a golden litter wait. Whereby the King stood, aged and bent to earth, The flute-players with faces void of mirth, The down-cast bearers of the ivory wands, The maiden torch-bearers' ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... come, spirit so dread, From the home of the werwolf, the home of the dead. Come, give me thy blessing! come, lend me thine ear! Oh spirit of darkness! oh spirit so drear! ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... art these lines now reading, Think not, though from the world receding I joy my lonely days to lead in This Desart drear, That with remorse a conscience bleeding Hath ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... tempest you admire proves its paternity," he said, with a manifest effort at lightness. "It emanates from the vast magazines of frost, snow, and wintry wind that lie far to the north-east even of my home, and THAT is in a region you would think drear and inhospitable after the more clement airs ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... I wander round Amidst the grassy graves: 15 But all I hear Is the north-wind drear, And all I see are ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... November. When we come to think of it, seems to amount to much the same thing as Autumn Session, which usually begins in mid-October. That an illusion. There will be no Autumn Session. Only we shall all be back at Westminster again in drear November. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... Willie Wink, Wae's me, drear, dree, and dra, A waeful thocht, a fearsome flea, A wuther ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... other eyes The busy deck, the flattering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... cruel hag has wreaked on him her vengeance. The country folk said there were two of them, one the semblance of a woman; the other the specter of a man. Their haunt is in the remote land, in the crags of the wolf, the wind-beaten cliffs, and untrodden bogs, where the dismal stream plunges into the drear abyss of an awful lake, overhung with a dark and grizzly wood rooted down to the water's edge, where a lurid flame plays nightly on the surface of the flood—and there lives not the man who knows its depth! So dreadful ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... to the dark ravine where the icicles hang from the rocks—for Love and Life must pass through strange drear places—there, where all is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands and held them against his beating little heart, and warmed them—and softly he drew ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... desolation,—a desolation utter and complete, a mere waste of tumbled sand, by daylight whitened here and there by irregular patches of alkali, but under the brooding night shadows lying brown, dull, forlorn beyond all expression, a trackless, deserted ocean of mystery, oppressive in its drear sombreness. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... now driven along in an uproar of hideous globes; faces grinned and mocked at her; her mind ever strove to recover itself, and was ever borne away in the rush of invading fancies; but through it all was the nameless unrest, not an aching, nor a burning, nor a stinging, but a bodily grief, dark, drear, and nameless. How could they have borne ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... school of hard mishap, Driven from the ease of fortune's lap. What schemes will nature not embrace T' avoid less shame of drear distress? Gold can the charms of youth bestow, And mask deformity with shew: Gold can avert the sting of shame, In Winter's arms create a flame: Can couple youth with hoary age, And ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... connected with my prayer, the sea grew tolerable. It still came on to the land (we could sail with the wind starboard), and the wind blew harder yet; but we ran before it more easily, because the water was less steep. We were racing down the long drear shingle bank of Oxford, past what they call "the life-boat house" on the chart (there is no life-boat there, nor ever was), past the look-out of the coastguard, till we saw white water breaking on the bar of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... woman roused up a little to meet his words of cheer and look of sympathy; and Sarah came and stood by his shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... had spoken thus, before he stirred, 25 I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs Of desolation I had seen and heard In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines: Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed, Can Life still live? By what doth ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... experience the drear loneliness that had sat on her like a dead weight the last month before she turned her back on Granville and its unhappy associations. For one thing, Bill Wagstaff kept her intellectually on the jump. He was ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... made their appearance over the German trenches, gleamed for a moment, and then went out leaving the landscape very dark and drear. We hurried on back to Ramscapelle, sentries popping up at intervals to enquire our business. Floods stretched on either side of the road as far as the eye could see. We were obliged to crawl at a snail's pace as it grew darker. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. But there grew up in Owen's silent, lonely breast a great ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... her hero? No, thank heaven for that, Madeline, else your way would have been far more drear, else your life might have known never a ray of sunlight, in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... and looked into the room; And lo! it was cheerless and bare; Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,— And the lady was not there; Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom, As ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... blackest clouds around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... do for thee the very best I can, And sound thy praise as 'a good third-rate man.' But if ye fail, if cannonading stones, Or toppling ice-crag, pulverize your bones; O happy stroke, that makes immortal heroes Of men who, otherwise, would be but zeroes! What tho' no Alpine horn make music drear O'er the lone snow which furnishes your bier; Nor Alpine maiden strew your grave with posies Of gentian, edelweiss, and Alpine roses? "The Alpine Muse her iciest tears shall shed, And 'build a stone-man' o'er your honour'd head, Chamois and bouquetins the spot shall haunt, With ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... mirror to watch the flakes fall, Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns! While musing on sleigh ride and ball: There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth, Floating over each drear winter's day; But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth, Will melt like the snowflakes away. Turn, then thee to Heaven, fair maiden, for bliss; That world has a pure ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... early to discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the "Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the arrival of the teamster with the chests the night before. I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... seem'd one pure delight, Tho' now each spot looks drear; Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... delegate of God, Whose words of balm, and guiding light. Would lead us, from earth's drear abode, To worlds with bliss for ever bright,— What have the spoils of mortal fight To do with themes 'tis thine to teach? Faith's saving grace—each sacred rite Thou know'st to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... remembered lay, And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; 5 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... up. On earth she lies, With the drear mantle of the pall spread o'er. The new-made nun, the living sacrifice, Dead to this world of ours for evermore! The sun his parting rays has ceased to pour, As loth to lend his light to such a scene.... The sisters ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... those drear days was mad enough to see the outcome. The strategical experts protested against the wasteful "side-shows" in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Saloniki, and the taking of Jerusalem was counted merely a pretty bit ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the water advanced the forest became submerged, and formed a desolate stretch known as the Drowned Lands. Its slimy, green surface was dotted with rotten stumps and fantastic tree-trunks, pitched together in wild confusion, and above it rose a drear, dead forest of tall pine stems, bleached and scarred, and stripped of every limb. Around this silent, ghostly place the swamp formed a ring through which it was dangerous to pass, for near the edge of the Drowned Lands it was honeycombed with mud holes, into which ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the habitation of the witch. Here he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but supported by a long staff, the drear and sharp ascent. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... down, On foot, a-horse, by night and noon: His lands are bleak and drear, O; Forsook his dales Of nightingales, Forsook his moors of ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... journey—what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another. And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from Sneffels from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of the earth. The wondrous changes of this expedition had transported us to the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands. We had abandoned the region of eternal snows for that of infinite verdure, and had left over our heads the gray fog ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... when we slapped his back with friendly roar Aesop awaited him without the door,— Aesop the Greek, who made dull masters laugh With little tales of FOX and DOG and CALF. And be it said, mid these his pranks so odd With something nigh to chivalry he trod And oft the drear and driven would defend— The little shopgirls' knight unto the end. Yea, he had passed, ere we could understand The blade of Sidney glimmered in his hand. Yea, ere we knew, Sir Philip's sword was drawn With valiant cut and thrust, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... had gone for her usual walk upon the Charles River embankment, a fine esplanade stretching for seven miles along the river-side. It was a beautiful day—one of those rare days which gladden the drear northern spring and remind dwellers in Boston that they live under the same latitude under which Naples idles. A turn of the Gulf Stream and the descendants of the Puritans would lose the last vestige of their inherited consciences ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Life's Light, my dear, Drear, dark, and melancholy; Seek Light and Life and jocund cheer, And mirth and pleasing folly. Be thine, light-hearted folly, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing to see!— In drizzle and in daylight drear, From out their dark abodes let free, Dim, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... ought never to have indulged my wishes, but have grown gray in the same dull manner in which I was brought up! Because I once venture a step beyond the drear monotony of my past life, and look around me to see whether there be not some new source of enjoyment ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... been badly scared but stubborn, insisting that he had heard Elfigo call Estan from the house just before the shot was fired. The mother also had been badly frightened, but not at all stubborn. Indeed, she was not even certain of anything beyond the drear fact that her son was dead, and that he had fallen with the lamp in his hand, unarmed and unsuspecting. She was frightened at the unknown, terrible Law that had brought her there before the judge, and not ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... wife needs a carriage, And opera-boxes and stalls, That money's the one thing in marriage, And cheques are as common as calls. They say women shy (like some horses) At vows made to love and obey; They tell you drear tales of divorces, And scandals, the talk of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... most pleasant hours of my life!" declared Dorothy. "It has been like heaven here; I am sorry to go. And oh! how dark and drear to-morrow will be in the bindery, after such a ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... slaughtered deer Hung on fork'd boughs—with thongs of leather. Bound were his stiff, slim feet together— His eyes like dead stars cold and drear; The wand'ring firelight drew near And laid its wide palm, red and anxious, On the sharp splendor of his branches; On the white foam grown hard and sere On flank and shoulder. Death—hard as breast of granite boulder, And under ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... generally managed to slosh myself with cold water from the well, and so went to my bed with a measure of self-respect, but even the "spare room" was hot and small, and the conditions of my mother's life saddened me. It was so hot and drear for her! ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My glory out ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... not return, but, enamoured anew of the glories of those storied harbours, would abandon us, though we had come to love him, with all our hearts. Skipper Tommy Lovejoy joined with my sister to persuade me out of these drear fancies: which (said they) were ill-conceived; for the doctor must depart a little while, else our plans for the new sloop and little hospital (and our defense against Jagger) would go all awry. Perceiving, then, that I would not be convinced, the doctor took ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain—one of those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut the mortal coil. By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... Smith and Coles I sat down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... and peeped furtively down through the skylight. The empty cabin looked strangely quiet and drear, and the door of the stateroom stood ajar. There was nothing to satisfy their curiosity, but they came back looking as though they had ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate in the Seven Dials, as most ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... disposition toward the people they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not hear it? Is it howling wind? The tram-car rattling o'er the stony street? The groans of M.P.'s wearily confined To the dull House when night and morning meet, Dragged to Divisions drear with dawdling feet? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... rose And pent the demons in their prison cell; Full on their head the uprooted mountain fell, Enclosing all within its horrid womb Straight from the teeming earth the waters swell, And pillared rocks arise in cheerless gloom Around the drear abode—their ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... I know. If thou persist In these thy wailings, they will send thee far From thine own land, and close thee from the day, Where in a rock-hewn chamber thou may'st chant Thine evil orisons in darkness drear. Think of it, while there 's leisure to reflect; Or if thou suffer, henceforth blame ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... thou art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee, But, och! I backward cast my ee On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... that institution which, for twelve centuries, had exercised marvelous dominion over the spiritual and temporal interests of the continent, and for eight hundred years had suffered or thrived on English soil. "The day came, and that a drear winter day, when its last mass was sung, its last censer waved, its last congregation bent in rapt and lovely adoration before the altar." Its majestic and solemn ruins proclaim its departed grandeur. Its deeds of mercy, its conflicts with kings and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... to dignify the city, and flowers were blooming everywhere. Wonderful enough did all this seem to me after thousands of miles of rude scenery of bare valleys and rocky hills, wild landscapes, seen often through cold and blinding storms amid peaks and gorges, or on the drear, forbidding Plains. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... on this drear Thanksgiving-Day despondent beside his hearth. With a hundred hard lines furrowing his pale face, telling of the work of time and struggle and misfortune, he looked the incarnation of silent sorrow and hopelessness, waiting in quiet meekness for the coming of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... without a pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or sigh, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of a bird can mean to him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains came rumbling in by the first ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... as you will have to do if you penetrate far into the interior. They hunt and fish, saving their canned supplies for the winter, for the winter months are long and drear up in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... their "reformation" while indignantly drawing their skirts aside lest they come in contact with the tawdry finery of females whom these lawless satyrs have debauched. Of course when a woman learns that her reformatory work has proven a failure, drear and dismal, she complains bitterly, may even demand a divorce; yet she could count upon the fingers of one hand the hubbies whom she would trust behind a sheet of paper with a wayward daughter. She doesn't believe a little bit in the virtue of the genus male, yet insists ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... steering for the beach, and all the sea as a single fleet sailing in. His helmet-spike blazes, flame pours from the cresting plumes, and the golden shield-boss spouts floods of fire; even as when in transparent night comets glow blood-red and drear, or the splendour of Sirius, that brings drought and sicknesses on wretched men, rises and saddens the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... old and famous city of Metz. But it looked drear and abandoned- as everywhere during my journey. Nothing was yet restored, for confidence was wanting in the state of things. Wellington and Blcher, the lords of the ascendant, seemed alone gifted with the Power of foreseeing, as they had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... a Spenserian; he owned to Dryden in later years that "Spenser was his original," and in some of his earliest lines at Horton he dwells lovingly on "the sage and solemn tones" of the "Faerie Queen," its "forests and enchantments drear, where more is meant than meets the ear." But of the weakness and affectation which characterized Spenser's successors he had not a trace. In the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," the first results of his retirement at Horton, we catch ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... like this. What I want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't wait till ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Added as England's grace to Hindostan: O climax to this age's wondrous story, Full of new hope to India, and to Man In heathendom's dark places! For the light Of our Jerusalem shall now shine there Brighter than ever since the world began:— Yet by a way chaotic, drear and gory Travelled this blessing; as a martyr might Wrestling to heaven through tortures unaware: Our Empress Queen! for thee thy people's pray'r All round the globe to God ascends united, That He may strengthen thee no guilt to spare Nor leave one ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... can forget, The spot where first success he met; But he, the shepherd who, of yore, Has charm'd so many a list'ing ear, Came back, and was beloved no more. He found all changed and cold and drear A skilful hand had touch'd the flute; His pipe and he ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, whatever the ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... slab, smooth, hard, and black. The legend went, unconfirmed and unaccredited, but still propagated, that this was the portal of a vault, imprisoning deep beneath that ground, on whose surface grass grew and flowers bloomed, the bones of a girl whom a monkish conclave of the drear middle ages had here buried alive for some sin against her vow. Her shadow it was that tremblers had feared, through long generations after her poor frame was dust; her black robe and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and shade had mocked, as they fluctuated ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... graying the low clouds, from which fell a cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent, drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered figure that the dreaded stampede had ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... having no hatred left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dark and drear, and thick and misty. How unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love! Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable youth! What could possibly have induced ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... brink of the steep. Hastily snatching up one of the Indian's rifles, Burl ran to the brow of the hill, and taking deliberate aim at the rolling body far down there, fired. Up came ringing a cry—a death-yell, so it would seem, so fierce it was, and wild and drear. The moment thereafter, now rolling with frightful rapidity, over the river bank vanished ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and sudden sadness falls on Molly. She forgets all the cruel words that have been said, while a terrible compassion for the loneliness, the utter barrenness of his drear ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... bade you," he commanded, spurning her from him with force. "Go, lest I summon my servants to bind you fast, and place you in a prison as drear and lonely as hers." ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... before him on the endless winter road was one not easily daunted by outward aspects. Nevertheless he had at this moment, in the back of his head, a weary consciousness that war was roseate only to young boys and girls, that the day was cold and drear, the general hostile, the earth overlaid with dull misery, that the immortals, if there were any, must be clamouring for the curtain to descend forever upon this shabby human stage, painful and sordid, with its strutting tragedians and its bellman's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... His body stretched on the mat. A trumpet sounds through the fog, 5 Dimmed are the stars in the sky; When the night is clear, how they twinkle! Lani-kaula's torches look double, The torches that burn for Kane. Ghostly and drear the walls of Waipio 10 At the endless blasts of Kiha-pu. The king's awa fails to console him; 'Tis the all-night conching of Kiha-pu. Broken his sleep the whole winter; Downcast and sad, sad and downcast, 15 At loss to find a brave hunter Shall steal the damned conch from the cliff. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept T'wards the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... I leave thee, thou land to my infancy dear, Ere I know aught of toil or of woe, For the clime of the stranger, the solitude drear, And a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "Winter past, so drear and hoary, Thou again wilt spring and bloom: So I hope to rise in glory From the ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... never will smile All the lonesome while. Oh the mile after mile, And never a stile! And never a tree or a stone! She has not a tear: Afar and anear It is all so drear, But she does not care, Her heart is as dry ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... part way up a steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... magic, Swept the gifted peasant on— Though his feet were on the greensward, Light from heaven around him shone; At his conjuration, demons Issued from their darkness drear; Hovering round on silver pinions, Angels stoop'd his songs to hear; Bow'd the Passions to his bidding, Terror gaunt, and Pity calm; Like the organ pour'd his thunder, Like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... while the rest are flitting phantoms, with no sense at all. "What wouldst thou of me, Odysseus, son of Laertes," said the spectre in faltering tones, "and wherefore hast thou left the glad light of day to visit this drear and joyless realm of the dead? Draw back from the trench, and put up thy sword in its sheath, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee all that ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... kindly to ballet, probably for the reason that it has never seen one of genuine artistic merit. A capital performance entitled "A Yankee Circus in Mars" was not a bit less "dramatic" than the alleged comic operas and tiresome musical comedies that have afflicted us with such drear persistence, and it was certainly infinitely more plausible. It had novelty, sensational features and a superb equipment. In addition to all this, there was a wonderful aquatic arrangement, in which the huge stage suddenly sank and gave ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... certain distinguished old man of soldier-like aspect would pass them on horseback, and gaze at their two tall British figures with a look of curious and benign interest, as if he mentally wished them well, and well away from this drear limbo of penitence ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... chase is o'er, the hart is slain! The gentlest hart that grac'd the plain; With breath of bugles sound his knell, Then lay him low in Death's drear dell! ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... realm. Only—and the word shadows so wide a space—can he do anything to make good the birthright he has unwittingly taken? She is rich, accomplished, and pretty, worth a dozen like Polly, it seems to him. Must her life be drear and wintry, except as she rambles into the pleasaunce of others? He could give up the seductive delights that have never been his, yet he has come to a time when home and love, wife and child, have a sacred meaning, and are the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, a fool lies here Who tried to hustle ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... time the calm itself is sufficiently dreary, but now there was something which made all things still more drear. For the calm was attended by a thick fog; not a moist, drizzling fog like those of the North Atlantic, but a sultry, dense, dry fog; a fog which gave greater emphasis to the heat, and, instead of alleviating it, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... dreadful curse Of widowhood; the vigils, fasts, And penances; no life is worse Than hopeless life,—the while it lasts. Day follows day in one long round, Monotonous and blank and drear; Less painful were it to be bound On some bleak rock, for aye to hear— Without one chance of getting free— The ocean's melancholy voice! Mine be the sin,—if sin there be, But thou must make a ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... "Drear was the scene—a dark and troublous time— The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime; Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will. Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows, And black ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... coming, winter's coming! Now his hoary head draws near; Winds are blowing, winds are blowing; All around looks cold and drear. Hope of spring must now support us; Winter's reign will pass away; Flowers will bloom, and birds will warble, ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... when the air was electric with patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... gone! oh, madness wild Dwells in that drear and Atheist doom! But death of horror is despoiled, When Heaven shines forth beyond ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... that were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street Or rises to shake the ivied walls ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... had long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an exotic ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... of the moon presents to the telescopic observer just that drear, cold, and chalk-like aspect, which our snow-clad mountains exhibit when the angle of reflection is similar to that in which we behold the lunar surface. In consequence, its mild light is due to the myriads of sparkling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I alone, He too our guest hath known, E'en as some headland on an iron-bound shore, Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge's roar, So is he buffeted on every side By drear misfortune's whelming tide, By every wind of heaven o'erborne Some from the sunset, some from orient morn, Some from the noonday glow. Some from ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... the atmosphere. No inhabitant of Brussels need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and trackless round the capital of Brabant. Having gained the summit of the hill, and having stood and looked long over the cultured but lifeless campaign, I felt a wish to quit the high road, which ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the pomp I see; For, crown'd with roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent fame, And cry, Lo, here! And name The Lady whose smiles inflame The sphere. Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid, And wedded Spouse, if virginal ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... traveller, When far in Arab desert, drear, He found within the catacomb, Alive, the terrors of a tomb? While many a mummy, through the shade, In hieroglyphic stole arrayed, Seem'd to uprear the mystic head, And trace the gloom with ghostly tread; Thou heard'st him ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of mine Is a Song of the Vine, To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns, When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... on the holy Hearth, 190 The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Roland's mouth is the bloody stain, Burst asunder his temple's vein; His horn he soundeth in anguish drear; King Karl and the Franks around him hear. Said Karl, "That horn is long of breath." Said Naimes, "'Tis Roland who travaileth. There is battle yonder by mine avow. He who betrayed him deceives you now. Arm, sire; ring forth your rallying cry, And stand your noble ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he is. Trembles with wrath my frame If I but faintly breathe his awful name." Lilith replied, "Meseemeth, master true Of every craft is He." Forth the two From that drear cavern passed. Ere the water's brim They gained, he plucked the wilding reeds, that slim Stood by a brook. "My pipe I make, one strain Harmonious to wake. Nor yet again Shalt thou such fresh notes hear. Music ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... blanket damp from the spray of heavy rain against the canvas earlier in the night. Soon, with slow dawn's approach, he could make out the dull white of his carbine and sabre against the mud-plastered chimney. In that drear dimness the boy shivered, with a sense of misery rather than from cold, and yearned as only sleepy youth can for the ease of a true bed and dry warm swooning to slumber. He was sustained by no mature sense that this too would pass; it was with a certain bodily despair that he felt ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... was dry and yellow, and the hut itself looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet of her companion,—an aged dame of tall and imposing appearance, who, standing erect, looked down upon her with an air of mingled contempt and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... third flight of rickety stairs the old gentleman sees a shabbily dressed woman, and as he glances at the surroundings his soul sickens. All is drear and desolate. The apartment is cold, and a few coals seem trying to keep a little glow that the poor creature may not ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the auld man, breaking his silence. "But we'd no be wi'oot them. They brichten up the hoose it'd be dull' and drear wi'oot them. I'm hoping that daft lad never comes back, for all o' ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... beside In sage and solemn times have sung Of turneys and of trophies hung; Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... cairn are fixed her eyes Where her murdered father lies, And a voice remote and drear ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... noisy; and Nature when she storms and scolds, is a fish-wife. Possibly you can learn to endure it all but will the game be worth the candle? Without true fondness for outdoors and an inner urge for a measure of seclusion, life in the country is drear. Don't ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... pray for the souls of the inhabitants. Mr. Brooke, in his recent travels, says, "as each hour elapses, they are prepared with a different kind of exhortation or prayer; which, forming a sort of tune or chant, is sung by them during the drear hours of the night." Of one of these pious songs, he gives the following ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... keys have been won by R. C. Bruce at Harvard, Ellis Rivers at Yale, Clyde McDuffie and Rayford Logan at Williams, Charles Houston and John R. Pinkett at Amherst, Adelaide Cooke at Cornell, and Herman Drear at Bowdoin. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... yet, and cannot come Out of the drear and desolate place, So full of ruin's solemn grace, And haunted with the ghost ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... they hound the hull, The sharks they dog the haglets' flight; With one consent the winds, the waves In hunt with fins and wings unite, While drear the harps in cordage sound Remindful wails for ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... the gray branches of the oaks, starlit, I hear the heavy murmurs of the winds, Like the low plains of evil witches, held By drear enchantments from their demon loves. Another night-time, and I shall have found A refuge from their ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... madcaps gone? Why is the house so drear and lone? No merry whistle wakes the day, Nor evening rings with jocund play. No clanging bell, with hasty din, Precedes the shout, "Is Bertie in?" Or "Where is Fred?" "Can I see Jack?" "How soon will he ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again there came to him that odor of mustiness—of all smells the most eerie and drear—which he had noticed on his arrival. Somehow, as long as Nur-el-Din had been there, he had not remarked the appalling loneliness of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... lonely wind and rain, Went sobbing by, repeating o'er and o'er The miserere, desolate and drear, Which every human heart must sometime hear. Pain is but little varied. Its refrain, Whate'er the words are, is for aye the same. The third day brought a change: for with it came Not only sunny smiles to Nature's face, But Roy, our Roy came back ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sleep, my baby dear, A little while forget thy sorrow, The wind is cold, the night is drear, But drearier it will be to-morrow. For none will help, tho' many see Our wretchedness—then close thine eyes, love, Oh, most unbless'd on earth is she Who on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar Power ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am afraid to be in. I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and I don't dare to go where there is light enough ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... his bright and happy home, He has that cell, so drear and dark, The narrow walls, for heaven's blue dome, The clank of chains, for song of lark; And for the grateful voice of friends— That voice which ever lends Its charm where human hearts are found— He hears the key's dull, grating ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... mast, the child and cat, Through the dire time of slaughter sat, By terror both spellbound; But when night came, a silence drear Fell on the coast; and far or near, No voice caught Edric's wakeful ear, Save water's lapping sound. He wandered from the stern to prow, Ate of the stores, and marvelled how He yet might reach the ground; Till low and lower sank the tide, Dark banks of mud spread far and wide Around ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,— So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face What shall be said,—which, like a governing star, Gathers and garners from all things that are ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... glance he views the fortress round. Bristled with pikes, with dark artillery crown'd; Resolves with naked steel to scale the towers, And snatch a realm from Britain's hostile powers. Now drear December's boreal blasts arise, A roaring hailstorm sweeps the shuddering skies, Night with condensing horror mantles all, And trembling watch-lights glimmer from the wall. From bombs o'erarching, fusing, bursting high, The glare scarce wanders thro the loaded sky; And in ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the syllogism which argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every thing by subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kabalastic dogma and wandered off into the drear vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a wisdom than a philosophical automaton, replying by means of springs, and uncoiling its theses like a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb but the monotonous cry of a machine, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... loathsome self new threads to spin; No splendid tapestries for royal rooms, But sordid webs to clothe the caves and tombs. Nor blame the Poet's Metamorphoses: Man's Life has Transformations hard as these; Thou shall become, as Ages hand thee down, The drear day-worker of the crowded town, Who, envying the rough tiller of the soil, Plies her monotonous unhealthy toil, Passing through joyless day to sleepless night With mind enfeebled and decaying sight, Till some good genius,[437] kindred though apart, Resolves to raise thee ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ray All thought of hopeless sorrow flies, Despair and anguish melt away Where'er its healing beams arise. How dark our sinful world would be— A flowerless desert, dry and drear! Did not this light, O God, from thee Its ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... a frivolous, festive year I followed the path that I felt I must; I failed to discover the road was drear, And rather than otherwise liked the dust. It led through a land that I knew of old, Frequented by friendly, familiar folk, Who bowed before Mammon, and heaped up gold, And lived like their neighbours, and loved ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler |
