"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smoking at the club windows on the Ponte Vecchio; Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.'s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of clattering spurs, into ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... breaking and showing ebon patches and infrequent stars through a wind-harried wrack of cloud. The night had grown sensibly colder, and noisy with the rushing sweep of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... seemed to be more daylight left than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds shone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles on either side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now shallower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals of a yard or two, and it is they which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pull it too far down, all Kadabra would be consumed by heat before I could replace it. Come away! Come away! You know not with what mighty powers you play. This is the lever that you seek. Note well the symbol inlaid in white upon its ebon surface." ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lovely light all truth revealed,— The cherished forms, which sad distrust concealed, Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, The kindred angels of a faithful band; Ruby and ebon cross then cast aside, No lamp more needed, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Tower, The Prophetess by all men feared yet loved, Smit by a cold beam from the yellowing west, Shone like a tower of brass. Her ravens twain Crested the turrets of its frowning gate, Unwatched by warder. Sigebert passed in: Beneath the stony vault the queenly Seer Sat on her ebon throne. With pallid lips The King rehearsed his tale; how one with brow Lordlier than man's, and visionary eyes Which, wander where they might, saw Spirits still, Had told him many marvels of some God Mightier than Odin thrice. He paused awhile: A warning shadow ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... trees, in full bloom, attested the glorious wealth of June. On the broad portico, to welcome us, stood the host, with his fresh, charming wife, and, a little retired, a white-headed butler. Greetings over with host and lady, this delightful creature, with ebon face beaming hospitality, advanced, holding a salver, on which rested a huge silver goblet filled with Virginia's nectar, mint julep. Quantities of cracked ice rattled refreshingly in the goblet; sprigs of fragrant mint peered above its ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... orientalist, but neither sparkling nor prominent, soft as the thrush's. It was only when moved by joy, surprise, or sorrow, that the star-like iris dilated and glistened, and then its effect was most eloquent and magical. The distinct ebon-lashes which curtained them were singularly long and beautiful; and when she slept they pressed against her pale cheeks, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... negro as they would some wild beast. They ran up stairs to give the alarm, but when they returned the bird had flown, and while a fruitless search was instituted throughout the basement, Mary was in her own room, hastily removing the ebon tinge from her face. Such were a few among the many wild pranks of the mischief spirits, invented to while away the time. Quite different from this was the employment of the "sisterhood." A number of the older pupils of the school had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wines on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink. To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black and purple ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would perhaps have ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... with a single idiotic trimming; on her breast a large diamond cross. Her head was an Athenian sculpture—no chignon, but the tight coils of antiquity; at their side, one diamond star sparkled vivid flame, by its contrast with those polished ebon snakes. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... —Mr. Ebon C. Ingersoll of Illinois made a strong and eloquent appeal for the passage of the amendment and the liberation of the slave. With the accomplishment of that grand end, said he, "our voices will ascend to Heaven over a country re-united, over a people disinthralled, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of Christchurch, Frank, the man that used to speak at the Union, and was always raving about ebon locks ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... foot was heard old Ocean's roar; And in a shelter'd cove at anchor rode, Close into land, where slept the solemn flood, A gallant bark, that with its silken sails Just bellying, caught the gently rising gales, And from its ebon sides shot dazzling sheen Of silvery rays with mingled gold between. A favouring fairy had beheld the blow Dealt the young hunter by her mortal foe: Thence grown his patroness, she vows to save, And cleaves with magick help the sparkling wave: ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... tree filled with the shifting shadows of beasts. There was a Black-buck at the Bull's heels—such a buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams—a buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns. Beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced a ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... figures standing as if in silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin. One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding to him, I pushed without ceremony ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... solemn night of state, In all his pomp of terror sate: The attendants of his gloomy reign, Diseases dire, a ghastly train! Crowd the vast court. With hollow tone, A voice thus thundered from the throne: 'This night our minister we name, Let every servant speak his claim; Merit shall bear this ebon wand;' All, at the word, stretch'd forth their hand. 10 Fever, with burning heat possess'd, Advanced, and for the wand address'd: 'I to the weekly bills appeal, Let those express my fervent zeal; On every slight occasion near, With violence I persevere.' ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... ebon blackness, laced with lustres From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat, Where wan rills warble over glistening marble; Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet— These ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... feel so shivery-and-livery. Ugh!—so chilly. Here! Send for Dr. ROBSON ROOSTEM PASHA!" cried the Baron, clapping his hands, and a thousand ebon slaves bounded off to execute his commands. Had they not done so, they themselves might have suffered the fate intended for the commands, and have themselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... the mirage faded, the Arab vanished, the thud of the horse's hoofs died in her ears, and Tahar, the dragoman, glided round the tent, and stood before her. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight like ebon jewels. ...
— The Figure In The Mirage - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... humming-bird in emerald coat, Shedding the light, and bearing fain His ebon spear, while at his throat The ruby corselet sparkles plain, On wings of misty speed astain With amber lustres, hangs amain, And tireless hums his happy strain; Emperor of some primeval reign, Over the ages sails to spill The luscious juice of this, and thrill Its very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... difference. He straddled time. He was at one and the same instant all modern, all imminently primitive, capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of remaining modern for as long as he could with his will master the study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white of decoration that ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form, Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee, and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge. But when I look again It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... back Toulon, when proudly on her captive towers Wav'd high the English flag? or fought I then With merchant wiles, when sword in hand I led Your troops to conquest? fought I merchant-like, Or barter'd I for victory, when death Strode o'er the reeking streets with giant stride, And shook his ebon plumes, and sternly smil'd Amid the bloody banquet? when appall'd The hireling sons of England spread the sail Of safety, fought I like a merchant then? Oh, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning. The hush of the immense armament—the glare of the torches, lighting the ebon faces and giant forms of their bearers—the majestic appearance of the king himself—the heroic aspect of Muza—the bare head and glittering banner of Almamen—all combined with the circumstances of the time to invest the spectacle with something singularly ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grinning ebon-faced giant he uttered some rapid words in his own language and told him my name, whereupon he snapped fingers in true native fashion, the negro showing an even set of white teeth as an expression of pleasure passed over ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... rocky steeps, Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch: He fails alone who feebly creeps; He wins, who dares the hero's march. Be thou a hero! let thy might Tramp on eternal snows its way, And, through the ebon walls of night, Hew down a passage ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... I saw the golden glories die, I thought on life's uncertainty, And as night came on in her ebon gloom, Oh! I thought of the dark and the dreamless tomb, How soon man's fairest prospects flee, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... pallid, Ebon slaves and white, When Minx mounts her music-stool Neighbours fly with fright. Ah, the bass's thunder! Oh, the treble's trips! Eugh, the horrid tyrannies Of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... nor texture; it was not matter—and yet it suggested solidity; an entire cessation, a complete absorption of light; an ebon veil at once immaterial and palpable. I stretched, involuntarily, my hand out toward it, and felt it quickly ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... I have no more The power to wreak revenge! The charms I had From my own mother, that grim Colchian queen, From Hecate, that bound dark gods to me To do my bidding, I have buried them, Ay, and for love of thee!—have sunk them deep In the dim bosom of our mother Earth; The ebon wand, the veil of bloody hue, Gone!—and I stand here helpless, to my foes No more a thing of terror, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... me unto the silken down On the cheeks of a dusky maiden, like the cane straight and brown, Seeing the spot of beauty in waterlilies' cups Is of the poets fabled to be all beauty's crown? Yea, and I see all lovers the swarthy-coloured mole, Under the ebon pupil, do honour and renown. Why, then, do censors blame me for loving one who's all A mole? May Allah rid ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... ground with Bacchus, that with Ceres suits; That other loads the trees with happy fruits, A fourth with grass, unbidden, decks the ground: Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crown'd; India black ebon and white iv'ry bears; And soft Idume weeps her od'rous tears: Thus Pontus sends her beaver stones from far: And naked Spaniards temper steel for war: Epirus for th' Elean chariot breeds (In hopes of palms) a race of running steeds. This is th' original contract; these the laws Imposed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... broad daylight, by the uncertain Rembrandt glare of the chamber-candle, its gorgeous palm-leaf pattern and soft folds made a by no means unpicturesque or unbecoming drapery, in conjunction with the girl's grand, soft, un-English eyes, and equally un-English ebon hair. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... And with her weapon ope's the senior's throat; His aged blood exhausted sees, and pours Her juices copious: part his mouth receives; And part the wound. When AEson these had drank, Their hoary whiteness lost, his beard and hair, An ebon tinge receiv'd; his leanness fled; His pallid ghastly face no more was seen; His hollow veins with added blood were fill'd; And all his limbs in lusty plumpness swell'd. The wondering AEson, such himself beheld, As the last forty ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... swallows his drink greedily, singing to himself between the gulps.] "Oh, the gals! Oh, the gals! I am awfully fond of the gals! [Putting his empty glass upon the counter and making for the door on the left.] Be they ebon or blond, Of the gals I am fond; I am dreadfully fond ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... brooding darkness spreads her jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ached for the Australians And the Borriobooli-Ghalians, And the poor dear Amahagger, Yes, it did; And she loved the black Numidian, And the ebon Abyssinian, And the charcoal-coloured Guinean, Oh, she did! And she said she'd cross the seas With a ship of bread and cheese For those starving Chimpanzees, So ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne? Or by what reason or what right divine, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be obliterated. The stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebon ether in ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... white, And the air is crisp and chill; While the ebon wings of night Are spread on ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze on the landscape, if thy soul puts no check on the dull delight of the senses. Two wings only raise thee to the summit of Truth, where the Cherub shall comfort the sorrow, where the Seraph shall enlighten the joy. Dark as ebon spreads the one wing, white as snow gleams the other,—mournful as thy reason when it descends into the deep; exulting as thy faith when ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the desired object? | More t'other. | Infinitely, peculiarly, and most intensely | the entire extreme and the absolute reverse. | | Quite different. | Dissimilar as the far-extended poles, or the | deep-tinctured ebon skins of the dark | denizens of Sol's sultry plains and the fair | rivals of descending flakes of virgin snow, | melting with envy on the peerless breast of | fair Circassia's ten-fold white-washed | daughters. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth; Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, With two sister Graces ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... inherit all her father's beauty and peculiar grace, and endeared her to her young mother's heart with an increased warmth of love, while the dark flashing eyes of Lord Manvers and his glossy, flowing, ebon curls rendered him, Edward declared, the perfect likeness of his mother, and therefore he was the father's pet. Round Mr. Hamilton were grouped, in attitudes which an artist might have been glad to catch for natural grace, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... forests, and the far blue stretch Of regal mountains piled along the sky, Must see, for many an eve, the level sun Sheathe, with his latest gold, the heaving brine, By thousand ripples shivered, or Night's pomp Brooding in silence, ebon and profound, Upon the murmuring darkness of the deep, Broken by flashings, that the parted wave Sends white and star-like throujch its bursting foam. Yet not more dear the opening dawn of heaven Poured ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... accidentally out in front! A pleasant sight it was to behold him in a chance rencontre with some one genteel enough to be recognized—as he stood, resting on his left leg; his left arm stuck upon his hip; his right leg easily bent outwards; his right hand lightly holding his ebon cane, with the gilt head of which he occasionally tapped his teeth; and his eyes, half closed, scrutinizing the face and figure of each "pretty gal" as she passed, and to whom he had a delicious consciousness that he appeared an object of interest! This was indeed HAPPINESS, as far as his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... with a princely air, I filled my crop with the richest fare; I cawed all day 'mid a lordly crew, And I made more noise in the world than you! The sun shone forth on my ebon wing; I looked and ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... robes unsewn The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies, Trailing behind him with a restless moan Like cattle herded for ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... of rosy night Drives off the ebon morn afar, While through the murmur of the light The huntsman winds his mad guitar. Then, lady, wake! my brigantine Pants, neighs, and prances to be free; Till the creation I am thine, To some ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... woo Those merry, dark-eyed girls, With faces of ebon hue, And teeth like eastern pearls! One vowed my love she would repay— Her heart my song had won— When winter snows had passed away, And ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... beware, then he had spoke, And, hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944 The Destinies will curse thee for this stroke; They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck'st a flower. Love's golden arrow at him shoull have fled, And not Death's ebon dart, to strike ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... grave That now o'er care-worn temples wave, Oh! what change hath pass'd since ye O'er youthful brows fell carelessly! In silken curls of ebon hue That with such wild luxuriance grew, The raven's dark and glossy wing A richer shadow scarce could fling. The brow that tells a tale of Care That Sorrow's pen hath written there, In characters ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... with it, and ready to overflow, like a goblet of Bohemian glass filled with the "foaming draught of eastern France," if we may be permitted to make so unworthy a comparison. Her merry black eyes were now dancing, and her ebon curls rippled from her smooth ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the crown of myrtle and laurel which he was to place on the head of Corinne. She removed the shawl which graced her forehead, and all her ebon hair fell in ringlets about her shoulders. She advanced with her head bare, and her look animated by a sentiment of pleasure and gratitude which she sought not to conceal. She a second time bent her knee, to receive the crown; ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... had restrained their course, Tents and pavilions, countless foot and horse, Clothed all the spacious plain, and gleaming threw Terrific splendours on the gazer's view. But when the Sun had faded in the west, And night assumed her ebon-coloured vest, The mighty Chief approached the sacred throne, And generous thus made danger all his own: "The rules of war demand a previous task, To watch this dreadful foe I boldly ask; With wary step the wondrous youth to view, And mark the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... architectural beauty nor salient character; wooden warehouses, Malay shanties, and white-washed streets being merely attractive from the ever-changing scheme of colour painted by varieties of race and costume. Tamils of ebon blackness drive picturesque teams of humped white oxen in red waggons laden with purple sugar-cane. Noble-looking Sikhs, in spotless linen, stride past with kingly gait. Brown Siamese, in many-coloured scarves and turbans gleaming with gold thread, chaffer and bargain at open ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... are those orbs of light, In all their bright array, That gem the ebon brow of night, Or ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... received news of the World War that had already started, and, anticipating an immediate invasion of British East Africa by the Germans, was hurrying homeward to fetch his wife to a place of greater security. With him were a score of his ebon warriors, but far too slow for the ape-man was the progress of these trained ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... interesting to me was the large colony of yellow-headed blackbirds that had taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of the upper end of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the Icteridae family, a kind ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... direction of the trail. MacDonald followed close behind him. It was dark—that almost ebon-black hour that precedes summer dawn in the northern mountains. The moon had long ago disappeared in the west. When a few minutes later they paused in the little opening on the trail Aldous could just make out the shadowy form of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... away into the sky, rising rapidly, because, from one of the swirling eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... condescension was all on the other side. Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did a credit to his side of the Church. But our friend the parson was discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie could hardly have been clean during the last forty-eight ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... suffer so much from the cold as poor Gahra. His ebon skin has turned ashen gray, he shivers continually, can hardly speak, and sits ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakawa himself is there; And round the feast in the Sacred Ring, [48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their teepee alone and ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... autumn glow'd Upon the ebon board; The blood that grape of Burgundy In other days had pour'd, Gleam'd from its crystal vase—but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and frailer for their knots of ebon stamens, or the delicate moth who shows fine black pencillings among his pearly down. Still, nobody denied that she had "an uncommon purty face of her own," and the neighbours, moreover, always found her "plisant ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... about, I sat down to await M. Picot. There was stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the door curtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face I remembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Only three men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M. Picot and Le Borgne ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... dat, massa leetenant. Not pleasant place to take swim," answered the man, with a broad grin on his ebon features, showing his ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... wondering whether they would be able to hear each other. As they got in Lady Enid, after giving the direction, said to the cabman, who was a short person, with curling ebon whiskers, a broken-up expression and a ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixed quantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himself in seeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebon surface. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... medium height, with a full, voluptuous form, a complexion of pale olive, with brilliantly scarlet lips, and eyes like "black diamonds," and hair that had almost a purple tinge in its ebon masses; her features, though far from being regular, were piquant, and when she was speaking lighted into fascinating animation ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that you should wed And Antoine keeps his first love still, And Antoine is so well to do, You may be happy if you will His pleading eyes ask leave to woo" 'Twas a relief to steal away, And tell her ebon rosary, And to the Virgin Mother pray, Thinking that she in Heaven above, Remembered all of earthly love, And human sympathy, And having suffered human pain— Known what it was to grieve in vain— Might bend to listen to her prayer, And make the absent one her care In pleading with ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... dinner, which was served to us on old silver dishes, blackened and battered. The exile, my darling pet, is like the railing, emaciated! He is pale and silent, and bears traces of suffering. At thirty-seven he might be fifty. The once beautiful ebon locks of youth are streaked with white like a lark's wing. His fine blue eyes are cavernous; he is a little deaf, which suggests the Knight ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... are nearly always pinioned here, a stupid habit which our people have learnt from the ancient and time-honoured brutality of "swan upping," we never see them flying. They are then very beautiful objects, with their plumage of ebon ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... horses, all vehicles on the land. As ant-hills, the bridge arches crawled with processions of carts, coaches, drays, every sort of wheeled, rumbling thing, the noses of the horses behind touching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the thither ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... squad stood at attention, their leader surveyed the bloody section of shore. He checked each of the prone men and found only one still alive, a seven-foot, ebon-skinned warrior who got to his feet when the leader kicked him and stood erect but swaying drunkenly from the blow Mike had laid across his skull ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... at us, seemingly on puffs of wind. Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave, and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... azure that abashed the heavens. He had been very near to loveliest hair of Egypt, so close that its odorous filaments had blown across his face and his artist senses had been caught and tangled in its ebon sorcery. But down each side this broad brow was a rippling wave of gold, over each shoulder a heavy braid of gold that fell, straightened by its own weight, a span below the waist. The winds of the desert had roughened it and the bright threads ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... her for the first time to wonder if she was pretty, whether she was going to be one of the women that men desire. Without the least vanity she studied herself, appraised the soft brown cheeks framed with ebon hair, the steady, dark eyes so quick to passion and to gaiety, the bronzed throat full and rounded, the supple, flowing grace ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... power, and they his slaves In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell; And keep their state from palaces to graves, 390 In all resorts of men—invisible, But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell To tyrant or impostor bids them rise, Black winged demon forms—whom, from the hell, His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies, 395 He loosens to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... well I marked his open brow, His sweet and tender eyes, His ruddy lips that ever smiled, His glittering teeth betwixt, And flowing robe embroidered o'er, With leaves and blossoms mixed. He wore a chaplet of the rose; His palfrey, white and sleek, Was marked with many an ebon spot, And many a purple streak; Of jasper was his saddle-bow, His housings sapphire stone, And brightly in his stirrup glanced The purple calcedon. Fast rode the gallant cavalier, As youthful horsemen ride; "Peyre Vidal! know that I am Love," The blooming stranger ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... themselves, thus keeping the race pure, any of them would form a fit subject for the sculptor who would wish to immortalize in marble an Antinous, a Hylas, a Daphnis, or an Apollo. The women are as beautiful as the men are handsome. They have clear ebon skins, not coal-black, but of an inky hue. Their ornaments consist of spiral rings of brass pendent from the ears, brass ring collars about the necks, and a spiral cincture of brass wire about their loins for the purpose of retaining their calf and goat skins, which are folded about their bodies, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opera Comique, stood by him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him. She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant and yet ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... die—they'll hang us high, unshaven, undefended! Ah, wolves are we that roam the sea, and rend with savage fury; as soft our mind, our hearts as kind will be judge and jury! To rob and slay we go our way, our vessel low and raking; and men who hail our ebon sail may well be chilled ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... sky grew darker, and as gloom gathered above so it increased below, till all the sea spread out a smooth ebon mass. Darkness settled down, and the sun's face was thus obscured, and a preternatural gloom gathered upon the face of nature. Overhead vast black clouds went sweeping past, covering all things, faster and faster, till at last far down in the northern ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... appearance in Fore Street—he being so tall and the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon face toppled ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and intense As midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth! Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors—and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with ebon heads That climb the slender fence along, As black as ink, as thick as weeds, Ye little Africans ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his years ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... thro timeless hours my eyes Without intent have watched the slowing flight Of ebon crows across quiescent skies Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird, Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd That flow far eastward to the coming night. And as I turn again to foiling thought My spirit leaves me—as faint zephyrs leave The trees at evening; tho all day they've sought A ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... invention, And pressed her hands against her side Her bursting merriment to hide. To hear our Gascon talk, no Sue Nor Poll in town but that he knew; With each he'd passed a blissful night More to their own than his delight. This one he loved for she was fair, That for her glossy ebon hair. One miss, to tame his cruel rigour, Had brought him gifts.—She owned his vigour In short it wanted but his gaze To set each trembling heart ablaze. His strength surpassed his luck,—the test— In one short night ten times he'd blessed ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery. And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, Then go—but go alone the while— Then view St. David's ruin'd pile; And, home returning, soothly swear. Was ever scene ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... selfe thy sacrifice By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes, Which now are alter'd white, And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the gellie's left. Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you, Then swearing to a saint ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Finola, shaking down the mantle of her ebon locks, and setting the golden combs more firmly in them; "only, if I perish, I prithee let there be no cairns or Ogams. Let me fall, as a beauty should, face upward; and if it be but a swoon, and the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... banks and bars, where their tough, interlacing roots soon form an almost impregnable barrier to the onslaught of the flood. Only a stone's throw away there stood a great old black willow, with a sturdy trunk of ebon hue, crowned with a mass of soft green leafage, lighter where the breeze lifted up the under side to the sunlight. Many times, doubtless, the winds had shorn and the sleet had rudely trimmed this old veteran, but there remained ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... to the farther end of the portico, where Alfred Branch, in his natty suit of white grasscloth, plucked at his ebon whiskers with untanned fingers, and talked society nothings with the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... terrene Rolled in the beam of first-created day, And all its elements obeyed the voice Of Him, the great Creator; Air, and Fire, 10 And Earth, and Water, each its ministry Performed, whilst Chaos from his ebon throne Leaped up; and so magnificent, and decked, And mantled in its ambient atmosphere, The living world began its state! To thee, Spirit of Air, I lift the venturous song, Whose viewless presence fills ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... victor without a rival!—it is Alcibiades, the destroyer of Athens! Turn to the temple of the Olympian god, pass the brazen gates, proceed through the columned aisles [121], what arrests the awe and wonder of the crowd! Seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, of gold and gems—the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand the statue of Victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, the cloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of Phidias, the Homeric dream imbodied [122]—the majesty of the Olympian ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ebon dart, And cure the pangs of this convulsive heart. Snatch me, ye whirlwinds! far from human race, Toss'd through the void illimitable space Or if dismounted from the rapid cloud, Me with his whelming wave let Ocean shroud! So, Pandarus, thy hopes, three orphan fair; Were doom'd to wander ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... attention to dressing their ebon-black hair. None are so poor or humble as to forget this inexpensive ornamentation. Nature has endowed them with a profusion of covering for the head, and they wear no other. It is not very fine, to be sure, but always black ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... fretted niche and fairy pediment—meshed like gossamer with inextricable tracery: many a quaint monument of past times standing to tell its far-off tale in the place from which it has since perished—in the midst of the throng and murmur of those shadowy streets—all grim with jutting props of ebon woodwork, lightened only here and there by a sunbeam glancing down from the scaly backs, and points, and pyramids of the Norman roofs, or carried out of its narrow range by the gay progress of some snowy cap or scarlet camisole. The painter's vocation was fixed ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... supper: so much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where, it standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden: there did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... and Irish—he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sense of desertion. But with this man beside her, who, she knew, would do anything he could to help, the place did not look quite so bad to Gladys as it had done the day before. There was a ray of light now where, before, ebon blackness had prevailed. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... myriad of stars on a vast ebon canopy. One could see only shadows in denser shadows, and the serene sure movements of the men as they lifted the whale-boat from Bauda's shed and carried it lightly to the water were mysterious to ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of want and woe! A brilliant meteor in an ebon sky! Thy soul's weird music all did flow From heart-strings ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... flowing of the spring. Two brothers there lie lock'd in stony sleep,— I go to wake them on the mountain's side." The Dervise laid his forehead in the dust, "Allah go with thee, since it must be so! Take thou this ebon bowl, and cast it down; The ball will roll before thee swift and sure, Until it stop beneath the mountain's side; There stop thou; and, dismounting, leave thy steed, And climb the fearful hill; but oh! beware Thy glance turn never backward on the way! Above, the golden fountain bubbles ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... forehead Love his trophies fits, A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying: And in the midst himself full proudly sits, Himself in awful majesty arraying: Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow, And ready shafts; deadly those weapons show; Yet sweet the death appear'd, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... conducted me to the strong-room where the wonderful image is kept. The Saint is of wood, about fifteen inches high, and laden with silver trinkets, which have been presented on different occasions. When exposed to public view, it has the honours of field-marshal accorded to it. It is a mystic deity with ebon features—so different from the lovely Child presented to us on canvas by the great masters! During the feast held in its honour (January 20), pilgrims from the remotest districts of the island and from across ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... that he might catch him if he could. Passing under the frowning batteries of the old fortifications, we landed at a handsome wharf among a crowd of people of various tints, from the white skin of the European to the ebon one of the sons of Africa, and habited in every variety of Eastern costume—Englishmen in white dresses wisely shading their heads under japanned umbrellas; Parsees, Chinese, Caffres, and Chetties from the coast of Coromandel, wearing prodigious ear-rings, and with most peculiar ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... thousands sailed into the north at the call of the great man they all had learned to respect, and, respecting, love. Pacing the flagship of this mighty fleet, second only to the navy of Helium, was the ebon Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born, his heart beating strong in anticipation of the coming moment when he should hurl his savage crews and the weight of his mighty ships upon the enemies ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sighed Clary, hiding her fair face among his ebon curls, "and the new life with which you have inspired me is ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... gradually forming into two divisions, awaited the arrival of the advancing army of the Turks. The Moslemin came forward in fierce array, and with the sanguine courage inspired by expected triumph. Very conspicuous was Iskander bounding in his crimson vest upon his ebon steed ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... wake, and fall asleep again, The same delights in visions rise; There's nothing can appear more plain Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes. I wake again, and all alone Sits Darkness on his ebon throne. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... complexions which the artists, in their desire to flatter, ordinarily assign to women, as well as from the attractiveness of Sarah, even in advanced age. When a Theban king contracted marriage with an Ethiopian of ebon blackness, we are entitled to assume a political motive; and the most probable political motive under the circumstances of the time was the desire for military assistance. Though in the early wars between the Kashi and the Egyptians the prowess of the former is not represented as great, and ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... clung with trembling to his side, while she listened to the narration of the terrible overthrow of those gorgeous cities, and the rescue of her brother's household, and beheld in the distance the seething and silent grave of millions, sending up a swaying column of ebon cloud, like incense, to God's ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... Knapp-of-Reeds to a plantation twenty miles away, upon a pass from Mr. Ware, on the errand his conversation disclosed. He was a fine figure of a man despite his ebon hue, and the master, looking at him, very naturally noted his straight, strong back, square shoulders, full, round neck, and shapely, well-balanced head. His face was rather heavy—grave, it would have been called ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... whose whisper will soothe you. Come to me when the morning sun blazes across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted firmament like a cup brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all the constellations that float in my ebon goblet. Do you know the charm of melancholy? Where will you find a sympathy like mine in your hours of sadness? Does the ocean share your grief? Does the river listen to your sighs? The salt wave, that called to you from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... progressed, the country seemed to Will more and more beautiful, and by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... long use With tobacco's balmy juice From snowy white to ebon turned By the incense daily burned. Laid at night within thy case Of velvet soft—thy resting place— Whence with leering, stained face ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... "'Hence, long-tailed, ebon-eyed, nocturnal ranger! What led thee hither 'mongst the types and cases? Didst thou not know that running midnight races O'er standing types was fraught with imminent danger? Did hunger lead thee—didst thou think to find Some rich old ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... fun to themselves. The colored folks had their parties and festivities as well, their mistresses superintending the suppers and decorating the tables with their own hands, while ladies and gentlemen from the mansion came to look on, an attention which was considered a compliment by the ebon guests. And the Christmas season rarely passed without a colored wedding, the holidays being specially ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... McGregor, hot but triumphant in a petticoat that crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of blacking—so recent that they entertained some concern lest it trickle down their heated faces in disfiguring rivulets. Mary's white dress rustled as crisply as did her mother's petticoat and her hair, crimped and ironed until ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... worshipp'd forms, the Genii of the Wood! But see, the regal plumes, the couch of state! [o] Still, where it moves, the wise in council wait! See now borne forth the monstrous mask of gold, [Footnote 1] And ebon chair [also Footnote 1] of many a serpent-fold; These now exchang'd for gifts that thrice surpass The wondrous ring, and lamp, and horse of brass. [p] What long-drawn tube transports the gazer home, [Footnote 2] Kindling with stars at noon the ethereal dome? 'Tis here: and here circles ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... to understand the motives, the customs and the social laws that guide me? I do not wish to hurt you, nor to seem to undervalue the honour which you have done me, but the thing you desire may not be. Regardless of the foolish belief of the peoples of the outer world, or of Holy Thern, or ebon First Born, I am not dead. While I live my heart beats for but one woman—the incomparable Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium. When death overtakes me my heart shall have ceased to beat; but what comes after that I know not. And in that I am as wise as Matai Shang, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A work ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... season; ye have breathed Rich benedictions o'er us; ye have wreathed Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard In many places;—some has been upstirr'd From out its crystal dwelling in a lake, By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake, Nested and quiet in a valley mild, Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild About the earth: happy are ye ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats |
