"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 full ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... saw them both from a distance against the vastness of the gold. Bushes and shrubs, and two or three giant pine trees, between the summit of Drouva and the plain, showed black, and the figures of woman and child were almost ebon. Dion watched them. He could not see any features. The two were now like carved things which could move, and only by their movements could they tell him anything. The gun over the boy's shoulder was like a long finger pointing to the west where a redness ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... 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 been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... said Egremont, and he pointed to the portrait of a saint by Allori: the face of a beautiful young girl, radiant and yet solemn, with rich tresses of golden brown hair, and large eyes dark as night, fringed with ebon lashes that ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... or a dark heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre through the obscurity of the night, they easily fancied they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush, and ready to spring on them. But it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp of horses, and the hoarse rumbling ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple-branches, mute: With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Melancholy Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy, Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There under Ebon shades and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... thy deathful 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 ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with the catechu. Bichromate of potash alone in water will give a good stain. A solution of 2 oz. of pearl ash and 2 oz. of potash mixed in a quart of water makes a good stain. Potash solution darkens the wood, and when applied very strong will produce an almost ebon hue, due to what we might describe as the burning of ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... shouted forth, the 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 ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ruined capitals: then was seen a group Of granite elephants 'neath a dome to stoop, Shapeless, giant forms to view arise, Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties! Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries: O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon-trees; Temples, where seated on their rich tiled thrones, Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones; Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare, Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees Great gods of bronze, their hands upon their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... 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 autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... mantling mists that circle round the tomb, Where bitter groans resound for aye amid the starless gloom; Who saw the cities of the blest, and with as fearless tread Paced through the ebon halls of hell, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... a 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 me. Their eyes saw where mine were blind. Pere Victorien and I were seated ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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 A dame who gratefully expressed ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a wild confusion in my mind of shrieks and groans; of foaming, tossing waters; of pieces of plank driven to and fro; of arms outstretched; of despairing countenances, some pale or livid, some of ebon hue, lighted up ever and anon by a flash of lightning. I was clinging, I found, to a small piece of timber torn from the wreck. Now I was driven near the sands; now carried out to sea; tossed about on the tops of the foaming waves, rolled over and over, and almost drowned with ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... delicate that she fairly sparkled, she took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed, uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes, long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating the white. Dark, shining, she was a night with stars, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... fur'ous. It's real fun. I guess you'd better come right up, Dr. Percival;" and the ebon head darted off, without one word ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Mrs. 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 it was fuzzy as a bushman's, drifted out ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... steering for the Seychelles Islands, the nearest place at which negroes could be landed without the risk of again being enslaved. There were upwards of three hundred of these poor creatures on board, of all tints, from yellow and brown to ebon black. Some few, chiefly Gallas, were fine-looking people, with nothing of the negro in their features, and of a dark copper colour; but the greater number, according to European notions, were excessively ugly specimens ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... it open. The scene was squalid. A rush-candle was burning on a table. Around it squatted seven men who rose and bowed as the strategus entered. In the dim flicker he could just recognize the burly shipmaster Hasdrubal and gigantic Hib, the Libyan "governor," whose ebon face betrayed itself ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... height, her figure was exquisitely moulded, and the beautiful head was poised on the shoulders with that indescribable proud grace one sometimes sees in perfect marble sculpture. But the delicate woeful Oenone face, as white and gleaming under its shining coil of ebon hair, as a statue carved from the heart of Lygdos; how shall mere words ever portray its peculiar loveliness, its faultless purity? Unconsciously she had paused in the exact position selected for that beautiful figure of "Faith" which Palmer has given to the world; and standing with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... followed by another clang, louder and more brattling than the first. The solid walls of the dungeon were shaken, and the heavy columns rocked; while, to Alizon's affrighted gaze, it seemed as if the sable statue arose upon its ebon throne, and stretched out its arm menacingly towards her. The poor girl was saved from further terror ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... threatened to hang the man who gave the vicomte a sword. As the majority of the colonists were ignorant of what lay behind this remarkable quarrel, they naturally took sides with the man whose laugh was more frequent than his frown. Thus, the vicomte still shuffled the ebon dominoes of a night and sang out jovially, "Doubles!" Whenever the man he had so basely wronged passed him, he spat contemptuously and cried: "See, Messieurs, what it is to be without a sword!" And as for Brother Jacques, it was: "And how is Monsieur Jacques's ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... lover's pride, Prince Ember led his beloved to the King. Never had the Shadow Witch looked more beautiful. Her ebon hair fell like a rich cloak over her grey robes; her cheek was mantled by a crimson flush; her dark eyes gleamed with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster—"Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously that it ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... the joys of that domestic glade Can wipe the tear from off his rugged brow, A stone beneath the yew-tree's ebon shade Deep o'er his heart a heavier shade doth throw. (Oh! sad indeed, when thus such tidings come That stun, even when by slow degrees they steal,) That tablet tells how cold within the tomb Are hands whose fond warm grasp he long'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... though as they 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 and ivory. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... 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
... chapel was crowded. Nearly twelve hundred persons were present. All sat promiscuously in respect of color. In one pew was a family of whites, next a family of colored persons, and behind that perhaps might be seen, side by side, the ebon hue of the negro, the mixed tint of the mulatto, and the unblended whiteness of the European. Thus they sat in crowded contact, seemingly unconscious that they were outraging good taste, violating natural laws, and "confounding distinctions of divine appointment!" ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Even sound has been included in Nature's 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
... 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 if he had been white—and his ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... were bent lower than ever, his ebon eyes were more doglike. Yet, he still dreamed of reinstatement, for he saw (though he could not understand it) that the warriors were again ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] 60 To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... relapsed into thoughtful silence. The pale fire-light glowed on her delicate features. One tiny white hand rested on the cushioned arm of the chair, and the large, melancholy blue eyes were fixed on the glowing blaze within the shining ebon grate. The profile was strictly Grecian in outline, and the soft, silken hair fell in a shower of golden ripples over her small, sloping shoulders. Her lips were vermilion red, and disclosed two rows of tiny pearls whenever ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... risen, and we stood facing each other. I felt that I was right here playing for that greatest of all stakes, my self-respect, the loss of which to any man, I had long before discovered, means ebon failure. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... minister to-night; Let him who wills prefer his right, And unto the most worthy hand We will commit the ebon wand." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But the shells came too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... worlds! Then beautiful the ball of this 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 living scene, Whose element ten thousand thousand ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... dotted tribe with ebon heads That climb the slender fence along, As black as ink, as thick as weeds, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of ebon hue May beat a heart that's kind and true. The worst of scamps in time of need Will ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... plumed black top and along the swelling branches decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass. It was very witch-like, of a witch in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devilish voices rushed 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
... well-known pool, whose crystal depth A sandy bottom shows. Awhile he stands Gazing the inverted landscape, half afraid To meditate the blue profound below; Then plunges headlong down the circling flood. His ebon tresses, and his rosy cheek, Instant emerge: and through the obedient wave, At each short breathing by his lip repell'd, With arms and legs according well, he makes, As humour leads, an easy-winding path; While from his polish'd sides a dewy light Effuses ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... or less entirely grown over on the trees whose wood is very different from that of indigenous trees, such as the very soft woods of Baobab, the Papayers, and on the very hard woods as iron wood, ebon, etc. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... the lantern was reflected from the glossy ebon of her hide, spotted with stains of a duller black. For an instant she remained motionless, crouching upon her thick-set limbs, with her head close to the floor, as if calculating the distance of the leap by which she was to reach the horse; then ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wicked seven winds howl wildly round, And crashing cedars falling shake the ground. Now Tsil-lattu her black wings spreads o'er all, Dark shrouding all the forest with her pall, And from his steed for safety each dismounts, And o'er their heads now break the ebon founts. But hark! what is that dreadful roaring noise? The dragons come! Their flaming crests they poise Above, and nearer blaze their eyes of fire, And see! upon them rush the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... 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 Tigress, full-bellied ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... —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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the storm-tossed waters close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he knew—oblivion, deep, ebon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various |
