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Melancholy   Listen
noun
Melancholy  n.  
1.
Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
2.
Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
3.
Pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness. (Obs.) "Hail, divinest Melancholy!"
4.
Ill nature. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books



... one of horror. A screech-owl had just sent its dreadful note in melancholy waves out upon the still night air. It started low, almost pianissimo, rose with a hideous crescendo to fortissimo, and then died away like the wail of a lost soul. It came from just ahead of them and to the right. Alice's horse shied and danced nervously. Prudence's ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... trades than to husbandry"; in spite, also, of the almost sacred character of husbandry, which was clearly recognized in "elder times," so that even the rudest and most savage peoples respected ploughmen and tillers of the soil in time of war. He then quotes some melancholy verses of Virgil, and gives the whole chapter a twist of humour by ending up with—"But not a word of this in any case, especially that I told you so; and we will proceed to the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... walked back to his seat, the exultant light went out of his eyes, his limbs relaxed, the windows and the sunlight cleared to vulgar day, and his face flushed with timidity. He sat down with a feeling of melancholy in his heart, as if something divine had faded out of ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... time insinuates delay. Seeing her displeased, he urges for the morrow: but, before she can answer, gives her the alternative of other days. Yet, wanting to reward himself, as if he had obliged her, she repulses him on a liberty he would have taken. He is enraged. Her melancholy reflections on her future prospects with such a man. The moral she deduces from her story. [A note, defending her conduct from the censure which passed upon her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... seen to speak to the lone knight, the one who had been made prisoner last of all. A melancholy figure, he did not seem to realize that release had come with the advent of these knights. In fact, through all the hubbub he seemed to have been lost within himself. No doubt, they were bitter thoughts that possessed him and at ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... least the boat, and attempt our relief. The workmen looked steadfastly upon the writer, and turned occasionally towards the vessel, still far to leeward.[14] All this passed in the most perfect silence, and the melancholy solemnity of the group made an impression never to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the bolder of them had summoned up courage to settle among our oysters, despite the scarecrow which we had set up; but they took to flight immediately upon our approach, and hovered over us all day, uttering their melancholy cries with such persistency, and creating such a volume of sound, that we could scarcely hear our ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... nor when she light, did any body press (as she seemed to expect, and staid for it,) to take her down, but was taken down by her own gentlemen. She looked mighty out of humour, and had a yellow plume in her hat, (which all took notice of,) and yet is very handsome, but very melancholy: nor did any body speak to her, or she so much as smile or speak to any body. I followed them up into White Hall, and into the Queene's presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... on the history of genius without being impressed with a melancholy feeling at the obscurity in which the lives of the poets of our country are, with few exceptions, involved. That they lived, and wrote, and died, comprises nearly all that is known of many, and, of others, the few ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... she is devoted to her husband," said Rosamond, implying a notion of necessary sequence which the scientific man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman; but she was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon. "Do you ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your scorn of convention gone? ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... Slave for twice two (m) Year. My Cloaths were fashionably new, Nor were my Shifts of Linnen Blue; But things are changed, now at the Hoe, I daily work, and Bare-foot go, In weeding Corn or feeding Swine, I spend my melancholy Time. Kidnap'd and Fool'd, I hither fled, To shun a hated Nuptial (n) Bed, And to my cost already find, Worse Plagues than those I left behind. Whate'er the Wanderer did profess, Good-faith I cou'd not chuse but guess The Cause which brought ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook

... Andrews Bay,' beautiful alike in winter mists and in the crystal days of still winter sunshine; the quiet brown streets brightened by the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands; the dark blue distant hills, and far-off snowy peaks of the Grampians; the majestic melancholy towers, monuments of old religion overthrown; the deep dusky porch of the college chapel, with Kennedy's arms in wrought iron on the oaken door; the solid houses with their crow steps and gables, all the forlorn memories ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... supposed that his occupation would have inclined him to melancholy. Far from it. He was a brisk, active creature, about middle height, with jet black hair, and a quick circulation. He was never overcome, as he might reasonably have been, with meditations on the flux of time. He never rose in the morning saddened by the thought that the day would be ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... pair of Dresden figures, a blue Sevres vase of graceful shape, a bronze clock with gilded rose-wreathed Cupids; and then raised his eyes to the two portraits which hung above. One of these was familiar enough—the dark melancholy face of Felix Arnault, whose portrait by different hands and at different periods of his life hung in nearly every room of La Glorieuse. The blood surged into his face and receded again at sight of the other. Oh, so strangely like! The ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... itself, the true centre of his inheritance. The house there had been uninhabited since his father's early years; it was a closed and melancholy memento; he had reanimated a comfortable stone dwelling at Shadrach Furnace; its solid grey facade drawn out by two happy additions to the original, small square. It had been, traditionally, at first, the house of the head furnacemen; sometime after ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... was an old one, in the pockets of which Clemens kept a melancholy assortment of pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, neckties, letters, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... land we see from any hilltop. As we gaze at its far off rises, its hazy, shadowy valleys, we feel within us a longing and a faint melancholy. There, we think, dwell the friends who would love us, if we were known to them, and there, too, must be found the beauty and the happiness that we have failed to discover where we are. It seems to us that there, in the distance, ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... dwelt by the Mediterranean might not ally himself with a woman of the Bear clan whose home was on the shores of the Baltic, and who was in no way related to him by consanguinity. These details are dry, but absolutely necessary to the comprehension of the First Radical's stormy and melancholy career. We must also remember that, among the tribes, there was no fixed or monarchical government. The little democratic groups were much influenced by the medicine-men or wizards, who combined the functions of the modern clergy and of the medical profession. The old men, too, had ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... pleased to see her, and made no attempt to assume the contrary. He was sitting in his library, moody and melancholy, still in the half-dazed condition into which the death of Christine Manderson had cast him. His face was drawn, haggard, and sickly; his eyes were bloodshot. He looked up at her with a forbidding frown, and did not move from ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... sad farewell as the Zaire passed round the bend of the river, and looked, as he desired to look, a melancholy figure with his huge pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust dejectedly into ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... attentive, reasoning fashion of our friend. It often seemed to Mallet that he wholly lacked the prime requisite of a graceful flaneur—the simple, sensuous, confident relish of pleasure. He had frequent fits of extreme melancholy, in which he declared that he was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. He was neither an irresponsibly contemplative nature nor a sturdily practical one, and he was forever looking in vain for the uses ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... the years that followed that first happy day at Moor Court seem to me now, on looking back upon them, a good deal mixed up together—till, that is to say, a change, a melancholy one for me, came over my happy ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... when Mrs. Two-Shoes was diverting the Children after Dinner, as she usually did with some innocent Games, or entertaining and instructive Stories, that a Man arrived with the melancholy News of Sally Jones's Father being thrown from his Horse, and thought past all Recovery; nay, the Messenger said, that he was seemingly dying, when he came away. Poor Sally was greatly distressed, as indeed were all the School, for she dearly loved her Father, and Mrs. Two-Shoes, ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous

... Munich, Paris and London. After his first appearance in Vienna, the foremost musical critic there wrote of him: "From the outset Chopin took place in the front rank of masters. The perfect delicacy of his touch, his indescribable mechanical dexterity, the melancholy tints in his style of shading, and the rare clearness of his delivery are in him qualities which bear the stamp of genius. He must be regarded as one of the most remarkable meteors blazing on the musical horizon." In Paris he gave a concert at Pleyel's house. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... the day set for Mr. Barnum's funeral. The morning was cold, gray, and dismal. Nature's heart, with the spring joy put back and deadened, symboled the melancholy that had fallen upon Bridgeport. No town was ever more transformed than was this city by one earthly event. On the public and private buildings were hung the habiliments of woe; flags were at half mast, and, in the store windows ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... his chair to the actor. Godolphin was very cordial, deferentially cordial, with a delicate vein of reminiscent comradery running through his manner. She spoke to him of having at last got his ideal for Salome, and he said, with a slight sigh and a sort of melancholy absence: "Yes, Miss Havisham will do it magnificently." Then he asked, with a look ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... of the opposite sex, and upon whom Mr. Jinks evidently desired to produce an impression, gazed at the cavalier with tender melancholy in her ruddy face, and especially regarded the legs of ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... feeler and a thinker; over his emotions and his reflections spread a mellowing of melancholy; more than a mellowing: in trouble and bereavement it became a cloud. He did not know much about Lucy Snowe; what he knew, he did not very accurately comprehend: indeed his misconceptions of my character often made me smile; ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline we found a great sea-going ship at anchor; and this I supposed at first to be one of the King's cruisers which were kept along that coast, both summer and winter, to prevent communication with the French. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whole graceful line of her figure thrown back in the large arm-chair which she occupied—except, indeed, the head, which was bent slightly forward—sat a very lovely young woman, perhaps of two or three and twenty years of age, in meditations evidently of a somewhat melancholy cast. The hand on which her head leaned, and which was very soft, round, and fair, was covered with rings, while the other was quite free from such ornaments, with the exception of one small ring of gold upon the slender third finger. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... our cavalry, was by this time far away at sea. The other officers had shown their incapacity that morning. For my own part, I chose out a snug billet on a hearthrug in the George Inn, where I slept very soundly for several hours. While I slept, the Duke held a melancholy council to ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... half-breed, on whose cheek The marks of seasons wild and winters bleak Were softened by the warm light from the west— Sunset—the last day-beauty, and the best! Beside the spring he sat and gazed and dreamed In melancholy silence, till it seemed His very soul was pouring from his eyes And melting in that mirror, where the skies Were glassed in all their purity, and where No ripple reached the surface from the fair White bosom of the palpitating sand,— A constant ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... Padua. The traditions of some remote spots about Italy still connect his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell in a convent. In the recollections of the following generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled reluctantly, and for a while, in the brilliant court of the Scaligers; and scared the women, as a visitant of the other world, as he passed by their doors in the streets of Verona. Rumor brings him to the West—with probability to Paris, more doubtfully to Oxford. But little that is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... by degrees into a deep melancholy, from which nothing could rouse him except his desire to purify and preach morality to the students around him. To anyone who knows university life such a task will seem superhuman. Sand, however, was not discouraged, and if he could not gain ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... I watched the great, clumsy, shaggy beasts, as they grazed in the open glade. Mixed with the eager excitement of the hunter was a certain half-melancholy feeling as I gazed on these bison, themselves part of the last remnant of a nearly vanished race. Few, indeed, are the men who now have, or evermore shall have, the chance of seeing the mightiest of American beasts in ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... her seclusion was explained by the death of one of her ladies whom she loved, the Countess of Nottingham: but soon it could not be concealed that the Queen herself was seized with a dangerous illness: sleep and appetite began to fail her: she showed a deep melancholy. 'No,' she replied to one of the kinsmen of her mother's house, Robert Cary, who at that moment had come back to court and addressed friendly words to her about her health, 'No Robin, well I am not, my heart has been for ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... rode forth on a quest. The first had been after my papers. The second was after my love. The second was the hopeless one, and, overcome by melancholy, I did not even spur my horse swiftly on my mission. There was upon me the deep-rooted sadness which balances the mirth of my people,—the Celtic aptitude for discouragement; and even the keening of old women in the red glow of the peat fire could ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... quietly, as if to dismiss all conception of taunt and insult and said with his soft melancholy eyes fixed upon the working features of Lily's aunt, "This man is more worthy of her than I. He prays you, in his letter, to prepare your niece for that change of relationship which he dreads too abruptly to break to her ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ox-eye daisies, they looked at each other suspiciously, and each felt that somehow it was the other fellow's fault. Aggrieved and miserable, they went rambling off, each his own way, to face alone what Fate might have in store for him. And Young Grumpy, looking up from a melancholy but consoling feast which he was making on a mushroom, found ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... twist a rope of which I never held the other end. I feel sometimes as though it must be the life of another that I have taken, leaving my own unfinished, for I was never meant to be a professor. That is the way of it; and if I am sad and inclined to melancholy humours, it is because I miss my old self, and he seems to have left me without even a kindly word at parting. I was fond of my old self, but I did not respect him much. And my present self I respect, without fondness. Is that metaphysics? ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... not expect me, Miss Mutimer,' Keene replied. He invariably began conversation with her in a severely formal and respectful tone, and to-day there was melancholy in his voice. ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... this mass of smiling verdure and blossom-loaded boughs, appeared the dark funereal cypress, the emblem of death, intruding itself in melancholy contrast with the smiling and cheerful tints by which it ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... of the church is a melancholy spectacle of churchwarden methods, but probably Lockton will before many years receive that careful restoration that has taken place at Ellerburne and Sinnington. The font is one of those unadorned, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... of a reserved nature is sometimes more attractive to women than the most fluent vivacity. Possibly there was also a melancholy grace in this sardonic soldier's manner that affected her, for she ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... Baseness for the Greatest to descend and looke into their owne Estate. Some forbeare it, not upon Negligence alone, But doubting to bring themselves into Melancholy in respect they shall finde it Broken. But wounds cannot be cured without Searching. Hee that cleareth by Degrees induceth a habit of Frugalitie, and gaineth as well upon his Minde, as ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... to the distant isle of Calypso, and warned the bright-haired nymph, whom he found weaving in her charmed grotto, that she must let her mortal lover go or brave the wrath of the gods. The nymph, though loath to part with her lover, sought out the melancholy Ulysses, where he sat weeping beside the deep, and giving him tools, led him to the forest and showed him where to fell trees with which to construct a raft. His labor finished, she provided the hero with perfumed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... with deep melancholy, "it must be the city atmosphere" (Dartmoor was a town of perhaps fifteen thousand inhabitants), "for, you know, she never was so perverse in Killamet. I'm afraid she'll disgrace us all!" Upon which Sara would comfort her by saying that, as most parrots were ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... her best-beloved lord the young widow was overcome with brooding melancholy from which nothing could rouse her. At that time you, my Margery and Agnes, her daughters, clung to me as to your own father; and when, at the end of three years, your mother was healed of that melancholy, it had come about ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... little white thing regards me with melancholy. His ears twitch restlessly and his beautiful eyes, so fine, so observant of everything, say to me as plain ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... her house for one whom he called his cousin, a fair young woman, together with her serving girl, who did attend upon her. She tarried about a month, seeing no one, and going out only towards the evening, accompanied by her servant. She spake little, but did seem melancholy and exceeding mournful, often crying very bitterly. Sir Christopher came only once to see her, and Good wife Nowell saith she well remembers seeing her take leave of him on the roadside, and come back weeping and sobbing dolefully; and that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... that reminds me that Eda and your wife are particularly desirous of having breakfast," said Frank. "In fact they sent me specially to lay their melancholy case before you; and I have great fears that Eda will lay violent hands on the raw pork if her morning meal is delayed much longer. As for Chimo, he is rushing about the island in a state of ravenous despair; so pray let ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... grieved at parting from me, at leaving her dear old Southern relatives; and secretly she perhaps half suspected that she might never come back to her Gascon home. It was a November day, dissolving fitfully into warm rain, and very melancholy. I was to take the late train to Agen with the two girls. And she and I, when all was ready, were to have the afternoon together. Of course we must have it serene, as if no parting were to close it. All traces of departure, of packing, were ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... auxiliary corps. On 20th April General Clarke, head of the Topographical Bureau at the War Office, agreed to send 10,000 men and 20,000 stand of arms. The mercurial Irishman encountered endless delays, and was often a prey to melancholy; but the news of Bonaparte's victories in Italy led him to picture the triumph of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... have added, my brother," said the Abbot, listening with melancholy acquiescence to the detail of his own merits, "that I caused to be built that curious screen, which secureth the cloisters from the north-east wind.—But all these things avail nothing—As we read in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve for three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be persuaded during that time to pay, by a timely conversion, some regard to her eternal welfare. The lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by all the topics then in use, but also to write a letter to her sister[v] in the Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the Scriptures in that tongue, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... prospect in the distance. Not that the Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment. Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. I began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. I endeavoured to calculate how much longer I ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... chaste Sita was dwelling there afflicted with melancholy and grief on account of her lord, attired in mean garb, with but a single jewel (on the marital thread on her wrist), and incessantly weeping, seated on a stone, and waited upon by Rakshasa women, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... beating and hand him over to Olynthides to be sold at auction without a character." Her survey of her former home and her selection of the ornaments, pictures, statues, articles of furniture and other objects which she desired reserved for herself she completed with an air less of melancholy than of puzzled thought. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... beautiful Adonis, the Count de Volaski, looking very fair and dainty, very languid and melancholy. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... however, a melancholy ride, and John felt more down-hearted than ever before in his life as he entered the market square of Capetown. Here all was in confusion, burghers were galloping hither and thither, and every one seemed too busy and excited to notice Colton as he rode wearily towards the Field Cornet's ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... up, advanced toward the place whence he heard the voice, and coming to the door of a great hall, opened it, and saw a handsome young man, richly habited, seated upon a throne raised a little above the ground. Melancholy was painted on his countenance. The sultan drew near and saluted him; the young man returned his salutation, by an inclination of his head, not being able to rise, at the same time saying: "My lord, I should rise to receive you, but am hindered by sad necessity, and therefore hope you will ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... perhaps rather more surprising that he should have liked Spenser than that he should have liked the other two; and we must suppose that the profusion of beautiful pictures in the "Faerie Queen" enabled him, not to appreciate (for he never could have done that), but to tolerate or pass over the deep melancholy and the occasional philosophisings of the poet. But the attraction of Dryden and Chaucer for him is very easily understood. Both are eminently cheerful poets, Dryden with the cheerfulness born of manly sense, Chaucer with that of youth and abounding animal spirits. Leigh Hunt seems ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... may have been, their appearance would not have been altogether reassuring to a man, for instance, travelling with a good many valuables about him. There was Grant the engineer, who never spoke at all, and who loved his engines with a personal love; Pedro, a man with big, melancholy eyes, half Basque and half Italian; an old Belgian stoker and a nigger from South Carolina; and, lastly, John Lewis (or Black John, as he was always called), who came from a Danish West Indian island, and who said he was an Irishman and had ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... "8th.—Having the melancholy duty of yesterday over was a relief, only alloyed by the sad prospect of a near recurrence. I now turned my mind seriously to departure, having well weighed the pros and cons of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... that Byron's love of the desolate and inhuman in nature was the mark of vital scepticism and depression. When a young man can elect deliberately to walk alone in winter by the side of the shattering sea, when he takes pleasure in storms and stricken peaks, and the lawless melancholy of the older earth, we may deduce with the certainty of logic that he is very young and very happy. There is a certain darkness which we see in wine when seen in shadow; we see it again in the night that has just buried a gorgeous sunset. The wine seems black, and yet at the same ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... Birs-Nimroud, giving it for one instant a weird effect, as though the ghost of some Babylonian watchman were waving a lit torch from its summit,—but the lurid glare soon faded and a dead gray twilight settled solemnly down over the melancholy landscape. With a sudden feeling of dejection and lassitude upon him, Alwyn, heaving a deep sigh, went onward, and soon perceived, lying a little to the north of the river, a small, roughly erected tenement with a wooden cross on its roof. Rightly concluding that this must be Elzear of Melyana's ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... turned into mourning. It was at that very time that the disastrous conflict took place, in which the English were routed, and the Duke of Clarence, whom Henry had left his representative on the Continent, was slain. Where the King was when the melancholy tidings reached him, and which induced him to cut short his progress, does not appear. We know that the joyful news of Agincourt reached London on the fourth morning after the battle; and probably ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... grateful for the present, as his wife, he said, was in delicate health, and to her it would be especially welcome. He invited us into the cabin where she was seated. She was a nice, pleasant-looking woman, though it struck me that her countenance bore a peculiarly melancholy expression. He at once handed us a bundle of English papers, published long after we had left home, ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... court of Saul is variously accounted for. According to one narrative, Saul, being possessed by an evil spirit, fell at times into a profound melancholy, from which he could be aroused only by the playing of a harp. On learning that David was skilled in this instrument, he begged Jesse to send him his son, and the lad soon won the king's affection. As often as the illness came upon him, David took his harp, and "Saul was refreshed, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... crowded, were sent forth under the name of plays. The Cassandra or Alexandra of Lycophron is the only specimen that has come to us. Its thorny difficulties deter the reader, but Fox speaks of it as breathing a rich vein of melancholy. The Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid were no doubt greatly improved copies of dramas of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... passed with little or no improvement, and as every hour of inactivity was a real menace to the success of their plans, no one can wonder that they chafed over this most exasperating delay. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been melancholy enough to watch the mottled, wet, green walls of their tents and to hear the everlasting patter of the falling snow and the ceaseless rattle of the fluttering canvas, but when the prospect of failure of their cherished plan was added to the acute discomforts ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... course, there was but one manly thing to do: confess the whole matter to General Bradshaw. But he felt sure he'd rather die than do this. He went over to where Aunt Silvy was barbecuing the deer, the most melancholy-looking boy, perhaps, that ever was at a barbecue with a cotton-bloom in his button-hole. To her he told the truth, and felt better the instant he had spoken it. But when he asked ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... Harwell University in June, and left class day morning for home. He had the satisfaction of seeing his name in the list of honor men for the year, having attained A or B in all studies for the three terms. The parting with Outfield West was shorn of much of its melancholy by reason of the latter's promise to visit Joel in August. The suggestion had been made by Outfield, and Joel had at once warmly ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... sighted the sea, wide-stretched and restless, ahead, and turned westward parallel with the coast-line, till, in the afternoon, he came unto "a land where it was always afternoon"—a flat, damp, dwarf-treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and melancholy—a land full of water. But for once it was a cold land, and the thrush realized that the bitter frost had leapt ahead of him, and that he might now never outstrip it again, perhaps. I do not know if he realized, too, that the lead sky, that looked as if it were going ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... doing a whole year, and little by little she sold off her goods and gave charitable gifts to the sick and sorry; whereby her report was bruited abroad in the city and the folk abounded in her praise. All this while Salim lay in fetters and strait prison, and melancholy gat hold of him by reason of that whereinto he had fallen of this affliction. At last, when care waxed on him and calamity grew longsome, he fell sick of a sore sickness. Then the Kitchener, seeing his plight (and verily he was like to sink for much suffering), loosed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... married; he is the business partner of Edwin Booth, and they are likely to become as powerful managers as they have been successful "stars." Edwin Booth, who is said to have the most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladies call the beau ideal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenth street. He has acquired a fortune, and is, without doubt, a frankly loyal gentleman. He could not well be otherwise from his membership in the Century Club where literature and loyalty, are never dissolved. Correct and pleasing without being powerful ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... your highness, it so happened that the great Haroun Alraschid was one night seized with one of those fits of sleepless melancholy with which it had pleased Allah to temper his splendid destiny, and which fits are, indeed, the common lot of those who are raised by fortune above the ordinary fears ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... monotony of dark house-fronts, were little isolated shops, which gave a touch of colour to the drabness. I paused before one of them, through whose small and dim window a light shed a melancholy beam upon the pavement. Nothing seemed to be sold there, for the window was occupied by empty glass jars, bearing such labels as "peppermint rock," "pear drops" and "bull's-eyes." Apparently the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... into the beautiful leafy walks of the imperial gardens. In this way they came to a terrace, from which they could see the ship. Instead of pressing quickly forwards, they concealed themselves behind a bush. A very melancholy old man sat on this terrace, looking over the sea; and while a flood of tears ran ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... the world, the more I am convinced that religion is founded on fear. The immortal bard, from whom nothing seems to have been hidden, lays down the foundation of all religion in those words from 'Hamlet,' where he makes the melancholy ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... altars in it; and a piscina still remains in the south aisle, close to the west wall of the transept. A curious monument was erected in 1634 by Martin Blake, the Vicar, to his son and four children who died very young. A heavy and elaborate framework surrounds a severe likeness of a melancholy-looking man, who is resting his head on his hand. On the monument ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not mind hard work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat by depression or melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get tired while Nielsen kept ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... friend Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio, where he painted the frescoes in the smaller Hall of Audience. These are principally scenes from the Life of Camillus. The story of the schoolmaster of Falerii is very spirited, and the Triumph of Camillus varied and pleasing in colouring. Although melancholy and suspicious, often making enemies and losing patronage by misunderstandings, Rossi and Vasari were always faithful to their first boyish friendship, often working together, but never with any spirit of rivalry. Salviati's style was bold and spirited; he ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... fine-looking old couple. The Duke still wore the blue ribbon of the Garter across his breast. He was a mild-looking gentleman, who seemed to be plunged in deep melancholy. His head was bald and highly polished, his gray side-whiskers were brushed carefully forward, and his nose was aquiline. Her Grace the Duchess surveyed the company with a haughty stare, which seemed to be a matter of habit ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... canning factory started up again, and so once more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or two later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three days after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... something to look at, and the excited boys shouted, cheered, and gave forth remark after remark such as must have been painful to the dignity of the melancholy-looking beast, which kept on turning its half-closed, plaintive-looking eyes at the noisy groups, wincing and seeming to protest against ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... of enduring disappointment and changing a shadow to a spot of sunshine, there yet come days of loneliness into the life of the commercial traveler—days when he cannot and will not break the spell. There is a sweet enchantment, anyway, about melancholy; 'tis then that the heart yearns for what it knows awaits it. Perhaps the wayfarer has missed his mail; perhaps the wife whom he has not seen for many weeks, writes him now that she suffers because of their separation and how she longs for ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... more in thought than action—he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful; and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others—not in bitterness, but in sport. ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... strange, solemn music,—the sobbing of the 'cellos, the tenderer melancholy of the flute—the long procession was moving up the Canal Grande—the ducal barge and the gondola of the Patriarch not keeping decorous line, for the roughness of the waters. From the portals of the Palazzo ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... visited by a pelting shower, which wetted them to the skin in a moment. A gutter or hollow, misnamed a pathway, was soon overflowed, and they had to wade in it up to their knees in water, and through a most melancholy-looking forest, before they entered a village. It was called Sagba, and was about eight miles from Wow. They were dripping wet on their arrival, and the weather still continuing unpleasant, it was some time before any one made his appearance ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... some well-used pipes were on the chest of drawers, with a tin of Virginia; and an old brown camel's-hair dressing-gown hung over a castorless, shabby, American-cloth-covered armchair. And an empty whisky-bottle stood upon the washstand, melancholy witness to the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... blazing flambeaux. Down the high street, between the lofty, many-storeyed and balconied houses, where every window, every balcony, every housetop was crammed with a dense mass of spectators, all dressed and masked in fantastic gorgeousness, the procession took its melancholy way. Over the scene flashed and played the shifting cross-lights and shadows from the moving torches: red and blue Bengal lights flared up and died out again; and above the trampling of the horses and the measured tread of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... shave while sitting snugly in a tubful of hot water. He may be viewed to-night as a plump, smooth, pink, baldish, podgy goodman, robbed of the importance of spectacles, squatting in breast-high water, scraping his lather-smeared cheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower, and with melancholy dignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... eyebrows to the opposite side of the room, where a large, stout young woman in somber cloak and wide-plumed hat was eating her way through a chocolate eclair with just such an air of tragic and settled melancholy as one sometimes sees in a child whose grief is momentarily its ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... countenance became sadder and more serious, except when in the presence of her husband. There she assumed an appearance of gayety: laughing, jesting, and drawing from her violin its sweetest sounds. But, with her attendants, or in the company of the other members of the imperial family, she was melancholy, and made her preparations for death, which she foretold ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Zicci, gently, and with a smile of singular but melancholy sweetness: "have you earned the right to ask me these questions? The clays of torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... laugh even in the midst of the melancholy thoughts which involuntarily arose in her mind during the elucidation of John's plan of escape; she could not, however, explain the difficulties in the way of its successful issue to the self-satisfied expounder, and finding no other ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... 'Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life, else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the hours in the book closet. Here were the best French writers of the last century; for my father had been more than half a Jacobin, in the time ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... tied to the corners of a grub sack so that it could be carried over his shoulder like a game bag. With the first rose-flush of the sun he was ready for the trail of Neewa and his mother. Miki set up a melancholy wailing when he found himself left behind, and when Challoner looked back the pup was tugging and somersaulting at the end of his rope like a jumping-jack. For a quarter of a mile up the creek he could ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... went on their mission, and soon returned with the Cihuacoatl at their head, a magistrate of high authority among the Mexicans. He said, with a melancholy air, in which his own disappointment was visible, that "Guatemotzin was ready to die where he was, but would hold no interview with the Spanish commander"; adding in a tone of resignation, "It is for you to work your ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... Creole negro I knew well, who, after having been often thus transported from island to island, at last resided in Montserrat. This man used to tell me many melancholy tales of himself. Generally, after he had done working for his master, he used to employ his few leisure moments to go a fishing. When he had caught any fish, his master would frequently take them from him without paying him; and at other times some other ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... nicer he had clearly been, all the while, poor dear man, than his wife and the court had made it possible for him publicly to appear; how much younger, too, he now looked, in spite of his rather melancholy, his mildly jaundiced, humorously determined sallowness and his careless assumption, everywhere, from his forehead to his exposed and relaxed blue socks, almost sky-blue, as in past days, of creases and folds and furrows that would have been perhaps tragic if they hadn't seemed rather ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... rests with heaven. But, for myself, sir, if I should to-morrow hear that they have failed—that their last phalanx had sunk beneath the Turkish cimetar, that the flames of their last city had sunk in its ashes, and that nought remained but the wide, melancholy waste where Greece once was—I should still reflect, with the most heartfelt satisfaction, that I have asked you, in the name of seven millions of freemen, that you would give them, at least, the cheering ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... the new knowledge and method were warmly received. Boccaccio equaled Petrarch in his passion for the ancient writers, hunting for them wherever he thought they might be found. One of his pupils has left us a melancholy picture of the library at Monte Cassino, as Boccaccio found it at the time of his visit (R. 126). He wrote a book of popular tales and romances, filled with the modern spirit, which made him the father of Italian prose as Dante ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... clouds of the last downpour, driven before the wind, were nearing the horizon towards the heights of Pere-Lachaise, which were wrapped in gloom; and against this stormy background Paris, illumined by a uniform clearness, assumed a lonely, melancholy grandeur. It seemed to be uninhabited, like one of those cities seen in a nightmare—the reflex of a world of death. To Jeanne it certainly appeared anything but pretty. She was now idly dreaming of those she had loved since her birth. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... which had been making itself felt behind the eastern line of mountains now came plainly in view, late moon, melancholy and significant, as the waning moon always is. By its dim illumination Creed saw Judith Barrier standing at the door of his own house, smiling at him tremulously, with the immemorial challenge in her dark ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... days before they were to have been married—died by the hand of violence, and Castrani had shot the rival who murdered her. Public opinion had favored the avenger, and he had not suffered for the act, but ever since he had been a prey to melancholy. He told Margie his history, and it aroused her pity; but when he asked her love, she refused him gently, telling him that her heart was another's. He had suffered deeply from the disappointment, but he did not give up her society, as most men would have ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 'tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions." Admirable connoisseur! "And did you step in to take a look at the grand picture on your way back." "It is a melancholy daub! my lord, not one principle of the pyramid in any one group; there is nothing of the colouring of Titian, the expression of Rubens, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregiescity ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... singularly agreeable in being an object of so great interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my dejected aspect, it was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the opinion that people who are melancholy without any particular reason, such as poets, artists, and young musicians with long hair, have rather an enviable time of it. In a quiet way I never enjoyed myself better in my life than when I was ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... first year of the Peace was ended this class had been reduced to those elements which made it more properly called "unemployable." There were the men who had forgotten their trades and their working habits, and there were still left some of those melancholy products of our decadent industrial and social systems—the men who were determined not ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... of our time, which, having seen revolutions face to face, can see more clearly the destiny of humanity and comprehend Providence better,—Balzac redeemed himself smiling and severe from those formidable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and misanthropy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the shadowy roofs of the town. The air was so languorous that it was as if the day were being slowly smothered in honeysuckle, the heavy scent of which drifted to him from the next garden. A vast melancholy—so vast that it seemed less the effect of a Southern summer than of a universal force residing in nature—was liberated, with the first cooling breath of the evening, from man and beast, from tree and shrub, from stock and stone. The very bricks, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... that you have duly prepared yourself for the worst by all these reflections, I proceed to tell you the melancholy news that your book has been very unfortunate, for the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely. It was looked for by the foolish people with some impatience; and the mob of literati are beginning already to be very ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... houses with plans in very bright colors and notices in very large letters. But a serious observer, at a second glance, might have seen in his eyes something of that shining sleep that is called vision; and his yellow hair, while not affectedly long, was unaffectedly untidy. It was a manifest if melancholy truth that the architect was an artist. But the artistic temperament was far from explaining him; there was something else about him that was not definable, but which some even felt to be dangerous. Despite ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... on her knees, and put up a prayer. On rising, she saw such a crazy expression of joy on her husband's face, that the diabolical suggestion returned, and then Adeline sank into a sort of idiotic melancholy. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... came to ask what had kept her from the ceremony. He learned it in the entry from Frau Lamperi, and Barbara's tearful eyes showed him what deep sorrow this loss had caused her. Her whole manner expressed quiet melancholy. This great, pure grief had come just at the right time, flowing, like oil upon the storm-lashed waves, over hatred, resentment, and all the passionate emotions by which she had previously been driven to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... This grave, melancholy man went smiling to his death. When he was entreated to seek for pardon for his crimes, his reply was, in a triumphant tone, "I am satisfied that our project was so far from being sinful, that I rely entirely upon ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... in London, where his f. was U.S. ambassador. He wrote a number of light, graceful short poems, but fell a victim to ill-health and a morbid melancholy at 25. His longest poem ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... you receive it? Here is no honest John to carry my letters to you! And, besides, I am watched in all my steps; and no doubt shall be, till my hard fate may ripen his wicked projects for my ruin. I will every day, however, write my sad state; and some way, perhaps, may be opened to send the melancholy scribble to you. But, alas! when you know it, what will it do but aggravate your troubles? For, O! what can the abject poor do against the mighty rich, when they ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... your personal prejudices? You dislike the young man himself, I know, because he is moody and emotional and uncontrolled, and because he considers his own emotions fit subjects for discussion. A boy, self-centred, melancholy, and in love—what do you want ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... Scott died before his grandson was four years of age; and I heard him mention when he was an old man that he distinctly remembered the writing and sealing of the funeral letters, and all the ceremonial of the melancholy procession as it left Sandy-Knowe. I shall conclude my notices of the residence at Sandy-Knowe with observing that in Sir Walter's account of the friendly clergyman who so often sat at his grandfather's fireside, we cannot fail to trace ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... has not the pathos that usually distinguishes Redgrave. "Rizpah watching her Sons," is very fine. The night, the glaring torchlight, to scare away the approaching wolves, and the paler, more distant light in the sky, with the melancholy mourning Rizpah, are of the best conception. "The Sick Child" has quite the effect of a Rembrandt plate; yet it is very tender—a scene fit for the angelic visit, and pure and devout of thought and purpose is that angel—we do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... for thy voice remeasures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures The things of Nature utter; birds or trees, Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves, Or where the stiff grass 'mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... of the once highly cultivated fields and gardens bore the marks of gradual decay and destruction. The ranchos of Calabazas, of San Bernardino, and numerous other places on this frontier, presented the same melancholy aspect, the result of the inability of Mexico to protect this portion of territory from the inroads of the savages. There are now but a few settlements throughout this district of country, but were it protected by a power that could and would defend it, what ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry

... proffered them occasionally by a morose and distrustful gillie they had no help or other companionship. They won their food for themselves, cooked it by the smoking fire, and washed heroically in the icy river water. A sting of winter was already in the wind and a melancholy and bitter rain swept the hills, giving way at evening to unearthly sunsets. They saw themselves as pioneers at the world's end. And Stonehouse, who had calculated its effect on Cosgrave, was himself caught up in the fierce, rough charm of that daily life. He who had never played ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... tinge of melancholy seemed to hang about the few scraps of wreckage. How many times the little bridge must have tempted men and maidens to linger of a summer evening, dreaming the big dreams of youth—visions which the spreading wings of Time bear away into the Land of Lost Desires. Perhaps some ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... late JOHN DENT, Esq., whose library was sold in 1827; and of which library that of the late Robert Heathcote formed the basis. It contained much that was curious, scarce, and delectable; but the sale of it exhibited the first grand melancholy symptoms of the decay of the Bibliomania. The Sweynheym and Pannartz Livy of 1469, UPON VELLUM, was allowed to be knocked down for L262! Mr. Evans, who had twice before sold that identical volume—first, in the sale of Mr. Edwards's library (see Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... a melancholy shrug. "It is too true, Nello. She has been depriving herself of half her proper food every day during this famine. But what can I do? Her mind has been set all aflame. A husband's influence is powerless against ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... There was a succession of broken treble notes that sounded like the crackling of flames. Moans deep and melancholy followed. These grew more strident and prolonged, giving place to abject howls, suggesting the lamentations ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... night dream each man his dream: Which dreams, according to interpretation, Had to themselves particular relation. And Joseph coming early the next day, Into the room where Pharaoh's servants lay, Beheld their countenances much dejected: Wherefore he said, What evil hath effected This melancholy frame, what is't that causes These marks of discontentment in your faces? Then said they, We have dream'd each man his dream, And there is no man to interpret them. Then Joseph said, Your dreams to me make known. Interpretations are from God alone. Then unto Joseph the chief butler told His dream, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... assur'd, I too shall take my turn, and will exert the—Husband! In saying this, he flung out of the Room in spite of her Endeavours to hinder him, and going hastily through a Gallery which had a large Window that look'd into the Garden, he perceiv'd Melliora lying on a green Bank, in a melancholy but a charming Posture, directly opposite to the place where he was; her Beauties appear'd, if possible more to advantage than ever he had seen them, or at least he had more opportunity thus unseen by her, to gaze upon them: he in a moment lost all the Rage of Temper he had been in, and his ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... knew it! Handsome Harry Kendal does not love this girl with whom they have forced him into a betrothal. No wonder he looks sad and melancholy, with a prospect before him of marrying a blind wife! Ah, me! it is too dreadful a fate to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... Potomac above Washington, as a corps of observation. The Union troops, engaged in the disastrous battle of Ball's Bluff, belonged to his corps, but were under the immediate command of Colonel E. D. Baker. The repulse and slaughter on that melancholy field were followed by excitement and indignation throughout the country quite as deep as that shown in Congress. The details of the disaster were greatly exaggerated. The official summary of losses, made up with care, showed that the total number killed, including both ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... lightened of its load, rose to the surface of the water, and placed them beyond the reach of the voracious jaws of their relentless destroyers. The tide and current soon carried them to the shore, where they landed to tell the melancholy fate of their fellow-voyagers." ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These were followed by periods of an intense, bitter, black, Celtic melancholy. Ralph Addington degenerated into what Honey described as "the human sourball." He spoke as seldom as possible and then only to snarl. He showed a tendency to disobey the few orders that Frank Merrill, who still ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... the tragical business of the day were ended. The vast range of Pendle was obscured by clouds, and ere long the vapours descended into the valleys, and rain began to fall; at first slightly, but afterwards in heavy continuous showers. Melancholy was the aspect of the abbey, and it required no stretch of imagination to fancy that the old structure was deploring the fate of its former ruler. To those impressed with the idea—and many there were who were so—the very stones of the convent church seemed dissolving into tears. The statues ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... to coincide throughout with the opinions either of abolitionists or of slaveholders: but they will be found to present a masterly view of a most perplexing and interesting subject, which seems to cover the whole ground, and to lead to the melancholy conclusion of the utter impotency of human effort to eradicate this acknowledged evil. But on this, and on the various topics of the deepest interest which are discussed in this work, it was thought that the American readers would be fully competent to form ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... Melancholy was the prevailing characteristic of the great Italian's mind. It was so profound that it penetrated all his thoughts; so intense that it pervaded all his conceptions. Occasionally bright and beautiful ideas flitted across his imagination; visions of bliss, experienced for a moment, and then lost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... was very old and melancholy. He accepted a piece of locust-bean with leisurely condescension and watched us with quiet interest as he chewed. He rather frightened me; the wisdom of all the ages was behind his ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that on the whole it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... more beautiful than his countenance, or to fancy a form more replete with living grace than his. His hair swept round his clear and open countenance in dark wavy curls; and while he held the taller of the two gentlemen by the hand, he gazed forward over the wide melancholy sea, which came rolling up towards their feet, with a look full of thought, and perhaps of anxiety. There was certainly grief in that gaze; for the black eyelashes which surrounded those large blue eyes became, after a moment or two, moistened with something bright like a tear; and apparently ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... Unrequited love. Dandelion Coquetry. Everlasting Always remembered. Everlasting Pea Wilt thou go with me. Ebony Blackness. Fuchsia Humble love. Foxglove Insincerity. Fern Sincerity. Fennel Strength. Forget-me-not For ever remembered. Fraxinella Fire. Geranium, Ivy Fond of dancing. Geranium, Oak A melancholy mind. Geranium, Rose I prefer you. Geranium, Scarlet Stillness. Gladiolus Ready armed. Golden Rod Encouragement. Gillyflower Promptness. Hyacinth Benevolence. Honeysuckle Devoted love. House Leek Domestic economy. Heliotrope I adore you. Hibiscus Delicate beauty. Hollyhock Ambition. ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... or a submissive patience but rather the quickening bread and wine of an intense and high-keyed life. This is why the Saints, be the provocation ever so great, never develop nerves, or experience those melancholy and humiliating reactions which are the natural ebb-tide of spiritual energies. This is why Saints can fast and keep their temper sweet, can wear hair-shirts without cultivating wry faces, can be passed by in the distribution of honors without ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... tickled by the story. He came in smiling and thoroughly self-possessed. Then, addressing the governess, he said, "Madame, allow me to compliment you and to thank you at the same time. I thought you were of a serious, melancholy disposition, but as I listened to you through the keyhole, I am no longer surprised that you have such long talks with the Marquise. Will you do me the favour of being as amusing some other time, if I venture to make one ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... husband, on the contrary," said Dr. Carr, overhearing her; "you must learn that lesson once for all, children. There's no escape from the melancholy fact; and it's quite right and natural that Ned should wish to go to his sister, and she should want ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... followed my conductor into his dwelling place; Poverty were depictured in his melancholy face. His bread it was corn dodger, his beef I could not chaw; This was the kind of hash they fed me ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... undertaker, who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the most melancholy in their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... it appeared to me a hyperbolical criticism from the very beginning. On that account I resolved to make a few brief commentaries on the matter in the letter, both for the consolation of those whom our Lord may call to these missions, and so that it may be understood that at times sadness and melancholy are accustomed to heighten things, making giants out of pygmies—all the more, if a relish for revery and grumbling be joined with a tendency to exaggeration and with figures of speech corresponding thereto. Consequently, I am surprised that the reverend annalist ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... Priest Shallow of the parish of Newbawn was present, and twenty five not included in the above number were shot in the most deliberate manner, their cloaths being worth preserving. I pass within two miles of the melancholy spot every month, and often converse with those who know every particular relative to it, ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... and crannies the homes of basking lizards, its charming loggia trodden only by enthusiasts for whom every spot touched by the genius of Raphael is a shrine of pilgrimage—the Villa Madama, though appealing in its desertion, is not a melancholy solitude. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... contralto voice, even when it sank to the lowest notes of melancholy, was full of tenderness and caressing feeling. As he touched her tapering fingers on the steel bars and watched the red blood mount until her delicate ears shone like transparent shells in the dark mass of her hair, visions of their life together would rise until the past few years ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... peculiar a character as to merit particular notice. Should any of my readers ever go to Bombay, he will find two of these dakhmas, or Temples of Silence, in a secluded part of Malabar Hill, though admittance is denied within the walls enclosing the melancholy structures to aught but Parsees. The interior is fitted up with stages or stories of stone pavement, slanting down to a circular opening, like a well, covered with a grating, into which the bones are swept, after the fowls ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... the same lines. The complexion, indeed, in the picture, was more brilliant; and it was that, perhaps, as well as a certain roundness, which marked a difference of age; but then the expression was precisely the same—a depth, a tenderness even approaching to melancholy—in the picture, as in her whom he had seen; and though he gazed, and wondered, and wearied imagination for probabilities, he found none, but could only end by believing that, in the facts connected with that picture, lay the mystery of his fate, and of the link ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... these people were so visibly strangers to the causes of the fatality, of this catastrophe, that their innocence led them like children to look elsewhere for the guilty. It comforted and quieted their conscience. Clerambault breathed more easily when he got to Paris. A stoical and virile melancholy had succeeded to the agony of the night. He was however only at ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... one of those melancholy events in life to which the mind cannot for a long time reconcile or accustom itself. I saw her so short a time ago 'glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy;' the accents of her voice still so vibrate ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... I stood, smiling and silent, while she spoke of Walter Butler, describing him vividly, even to his amber black eyes and his pale face, and the poetic melancholy with which he clothed the hidden blood-lust that smoldered under his smooth pale skin. But there you have it—young, proud, and melancholy—and he had danced with her at Niagara, too, and—if I knew him—he had not spared her hints of that impetuous flame that burned for all pure women deep in ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... old man, dear reader, if he spares himself and does not expatiate on these anxious years. He is not a friend of tears and does not like to give in to melancholy. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... fact that I have to brood over it alone. I have not one friend in this wide world to whom I can fly for consolation. No! not one! My life is unspeakably lonely. You will forgive me for not being more gay; I cannot help it! I strive to be, but it is impossible. I often fear that my melancholy has a chilling effect on those around me, and that they think me cold ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... Maurice Ogston, and Edward Coffin were executed on the 16th of August, 1837, at San Josef Barracks. Nothing seemed to have been neglected which could render the execution solemn and impressive; the scenery and the weather gave additional awe to the melancholy proceedings. Fronting the little eminence where the prisoners were shot was the scene where their ill-concerted mutiny commenced. To the right stood the long range of building on which they had expended ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... She had once made it her place of summer residence, but it was now given over to the people and was, during the spring and summer, used by them as a kind of fair and pleasure-garden. The place had always been to me romantic and melancholy, with the old faded wooden palace, the deserted ponds, and the desolate trees. I had never been there in the summer. I don't know with what idea I hurried there. I can only say that I had no choice but to go, and that I went ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole



Words linked to "Melancholy" :   melancholy thistle, sombre, gloominess, melancholic, sombreness, humor, humour, uncheerful, brooding, pensiveness, black bile, body fluid, depressing, bodily fluid, heavyheartedness, world-weariness, sad, cheerless, somber, gloom, unhappiness, somberness, depression, sadness, Weltschmerz, liquid body substance



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