"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Dean to deliver it. The present writer once heard a very eminent Churchman, who was also a great poet, preach his last sermon, at the age of ninety. This was the Danish bishop Grundtvig. In that case the effort of speaking, the extraction, as it seemed, of the sepulchral voice from the shrunken and ashen face, did not last more than ten minutes. But the English divines of the Jacobean age, like their Scottish brethren of to-day, were accustomed to stupendous efforts of ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stood gazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silence of the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that the grilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did not know; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, eerie feeling. It seemed like a place of waiting, of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... digging, or had gone to pieces on the admission of the air. This urn was surrounded by a number of cells formed of flat stones, in the shape of graves, but too small to hold the body in its natural state. These sepulchral recesses contained nothing except ashes, or dust of the same kind as that in the urn."—Sykes' Local Records (2 vols. 8vo, 1833), vol. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... ghost flitting about the garden suggested a midnight rush after old Bun. Frank watched laughingly, till poor Jack came toward the house with the gentleman in gray kicking lustily in his arms, and then whispered in a sepulchral tone,— ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... of verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as memorials of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Herne the Hunter," said the figure, in a deep, sepulchral tone. "Ride hence to the haunted beechtree near the marsh, at the farther side of the forest, and you will ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to have the gloomy fascination of these objects broken by the custodian, who approached to ask if we wished to see the prisons of Ecelino, and we willingly followed him into the rain out of our sepulchral shelter. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... was shining into the room. By its light he could see the outline of the beds. Around him there ascended a choral harmony composed of snores of every degree, reaching from the mild, mellow intonation of Clive, down to the deep, hoarse, sepulchral drone of Uncle Moses. In spite of his vexation about his wakefulness, a smile passed over Bob's face, as he listened to those astonishing voices ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... through the half-open door, went through the vast antechamber, full of tapestry and figures of old Venetians in armor, down the wide staircase, into the great courtyard that looked strange and sepulchral when he struck a match to find the water-portal, and saw his shadow curving monstrous along the ribbed roof, and leering at the spacious gloom. He opened the great doors gently, and came out into the soft spring night air. All was silent now. The narrow side-canal had a glimmer ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lament or to envy the touching and simple burial rite of soldiers? To me, nothing could be more beautiful than such a last resting-place. Why should we desire richer tombs, sepulchral stones, and sculptured monuments? We are all equal upon that field of death, the battlefield at the close of day. And there can be no fitter shroud for him who has fallen on that field than his soldier's cloak. A little earth that will be grass-grown ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... tortoise—the sacred animal of Chinese religion—with gold eyes and claws. All round the side of the room were set coloured lights, shaded and dim. Coming from the bright outer sunlight, the place in its shadowed state seemed half- sepulchral. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... side with their ancestors of the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... had almost walked into it. Now she parted the bushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral echo. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think of looking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come. And in a little while—a very ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... research. So long as this special knowledge remains the exclusive possession of professional antiquaries like Gough, Hearne, Bentham, Perry, Grose,[2] it bears no fruit in creative literature. It produces only local histories, surveys of cathedrals and of sepulchral monuments, books about Druidic remains, Roman walls and coins, etc., etc. It was only when men of imagination and of elegant tastes were enlisted in such pursuits that the dry stick of antiquarianism put forth blossoms. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... said Frank, in a sepulchral tone, "you cannot be ignorant, as a scholar and bachelor of Oxford, of that dread sacrament by which Catiline bound the soul of his fellow-conspirators, in order that both by the daring of the deed he might have proof ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... place I failed to find the burrowing owl, although there can be little doubt of his presence there, especially out on the plains. Not far from Denver one of these uncanny, sepulchral birds was seen, having been frightened from her tunnel as I came stalking near it. She flew over the brow of the hill in her smooth, silent way, and uttered no syllable of protest as I examined her domicile—or, rather, the outside of it. Scattered about the dark ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... years, these tumuli have been carefully examined, and, from their contents, shape and position, they are now classified as Temple or Sacrificial Mounds, Burial or Sepulchral Mounds, Symbolic Mounds, Signal Mounds and Indefinite Mounds. I shall briefly describe the characteristic of each class and give ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets, a thin, spiral scream, the music tapered into the sepulchral clang of a tam-tam. And Pobloff, his broad face awash with fear saw by a solitary wavering gas-jet that he was alone and upon his knees. Not a musician was to be seen. Not a sound save dull noises from the street without. He stared about him like a man ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... rather, of some internal disquiet, suppressed but volcanic, working towards a change. Once or twice he staggered me by answering some casual question in a tone which, to say the least of it, suggested an ungainly attempt at facetiousness. A look at his sepulchral face would reassure me, but did not clear up the mystery. Something was ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know?" he laughed. "It's the sepulchral silence of Old Grandfather Clock, over there. You're looking right at him and wondering subconsciously why he doesn't make a noise ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... only traces of their existence now extant were the nuraghs of Sardinia and the talayots of the Balearic Islands,—gigantic tables formed with blocks, barbaric altars of enormous rocks which recalled the Celtic obelisks and sepulchral monuments of the Breton coast. These obscure people had passed from isle to isle, from the extreme of the Mediterranean to the strait ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was so close that I could hear its breathing, and then it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it had come upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke the sepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on the part of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and I felt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and down until it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then, ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Carn), a heap of stones piled up in a conical form. In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient times they were erected as sepulchral monuments. The Duan Eireanach, an ancient Irish poem, describes the erection of a family cairn; and the Senchus Mor, a collection of ancient Irish laws, prescribes a fine of three three-year-old heifers for "not erecting the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... cold, dark night. The stars seemed, to the boy's eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He softly reclosed the door. Having availed himself of the expiring light of the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few articles of wearing apparel he had, sat himself down upon a bench, to wait ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. When their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... VIII., according to an accepted tradition, knocked his head to such good purpose that he died. It was within the walls of Amboise that his widow, Anne of Brittany, already in mourning for three children, two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble at Tours, spent the first violence of that grief which was presently dispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor, Louis XII. Amboise was a frequent resort of the French Court during the sixteenth century; it was here that the young Mary Stuart ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... club after I had left Claridge's, and stayed playing bridge till unusually late. It was early in the morning when I reached the Milan, and the hotel had that dimly lit, somewhat sepulchral appearance which seems to possess a large building at that hour in the morning. As I stood for a moment inside the main doors, four men stepped out of the lift on my right, carrying a long wooden chest. They slunk away ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tell you," wailed the Aunt, "That's just it. There's just one person he likes as well, or mebbe better'n Miss Mary Lynn, an' that's Mark Carter! Mrs. Severn I'm just afraid he's gone off with Mark Carter!" she lowered her voice to a sepulchral whisper, "And Mrs. Severn, they do say that Mark is ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones. The corpse's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Catalogue of Sepulchral Monuments in Suffolk, throughout the hundreds of Babergh, Blackbourn, Blything, Bosmere and Claydon, Carlford, Colnies, Cosford, Hartismere, Hoxne, Town of Ipswich, Hundreds of Lackford and Loes. By the late D. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... was a pause. At that instant a man, whom Falkland recognised as the physician of the neighbourhood, passed at the opposite end of the hall. A light, a scorching and intolerable light, broke upon him. "She is dying—she is dead, perhaps," he said, in a low sepulchral tone, turning his eye around till it had rested upon every one present. Not one answered. He paused a moment, as if stunned by a sudden shock, and then sprang up the stairs. He passed the boudoir, and entered the room where Emily slept. The shutters ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... light. When sugar burns in spirits, a sepulchral light appears on everything: living faces look like faces of the dead; all color disappears from them, the ruddiness of the countenance, the brilliance of the lips, the glitter of the eyes,—all turn green. It ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Gabriel ran towards Rodin, while the prelate succeeded in making his escape. Rodin, stretched upon the carpet, his limbs twisted with fearful cramps, was writhing in the extremity of pain. The violence of his fall had, no doubt, roused him to consciousness, for he moaned, in a sepulchral voice: "They leave me to die—like ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... mist had followed them through the street door, and hovered about the staircase, charging the air with a moist sepulchral odour. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... every vilor or farm within the district is derived from them." The church build at the end of the village, was erected at the formation of the parish by bishop Ralph in 1230. It has a nave and north aisle with a small sepulchral chapel appendant. In this portion of the church which belongs to the manor of Dedisham, is a curiously sculptured female figure, destitute of any inscription, but traditionally said, to belong to a member of the family ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... as he spoke, as if he meant starting on the moment, but he sank into the chair again as John Heron said in a sepulchral voice: ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... glorious. The bright sun and delicious air are quite exhilarating. We passed a fine flowing rivulet, called Levize, going into the Lake, and many smaller runnels of delicious cold water. On resting by a dark sepulchral grove, a tree attracted the attention, as nowhere else seen: it is called Bokonto, and said to bear eatable fruit. Many fine flowers were just bursting into full blossom. After about four hours' march ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... very genius of desolate stillness, had stopped breathless upon the threshold of one cabin; a squirrel peeped impudently into the window of another; a woodpecker, with the general flavor of undertaking which distinguishes that bird, withheld his sepulchral hammer from the coffin-lid of the roof on which he was professionally engaged, as we passed. For a moment I half regretted that I had not accepted the invitation to the river-bed; but, the next moment, a breeze swept up the long, dark canyon, and the waiting files of the pines beyond ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... before them the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,—ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... English estimate Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, namely, the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled away from the face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his rest; for, had the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have offered for negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues through the feuds always gathering upon national ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ever lived upon whom the greed of gold was stronger than on Ezekiel, yet he hesitated now that his spectral friend had spoken so plainly, and trembled in every limb as the ghost slowly delivered himself in sepulchral ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... an idea,' wrote Dr Richardson later on, 'of the filth and wretchedness that met our eyes on looking around. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees and we were accustomed to the contemplation of each other's emaciated figures, but the ghastly countenances, dilated eye-balls, and sepulchral voices of Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could bear.' Franklin, on his part, was equally dismayed at the appearance of Richardson and Hepburn. {104} 'We were all shocked,' he says in his journal, 'at beholding ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... by the crepuscular light of a magical sky on the boundaries of the major and minor modes, now seeming to spring from the bowels of the earth with sepulchral inflexions, melody moves with ease on the serried degrees of the enharmonic scales. Lively or slow she always assumed in them the accents of a fatalist impossibility, for the laws of arithmetic have preceded her, and there still remains, as it were, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... a settlement of some importance. The subterraneous passages and foundations of ancient buildings, scattered over a wide extent of ground, attest a place of no small size. The remains of a theatre,[151] added to abundance of vases, cinerary urns, sepulchral lamps, and coins and medals, both of the upper and lower empire, which have been from time to time dug up here, prove it to have been occupied by the Romans during a considerable period. But no records remain, either of its greatness or overthrow. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... anywhere, then in life, and in life not as it might be imagined beyond the grave, but as it had been and would be lived on earth, appears to be consonant with all that we know of the clear and objective temper of the race. It is the spirit which was noted long ago by Goethe as inspiring the sepulchral monuments ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain," gives this epitaph of Robert Byrkes, which is to be found in Doncaster Church, "new cut" upon ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... and we will make unto thee the divine offerings which we are bound to make, and offer sacrifices in thy name for ever. Acclamations are made in thy name, libations are poured out to thy KA, and sepulchral meals [are brought unto thee] by the spirits who are in thy following, and water is sprinkled ... on each side of the souls of the dead in this land. Every plan for thee which hath been decreed by the commands of R[a] from the beginning hath been perfected. ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... sense of the term, originated with the Greeks and was extended in a surprising degree among the Romans. All the other peoples of antiquity devoted themselves to the rearing of religious and sepulchral monuments, and to the construction of palaces for their sovereigns. Their political organization did not lend itself to development in other directions. So long as a people is not considered as an individual there ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... the opaque and almost sensible darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, perhaps, an emphatic crack from the old cabinet that was made by Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of the coals on the extinguished fire. It was a calm; or I know that I should have heard in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... also"Chapter" or category. See vol. i., 136 and elsewhere (index). In Egypt "Bb" sometimes means a sepulchral cave hewn in a rock (plur. Bbn) from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... carving or some intaglio supposed to be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present aesthetic craze, an honest penny ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... her head or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste like sepulchral lamps among the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... it was a sepulchral place entombing all she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped about—after its habit—for something cheerful, something that would break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In a flash she ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... tragic picture, and listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... his shade thy floor still darken? dost thou still, despairing, hearken To that deep sepulchral utterance like the oracles of yore? In the same place is he sitting? Does he give no sign of quitting? Is he conscious or unwitting when he answers "Nevermore?" Tell ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Cord,'" he muttered, "in blood-red letters on a ground of dead, sepulchral black, with a crimson cord writhing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... myself to admit this idea, it is astonishing how rapidly it gained possession of my judgment, altering the whole tenor of my thoughts, and if not exactly transforming the situation into one of cheerfulness and ease, at least robbing it of much of that sepulchral character which had hitherto made it so nearly unbearable to me. The surroundings, too, seemed to partake of the new spirit of life which had seized me. The room looked less shadowy, and lost some of that element of mystery which had made its dimly ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... cautious sotto voce to Leroy, "at the end of your adventures! Behold the number Thirteen! Six lights at one end, six lights at the other,—that is twelve; and in the centre the Thirteenth—the red Eye looking into the sepulchral urn! It is all ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... leave it, and turned back again, walking still more slowly and heavily than before. So far as any outward object or circumstance could be said to be in harmony with his mood, the dismal lane, the failing light, the bitter air, were at that moment sympathetic to him. The tomb itself is not more sepulchral than certain streets and places in Prague on a dark winter's afternoon. In the certainty that the last and the greatest of misfortunes had befallen him, the Wanderer turned back into the gloomy by-way as the pale, wreathing ghosts, fearful of the sharp daylight and the distant voices of men, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... he even think it beneath his dignity to issue a detailed law as to luxury—which, among other points, cut down extravagance in building at least in one of its most irrational forms, that of sepulchral monuments; restricted the use of purple robes and pearls to certain times, ages, and classes, and totally prohibited it in grown-up men; fixed a maximum for the expenditure of the table; and directly forbade a number of luxurious dishes. Such ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... later he had entered. He remained long, so long that Bertram, uneasy and suffering, called him again and again, but without response. Half an hour—an hour passed, and then he feebly and painfully crept to the doorway of the tomb. He saw Atma prostrate on the damp sepulchral mould, his face buried in his hands, and beside him lay still, and cold, and lifeless, a girl attired in bridal finery, with jewels gleaming on her dark hair and on her stiffening arms. It ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... had not long been back from Europe when sealed windows and boarded entrances began to give a sepulchral blankness to the houses of the rich. Society was leaving town, and for Mary Burton to remain when her set had gone would have been like reigning in an empty court, for already she had entered upon her dominion and her triumph was secure. New York society ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... said the Hermit in a sepulchral tone. "Yes, my boy; but keep it mum. I shan't waste my Latin over ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... accretions. Apart from them there are only four non- elegiac pieces among the three hundred and eight amatory epigrams. The three hundred and fifty-eight dedicatory epigrams include sixteen in hexameter and iambic, and one in hendecasyllabic; and among the seven hundred and fifty sepulchral epigrams are forty-two in hexameter, iambic, and other mixed metres. The Epideictic section, as one would expect from the more miscellaneous nature of its contents, has a larger proportion of non-elegiac pieces. Of the eight hundred and twenty-seven epigrams no less than a hundred ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... in the sepulchral tones of Bensley, the tragedian, were judged to have a depressing effect upon the audience—a conclusion which seems reasonable and probable enough, although Boswell suggested that "the dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles they glided beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,—a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no sounding line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Where once my playful footsteps trod, Where now my head must lay; The meed of pity will be shed In dew-drops o'er my narrow bed, By nightly skies and storms alone; No mortal eye will deign to steep With tears the dark sepulchral deep Which hides ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... atmosphere, An inconsiderable and feathery speck Of no proportions, now augmented, wears A threatening aspect, ominously dark; Enveloping the heaven's canopy In lowering shadow and portentous gloom; In pall of ambient obscurity. The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play Upon a background of sepulchral black; The growling thunders rumble a reply Of detonation awful and profound, To every corruscation's vivid gleam; In deep crescendo and fortissimo, In quavering tremolo and stately fugue Echoes, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... keep your voice free from such undesirable qualities as the harsh, breathy, sharp, rough, rigid, throaty, guttural, thin, shrill, nasal, unmusical, discordant, muffled, explosive, strained, inaudible, hollow, strident, sepulchral, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... this inquiry been extended to British Runes, and might it not throw much light upon many monuments of dates prior to the Conquest? Crossed slabs with Runes have been found at Hartlepool, Durham; have the inscriptions been read? (Boutell's Christian Monuments, p. 3.; Cutt's Manual of Sepulchral Slabs, pp. ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... thou art a fool of the first water!" he said to himself as he realised the ignominy of his situation. For he was in the most dismal of dungeons, furnished as scantily as a cellar, fireless, damp, and almost in sepulchral darkness, for what light might have entered by a little window over the door was ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... population—elsewhere, from ignorance and prejudice, the stronghold of the papal religion—here seemed to share in the universal tendency, and, unfortunately, as a local chronicler, to whom we are indebted for these particulars, informs us, took no better way of testifying its devotion than by "mutilating sepulchral monuments, unearthing the dead, and committing a thousand acts of folly." Carrying their hatred of everything that reminded them of the period of judicial abuse to the length of detesting even the insignia of office, the people compelled the ministers ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... DRACO.—The Dragon's Blood tree of Teneriffe. This liliaceous plant attains a great age and enormous size. The resin obtained from this tree has been found in the sepulchral caves of the Cuanches, and hence it is supposed to have been used by them in embalming the dead. Trees of this species, at present in vigorous health, are supposed to be as old as ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... alone. It was not so much fear of stray bullets from a lurking enemy as the suggestion of the spirits of the slain lingering round these tombs. For Termonde appeared like one vast tomb. As we first entered its sepulchral silences we were greatly relieved that the three specter-like beings who sat huddled up over a distant ruin turned out not to be ghosts, but natives hopelessly and pathetically surveying this wreck that was once called home, trying to rake out of the embers ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... was admitted with certain solemnity by a sour-faced footman whose milk of human kindness had turned acid in the thunderstorms of Mrs Pansey's spite. This engaging Cerberus conducted the chaplain into a large and sepulchral drawing-room in which the good lady and Miss Norsham were partaking of afternoon tea. Mrs Pansey wore her customary skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... drive out of the gate and forsake the hotel "King of Portugal." The host waited awhile, and talked with the neighbors, who, roused by the continual blast of the post-horn, were curious to know how it happened that so many guests were departing by extra posts. Whereupon the host, in a hollow, sepulchral voice, his eyes glaring, and shrugging his shoulders, declared that there had been but one gentleman at the hotel, but nine times he had seen him drive away, and the devil must have a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numerous acquaintances. The chapel was hung with black cloth, and dimly lighted. He was seated beside his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the service of the dead. It is an ordeal under which the stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been found to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours he was led out to execution. He came forth calm and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his hand, he recited in a loud, clear voice ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Ada,' Sheila began, then caught back the angry words, and turned and looked over her shoulder into the room. 'Do you think you will need anything more, Dr Ferguson?' she asked in a sepulchral voice. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... been fatal to his predecessor. Voracity killed him, as it killed Scott's. He died unexpectedly before the kitchen-fire. "He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of Cuckoo!" The letter which told me this (31st of October) announced to me also that he was at a dead lock in his Christmas story: "Sick, bothered and depressed. Visions of Brighton come upon me; and I have a great mind to go there ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... down in 1849 and the present seats, giving room for near 2,500 persons, introduced, while the incongruous wall-arcading in the apse was soon after added. At the same period many important sepulchral monuments, probably stigmatized as "excrescences," were taken down and removed to other ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... expressions of Duck Island were in keeping with its general appearance, melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of the passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, were all beyond powers of written expression. The aspect of these ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the atrium, in one of which was the sarcophagus of Claudia Hermione, the renowned pantomimist. The best discovery, that of pagan tombs exactly on the line with that of S. Peter's, was made in the presence of Grimaldi, November 9, 1616. "On that day," he says, "I entered a square sepulchral room (10 ft. x 11 ft.), the ceiling of which was ornamented with designs in painted stucco. There was a medallion in the centre, with a figure in high relief. The door opened on the Via Cornelia, which was on the same level. This tomb is located ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... given in both, but explained a fort, a turret, and the real meaning of the word as still understood in many parts of Ireland is a fairy-hill, or hill of the fairies, and is applied to a green round hill crowned by a small sepulchral mound. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the deep voice of the Postmaster. This meant that the boy must come to bed. It was the sepulchral tone that made them jump perhaps. Zizi got up without a murmur; he was glad to go, really. He slept in the room with his parents. His father, an overcoat thrown over his night things, led him away without another ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... in their hard lot, for their love survives them, and by their death they have obtained an endless triumph over every separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... pillars in Genesis, xxviii. v. 20; Deuteronomy, xxvii. v. 4.; Joshua, xxiv.; 2 Samuel, xx. v. 8.; Judges, ix. v. 6., &c. &c. Many are the conjectures as to what purport these stones were used: sometimes they were sepulchral, as Jacob's pillar over Rachel, Gen. xxxv. 20. Ilus, son of Dardanus, king of Troy, was buried in the plain before that city beneath a column, Iliad, xi. 317. Sometimes they were erected as trophies, as the one set up by Samuel between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... through a piece of meat, flabby and cold; then he found a very few lentils, stiff with insecticide, beneath a great deal of sauce; finally he savoured some ancient prunes, whose juice smelt of mould and was at the same time aquatic and sepulchral. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... avoiding the night winds and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean. And once out—once where they could see the ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm—once where they could hear the shriek of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic picture ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he, in a hollow and sepulchral voice, "that could do it." Father Magauran, who was present, looked at him with surprise; as indeed did every one who had got an opportunity ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was no well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to do, and to which I cared not to find the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... admirable gravity; then fixed his eyes on the pair, in silence; and then said in a tone so solemn it was almost sepulchral, "This very day, nearly a century and a half ago, Sir Richard Raby was beheaded for being true ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... than would be good for us to know; and probably, if capable of speech, she could tell us the strangest stories of air and water. Gifted, or afflicted, as she is with such terribly penetrant power of sense, her notion of apparent realities must be worse than sepulchral. Small wonder if she howl at the moon that shines ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... that Bacchus was somehow or other connected with the said elevation, looked carefully round the room, but saw nothing. Gradually the chest lid opened a little way, and a sepulchral voice, issuing from it, uttered in a low tone ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... do, for he'd have every mother's son of us sent to jail or hanged, if he could," growled another voice on Snell's right, while from a mask on the left there came in sepulchral tones, the words, "It had better be hands off with you then, man," the speaker pointing significantly to Boyd's ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... sound. Then, without their knowing where it came from, a pale reddish light fell upon the muffled figures, and four grisly skulls riveted their hollow ghastly eyes upon the Pyramid Doctor. "Woe—woe—woe betide thee, Splendiano Accoramboni!" thus the terrible spectres shrieked in deep, sepulchral tones. Then one of them wailed, "Do you know me? do you know me, Splendiano? I am Cordier, the French painter, who was buried last week, and whom your medicaments brought to his grave." Then the second, "Do you know me, Splendiano? I am ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the Public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with the main Work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Paymaster presently in tones of sepulchral gloom, "the neophyte of AESCULAPIUS, to whose care the inscrutable wisdom of Providence has entrusted our lives, is being excruciatingly funny. Number One says it is belated remorse for the gallant servants of His Majesty whom he has consigned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan "Fairy Queen Proserpina," ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... find in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever, he would not care about his offspring." The "Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train of reflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixir vitae "in an antique sepulchral urn." The narrator there represents himself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial something within ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of this peculiar worship and the number of these subterranean temples in recent generations. The fame of some of the greater ones of the past still survives, as the vast grotto of Chalcatongo, near Achiutla, which was the sepulchral vault of its ancient kings; that of Totomachiapa, a solemn scene of sacrifice for the ancient priests; that of Justlahuaca, near Sola (Oaxaca), which was a place of worship of the Zapotecs long after the Conquest; and that in the Cerro de ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the parent's tie The prevalence obtains; impiously good, With blood her own, she soothes the brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By mine be punish'd; on their funeral ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... turn his face toward the open room, there came to his ears the most terrifying sound. Distinctly, plainly he heard a chuckle, almost at the bedside. A chuckle, hollow, sepulchral, mirthless. The hair on Hawkins's head stood straight on end. The impulse to hide beneath the covers was conquered by the irresistible ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the gradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavors to disguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and mercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imagination which culminate in "Castle Dangerous" cast a Stygian hue over "St. Ronan's Well," "The Fair Maid of Perth," and "Anne of Geierstein," which lowers them, the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the very beautiful woman whose statue adorns the fountain," declared Mary Cox, if it were she, in a sepulchral voice. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... starting; the skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the cheek ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... roads, which lost themselves behind the Beguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead. Could it be that l'Intruse of whom she had just been reading, that fatal, unseen visitor, was even now crossing the sepulchral city; could it be that the short ripples upon the face of the dark water were her shadow, while she herself had reached the threshold of the villa, bringing with her the coveted gift of eternal sleep! The church bells chimed the hour ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... for the circumstances of his death. There was, it seems, one Honeyman, a blacksmith, who was a ventriloquist, and could speak with his mouth closed. He was introduced to Britton, and, by way of a joke, told him in a sepulchral voice that he should die in a few hours. Britton never recovered the shock, but died a few days afterwards in 1714. Among the humorous pieces in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in plenty, as well as much other wild life, should go over Maddeket way and sit on the shore of Long Pond. There I found the bushy swales alive with marsh birds. Blackbirds gurgled all about. The reedy shallows held many bitterns whose sepulchral "Cahugancagunk, cahungancagunk" sounded ventriloqually from the reeds. Coot, sea duck, loons, black duck, grebes, dotted the surface of the pond and in all the sandy shallows spawning alewives splashed and played—thousands ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... in sepulchral tones, when she recovered her breath, "this is one of the results of Miss Octavia Bassett." And nothing more had been ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... romance to see you. It doesn't matter what I say to you. You didn't know me yesterday, you'll not know me to-morrow. Let me to-day do a mad sweet thing. Let me imagine in you the spirit of all the dead women who have trod the terrace-flags that lie here like sepulchral tablets in the pavement of a church. Let me say I delight in you!"—he raised her hand to his lips. She gently withdrew it and for a moment averted her face. Meeting her eyes the next instant I saw the tears had come. The Sleeping ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... humorously snaky, little face, a deep sepulchral voice, which broke into squeaks in moments of excitement, and curious black eyes with apparently no pupils—little glittering black wells of ill intent, with which he cowed dogs and set small children screaming and grown ones swearing. His little body was as malformed as his twisted little ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... his chamber and his bed, and his death was hourly expected. He hated the French, and all his sympathies were with Austria. Some priests entered his chamber, professedly to perform the pompous and sepulchral service of the church of Rome for the dying. In this hour of languor, and in the prospect of immediate death, they assailed the imbecile monarch with all the terrors of superstition. They depicted the responsibility which he ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... which time periods of sepulchral silence would be followed by a repetition of the uncanny scraping of naked ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inclination to laugh; but for a time succeeded in restraining it. But when, in close succession upon the minister's words, there arose from the next room (separated from us by a thin board partition) a sepulchral echo in the voice of my room-mate, a grim and swarthy miner, who probably had not heard the prayer since he repeated it after his mother at her knee, and from the still potent though long dormant force of habit, now joined in its utterance, the incongruity of my surroundings overcame me, and I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... showing raising of floor; (2) squint and rood-loft stairs on N.; (3) square fluted font with cable moulding; (4) consecration crosses on jamb of W. door, on chancel buttresses, and on wall of S. aisle (cp. Nempnett); (5) arched doorway into tower from chancel, made up of a sepulchral slab with ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... graceful. The front towards the city is adorned with two or three Roman pillars, bearing, if I remember rightly, plain capitals. There is, I think, no pediment above them, or any other adjunct of architectural pretension; but the pillars themselves, so unlike anything else there, so unlike any other sepulchral monument that I, at least, have seen, make the tomb very remarkable. That it was built for a tomb is, I suppose, not to be doubted; though for whose ashes it was in fact erected may perhaps be questioned. I am not aware that any claimant has been named ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait - Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... were heard, which, as they approached, resounded with a sepulchral distinctness on the marble pavement. Presently a young man entered breathlessly, holding his hat in one hand and a white ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... disappeared, the ivy darkened, and a wind arose and shook all its leaves, making them look cold and troubled; and to Elsie's ear came a low faint sound, as from a far-off bell. But close beside her—and she started and shivered at the sound—rose a deep, monotonous, almost sepulchral voice: 'Come hame, come hame! The wow, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... tone, Thrills through me, from my lips the goblet stealing! Ye murmuring bells, already make ye known The Easter morn's first hour, with solemn pealing? Sing you, ye choirs, e'en now, the glad, consoling song, That once, from angel-lips, through gloom sepulchral rung, A ...
— Faust • Goethe
... people leave the city in a kind of panic. The stillness is awful. A longer stay would reduce one to a state of melancholy madness. A few poets, however, have been able to endure, and even to love, the sepulchral stillness of the city. But to appreciate Venice one ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... articulated with astonishing success. It was interesting to watch their countenances, which were alive with eager attention, and to see the apparent efforts they made to utter the words. They spoke in a monotonous tone, slowly and deliberately, but their voices had a strange, sepulchral sound, which was at first unpleasant to the ear. I put one or two questions to a little boy, which he answered quite readily; as I was a foreigner, this was the best test that could be given of the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... more clearly the roar and snarl and rending thunder of the great fields of ice as they swept down with the arctic current into Hudson's Bay. Over him hovered a strange night. It was not black but a weird and wraith-like gray, and out of this sepulchral chaos came strange sounds and the moaning of a wind high up. A little while longer, Keith thought, and the thing would have driven him mad. Even now he fancied he heard the screaming and wailing of voices far ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... questions, not to mythological ones); but it is, I believe, much connected with the brooding of the shadow of death over the Greeks without any clear hope of immortality. The restriction of the color on their vases to dim red (or yellow) with black and white, is greatly connected with their sepulchral use, and with all the melancholy of Greek tragic thought; and in this gloom the failure of color-perception is partly noble, partly base: noble, in its earnestness, which raises the design of Greek vases as far above the designing of mere colorist nations like the Chinese, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... same instant a voice reached their ears—in a hollow sepulchral tone, like that of a man speaking from the bottom of a well, or through the bung-hole ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... order my coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral tone. "I sha'n't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though I know I'm past help. I will go up ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... to the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below them, and an effort to recall in detail ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... dark. No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and close beside it pale light spread out upon the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... But as I hastened on toward the quarter where the Zabels lived, I was seized by such compunction for his desolate state that I faltered in my rapid flight and did not arrive at the place of my destination as quickly as I intended. When I did I found the house dark and the silence sepulchral. But I did not turn away. Remembering my mother's anxiety, an anxiety so extreme it disturbed her final moments, I approached the front door and was about to knock when I found it open. Greatly astonished, I at once passed in, and, seeing my way perfectly in the moonlight, entered ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green |
