"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might have been mistaken for mother and daughter, as the elder woman was clad in a sombre black velvet dress, and had a pale, thin face, crowned with heavy masses of grey hair. On closer inspection, however, one perceived that Julia Lester was far from old—indeed, not more than about forty-five, and with a peculiarly gentle, almost child-like ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the height of this engagement was sombre, magnificent, and unique. The day was perfectly clear, and you could see right down the coast as far as Sedd-ul-Bahr. There the warships of the first division were blazing away at Aki Baba and the hills around it, covering their summits with a great white cloud of bursting ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... each other in Western Asia annihilated all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at length an interpretation in the peerless ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... pendent portraits of the "Two Clowns," cutting in its sarcasm, but not bitter—from "The Captain's Vices," which suggests at once George Eliot's Silas Marner and Mr. Austin Dobson's Tale of Polypheme, to the sombre revery of the poet "At Table," a sudden and searching light cast on the labor and misery which underlies the luxury of our complex modern existence. Like "At Table," "A Dramatic Funeral" is a picture more than it is a ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian giants, lift their icy shields in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... clerics fight might make the sourest laugh! They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown, So keep us good St. Genevieve, Umslopogaas is down! About the mace of David Grieve his blood is flowing red, Alas for ancient chivalry, le brave Bussy is sped! Yet where the sombre Templar rides the Modern caitiffs fly, The Mummer (of The Mummer's Wife) has got it in the eye, From Felix Holt his patent Colt hath not averted fate, And Silas Lapham's smitten fair, right through his gallant pate. There Dan Deronda reels and falls, a hero sore ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... are gone— Oh, you are gone Out to the blaze and glory of dawn! Leaving the print of blood-red anemones In the mould, and echoes of ancient glees Shaking like silver leaves on my sombre trees! ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... were mostly very old, with canvas or leather saddle-bags, containing cups, etc. I saw also one or two horses with our regimental brands on them. Some had bright-coloured rugs on them, and all the men had the same, which lent vivid colour to the otherwise sombre throng. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... It was a very sombre face. "This thing has given me a great deal of pain," said Montague; "and I don't want to prolong it any more than necessary. I have thought the matter over, and my mind is made up, so there need be no discussion. It will not be ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, old, bearded regular, who headed the cavalry. The staff was at hand, also, including Fitz Hugh, who sat his horse a little apart, downcast and sombre and silent, but nevertheless keenly interested. It is worthy of remark, by the way, that Waldron took no special note of him, and did not seem conscious of any disturbing presence. Evil as the man may have been, he was a thoroughly ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the smallest with its golden chimes, seem to be chanting it when they ring. Each swinging tongue has its tale to tell, a tale of old Spain, of Spanish galleons and Spanish gentlemen adventurers, of gentle-voiced priests and sombre-eyed Indians, of conquest, revolt, intrigue, and sudden death. When a baby is born in San Juan, a rarer occurrence than a strong man's death, the littlest of the bells upon the western arch laughs while it calls to all to hearken; when a man is killed, the angry-toned ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the holly! oh, twine it with bay— Come give the holly a song; For it helps to drive stern winter away, With his garment so sombre ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's; unfortunately ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... gently on slight ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to the shore. Rows of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on parade between towering buildings; but on the other side of the harbour sombre hills arched high their black spines, on which, here and there, the point of a star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off, Byculla way, the electric lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of lofty standards with ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... with the consequent loss of personality, individuality, and all moral responsibility, had a most depressing effect upon the character of the people who embraced this strange system. This is so manifest that it may be plainly read in the sombre character ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will see him soon In our great Forum, there with him will walk, And hear him rail and rave against the East. I stay behind—for these bare silences, These hills that in the sunset melt and burn, This proud stern people, these dead seas and lakes, These sombre cedars, this intense still sky, To me, o'erwearied with life's din and strain, Are grateful as the solemn blank of night After the fierce day's irritant excess; Besides, a deep absorbing interest Detains me here, fills up ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... struck her more than ever after coming from the crowded and inconvenient little court within. The vaulted roof, with its quaintly carved angels, was for the most part dim and shadowy, but here and there a ray of sunshine, slanting in through the clerestory windows, changed the sombre tones to a golden splendor. Erica, very susceptible to all high influences, was more conscious of the ennobling influence of light, and space, and beauty than of the curious eyes which were watching her from below. But all at once her attention was drawn to a group ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... gathered some two or three hundred officers, English, Dutch, and German, the bottom of the valley, which was some forty yards across, being left clear. There was, however, none of the life and animation which generally characterize a military gathering. The British officers looked sombre and stern at what they deemed nothing short of the approaching murder of their gallant young countryman; and the Germans were grave and downcast, for they felt ashamed of the inequality of the contest. Among both parties there ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Devotional and Doctrinal, of as early date as many of the songs inspired by the spirit of Love, War, and Romance. Among them they represent the diverse strands that are blended in the Scottish character—the sombre and the bright; the prose and the poetry. The one or the other has predominated in the expression of the genius of the nation in verse, according to the circumstances and mood of the time. But neither has ever been really absent; ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Here was a sombre dining-room with decanters and glasses, bedrooms with satin down quilts spread over the foot of the bed, and adjoining one of them a dressing-room with pomades and perfumes and rows of boots just ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... story which Charles Turold heard by that grey Cornish sea—a story touched with the glitter of adventurous fortune in the sombre setting of a trachytic island, where wine-dark breakers beat monotonously on a black beach of volcanic sand strewn with driftwood, kelp, dead shells, and the squirming forms of blindworms tossed up from the bowels of a dead sea. It was there in the spell of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... "Green-head," "Wild Duck." Adult male, in fall, winter, and spring, beautifully colored; summer, resembles female—sombre. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... of the Admirals of the Atlantic, held in the sombre depths, is a biting satire, in its mingled comedy and tragedy, on the effort to win command of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... matter with you, you dirty hound?" and he walked a few steps forward, gazing at the indistinct outlines, the sombre ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... wheeled. The convict, forgotten by the two gentlemen, had been left standing at the foot of the steps, and his sombre eyes were now fixed upon the girl in a look so strange and intent as fully to explain her perturbation. Through his parted lips the breath came hurriedly, in his eyes was a mournful exaltation as of one who looks from a desert into Paradise. He stood absorbed, unconscious ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... intelligent; the eyes are large and prominent; the mouth is wide, but well shaped. This head is carved in hard limestone of a creamy tint which seems to soften the somewhat satirical expression of her eyes and smile. The king (fig. 200) is in black granite; and the sombre hue of the stone at once produces a mournful impression upon the spectator. His youthful face is pervaded by an air of melancholy, such as we rarely see depicted in portraits of Pharaohs of the great period. The nose is straight and delicate, the eyes are long, the lips are large, full, somewhat ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... and closer to the land, until a towering line of cliffs rose for more than a thousand feet right above their heads. It was a stern and sombre coast, unbroken by any bays or inland glimpses, and gloomy and terrible in the fading light. The great oily swell broke into spouts of foam at the cliff-foot, and all along the face of the precipice they could see innumerable sea- fowl clinging to ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... grander every moment; the brook was working its way deeper below the level of the road, while here and there in this sombre defile a splash of yellow aspen gleamed like living gold on the face of the precipice. The wild and beautiful gorge interested him in spite of himself; it disengaged his thoughts alike from his personal grievance, and from his dissatisfied ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... burial-ground. Every one used to say it was haunted, and the Holkitts had great trouble in getting servants. The appearance of the haunted house did not belie its reputation, for its grey walls, sombre garden, gloomy hall, dark passages and staircase, and sinister-looking attics could not have been more thoroughly suggestive of all kinds of ghostly phenomena. Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the place, no matter how hot and bright the sun, was cold and dreary, and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... in this timeless grave to throw, No cypress, sombre on the snow; Snap not from the bitter yew His leaves that live December through; Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... was her name, took me at once up stairs to the third story back room. As we passed through the halls, I could not but notice how rich, though sombre were the old fashioned walls and heavily frescoed ceilings, so different in style and coloring from what we see now-a-days in our secret penetrations into Fifth Avenue mansions. Many as are the wealthy houses I have been ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... the wax candles in the nine-branched candlestick of silver. He wore a long, hooded mantle reaching to the feet, and showing where it fell back in front a brown gaberdine clasped by a girdle. These sombre-colored robes were second-hand, as the austere simplicity of the Pragmatic required. The Jewish Council of Sixty did not permit its subjects to ruffle it like the Romans of those days of purple pageantry. The young bloods, forbidden by Christendom to style themselves ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of construction, will bear to be painted with darker colors, but they should not be too sombre, so as to give a gloomy appearance to the house. The country, with its bright sunshine, its rich adornments of flowers, and its numberless forms of beauty and grace, is eminently cheerful. It often happens that the ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... unceasingly another character to the face of people who think and study, that is why their portraits do not look like one another nor like them for long. I dream so much and I live so little, that sometimes I am only three years old. But, the next day I am three hundred, if the dream has been sombre. Isn't it the same with you? Doesn't it seem at moments, that you are beginning life without even knowing what it is, and at other times don't you feel over you the weight of several thousand centuries, of which you have a vague ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... that he did, but his sombre gaze into darkness belied him. So again she slipped her arm through his and he suffered himself to be led away along the path of ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... as the night was clear though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open—and went forth Into a gallery, of a sombre hue, Long, furnish'd with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth. But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ghastly, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the Minaret: The groves of olive scattered dark and wide Where meek Cephisus pours his scanty tide; 1210 The cypress saddening by the sacred Mosque, The gleaming turret of the gay Kiosk;[228] And, dun and sombre 'mid the holy calm, Near Theseus' fane yon solitary palm, All tinged with varied hues arrest the eye— And dull were his that passed him ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... stirs the mist at the bottom of the hill. A monotonous rhythm grows in the silence. The mist darkens, and from it there emerges a strange shadowy column that reaches slowly up the hill, moving in silence to the sombre and muffled beating of a drum. As it draws nearer the shadow becomes two files of marching men bearing between them a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sort of steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and he consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly—rather as if he were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which had half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder. Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... He and the sombre, silent Spirit met— They knew each other both for good and ill; Such was their power, that neither could forget His former friend and future foe; but still There was a high, immortal, proud regret In either's eye, as if 'twere less their will Than destiny ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... seemed to flow back up the steep side of the mountain, thick with underbrush. Just below us, and possibly fifty feet from the highway, I could perceive a small one- story log cabin, as silent, gloomy, and deserted to all outward appearance as were the sombre woods of ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... through the hills for a matter of ten miles; till at last, after descending a crag, we saw opening out in front of us a ravine so sombre and dark that it might have been the gate of Hades itself; cliffs many hundred feet shut in on every side the gloomy boulder-studded passage which led through the haunted defile into Kaffirland. The moon, rising above the crags, threw into strong relief the rough, irregular pinnacles ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... He gazed down at her for a moment with a sombre stare, as one looks at ruins, at the devastation of some ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... attributed, no doubt, to the years which intervened; but something, too, to his abandonment of that mother-ground which to him, as to the fabled Antaeus, was the source of strength.' The autumn of his life glided quietly on amid the pleasures and pains of literature; its sombre close being pleasantly illuminated by the rays of spring-promise that radiated around the young brow of his daughter, which the dying veteran might well hope would be matured into 'glorious summer by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... walks, lest the mourner should get "wet on's feet," and vaults numbered like warehouses, where "parties may bring their own minister," and be buried with any form, or no form, if they like it better. No, give us the village churchyard with its sombre yew-trees, among which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten selfhood—in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of the pavilion was the number of ladies who were present. A great room exclusively filled with men, is at best a dull and sombre spectacle; and so far from social, that it always conveys to us a gross idea of selfishness. The mere scenic effect on this occasion was immensely heightened by the adoption of the polite rule; nor can it be doubted that the tone of the meeting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... gaze drifted downward from his employer's face. He sat, then, gazing into the rosy little fire until something upon the lapel of his coat caught his attention—a wilted and disreputable carnation. He threw it into the fire; and, with a sombre satisfaction, watched it sizzle. This brief pleasure ended, he became expressionless and relapsed ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... aside the bird-cage). No, the time for prattle is gone by—from now on we shall be serious. You need not fear my boisterous happiness. It was only put on for your sake, and as it doesn't suit your sombre calling, I'll—(She ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... you not get used to the life one leads here? Is it too gloomy here?—It is true the castle is very old and very sombre.... It is very cold, and very deep. And all those who dwell in it, are already old. And the country may seem gloomy too, with all its forests, all its old forests without light. But that may all be enlivened if we will. And then, joy, joy, one does not have it every ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... To the left the waters of the noble River St. John rippled and sparkled beneath the glowing sun. Over there amidst that long stretch of marshland, in many a cove and reedy creek, the wild ducks were securely hidden. What connection had a rugged, stirring lad with a brown sombre potato patch when the strong insistent voice of the wild was calling him to fields afar? There was no inspiration here—among these straggling rows. Nothing to thrill a boy's heart, or to send the blood surging and tingling through his body. But ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... not a single sound Breathes on the eternal stillness all around; 'Tis tropic noon! and yet the sultry time Seems like the twilight of some fairy clime. Spreading in lone luxuriance round is seen The mangrove's tangled maze of sombre green; Thro' mists that dwell those baneful fens upon Large orbed and pale peers out the shrouded Sun, And struggling sickly thro' the vaporous day, Dull on the windless waters falls the pallid ray. So slumb'ringly the glassy river ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hill is all one heavy dull hue in the sombre evening light, and against it the sharp glints of fire as the shrapnel bursts, and the round puff-balls of white smoke show vividly. Every now and then a great curtain of murky vapour goes up to show where the old lyddite-slinger in the rear is depositing ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... The sombre taste of the Spanish ladies in dress, so famous and effective that the black mantillas and skirts, and the fans that do such execution in the hands of the dark-eyed coquettes, as to have sway where empires ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals; and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant colouring, its sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to a human visitant. But neither man nor any other animals were then in existence to look for such uses or such beauties in this vegetation. It was serving other and equally important ends, clearing (probably) the atmosphere of matter noxious to animal life, and storing up mineral masses ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... some sort complementing, the "Confessions," are often published several detached pieces called "Reveries," or "Walks." These are very peculiar compositions, and very characteristic of the author. They are dreamy meditations or reveries, sad, even sombre, in spirit, but "beautiful exceedingly," in form of expression. Such works as the "Rene" of Chateaubriand, works but too abundant since in French literature, must all trace their pedigree to Rousseau's "Walks." We introduce two specimen extracts. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... claim its own. Nature wore a hardy countenance, as wild and as untamed as the savage landholders. Manhattan's twenty-two thousand acres of rock, lake and rolling table land, rising at places to a height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet, were covered with sombre forests, grassy knolls and dismal swamps. The trees were lofty; and old, decayed and withered limbs contrasted with the younger growth of branches; and wild flowers wasted their sweetness among the dead ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... independence, went down before the storm, including the kingdoms of Urartu, of the Mushku, and of the Tabal,** the miserable end furnishing the Hebrew prophets full fifty years later with a theme of sombre rejoicing. "There is Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude; her graves are round about her: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in the land of the living. And they shall not lie with the mighty that are ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... suddenly pause in their merry game, for the wily dwarf Alberich has emerged from one of the sombre chasms. He is a Nibelung, a spirit of night and darkness, and slowly gropes his way to one of the upper ridges, whence he can see the graceful forms of the nymphs, watch their merry evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... le soir tombait, l'homme sombre arriva Au bas d'une montagne en une grande plaine; Sa femme fatiguee et ses fils hors d'haleine; Lui dire: 'Couchons-nous ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... even, possibly, that they would be singled out for more annotation and comment than the tragedies or the histories. The most heavily annotated plays are, however, the tragedies, and it is curious to observe that the sombre "problem comedy," Measure for Measure, commands more notes than any other comedy. Further, Johnson's moral and religious sensibilities were offended by profanity and obscenity in the drama, and Shakespeare's comedies, far more ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... of cypress "knees." Unwittingly, you are sure to gather on your clothing a colony of ravenous ticks from some swaying branch. Redbugs bent on mischief scramble up on you by the score and bury themselves in your skin, while a cloud of mosquitoes waves behind you like a veil. In the sombre shadows through which you move you have a feeling that there are many unseen things that crawl and glide and fly, and a creepy feeling about the edges of your scalp becomes a familiar sensation. Once we came upon the trail of a bear and found the going easier when we waded on hands ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... my friend; the Kingfisher But yestermorn conjured me here Out of his green and gold to say Why thou, in splendour of the noon, Wearest of colour but golden shoon, And else dost thee array In a most sombre suit of black? 'Surely,' he sighed, 'some load of grief, Past all our thinking—and belief— Must weigh upon his back!' Do, then, in turn, tell me, If joy Thy heart as well as voice employ Why dost thou now most Sable, shine In plumage woefuller ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... clasp the hands they love, though wrapped in countless furs and muffs. Gay steeds dash on with steaming nostrils, as if their toil were sport; and their bells, as they ring cheerily out in the sombre night, give ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... The sombre words knocked upon every heart like a blow on a door behind which conspirators are plotting. The Major was the first to recover ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every inch of ground with the wilderness, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... depicted on the countenances of those assembled slave-drivers as they listened to the delegates' report. The sombre silence that followed was broken at length by Mr Rushton, who suddenly started up and said that he began to think they had made a mistake in going outside the constituency at all to look for a man. It was strange but true that a prophet never received honour in his own land. They had been wasting ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... from the crossing at Jersey City to the depot where the Norwich train was in waiting. Our route lay for some distance along Broadway, through the very heart of the great metropolis. As we passed the hurrying throngs that crowded the great thoroughfare that sombre winter evening, Mr. Garfield remarked that it was a scene similar to the one we were then witnessing that suggested to Mr. Bryant one of the most stirring of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... women, in thin, floating white dresses and spangled veils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy silver ornaments jangled on their ankles, above their black slippers splashed with mud. Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained, claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... billeted in Hocquincourt, a little French village near Hallencourt. Viewed from a distance the village looked picturesque, with the red tiled roofs of the houses contrasted against the sombre winter sky, but a closer inspection revealed a different picture. The houses were rickety, the billets poor, and the conditions insanitary. So backward were the peasants in agriculture that they still ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... lunch and dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn—silent and sombre almost to moroseness. But Randal had ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... soul, or a fallen angel in metempsychosis, and that to him who is remarkable for hostility to the phocal race some fatal retribution will ensue. I can easily conceive the feeling of awe with which a fisherman would be impressed when, in the sombre magnificence of some rocky solitude, a great seal suddenly presented himself, for an interview of this kind ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to quaintness, without being picturesque. Its houses are not grouped according to size and character, but dropped as it were anyhow, in chance collocations, tall and low, thatched and slated together. Two or three gigantesque meeting-houses, featureless and sombre, domineer over the roofs around them. One or two others of a less puritan design, and not out of character with the church on a knoll a furlong off, compensate their severer rivals. The shape of the village is determined by the narrow ridge of terra firma, the mere heaping of the tides, between ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the garden two men clad in mourning robes so long and flowing that they trailed upon the ground. As they marched they beat two great drums which were likewise draped in black, and beside them came the fife player, black and sombre like the others. Following these came a personage of gigantic stature enveloped rather than clad in a gown of the deepest black, the skirt of which was of prodigious dimensions. Over the gown, girdling or crossing his figure, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... view. The former have all their brilliant colouring on the upper surface of all four wings, while the under surface is almost always soberly coloured, and often very dark and obscure. The moths on the contrary have generally their chief colour on the hind wings only, the upper wings being of dull, sombre, and often imitative tints, and these generally conceal the hind wings when the insects are in repose. This arrangement of the colours is therefore eminently protective, because the butterfly always rests with his wings raised so as to conceal the dangerous brilliancy ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... fine collection of American Letters. I found a complete set of Hawthorne and straightway became a moody and sombre Puritan ... and I wrote in Hawthornian prose, quaint essays and stories. And I lived in a world of old lace and lavender, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the next afternoon when I rode through the canada that led to the rancho. I confess my thoughts were somewhat gloomy, in spite of my escape from the noisy hotel; but this was due to the sombre scenery through which I had just ridden, and the monotonous russet of the leagues of wild oats. As I approached the rancho, I saw that Enriquez had made no attempt to modernize the old casa, and that even the garden was left in its lawless native luxuriance, while ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... battle had been fought in the North Sea! Ten British battleships had been sunk, but the whole German fleet had been destroyed! For the first time war took on some colour. Crimson and purple and gold began to shoot through the sombre black and grey. A completely new set of emotions filled their hearts, a new sense of exultation, a new pride in that great British Navy which hitherto had been a mere word in a history book, or in a song. The children who, after ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... the prisoner with a horseman who had civilly borne each of them company for an hour in their several homeward rides from certain fairs, and had carried the pleasure of his society, they very gravely asserted, considerably beyond a joke; so that the state of the prisoner's affairs took a very sombre aspect, and the counsel—an old hand—intrusted with his cause declared confidentially that there was not a chance. But a yet more weighty accusation, because it came from a much nobler quarter, awaited Clifford. In the robbers' cavern were found several articles ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the river. From the bridge the town seemed more fantastic and mysterious than ever; upon a wall might be made out the galleries of a palace, and several lofty, sombre towers shot up from amidst the jumbled dwellings of the town; a strip of moon gleamed close to the horizon, and the river, divided by a few islets into arms, glittered ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... tapes to hold up the clothing and fasten it together. The clothing of the Piscataquay planters varied but little from the others. They had scarlet waistcoats and cassocks of cloth, not of leather. We are apt to think of the Puritan settlers of New England as sombre in attire, wearing "sad-colored" garments, but green and scarlet waistcoats and scarlet caps certainly afforded a gay ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... abundance of gray hair that was combed straight back from her forehead, and her features, gave evidence of great decision of character. The young lady had large, lustrous eyes, and the pallor of her face was in strange contrast with her sombre drapery. These were the ladies from Waverly, as the Garwood place was called; and Helen and her aunt met them a few ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... view of this great island is scarcely attractive. Its abrupt shores wear a sombre hue, and the traveler, ere he sets foot on the soil, detects a sort of savage air that seems to reign triumphant over the demi-civilization that has been the growth of only a score or two of years. Tiny native huts, looking as though the architect ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... muttered our hero, as he sprang away from the gasping beast. The next moment he had disappeared in the dense, dark wood. Ah! how sheltering, how kindly, seemed that sombre sanctuary, with its dark grey tufts beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and Cruces. The distance from Chagres to the first named, is about 45 or 50 miles—to the latter, some 50 or 55 miles. The traveler, who for the first time in his life embarks on a South American river like the Chagres, cannot fail to experience a singular depression of spirits at the dark and sombre aspect of the scene. In the first place, he finds himself in a canoe, so small that he is forced to lay quietly in the very centre of the stern portion, in order to prevent it upsetting. The palm leaf thatch ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... mating season the female may be seen perching — a posture one rarely catches her gay lover in — preening her dainty but sombre feathers with ladylike nicety. The young birds do a great deal of perching before they gain the marvellously rapid wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly within three weeks after they are hatched. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... composure of manner. She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited means. The dress was a sombre grayish beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side. Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... became a roar, That made the dungeon ring; They laughed, they rolled upon the floor, Till suddenly the massy door On creaking hinge did swing; And to them the head jailer now appeared, A sombre man ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... shouted Farmer Tallington from the trees beyond the hut, which now appeared before them, sombre and gloomy, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... was blotted out from Spain,—and Spain was blotted out from the ranks of enlightened nations. Freedom of thought was at an end. The mind of the Spaniard was put in fetters. Spain, under the sombre shadow of this barbarity, was shut out from the light which was breaking over the remainder of Europe. Literature moved in narrow channels, philosophy was checked, the domain of science was closed, progress was at an end. Spain stood still while the rest of the world was sweeping ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... had been brought back to her, and she had seen the life which her husband was living, and that her anger,—hot anger,—had been changed to pity, and that with pity love had returned, it was not till this point had come in her sad life that her dress became always black and sombre, that a veil habitually covered her face, that a bonnet took the place of the jaunty hat that she had worn, and that the prettinesses of her life were lain aside. "It is very good of you to come," she said; "very good. I hardly knew what to do, I was so wretched. On the day that I sent he ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... touched upon. Marcus Clarke could never have shown the Australian people so much of the beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in Geoffry Hamlyn. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the country to be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonely specks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend the contrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left on the mind of the reader. Australian scenery ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... it forth to the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old, again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must have been sombre enough. For some reason or other—tradition says to ask for some bread and water for his boy—he stopped at the Franciscan monastery of La Rabida, about half a league from Palos. The prior, Juan Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly interested in him and listened with earnest ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... but a gloomy picture of Paradise. It is so vast, and such hundreds of figures are crowded together, and the colour is dark and sombre. There is none of that swinging of golden censers by white-robed angels, none of the pure glad colouring of spring flowers which makes us love the Paradise of ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... allowed to draw a curtain over the sorrows of the archdeacon as he sat, sombre and sad at heart, in the study of his parsonage at Plumstead Episcopi. On the day subsequent to the dispatch of the message he heard that the Earl of - had consented to undertake the formation of a ministry, and from that moment he knew ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of sombre triumph. "The Sistine Chapel. I've got a print of it in my room. That's where you saw it." She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than usually grey and dishevelled ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... may see the ruins of the temple of Serapis[203] at Pozzuoli, and that of Isis at Pompeii. The gods of Greece, as we have seen, took some hints from Egypt, but the Greek Olympus, with its bright forms, was very different from the mysterious sombre worship of Egypt. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... little incident to change the tone of one's feelings and the humor of the occasion. As a few drops of oil, cast upon the surface of the waters, will quiet the troubled waves, so did the glad voice of this merry bird suddenly dispel all those sombre feelings which had been fostered by dismal scenes and a lonely journey. Nature never seemed so lovely as when the rising dawn, with its tearful beams and purple radiance, was greeted by this warbling salutation, as from some messenger of light, who came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of foreign birds hasten, impelled by some inexplicable instinct, from unknown regions on the other side of immense oceans, to feed upon the grain and other vegetable productions of the island; and the brilliancy of their plumage forms a striking contrast to the more sombre tints of the foliage embrowned by the sun. Among these are various kinds of parroquets, and the blue pigeon, called here the pigeon of Holland. Monkeys, the domestic inhabitants of our forests, sport upon the dark branches of the trees, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... than usual. Her dress and hat were of sombre black, and her manner nervous and disturbed. She came slowly to-wards their end of the table, although she was obviously in search of some ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hantee L'eau morne croupit— Sous la sombre futaie Le renard glapit, Et le cerf-dix-cors brame, et les daims viennent boire a l'Etang du Repit. "Lachez-moi, Loupgaroux!" Que sinistre est la mare Quand tombe la nuit; La chouette s'effare— Le blaireau s'enfuit! L'on y sent que les morts se reveillent—qu'une ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "before I went to Pierre Chatel, a monk of a very melancholy humor, whose character was very sombre, and who was looked upon as ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... a kindly way, and took her hand, very cold and lax, in his for welcome. She could not answer, but made haste to follow Veronica to her room, whither the old woman led the way with a candle. It was a gloomily spacious chamber, with sombre walls and a lofty ceiling with a faded splendor of gilded paneling. Some tall, old-fashioned mirrors and bureaus stood about, with rugs before them on the stone floor; in the middle of the room was a bed curtained with mosquito-netting. Carved chairs were pushed here and ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... manners of the house. Under her guidance we passed through a dozen apartments, duly stocked with old pictures, old tapestry, old carvings, old armour, with a hundred ornaments and treasures. The pictures were especially valuable. The two Vandykes, the trio of rosy Rubenses, the sole and sombre Rembrandt, glowed with conscious authenticity. A Claude, a Murillo, a Greuze, a couple of Gainsboroughs, hung there with high complacency. Searle strolled about, scarcely speaking, pale and grave, with bloodshot eyes and lips compressed. He uttered no comment ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... laughed—chattered and laughed, seeing an ordinary game between the King and a marker; while I, for whom the court had grown sombre as a dungeon, saw a villain struggling in his own toils, livid with the fear of death, and tortured by horrible apprehensions. Use and habit were still so powerful with the man that he played on mechanically with his hands, but his eyes every now and then sought mine ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... rounded a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following as swiftly and silently as sharks that had scented blood, and they ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... demonstration that the Gospel is the revelation of 'the righteousness of God from faith to faith,' and is thereby 'the power of God unto salvation.' What a contrast there is between the beginning and the end of his argument! It started with sombre, sad words about man's sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of God. It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph; like some stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy moorlands, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... this time that he, in accord with the chrysalid tendency manifested by most other millionaires, discarded his long-followed sombre method of life, and invested himself with a gaudy magnificence. On Fifth avenue, at Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets, he built a spacious brown-stone mansion. In reality it was a union of two mansions; the southern ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... by mentioning that name?" Littimer said, hoarsely. His face was very pale, and sombre anger smouldered in his eyes. "Tell me you showed the thing to my ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... handsome, sombre room in oak and dark red, with sinister easy chairs and couches, great curtains discreetly drawn, a door to enter by, a door to hide by, a carelessly strewn table on which to write a letter reluctantly to ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... child of Spring, once more smiled upon the bleak shores and sterile plains which, when we last beheld them, were encompassed by the chilling atmosphere, and loomed bleak and desolate beneath the sombre sky of, to that ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... we two stepped forward, Mr. Whitmore had instantly shot out his right hand to the door—against which Mr. Rogers, however, had planted his foot—with a gesture as if to slam it in our faces. But the sombre apparition of the Rector seemed to freeze him where he stood—or all of him but his left hand which, grasping the candlestick, slowly and as if involuntarily lifted it above the level of his eyes. Then, before the Rector ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dreams I renewed the events of that evening. Not the latter part of it, but the former part. There, before me, floated the forms of Nora and of Marion, the one all smiles, the other all gloom—the one all jest and laughter, the other silent and sombre—the one casting at me the glowing light of her soft, innocent, laughing eyes; the other flinging at me from her dark, lustrous orbs glances that pierced my soul. I'm an impressible man, I own it. I can't help it. I was so made. I'm awfully susceptible. And so, 'pon my honor, for the life of ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... house of your friends," laconically responded the voice, now quite familiar. Her eyes swept the room in search of the priest. His robes lay in a heap across her feet. "Where is Father Paul?" she demanded. "He is no more," said the man, in sombre tones. "I was he ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... glowed in his dark eyes, and of a body so slight and fragile as to seem almost misshapen. His age was not above thirty, yet indifferent health, early privation, and misfortune had so set their mark upon him that he had all the appearance of a man of fifty. He was dressed with sombre magnificence, and a jewel of great price smouldered upon the middle finger of one of his slender, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... is elated to-day. Casting aside the sombre garb that was suitable to retirement, ladies have come forth clad in raiment that is festively bright to go a-shopping, as if there were no such things as shells to disturb them, and no cares greater than feminine frivolities. If the siege ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the first light—the first sign of help coming—the first searching glow of white brilliance, deep down on the sombre sides of the black pot of night that ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... like the goal of all things, with its enormous mass of towers and gables, the belfry of its chapel mounting into the blue-black sky, and a crowd of small lights that winked, went and came, twinkled at all the windows, and seemed, on the sombre background of the building, like sparks running through the cinders of burnt paper. Once past the drawbridge and the postern, it was necessary, in order to gain the chapel, to traverse the first courtyard, full of coaches, of valets, of sedan-chairs, and bright with the flare of torches and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Outside, sombre masses of lead-coloured clouds gathered ominously in the tempestuous sky. The gale roared loudly round the old-fashioned house and the windows rattled discordantly. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... receptivity, I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve, My sombre image, warped by insidious heave Of those less forthright, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... has not marvelled as he passes in the train the seed-ground of some great horticulturist?—but seen thus they have but little charm. In a college garden a border filled with delphiniums and madonna lilies is backed by sombre yews, while the thick foliage of elm or chestnut quiets harmoniously the farther distance. See how the spires of blue—now declaring themselves for Oxford, now for Cambridge—are twice as vivid for the contrast, and how the lilies shine against the deep dark green, ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... her deep, dark and restless eyes. It was by sense rather than by anything his eyes could base conclusions upon that Peter realized her spirited personality, knew instinctively that radiant and destructive fires burned behind the sombre, questioning eyes. The full, red lips might have told ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... stranded, the thick-falling white snow which had already covered the decks seemed to be busy wreathing a shroud for the ill-fated ship, while the surges sang her requiem in their dull, heart-breaking roar—the sea-fog hanging over the scene of the calamity the while like a sombre pall. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... a complete poetic career which you have left behind to strike out into wider waters.... The passage on Night, which you say was written under the planet Shelley, seems to me (and to my brother, to whom I read it) to savour more of the "mortal moon"—that is, of a weird and sombre Elizabethanism, of which Beddoes may be considered the modern representative. But we both think it has an unmistakeable force and value; and if you can write better poetry than this, let your angel say unto ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Some sombre evening, when I sit And feed in solitude at home, Perchance an ultra-bilious fit Paints all the world an ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... the pictures in Kew Palace were not all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many manuscripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for public gardens. The portraits of royal gentlemen in blue and red puzzle ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of, sir?" asked Jabez, bewildered, and suddenly realizing that their sombre faces and manner meant something more ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... smooth as glass, and reflected them so clearly that they might have fancied that there was a heaven beneath as well as above them. The land presented a dark opaque mass, the mountains in the distance appearing as if they were close to them, and rising precipitately from the shore. All was of one sombre hue, except where the lights in the houses in the town twinkled here and there, announcing that some had not yet dismissed their worldly cares, and sought repose from the labours of the day. Yet all was silent, except occasionally the barking of a dog, or the voice ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... While he and his hands were setting every rag the ship could carry on that tack, the other officers, having unluckily no orders to execute, stood gloomy and helpless, with their eyes glued, by a sort of sombre fascination, on that coming ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... lingering ray of sunshine lit up her face and gently caressed her soft brown hair; slight though her form, sombre her clothes, and unlovely her features, she seemed a gracious ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various |
