"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I've got teu chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't ought to be kept no longer, and if he wan't to hum, I were ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... face; he was evidently thinking of the young wife whom he had lost. I repeated—fervently and sincerely repeated—what I had already said to him in writing. "I owe everything, sir, to your fatherly kindness." Saying this, I ventured a little further. I took his wan white hand, hanging over the arm of the chair, and respectfully ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in him and in Lucifer, who personifies the creative fire, is aroused against the narrow asceticism of orthodox Christianity, embodied in the wan and feeble Titurel. Satan decides to imitate the Lord of Christianity, by begetting upon a virgin, Candida, a son who is to save the world from the sterility of asceticism. Candida is briefly introduced, acknowledging the power of the mighty spirit and bewailing her fate in one of the finest passages ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Great light from God gave sight of all things dim, And wisdom of all wondrous things, to say What root should bear what fruit of night or day; And sovereign speech and counsel above man: Wherefore his youth like age was wise and wan, And his age sorrowful and fain to sleep." SWINBURNE, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to the threshold. Yes, it was really a corridor, but endless in length. A wan light illumined it: lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling lightened at intervals the dull hue of the atmosphere—the distance was veiled in shadow. Not a single door appeared in the whole extent! ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... here, and they're soopin' now. Postman's coom over fra' Drigg wi' a letter—will it be for wan of ye?' and she held out an eccentrically shaped and tinted envelope; 'there's a bonny smell ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... said Madame Goesler, standing close by him and putting her left arm very lightly on his shoulder. It was all that she could do for him, but it was in order that she might do this that she had been summoned from London to his side. He was wan and worn and pale,—a man evidently dying, the oil of whose lamp was all burned out; but still as he turned his eyes up to the woman's face there was a remnant of that look of graceful faineant nobility which had always distinguished him. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... upon the followers of Hung Hsiu-ch'wan, a village schoolmaster of China, who, coming under the influence of Christian teaching, sought to subvert the religion and ruling dynasty of China; he himself was styled "Heavenly King," his reign "Kingdom ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... favored. Usually the love is mutual and at first sight—nay, preferably before first sight. The mere hearsay that a certain man or maiden is very beautiful suffices, as we saw in the story of Nala and Damayanti, to banish sleep and appetite, and to make the lover pale and wan and most wretched. Sakuntala's royal lover wastes away so rapidly that in a few days his bracelet falls from his attenuated arm, and Sakuntala herself becomes so weak that she cannot rise, and is supposed to have sunstroke! Malati dwindles ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... which is becoming or graceful. Port, manner of movement or walk. At-tire', dress, clothes. Tar'-nish, to soil, to sully. Av'a-lanche, a vast body of snow, earth, and ice, sliding down from a mountain. Vouch-safes', yields, conde-scends, gives. Wan'ton, luxuriant. Net'ted, caught in a net. Fledge'ling, a young bird. Rec-og-ni'tion, acknowledgment of ac-quaintance. Pre-con-cert'ed, planned beforehand. Cai'tiff (pro. ka'tif), a mean villain. Thral'dom, bondage, slavery. Scan, to examine closely. Neth'er, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and East, and toil sadly, and leave their bones among the mud. Thin, pale-faced, joyless mothers will come there, and grow old before their time; and sickly children will be born, struggling up with wan faces to their sad life's labor. But the work will go on, for it is God's work; and the earth will be prepared for the people and the fat rottenness of the still living forest will be made to give ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes—a wan mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by some peddler of our ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... West early in May for his annual inspection trip, Isabelle moved to the Farm for the season. She was wan and listless. She had talked of going abroad with Vickers, but had suddenly given up the plan. A box of books arrived with her, and she announced to Vickers that she meant to read Italian with him; she must do something to kill the time. But the first evening when she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... as an old man, ask some impertinent questions?" he inquired, with a cheerfulness which sat strangely on the wan face. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... him, an' anny gintleman that took a thrip to Reno in ordher to saw off th' housekeepin' expinses on a rash successor wud find throuble ready f'r him whin he come back to Ar-rchey Road. No, sir, whin our people grab hands at th' altar, they're hooked up f'river. There's on'y wan decree iv divoorce that th' neighbors will recognize, an' that's th' wan that entitles ye to ride just behind th' pall bearers. That's why I'm a batch. 'Tis th' fine skylark iv a timprary husband I'd make, bringin' home a new wife ivry Foorth iv July an' dischargin' th' old wan without a charackter. ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... As one of these wretched underlings, he did his drudgery, sometimes abroad, sometimes at home, and long endured the various miseries of such a station. Ten or a dozen years ago—not more—a meagre, wan old man, diseased and miserably poor, was found dead in his bed at an obscure inn in the Borough, where he was quite unknown. He had taken poison. There was no clue to his name; but it was discovered from certain entries in a pocket-book he carried, that he had been secretary to Lord George ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... throops here? We'll lave the English to clane up the threnches,' and on that they packs the Irish off and marches thim thousands of miles intil Siberia. Ah! 'twas the dhrop thim Germins got when they came shtrugglin' along wan day and run up aginst the ould Tinth agin. There was tarrible slaughter that day, and the inimy bruk in great disorther, and is now trying to escape down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... Sue, take up. I jes' like to talk to you, honey 'bout dem days ob slavery; 'cause you look like you wan'ta hear all 'bout 'em. All 'bout de ol' rebels; an' dem niggers who left wid de Yankees an' were sat free, but, poor things, dey had no place to go after dey got freed. Baby, all us wuz helpless an' ain't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... to the Cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; When she got there The Cupboard wan bare. And so the poor ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... then, in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become attached to Mr. Sleuth. A wan smile would sometimes light up his sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased—pleased and vaguely touched. In between those—those dreadful events outside, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... disrespectfully, because, as with all clowns, underlying buffoonery is the desire to be taken seriously; that pale ignorances, presiding over microscopes by which they cannot distinguish flesh from nostoc or fishes' spawn or frogs' spawn, have visited upon us their wan solemnities. We've been damned by corpses and skeletons and mummies, which twitch and totter ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... circles, and then, with the same swift, silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side, looking earnestly into his countenance, and ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... I begin to feel kinder comfortable here in this place, if it wan't for this tarnal fat critter. He don't seem to have any work to do, but swells out his big bosom like an old turkey-cock in laying time. I do wonder what he's here for? Do they think I mean to absquatulate with the spoons? [Binny attempts to take valise—Asa puts his foot on ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... touching to look upon one whose morning of life had been so bright and beautiful and, still in the sunny days of childhood, transformed into an image of decrepitude and decay. The fair blooming cheek and finely chiselled features were now shrunk and stiffened into the wan and rigid inflexibility of old age; while the black bandages which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional gloom and harshness to the profound melancholy which clouded its most intellectual expression. Disease and death were stamped ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for the fancy; and many devious and alluring ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... little truckle-bed in the chamber above, lay the dying child. Had she survived till the following spring, she would then have been eight years old. As Isoult bent over her, a smile broke on the thin wan face, and the little voice said,—"Aunt Isoult!" This was Honour's pet name for her friend; for there was no tie of relationship between them. Isoult softly stroked the fair hair. "Aunt Isoult," the faint voice pursued, "I pray you, tell me if ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... gray, a dim waste of grass dotted with shadowy trees; but a vivid band of green still glowed on the western horizon. In front lay a broad shallow basin, streaked with filmy trails of mist, between which came the wan gleam of little pools. A causeway stretched out into the morass, sprinkled with the indistinct figures of toiling men. At its inner end, where it left the higher ground, a row of cars stood on a side-track, and near-by there were ranged straggling lines of tents and wooden shacks. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... I cark and cave, For her love I droop and dare, For her love my bliss is bare, And all I wax wan. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... what sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What, may it be, that even in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrow tries? Sure if that long with love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case. I read it in ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... fit of coughing proceeding from the sofa awoke Lawrence next morning, startling him into sudden recollection of the evening's adventure; and when the shutters were opened Wikkey looked so fearfully wan and exhausted in the pale gray light, that he made all speed to summon Mrs. Evans, and to go himself for the doctor. The examination of the patient did not last long, and at its conclusion the doctor ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... their fleecy veil around the pallid moon, and bear her softly on their snowy bosoms. But she moves on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the sad clouds. Deeper and deeper into the darkness. Closer and closer the Shadow clutches her in his inexorable arms. Wan and weird becomes her face, wrathful and wild the astonished winds; and for all her science and her faith, the Earth trembles in the night, and a hush of awe quivers through the angry, agitated air. On, still on, till the fair and smiling moon is ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Life without my mother! The very thought was death! I looked in her pale, beautiful face. It was more than pale,—it was wan—it was sickly. There was a purplish shadow under her soft, dark eyes, which I had not observed before, and her figure looked thin and drooping. I gazed into the sad, loving depths of her eyes, till mine were blinded with tears, when throwing my arms across her lap, I laid my face upon them, and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... coiled in an artistic way and a little curl on each cheek. Madame's daughter, I thought, looking up at the woman standing in front of me in a grubby bodice and tousled hair. She looked a woman of about forty, with a wan ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... have known it was wrong,' he returned, a little bewildered by these extraordinary statements. If she had not looked so wan and haggard, he would have accused ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... little book won no attention; it is not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death. They are not living and breathing people, these persons of the ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... was a pause, then the words came with the rush of desperation. "He said home wan't like home no more. That Katy was as good as gold, an' they was proud of her; but she was turrible upsettin'. Jim has ter rig up nights now ter eat supper—put on his coat an' a b'iled collar; an' he says he's ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... of Meurs thirty and six years spent, Fourteen of which she took no nourishment; Thus pale and wan she sits sad and alone, A garden's all ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... that a small and partly ruinous tenement in the outskirts of A. received a new family. The group consisted of four children, whose wan and wistful countenances, and still, unchildlike deportment, testified an early acquaintance with want and sorrow. There was the mother, faded and care-worn, whose dark and melancholy eyes, pale cheeks, and compressed lips told of years of anxiety ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... There wan a long silence after Jack ceased speaking, and I have no doubt that each was revolving in his mind our extraordinary position. For my part I cannot say that my reflections were very agreeable. I knew that we were on an island, for Jack had said so, but whether it was inhabited ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... fourteen from working in the cotton mills. Wygant sent Jack Pemberton up to the Capital for nothing at all but to beat that law." Samuel sat with his hands clenched tightly. Before him there had come the vision of little Sophie Stedman with her wan and haggard face! "But why does he want the children ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... They ain't made f'r to come off. Never mind; peg along afther me. You did be doing me a good turn wan black night, and I'm not ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... quivering lip and eye, And eager rose to speak,—but ere His tongue could hurry forth his fear, Had Douglas marked the hectic strife, Where death seemed combating with life; For to her cheek, in feverish flood, One instant rushed the throbbing blood, Then ebbing back, with sudden sway, Left its domain as wan as clay. 'Roderick, enough! enough!' he cried, 'My daughter cannot be thy bride; Not that the blush to wooer dear, Nor paleness that of maiden fear. It may not be,—forgive her, Chief, Nor hazard aught for our relief. Against his sovereign, Douglas ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... ear, As ever by the dungeon'd wretch was heard Howling at evening round the embattled towers Of that hell-house [3] of France, ere yet sublime The almighty people from their tyrant's hand Dash'd down the iron rod. Intent the Maid Gazed on the pilot's form, and as she gazed Shiver'd, for wan her face was, and her eyes Hollow, and her sunk cheeks were furrowed deep, Channell'd by tears; a few grey locks hung down Beneath her hood: then thro' the Maiden's veins Chill crept the blood, for, as the night-breeze pass'd, Lifting her ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... there was not a breath of wind from one end of the sky to the other. So it was no great marvel to me, when one day, not long after my first appearance at the windowsill, I saw the poor woman come into the room with a very faltering step, and a whiter, sicklier look on her wan face than was usual to it. She threw herself wearily down upon her bed in the corner, and panted for breath. She had been to the town to take thither the last piece of needlework she had done, and she laid on the wooden table ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... unroped, and a halt was called for a bite and sup. It was daylight; a cold wan light among a circle of peaks and shafts, overtopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands of feet above them. The guides were apart, gesticulating and consulting, with many shakings of the head. Seated on the white ground, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... of rainbows and of diamond spray, where the sun struck the shaken snow sifted from overweighted branches. Sheila remembered well enough the route to the post-office. It meant miles of weary plodding, but she thought that she could do it before night. If not, she would travel by starlight and the wan reflection of the snow. There was no darkness in these clear, keen nights. She would not tell herself what gave her strength such impetus. She thought resolutely of the post-office, of the old, friendly man, of his stove, of his ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow-green: And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye! And those ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... wan't. There wan't nobody in the store but Susie Ellis, that keeps the books there now, and Abner Burgess's boy, that runs errands and waits on folks when everybody else is busy. That was a funny thing, too—that ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... corresponding very closely to our Quakers, before Worth and Wanamaker threw them a hawse and took them in tow. It is a tide of feeling produces a sect, not a belief: primitive Christianity was a revulsion from Phariseeism, and a William Penn and a wan Ann Lee form the antithesis of an o'ervaulting, fantastic ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... so have the rest, as far as there was occasion. Let me tell you how wan and weary you look. Oh, Amy, our home is so much more to us since ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... up at him, with a wan smile. "A barren life!" she said: "ah, yes, his was a wasted life! His books are all out-of-date now, and nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren life, Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun—Life ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which he drank[9], though I never discovered that it was drank up by him. He generally wore ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... Orthopaedic Hospital, she told Delia. The legs twisted with rickets had been broken and set twice, and now he was "doing fine." She set him down, and made him walk. "I never thought to see him do that!" she said, her wan face shining. "And it's all his doing—" she pointed to Winnington, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cried the priest, passing his wan hand over his brow. 'If this be true, what—what can be done to save her? They may not admit me. I know not all the mazes of that intricate mansion. O Nemesis! justly am ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... unable to answer. She had put her hand to her heart and, wan-faced, with staring eyes, seemed to ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Grell, lifting his head, haggard and wan. Then, as a thought occurred to him, "She is not ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... to carry Eli Kirke to the docks. 'Twas a wan hope, but in a twinkling I was riding like wind for the barking behind the hill. A white-faced man broke from the brush at ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... till her cheek-bones were nearly pressing through her skin, till her elbows were sharp, and her finger-bones as those of a skeleton. Her eye did not lose its lustre, but it became unnaturally bright, prominent, and too large for her wan face. The soft brown locks which she had once loved to brush back, scorning, as she would boast to herself, to care that they should be seen were now sparse enough and all untidy and unclean. It was matter of little thought now whether they were seen or no. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... further favors the prolongation of the artificially induced vital lethargy; in this condition they rest for from six to eight weeks. When resurrected they are only by degrees restored to life, and present a wan, haggard, debilitated, and wasted appearance. Braid is credited, on the authority of Sir Claude Wade, with stating that a fakir was buried in an unconscious state at Lahore in 1837, and when dug up, six weeks later, he presented all the appearances of a dead person. The legs and arms were ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... take for that contest. I believe that the man would have mastered me and slain me, and then done his butcher's work, for he was the most skilful swordsman I have ever met; but even as he pressed me hard, the half-mad, wasted, wan creature in the corner leapt ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... to hear what his prisoner said, so closely did he examine the wan and wasted features, and stiffened limbs, of the dead body before him. Catharine, overcome by sickness and fainting, at length obtained permission to retire from the dreadful scene, and, through confusion of every description, found her way to ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... evidently was, had a meagre, wan, countenance; and a diminutive form. The servant ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Pilgrim as he went Forgot the minstrel's song; But the blessing that his wan lips sent Will guard the minstrel long; And keep his spirit innocent, And turn his hand ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light. It was Fenris, and he guarded the canoe. He crouched, ready to spring ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... turned, and though, evidently much enfeebled since the last visit, a wan smile gleamed on ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a breeze sprang up and dispelled the ominous fog. The moon showed her wan face through the driving scud, the sail was at last hoisted, and cold and hungry, and sick at heart, our voyagers once more returned to ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... said Lorelei, with a wan smile, "and I'll know that you are in good company for one evening ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... that somewhere up and beyond were the hands stronger'n Waldstricker's, but they'd hoped those pitying hands would have lifted them up before this. Still they clung to their faith and all the long ride from Ithaca had bolstered each other up with wan smiles and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of heaven, how few and wan Are all we see below Compared with what remain unseen Beyond ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... prow grates on the beach. The fisherman Stoops, tearing at the cords that bind the seal. Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and wan? Lapis? carnelian? Unheard-of stones that make the sick ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... present in court, and was sitting on the bench to the right of the judge who had long been a personal friend of his. Hitherto his face had been hidden in his hands, as this terribly logical tale went on. But here he raised it, and smiled, a wan smile enough, at Morris. The latter did not seem to notice the action. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... so that no man may yow wake. Who sey ever or this so dul a man?" "Ye, freend," quod he, "do ye your hedes ake For love, and lat me liven as I can." 550 But though that he for wo was pale and wan, Yet made he tho as freshe a countenaunce As though he shulde have led ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... prepared, Of the bold for battle; stepped out the valiant 200 Men and comrades, bore their banners, Went forth to fight straight on their way The heroes 'neath helmets from the holy city At the dawn itself; shields made a din, Loudly resounded. Thereat laughed the lank 205 Wolf in the wood, and the raven wan, Fowl greedy for slaughter: both of them knew That for them the warriors thought to provide Their fill on the fated; and flew on their track The dewy-winged eagle eager for prey, 210 The dusky-coated sang his war-song, The crooked-beaked. Stepped forth the warriors, The ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... Beech 'That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high, 'His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch, 'And pore upon the Brook that babbles by. 'Hard by yon Wood, now frowning as in Scorn, 'Mutt'ring his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove, 'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, 'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love. 'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill, 'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree; 'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill, 'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he. 'The next ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... swallow when told they would save his life. Then he was led outside and far away by Snake and Yellin' Kid. In a short time Fah Moo was a very sick Celestial, but after that he grew rapidly better and came creeping back to the kitchen, somewhat pale, wan and drawn, but no longer ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... spaceport city; and a little before noon they entered the great crystal pylon that was the headquarters of the Federation Trade Bureau on Procyon Alpha. Men and Lhari were moving in the lobby; among them Bart saw Vorongil, Meta at his side. He smiled at her, received a wan smile in return. ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... coarse, dusty felt hats or peaked caps, with shaggy beards or faded scarfs around their throats. Here and there, too, was a woman of comely face and figure, but for the most part it was a collection of crones, prematurely aged, with weird, wan, old-world features, slip-shod and draggle-tailed, their heads bare, or covered with dingy shawls in lieu of bonnets—red shawls, gray shawls, brick-dust shawls, mud-colored shawls. Yet there was an indefinable touch of romance and pathos about the tawdriness ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... His mother doesn't know it yet. Brenton, I've got to tell her." And the professor turned a wan, appealing face up to the younger man, as ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined. Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered doorway, holding ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents' feet for hours together, with his little hands patiently folded in each other, and his thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pine away, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been a joyless one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which, child as he was, he had never known in this world, they were his parents, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a wan smile. She stroked the girl's soft cheek. "My dear, no one with a heart like yours could have an ugly face. How did you enjoy your dance with ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... To be sure, the heads of the offices were polite enough; but when the young housekeeper had stated her case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, with an innocent ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... comes a third of regal port, But faded splendor wan; who by his gait And fierce demeanor seems ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... very seemilar case," broke in Snecky Hobart, shrilly. "Maist o' ye'll mind 'at Donal was michty plague't wi' a drucken wife. Ay, weel, wan day Bowie's man was carryin' a coffin past Donal's door, and Donal an' the wife was there. Says Donal, 'Put doon yer coffin, my man, an' tell's wha it's for.' The laddie rests the coffin on its end, an' says he, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... and the fulfilment? Nay, was it all only a useless after-death, a wan, bodiless after-death? Alas, and alas for the passion of the human heart, that must die so long before ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... she saw the stern faces of the men and the wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts, whimpered. The men talked in low voices, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the Sabbath morn. But such a Sabbath! The day seemed all wan with weeping, and gray with care. The wind dashed itself against the casement, laden with soft heavy sleet. The ground, the bushes, the very outhouses seemed sodden with the rain. The trees, which looked stricken as if they could die of grief, were yet tormented with fear, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... are all to buy: The wan look, the hollow tone, The hung head, the sunken eye, You can have them for ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... the single pine Sentinel the ending line, And out beyond it, clear and wan, Reach the ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... arrival of Oowikapun and Astumastao did he have sufficient strength to go with them to the house of God. Every Indian within twenty miles of the sanctuary was there that bright Sabbath morning. Wan and pale and spiritual looked the saintly man who seemed to have just, by the strength of his will, kept the soul in the frail earthen vessel, that he might once again worship in the earthly sanctuary, ere he entered into that ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... son," cried the prophet in deep tones, and as he spoke he slowly raised his body till he sat rigidly erect, and his wan and ancient fingers were stretched out towards the young soldier. "Go forth and do thy part, for thou art in the hand of the Lord, and some things that thou wilt do shall be good, and some things evil. For thou hast departed from the path of crystal that leadeth ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... all—voices in which no accent of sex transpired, abstract voices aloof from any stress of passion, undistressed by any longing, even for God. They were not human voices, and, hearing them, Evelyn had imagined angels bearing tall lilies in their hands, standing on wan heights of celestial landscape, singing ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the miracle of dawn was enacted on the river. The world stole out of the dark like a woman wan with watching. First the line of tree-tops on either bank became blackly silhouetted against the graying sky, then little by little the masses of trees and bushes resolved ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... to vs pees and vnyte.' And of that pepulle, to telle the trewthe, It was a sighte of fulle grete ruthe. Mykelle of that folke therynne Thay weren[O] but verrey bonys and skynne. With eyen holowgh and[P] nose scharpe, Vnnethe thay myght brethe or carpe, For her colowris was[Q] wan as lede, Not like to lyue but sone ben dede. Disfigurid pateronys[R] and quaynte, And as[S] a dede kyng thay weren paynte. There men myght see an[T] exampleyre, How fode makith the pepulle faire.[U] In euery strete ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be asleep now, old Phebe Trull,—in the room off the brick kitchen, her wan limbs curled up under her check nightgown, her pipe and noggin of tea on the oven-shelf; he could smell the damp, musty odor of the slop-sink near by. What if he could reach shore? What if he were to steal up to her bed and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... when he came, though pale and wan, He looked so great and high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... "Sorra wan o' me knows what's come to the master; he's gone up the stairs, and the heart of him that light that his foot is only touchin' the ground ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" All one has ever felt is said for one in a phrase, all that one finds most isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling of wonder in it; "so long," and yet you think that of me! "so long," and yet such absolute inability to read my character! "so long," and yet still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... him, gazed curiously down, and Bella knelt opposite and drew away Hugh's mackinaw coat, with which he had wrapped his trove. It was not a woman whom they looked down upon, but a girl, and very young—perhaps not yet seventeen—a girl with cropped dark curly hair and a face so wan and blue and at the same time so scorched by the snow-glare that its exquisiteness of feature was all the more marked. Hugh's handkerchief was tied loosely across ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a beautiful garden, monsieur," he said with glistening eyes. "It was arranged with much skill and care. We loved every bush, every flower. But one evening three German shells fell in it and burst. The good wife and I" (here a wan smile) "thought the climate no longer sanitary. We ran away that night on foot. Much misery for old people. Last night we slept in a barn with hundreds of others. But some day we go back to restore that garden. ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Emperor, about the yere 1480. The same began likewise to encroach vpon the countries of Lituania and Liuonia, but the conquest only intended, and attempted by him vpon some part of those countries, was pursued and performed by his sonne Basileus, who first wan the citie and dukedom of Plesko, afterwards the citie and dukedome of Smolensco, and many other faire towns, with a large territory belonging vnto them, about the yere 1514. [Sidenote: 1580.] These victories against the Lettoes or Lituanians in the time of Alexander ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in person; his face, which had once the beaming roundness of a well-to-do middle-class gentleman, became furrowed with wrinkles. Lines appeared in his forehead, his jaws grew gaunt and sharp; and at the end of the fourth year he bore no longer the likeness of his former self. He was now a wan, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the spot whence he has anxiously watched the different members of the departing throng, and feebly crouches down on his knees at the base of a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow, and his cheeks are wan; his thin grey hairs are few and fading on his aged head. He makes no effort to follow the crowd and partake their sustenance; no one is left behind to urge, no one returns to lead him to the public meal. Though weak and old, he is perfectly forsaken ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... support this humble reference to her judgment, from the wan face of the poor invalid, and taking her by the hand, whispered, "You shall do what you please." In a few ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald |
