"Bereft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shut fast. Did I say all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,— "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me. For he led us, he said, to a joyous land. 240 Joining the town, and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... night followed the hearse to the church at Wotton, where my father was interred, and mingled with the ashes of our mother, his dear wife. Thus we were bereft of both our parents in a period when we most of all stood in need of their counsel and assistance, especially myself, of a raw ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... a general gathering of types. Nobles mixed with the poorest, meanest and most criminal classes, and mingled with their common sorrow. For the most part a dumbness, a silence prevailed. The shock of the national disaster had bereft the people of ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... milk-white teeth, grins for ever and aye. An he be in court, when counsel excites tears, he grins. An he be at funeral pyre where one mourns a son devoted, where a bereft mother's tears stream for her only one, he grins. Whatever it may be, wherever he is, whate'er may happen, he grins. Such ill habit has he—neither in good taste, well assumed, nor refined. Wherefore do thou take note from me, my good Egnatius. Be thou refined Sabine or Tiburtine, paunch-full ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... cry because thou hast gone and left us, But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us. We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save, But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and, situated as this country is at present, even the affectation of virtue is captivating.— As far as they dare, the people are partial to them: bending beneath the weight of a sanguinary and turbulent despotism, if they sigh not for freedom, they do for repose; and the harassed mind, bereft of its own energy, looks up with indolent hope for relief from a change of factions. They forget that Danton is actuated by ambitious jealousy, that Camille Desmoulins is hacknied in the atrocities of the revolution, and that their partizans are adventurers, with neither honour nor morals. Yet, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... she had uttered, and he had overheard: Lost happiness is past recovery. Not only was she bereft of happiness, but so was he. His father and mother, when too late, had found that they also had parted with theirs when they had let Mehetabel leave ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... not seen her. I sit at her door almost bereft of my senses; but I do not go in, because I am afraid that the sight of me will make her worse and increase the fever. At times a horrible idea crosses my mind that I am going mad and might kill Aniela in a fit of insanity. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Poitiers was the result (19th September, 1356). The carnage and utter ruin of the French feudal army was quite incredible; the dead seemed more than the whole army of the Black Prince; the prisoners were too many to be held. The French army, bereft of leaders, melted away, and the Black Prince rode triumphantly back to Bordeaux with the captive King John and his brave little son in his train. A two years' truce ensued; King John was carried over to London, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... through my front teeth. "Say, Miss Cornie, but you are gettin' out of the bereft class for fair! I guess it's comin' to you, though. Now jest let me get an idea of how far you want ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... world revealed in his tiny library. The flood would pass away and the fertility of summer would hide every trace of the disaster, but for Anton's loss there was no such swift remedy. His books were his closest friends, and now, at one stroke, he was bereft of all of them. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sally. He thought of his commanding officer and of the fellows he liked and disliked. The primitive urge to communicate was upon him, because he must first establish communication before he could rise from the stony mineral stage to the exalted level of a vegetable. Bereft of his normal senses, undistracted by trivia such as noise and pain and the inestimable vastness of information bits that must be considered and evaluated, his brain called upon his memory and ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... On consulting the oracle of Delphi he was informed that any land which offered him shelter would be cursed by the gods, and that the malediction would continue to follow him till he came to a country which was not in existence at the time he had murdered his mother. Bereft of hope, and resolved no longer to cast the shadow of his dark fate over those he loved, Alcmaeon took a tender leave of his wife and little son, and became once more an outcast ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... weakness. We rode together for days and quartered together. He was so clean-cut. It's the way his words come. And he seems so utterly bereft ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... neither make way, nor feele the helme: so huge and high carged [Footnote: From the French, carguer to furl.] was the Spanish ship, being of a thousand and fiue hundreth tuns. Who after layd the Reuenge aboord. When he was thus bereft of his sailes, the ships that were vnder his lee luffing vp, also layd him aboord: of which the next was the Admiral of the Biscaines, a very mighty and puissant shippe commanded by Brittandona. The sayd Philip carried ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... like the moan of a heart that refuses to be comforted. When Spring danced through the forest, leaving flowers upon her way, while all the silences were filled with life and joy, these two knew it not, for they were bereft. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... sister, with a due attention, brother Toby, to her evacuations and repletions—and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.—My child was bereft of these!—What a teazing life did she lead herself, and consequently her foetus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted with the greatest patience, replied my uncle Toby—I never heard her utter one fretful word ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded "War is done!" One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, "Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... there was such a hideous noise withal, like thunder, and filthy smell, that their hair stared for fear, and their hearts quaked, men and beasts were incredibly terrified. In Sacai, another city, the same earthquake was so terrible unto them, that many were bereft of their senses; and others by that horrible spectacle so much amazed, that they knew not what they did." Blasius a Christian, the reporter of the news, was so affrighted for his part, that though it were two months after, he was scarce his own man, neither could he drive ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... LADY. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise That is addressed to unattending ears. Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift How to regain my severed company, Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo To give me answer from her mossy couch. COMUS: What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus? LADY. Dim darkness and this leafy labyrinth. COMUS. Could that divide you from near-ushering guides? LADY. They left me weary on a grassy turf. COMUS. By falsehood, or discourtesy, or ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from Russia, as it were Russian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... a man of hard sense and native resources that rendered him ready for any emergency. Once when we had won some money from a man, he began to raise a fuss and carry on like one bereft of reason. Sherman humored him. He locked him up in the car, and told everybody that he was a lunatic that he was removing to the asylum—to keep away from him, as he was dangerous and entirely irresponsible. Then when the fellow got too noisy, Sherman went ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Strumley had finished his bit of philosophy, he fell to communing with himself. Apparently his own wisdom had stirred a new thought within his breast. It had. He was beginning to wonder what would happen if Bettina's father suddenly found himself bereft of sufficient "spot cash" to take advantage of this option. Anyone having a second call on same might be fortunate enough to swing the "big deal"—and profit by ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... animals of the woods had resorted there as to a place of shelter and retreat. Mr. Wentzel had taken away the trunks and papers but had left no note to guide us to the Indians. This was to us the most grievous disappointment: without the assistance of the Indians, bereft of every resource, we felt ourselves reduced to the most miserable state, which was rendered still worse from the recollection that our friends in the rear were as miserable as ourselves. For the moment however hunger prevailed and each began to gnaw the scraps ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... moment that it is not a month hence). Help your mistress first, girl. (Three women are bereft of speech, but he does not notice it. He addresses CATHERINE vaguely.) Are ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... that Englishmen at martes Be discharged, for all her craftes and artes, In Brabant of her marchandy In fourteene dayes, and ageine hastily In the same dayes fourteene acharged eft. And if they bide lenger all is bereft, Anon they should forfeit her goods all, Or marchandy: it should no better fall. And we to martis in Brabant charged beene With English cloth full good and fayre to seene: We ben againe charged with mercerie, Haburdasher ware, and with grosserie: To which marts, that English ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... over her, in which she was always enveloped, whether she sat at home, or walked abroad in the places where she and Giuseppe used to wander. The simple people respected her grief, and always made a tender-hearted stillness when the bereft little maiden went through the streets,—a stillness which she never noticed, for she never noticed anything apparently. The bishop himself when he walked abroad could not be treated with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spread to the government, infected the provinces, sparing neither prince nor peasant, until over the whole fair land of France it crept and hung, a fetid, miasmic effluvia, till the nation, hopeless, weary, despairing, bereft of nerve and sinew, sank under it into utter ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... him like one bereft of reason. He had no idea of the route by which he had been driven, and it was only after looking for some time at the houses about him that he discovered where he was, for he felt as perplexed and confused as though he had been voyaging through the air in a balloon. ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... at the foot of an acclivity, up which a force of Sioux had gone in single file. Many warriors it would seem, however, must have joined the party on the way, and from here,—where with the wagon was found Hay's stout box, bereft of its contents,—in four different directions the pony tracks of little parties crossed or climbed the spurs, and which way the captives had been taken, Captain Billings, the commander, could not determine. What the Sioux hoped he might do was divide his force into four detachments and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... ought to reign, to wit, birth and the courage to dare. Wherefore am I thrust out from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all the supports of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am of honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you? By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers? Please God things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes! Rejected, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... those who wished to exist in peace. There was but one being who was not to be turned from his allegiance—the convict murderer, Rufus Dawes, who awaited death. For many days he had remained mute, broken down beneath his weight of sorrow or of sullenness; but North, bereft of other love and sympathy, strove with that fighting soul, if haply he might win it back to peace. It seemed to the fancy of the priest—a fancy distempered, perhaps, by excess, or superhumanly exalted by mental agony—that this convict, over whom ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... for, instead of merely five, she has scattered about 150 species up and down the globe. To describe all these would be a thorny experience indeed, robbing the reader of his patience as completely as he would be bereft of his clothing should he literally attempt to go through them all. Therefore, I shall give Professor Gray's description of the two species which have furnished our few really good varieties, and dismiss with mere mention a few ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... felt myself to be alone with the immensity that properly belongs to plains alone. I saw the stars, and remembered how I had looked up at them on just such a night when I was close to the Pacific, bereft of friends and possessed with solitude. There was no noise; it was full darkness. The woods before and behind me made a square frame of silence, and I was enchased here in the clearing, thinking of ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... happened?" cried Chichikov. "I have been ruined by an accursed woman. That was because I could not do things in moderation—I was powerless to stop myself in time, Satan tempted me, and drove me from my senses, and bereft me of human prudence. Yes, truly I have sinned, I have sinned! Yet how came I so to sin? To think that a dvorianin—yes, a dvorianin—should be thrown into prison without process or trial! I repeat, a dvorianin! Why was I not given time to go home and collect my effects? ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... moment, really bereft, by the apprehension he had conjured up, of the power to move. The footsteps drew nearer, the door was opened with a hasty hand, and the child herself, pale and breathless, and hastily wrapped in a few disordered garments, hurried ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him from head to foot. No ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... prominent part in the tournaments and other celebrations which took place in honor of the wedding before Margaret left her native land. When he now saw the poor queen coming back to France an exile, bereft of friends, of resources, and almost of hope, the interest which he had felt for her in former years was revived. It is said that he fell in love with her. However this may be, it is certain that Margaret's great beauty must have had a very important influence in deepening the ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... figure and character and so relieved us of a sense of untoward discipline or of the pursuit of abstract knowledge. It was a recreational, or at least a social, rather than a tuitional house; which fact had, I really believe, weighed favourably with our parents, when, bereft of M. Lerambert, they asked themselves, with their considerable practice, how next to bestow us. Our father, like so many free spirits of that time in New York and Boston, had been much interested in the writings of Charles Fourier and in his scheme of the "phalanstery" as the solution ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... afterwards of other persons to see them; together with vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a truce, and ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... my gladness, I'm thine in thy tears; My love it can change not With absence or years. Were a dungeon thy dwelling, My home it should be, For its gloom would be sunshine If I were with thee. But the light has no beauty Of thee, love bereft: I am thine, and thine only! Thine!—over the left! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... is dead," said the knight. "An arrow in the left eye has bereft our Duke of a noble ally and increased the blessedness of the City of Paradise. You are masterless now. Will you ride with me on my service, you Jehan the Hunter? It would appear that we are alike in our ways of thinking. They call me the Dove from the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... deep and lasting impression the great events of the day must needs produce upon your opening minds, the author of this book has been casting about him how he might contribute to your and the nation's good. As he is altogether bereft of sight, and nearly so of hearing, he is, of course, unable to lift a hand in his country's defence, or raise his voice in her justification. But she has a future; and for that he entertains an earnest hope, that through you, the rising ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... bereft Wordsworth of a beloved brother, brought with it also another death, which was felt by the whole English nation like a private calamity. The emotion which Wordsworth felt at the news of Trafalgar,—the way in which he managed to intertwine the memories of Nelson and of his own brother ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... fields, accidentally turning towards his house, suddenly discovers a vast column of smoke bursting forth, and ascending in black curling volumes to heaven. "Oh my God! my house!" he exclaims, "my poor wife and children!" Then, half bereft of his senses, he sets off and runs towards his house. — Still, as he cuts the air, he groans out, "Oh, my poor wife and children!" Presently he hears their cries: he sees them at a distance with outstretched arms flying towards him. Oh, pa! pa! pa! his ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... forgot that he owed his throne to the pope and his legate. "When we were bereft of our father in tender years," he declared long afterwards, "when our subjects were turned against us, it was our mother, the Holy Roman Church, that brought back our realm under our power, anointed us king, crowned us, and placed us on ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... home, of hope, of Heaven bereft; It is the destiny of man To cower beneath his Maker's ban, And ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... increased parade of military power only served to infuriate the crowd still more. They surged, swayed, and pressed, and howled, groaned, and shrieked as if bereft. Baulked in their desire to snatch us from the soldiers they began to fling missiles of all descriptions. Fortunately they were too excited to throw with pronounced accuracy, although my two Hindoo companions and I were struck several times with vegetables. Then a bottle ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... over the next few days, with their mournful incidents and the despairing grief of the beautiful girl, who had been so sadly bereft, to the morning after the funeral ceremonies, when Mr. Graves, with Mr. Dinsmore's unsigned will in his pocket, called to consult with Mona regarding her uncle's affairs and her ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Hate: What seeds of death by wan Confinement sown, When Prison-echoes mock'd Disease's groan! Shall bid th' indignant Father flash dismay, 45 And drag the unnatural Villain into Day Who[151:1] to the sports of his flesh'd Ruffians left Two lovely Mourners of their Sire bereft! 'Twas wrong, like this, which Rome's first Consul bore, So by th' insulted Female's name he swore 50 Ruin (and rais'd her reeking dagger high) Not to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... flew by and no succour came, some gave way altogether and moaned piteously, while others appeared to be bereft of all capacity of thought or action. Many began to pray in frantic incoherence, and several gave vent to their feelings in curses. Only a few maintained absolute self-possession and silence. Among these were the widow and one or ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... jealous, and unscrupulous influence of slaveholders. Rebellion and treason required the lead and direction of an ambitious and reckless class; a class actuated by gross and selfish passions, in disconnection with sympathy for the masses. It required a class stripped and bereft by habits of thinking of the spirit of political beneficence, devoid of national honor, national pride, and national fidelity. Nothing less unscrupulous would have answered to plot, to carry forward, and to manage the incidents of the attempted dismemberment ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... heaven, he said, to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in Germany; but having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all; and made a vow, if heaven would not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude to St. Iago ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... stolen glances, sweeter for the theft, And burning blushes, though for no transgression, Tremblings when met, and restlessness when left; All these are little preludes to possession, Of which young passion cannot be bereft, And merely tend to show how greatly love is Embarrass'd at first starting ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... terrible open-handed slap nearly knocked his victim through the bar-room wall. The head rocked sideways and the big body turned completely round. Eyes rushing water and one profile now resembling a slab of bloodied liver, the man reeled about in a circle as if bereft of sight. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... extremely delicate, and she sunk under it and died, and was buried beside her mother. Angel despaired then, and went on for the future in a kind of maze of bewilderment, doing that which her hand found to do mechanically. Only God, who had bereft her, pitied her still, and helped her to resist temptation ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... inhum'd, To teach our soldiery, how much we love, E'en in a foe, true worth and noble fortitude. Come then, brave soldiers, and take up the dead, Majors, and Col'nels, which are this day slain, And noble Captains of sweet life bereft. Fair flowers shall grow upon their grassy tombs, And fame in tears shall tell their tragedy, To many a widow and soft weeping maid, Or parent woe-ful for an only son, Through mourning ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... demurely bowing to Edith Cortlandt, her hand upon the arm of a swarthy man whom Kirk knew at once as her father. He felt the blood rush blindingly to his head, felt it drumming at his ears, knew that he must be staring like a man bereft. Mrs. Cortlandt was speaking, and he caught the name "Garavel" like a bugle-call. They turned upon him, the Spanish gentleman bowed, and he saw that Chiquita's little white-gloved hand was extended ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... up, for the moment bereft of further speech. "I shan't take any legacy left me by him," she announced, passionately. "Mother, ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... sundered from the object you had learned to prize most on earth, Jennie?" said he, as the drooping lashes were lifted, and the pensive, earnest eyes met his inquiring gaze, "and was there utter desolation? Then do you appreciate fully all that I would say to you of my own sorrow when bereft of the only mortal whom my heart had ever cared to cherish. I ask you not to bind yourself to me in an irrevocable vow, but to think of me as your truest friend until you have seen more of the world and of men. If then ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs {of the Zodiac}. As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, in a chill of horror. Soon as they, falling down, have touched the top of their backs, the horses range at large: and no one restraining them, they go through the air of an unknown region; and where their fury drives them thither, without ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... has owned his love to her. Darkness comes on and the gnomes appear with their Queen, who reveals to the frightened girl the origin of her bridegroom and entreats her to give back the son to his poor bereft mother. When the gnomes have disappeared, Conrad overtakes Anna, and she tells him all, asking his help against her mysterious bridegroom. Conrad, seeing that she returns his love, is happy. He has just obtained ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... and made desperate exertions to climb aboard; some fell into the sea and perished, other were killed by the elephants, which got close to one another and to the human beings, still others were slain by the Romans; many also were captured alive, men as well as elephants. For since the beasts, bereft of the men to whom they were used, became furious, Metellus made a proclamation to the prisoners, offering preservation and forgiveness to such as would check them: accordingly, some keepers approached the gentlest of the animals, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... been introduced often enough into fiction, and many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ was "le grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... bore an intensely eager look, while Katie's was strangely agitated. They were talking earnestly. Dreading they might think he was eaves-dropping, Vital was about to make his presence known, when they began slowly to move away, and there fell upon his ears words that bereft him of speech. It was his brother's voice, low and pleading: "Before I went away I loved you, and I have loved you ever since. I was so anxious to see you, that I came back. You are surprised at me telling you to-night; ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... a child's death, a common thing, almost as common as family existence, but it gave a new color to my life, establishing forever a sympathy with the common grief, and a community of sorrow with all bereft fathers and mothers, in the premature dissipation of the hopes of their future, and the lapse of a dear companionship into the eternal void. This is the human brotherhood of sorrow, sacred, ennobling, sanctifying where it abides, the deepest lesson of the school of life. My feet have wandered ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... incongruities and corruptions that surround our present system, when I see what politics and government and administration actually are, if I believed there was to be no progress in that direction I should be bereft of all hope and desolate of faith. On the contrary, methinks I can see in the adown vista of the future the golden apples hanging on the tree of promise. It seems to me that the light of the morning is already streaming in upon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... strode forth—Tempest transformed by the footlights and by her young imagination into a true king most wonderfully and romantically bereft of reason by the woes that had assailed him in horrid phalanxes. If anyone had pointed out to her that Tempest's awful voice was simply cheap ranting, or that her own woes had been as terrible as any that had ever visited a king, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and tent; what can we do? We dare not stir out." "Light fires, you magnoons," (fools), was the final rejoinder, and the train service went forward as usual. It appeared that the hyenas and wolves, wont to snap up a living around the men's camp, bereft of their pickings were in a state of howling starvation, and had turned up and made an appeal, by no means mute, to the station guard, which the latter failed to understand or appreciate. In a remarkably short space ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... wears its rugged projections to smoothness; but an earthquake overthrows it in an instant. The mind of Evellin, which for a period of seven years had contended with hope and fear, sometimes almost suspecting, and at other times rejecting distrust, was by this proof of his friend's treachery, bereft of all fortitude and patience. Wounded by the neglect of the world, his confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... time at which Wenamon wrote his report Egypt had fallen on evil days. A long line of incapable descendants of the great Rameses II. and Rameses III. had ruled the Nile valley; and now a wretched ghost of a Pharaoh, Rameses XII., sat upon the throne, bereft of all power, a ruler in name only. The government of the country lay in the hands of two great nobles: in Upper Egypt, Herhor, High Priest of Amon-Ra, was undisputed master; and in Lower Egypt, Nesubanebded, a prince of the city of Tanis (the Zoan of the Bible), virtually ruled ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... her being bemoaned her childlessness, and had been conscious of yearnings and longings which were agonies, when Doctor Sturtevant, after the poor young unknown mother had been laid away in the Fairbridge cemetery, proposed that they should adopt the bereft little one, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to say when it seemed to me that the whole machine of the mind suddenly ceased to work. It was as though an immense loneliness descended on me. I saw the audience before me, but apart from vision I seemed bereft of all my faculties. If I had in that instant been asked for my name I am doubtful whether I could have got anywhere near it. Happily some one in a front row, thinking I was pausing for a word, threw out a suggestion. It was like magic. I felt the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... interest. The great purpose of the present history must be found in its illustration of the creative power of civil and religious freedom. Here was a little republic, just born into the world, suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success. To a certain extent its achievements were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left The body living—feeling in its breast The death of deaths, its everlasting guest! Such is my cheerless bosom; 'tis a tomb Where Hope lies buried in eternal gloom, And Love mourns ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... bent bended, bent bereave bereaved, bereft bereaved, bereft blend blended, blent blended, blent bless blessed, blest blessed, blest burn burned, burnt burned, burnt cleave, stick cleaved (clave) cleaved clothe clothed, clad clothed, clad curse cursed, curst cursed, curst dive dived (dove) dived (dove) dream dreamed, ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... all thy perils shared, Thine aged sire, of thee bereft, To muse on all thy courage dared, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... woman's stubbornness? Or was it a morbid obsession that demanded a child of hers should be named Samuel? Her third child was a girl, named after herself, and the fourth was a boy again. Despite the strokes of fate that had already bereft her, and despite the loss of friends and relatives, she persisted in her resolve to name the child after her brother. She was shunned at church by those who had grown up with her. Her mother, after a final appeal, left her house with the warning that if the child were so named she would ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... who was sobbing nervously and quite bereft of her usual self-command, to Colonel Hathaway's residence. The woman was unnerved, too, and had little ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... unmarried mother and either marry the woman or give financial aid for the child. It does not thereby secure two actual parents for the child. The orphan child, the half-orphan child is handicapped; more so if bereft of mother than of father, but if the father dies or deserts after marriage, all experience shows that even if the mother lives and is capable and faithful, the child who lacks a father has many difficulties to overcome. The child of parents who have come to dislike each other is seriously ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... 1692, none, it appears to me, equalled those committed in the case of Martha Carrier. The Magistrates who sat and listened, with wondering awe, to such evidence from a little child against her mother, in the presence of that mother, must have been bereft, by the baleful superstitions of the hour, of all natural sensibility. They countenanced a violation of reason, common sense, and the instincts of humanity, too horrible to be ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... whisper old half forgotten prayers. There were no fond recollections to lay their hands upon him with angelic tenderness and lead him away from his City of Destruction. He was a child of sin, a child of blackness and of night, a child bereft of the inspiration of a good mother's life and the sweet ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... where descent in male replaced descent in female line, woman among the Jews stood wholly bereft of rights. Wedlock was marriage by purchase. On woman the obligation was laid of the strictest chastity; on the other hand, man was not bound by the same ordinance; he, moreover, was privileged to possess several wives. Did the husband, after the bridal night, believe ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... was roused in Helen, and like a sister she smoothed the locks of damp, dark hair, keeping a perfect silence as the strong man, no longer able to bear up, wept like a very child. For a time Helen felt as if bereft of reason, while earth and sky seemed blended in one wild chaos as she thought: "Oh, why couldn't it have been? Why didn't you tell her in time?" and at last she said to him; "If Katy had known it! Oh, Morris, why didn't you tell her? She never guessed it, never! If she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke out of the cabins; pale women, with long, black, or yellow locks—men with countenances and figures bereft of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... still standing, but all the rest was a heap of blackened, half-burned rubbish which spring and summer were covering with wild vines and weeds, and around the ruins of the house lay the ruins of the garden. The honeysuckle, bereft of its trellis, wandered helplessly over the ground, and amid a rank growth of weeds sprang a host of yellow snapdragons. I remember the feeling of rapture that was mine at the thought that I had found ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... given any advice to the editor for six whole days," he complained. "How can you expect an institution to run, bereft of its presiding genius? Is it your notion of a fair partnership to stay away and let your fellow toilers wither on the bough? I only wonder that the presses ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... seemed to dilate bodily, and moved towards Alfred pale and lowering. Yes, for once this gentle quiet lady looked terrible. She confronted Alfred, "Is this true, sir?" said she, in a low stern voice. "Are you not insane? Have you never been bereft of your reason?" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... My Lady gave one Sum to her steward, Mr. Cadwallader, and bade him dispose of it according to his best judgment among the afflicted, bearing not their creed or politics or parish in mind, but their necessities. And I was bereft of a joyful day; for in ordinary she would be pleased that I should be her little almoner, and hand the purses with the groats in them to the poor almsfolk. What has become, I wonder, of those good old customs of giving away things at Christmas-tides? Where is the Lord Mayor's dole of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... tongue is a well-matched Jehu for thy devil's race. I would I might scorch thee with it, to give thee foretaste of that to come; perchance 'twould seethe thy rottenness to the quick—if thou of that art not also bereft—and turn thee from thy course. Thou dost pander for the King's son and steal an innocent maid of unripe years to gratify his lust—ah, 'sdeath! thou art but a pernicious wench, as false as hell. And when the nurse whispered that 'twould save the child from ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... her, and placed her on the bed. She lay bereft of animation for hours; and when life, look, and speech returned, her senses had deserted her, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... herself thrown back on the horror of her meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her home. Study was indifferent to her, since study had not brought her back her husband's heart. Initiated into the secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their resources, she was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing their pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her seemed mean and small as compared with the incidents of passion. In short, her ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... the best of the situation. Tallente, who had expected a very different visitor, was for the moment bereft of words. Lady Jane, who, among her minor faults, was inclined to be a supercilious person, with too great a regard for externals, gazed upon this strange figure which had found its way into her sanctum with an astonishment which ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ordained," replied Sudall. "Bereft of her parents in this way, the infant was taken charge of and reared by Dame Croft, the miller's wife of Whalley; but even in those early days she exhibited such a malicious and vindictive disposition, and became so unmanageable, that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hardships of that campaign amongst the mountains; of the death of Llewelyn the prince, and of his brother Howel; and of the resolve of the gallant little band, thus bereft of their hope, to go out and die sword in hand, and so end the miserable struggle that had ceased to be aught but a mockery of war. It was plainly a bitter thought even to the gentle Griffeth that they had not met the death they craved, but had fallen alive into the hands ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... bed, like one moving in a horrible dream. That night, and through all the next day, he felt utterly bereft and wretched: something, say, as though flood and pestilence had swept through his dear old town and carried off everything and everybody but himself. He crawled alone in a smashed world. On the second day following, he found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing about him with faint ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... republican government. In like manner we might run through all the forms of government that have ever blessed or cursed our race, without finding one which can he adopted by any State of this Union, except the single form of 'republican,' named in the Constitution. But can a State bereft of the right to frame its own mode of government be said to be possessed of 'sovereign' 'State rights,' or could a more effectual provision against their development have been ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a chair as though bereft of strength. He sought to think, but thinking coherently he ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of love that still could soothe when all its hopes were o'er, Alas! those sweetly sacred tones are hushed forever-more; The smile that lingered round its path when other lights had fled, Oh! can it be that blessed smile is buried with the dead? Then what is left the orphan heart thus mournfully bereft? To call its crushed affections home and count the treasures left, With trembling fear to count them o'er, and bitterly to sigh, Remembering they are earthly too,—they, too, alas, ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney |
