"Donjon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... antiquity, over most of the castles of the middle ages. A deep moat, now dry pasture land, with a bold acclivity before you, should seem to bid defiance, even in times of old, to the foot and the spear of the invader. There are circular towers at the extremities, and a square citadel or donjon within. To the north, a good deal of earth has been recently thrown against the bases of the wall. The day harmonised admirably with the venerable object before me. The sunshine lasted but for a minute: when afterwards a gloom prevailed, and not a single catch ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... thirty feet above the snow-drifted moat. Beyond the portcullis a dim door swung open. Some sort of seneschal met us with a light and led us below the twilight arches, where beyond, I could catch glimpses of the baileys and courts and the donjon tower against ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... above each other to the very summit of the hills by which they were surrounded. A swollen waterfall was visible, below which a bare and flattened trunk, whose boughs had apparently been but just lopped, was thrown across the torrent. A ruined keep or donjon was seen above a line of dark firs, crowning the summit of a steep crag that rose abruptly from ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Morrin College occupies one wing, and the other contains the well-stocked library of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Valuable manuscripts have taken the place of useless malefactors in the donjon keep, and the vaults are full of the gold and myrrh ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone: The battled towers, the donjon keep, The loophole grates, where captives weep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow lustre shone. The warriors on the turrets high, Moving athwart the evening sky, Seemed forms of giant height; Their armor, as it caught the rays, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... The architect worked hard for weeks In venting all his private peaks Upon the roof, whose crop of leaks Had satisfied Fluellen; Whatever anybody had Out of the common, good or bad, Knott had it all worked well in; A donjon-keep, where clothes might dry, 50 A porter's lodge that was a sty, A campanile slim and high, Too small to hang a bell in; All up and down and here and there, With Lord-knows-whats of round and square Stuck on at random everywhere,— It was a house ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... und early, Rose from bett und vent his vay, To a dark mysderious gastle, Vhere his lager-donjon lay. Vhile de lark's first song vas ringin', Und die roses shone in dew, Den his soul vas shoost in order To enshoy de ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... cheer within, At morning's gray dawn he maun dee. He's gallant Wat Scott, heir o' proud Harden Ha', Wha ettled our lands clear to sweep; But now he is snug in auld Elibank's paw, An' shall swing frae our donjon-keep. Though saddle an' munt again, harness an' dunt again, I'll ne'er when I ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone; The battled towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... house, it was plain that it was built with Old-World notions of strength and durability, and, so far as might be, with Old-World materials. The hinges of the doors stretched out like arms, instead of like hands, as we make them. The bolts were massive enough for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes were actually inclosed in the wood of the sashes, instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in our modern windows. The broad staircase was of easy ascent, and was guarded by quaintly turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... visiting these objects, and there was a kind of pictorial sweetness in the episode; but I have not many details to relate. The isolated tower I just mentioned has much in common with the detached donjon of Montmajour, which I had looked at in going to Les Baux and to which I paid my respects in speaking of that excursion. Also the work of Philippe le Bel (built in 1307), it is amazingly big and stubborn, and formed the opposite ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and passionately devoted to the sport, leap their horses over fences, moats, donjon keeps, hedges and currant bushes with utter sang froid and the wild, unfettered toot ongsomble of a brass band. It is one of the most spirited and touchful of sights to see a young fox-hunter going home through the gloaming with a full ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... join the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild September morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with these lines: "We wanted to know what Daddy Jacques meant by the cry of the Bete Du Bon Dieu." The landlord of the Donjon Inn explained to us that it is the particularly sinister cry which is uttered sometimes at night by the cat of an old woman,—Mother Angenoux, as she is called in the country. Mother Angenoux is a sort of saint, who lives in a hut in ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... peach-tints to her cheeks and drew out unravelled braids of gold in lingering caress. She could have come to me, had she pleased, then: this old chief who rules the place was her father's friend and hers.—But look I but see! Who is it comes now,—sweeps round the donjon flank? Lean over the embrasure, and learn! Ah, man, are my eyes so old, my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night? They have gone on,—or did they enter, think you? Or yet, there is to be carousal, perhaps, in the halls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... crowded with gables of the sixteenth century and later timbered houses, slightly bends and rises as well, until the perspective seems to lose itself in a distant grove of trees, locally called the "Dane John," a corruption of "Donjon." This view, especially when seen on a summer afternoon, is most picturesque. The present appearance of the quiet street is decidedly unlike that which it presented on that busy market-day when Miss Betsey Trotwood drove her nephew along it, for ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... who dwell in donjon keep, And steel-clad knight and peer, Whose forts are girt with a moat cut deep— But none excel in soldiership My ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... nobles were regarded with respect," he said, with his fine smile. "In the days when a man appeared with clang of arms and with javelins and spears before, and donjon keeps in the background, the attitude of bent knees and awful reverence were the inevitable results. When one could hang a servant on one's own private gallows, or chop off his hand for irreverence or disobedience—obedience and reverence were a rule. Now, a month's notice is the extremity of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in an upper chamber of the donjon tower the Conqueror had erected at Oxford, hard by the mound thrown up by Ethelfleda, lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred. For thither the king had caused him to be removed, unwilling to stain the holy precincts of Abingdon with a deed of blood, and confiding ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... finest promenades of its kind in France, named after the engineer who constructed it. It is planted with trees and adorned with marble statues of Neptune and Abundance by Antoine Coysevox. The castle with its donjon and seven towers (12th to the 16th centuries), commanding the entrance to the river, is the only interesting building in the town. Brest is the capital of one of the five naval arrondissements of France. The naval port, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various |
