"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up early. One never has difficulty in getting up early in the country: it is so noisy, at least to a city-bred man. City noise at five A.M. is sepulchral silence compared with bucolic activity at ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... year The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost, Mount but the fatal half way up - Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed, For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend, By passion for the arms' possession tossed, It falls the way of sighs and hath their end; A spark gone out to more sepulchral night. Good if the arrowy eagle of the height Be then the little bird that hops ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... changes ye are mourning; 'Tis to the hopeless every star appears Like lamps in dark sepulchral vistas burning— And every dew-tipp'd flower is gemm'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... feci. I may borrow the old sepulchral motto of the Roman matron. I stayed at home, and began the third volume of Chronicles, or rather the first volume of the Second Series.[72] This I pursued with little intermission from morning till night, yet only finished nine pages. Like the machinery ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... behold a stranger at the same water-hole. He's alone—he's looking for something. He rides in circles. He's off his horse and bending over—What? A skeleton! Yes, it's the skeleton of one of them other Mexicans." Strange's voice became positively sepulchral as his spirit control took fuller possession of his earthly shell and as his visions resolved themselves into clearer outline. "See! He swears an oath to avenge. And now—the scene changes. Everything dissolves. I'm in a mansion; and the red-haired woman ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... ceased to roll and a sepulchral voice croaked the news that eight was the winning number, he fixed on the croupier a gaze that began by being joyful and expectant and ended, the croupier remaining entirely unresponsive, by ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... The sepulchral monuments, aside from the sarcophagus of Jovinus, are to-day practically nil, having been swept away during the terrors of the Revolution. Two interesting effigies still remain, however, near the western doorway, a figure of a mailed ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... distant footsteps were heard, which, as they approached, resounded with a sepulchral distinctness on the marble pavement. Presently a young man entered breathlessly, holding his hat in one hand and a ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... He professed his readiness to accompany us immediately into the receptacle of departed imperial grandeur. He spoke Latin with myself, and his vernacular tongue with the valet. I was soon satisfied with the sepulchral spectacle. As a whole, it has a poor and even disagreeable effect: if you except one or two tombs, such as those of Francis I. Emperor of the Romans, and Maria Theresa—which latter is the most elaborately ornamented of the whole: but it wants both space and light ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below them, and an effort to recall in detail that vision ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Rodin, stretched upon the carpet, his limbs twisted with fearful cramps, was writhing in the extremity of pain. The violence of his fall had, no doubt, roused him to consciousness, for he moaned, in a sepulchral voice: "They leave me to die—like ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... praises little need have we To tell the wonders wrought within these waves Enough, so well he taught us to be free, That even to him we could not kneel as slaves. Oh! let our tears be fast-destroying graves, Where doubt and difference may for ever lie, Buried and hid as in sepulchral caves; And let love's fond and reverential eye Alone behold the star new risen in ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... times more imposing and terrific. For instance, in Jala-Jala, at the approach of one of these phenomena, a profound, even mournful stillness pervades nature. The wind no longer blows; not a breeze nor even a gentle zephyr is perceptible. The sun, though cloudless, darkens, and spreads around a sepulchral light. The atmosphere is burdened with heavy and sultry vapours. The earth is in labour. The frightened animals quietly seek shelter from the catastrophe they foresee. The ground shakes; soon it trembles under their feet. The trees move, the mountains quake upon their foundations, and their summits ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... close of school eight pupils elected to remain indoors, ostensibly to study; eight heads bent diligently over the long oak table in the library until a safe passage into the deserted halls above was assured. Then Gyp and Jerry led the new Ravens to the secret door where, in a sepulchral whisper, Gyp extracted a solemn promise from each that she would not divulge the secret of the hidden stairway. One by one, quite breathless with excitement, they climbed to the tower room where Gyp with ridiculous solemnity called "to ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... Doctor and Hepburn, as they strongly evidenced their extremely debilitated state. The alteration in our appearance was equally distressing to them, for since the swellings had subsided we were little more than skin and bone. The Doctor particularly remarked the sepulchral tone of our voices, which he requested us to make more cheerful if possible, unconscious that his own partook of ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... relation to special callings, but also for ornamentation or commemoration in any and every sphere in which merchants desired to leave the impress of their personality and interest. They were to be found on the fronts of houses, over the fireplace in halls, on seals, on sepulchral slabs and monumental brasses, and on painted windows. In his description of a Dominican convent—printed in full in Prof. Skeat's "Specimens of English Literature" (a.d. 1394-1579)—the author of "Peres the Ploughman's Crede" speaks ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... know them." His face was almost sepulchral as he answered her, and as she looked at him she perceived that a slight quiver came upon his lips as she pronounced with peculiar clearness the two ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... at her with strange, deep interest and curiosity, she related her sepulchral experiences of the night. When with pale cheeks and shuddering frame she described the six dark, shrouded forms that had come up out of the vault, bearing long shadowy coffins, which they carried in a slow procession down along the east wall, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the room. The barking ceased, and I slept only to dream of snarling curs and 'dirty dogs' for ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Again he gathered collections of books. And he set up in the Forum an enormous column, to serve at once as a sepulchral monument to himself and as a reminder of his work in the Forum. The whole region there was hilly and he dug it down for a distance equaling the height of the column, thus making the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... learned work is divided into four Parts. Part I. deals with The Primeval or Stone Period: Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral Memorials, Dwellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, &c. &c.; Part II., The Bronze Period: The Metallurgic Transition, Primitive Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic Habits, with other topics; Part ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... clay, Where once my playful footsteps trod, Where now my head must lay; The meed of pity will be shed In dew-drops o'er my narrow bed, By nightly skies and storms alone; No mortal eye will deign to steep With tears the dark sepulchral deep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... said he, in a hollow and sepulchral voice, "that could do it." Father Magauran, who was present, looked at him with surprise; as indeed did every one who had got an opportunity of ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on 'certain sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.' In the year of Cromwell's death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing 'The Garden of Cyrus' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... effort to escape, but the demon barred her path, and in a sepulchral voice commanded her to go for the Mother Superior and bid her come at once, if she did not want the worst of evils ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By mine be punish'd; on their funeral biers "His must ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... be termed one of the "social meetings" of the Church. A solemn stillness pervaded the room. No one ever spoke after he entered the awful presence, unless he rose, formally addressed "the chair," and delivered himself of a set address. Occasionally one bolder than the rest spoke in a sepulchral whisper to his neighbor-that was all. In other social meetings the ladies, according to my observation, bear their full burden of conversation. In our prayer-meetings no woman ever ventured to open her mouth. In fact, I hardly know why they were ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... of a wheeled chair coming toward the living room and he made a pretense of staring aimlessly into the street. Presently a sepulchral voice broke the silence. He turned—Mrs. Hilmer was leaning forward in her chair, regarding him attentively, while the maid stood a little to one side. He had expected to come upon a huddle of blond plumpness, an inanimate ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: "foreordination!" secondly: "predestination!" and thirdly: "the final perseverance of the saints!" And he will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, but one of God's own elect, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... settlement of some importance. The subterraneous passages and foundations of ancient buildings, scattered over a wide extent of ground, attest a place of no small size. The remains of a theatre,[151] added to abundance of vases, cinerary urns, sepulchral lamps, and coins and medals, both of the upper and lower empire, which have been from time to time dug up here, prove it to have been occupied by the Romans during a considerable period. But no records remain, either of its greatness or overthrow. It fell, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... is) of pyramidical architecture. One of the Pyramids at Sakkara is almost a rival for the full-grown monster at Ghizeh; others are scarcely more than vast heaps of brick and stone: these last suggested to me the idea that after all the Pyramid is nothing more nor less than a variety of the sepulchral mound so common in most countries (including, I believe, Hindustan, from whence the Egyptians are supposed to have come). Men accustomed to raise these structures for their dead kings or conquerors would carry the usage with them in their migrations, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... paintings in which Florence is so rich, returning ever and anon, with restless sympathies, to wonder whether these tender blossoms of art had not a vital fragrance and savour more precious than the full-fruited knowledge of the later works. We lingered often in the sepulchral chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo's dim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful Genius of Doubt and brooding behind his eternal mask upon the mysteries of life. We stood more than once in the little convent chambers where Fra Angelico wrought ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... Kelke has published some Notices of Sepulchral Monuments in English Churches, a work which is not intended for professed antiquaries, but for that large class of persons who, although they have some taste for the subject of which it treats, have neither time nor inclination to enter deeply into it, and as will, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... to his side paralyzed with fear, as that same hoarse voice cried, solemnly: "Brossard, beware! Beware!" But worse than that voice of sepulchral warning was the white-sheeted figure, coming towards him with a wavering, ghostly motion, fire shooting from the demon-like eyes, and ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... gentle Mother. The Gothic, on the contrary, is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin; it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders. Bowed shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the interpretation of these styles," Durtal ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the day. According to the Roman custom the body had been already removed, the regulations of the city requiring that this should be done within twenty-four hours. The great black pedestals on which the lights had been placed were still standing, and lent a ghastly and sepulchral appearance to the whole. Numbers of servants in mourning liveries stood around an immense copper brazier in a corner, talking together in low tones, their voices dying away altogether as the Princess Sant' Ilario entered the open door of the hall. The man who came forward appeared to be the person ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... age bring her faces already furrowed. Nevertheless, if the desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at your age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages, come to me; 'tis well, I will make the effort. I will not tell you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the pyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower of Babylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian temple of Eklinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the Chaldean masonry works constructed according to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... person the varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... century. It is a species of evergreen, and its leaf resembles our hemlock, only it is longer. This sprig gives you some idea of its general form. It is always planted about churches and graveyards; a kind of dismal emblem of immortality. This sepulchral old tree and the bass and treble dogs were the only occupants of the court. One of these, a great surly mastiff, barked out of his kennel on one side, and the other, a little wiry terrier, out of his on the opposite side, and both strained on their chains, as if they would enjoy making even ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... pale sepulchral place Bloomed, as new life might in a bloodless face, And where men sorrowing came to seek a tomb With funeral flowers and ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had not long been back from Europe when sealed windows and boarded entrances began to give a sepulchral blankness to the houses of the rich. Society was leaving town, and for Mary Burton to remain when her set had gone would have been like reigning in an empty court, for already she had entered upon her dominion and her triumph was secure. New York society had at first received the over-seas ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... been any telling echo of the sorrow and regret of bereaved survivors, every one would have entered the cities in a black mood. As it is, as every one who has been in the museums of Athens knows, the sepulchral artists carefully avoided anything which might harrow the feelings. They represented the dead at their best, engaged in victorious warfare, or in athletic sports or in the happy family circle. A gentle air of melancholy could not be avoided; but there was ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the blue light already, expecting to be called on to use it, and the next instant a lurid glare illumined the whole ship; the sails, the spars, and the countenances of the people, all assumed a sepulchral hue, which gave her the appearance of some phantom bark, such as has appeared to the excited imagination of many a seaman in his wandering through those distant and torrid climes, whose pestilential vapours, rising from the overteeming ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... fatal to his predecessor. Voracity killed him, as it killed Scott's. He died unexpectedly before the kitchen-fire. "He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of Cuckoo!" The letter which told me this (31st of October) announced to me also that he was at a dead lock in his Christmas story: "Sick, bothered and depressed. Visions of Brighton come upon me; and I have a great mind ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral voice; "I shan't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though I ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... annoyed over my indiscretion; but he resumed his work. Mine was quickly gone through, and I passed up the dimly lighted aisle, wondering at myself. Just near the door, I could not forbear looking around the deep sepulchral gloom. It was lit by the one red lamp that shone like a star in the sanctuary, and by the two dim waxlights in tin sconces, that cast a pallid light on the painted pillars, and a brown shadow farther up, against which were silhouetted the figures of the men, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... followed them through the street door, and hovered about the staircase, charging the air with a moist sepulchral odour. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of dark and damp subterranean vaults situated beneath the floor of the Palace of Justice. Imagination can conceive of nothing more dismal than these somber caverns, with long and winding galleries opening into cells as dark as the tomb. You descend by a flight of massive stone steps into this sepulchral abode, and, passing through double doors, whose iron strength time has deformed but not weakened, you enter upon the vast labyrinthine prison, where the imagination wanders affrighted through intricate mazes of halls, and arches, and vaults, and dungeons, rendered only more appalling ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... A sepulchral tremolo rumbled across the water, and the topmast of a craft was discerned gliding along over the stunted tops of the timber growing on the projecting point of land which for the moment shut the hull from view. From the highest point fluttered the most beautiful flag ever bathed ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and close beside it pale light spread out upon the road ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Isle of Man,—where I and mine made a long summer stay at Castle Mona. The chief literary productions of mine in that modern Trinacria, whose heraldic emblem, like that of ancient Sicily, is the Three legs of Three promontories, are some antiquarian pieces, principally one on the sepulchral mound of Orry ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... distinguish it as a chariot of state. To some antiquarians it told the story of the overwhelming of one of the chiefs of the old primeval people of Holland, amid all his gala array, in a great storm. But it was another view which Sebastian preferred; that this object was sepulchral, namely, in its motive—the one surviving relic of a grand burial, in the ancient manner, of a king or hero, whose very tomb was wasted away.—Sunt metis metae! There came with it the odd fancy that he himself would like to have been dead and gone as long ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... undergo any more of this, I made up my mind to remain in ignorance of who Babette was, for I could pretty well guess what she would be like. I pictured her to myself as a flower that had sprung up in a corner of these dull courtyards, like a ray of sun shining through the sepulchral ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a sepulchral tone. "An' say! I've busted your bean-pot. Don't you dast give me pork an' beans for a year come ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... without rising to his feet or allowing himself to be seen, uttered these words in such a sepulchral tone that they almost lifted the hair on the head of the criminal. He started, and stared ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... off, like modern day Innocents Abroad, with the Winnebago banner across the back of each car, and our green veils fluttering in the breeze. Mr. Evans waved the paper on which the bet was recorded significantly, and shouted "Remember!" in a sepulchral tone, and it was plain to be seen he was sure he would win the bet. He even tempted Fate so far as to throw an old rubber after us as we departed, instead of an old shoe, to bring us luck according to the Rain Jinx. It landed in the tonneau of ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... certain;—but at least, when Davidge died one evening, and Douglas was informed of the hour, he remarked, "I did not think he would have died before the half-price came in!" Sordid fellows are not safe from genius even in the grave. It spoils their sepulchral monuments,—as the old heralds tore the armorial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... or otherwise I shall have to languish in purgatory much longer," the sepulchral voice replied with a deep sigh; but the next moment the ghost yelled out in terror: "Oh! Good Lord!" and began to run away as fast as it could. A shrill whistle was heard, and then another, and the police director laid his hand on the shoulder of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... a sound. Then, without their knowing where it came from, a pale reddish light fell upon the muffled figures, and four grisly skulls riveted their hollow ghastly eyes upon the Pyramid Doctor. "Woe—woe—woe betide thee, Splendiano Accoramboni!" thus the terrible spectres shrieked in deep, sepulchral tones. Then one of them wailed, "Do you know me? do you know me, Splendiano? I am Cordier, the French painter, who was buried last week, and whom your medicaments brought to his grave." Then the second, "Do you know me, Splendiano? ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... speak loudly your words have a weird sepulchral tone that echoes far and near through the spacious halls and avenues that makes the black pall of mystery all the more uncanny. As you first enter on your journey on this stream of inky blackness you are appalled by the awful darkness, and the stillness so intense is like ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... was not built by an Egyptian holding in great favour the special religious ideas of his people, but by one who had adopted other views and those not belonging, so far as can be seen, to a people among whom sepulchral rites ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... time, I heard another groan, this time much louder than before. The voice appeared to be overhead. There was no tree or house to be seen; and then again the voice seemed to answer from under the ground, in a hollow, sepulchral tone, but I could not tell where he was. But I was determined to find him, so I kept on hallooing and he answering. I went to the place where the voice appeared to come out of the earth. I was walking along rather thoughtlessly ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... way of making conversation, asked him if he was interested in all those outdoor games. But his voice dropped to the sepulchral ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... back and lay still for a while. He remained motionless under the white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statue of marble with a face ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... and then disinterred, and whose towering forms, surmounted by heads disproportionately small, we have seen pictured on the walls of Chichen-Itza. They recalled forcibly to our minds the antique Guanches, the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands, whose gigantic mummies are yet found in the sepulchral caverns of Teneriffe, and whose peculiar sandals with red straps so closely resemble those seen on the feet of Chaacmol. The edifices of Ake are composed of large blocks of stone, generally square, often oblong in shape, superposed, and held together merely ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... not know the play, or even what the title is, But safe to make success a charnel house recital is! So please to bear in mind, if I am not to fail in it That Hamlet's father's ghost must rob the Lyons Mail in it! No! that's not correct! But you may spare your charity— A good sepulchral ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... lived the life of a recluse for months at a time. The monotony of the weird song of the sea winds, the nerve-tearing, lazy creak of the wooden timbers, the sinuous crawling, rolling, or plunging over the most wondrous of God's works, invariably produces a sepulchral impression even on the most phlegmatic mind, but to the mystically constituted brain of Nelson, under all the varied thoughts that came into his brain during the days and nights of watching and searching for those ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... farm within the district is derived from them." The church build at the end of the village, was erected at the formation of the parish by bishop Ralph in 1230. It has a nave and north aisle with a small sepulchral chapel appendant. In this portion of the church which belongs to the manor of Dedisham, is a curiously sculptured female figure, destitute of any inscription, but traditionally said, to belong to a member of the family of Tregoz.—There are also two other mural monuments, ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... was little over a minute when the man outside knocked again—a loud, sepulchral, single knock, with determination in it. Its resonance in the empty house was awful to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... grew out of the heights, out of the west and the dark, and growing and growing momentarily, became a rustling, sinister, untidy, heavy shape, which anon settled upon a rock, and croaked, "Glock! glock!" twice, almost like a bark, in a deep and sepulchral voice. To it was added another sable form, coming down from the lonely stony heights, and the two sat together, remarking, as they looked—but their wonderful eyes must have seen it very far away—at the bait. It was the wild cat turned inside-out, and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... visited. Walls of sharp rock rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes—one is called the Powder Lake—and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough [Symbol: T] and set in a heap of loose stones. It is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... 1), which presents the appearance of an ordinary round center table, permits of reproducing at will the "spirit rappings" and sepulchral voice experiments. The table support contains a Leclanche pile, of compact form, carefully hidden in the part that connects the three legs. The top of the table is in two parts, the lower of which is hollow, and the upper forms a cover three or four millimeters in thickness. In the center of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... the dean, whom I ever feared? Is this the bishop, of whom within the present hour I stood in awe? Is this William, whose every glance struck me with his superiority? Alas, my brother! and is this horrid abode the reward for all your aspiring efforts? Are these sepulchral trappings the only testimonies of your greatness which you exhibit to me on my return? Did you foresee an end like this, while you treated me, and many more of your youthful companions, with haughtiness and contempt; while you thought it becoming of your dignity ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... chest. And that prancing ghost, that giggling death's head, which only a week before perhaps had still been young, affected him like a nightmare. And the thought that now his turn had come to stick it out in that sepulchral vault for five or six days or a week and experience the same horrors that the man there was telling about with a laugh intensified his discouragement into a passionate, throbbing indignation which he could scarcely control any more. He could have roared out, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... seemingly lifeless, limbs of a man, as if thrown upon a chair and left to sprawl in unseemly disorder. A step further, and the fallen head disclosed the features of the President. I turned back; a word from my companion reached the drooping figure, and a sepulchral voice bade us advance. We came upon a man, in some respects the most remarkable of any time, in the hour of his prostration and weakness—in the depths of that depression to which his inherited melancholy at times reduced him, now perhaps coming to overwhelm him as he thought of the calamities ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... who are familiar with the poem, know that it becomes more and more wild and weird as it draws to the conclusion. This, with his gloomy surroundings, had its effect upon the mind of Fletcher. Scarcely had he uttered the last words, when a burst of wild and sepulchral laughter was heard within a few feet of him. A cry of fear proceeded from Fletcher, and, clutching his book, he ran at wild speed from the enchanted spot, not daring to look behind him. Indeed, he never stopped running till he passed out of the shadow of the woods, ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... himself, the boyarin put back the image into its former place, and then hastened to sprinkle his child with holy water which always stood ready in the oratory. Anastasia revived, and when she saw herself surrounded by her father and brother, in a dark, narrow, sepulchral place, she uttered a wild cry, and turned her dim eyes around. 'My life, my darling child, my dove! what aileth thee?' cried the father. 'Recollect thyself: thou art in the oratory. 'Tis plain some evil eye hath struck ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... gnaws me, and the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a hopeless, endless sorrow. I have lost the taste of my food by feverish anxiety; and my favourite beverage, which used to refresh me when I got up, has no moisture in it. Oh! cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared with those which I promised myself with her; or which I made when she had been standing an hour by my side, my guardian-angel, my wife, my sister, my sweet friend, my Eve, my all; and had blest me with her seraph kisses! Ah! what I suffer at present only shews what I have enjoyed. ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... promise you that," I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You must be getting chilly ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Ignominious insults, bitter and galling threats, exposure to scorching heat by day and to frosty cold at night, torturing pangs of hunger,—these were the methods by which stalwart men had been transformed into ghastly beings with sunken eyes and sepulchral voices. They were clothed in uncleanly rags, many without caps, and most without shoes. Their hair and beards were overgrown and matted. The condition of their teeth was the only appearance of neatness about them: and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... hour I wandered among the tombs that lay within the cemetery at some distance from the city: they were arranged with the most pleasing care, and the statuary exhibited on many of them formed an ornamental grace to their sepulchral beauty. Some were wholly shrouded in cypress, while others shone in the moonlight beneath a wreath of consecrated roses, designed to embalm the mementos of mouldering marble. Here a sister's affection might be traced—one who had lived long enough to lay her sacred offering upon the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... the British stage, Great Anarch! spread thy sable wings; Not fired with all the frantic rage, With which thou hurl'st thy darts at kings. As thou in native garb art seen, With scattered tresses, haggard mien, Sepulchral chains and hideous cry By despot arts ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... sun. No painter's brush could do justice to the prismatic tints which hover around the higher peaks. But this flood of glory is soon followed by the pure whiteness of death. "Like a gigantic ghost shrouded in sepulchral sheets, the mountain now hovers in the background of the landscape, towering ghastly through the twilight until darkness closes upon ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... better by their own aspect than by his explanation. The whole soil around his dwelling is elevated much above the level of the road, and it is probable that, if he chose to excavate, he might bring to light many more sepulchral chambers, and find his profit in them too, by disposing of the urns and busts. What struck me as much as anything was the neatness of these subterranean apartments, which were quite as fit to sleep ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "ivy-mantled tower"—his "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault"—in the paraphernalia of the tomb which they accumulate so laboriously; the cypress and the yew, the owl and the midnight bell, the dust of the charnel-house, the nettles that fringe the grave-stones, the dim sepulchral lamp and gliding specters. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was "breaking the Lord's fourth commandment," and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing had been suggested ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... had yet really assailed it; but one of the peculiar properties of the preservative used by Doctor Pormont, is its pervading sepulchral odour. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... hole at the other end, he could see no sign of life. It baffled comprehension. But so did it defy contradiction. There was but one Resource: to play the rabbit was still there and only to be got out by rattling the bayonet every other moment and repeating, in a sepulchral voice, "I—I—I'm gwine to have ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... it, then," said Jem, bending forward to listen to what the other went on to read in a deep sepulchral voice— ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... he'd have every mother's son of us sent to jail or hanged, if he could," growled another voice on Snell's right, while from a mask on the left there came in sepulchral tones, the words, "It had better be hands off with you then, man," the speaker pointing significantly to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... of a gaunt old clerk in a shabby uniform, with a face as yellow as a lemon, hair that stood up like a brush, and pewtery eyes; the clerk said something in a sepulchral voice and shook a bony finger at him. And Navagin almost had an attack ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a torch at a sepulchral lamp, Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp, I bore it through the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... arrived," said Max Graub, in a cautious sotto voce to Leroy, "at the end of your adventures! Behold the number Thirteen! Six lights at one end, six lights at the other,—that is twelve; and in the centre the Thirteenth—the red Eye looking into the sepulchral urn! It is all ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... have long been noted as the burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its vicinity.[6] Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P. (Requiescat in pace), which initials, or others analogous to them, are always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... ancestors of the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... of a white ghost flitting about the garden suggested a midnight rush after old Bun. Frank watched laughingly, till poor Jack came toward the house with the gentleman in gray kicking lustily in his arms, and then whispered in a sepulchral tone,— ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped about—after its habit—for something cheerful, something that would break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In a flash ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... worn and gone; No friend that trod them here delays, I pass benighted and alone. Yet in this mist of life and mind, Which ever dark and darker grows, There is one living lamp enshrin'd, Whose ray in deathless lustre glows. That star-like light my God bestows To break the deep sepulchral gloom; Its beams Eternity disclose, And show the garden round ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... be, by raising a few sepulchral mounds, such as those which still, here and there, break the flowing contours of the Downs, man's hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the shelving sides of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and shake myself, and yawn in the little sepulchral shelter. I stretch my arms, and my hands touch the soft and cold clay. Then I cleave the heavy odor that fills the dug-out and crawl out in the middle of the dense gloom between the collapsed bodies of the sleepers. After several stumbles and entanglements among accouterments, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... wish to see me together; or shall I communicate with one at a time?" demanded Doortje, in her husky, sepulchral voice; which, it struck me, obtained its peculiar tones partly from nature, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,—ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... did the honours of the castle, showing them mouldy chapels, sepulchral halls, rickety stairs, grubby cells, and pitch-dark passages, till even the romantic Matilda was glad to see the light of day, and repose in the pleasant gardens while removing the cobwebs from her countenance and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... creature in his churn Unhorsed his caution—made him blind To the fell vigor of bullkind, Till, filled with valor to the teeth, He drew his dasher from its sheath And bravely brandished it; the while He smiled a dark, portentous smile; A deep, sepulchral smile; a wide And open smile, which, at his side, The churn to copy vainly tried; A smile so like the dawn of doom That all the field was palled in gloom, And all the trees within a mile, As tribute to that awful smile, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of the "Portland Vase." It was found about the middle of the 16th century, about two and a half miles from Rome, on the road leading from Frascati. At the time of its discovery it was enclosed in a marble sarcophagus, within a sepulchral chamber, under the mount called Monte di Grano. The material of which it is made is glass, the body being of a beautiful transparent dark blue, enriched with figures in relief, of opaque white glass. For more than two centuries it was the principal object of ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... should meet that he came as a messenger of peace. And this, according to one authority, was the origin of wampum, of which Hiawatha was the inventor. That honor, however, is one which must be denied to him. The evidence of sepulchral relics shows that wampum was known to the mysterious moundbuilders, as well as in all succeeding ages. Moreover, if the significance of white wampum-strings as a token of peace had not been well known in his day, Hiawatha ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... carrying a tin-headed spear, with a file of similar figures to examine the candidate, who turned out to be the discharged Stevens, sitting in an anteroom, foolish and apprehensive, and looking withal much as he had done in the counting-room. He was now asked by the leader of the file, in a sepulchral tone, several formal questions, among others whether he believed in a Supreme Being. Stevens gulped, and said "Yes." He was then asked if he was prepared to endure any ordeal to which he might be subjected, and warned unless ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... completed, but he was, notwithstanding, an acute philosopher. The author of no complete history, he was not the less a divine master of historic narration, grave or gay, sententious or impassioned. No one is more profoundly convinced than ourselves that mere rhetorical declamation, and the sepulchral voice of fulsome eulogy can never establish claims of such vast magnitude. What has Mr. de Quincey achieved, what range of capacity has he exhibited in the memorials he has left behind, in the grand conceptions that have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... friend, Hadrian was not unmindful of his own sepulchral monument, the present castle of St. Angelo. It served as a mausoleum for the imperial family. The ashes of Faustina (to whose memory her husband erected the beautiful temple bearing her name) were placed here, their urn guarded by two bronze peacocks, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the quiet roads, which lost themselves behind the Beguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead. Could it be that l'Intruse of whom she had just been reading, that fatal, unseen visitor, was even now crossing the sepulchral city; could it be that the short ripples upon the face of the dark water were her shadow, while she herself had reached the threshold of the villa, bringing with her the coveted gift of eternal sleep! ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... weird light. When sugar burns in spirits, a sepulchral light appears on everything: living faces look like faces of the dead; all color disappears from them, the ruddiness of the countenance, the brilliance of the lips, the glitter of the eyes,—all turn green. It is as if phantoms rose from the grave and were gazing ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... handsome man will soon come into your life," he was intoning in that sepulchral voice men habitually use in their dealings with ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... vain tied down, Escape in monsters, and amaze the town. Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:[186] Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,[187] Hence journals, medleys, mercuries, magazines; Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace, And new-year odes,[188] and all the Grub Street race. In clouded majesty here Dulness shone; Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne: Fierce champion fortitude, that knows ...
— English Satires • Various
... fireside, I could not utter it. I was also rooted to the earth, as if by magic; and although instant tergiversation and flight had my most hearty concurrence, I could not move a limb, nor even raise my eyes off the sepulchral-looking object which lay before me. I now felt the perspiration fall from my face in torrents, and the strokes of my heart fell audibly on my ear. I even attempted to say, "God preserve me!" but my tongue ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... were uttered aloud, and the echo of her own voice seemed sepulchral; then the chill silence again fell upon her. She smiled at her own folly, and thought her imagination had been unduly excited by the pictures she had been examining, and that the nervous shiver that crept over her was the result of the cold. Just ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... in contemplation of this person's familiar contour, I was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whisper: "Hollingsworth! ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is ended. No revolution, so far as we are aware, has distracted modern England, and Sir Richard and Lady Burton still sleep in sepulchral pomp in their marmorean Arab Tent at Mortlake. More than fifteen years have now elapsed since, to employ a citation from The Arabian Nights, there came between them "the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companies and glory be to Him who changeth not, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and the boy climbing for his kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of Brignal-bank; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered flanks of rock,—the sepulchral stones of the great ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... church is composed of four hundred tombs of knights, incrusted with jasper, porphyry, verd-antique, and precious stones of various kinds, which should form the most splendid sepulchral mosaics conceivable. I say should form, because at the moment of my visit, the whole floor was covered with those immense mats, so constantly used for carpeting the southern churches—a usage which is explained by the absence of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... fingers as a sign of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones. The corpse's head is anointed, then it is smoke-dried and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
