"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some coarse crockery. Norah Brewster looked rapidly about her, and in an instant took over her new duties. Ere five minutes had passed the tea was made, two slices of bacon were frizzling on the pan, the table was rearranged, the antimacassars straightened over the sombre brown furniture, and the whole room had taken a new air of comfort and neatness. This done she looked round curiously at the prints upon the walls. Over the fireplace, in a small, square case, a brown ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... progress he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;—indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... heads once more. They put the horses to a canter as soon as the ridge was cleared, for there were still ten miles to go and the light was waning. Jeremy was very much at home in the woods, but the chill, sombre depths that appeared and reappeared on either hand seemed to warn him to be prepared. He reached to the saddlebow, undid the flap of the pistol holster, and made sure that his weapon was loaded, then put it back, reassured. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the young girl was necessarily of the most limited and uncostly character; and, though she was dressed for a ceremonious dinner, her attire consisted merely of a sombre-hued barege, made with the severest simplicity, and gaining its only pretension to full dress by disclosing her white, finely-moulded neck and arms. Her sole ornament was the bracelet which ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... self-command; and now, as his dark eyes rested upon Hugh's pale countenance, and then glanced upon the impassive mule, dozing quietly under the weight of poor Adam's model, his hand mechanically sought his dagger-hilt, and his face took a sinister and sombre expression. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like a transparent, gray veil, through which every outline of the hills was clear, but softened. The massive pines and spruces looked almost black against the white of the snow, and the whole landscape was at once shining and sombre; an effect which is peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country, and is always either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul. Dreamy and inert and phlegmatic people shiver and huddle, see only the sombreness, and find the winter one long imprisonment in the dark. But ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... she ushered Jessie was a small, dingy apartment, with draperies so sombre that they seemed almost black. The curtains were closely drawn, and an unmistakable atmosphere of mustiness ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... a gust a sort of wind Drove by, and where its power was hurled, She saw across the twilight, jarred and thinned, Those gloomy meadows of the under world, Where never sunlight was, nor grass, nor trees, And the dim pathways from the Stygian shore, Sombre and swart and barren, wandered o'er By ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... Northern Russia, rises in the Ural Mountains and flows N. through Vologda and Archangel, then westward and N. again, entering the Arctic Ocean by a large, island-studded estuary, after a course of 1000 m. through sombre forests ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... most effective creations was a blue serge coat and vest, and a pair of white duck trousers linked by emotional red socks to patent-leather shoes. This confection, crowned with a wide, saw-edged straw hat with a blue band, made him the brightest bit of colour on the sombre streets of our dull town. He wore his collars so high that he had to order them of a drummer, and as he came down street from the depot, riding magnificently with the 'bus-driver, after the train had gone, the clerks used to cry: "Look ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of The Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... one of those rich slumberous afternoons of spring that seem to bathe earth and heaven with an Elysian softness; and from her little lonely nook shrouded in dusky shadows by its orange-trees, Agnes looked down the sombre gorge to where the open sea lay panting and palpitating in blue and violet waves, while the little white sails of fishing-boats drifted hither and thither, now silvered in the sunshine, now fading away like a dream into the violet vapor bands that mantled the horizon. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... see the hated invaders had been somewhat satisfied, the people were urged to go to their homes, and by mid afternoon the streets were deserted. Then began the entrance of the real force of occupation. At the head rode a general of brigade, a sombre, stern-eyed man, accompanied by his staff. And behind him marched thousands of green-gray German infantry keeping step with a marvelous precision. These men had been fighting hard, but they looked fresh and trim. And as they marched ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... Marie Antoinette wears in the contemporary portrait by Madame Vigee-Lebrun, a portrait exhibited at the Salon of 1783. The ladies, with La Motte, then dined at the best restaurant in Versailles, and went out into the park. The sky was heavy, without moon or starlight, and they walked into the sombre mass of the Grove of Venus, so styled from a statue of the goddess which was never actually placed there. Nothing could be darker than the thicket below ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Sabbath in Washington, and trains laden with troops, ambulances, and batteries, sped along the line of railway, toward the rendezvous at Alexandria. A wagoner, looking forlornly at his splintered wheels; a slovenly guard, watching some bales of hay; a sombre negro, dozing upon his mule; a slatternly Irish woman gossiping with a sergeant at her cottage door; a sutler in his "dear-born," running his keen eye down the limbs of my beast; a spruce civilian riding for curiosity; ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... stood still, and gazed long upon the lifeless body. Even in death he was very handsome; his manly face, so short a time ago filled with power, and with an irresistible charm for every woman, still had a marvellous beauty; his black brows, like sombre velvet, set ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... window was blue and the edges red. Upon this sombre richness of colouring, the personages, whose flying draperies allowed their limbs to be seen, stood out in relief in clear light on the glass. Three scenes of the Legend, placed one above the other, filled the space ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... chief political characteristic, was a constant endeavor to make striking effects. The reader may be sure to find nothing commonplace in his writings. Every scene and every character is painted in the brightest of colors. If the background be sombre, it will simply throw out more brilliantly the figures in the foreground. It is said that most men have a favorite word. That of d'Israeli was "wondrous." He took his reader into wondrous baronial halls, filled with wondrous gems, with wondrous ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... season came in, the market assumed an aspect of half-subdued brilliancy with the many sombre and high-colored varieties of that fungus. The poorer people indulge in numerous kinds which the rich do not eat, and they furnish precious sustenance during fasts, when so many viands are forbidden ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... doctrines or impress emotions. Certain it is that he looked on colour as something carnal: the example of the Venetian painters warned him against passionate excess, and so as a religious artist he felt it a duty to use sombre pigments, tertiary tints, and low, shadowy tones. Thus much needs explanation, yet it must always be cause for regret that Overbeck did not take for examples such masters of colour as Fra Angelico and Perugino, and thus gain the heavenly ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... the table and another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark little room. She looked about with a little shiver. Then she sank into the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, passed a hand over her hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... home, now, you know," he said, in a kindly way, and took her hand, very cold and lax, in his for welcome. She could not answer, but made haste to follow Veronica to her room, whither the old woman led the way with a candle. It was a gloomily spacious chamber, with sombre walls and a lofty ceiling with a faded splendor of gilded paneling. Some tall, old-fashioned mirrors and bureaus stood about, with rugs before them on the stone floor; in the middle of the room was a bed curtained with ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... that you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I am gled to see that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... entire suspension of all noises and sounds, not even the tick of an insect to break the black, dull, dark monotony, is a wet blanket to cheerfulness. I really think the stillness of a large prairie is one of the most painful sensations of loneliness, a man ever encountered. The sombre and dreary monotony of a dungeon, is scarcely a comparison; in fact, language fails to describe the essentially double-distilled monotony of these great American grass-patches—you can't call them deserts, for at times they ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... cutting away the branches alarmed my sombre little friend (I knew that the nest was tenanted, as the bill and head were distinctly visible through the lateral entrance), and out she darted with such a 'whir' that anything like satisfactory identification for a bird of ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm- house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its ravine, washing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... close to the window, that I might see it better. The electric light emphasized the lines of the high-bred face, with its sombre searching eyes and the air of old-world breeding. There could be no doubt whatever that the original of this portrait was the man from whom I had just parted. By the costume I knew that the original had lived in the last century; and the legend beneath ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... which succeeded each other in Western Asia annihilated all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at length an interpretation in the peerless man to whom the universal conscience has decreed ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... talking thus, we were penetrating the sombre arches of the forest, and for two hours we surveyed it in ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... The little figures were exactly what she wanted, quite simple in outline, but most effective, and not at all difficult. They would certainly improve Lizzie's calendar for the week, and relieve the sombre character of the Dryden quotations. She worked away very rapidly, sketching them lightly in pencil, intending to finish them in ink afterwards. She grew quite interested, especially when she reached the pen part. That little face with its ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... musical they glide, Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, The next with silver Murmur dies away, Like Tides ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... of the night Is spread, wine-dark, above, But glistens with no gems of light, To hint of Heaven's love. A sombre pall hangs overhead, Fringed with lurid clouds of lead,— O'er the sleeping earth below One long, wide waste of silent snow, And the wind moans drearily As it wanders by, And the night wanes wearily In the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... wretches who drove me, or delivered up by their treachery, it mattered not, my fate seemed certain; before I had time to determine upon any line of acting in this confounded dilemma, the door was jerked open by a servant in a sombre livery; who, protruding his head and shoulders into the chaise, looked at me steadily for a moment, and said, "Ah! then, doctor darlin', but ye're welcome." With the speed with which sometimes the bar of an air long since heard, or ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Womanhood radiated from everything. A fire blazed in the chimney. A rug of long white wool lay before it. A little way off stood the piano. Ornaments sparkled and shone upon the dressing-table. The door of a wardrobe had swung a little open, and discovered the sombre shimmer of a black silk dress. Something gorgeously red, a China crape shawl, hung glowing beyond it. He dared not gaze any longer. He had already been guilty of an immodesty. He hastened to ascend, and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to and fro, he returns; his hand opens and empties itself, fills itself and empties itself again and again; the sombre plain is stirred, the deeps of nature open, the unknown abyss of creation begins its work; the waiting dews fall, the spear of wild grain quivers and reflects that the sheaf of wheat will succeed it; the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... sight Beyond the western plains, gilded and tinged, Misty and vast, beneath a brilliant sky, Shaded from brightest gold to softest rose. Then, after supper, back and forth he paced Upon the narrow rock before his cave, Seeking to ease his numbed and stiffened limbs; While evening's sombre shadows slowly crept From plain to hill and highest mountain-top, And solemn silence settled on the world, Save for the night-jar's cry and owl's complaint; While many lights from out the city gleam, And thickening stars spangle the azure vault, Until the moon, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... with the Scandinavian Rollos, Sigurds, Einars, and Hacos of our dingier chronicles, serve greatly to enhance its interest. It is a noble pile, built of a dark-tinted Old Red Sandstone,—a stone which, though by much too sombre for adequately developing the elegancies of the Grecian or Roman architecture, to which a light delicate tone of color seems indispensable, harmonizes well with the massier and less florid styles of the Gothic. The round arch of that ancient Norman school which ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... November—and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... forgotten by the two gentlemen, had been left standing at the foot of the steps, and his sombre eyes were now fixed upon the girl in a look so strange and intent as fully to explain her perturbation. Through his parted lips the breath came hurriedly, in his eyes was a mournful exaltation as of one who looks ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... It was a glorious August forenoon, and the sombre spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped and rippled in the waters were penetrated to their deepest recesses with the clear brilliancy of the sky,—a true northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening haze, defining ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Wordsworth is probably the most recent bit of work contained in this volume. If one might choose between so much that is good, I should be inclined to say it is the finest also. The essay on Lamb is curiously suggestive; suggestive, indeed, of a somewhat more tragic, more sombre figure, than men have been wont to think of in connection with the author of the Essays of Elia. It is an interesting aspect under which to regard Lamb, but perhaps he himself would have had some difficulty in recognising the portrait given of him. He had, undoubtedly, great ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Jeff nodded, with sombre meaning. He was always a pessimistically inclined man; and, in his rough way, he had conceived a good deal of affection and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... to Ulrich of the dreamy eyes. His wheelwright's business had called him to a town far off. He had been walking all the day. Towards evening, passing the outskirts of a wood, a feeble cry for help, sounding from the shadows, fell upon his ear. Ulrich paused, and again from the sombre wood crept that weary cry of pain. Ulrich ran and came at last to where, among the wild flowers and the grass, lay prone five human figures. Two of them were of the German Landwehr, the other three ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... day added something to Adelaide's feelings of chagrin and disappointment. But it was still worse when she found herself settled for a long season at Norwood Abbey a dull, magnificent residence, with a vast unvaried park, a profusion of sombre trees, and a sheet of stillwater, decorated with leaden deities. Within doors everything was in the same style of vapid, tasteless grandeur, and the society was not such as to dispel the ennui these images served to create. Lady Matilda Sufton, her satellite Mrs. Finch, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... was Carlson's unimaginative way of describing the affair. "I fixed him," he repeated, while a sombre light burnt in his eyes, and his huge, toil-distorted hands opened and closed eloquently. "He made no noise. I hid him, and tonight I will go back and bury ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... which is properly denominated Pantheism, where the Creator is forgotten in creation. The former line of Pantheism noticed in Averroes approaches more nearly to theism. Bruno's unbelief was not gay and flippant, but sombre and earnest. With a fantastical conceit which can hardly be explained, he travelled as the missionary to propagate his own views like a knight errant tilting at all opinions, with a soul especially embittered against the Christian priesthood.(327) On ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... we were tired with our long journey, yet we did not stand a second call, and in an hour's time after being aroused, we had despatched our hastily cooked breakfast, and were on the road and urging the cattle towards the dark and sombre appearing woods where the gang of Black Darnley ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... continued without a day's intermission, until she at last came in sight of the long-looked-for place. After the time-worn state-house, the next building that met her eye, was the old, dark-looking prison, in which was confined her husband. How gladly did her eyes greet its sombre walls! It was the dwelling-place of one, for whom, in all his wanderings, her heart retained its warm emotions of love. Suddenly, like a parching wind of the desert, came upon her the thought that he might be dead. For three long years ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness. But afterward she was grave again and thoughtful. "Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us—to warn me of possibilities like that? You might quite easily do ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of this sombre artistic effect, the morning was not one which tended to lower the spirits. It was even cheering. For it did not rain, nor was rain likely to fall for many days ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... years in Rome present all the elements of an intellectual situation of the highest interest. The beating of the soul against its bars, the sombre aspect, the alien traditions,* [190] the still barbarous literature of Germany, are afar off; before him are adequate conditions of culture, the sacred soil itself, the first tokens of the advent of the new German literature, with its broad horizons, its boundless ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... reason I do not name Mr. Gray's Eton Ode and Churchyard.' Prior's Solomon (for I doubt his Alma, though far superior, is too learned for her limited reading,) would be very proper. In truth, I think the cast of the age (I mean in its compositions) is too sombre. The flimsy giantry of Ossian has introduced mountainous horrors. The exhibitions at Somerset-house are crowded with Brobdignag ghosts. Read and explain to her a charming poetic familiarity called the Blue-stocking ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... paradise was placed we have no certain information. It could hardly have been a mere separate district of that abode of shades that is painted in such sombre colours. We must suppose that it was open to the sunlight; it was perhaps on one of the slopes of the Northern Mountain, in the neighbourhood of the luminous summit on which the gods and goddesses had ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... it flame and glance, A beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance That wrap mankind Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not be, Whate'er be shaped and fixed within Zeus' ruling mind— Dark as a solemn grove, with sombre leafage shaded, His paths of purpose wind, A marvel ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... charities. Her work lay chiefly with children, She was active in mission-schools and in two or three homes for friendless little ones, and did much to extend their sphere of usefulness. Her garments were plain and sombre, her fair young face almost colorless, and her aspect so nun-like as often to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... vista of death, a sea of rusting corpses of space ships, and worn-out mining machinery, and of those of my race whose power packs burned out, or who simply gave up, retiring into this endless, corroding limbo of the barrens. A more sombre sight was never seen. ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... there is a constant battle as to which shall be the town. For the rest, there is a road wandering in an aimless way along the hill-side, like a child at play who is going nowhere, and all along this road are scattered every variety of dwelling, big and little, sombre and gay, humble and pretentious, which the mind of man ever conceived of,—and some of which I devoutly trust the mind of man will never again conceive. There are solid substantial Dutch farm-houses, built of unhewn stone, that look as though ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... This was the sombre background to her frightened thoughts as she lay in her bed next to Marie. In the midst of all the figures which haunted her, there stood now one alone who offered her anything but fearful things—and he was a stranger. Out of the infinite multitude ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... this gorge can be compared. Storm-clouds lowered into the chasm in the early morning. The sky was overcast and threatening. We were travelling directly west again, and no sunlight entered here, even when the sun shone. The walls had lost their brighter reds, and what colour they had was dark and sombre, a dirty brown and dark green predominating. The mythology of the ancients, with their Inferno and their River Styx, could hardly conjure anything more supernatural or impressive than this ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... prelate made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at people without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... have but little brilliancy—probably some of them possess none at all. This suggests a greatly enhanced conception of the majestic scale of the universe. It also invites us to the belief that the universe which we behold bears but a small ratio to the far larger part which is invisible in the sombre shades of night. In the wide extent of the material universe we have here or there a star or a mass of gaseous matter sufficiently heated to be luminous, and thus to become visible from the earth; but our observation of these luminous points can tell us little of the remaining ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in His eyes Who ransomed us, and haler too than I; And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own; And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer The sombre close of that voluptuous day, Which wrought the ruin ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of the gambling, the supper parties, and the gaieties of the town, there is the continual sombre shadow of an important constitutional change—a system and a Cabinet were falling under the deep resentment of the country. Neither the King, the Ministry, or its supporters appeared to appreciate that, even in an age when public ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... closed, and the growing darkness gave to the broad, still, and deep expanse of the brimful river, first a hue sombre and uniform—then a dismal and turbid appearance, partially lighted by a waning and pallid moon. The massive and ancient bridge which stretches across the Clyde was now but dimly visible, and resembled that which Mirza, in his unequalled vision, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... lined with Phynotomi and Sitones both an indeterminate grey, and Otiorhynchi, black or tan-coloured. Now I have sometimes happened to unearth from her cells a collection of veritable jewels which, thanks to their bright metallic lustre, made a most striking contrast with the sombre Otiorhynchus. These were the Rhynchites (R. betuleti), who roll the vine-leaves into cigars. Equally magnificent, some of them were azure blue, others copper gilt, for the cigar-roller has a twofold colouring. How did the Cerceris manage to recognize in these jewels ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... greater or less degree, experiences with the feelings of those around, as they are manifested by the countenance and voice. A sorrowful, a discontented, or an angry countenance produces a silent, sympathetic influence, imparting a sombre shade to the mind, while tones of anger or complaint still more ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a Watteau's brush—the sun just sinking behind the orchard trees gilding the edge of each leaf, shone on the dark red of John Johnstone's dress, warmed the sombre hue of fair Betty's lincoln green, and played on the blue and primrose of Mistress Mary's flower-like costume. It was a fair picture, and no eye could rest on a goodlier couple than the tall lithe young man, and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... an evening sky— The twilight's gift—of sombre hue, All checkered wild and gorgeously With streaks of crimson, gold and blue;— A sky that strikes the soul with awe, And, though not brilliant as the sheen, Which in the east at morn we saw, Is far more glorious, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... well-being is higher than in any State we know in history. Puritan though it be, it is more truly liberal and free than any large community in the world. But it had bleak beginnings. The icy shore, the sombre pines, the stealthy savages, the hard soil, the unbending religious austerity, the Scriptural severity, the arrogant virtues, the angry intolerance of contradiction—they all made a narrow strip of sad civilization between the pitiless sea and the remorseless forests. The moral and physical ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... threadbare magnificence that told the secrets of vanity. Heavy tables crowded down the centre of the room. I came, saw, and fled. The oratory was the most thrilling place of all. It opened out of my sister's room, which was a large, sombre apartment. It was said to attract a frequently seen ghost by the force of its profound twilight and historic sorrows; and my sister, who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly approved of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly lost her buoyant taste for disembodied ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... said my father, quietly, and he left us staring in that heavy, sombre face before us—a face full of despair, but one to which we could not address words ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... the Kingfisher But yestermorn conjured me here Out of his green and gold to say Why thou, in splendour of the noon, Wearest of colour but golden shoon, And else dost thee array In a most sombre suit of black? 'Surely,' he sighed, 'some load of grief, Past all our thinking—and belief— Must weigh upon his back!' Do, then, in turn, tell me, If joy Thy heart as well as voice employ Why dost thou now most Sable, shine In plumage woefuller far than mine? Thy silence ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... between lunch and dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn—silent and sombre almost to moroseness. But Randal had no doubt that ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... confederates was the city of Mons, which they resolved to besiege with all possible expedition. They passed the Schelde on the third day of September, and detached the prince of Hesse to attack the French lines from the Haisne to the Sombre, which were abandoned at his approach. On the seventh day of September, mareschal de Boufflers arrived in the French camp at Quievrain, content to act in an inferior capacity to Villars, although his superior in point ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it is here!" said Frida, "and yet how unlike the sombre appearance of the trees in ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following as swiftly and silently as sharks that had scented blood, and they were not a ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... cliff serene Man saw the sun hold a red torch above the farthest seas, and the fierce island pinnacles put on in his defence their sombre panoplies; Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees, till all the beauty of the scene seemed one, led by the secret whispers ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... well,' muttered our hero, as he sprang away from the gasping beast. The next moment he had disappeared in the dense, dark wood. Ah! how sheltering, how kindly, seemed that sombre sanctuary, with its dark grey tufts beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... presence in the changed atmosphere. A furious gale was blowing across the lake from the west, which lashed huge waves into fury and foam as they beat in endless confusion on the rockbound shore. Blinding snow mixed with the spray gave the inky blackness of the night a weird and sombre appearance. Our Cossack attendant, Marca, droned a folk-song about the wonders of the Baikal, which, when interpreted by my liaison officer, fitted the scene to a fraction. We put up the double windows, listed the doors and turned ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... serious Baron stuck his lance; For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, Pricked onward, bound for their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... threw her sable mantle over the bloody field, covering in her sombre folds the stiffened corpses and mangled forms of not less than fifteen thousand dead and wounded, including ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... village homes in the province of Fo-kien, after a few years of work in various tropical colonies. The morning was fine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer white misty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed with Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind, and the heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared over the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each other; a few slept on hatches, while several ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... talking in her lively, girlish way. She was quite unconscious of the sombre tinge that ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... more heavily veiled than usual. Her dress and hat were of sombre black, and her manner nervous and disturbed. She came slowly to-wards their end of the table, although she was obviously in search of some ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... delicate softness. The young maize—planted in a soil that has lain fallow, perhaps for a thousand years—is rapidly culming upward; and the rich sheen of the long lance-like leaves, as they bend gracefully over, hides from view the sombre hues of the earth. The forest trees appear with their foliage freshly expanded—some; as the tulip-tree, the dogwood, and the white magnolia, already in the act of inflorescence. The woods no longer maintain that monotonous silence which they have preserved throughout the winter. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... one of the coldest winters known in Canada.[16] The snow fell so heavily in the thick pine woods of Minnesota that Radisson says the forest became as sombre as a cellar. The colder the weather the better the fur, and, presenting gifts to insure safe conduct, Radisson set out with a band of one hundred and fifty Cree hunters for the Northwest. They travelled on snow-shoes, hunting moose on the way and sleeping at night round ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... were hushed in the presence of death. Everywhere within the building were the evidences of a great sorrow. Crape was seen wherever the eye turned—surrounding the galleries, fronting the platform, encircling the choir. But there was one spot thrown into alto relievo by the sombre drapery of woe. In front of the pulpit, on a small table, were the exquisitely beautiful floral tributes of friendship and affection, whispering of the beauty and glory of that spring-time of the human race, when this "mortal shall have ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... as he went down into L'Houmeau; and when he took his way towards Marsac, with the last sombre thoughts gnawing at his heart, it was with the firm resolve to hide his death. There should be no inquest held over him, he would not be laid in earth; no one should see him in the hideous condition of the corpse that ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... it was not an impressive country. There were no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were measured and done not by the clock but ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... had formed coal so generously upon the earth had thrown up, almost as lavishly, huge quantities of pure diamond. The material was of all colours, as diamonds run, and considered of small value; for every day purposes they preferred substances of more sombre hues. They used it, it ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... a tonic to her overwrought nerves. All longings and regrets had been put off with the Paris-made gown which the maid at that moment was carefully packing away. The order of nature seemed reversed; the butterfly had abandoned its gorgeous wings of gauze, and was habited in the sombre working garb of the grub. With her hands clasped behind her, the girl paced up and down the room, pouring forth words, two hundred to the minute, and sometimes more. Silently one stenographer, tiptoeing in, replaced another, who as silently departed; and from the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... my lap as I sit over the brook, on a log—a single leaf, gilded about its border, in the centre a crimson flush, fast swallowing up the original greenness; the whole will presently be bronzed and sombre. O, Leaf! how art thou mummified! We do not think of these little things of Nature. Look at this leaf. What is its record? How many generations, think you, are numbered in its ancestry? A perpetual intermarriage ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... conditions of the lonely New England life, with its religious theories as sombre as its forests, its rigid notions of duty as difficult to make bloom into sweetness and beauty as the stony soil, would have been unendurable if they had not been touched with the ideal created by the poet. There was in creed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sounding ever taken in the Atlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen or unseen, always impresses the human mind—perhaps oppresses it. We were very silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened to crimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long after the rose-tint died ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... natural effects of her lying-in wore off, she appeared also to have recovered her general good health, and her usual cheerfulness. She was always benignant, kind, and affectionate, but the effects of an incessant nervous headache had produced a sombre sadness, which threw a gloom around, and affected the whole family, and prevented that sort of hilarity and cheerfulness, which was the usual companion of our abode. My father was of a generous, hospitable, sociable disposition, and was never ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... it with dignity, amid laughter and shouts of approval. Suddenly all the noise dies down and a sombre silence reigns—a woman's strange voice drowns the noise—so strange and unfamiliar, as if it were not Mariet's voice at all, but another voice speaking ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... passing. Dandelion ghosts lined the paths, wild roses dropped their rosy pink and appeared in sombre green, and meadow lilies peeped out from every fence corner. A few days after my grand discovery, I went one evening to the blackberry tangle, and was greeted by gleeful shouts and calls from the bird of late so ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the young scholars of the day applied themselves to Arabic in order to equip their minds, and to be in a more blissful state of preparation for the triumphant edition to follow. Captain Burton's first volume in sombre black and dazzling gold—the livery of the Abbasides—made its appearance three weeks ago, and divided attention with the newly-discovered Star. It is the first volume of ten, the set issued solely to subscribers. And already, as in the case of Mr. Payne's edition, there has been ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... are losing our ability to smile let's have no false notions. We are neglecting our physical well being. Let us then and there drop the sombre thoughts and get out into the open air. Run down the street and if possible out into the country. If we see a tree and have the inclination to climb it—well, then, climb it. If we are sensitive about what our neighbors might say—too ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... coigns the priceless portraits of the S. Croix gazed complacently down upon him. Royalty had aforetimes been of daily habit to them. Their scornful brows with sombre eyes, their thin curling lips, appeared to be of some alien race. They seemed to hold themselves aloof as though he was a child of their one-time serfs, having no claim upon their bond of caste. Even to himself ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... admiration, serious enough in all conscience in Adrian's eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty, the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable foot—pointed so—and treading the ground with the softness of a kitten ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... respect for his bigness and for his bandit airs, but he is a sombre bird, with none of the buzzard's ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and put a foot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... early memories, as a poetical aspirant, of the magnificent flatteries by which Victor Hugo made himself the god of young romantic Paris; his talks with Montalembert in the days of L'Avenir; his memories of Lamennais's sombre figure, of Maurice de Guerin's feverish ethereal charm; his account of the opposition salons under the Empire—they had all been elaborated in the course of years, till every word fitted and each point led to the next with the 'inevitableness' of true art. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... even that was so short as to be barely decent. Six months—yet in that space of time much might happen—things undreamed of and undesired—slow tortures carefully measured out, punishment sudden and heavy! Wrapped in these sombre musings I walked beside him in profound silence. The moon shone brilliantly; groups of girls danced on the shore with their lovers, to the sound of a flute and mandoline—far off across the bay the sound of sweet and plaintive ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... glow of sunset was already fading into the sombre shadows of night, when two travellers might have been observed swiftly—at a pace of six miles in the hour—descending the rugged side of a mountain; the younger bounding from crag to crag with the agility of a fawn, while his companion, whose aged ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... had predicted, Sidney Lorimer's funeral was a function. Everything about it was above criticism, with the minor exception of the manner in which Lorimer had met his end. Society, black-clothed and sombre-faced, was present, partly from respect to the Danes, partly from a real liking for Lorimer as they had known him at first, partly from curiosity to see whether there were any foundation for the rumors ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... sacrifices the worker for the idler's benefit. What have we done, we and the insects, to be ground with sovran indifference under the mill-stone of such wretchedness? Oh, what terrible, what heart-rending questions the Mason-bee's misfortunes would bring to my lips, if I gave free scope to my sombre thoughts! But let us avoid these useless whys and keep within the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Over the back of the chair he slung his girdle and the scabbard hanging therefrom and placed his plumed hat so that none could see that his Castilian blade was not in its resting-place. And when the sombre chamber had the appearance of one having undressed in it before retiring Rodriguez turned his attention to the bed, which he noticed to be of great depth and softness. That something not unlike blood had been spilt on the floor excited ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... view of the whole forest. The Prince felt certain that this must be the abode of the Oracle, and just as the sun was setting he reached its outermost gates. The whole castle was surrounded by a deep moat, and the drawbridge and the gates, and even the water in the moat, were all of the same sombre hue as the walls and towers. Upon the gate hung a huge bell, upon which was written ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... he who always knew That being lovely was a duty, Should have gold halls to wander through And should himself inhabit beauty. How like his old unselfish way To leave those halls of splendid mirth And comfort those condemned to stay Upon the dull and sombre earth. ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... was too bright to last. The sun sank swiftly, the celestial fires paled, the purples grew faint and died, and, where they had been, night trailed her sombre plumes across the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... despair in human form, dressed in a black coat and trousers with shining seams that recall the zinc on an attic roof, a glistening satin waistcoat, a hat preserved like a relic, a pair of old gloves, and a cotton shirt. The man is the incarnation of a melancholy poem, sombre as the secrets of the Conciergerie. Other kinds of poverty, the poverty of the artist—actor, painter, musician, or poet—are relieved and lightened by the artist's joviality, the reckless gaiety of the Bohemian border country—the first stage of the journey ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the dear, most kind, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... was very narrow—the houses so close together that a donkey loaded with brush-wood could hardly scrape through—and so steep that he had hard work to get a foot-hold on the smooth, worn stones serving to pave it. The buildings were all of that sombre gray stone so picturesque in paintings, and so pleasant for the eye to rest on, yet withal suggesting no brilliant ideas of cleanliness or even neatness. The houses were rarely over two stories in hight, the majority only one story, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the love of my youth, and I loved her, and told her of it. The sun was waning—going down to rest, and, like a mighty monarch, was folding himself away to sleep in gorgeous robes of crimson and gold. In his shaded light, outstretching for fifty miles beyond the river, lay, in sombre silence, the mighty swamp, with its wonderful trees of cypress, clothed in moss of gray, long, and festooning from their summits to the earth below, and waving, like banners, in the passing wind. The towering magnolia, in all the pride of foliage and flower, shaded us. The river, in ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... pink in the morning light. And behind us, just above the horizon, a segment of purple sky where a storm was gathering—a deep purple which was mirrored in the placid patches of open water, and darkened the ice-floes to a solemn, sombre hue. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... from that glance, where it falls. All purities and all candors meet in that celestial and fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming, in the depths of the soul, of that sombre flower, impregnated with perfume and with poison, which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... recognise them and suffer for it; or the gilding of rank and fashion may win for such persons a name in society above that which they deserve, and the moralist is bound to unmask them. These studies nevertheless are somewhat sombre;[W] and there is something much lighter and pleasanter in his presentation of some not unfamiliar phases of manners. There is the self-complacency that deals with itself like a "truant reader skipping over the harsh places"; the frank discourtesy ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... People walked in silence without knowing why they did not care to speak. And even the girls, discreet in ribbons and shining boots, thought less of kisses than they generally did on Sunday. The older people, sober by temperament, became sombre under the influence of sad, breathless sky, and breathless waters. The coldness that lay in the bosom of nature soon found its way to the responsive bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The one preached without heart. The other ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of observation is as incontestable as your very charming amiability. With a sagacious eye you observed my predilection for the silent "compatriot," apparently rather sombre, but of excellent composition at bottom. [A box of caviare, which Madame Rubinstein had sent to Liszt.] Doubtless the advantages which appertain to it in its own right were peculiarly enhanced by the charm ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... by a number of men who proclaimed his virtues and power in loud voices. He was seated in a chair carried by sixteen men; his guards, the officers of his household, standard and umbrella bearers, and musicians accompanied him. He was clothed in a robe of sombre-coloured silk, and wore a velvet cap, very similar in shape to that of Scotch mountaineers. A large pearl was conspicuous on his forehead, and was the only jewel or ornament ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... than anywhere else. The revolution of the seasons will repeat certain effects; spring will chill the waters to a cold, hard green; summer will spread its breadth of golden light on palace front and water way; autumn will come with its pearly-gray sirocco days, and sunsets flaming a sombre death; the stars of a cloudless winter night, the whole vast dome of heaven, will be reflected in the mirror of the still lagoon. But in spite of this general order of the seasons, one day is less like another in Venice than anywhere else; the lagoon wears a different aspect ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... her welcome into London, has seemed always at flood-tide. Faithful to her experience and convictions, the Queen smiled gladly on the marriage of affection between this gentle princess and the heir to the throne, and was present as a spectator, though still wearing her sombre weeds, at the splendid show of her son's wedding on March 10th, 1863. "Two things have struck me much," writes Dr. Macleod, from whose Journal we again quote: "one was the whole of the royal princesses weeping, though concealing their ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... time, I described the method of work, and while talking, holding him by the arm, drew him over toward the schoolhouse. Almost before he realized it, we were ready for the task. As he removed his shirt and prepared for the operation of oiling and the application of the plaster, he looked somewhat sombre. After seeing the work well begun, I stepped outside and sat in the portico until it should be done. The first piece of plaster had been applied, the subject had been turned, and was lying ready for the second ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... and another, has been invaluable. Well, I don't know: I have had the idea, but I don't suppose that, in reality—Still, I am fond of him, John. Such a tongue, and such a versatile brain, is he! He was my comfort for many a sombre day ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... "Young Miss" Emily Hawkins, "Young Mars" Washington Hawkins and "Young Mars" Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it. The moon rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled crash of a raving bank in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... population to about five thousand, and in its palmy days of slaveholding prosperity exhibited doubtless much pomp of vice-regal splendor. But this has long fled, and its sandy streets are now almost as silent and sombre in the glittering sunshine as if traversed only by the ghosts of the Spanish colonists who dwelt here in peace until ruthlessly thrust ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... on with a sombre fascination, as if the raft typified his life's happiness, till it was all over, and some of the trunks, carried by a cross current into a little creek, had been pulled in to the shore with long hooks, and the rest had floated on again in placid procession, their scraped ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Louis XV was artificially brilliant there is no doubt. It was this that made it stand out from the sombre background of the masses of the time. It was a dazzling, human spectacle, and Versailles, with its extravagant, superficial charms, carried it very near to the brink of ruin, though even in its most banal vulgarities there ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Dieu tient le coeur des rois entre ses mains puissantes. Il fait que tout prospre aux mes innocentes, Tandis qu'en ses projets l'orgueilleux est tromp. De mes faibles attraits le Roi parut frapp. 70 Il m'observa longtemps dans un sombre silence; Et le Ciel, qui pour moi fit pencher la balance, Dans ce temps-l sans doute agissait sur son coeur. Enfin, avec des yeux o rgnait la douceur: Soyez reine, dit-il; et ds ce moment mme 75 De sa main sur mon front posa son diadme. Pour mieux faire clater ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... little incident to change the tone of one's feelings and the humor of the occasion. As a few drops of oil, cast upon the surface of the waters, will quiet the troubled waves, so did the glad voice of this merry bird suddenly dispel all those sombre feelings which had been fostered by dismal scenes and a lonely journey. Nature never seemed so lovely as when the rising dawn, with its tearful beams and purple radiance, was greeted by this warbling salutation, as from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... society, accompanied by her excellent mother. She has since married —— Hemans, Esq., then an Adjutant in the army. A great number of her pieces have appeared in the Monthly Magazine, as well as the New Monthly, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her conversation and manner, which made her the delight and charm of every society with which she mixed. She likewise (I think in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... the glossy old chairs, polished by years of care; fluttering with flickering gleam on the bookcases, by the fire, and the antique China vases on the mantel, and even coqueting with sparkles of fanciful gayety over the face of the perpendicular, sombre old clock, which, though at times apparently coaxed almost to the verge of a smile, still continued its inevitable tick, as ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... constancy in writing to me. Your last letter is dated the 26th November. What can I say from this remote corner in return for the pleasure I experience at the receipt of your letters? I have already described my sombre kind of life, but I am sure you will rejoice to hear that my present quiet has been productive of the essential good of restoring my health. I now consider myself quite re-established; therefore, my good Irving, dispel all your alarms on my account. I once thought of visiting Ballstown, but, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the money was not in the pocket, and that his bill therefore would be paid, he was not indisposed to be gracious. He would, he said, desire his servant to take up what was required to Mr. Horne's chamber. I endeavoured to make him understand that a sombre colour would be preferable; but he only answered that he would put the best that he had at the gentleman's disposal. He could not think of offering anything less than his best on such an occasion. And then he turned his back and went his way, muttering ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope |
