"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In her pensive mood, Miss Tox's thoughts went wandering on Mr Dombey's track; probably because the Major had returned home to his lodgings opposite, and had just bowed to her from his window. What other reason could Miss ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... plaything as it soars, Vague against the shining sky, Where light yet throbs and confuses the eye, Then see it again, white and clear, As slowly, poisdly it falls by The dark green foliage and floats near. But Celia, apart, is pensive and must sigh, And Anais but faintly pursues the game. An encroaching, inner flame Burns in their hearts with the acrid smoke of unrest; But gaiety runs like quicksilver in Rose's breast, And Phillis, rising, Walks by herself with high and springy tread, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... during the voyage would at one time be in the highest spirits, and the next pensive, as if occupied by a world of thought—"I declare if that one isn't the very image of Mr Trotter, our curate at Allington! He has the same little tuft of hair on top on his head; and, besides, he has the identical same way of popping it on one side ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... broken by a pensive call note, sounding like the syllables chip-churr, and he is regarded as ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... wish in vain for that," said Ben, pointing out the orb of evening, with its pale-yellow light peeping over the tall tree-tops, and irradiating the scene with its pensive shimmer. ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... of his life Mr. Foster passed in New York. During all that time, his efforts, with perhaps one exception, were limited to the production of songs of a pensive character. The loss of his mother seems to have left an ineffaceable impression of melancholy upon his mind, and inspired such songs as "I dream of my Mother," "I'll be Home To-morrow," "Leave me with my Mother," and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... novice had made this proposition, Mrs. Weldon remained pensive. Her repugnance to the idea of a separation, even short, was very serious. Might it not happen that the shipwreck of the "Pilgrim" would soon be known to the Indian tribes who frequented the sea-shore, either to the north or to the south, and in case some plunderers of the wrecks thrown ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... it contained; but Winsett's, after all, contained still less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... reply; he stood looking down, pensive and resigned—tired, perhaps, now that the anxieties of the last few ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... exciting vicissitude as that of Louis Philippe. His life covers the most eventful period in French history. The storms of 1789 consigned his father to the guillotine, his mother and brothers to imprisonment, and himself and sister to poverty and exile. There are few romances more replete with pensive interest than the wanderings of Louis Philippe to escape the bloodhounds of the Revolution far away amidst the ices of Northern Europe, to the huts of the Laplanders, and again through the almost unbroken wilds of North ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... passglas[30] above his head, called aloud, "Come here, honest cooper and Meistersinger, come here and drain this glass with me, your Master Martin." Reinhold had to do as he was bidden. Returning to his place, he whispered into Frederick's ear, who was looking very pensive, "Now, you must sing—sing the song you sang last night." "Are you mad?" asked Frederick, quite angry. But Reinhold turned to the company and said in a loud voice, "My honoured gentlemen and masters, my dear brother Frederick here ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. 'Placida omnia et quiescentia.' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more pure, the atmosphere ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches that ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to Moll very gravely, and yet tenderly, for some while, Dawson and I going into the house to see what we could make of it; and then, telling us we should see him no more till the next day, he left us. But for some time after he was gone Moll sat on the side of the well, very pensive and wistful, as one to whom the future was opened for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... in which little Louisa and her father then were. The distress of the poor birds seemed to afflict the tender-hearted maid very much, which her father perceived as soon as she entered his chamber. "What is it makes you look so pensive now," said her father, "since it is but a few minutes ago when you were so remarkably cheerful?"—"O my dear papa!" said Louisa, "all those sweet birds, that sung so charmingly but a day or two ago, are now come into ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... near setting, and its rays, which still gilded the tree-tops, left the wood below pensive and melancholy. The house stood in a solitary place on the edge of the forest, half a mile from Poissy; and these two things had their effect on my mind. I began to wish that we had brought with us half a troop of horse, or at least two or three gentlemen; and, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... please: "Ye ken hoo I hate tae be workin'," says he; "But noo I can play in the street for bawbees, Wi' baith o' ma legs taken aff at the knee." And though I could see he wis rackit wi' pain, He reached for his whistle and stertit tae play; And quaverin' sweet wis the pensive refrain: 'The floors o' the forest are a' wede away'. Then sudden he stoppit: "Man, wis it no grand Hoo we took a' them trenches?" . . . He shakit his heid: "I'll—no—play—nae—mair——" feebly doon frae his hand Slipped the wee ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the milk-white blossoms and the red; And now, with noon long past, and that bright day Growing aweary, on the sunny way They wandered, crowned with flowers, and loitering, And weary, yet were fresh enough to sing The carols of the morn, and pensive, still Had cast away their doubt of death and ill, And flushed with love, no ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... a burlesque imitation and degradation of something serious. In his song, "Those Evening Bells," Moore wrote in pensive mood,— ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... once the young girl raised her head, and happened to look in his direction, and saw the pensive figure of the chevalier through the glass. It appeared evident to her that the young man remained there for her, and that it was at her he was looking. Then a bright blush spread over her face. Still she pretended she had seen nothing, and bent her head once more ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... me call Fidelio mine. Ah, wretch! what anguish yet thy soul must prove! For thou canst hope to lose thy care in love; And when Fidelio meets thy tearful eye, Pale fear and cold despair his presence fly. With pensive steps I sought thy walks again, And kissed thy token on the verdant plain; With fondest hope, through many a blissful hour, We gave our souls to Fancy's pleasing power. Lost in the magic of that sweet employ, To build ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Chrysostom in his own see of Constantinople. What daisies sprinkle the walks of Cowper, if we take his Task for a companion through the lanes of Weston! Under the thick hedges of Horton, darkening either bank of the field in the September moonlight, Il Penseroso is still more pensive. And whoever would feel at his heart the deep pathos of Collins's lamentation for Thomson, must murmur it to himself, as he glides upon the stealing wave, by the breezy lawns and elms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... wrong? Might he not, indeed, be considered a martyr, in some sort, to his own admirable impulses? I can see clearly enough where the contributor was astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear according to appointment added its final and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery from which the man emerged and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and most rightly touches them and us all, are topics eternally old, yet of eternal freshness, the perennial ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she tell why ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... called pensive—in which the soul of a human being, and especially of a woman, dominates outwardly and expresses its presence so strongly, that the intangible essence seems more apparent than the body itself. This was Cytherea's expression now. What old days and sunny eves at Budmouth ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... bounds! That classic house, those classic grounds My pensive thought recalls! What tender urchins now confine, What little captives now repine, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wait for you, father," Mrs. Donaldson said, in a sweet, pensive voice. "What do these ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... after Helen had finished he studied the fire and thoughtfully poked the red embers with his stick. His face was still and serene, untroubled and unlined, but to Helen his eyes seemed sad, pensive, expressive of an unsatisfied yearning and wonder. She had carefully and earnestly spoken, because she was very curious to hear ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... to know of her own existence; there was about her a simplicity to which he had felt himself rise only in the presence of the spirit about some lonely mountain-top or in the heart of deep woods. Her gaze was not vacant, not listless, but the pensive look of a sensitive child, and Clayton let himself fancy that there was in it an unconscious love of the beauty before her, and of its spiritual suggestiveness a slumbering sense, perhaps easily awakened. ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her... In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... unfortunate William dined for the last time, and the mark of the bullets on the wall in a little whitewashed space which bears a Dutch inscription reminding one that here died the father of his country. The corporal showed me where the assassin had fled. While I was looking round, with that pensive curiosity that one feels in places where great crimes have been committed, soldiers were ascending and descending; they stopped to look at me, and then went away singing and whistling; some near me were humming; others were laughing loudly in the courtyard. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Been. I felt that he wuz in fancy rowin' a boat up our creek in a red coat and green hat with yeller feathers mebby, carryin' sister Submit Tewksbury or sister Gowdey, sailin' towards his own Exposition of St. Josiah. There wuz a sad pensive look on his liniment that belonged to ruined hopes and ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... through his work but one is conscious that at bottom he is profoundly pessimistic and disenchanted. The gaiety of Turgeniev is winning and unforced; his sentiment natural and never "staled or rung upon." The pensive detachment of a sensitive and yet not altogether unworldly spirit seems to be the final ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... his couch he lies In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then his heart with pleasure fills, And ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the silent depths of her young heart far more than she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and looked round; the dark lake lay near me now, a little to the left. It was not large; it may have covered some ten or twelve acres; but it added to the melancholy of the scene. Near the centre of it was a small island, with two old ash trees, leaning toward each other, their pensive images reflected in the stirless water. The only cheery influence in this scene of antiquity, solitude, and neglect was that the house and landscape were warmed with the ruddy western beams. I knocked, and my summons resounded hollow and ungenial in my ear; and the bell, from far away, returned ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Lord William Howard entered, and, seeing the queen pensive, whispered something to her in English; then turning to us, he asked if we knew what he had said? The queen bade him not tell, but he paid no attention to her. He told us he had said he hoped soon to see somebody ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... but more graceful and beautiful form of the cypress. The cypress is silence personified. It stands wrapt in its own thoughts. One can hardly see it without asking, "What ails thee? Is it for the past you mourn?" Yet, pensive as it looks, its unconscious grace fills ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... 'Tis most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, And sits as safe as in a senate-house; For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... cold sepulchral stone Some name arrests the passer-by; Thus, when thou view'st this page alone, May mine attract thy pensive eye! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... while the war was proceeding without, and these troubles within, Niccolo Barbadoro desirous of inducing him to consent to the ruin of Cosmo, waited upon him at his house; and finding him alone in his study, and very pensive, endeavored, with the best reasons he could advance, to persuade him to agree with Rinaldo on Cosmo's expulsion. Niccolo da Uzzano replied as follows: "It would be better for thee and thy house, as well as for our republic, if thou and those who follow thee in ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... distinguish time. The story is of a female dog, though named Wylie, which was purchased by Dr. Brown when he was a young man, from an old shepherd who had long been in his employment. Wylie was brought to his father's, "and was at once taken," he says, "to all our hearts; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in all respects like a lady.... Some months after we got her, there was a mystery about her; every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but in vain; she was always ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... scuffle was over the woman retired to the cabin, and appeared pensive. Between eight and nine in the evening, the captain, who was attended by the captain of the Alfred, came on board; Rodney immediately ran to him, and informed him that Green had made an assault upon her. The captain, without any ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... not. Then the sunlight is whiter and newer in the morning,—not so yellow and diffused. A difference akin to this is true of the two seasons I am speaking of. The spring is the morning sunlight, clear and determined; the autumn, the afternoon rays, pensive, lessening, golden. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... other to the foaming beach and in good-nature tossed about the cat-boats and schooners and set the white sails shimmering and dipping in the changing lights. And Evelyn, drinking in the beauty and the peace of it, no doubt, was more pensive than joyous. Within the last few months life had opened to her with a suddenness that half ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on the low temple-roof, while we four Obstacles disported ourselves on different parts of the high pylon. The two Nubians wished to play a betting game with a kind of Egyptian Jack-stones, and it was not desirable that the pensive lady should behold them doing it. Observing the graceful figure of Mrs. East silhouetted against the sky's eternal flame of blue, and at the same time noticing that she could not see the waiting boat, Sir Marcus got his inspiration. He knew that the four Obstacles were somewhere about the temple. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... prepared for this, and felt that she had the necessary, courage, and she hoped to find in this last visit some amelioration of the bitter sorrow she endured. While speaking thus, her sad and beautiful countenance was calm and pensive. We then started, M. Cretu giving his arm to his cousin. The duchess's carriage followed at a distance, empty; and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging in braids down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she was dreaming, while her agile fingers ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... morning. It was now fourteen days since she and I had first met, and in that time I had found in her thrice that number of moods. She could be as gay and sweet as the morning, as dark and vengeful as the storms that came up of afternoons, pensive as the twilight, stately as the night,—in her there met a hundred minds. Also she could be childishly frank—and tell ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Do you see how pensive she is, with her cheek resting on her hand? I am sure she is thinking ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... she went about somewhat pensive, as though a troublous thought were on her; and when, three days thereafter, she met the wood-mother, she spake to her even as they parted, and said: Mother, much wisdom hast thou learned me, and now this at ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Europe death is not glorified to the foliage as in our own land), in the purple of the ripening grapes, and in the tawny grass of the pastures, there was autumn enough to touch our spirits, and while it hardly affected the tone of the landscape, to lay upon us the gentle and pensive spell of its presence. Of all the days in the year I would have chosen this to go pilgrim to the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... perceived that Schemselnihar's confidant came oftener to Ebn Thaher than usual, and that he was constantly with the prince of Persia, whose sickness was known to every one, though not the cause. This had awakened the jeweller's suspicions, and finding Ebn Thaher very pensive, he presently judged that he was perplexed with some important affair, and fancying that he knew the cause, he asked what Schemselnihar's confidant wanted with him? Ebn Thaher being struck with this question, would have dissembled, and told him, that it was on some trifling ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... bright spring morning offered a respectful "Howdy" to Anderson Crow, whose only recognition was a slow and imposing nod of the head. Once only was he driven to relinquish his pensive attitude, and that was when an impertinent blue-bottle fly undertook to rest for a brief spell upon the nickel-plated star. Never was blue-bottle ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... conjure up the image of her: scraps of memory and brief anecdotes. In their fleeting light they gave a glimpse of her shy, gracious gestures, her grave, young smile, the pensive, wistful grace that was so natural to her. Christophe would listen without a word and let the light of the unseen friend pierce to his very soul. In obedience to the law of his own nature, which everywhere and always ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... tender, silvery day, fair, mild, pensive, with light shadows and a capricious sun. There had been a storm of rain the night before, and it was as if Nature had repented of her wildness, and sought forgiveness by all sorts of winsome arts, insinuating invitations, soft caresses, and melting ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... somewhat pensive, and disposed For contemplation rather than his pillow: The Gothic chamber, where he was enclosed, Let in the rippling sound of the lake's billow, With all the mystery by midnight caused; Below his window waved (of course) a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Ptolemais, and Caesarea proclaimed that he was at length in the Holy Land. Barons and common people swell the number of these pilgrims. The haughty knight, who has committed unpunished murders, and the pensive saint, wrapt in religious ecstasies, rival each other in humility and zeal. Those who have no money sell their lands. Those who have no lands to sell throw themselves on Providence, and beg their way for fifteen hundred miles among strangers. The roads are filled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... may," said Edward, although he felt that such would not be the case, having been accustomed to much better clothes when at Arnwood than what were usually worn by secretaries; and this remembrance brought back Arnwood in its train, and Edward became silent and pensive. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... that the most brilliant display of them soothes the observer, instead of exciting him. And I know not whether it be more a moral effect or a physical one, operating merely on the eye; but it is a pensive gayety, which causes a sigh often, and never a smile. We never fancy, for instance, that these gayly-clad trees might be changed into young damsels in holiday attire, and betake themselves to dancing on the plain. If they were to undergo such a transformation, they would surely arrange ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... In pensive mood sat Nancy Bell; Of Joshua thought not she, But of a hearty sailor lad Across ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... cried, "To waste alone my years!" While o'er a streamlet's flow'ry side She pensive hung, and watch'd the tide That ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... wearied with the long day's excitement, were disposed in graceful abandon under its glow. Senci sat with Ta-meri's head in her lap, and three or four drowsy little girls were tumbled about her feet. Only Io was wide awake, and even her sweet face wore a pensive air. Kenkenes had retired to the stern, where, under the high up-standing end, stood a long wooden bench. The young sculptor had flung himself on this, and with the whole of the boat and its freight within range of his vision, he listened ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the painter and the plasterer. The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a spurious air of motion and ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spurred on her horse, saying to her people, "Ho there! Don't let him kill her." But when the seneschal's lady arrived close to them, she turned her horse's head quickly and the sight she beheld prevented her from hunting. She came back pensive, and then the lantern of her intelligence opened, and received a bright light, which made a thousand things clear, such as church and other pictures, fables, and lays of the troubadours, or the domestic arrangements ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Thou whom nature created at once to flatter the pride of man, and to reduce it to despair by thine unapproachable greatness! Thy shade rose before me, bright and colossal, and the cataract of ages fell foaming at thy feet! Pensive and silent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... among the pensive woods The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung From buried faces the close fitting hoods, And listened to your piping till they fell, The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell, The wind-flower, and the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... of the jubilant throng, Jesus appeared, clad in a long garment of gray, over which was cast a flowing robe. His face was composed and pensive. His long black hair and beard surrounded features somewhat swarthy from the rays of the hot sun, and he rode on the side of the ass's colt that seemed almost too small to support ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... most beautiful creature that I ever beheld," continued the General, in a pensive tone, after some silence. "She was tall and slight, with all that litheness and grace of movement which is peculiar to Indian women, and yet she seemed more European than Indian. Her face was small and oval, her hair hung ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Their hopes, their faith, their tender love, Faith that sustain'd, and hope that strove, Is sacred joy; to heave a sigh, A debt to poor mortality. Funereal rites are clos'd; 'tis done; Ceas'd is the bell; the priest is gone; What then if bust or stone denies To catch the pensive loit'rer's eyes, What course can poverty pursue? What can the poor pretend to do? O boast not, quarries, of your store; Boast not, O man, of wealth or lore, The flowers of nature here shall thrive, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... a barber at Rome, could imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it, as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... thousand pleasant sounds of birds in hedges, of wind in the boughs, of brooks trotting merrily under the rustic bridges. And this fresh nature is peopled by girls eternally young, natural, gay, or pensive, standing with eager feet on the threshold of their life, innocent, expectant, with the old ballads of old France on their lips. For the story is full of those artless, lisping numbers of the popular French Muse, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... would but interrupt some tale of scandal, or some description of a toupee. Active wit, however despicable when compared with intellectual, is yet surely better than the insignificant click-clack of modish conversation," casting his eyes towards Miss Larolles, "or even the pensive dullness of affected silence," changing their ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... be my last evening on earth," thought the prisoner. "Ere the sun set again, I may have entered into eternal rest." A deep sense of holy peace stole into the maiden's heart, though the expression of her beautiful countenance was pensive as she meditated on the future. "I shall no more join in worship with my brethren below; but perhaps, while they gather together in secret, with perils around them, my eyes shall see the King in His beauty, shall behold the land that is very far off. And will not He for ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... did Rowland daily roam, And of him little did his brothers see, He knew no pleasure in the gates of home, But pensive strolled beside the surging sea, Delighting in its vast sublimity, And in the thunders of its mighty roll, While all his love flowed forth in poesy, That love that fed the fountain of the soul: In her his youthful hopes were ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... members of their family in an excited state of hilarity. The youngest daughter was mimicking Jimmy perfectly, and had her brothers and sister in fits of laughter. Their father could not refrain from joining in the fun, but the mother was quiet and pensive, and got rather huffed when her husband chided her in his good-humoured way with being indifferent to the happy surroundings. Poor woman, she was troubled about Jimmy's prayer, and thought it irreligious to be joyous in the midst of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa, his black hair tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against the light as though slashed out with ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the spacious rooms melted into a tender hearing that feared to move lest the spell be broken and the artist leave the instrument. Men who did not know how lonesome they had been and who had missed the refinements of home more than they knew, blessed the player with their pensive listening, thanked fortune they were still alive and had chances of fighting through to get home again. And after playing ceased the British officer talked quietly of his home and the home folks and Americans ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... king was really a handsome or impressive-looking man: a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hair and beard,—these are the literal facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poor and had neither house nor land to support a family. Napoleon struggling with all his energies against combined England and Austria, and with all the cares of an army, on the march to meet one hundred and twenty thousand foes, crowding his mind, with pensive sympathy won the confidence of his companion and elicited this artless recital of love and desire. As Napoleon dismissed his guide, with an ample reward, he drew from his pocket a pencil and upon a loose piece of paper wrote a few lines, which he requested the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating hand toward the girl ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... dead, Burde Olive fair— Her mother's image—grows apace, And oft she throws in pensive care A glance upon that crape-veiled face: She wonders what may be beneath. But fears to lift the veil to know; Her father with his latest breath Forbade it, on the pain of woe, Till she to eighteen years had grown, With woman's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... But victory still sitteth on our perch, And yet we ratify in pensive tones. Let joy now reign, let vain regrets depart, And for small favors thank the God ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... are peach, soft and creamy," said Snorky with a pensive look. "But we should set an example you know, old top, and all that sort ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... except by proudly referring to the chariot-races copied from the ancients in which he had borne a part, which was more than some folks with long legs could say. Gentlemen never did that sort of thing, nor did they twit their best friends with their misfortunes, Thorny would remark, casting a pensive glance at his thin hands, longing the while to give Ben a good shaking. This hint would remind the other of his young master's late sufferings and all he owed his dear mistress, and he usually ended the controversy by turning a few lively ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... man about thirty-eight years of age, short, fair-haired, and with high shoulders; his eye a clear blue, now bright, but oftener with a pensive expression, and with nobility stamped unmistakably on his ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... had lived in a Normal school had had somewhat wider experiences. She entered at the age of 14 and experienced the usual loneliness and unhappiness of a new pupil. One day as she was standing pensive and alone in a corner of the room, a companion—one who on her arrival had been charged to show her over the college—ran up to her, "embracing me, closing by mouth with a kiss, and softly caressing my hair. I gazed at her in astonishment, but experienced a delicious sensation of supreme comfort. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... closely for signs of reduction and decided he might possibly be half a pound thinner than when she saw him last. Slim sighed and looked pensive and Sahwah had hard work to keep ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... authorised by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discouraged this talk; and being offended at its continuation, he watched an opportunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension. So, when the poor speculatist, with a serious metaphysical pensive face, addressed him, 'But really, Sir, when we see a very sensible dog, we don't know what to think of him;' Johnson, rolling with joy at the thought which beamed in his eye, turned quickly round, and replied, 'True, Sir: and when we see a very ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... was a tall and slim young man, some five-and-twenty years old, of so rare and delicate a beauty, that it seemed that some Greek statue, or rather one of those pensive and pious knights whom the old German artists took delight to paint, had condescended to tread awhile this work-day earth in living flesh and blood. The forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... as when it is being skilfully abused. As a society parasite, Corky had learned that it is easier to fool a man who has brains than it is to fool one who hasn't any at all. He had come in contact with both varieties, and he knew. And as for women, one can always fool them by looking pensive. They cannot bear it. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... things to worry them, I suppose," rejoined Sall, with a pensive look at the ground. "I wonder what sort of things worry them most? It can't be dressin' up grand, an' goin' out to great parties, an' drivin' in lovely carriages. Nobody could be worried by that, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... on this cutting subject. Though I hear of it from every mouth, yet I pretend 'tis all falsehood and malice. Yet Lady Betty will have it that there is more in it than I will own; and that I know my brother's wickedness by my pensive looks. She will make a vow, she says, never to marry ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... what the world might hear: Of softest manners, unaffected mind, Lover of peace, and friend of human kind: Go, live! for heav'n's eternal year is thine; Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine. And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom, Pensive hast follow'd to the silent tomb, Steer'd the same course to the same quiet shore, Not parted long, and now to part no more! Go, then, where only bliss sincere is known! Go, where to love and to enjoy are one! Yet take these tears, mortality's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... lady, "The Society Contralto," in evening dress, who sang the sentimental songs, and carried the sheets of music at which she never looked, pleased McTeague less. Trina, however, was captivated. She grew pensive over ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... plenty of colored folk—mainly women and girls; and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut—a glaring and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He, pensive, leans against a tree, A leafy evergreen, The boughs, the moonlight, intercept, And hide him like a screen He starts—the tree shakes with his tremor, Yet nothing near him pass'd; He hurries up the garden alley, In strangely ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... muse over the stately ruin of Trifels besides. The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, now, to the last stone. There have always been ruins, no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names and the important date of their visit. Within a hundred years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave the usual general flourish with his hand and said: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... drear Midnight assembles her shades, And Silence pours sleep from her throne, Pale, lonely, and pensive, I steal through the glades, And sigh, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the least inclined of any of the circle to be pensive and sombre, he now seemed occasionally to contend with shadows of some kind. He was far from being habitually gloomy, but his moods were not to be depended upon; sometimes a turn of the conversation would seem to alter him; sometimes a word which he himself might utter; sometimes a silence, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... craintive Ouvre au Soleil son palais enchante; Rappelle-toi, lorsque la nuit pensive Passe en revant sous son voile argente; A l'appel du plaisir lorsque ton sein palpite, Aux doux songes du soir lorsque l'ombre t'invite. Ecoute au fond des bois Murmurer une ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... always retiring and pensive, and seldom sought out by those who admired gayer damsels, was sitting apart in the embrasure of a window, whence, through an opening in the trees of the garden, she could catch a distant glimpse of the blue waters of the river where it joined the sea, which separated ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... touched to fine issues as that of an angel or a saint! All these reflections rushed through his mind in an instant, and it was almost a wonder that he did not blurt some of them out at once. But Lesley went on speaking in a quiet, pensive way. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... an air of authority and of attention, so new that I was struck with it. M. le Duc, gay and brilliant, appeared quite at his ease, and confident. The Prince de Conti, astonished, absent, meditative, seemed to see nothing and to take part in nothing. The Keeper of the Seals, grave and pensive, appeared to have too many things in his head; nevertheless, with bag, wax, and seals near him, he looked very decided and very firm. The Duc de la Force hung his head, but examined on the sly the faces of us all. Marechal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... began to love the little girls, and after a time they became the pets of the establishment. While the locks of the other children were cut close to the head, Isabel still possessed her long and flowing tresses. Day by day her exquisite beauty deepened into health again, and the pensive cast which grief had given to her features rendered them ideal as ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... and her flowerets bend, drooping, to the earth. Mild is her mien, and the tint of modesty is on her cheek. She smiles, whilst the tear still trembles in her eye, like placid resignation bending over the tomb of a departed friend. She is a pensive maiden, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Prince looked at her with pensive eyes. At that moment Katharine Howard came to the ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meager indeed. The Austrians were ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... worsted occupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish expression of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypocritical assumption in at once suffering her features to relax into a sweetly pensive smile upon learning that there was a gentleman to see her in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... pensive reverie, as she walked to the Abbey, Vernon being as usual more occupied by the inhabitants of the hedges and ditches than by his companion; but once arrived at the Abbey, there was no time for sadness. Bessie was on the threshold to welcome her, and the whole Knoll family were ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hold! is this the Plots last Murd'ring Blow, The dire divorce of Soul and Body? No. The mangled Snake, yet warm, to Life they'll bring, And each disjoynted Limb together cling. Then thus Baals wise consulting Prophets cheer'd Their pensive Sons, and ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... pensive. To drown the dark presentiments that haunted him, he sat down to table again, and with his companions drank immoderately. The whole party went early to bed, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... realize how much you have promised. It was certain that I must pay the expenses of his illness, and it was equally certain that I should not have enough money to pay my college bills as well; the whole thing made me very pensive. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... evident surprise, and doubt of the honesty of the change in her manner, caused Arabella very acutely to feel its dishonesty. She looked at Cornelia with envy. The latter lady was leaning meditatively, her arm on a side of her chair, like a pensive queen, with a ready, mild, embracing look for the company. 'Posture' seemed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but just went about her daily round of labours in a quiet, pensive way, striving by every means to lighten her mother's burden and to help her brother to the path which their father before them had ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Solitary Reaper" derives a pensive sorrow from "old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." But to Scott the battle is not far off, but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the Trosachs glen, his thought plainly was, "What a place for a fight!" And when James looks down on Loch Katrine his first reflection ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... dark with her father she sank into pensive silence. She was thinking of Nicholas having to trudge on foot all those miles back after his exertions on the sward. Mr. Everard, arousing himself from a nap, said suddenly, 'I have something to mention to 'ee, by George—so I have, Chris! You ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... just in her nineteenth year when her father died. Her features were regular, her expression lovely, her complexion, before trouble nipped the roses of her cheeks, full of the country's freshness. She had tender eyes, profoundly overshadowed by long, pensive lashes; in the sweet lines of her very delicate mouth a trace of quiet pride was prettily blended with thoughtfulness, and a just-forming smile that was always melancholy. Her feet were little, and her hands were soft and white; nor had toil and sorrow, and the weariness, and indifference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... banned Foes and false friend. Pleased by his daughters' tale, At once he stretched his huge yet aimless hands In welcome towards his guests. Beside him stood His mate of forty years by that strong arm From countless suitors won. Pensive her face: With parted youth the confidence of youth Had left her. Beauty, too, though with remorse, Its seat had half relinquished on a cheek Long time its boast, and on that willowy form, So yielding now, where once in strength upsoared The queenly presence. Tenderest grace not less Haunted ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... replied Philippe. "Have you become devot? Whence this sudden change? Consider; 'tis no hardship to meet such ladies as Madame de Sabran, or Madame de Prie—designer though I fear De Prie is for the domestic felicity of the youthful king—nor indeed my good friend, La Parabere, somewhat pale and pensive though she groweth. And what shall I say for Madame de Tencin, the spirituelle, who is to be with us; or Madame de Caylus, niece of Maintenon, but the very opposite of Maintenon in every possible way? Moreover, we are promised the attendance of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... face to him, without any start of surprise, with no brightening change in its pensive expression,—an expression rare to the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forgive," she said. "Don't you know that though the man always takes the blame, it's always the girl's fault. A man can't get himself into trouble by just sitting still and looking pensive, but a girl can. From the moment Evelyn sat on that bench under the cedar she had only one thought. It was to see if she could ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared. Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret during ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... was rarely beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest's daughter he would have given Twea, Taia, Amense, Hont-Reche, his Asiatic captives, his vases of gold and silver, his necklaces of gems, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his lips half open with surprise, Glance from the gloomy story, and with glee Light on the fairer fables of the gods. Thus we may sport at leisure where we go Where, loved by Neptune and the Naiad, loved By pensive Dryad pale, and Oread The spritely nymph whom constant Zephyr wooes, Rhine rolls his beryl-coloured wave; than Rhine What river from the mountains ever came More stately! most the simple crown adorns Of rushes and of willows interwined With here and there a flower: his lofty brow Shaded ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the Thistle, the Leek, the Broom of the Plantagenets, become noble by association.—F. W. Robertson. 10. Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the night.— Beecher. 11. In that calm Syrian afternoon, memory, a pensive Ruth, went gleaning the silent fields of childhood, and found the scattered grain still golden, and the morning sunlight fresh and fair.—Curtis. [Footnote: In Ruth of this sentence, we have a type of the metaphor called Personification—a ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... with their scarcely more beautiful voices. I am half persuaded that his song becomes different at this season. As he sits and sways on the top of a cypress and looks down on a rich and eatable world, he seems to have cast every note of pensive sadness out of his being and to sing aloud the rapture of a happy stomach. He is no longer the singer of elegy but of ecstasy. He is as unlike his old simple, friendly, appealing, pathetic self as a beggar who has come into a fortune. He actually ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... log-cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... little girl, without losing the sadly pensive air which she had that morning, "oh, that!—my brother Arrochkoa, I suspected it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know, was made to please him, in his mind there is nothing ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... elsewhere. She looked sad and pensive. Only from time to time she nodded across the dish towards her little Peter, and when he got up and came and laid his head in her lap, she gently smoothed his fair hair from his brow, and then she ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... saw was the tall and slender form of a young girl whose hands were clasped in front of her, and whose eyes were fixed on the ground in a pensive, not to say sorrowful, attitude. Clear as was the moonlight, at least in the intervals of the moon's passage through the broken clouds, her features were not plainly visible; but her every movement was instinct with grace. What ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed, And secret passions laboured in her breast. Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss, Not ancient ladies when refused a ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Europe. She hastened to Paris, when the allied sovereigns were there, and obtained an interview with the Russian tzar. Alexander was by nature of a devotional turn of mind, and the terrific scenes through which he had passed had given him a meditative and pensive spirit. He listened eagerly to the suggestions of Madame Krudoner, and, aided by her, sketched as follows the plan ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... along the ridge toward Deerfoot Gulch in silence. She had taken her sunbonnet off, and was enjoying the cool of the evening. He carried the rifle over the crook of his arm, and watched her pensive face. The poor little chipmunk lay stiffening in the cleft of the rock, forgotten. The next morning a prying jay discovered him and carried him away. He was only a little chipmunk after all—a very little chipmunk—and nobody and nothing missed him in all the wide ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... pensive, kind-hearted man, feeling keenly the wrong that has been done him, but not at all given to cherishing a resentful temper; and here, if I mistake not, his language relishes of the benevolent, meditative, and somewhat sentimental melancholy that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... wake mamma!' Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder's hand, and made him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber's, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin whether he knew 'Freischuetz,' whether he was fond of Weber, and added that though she was ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... were coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves, a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to any knowledge of such things. He was of an inquiring mind, for he then asked us if we had seen ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in currying and brushing down ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... mournful story, Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell, Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory, Hope's honey left within the withering bell And plants of mercy dead, that ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... carried upstairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvae gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... comprehends the true charm of the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time. Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the infinite cycles of decay. He who would ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that seemed pensive and sad there was a lovely, delicate fawn, which rested, with her head drooping, at the foot of a rose bush, on the summit of the little green mound which was the centre of this delightful spot. Perhaps the lovely creature is after being weaned from the udder of its affectionate dam; or, perhaps, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... cheek-bones, a trifle high, asserted their place above the softly concave cheeks. His mouth was closed and the lips were slightly compressed; the chin small, gracefully turned, not weak,—not strong. His eyes were abstracted, deep, pensive. His dress told much. The fine plaits of his shirt had sprung apart and been neatly sewed together again. His coat was a little faulty in the set of the collar, as if the person who had taken the garment apart ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and I have found in my self, That the very sitting by the Rivers side, is not only the fittest place for, but will invite the Angler to Contemplation: That it is the fittest place, seems to be witnessed by the children of Israel, [Psal. 137.] who having banish'd all mirth and Musick from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their then mute Instruments upon the Willow trees, growing by the Rivers of Babylon, sate down upon those banks bemoaning the ruines of Sion, and contemplating their own ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... justice" to the poems of Montgomery. Lais is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than Venus. No emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. No faltering; no turning back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover. ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... heart-breaker," he said to himself as he went toward the bunk-house, "a genuine, full-grown vampire, part intentional an' part because it's in her—but she's a pure-bred—" He grew pensive and silent, a look of gentleness came to his face, followed quickly by an expression of extreme humility. "Oh, hell," he exclaimed aloud, "what's th' use!" Entering the building the Ramblin' Kid seated himself at the table at the end ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... sleeping ear, 'Awake, Demetrius, Awake, and follow me to better fortunes.' Surpris'd I start, and bless the happy dream; Then, rousing, know the fiery chief Abdalla, Whose quick impatience seiz'd my doubtful hand, And led me to the shore where Cali stood, Pensive, and list'ning to the beating surge. There, in soft hints, and in ambiguous phrase, With all the diffidence of long experience, That oft had practis'd fraud, and oft detected, The vet'ran courtier half reveal'd his project. By his command, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... hear The rustling of the summer grove, And view those angel features near, Which first awoke the heart to love. How sweet it is, in pensive mood, At windless midnight to recline, And fill the mental solitude With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... Pensive nun devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... threshold vocal with their cries, Half tears, half laughter, mingled sport and strife, Like two flowers knocked together by the wind. Or of the elder two—more anxious thought— Breasting already broader waves of life, A conscious innocence on either face, My pensive daughter and my curious boy. Thus do I dream, while the light sailors sing, At even moored beneath some steepy shore, While the waves opening all their nostrils breathe A thousand sea-scents to the wandering wind, And the whole air is full of wondrous sounds, From sea to strand, from ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... that Golden—that selfsame, dear, pensive face, those eyes, benignly and sweetly mild, and that heart-dissolving voice, have escaped so many storms, so many dangers? Was it love for me that led you from the extremity of the world? and have you, indeed, brought back with you a heart full ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... lovely night," he said in low and pensive tones, very unlike those he generally used. "I remember when I was a ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon |
