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Bereft   Listen
verb
Bereft  v.  Imp. & p. p. of Bereave.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bereft" Quotes from Famous Books



... 1658, the General Court passed an order creating the town of Topsfield, including the larger part of these lands within its limits. No heed was paid to the remonstrances, against these proceedings, of the Salem farmers, who found themselves, without their consent, permanently bereft of the benefit that had been promised them, cut off from all connection with the town of Salem, to which they originally belonged, and put in the outskirts of another town. It was a clear case of wrong, and ought to have been rectified. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... fourteen (for which read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she exclaimed: 'They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off with, and hereafter from, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... forgotten prayers. There were no fond recollections to lay their hands upon him with angelic tenderness and lead him away from his City of Destruction. He was a child of sin, a child of blackness and of night, a child bereft of the inspiration of a good mother's life and the sweet uplift ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... staircase, he will hardly fail to pause and look at the picture presented by the interior of this house. To the left is a square garden-plot, allowing of not more than four long steps in each direction, a garden of black soil, with trellises bereft of vines, and where, in default of vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers collect, old rags, potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof; a barren ground, where time has shed on the walls, ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between gratitude and love she had purposely ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... of Gisbourne stared upon Robin as though bereft of wits; but his wonder quickly passed to a wild rage. "Art thou indeed Robin Hood?" cried he. "Now I am glad to meet thee, thou poor wretch! Shrive thyself, for thou wilt have no time for shriving when I am done with thee." So saying, he ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... Like some evil thing is borne: O what grief it is to see Swimming on the enormous sea Human corses pale and white, More, alas! than I can write: O what grief, what grief profound, But to think the world is drown'd: True a scanty few are left, All are not of life bereft, So that, when the Lord ordain, They may procreate again, In a world entirely new, Better people and more true, To their Maker who shall bow; And I humbly beg you now, Ye in modern times who wend, That your lives ye do amend; For no wat'ry ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from Russia, as it were Russian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... see was fruitless. He sank back, blind and tortured, upon the pillow. He had been taken ill at one of his own outlying farms, and here he had lain for days—a giant bereft of ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... our people is missing at the very time we need all our material and moral forces in order to build up our life again. The younger part, yea, the stronger part of our nation, the flower of France, has died away on the battle-fields. Our country has been bereft of its most ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... situation. Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow. Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss of the flames on his children's curls. He rose to his full height—il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... For then neither wilt thou see cause to complain of them that offend against their wills; or find any want of their applause, if once thou dost but penetrate into the true force and ground both of their opinions, and of their desires. 'No soul (saith he) is willingly bereft of the truth,' and by consequent, neither of justice, or temperance, or kindness, and mildness; nor of anything that is of the same kind. It is most needful that thou shouldst always remember this. For so shalt thou ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... to have been half lost in the sense of general benefit. He was one of those great gifts of God, like sunlight or the beauty of nature, which we scarcely know how to live without, or in the loss of which, at least, life is sadly changed, and the world itself is mournfully bereft. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... were no need of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and best,—namely, a moral life which is a progress—would thus be impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal being a ruin, so is ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... premises to two of his band, he drove away to another part of the town, to be sold at the post, as soon as the forms of the law, respecting notice of the sale, could be complied with. The poor widow, half distracted at being thus suddenly bereft of house and home, spent the remainder of the day in vainly endeavoring to procure some tenement into which she could remove with her furniture, or with so much of it as might yet be saved. On the next ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... because thou hast gone and left us, But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us. We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save, But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... him from his heart, but, said he, "O you labouring men! The calamity began among you. If you had but lived more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens

... only a meaningless buzzing in Gloria's ears; she sat speechless herself, bereft of all reason for a dull moment, then harbouring quick, clear thoughts, as swift, as vivid as lightning, and in the end as blinding by their very quality ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... was now presented to the world of poor Andrew Walkingshaw, bereft of his father and deserted by his sister, living in that great house in company only with his sense of duty and his aunt. People were very sorry for him indeed; they said he should marry; in fact, such as enjoyed the ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... evening, possibly in the hope that we should stay for it and he should get another seat. That was out of the question, however, sorry as we were to disappoint him. He had to tuck us into the carriage the following day, and let us drive away and leave him bereft of his charges. "You shall have a good ride," were his parting words, kind and fatherly as he was to the last; and so we had. But we found no one again to care for us so tenderly as our old friend, nor did any one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... station, charged up and full. He made you feel what a lot of work there was to be done, and how glorious it was to be able to do it, and how needful to get started upon it that very hour. With the frame and the vitality of a giant he was cruelly bereft of all outlet for his strength, and so distilled it off in hot words, in warm sympathy, in strong prejudices, in all manner of human and stimulating emotions. Much of the time and energy which might have built an imperishable name for himself was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... have pass'd that lovely cheek, Nor, perchance, my heart have left me; But the sensitive blush that came trembling there, Of my heart it for ever bereft me. Who could blame had I loved that face, Ere my eyes could twice explore her; Yet it is for the fairy intelligence there, And her warm, warm ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... show his heart was not of human decency bereft, Peter paid the undertaker. He got drunk on what was left; Then he shed some tears, half-maudlin, on the grave where lay the Co., And he drifted to a township where the city failures go. Where, though haunted by the man he was, the wreck he yet might ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... soul, so also the bodily community is a figure of this Christian, spiritual community, and as the bodily community has a bodily head, so the spiritual community has a spiritual head. But who would be so bereft of sense as to maintain that the soul must have a bodily head? That would be like saying that every live animal must have on its body a painted head. If this literalist (I should say, literary person) had really understood what the ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... noise was due to the door of the study, which great age had distorted and bereft of sense, and, in fact, almost unhinged. It unlatched itself, paused, and then calmly but firmly swung wide open. When it could swing no farther ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... his accustomed hour, Opening his casement he shall view thy bower, "Sure (he'll exclaim) I do not see aright, Or on yon hill an arbor greets my sight; Yes, that is Myrtil's work,—for this bereft Of his sweet sleep, his nightly couch he left: Such are the plans, his filial thoughts engage, And thus he soothes our fast declining age." And when with joy we'll greet the morning ray, With joy we'll celebrate the happy day, Each work to-day ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... wide-eyed with her question but the Lady Beata, for answer, could only fold compassionate arms about her—soothing her silently; so young and so bereft. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... fourteen hundred of such laborers; and what the effect of this will be upon the next generation of Frenchmen remains to be seen. They were pretty, docile little creatures, to be turned loose in villages and in the provinces, which villages and provinces have been bereft of men these many months, and where no race prejudice exists among the women. Many Frenchmen we have met deplored this state of things, and its probable effect upon the population of France. War is not very pretty, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... must have been terrific, and personally I can forgive anything to him who consistently and violently works. He had also acquired much learning. Indeed, I should suppose that on the subject of literature he was the most learned man in Britain. Unfortunately, he was quite bereft of original taste. The root of the matter was not in him. The frowning structure of his vast knowledge overawed many people, but it never overawed an artist—unless the artist was excessively young and naive. A man may heap up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... now the daughter would spend it as she willed. It was like a second defeat at the hands of the same woman. And this was the flower he had cherished with such pride, now scentless of spirituality and dead at the roots! He rose to his feet, suddenly an old man, utterly bereft, and shook a trembling ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Nazareth, form a profoundly important constituent of His life and teaching—impressively contrasted, as they are, with the probably not full year of the Public Ministry, even though we are almost completely bereft of all details for those ...
— Progress and History • Various

... Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, 75 They have bereft; and do pronounce by me: Lingering perdition—worse than any death Can be at once—shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from,— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls 80 ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke out of the cabins; pale women, with long, black, or yellow locks—men with countenances and figures bereft of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... raised her, and placed her on the bed. She lay bereft of animation for hours; and when life, look, and speech returned, her senses had deserted her, and she raved wildly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... him out of this kingdom of clay. Thou hast done it and so there is no further need of thee. Out of this corruptible body I shall rise in Jerusalem, my mission accomplished, into the incorruptible spirit. His passion rising again and into flood, he seemed like one bereft of reason, for he said that all men must drink of his blood if they would live for ever. He who licked up one drop would have everlasting life. Joseph recalled the murmurings that followed these words, but Jesus would not desist. These murmurings seemed to sting him to declare his doctrine to ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... hear your step upon the stair. We turn to speak and find a vacant chair. Something is broken which we cannot mend. God has done more than take away a friend In taking you; for all that we have left Is bruised and irremediably bereft. There is none like you. Yet not that alone Do we bemoan; But this; that you were greater than the rest, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... [Sidenote: A pretie shift of the moonks to disappoint the priests. Polydor.] certeine woords in this wise; God forbid it should be so, God forbid it should be so: ye iudged well once, but ye may not change well againe. As though (saith Polydor Virgil) the moonks had more right, which had bereft other men of their possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... she cried, "that will I! and you and I from the window will superintend our dear young ones. Alas!" she said, with a languishing look, "how lonely the house will seem when you are bereft of your daughter." ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded "War is done!" One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, "Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... gone about her work for days after Gard's return like a bereft tigress. Then one morning she locked the door of her house, put the key in her pocket, and took the cutter for Guernsey; and none ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... valley, which was just beginning to show silvery white under the rays of a rising moon. Perhaps, like Don Ruperto, he was gazing on some spot, a house endeared to him as the home of his childhood; but from which, as the leader of the Free Lances, he had been bereft by the last confiscation. Possibly he was indulging in the hope of its being soon restored to him, but least of all dreaming ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... what may be expected in the future. It will be noted that the revolting Military Governors are boldly termed rebels and that the constitutional view of everything they may contrive as from the 13th June, 1917, is that it will be bereft of all legality and simply mark a fresh interregnum. Furthermore, it is important to note that the situation is brought back by the Mandate of the 13th June to where it was on the 6th June, 1916, with the death of Yuan Shih-kai, and that a period ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... over Angele's grave face, for a stranger quartet never sailed high seas together: one blind of an eye, one game of a leg, one bald as a bottle and bereft of two front teeth; but Buonespoir was sound of wind and limb, his small face with the big eyes lost in the masses of his red hair, and a body like Hercules. It flashed through Angele's mind even as she answered the gurgling salutations of the triumvirate that they had been got together ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... married Gulielma Maria Springett, a young and charming Quakeress. Guli Springett's father had died when she was but twenty-three years old, after such valiant service on the Parliamentary side in the civil war that he had been knighted by the Speaker of the House of Commons. Her mother, thus bereft, had married Isaac Pennington, a quiet country gentleman, in whose company, after some search for satisfaction in religion, she had become a Quaker. Pennington's Quakerism, together with the sufferings ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth, The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth, The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor That should have remembered forever, * * * ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... not bereft of powers of action. Only an instant he stood there motionless and staring; then with a cry, wordless and harsh, he ran ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... was a little softened. I thought of his mother back in our wee hoose at Dunoon. And the thought of her, bereft even as I was, sorrowing, even as I was, and lost in her frightful loneliness, was pitiful, so that I had but the one desire and wish—to go to her, and join my tears with hers, that we who were left alone to bear our grief might bear it ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... and his mother Nature, to whose lap Like a repentant child at length he hies, Not in the whirlwind or the thunder-clap Proclaims her more tremendous mysteries: But when in winter's grave, bereft of light, With still, small voice divinelier whispering —Lifting the green head of the aconite, Feeding with sap of hope the hazel-shoot— She feels God's finger active at the root, Turns in her sleep, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... order. He was thus the chief opponent of that more tentative, but as is now seen, more liberal and more practical policy which lay very close to Lincoln's heart; enough has been said of him to suggest too that this grave person, bereft of any glimmering of fun, was in one sense no congenial companion for Lincoln. But he was stainlessly unselfish and sincere, and he was the politician above all others in Washington with whom Lincoln most gladly and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... will quite understand the distress of being thrust suddenly into old age. Up to 1847 I was young, good-looking, and attractive, and to be bereft of my youth and romance at one blow; to know that from henceforth all would be prosaic and business-like, that I should never again have lovers seeking my favour, was a condition of extreme pain. I had always prided myself on my figure, but even this Mr. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various

... all about the "freezing" game, too, and he "froze." My word, how that little beggar was still, so utterly bereft of movement that a fly settled upon him—about the first and the last that would, I should judge! And if a learned native had come along the road at that moment—on tiptoe, of course—he would have said the viper had hypnotized friend vole with fear. Hypnotize your grandmother! But you may take ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... found her lying on a low and miserable bed, in a most wretched condition, and exhibiting such a spectacle of disease and wretchedness that he was shocked at beholding her. She appeared, in fact, almost wholly bereft of reason. When Octavius came in, she suddenly leaped out of the bed, half naked as she was, and covered with bruises and wounds, and crawled miserably along to her conqueror's feet in the attitude of a suppliant. Her hair was torn from ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... Beaumont, Texas; '92-3-4 in Birmingham, Ala., and '94-5 in Burrell. In all these places she will long be remembered for her gift of song, scholarly attainment and genial bearing—a lovely woman. Besides a sorrowing husband she left a widowed mother, bereft of her only child, and a helpless infant three weeks old, thus seeming to lay down her work at the very dawn of great usefulness ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various

... away and given them to another hen who has only seven. Two mothers cannot be wasted on these small families—it would not be profitable; and the older mother, having been tried and found faithful over seven, has been given the other nine and accepted them. What of the bereft one? She is miserable and stands about moping and forlorn, but it is no use fighting against the inevitable; hens' hearts must obey the same laws that govern the rotation of crops. Catherine of Aragon feels her lot a bitter one just now, but in time ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Turk, with a glow of generous indignation that suddenly animated his countenance, 'is it wonderful that I should pine in silence, and mourn my fate, who am bereft of the first and noblest present of nature—my liberty?' 'And yet,' answered the Venetian, 'how many thousands of our nation ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... well aware that Masinissa would war against him no less than against the Carthaginians and fearing that he might find himself bereft of allies if they suffered any harm through his desertion of their cause, renounced his pretended friendship for the Romans and attached himself openly to the Carthaginians. He failed to render the wholehearted assistance, however, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... and he sat until two o'clock in the morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in detail what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... his gloomy corner, his spirits slowly rising under the influence of his refreshment, which he had just finished, he saw before him an object which recalled to him the life and friends of which he had bereft himself, Inkspot's nature took entire possession of him, and he bounded to the table in ecstatic recognition ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... and passed the battered stage lumbering along, bereft of its passengers, sunk to the level of carrying the baggage for its contemptuous aristocratic supplanter; and as Lee Virginia looked up at the driver, she caught the glance of a simple-minded farm-boy looking down at ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... realised the dreadful truth that the stranger whom we had taken for the advance guard of our enemy was in truth none other than Vicar Pinfold, and that it was the rhythmic pat of his stick which we heard mingling with his footfalls. Fascinated by the sight, we lay bereft of all power to warn him—a line of staring eyeballs. One step, two steps, three steps did the haughty Churchman take, when there was a rending crack, and he vanished with a mighty splash into the swift-flowing stream. He must have fallen upon his back, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not be so rude as to make any reflection on Mrs. Quintan, though he was stirred with resentment against her. This noble, angelic, saintly woman, who in every gesture reminded him of dead queens and historic personages! It went to his heart to think of her, bereft and lonely, in that splendid house he had so lately quitted. He recognised, in the unmistakable accord between him and her, the fellowship of a pair who, in different ways and in different stations, had yet fought and suffered and endured for what they judged their duty. Forty- two years old! ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... obliterated, perishing together in a watery tomb, or ground to atoms by floating timbers and wreck; households were suddenly bereft—some of fathers, others of mothers, others of children, neighbors and friends; frantic efforts were made to rescue the victims of the flood, render aid to those who were struggling against death, and mitigate the terrors of the horrible disaster. There were ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... some dream—some vision vain! What! I—the child of rank and wealth,— Am I the wretch who clanks this chain, Bereft of freedom, friends, and health? Ah! while I dwell on blessings fled, Which never more my heart must glad, How aches my heart, how burns my head; But 'tis not mad; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... He tried to speak and command the situation that in some subtle way had escaped his control, but he felt bereft and desperate. Now that Sandy was quite beyond recall, to whom could he turn? His strength and spirit were crushed and degraded—he moved up and sullenly took the plate and cup that were pushed toward him! Once he glanced at Molly. She leered at ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... father lives. Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you. Through the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic! If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks her father. In vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he disappears, he is ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... city, my friend, was as safe a place as another for my sisters. Nor did I myself know all its dangers. At length, with the emperor's leave of absence, I returned. And what did I find? Eight months had passed, and the faithful Rachael had died. The poor sisters, clinging together, but now utterly bereft of friends, knew not which way to turn. In this abandonment they fell into the insidious hands of the ruffian jailer. My eldest sister, Berenice, the stateliest and noblest of beauties, had attracted this ruffian's admiration while she was in the prison with her mother. And when I returned ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... slow of action, the cool-headed, seemed suddenly bereft of his chilling serenity. "Here, mother, a chair; father, some water, quick." He carried the swooning girl to the shadow of the porch and fanned her tenderly with ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede; Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars, Eclips'd her crescents, and lick'd up her stars: 160 So that, in moments few, she was undrest Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst, And rubious-argent: of all these bereft, Nothing but pain and ugliness were left. Still shone her crown; that vanish'd, also she Melted and disappear'd as suddenly; And in the air, her new voice luting soft, Cried, "Lycius! gentle Lycius!"—Borne aloft With the bright mists about the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... John Bumpus succeeded, by an almost supernatural effort, in calming the tumultuous agitation of his spirit, while the wild cries of the girl were at some distance, he found himself utterly bereft of speech when the dreadful sounds unmistakably approached him. Corrie, too, became livid, and both were rooted to the spot in unutterable horror; but when the ghost at length actually came into view, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... Such a flood of emotion came upon him he was bereft of speech. She looked at him surprised, and wondered if he knew aught. Could it be that Sir Julian had found out anything and had spoken to Cedric? She was sure she had kept this last secret safe from all save Constance, and had not been with Sir Julian for a whole day, fearing he would ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... dandy. It was exceedingly thick, having an outer case of enamel and an inner one of gold. The hands and the figures of the hours had originally been formed of brilliants; but the brilliants had long since vanished. Still, even thus bereft, the watch was much more in character with the giver than the receiver, and was as little suited to Leonard as would have been ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... had come, and Danvers, unfamiliar with death, knew no words of consolation for the father bereft of his firstborn. A numbness mercifully comes during those first hours, which makes it possible to move about and go through strange, meaningless ceremonies with a calm that surprises those who have not known the searing touch of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... having a very important conversation. Madam Talbot was a widow who had remained unwedded again from choice. Rumor had it that many gentlemen cavaliers of the neighborhood had been anxious to take to their own hearthstones the person of the fair young widow, so early bereft, and incidentally were willing to assume the responsibility of the management of the magnificent estate which had been left to her by her most considerate husband. Among the many suitors gossip held that Colonel Wilton was the chief, and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating bread without any ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... I was bereft not only of the best companion in the world, but of the best counsellor, and in consequence of this loss I fell ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... gliding o'er the meadow yonder? Is it the misty vapors of the moor That form a picture in the morning chill? Now it draws near.—The shade of Catiline! His spectre—! I can see his misty eye, His broken shield, his sword bereft of blade. Ah, he is surely dead; one thing alone,— Remarkable,—his wound ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... confessed. 20 Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase, The babbling Echo had descried his face; She, who in others' words her silence breaks, Nor speaks herself but when another speaks. Echo was then a maid, of speech bereft, Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left, Juno a curse did on her tongue impose, To sport with every sentence in the close. Full often, when the goddess might have caught Jove and her rivals in the very fault, 30 This nymph with subtle stories would delay Her coming, till the lovers ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... watched. The old man took the shock with an air of perfect calm. Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a man struck by lightning. Peyrade had lost all his stake in the game. He had counted on getting an appointment, and he found himself bereft of everything but the alms ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... my bliss bereft. Lonely and sad must ever moan, Dead to each joy the world can give, Alive ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... was advanced in years, his wife dead, and his home desolate, it pained him to think that he might leave the business which had been his joy and pride, and which he had hoped to make so great and so enduring, bereft of its vitality and in ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... down on our estate and us, The orphaned brood of him, our eagle-sire, Whom to his death a fearful serpent brought Enwinding him in coils; and we, bereft And foodless, sink with famine, all too weak To bear unto the eyrie, as he bore, Such quarry as he slew. Lo! I and she, Electra, stand before thee, fatherless, And each alike cast out ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... pillaged factories and gutted mills was more than I could bear. The stocks of oil in England were running short, but I commanded enough to fill my great transportplane. We flew low over roads crawling with humanity as a sick animal crawls with vermin. Some cities were empty, obscenely bereft of population; others ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... me, and upbraided me; but it is not I who am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny and Erinys that walketh in the darkness, who put into my soul fierce madness on the day when in the assembly I, even I, bereft Achilles of his meed. What could I do? it is God who accomplisheth all. Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate who blindeth all, a power of bane: delicate are her feet, for not upon the earth she goeth, but walketh over the heads of men, making men fall; and entangleth this one or ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... time had passed since then? Could it be true that for ten years she had been his wife, and that the tie between them was forever dissolved? From this day he was to be dead to her and to all the world. He was about to pass voluntarily into a condition of death amid life, as utterly bereft of all that had once been his as if the grave had closed over him. Roland Sefton was to ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... sat by the cot watching the faintly flickering life that, bereft of conscious will, fought for existence with each deep-drawn breath. About two in the morning Pete's breathing seemed to stop. Doris felt the hesitant throb of the pulse and, rising, stepped to the hall and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... of losing their soluble nitrogenous matter, which soaks into the ground beneath the heaps. The other portions of the field not covered by the manure-heaps are thus manured with washed-out farmyard manure, bereft of its most valuable constituents. The result is, that while certain portions of the field are too strongly manured, other portions are ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... their sorrow must remain within their houses. Only the Great Spirit, who lives beyond the golden veils of the boreal lights, may hear the sobbing of a stricken human creature over the thing of which it has been bereft. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... citizens of Hamburg was an injury to all foreigners who had funds in the Bank? Such is a brief statement of the vexations and cruelties which long oppressed this unfortunate city. Napoleon accused Hamburg of Anglomania, and by ruining her he thought to ruin England. Hamburg, feeble and bereft of her sources, could only complain, like Jerusalem when besieged by ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... and equipment for a ride on his shoulder, till she was forced to give in and hop along "on her own steam" in the hot dust. She did not always remain a front line monkey, but with the transport she went through all the fighting in Palestine and then accompanied the Battalion to France. At last, bereft successively by the chances of war of all her best friends, she somehow drifted to Glasgow and is now believed to be living in a travelling menagerie. We can only hope that she wears the war medal she has earned and is treated with proper respect, and ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... was the merest material contact. He bore her to the room where his mother sat, laid her on the sofa, said he had found her under the oak-tree—and went to his study, away in the roof. On a chair in the middle of the floor he sat, like a man bereft of all. Nothing came between him and suicide but an infinite scorn. A slow rage devoured his heart. Here he was, a man who knew his own worth, his faithfulness, his unchangeableness, cast over the wall of the universe, into the waste places, among the broken shards of ruin! If there was ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs {of the Zodiac}. As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, in a chill of horror. Soon as they, falling down, have touched the top of their backs, the horses range at large: and no one restraining them, they go through the air of an unknown region; and where ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... still exists higher up the Rue des Archives. The lavishly decorated Hotel de Soubise, entered from the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in which are exhibited historical documents and other objects of profound interest, though bereft of much of its former splendour is well worth a visit. The sumptuous chambers contain much characteristic and well-preserved decorative work by Boucher, Natoire, Carle Vanloo and others.[231] Opposite the hotel and between Nos. 59 and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... with all the cruelty satanic ingenuity could devise. Against a background of black and angry sky she stands forth, as a soul through whose reason God made himself manifest. Her unblemished character, her learning and her grace forever cry aloud against an orthodoxy bereft alike of reason and of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... had rallied but for a time. The dread disease had but dallied with its prey; it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the mother was bereft and childless! ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his former military service, and all manner of vague plans, artistic, literary and academic, occupied his mind. Intensive study of Kant's philosophy brought on an intellectual crisis, in which the ardent student found himself bereft of his fond hope of attaining to absolute truth. Meanwhile the romantic appeal of Nature, first heeded on a trip to Wuerzburg, and the romantic lure of travel, drew the dreamer irresistibly away from his desk. His sister Ulrica accompanied him on a journey that began ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... placed it and its fellow over her face and wept, a river of tears that came softly without sobs. Crowder was overwhelmed. He had never thought his friend could be so broken, never had imagined her weak as other women, bereft of her ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Bereft of him, Chicago overawed me, and took my breath away. It is a good thing I saw New York first, for if I'd come straight from England with only memories of peaceful London to support me through the ordeal, I don't know but it might have affected ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... India, and Ceylon; had found friends and amusement everywhere; and in the latter colony had even served eight months as private secretary to the Governor, who had taken a fancy to him, and had been suddenly bereft by a boating accident of the indispensable young man who was accustomed to direct the hospitalities of Government House before Tressady's advent. Thence he went to China and Japan, made a trip from Pekin into Mongolia, landed on Formosa, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... empty. No owner—no master! I with my strange momentary liberty, bereft of that irreplaceable love, never quite prized until it is lost. Most people have experienced the dismay that ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... having been reluctantly compelled to release another from bondage, sees him stumbling forward and upward, neglected by his friends and scarcely yet conscious of his own strength; seizes him, binds him, and having bereft him of speech, of sight and of manhood, "yokes him with the mule" and exclaims, with a show of virtue which ought to deceive no one: "Behold how good a friend I am of yours! Have I not left you a stomach and a pair of arms, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... hoping to rescue Ellice, I was in pursuit of the precious pair, my wife relapsed and died—the victim of excitement brought on by her child's disgrace. I came back here to a desolate, silent house;—bereft of wife and daughter; and in the grave of her mother, I buried every atom of love and tenderness I ever entertained for Ellice. When the sun is suddenly blotted out at noon, and the world turns black—black, we grope to and fro aimlessly; but after awhile, we accommodate ourselves ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... of love within his home, His alien home, the exiled father left; And when, like Cain, he wandered forth to roam, A Cain without his solace, all bereft, Stole down his pallid cheek the scalding tear, To think a stranger to his tender love His child must grow, untroubled where might rove His restless life, or taught perchance to fear Her father's name, and bred in sullen hate, Shrink from his image. Thus the gentle maid, Who with her smiles had ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... functions compared, a concomitance in the general course of their evolution and in their critical periods; it is insufficient for a conclusion. There would be needed clear, authentic and sufficiently numerous observations proving that individuals bereft of imagination of the creative type have acquired it suddenly through the sole fact of their sexual influences, and, inversely, that brilliant imaginations have faded under the contrary conditions. We find some of these evidences in Cabanis,[29] Moreau ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... was suddenly bereft of all power of speech. Three men were standing just outside the long bronze caging that enclosed the bookkeeping-department, and they were looking at him with a directness that was even more pronounced than the stare of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... hind or serf to tramp it i' the dust! Per De, my lord, a parch-ed pea am I— I'm all athirst! Athirst? I am so dry My very bones do rattle to and fro And jig about within me as I go! Why tramp we thus, bereft of state and rank? Why go ye, lord, like foolish mountebank? And whither doth our madcap journey trend? And wherefore? Why? And, prithee, to what end?" Then quoth the Duke, "See yonder in the green Doth run a cooling water-brook I ween, Come, Pertinax, beneath yon shady ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... is dead," said the knight. "An arrow in the left eye has bereft our Duke of a noble ally and increased the blessedness of the City of Paradise. You are masterless now. Will you ride with me on my service, you Jehan the Hunter? It would appear that we are alike in our ways of thinking. They call ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... upon him—his lips were upon her lips; his cheek touching her cheek; their breaths were mingling. Another moment and he had turned from her coldly, and she was drooping towards the earth like a tender vine bereft of the support to which it had held by its clinging tendrils. Ah! If he could only have shut out these images! If he could have erased the record so that Memory could not read it! How eagerly would he have drunk of Lethe's waters, could he ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... My life and honor by thy succor safe, Yet, Maharajni, even than this dear home One would be dearer: 'tis so many days Since we were parted. Suffer me to go Where those my tender little ones were led; So long—poor babes!—of me and of their sire Bereft. If, lady, thou dost think to show Kindness to me, this is my wish: to wend Unto Vidarbha swiftly; wilt thou bid They bear me thither?" Was no sooner heard That fond desire, than the queen-mother gave Willing command; and soon an ample troop, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... we ascended the red incline to an open tableland, where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest. Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in places is cut deeply ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... Ranger was dazed. He stood staring down at his pet; then the truth engulfed him. He realized that he had ridden her to her death, and at the thought he became like a woman bereft of her child, like a lover who had ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... sea and perished, other were killed by the elephants, which got close to one another and to the human beings, still others were slain by the Romans; many also were captured alive, men as well as elephants. For since the beasts, bereft of the men to whom they were used, became furious, Metellus made a proclamation to the prisoners, offering preservation and forgiveness to such as would check them: accordingly, some keepers approached ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... Bereft even of expletives, he gazed round the apartment prepared for him. It was a few moments before he could bring himself to make a tour of its ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... so generously provided for wives bereft of their lawful support, the press-gang found for the women of the land many an odd job that bore no direct relation to the earning of their bread. When the mob demolished the Whitby rendezvous in '93, it was the industrious fishwives of the town who collected the stones ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... salutation confined to his head: his shoulders, arms, thighs, ankles, and ribs, were visited with amazing rapidity, while Tom Pipes sounded the charge through his fist. Peregrine, tired with his exercise, which had almost bereft his enemy of sensation, at last struck the decisive blow, in consequence of which the squire's weapon flew out of his grasp, and he allowed our hero to be the better man. Satisfied with this acknowledgment, the victor walked upstairs with such elevation of spirits and insolence of mien, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... descend the shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour after sunset—every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world, and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there—such shame and such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... yield, my love, my friend, To Fate's implacable eyes and withering breath. We still are yours and mine, though, by Time's theft, My arms are empty and your arms bereft. It is not hard to part—not harder than Death; And each of us must face Death ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit

... linty 'mang the yellow broom, The laverock in the lift Ha'e never sang the waes o' love O' hope and joy bereft; Nor has the mavis ever sang The ills I ha'e to dree, For lovin' o' a paughty ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... lies unburied, on the smoky hill; But with rich honours he shall be inhum'd, To teach our soldiery, how much we love, E'en in a foe, true worth and noble fortitude. Come then, brave soldiers, and take up the dead, Majors, and Col'nels, which are this day slain, And noble Captains of sweet life bereft. Fair flowers shall grow upon their grassy tombs, And fame in tears shall tell their tragedy, To many a widow and soft weeping maid, Or parent woe-ful for an only son, Through mourning Britain, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge

... artifices of Hecuba, the blind avarice of Polymestor, and the paltry policy of Agamemnon, who, not daring himself to call the Thracian king to account, nevertheless beguiles him into the hands of the captive women. Neither is it very consistent that Hecuba, advanced in years, bereft of strength, and overwhelmed with sorrow, should nevertheless display so much presence of mind in the execution of revenge, and such a command of tongue in her accusation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... to see them; together with vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a truce, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... practical sense was both native and cultivated in Miss Fennimore's pupil. Yet as she recorded the sentences, and read them over bereft of the speaker's caressing grace, she blamed herself as unkind, and making the worst of gay retorts which had been provoked by her own home thrusts. 'At least,' she thought, 'he will be glad to see that it was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whole situation was most propitious, and yet he found himself moving through it without one of the impulses which had been almost lifelong with him. As if in some strange paralysis, some obsession by a demon of indifference unknown before, he was bereft of the will to realize these familiar protagonists of his plain dramas. He knew them, of course; he knew them all too well; but he had not the wish to fit the likest of them with phrases, to costume them for their several parts, to fit them into the places in the unambitious action where ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... freely from the people. To the want of this we owed the American war, and the vast accumulation of national debt; and if this had been done last year, it would probably have saved us from our present distresses. No set of Britons, unless bereft of their senses, could, after recent events, propose the French revolution as a model for our imitation. But were such principles even likely to threaten danger, the surest way of preventing it was to promote the happiness and comfort of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... hear you say that. I am sure it must be so. If I feel lonely at times, because of my exile from old friends, although surrounded by new ones who are already very dear to me, how much more lonely must you feel, bereft as you are, and with no wholesome relief from the cares of state that weigh you down. For your own sake, as well as for the sake of others, you ought to go into society oftener. I seldom see ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... together with a glowing description of her attractiveness and charm, the situation assumed a fresh aspect. Lola, she felt, had become an asset, instead of an anxiety; and, as such, must make a "good" marriage. Bath swarmed with detrimentals, and there was a risk of a pretty girl, bereft of a mother's watchful care, being snapped up by one of them. Possibly, a younger son, without a penny with which to bless himself. A shuddering prospect for an ambitious mother. Obviously, therefore, the thing to do was to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... riven face to weep, But not, as formerly, because bereft: Prophetic dreams afflict him when asleep Of losing his ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... sad for an individual, and still more so for a nation, to lose the illusions of youth, if not of innocence, and to awake to the knowledge of an unbeautiful reality, bereft of all fictitious adornment. When, however, the naked truth can be discovered—and that is seldom the case—it must be faced; if the national or individual mind cannot receive it, the fault lies with the immaturity or morbid condition of the former, not with the material ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... bereft of balls and soirees we devote our time to improving our Italian. Johan and I take lessons of a monsignore who appears precisely at ten every morning. We struggle through some verbs, and then he dives into Dante, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... the hut and tent; what can we do? We dare not stir out." "Light fires, you magnoons," (fools), was the final rejoinder, and the train service went forward as usual. It appeared that the hyenas and wolves, wont to snap up a living around the men's camp, bereft of their pickings were in a state of howling starvation, and had turned up and made an appeal, by no means mute, to the station guard, which the latter failed to understand or appreciate. In a remarkably short space of time ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... in progress the viands had not been neglected except by such members of the company as had been bereft of appetite by loftier emotions—in consequence of which the table appeared to have sustained a visitation of seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever economic in the value she placed not only upon herself but her environment, proposed to her guests that they should wash the dishes, an art in which ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... grass was the most piteous; and, as, one by one they were claimed and taken away—in some instances parents claiming two, and in one instance, three children—the utmost sympathy was felt for those who had been so suddenly bereft. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... and had been conscious of yearnings and longings which were agonies, when Doctor Sturtevant, after the poor young unknown mother had been laid away in the Fairbridge cemetery, proposed that they should adopt the bereft little one, she rebelled. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Homer's Iliad, XV, verse 137.] and that he simply mutilated Rome, by rendering it bereft of excellent men. [Antoninus was allied to three races. And he possessed not a single one of their good points, but included in himself all their vices. The lightness, the cowardice, and recklessness of Gaul were his, the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... Vautrin erected himself on his hands and haunches to see where he was going, while the vivacious Scamp, shut up in the wood-house and bereft of his bedfellow, and doubtless fearful of ghosts in every nerve of his quivering little body, rent the still night with his expostulations, as he heard ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... faith, good uncle, I can deny none of this. And indeed, unto those who were despoiled and robbed by the Turk's overrunning of the country, and all their substance movable and unmovable bereft and lost already, their persons only fled and safe, I think that these considerations—considering also that, as you lately said, their sorrow could not amend their chance—might unto them be good occasion of comfort, and cause them, as you said, to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... have you here, ye son of a horse-couper?" was the encouraging salutation offered by a solicitor's son to the stumpy little figure bereft of its father and left to fight its ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... Kingdom. We behold the clergyman and his family in the glebe-house, lately the abode of plenty, comfort, and elegance, a model of domestic happiness and gentlemanly life; but the income of the rector fell off, till he was bereft of nearly all his means. In order to procure the necessaries of life for his family, he was obliged to part with the cows that gave milk for his household, the horse and car, which were necessary in the remote place where his glebe-house was situated, and everything that could be spared, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of les Rouxey, where she leads a life wholly devoted ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... a man to feel very much the loneliness of his later life, bereft as he has been of all his family friends except one brother. But he is very lovingly and tenderly cared for by some distant relatives, who live at Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., where he has passed the most of his time the last ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... soon becomes wearisome, however, so the veteran summoned his companion. The Teuton was so dumbfounded by this display of wealth, that he was bereft for a time of all faculty of speech, and could only stare open-mouthed at the table. At last he extended a fore-finger and thumb and rubbed a five pound note between them, as though to convince himself of its reality, after ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... yell, rather than a human expression of terror, the Landgrave fell, as if shot by a thunderbolt, stretched at his full length upon the ground, lifeless apparently, and bereft of consciousness or sensation. A sympathetic cry of horror arose from the spectators. All rushed towards The Masque. The young cavaliers, who had first stepped forward as volunteers in the Landgrave's defence, were foremost, and interposed between The Masque and the outstretched ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... mother, of reason bereft, Soon ended her sorrows and sank cold in death; Thus died that slave mother, poor heart broken ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... have watched each other thus for a minute or more. I saw during those moments when I was bereft of all power that the man had a revolver cocked at his left hand, but a pen in his right; while manuscript lay before him, so that he must have been in the room for some time, and had extinguished his light only at my ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... for a moment, really bereft, by the apprehension he had conjured up, of the power to move. The footsteps drew nearer, the door was opened with a hasty hand, and the child herself, pale and breathless, and hastily wrapped in a few disordered garments, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... dollar one does for her antipodal sister,—develops the instinct of motherhood, besides standing a greater amount of rough handling. Nevertheless it usually comes to the same deplorable end, departing this world, bereft of its arms and legs, without going through the tedious process of a ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland



Words linked to "Bereft" :   bereaved, sorrowful, unbeloved, grieving, unloved, mourning, sorrowing



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