"Bleak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Eirek the Red sailed to the bleak shores of Greenland down to the brilliant exploit of Admiral Dewey in the Philippine Islands, how true it is, in view of each and every one of the events immortalized in this unequalled series of paintings, that, in ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... cold and bleak, but full of stars. He had already mastered the local topography, and he knew now exactly where all the bombs that had been showered upon the place had fallen. Here was the corner of blackened walls and roasted beams ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... those vanished day-dreams? Ah! God in heaven pity her! they lay in ruins around her, and heart-wrecked, heart-broken, she was facing the cold, bleak ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... from the very heaven of memory. But a pretended letter of friendship—how easily detected! how transparent its falsity! The loadstone of love touches it, and finds it mere brass. Its influence is icy and bleak, like the rays of the moon, from which all the lenses on earth cannot ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... with regret. Readers of Dickens remember the prolonged degradation of the young hero of 'Bleak house,' through hope deferred and the delays of a Chancery suit. Similar causes contributed to the final wreck of Charles. The thought of a Restoration was his Chancery suit. A letter of November 1753, written by the Prince ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually more ardent or more virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dullness the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of "Bleak House" there are nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's at the brick-maker's, or finished in their threatenings ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in Lesser Armenia, Pompey almost annihilated the army of Mithridates. The king fled from the field, and, after seeking in vain for a refuge in Asia Minor, sought an asylum beyond the Caucasus Mountains, whose bleak barriers interposed their friendly shield between him and his pursuers. Desisting from the pursuit, Pompey turned south and conquered Syria, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, which countries he erected into a Roman province. Still ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold day. Alvina shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open grave. Her coat did not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin furs were not much protection. The minister stood on the plank by the grave, and she stood near, watching the white flowers blowing ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... rose, you and I, All in the summer weather; Sweet its perfume and rare its bloom, Enjoyed by us together. The rose is dead, the summer fled, And bleak winds are complaining; We dwell apart, but in each heart We find the ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and sick. His head swam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But he was of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude, endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet. Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island. Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But the wind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom his rudder ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... full share of silly women—more's the pity—but there is not one who can hold a candle to the girl who trots about in the cold, bleak days of winter clad in summery undergarments fit only for the warm atmosphere of a baker's oven in August. So long as these exhibitions of utter absurdity continue we cannot consistently harp upon woman's recently acquired good sense in dress. It seems more and more the fad for ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... A scurry of rain: Bleak day from bleaker night Creeps pinched and fain; The old gloom thins and dies, And in the wretched skies A new gloom, sick to rise, Sprawls, like ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... atmosphere, and also, as regards the landscape, in a completely different country, which latter fact we only fully appreciated with the morning light, as we drew near to Pretoria. The stranger landing at Delagoa Bay, and travelling through those bleak and barren mountains, might well ask himself the reason of the late prolonged and costly war; but as he approaches the Rand, and suddenly sees the rows and rows of mining shafts and chimneys, which are the visible signs of the hidden ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... pleasant, or brightening the gloom of his infancy with any deceptive gleams of January sunshine. A bitter north wind made a dreary howling among the leafless trees, and swept across the broad bare fields with merciless force—a bleak cruel new-year's-day, on which to go out a-pleasuring; but it was more in harmony with Ellen Carley's thoughts than brighter weather could have been; and she went to and fro about her morning's work, up and down cold windy passages, and in ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... boyhood a shepherd, he has dwelt among the mountains of his native Wales, and his imagination has heard the voices that are in rocks and trees, in the silence of lonely places, in the desolation of the bleak hills, and in the cold light of distant stars. He is now a preacher, infatuated with his mission, inspired in his eloquence, invincible in his tremendous sincerity. He sees Vashti and he loves her. It is the first thrill of mortal passion that ever has mingled with his devotion to his ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... driven from Norway because they refused to submit to a king called Harold Fairhair, and when he pursued them to the Orkney and Faroe Islands they took refuge on the coasts of Iceland. There they settled, built themselves wooden houses, planted such crops as would grow in that bleak land, and founded a commonwealth. Little by little they left the old Viking life, and it lived only in their songs ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods. The country was split into bleak ravines, a pell-mell of rocks and boulders, and a sturdy crop of black pines between them. An overgrowth of brambles and briony ran riot over all. Prosper rode up a dry river-bed, keeping steadily west, so far as it would serve him; found himself quagged ere a dozen ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... It was a bleak night in January, and intensely cold, when Mrs. Singleton wrapped a shawl about her head, and ran along the dark corridor to the cell, where Beryl was walking up and down to keep herself warm. Only the moonlight illumined it, as the rays fell on the bare floor, making a broad band of silver ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the true channel, until one of the boys, who had made a couple of trading trips up to the city, took it upon his own responsibility to read the buoys and landmarks as far as he knew them. Keeping the lead constantly going, we quietly jogged up the river with a stiff breeze; the country bleak and bare, a region of half-redeemed swamp and lagoon: being in smooth water, our party all turned out; stores were rummaged, and a good breakfast provided upon the deck of the boat so recently swept by the green seas: the past was forgotten, the sun shone out, and again ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... early on a cold morning the family set foot, scarcely clothed, not only in the city of which the young boy was to be one day the leading citizen, but on the very spot, it is said, where he was afterwards to base one pier of his great bridge. On that bleak morning, however, none of them foresaw a bright future, or indeed anything but a distressful present. Some ladies of the old French families of the town were very kind to the forlorn women; and once on her feet Mrs. Eads set about supporting herself and her children. In those days, ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... ice-covered, bleak and mountainous, dominated by a large massif (Big Ben) and an active volcano (Mawson Peak); McDonald Islands ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Shalouf—and immediately prepared for the attack on the central positions. The chief of these was the place to which Samson carried the gates of Gaza: Ali Muntar—how familiar we were destined to be with that name!—a great, bleak rock, whose terraced slopes rose far above the rest and commanded a wide field of fire over the plains of Gaza. It was defended in its several tiers by machine-guns cunningly placed, concealed rifle pits, trenches protected by rows of cactus and prickly pear, the broad leaves of which ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... afforded but slight shelter, and after gazing fixedly at them for two or three minutes, he became convinced that the man was no longer there. As soon as he came to this conclusion he stood up and looked over the surrounding country. It was bleak and bare, and entirely destitute of hedges ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... is even still so bleak and bitter that few care to climb there; the mountains around are drear and barren, and snow lies till midsummer, and even longer sometimes. "But in the early ages," said the priest (and this is quite a true tale that the children heard with open eyes, and mouths only not open ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... place of remarkably wide streets and a number of well-built churches, not all of the Establishment, however. The solid old houses, consisting entirely of the local stone, are not uninteresting and are in keeping with the dour and bleak scenery of the island. The mistake of importing alien red bricks of a most aggressive hue has not been made here. Those that flame from the hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the general bleakness ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... a troop For escort, pauses, if perchance he spy Vestige of somewhat strange and rare: so paus'd The sev'nfold band, arriving at the verge Of a dun umbrage hoar, such as is seen, Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches, oft To overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff. And, where they stood, before them, as it seem'd, Tigris and Euphrates both beheld, Forth from one fountain issue; and, like friends, Linger at parting. "O enlight'ning beam! O glory of our kind! beseech thee ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... an instant a tide of bitterness, of passionate regret, swept over him. He saw the Hatburns' house, a rectangular bleak structure crowning a gray prominence, with the tender green of young pole beans on one hand and a disorderly barn on the other, and a blue plume of smoke rising from an unsteady stone chimney against an end of the dwelling. No one ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the end of October I started from Guachochic bound for the upper part of the great Barranca de San Carlos and the country southward as far as there were Tarahumares. Everything seemed bleak and dreary. The corn was harvested, the grass looked grey, and there was a wintry feeling in the air. The sere and withered leaves rustled like paper, and as I made camp near an Indian ranch I saw loose stubble and dead leaves carried up in a whirlwind, two or three ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... might know of that wild ride? Only the bleak Hill— The red Hill, vigilant, Like a blood-shot eye In the black mask of night— Dared watch them as they raced By each blind-folded street Godiva might have ridden down... But when they stopped beside the Place, I know he turned his face Wistfully ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... whose souls nobody cares. They are utterly destitute of moral and religious teachings. No efforts have ever been made by Protestants for their salvation. If you fellows are looking, in earnest, for a hard job, there is one ready for you to tackle on those bleak prairies." ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... to crush him. He went as often as he thought he could without attracting the attention of Mr. Shrank or eliciting ponderous jocosities from the other workers. After several visits, however, he did begin to question himself. What drew him to that bleak refuge again and again? He was not aware of bladder irritation. He had no infantile obsession about such facilities. Was he driven by an aggregation of petty forces, each too small to make sense by itself? Or was there one reason hiding behind ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... this enrage thee not, How changed art thou from what thou wast on earth! On Russia's plains, so bleak and desolate, They died, the sons of Italy; Ah, well deserving of a better fate! In cruel war with men, with beasts, The elements! In heaps they strewed the ground; Half-clad, emaciated, stained with blood, A bed of ice for their sick frames they found. ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... gelid hands distil 160 In pearly mowers the parsimonious rill; And, as aloft the curling vapours rise Through the cleft roof, ambitious for the skies, In vaulted hills condense the tepid steams, And pour to HEALTH the medicated streams. 165 —So in green vales amid her mountains bleak BUXTONIA smiles, the Goddess-Nymyh of Peak; Deep in warm waves, and pebbly baths she dwells, And calls HYGEIA to her ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... had become darker, the storm more threatening. The wind blew in furious gusts over the dismal country, and an occasional rumbling of distant thunder filled the weary lads with dread. The road they had chosen was absolutely deserted. It lay through a bleak, scarcely habitable prairie, a landscape common enough in that part of Russia; and stones and brambles did much to retard their progress. There was not a place of shelter in sight. The outlook was sufficiently unpromising ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... of San Francisco Bay, where ships to and from the Orient were continually plying, there should rise an Oriental city. The idea had a special appeal in providing a reason for extensive color effects. The bay, in spite of the California sunshine, somewhat bleak, needed to be helped out with color. The use of color by the Orientals had abundantly justified itself as an integral part of architecture. The Greeks and the Romans had accepted it and applied it even in their statuary. It was, moreover, associated with those Spanish ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... near daybreak; the moon shone faintly in the dull, grey heaven; a small, vaporous rain was sinking from the shapeless clouds; the waning night showed bleak and cheerless to the earth, but cast no mournful or reproving influence over the Pagan's mind. He looked round on his solitary lurking place, and beheld no human figure in its lonely recesses. He ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and propriety suggested such personal compliment as calling the Boyne a Tiber, and Halifax an improvement upon Virgil; while his heart was in the closing emphasis, also proper to the occasion, which dwelt on the liberty that gives their smile to the barren rocks and bleak mountains of Britannia's isle, while for Italy, rich in the unexhausted stores of nature, proud Oppression in her valleys reigns, and tyranny usurps her happy plains. Addison's were formal raptures, and he knew them to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... cold and bleak that winter's night, When hover'd o'er the dying light, The miser hugg'd his shrunken form, And grudged the ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... where at least minorities of people had hoped for some nobler vision of the world's needs, and for some healing remedy for the evils which had massacred its youth. The League of Nations, which had seemed to promise so well, was hedged round by limitations which made it look bleak and barren. Still it was peace, and the rivers of blood had ceased to flow, and the men were coming home again... ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... with two or three gasps, she came to herself. Lake had been railing on all this time, and his voice, which, in ill-temper, was singularly bleak and terrible, was again in her ears the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... questions about this or that. Beside the fire, in the chair that had once belonged to the master of the house, sat Micah Ward. He looked very old now and infirm. The months in a prison hulk in Belfast Lough and the long weariness of his confinement in bleak Fort George had set their mark upon him. On his knees lay a Greek lexicon, but he was pursuing no word through its pages. It was open at the fly-leaf inside the cover. He was reading lovingly for the hundredth time an ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... princesses of his own kith, whose brown cheeks blush with the blood of ancient Pharaohs and who exult with Babbulkund in her surpassing beauty, and who know nought of the desert or the jungle or the bleak hills to the north. Quite unadorned and clad in simple garments go all the kith of Nehemoth, for they know well that he grows weary of pomp. Unadorned all save one, the Princess Linderith, who weareth Ong Zwarba and the three lesser gems of the sea. Such a stone is Ong Zwarba that there are none ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... and a few frogs and buttons, so that Thackeray himself should hardly recognise him. And then of a sudden there came to me memories of a young Irishman, with whom I was once intimate, and had spent long nights walking and talking with, upon a very desolate coast in a bleak autumn: I recalled him as a youth of an extraordinary moral simplicity—almost vacancy; plastic to any influence, the creature of his admirations: and putting such a youth in fancy into the career of a soldier of fortune, it occurred to me that he would serve ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Farmer Sinclair's; they had often remarked him, but could give me no other information. I then proceeded towards the coast; there was a small public house belonging to Sir Lionel close by the sea shore; never had I seen a more bleak and dreary prospect than that which stretched for miles around this miserable cabaret. How an innkeeper could live there is a mystery to me at this day—I should have imagined it a spot upon which anything but a sea-gull or a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was in the mind of Mr. Alexander when he turned from his library, and, drawing on his overcoat, passed forth to the street. It was a bleak winter morning, and the muffled pedestrians hurried ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... way to a dim shop, where three golden balls hung to an iron bracket at the door, to show that a pawnbroker's business was carried on within. It was not the first visit she had made to this establishment, for the poor little household ornaments, the loss of which had left her home so bleak and bare, were now in the safekeeping of the proprietor; but still she shrank back as she approached a dim side entrance in a narrow street, and drawing her bonnet closer over her face, pushed open a ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... to-night. She thought he had been detained over-time at the harbor, but she was not anxious. He would come straight home to her as soon as his business was completed—of that she felt sure. Her thoughts went out along the bleak harbor road to meet him. She could see him plainly, coming with his free stride through the sandy hollows and over the windy hills, in the harsh, cold light of that forbidding sunset, strong and handsome in his comely youth, with her own deeply cleft chin and his father's dark gray, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... before we need give it a thought," said Hester. She had been reared along the river and had no fear of it. She loved it in any form it could assume—tranquil and quiet—frozen and white—rolling and bleak and sullen. In every form, she recognized only the beautiful and ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... prospects (so no graveyard be in the background), and also after Sweden-borganism, and the Spirit Rapping philosophy, with other new views, alike in things natural and unnatural; and immortally hopeful, is forever making new flower-beds even on the north side of the house where the bleak mountain wind would scarce allow the wiry weed called hard-hack to gain a thorough footing; and on the road-side sets out mere pipe-stems of young elms; though there is no hope of any shade from them, except over the ruins of her great granddaughter's gravestones; and won't ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... me, but obey me! Do not elect this man." Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment Syme's slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you could not have guessed it from Syme's bleak blue eyes. He ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... brief visit. His companions were the frost, the fluttering snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the soft notes of a shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies, he listened to the north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to the roar of an angry northern sea upon the bleak coast. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the air, in the glint of his eyes, in the leaping of her heart. And she knew what she would say to him, and what they would say to the world a few hours hence. The mountains seemed to have lost their splendid frown; they were beaming down upon her, tenderly caressing instead of bleak and foreboding as they ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... while yonder, like a jewel on the cusp of a horn, Porto Venere shines; and farther still, Lerici in the shadow of the hills washed by the sea, stained by the blood of the sunset, its great castle seeming like some splendid ship in the midst of the waters. From the bleak height of La Foce, whence all the woods seem to have run down to the shore, slowly one by one the lights of the city appear like great golden night flowers; soon they are answered from the bay, where the ships lie solemnly, sleepily at anchor, and at last the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... mountain range (the Sierra Guadarrama) and a river (the Ebro) as the natural boundary line of the two territories. The Moor was a child of the sun. If the stubborn Goth chose to sulk, up among the chilly heights and on the bleak plains of the north, he might do so, and it was little matter if one Alfonso called himself "King of the Asturians," in that mountain-defended and sea-girt province. The fertile plains of Andalusia, and the banks of the Tagus and Guadalquivir, were ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... her rights, and change her name to "penalty for transgression." The law is no enemy, but the friend of liberty. The world and the planets move by law. Disregarding the law by which they move, they would become wanderers in the bleak darkness forever. ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... her pity was so vast that she sickened under its weight. She had come prepared to see him die, as all men do when they have lived out their time, but she had not counted on seeing him die like this, with suffering in his bleak old eyes and a smile of derision ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... traveling; I was but lightly clothed, and of this I felt the inconvenience the more I advanced northeast. What must not a poor old man have suffered in that severe weather and climate, whom I saw on a bleak common in Poland, lying on the road, helpless, shivering, and hardly having wherewithal to cover his nakedness? I pitied the poor soul; though I felt the severity of the air myself, I threw my mantle over him, and immediately ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... such a time. One bright day in early winter Honora, returning from her walk across the bleak plains in the hope of letters, found newspapers and periodicals instead, addressed in an unknown hand. It matters not whose hand: Honora never sought to know. She had long regarded as inevitable this acutest phase of her martyrdom, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the true reply to his question and burst spontaneously from her lips. Her first swift suspicion when she had seen the bulk of him framed against the bleak night had been quite natural. But now that she had marked the man's carriage and had seen his face and looked for one instant deep into his clear eyes, she set her conjecture aside as an absurdity. It was not so much that her reason had risen to demand ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... sweltering patches of sand and gravelly soil, and sparse, harsh brush. She turned and looked back toward the sweep of Desert Valley; there she saw green fields, trees, grazing stock. It was like the Promised Land compared with this bleak desolate spot her father had chosen. She turned to him, words of expostulation forming. But his eyes were bright, his look triumphant. He had already dismounted and was poking about here and there, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... changed. He had taken on, merely in his physical aspect, a new quality: he seemed taller than formerly, and older. Amid all his tasks he moved with a sort of feline restlessness. He took to prowling at night, round and round the bleak garden. The robed figure paced the paths with an effect of stealing carefully toward an enemy. In the light from a window his fine profile appeared for an instant like a presentment of vengeance—with something sensual in its look ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... of the 17th century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the last proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to part with the ancient family seat, and to remove himself to a lonely and sea-beaten tower, which, situated on the bleak shores between St. Abb's Head and the village of Eyemouth, looked out on the lonely and boisterous German Ocean. A black domain of wild pasture-land surrounded their new residence, and formed the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... never at the perilous behest Of noble knighthood,—but the love of life, Compassion, and soul-sickness of the strife. "If any be that loved him!" Oh, to die Far from green-swarded Camelot, and lie Among these bleak and barren hills alone, His end unwept for and his grave unknown,— Never again to see the glad sunrise That brightened all his ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... gently for two days; and a white sheet of it, at least three inches deep, covered the ground on the morning of the 5th. The weather had changed during the night, and now the air was sharp and cold. Dark, bleak clouds hung along the horizon in the northeast, the distant hills stood out sharp and cold, and a chilling wind whispered and sighed through the leafless trees. Then the wind grew stronger and stronger, the snow fell thicker and ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Hindostan; but make a low grunting noise, scarcely audible, and that but seldom, when under some impression of uneasiness. These cattle are pastured in the coldest part of Tibet, upon short herbage, peculiar to the tops of mountains and bleak plains. That chain of lofty mountains situated between lat. 27 deg. and 28 deg., which divides Tibet from Bootan, and whose summits are most commonly covered with snow, is their favourite haunt. In this vicinity the Southern glens afford them food and shelter ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations of her stern, hard life had left her little strength for struggling against the disease when it laid hold of her at last, and so she too died in her cell one cold, bleak March morning, with a hushed sisterhood gathered round her death- bed, and gazing on it, as on that of a departing saint. Little beloved, but much revered, Therese Linders also had got that she had laboured for, and was now gone to prove the worth of it; that which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... of us see it from the deck, and it did look good. I once saw the flat, bleak Atlantic coast of Patagonia after ten days at sea, and the high iron wintry coast of Newfoundland after another period at sea, and I clearly recall that even they both looked like fine countries. And the coast of France was neither bleak nor icy, so you may guess that it was a pleasing sight ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... going to have a regular old-fashioned snowstorm," said Captain Nutter, one bleak December morning, casting a peculiarly ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pounded through the Cattegat, swung southward through the Skagerrack and the bleak North Sea. But the storm pursued her. The big waves snarled and bit at her, and the captain and the chief officer consulted with each other. They decided to run into the Thames, and the harried steamer nosed her way in ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... robe, less Oppressive than an emperor's jewelled purple. But, here! the despots of the north appear To imitate the ice-wind of their clime, 720 Searching the shivering vassal through his rags, To wring his soul—as the bleak elements His form. And 'tis to be amongst these sovereigns My husband pants! and such his pride of birth— That twenty years of usage, such as no Father born in a humble state could nerve His soul to persecute a son withal, Hath changed no atom ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... events intervening between this moment and that when death called to us out of the night, I have the haziest recollections. An excellent dinner was served in the bleak and gloomy dining-room by the mulatto, and the crippled author was carried to the head of the table by this same Herculean attendant, as lightly as though he had but ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... over the Wey runs between double ribands of water; on one side lies the sunny, slow canal, edged with iris and forget-me-nots, and banked up higher than the road; on the other, a shady stream, dun and bleak-haunted. Before the road turns into Addlestone there is a field-path, breaking off at right angles, which leads to a wooden bridge crossing the clear, brown little Bourne, and beyond the bridge lies Chertsey Mead, one huge hayfield, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... agreeably to his instructions from the American Secretary at War, with the view of depriving the British army of comfortable winter quarters. He was indeed ordered to lay waste the country as he retreated, if retreat became necessary. It was on the 10th of December, a bleak, cold winter day, that McClure fulfilled his instructions. One hundred and fifty houses, composing the flourishing village of Newark, were reduced to ashes, and four hundred women and children were left to wander in the snow or seek the temporary ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... singer of the highlands is the horned lark. One morning in June a lively carriage party passing along the mountain side, on a road so bare and bleak that it seemed nothing could live there, was startled by a small gray bird, who suddenly dashed out of the sand beside the wheels, ran across the path, and flew to a fence on the other side. Undisturbed, perhaps even stimulated, by the clatter of two horses and a rattling mountain ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... any place on earth where a man is justified in being mean, it is in Butte. It is a mining camp. It rests upon bleak, barren hills; the sulphuric fumes, arising from roasting ores, have long since killed out all vegetation. It has not even a sprig of grass. This smoke, also laden with arsenic, sometimes hovers over Butte like a London fog. More wealth is every year dug out of the earth in Butte, and more ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... full hour and a half before his friend would return to business. What should he do? The Verein where he had once been entertained was deserted even by its waiters; the garden, with its ostentatious out-of-door tables, looked bleak and bare. Mr. Clinch was not artistic in his tastes; but even he was quick to detect the affront put upon Nature by this continental, theatrical gardening, and turned disgustedly away. Born near a "lake" larger than the German Ocean, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... believe the latter, in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October, I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the naked bank ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... utter disillusion for her. The great house on the Avenue proved to be but four bleak walls; and when the villa on Long Island was built, she tried to be as enthusiastic as Morgan wanted her to be. He lavished gifts upon her. He brought out gay house-parties for weekends. Lucia did her best to keep her part of a bad bargain. She made herself lovely, and ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... black and clear and vitreous on the forest pools. The clods on the ploughed field, the broken hillocks in the pasture, the ruts of the winding backwoods road, were hard as iron and rang under the travelling hoof. The silent, naked woods, moved only by the bleak wind drawing through them from the north, seemed as if life had ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their striking dissimilarity, both in dress and manners. Truth was clad in garments of the plainest material and finish, while Error was decked in costly robes and jewels. The step of the former was firm and slow, while that of the latter was rapid and nervous. The bleak winds penetrated their forms as they turned a sharp angle in the road, when there was revealed to them, on an eminence, ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... the thirteenth century Genghis Khan, the great Mongol, born in the bleak Hsing-an Mountains, gathered together all the restless bands of Mongolia, and sweeping down on Peking drove out the Kins and established the purely Mongol dynasty of the Yuan. Up till then Peking had consisted of what is to-day the Chinese city, or the older outer city. Kublai Khan, Genghis's ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp. Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... up and beyond Barley. He saw the dark outline of the bleak, wet goal posts, saw the tense faces of the Canton team ... then his ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... background, and not without solicitude for the future of his favorite humanistic studies—a solicitude, some will think, only too well justified. "Cambridge at all times is full of ghosts," said Emerson. But no ghost from the past, flitting along the Old Road from Elmwood to the Yard, and haunting the bleak lecture-rooms where it had recited as a careless boy and taught wearily as a man, could wear a more quizzical and friendly aspect than Lowell's. He commonly spoke of his life as a professor with whimsical disparagement, as Henry Adams wrote of his own teaching with a somewhat cynical disparagement. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... over the sky, That the faint coming breeze would be fair for our flight, And shall steal us away, ere the falling of night. Dear Douglas! thou knowest, with thee by my side, With thy friendship to soothe me, thy courage to guide, There is not a bleak isle in those summerless seas, Where the day comes in darkness, or shines but to freeze, Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore, That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore! Oh think then how gladly I follow thee now, When Hope smooths the billowy path of our ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Switzerland. I could not LIVE in Switzerland. It does me good to go there, to be iced and baked and washed clean with pure air. But the terrible mountains, so cold and unchanged, with their immemorial patience, their frozen tranquillity; the high hamlets, perched on their lonely shelves; the bleak pine-trees, with their indomitable strength—all these depress me. Of course there is much homely beauty among the lower slopes; the thickets, the falling streams, the flowers. But the grim black peaks ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to which yet clung a number of brown leaves. Truelove sat down, drawing her cloak about her, for, though the sun shone, the air was keen. MacLean took off his coat, and kneeling put it beneath her feet. He laughed at her protest. "Why, these winds are not bleak!" he said. "This land knows no true and honest cold. In my country, night after night have I lain in snow with only my plaid for cover, and heard the spirits call in the icy wind, the kelpie shriek beneath the frozen ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... two afterwards, and we are surprised to find that the farmer is safely housed, and that he has not been robbed upon a bleak moor on a dark stage. But we soon feel a sensation of awe, when we learn that before us is the interior of the very farm-house that is going to be murdered. The farmer and his wife go through the long-standing dialogue of stage-stereotype, about love and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... soft light and looked across to the dark mass of the chapel opposite and saw that a dim light was still burning from the window by the organ loft. And as I stood and looked, the empty place that I had felt in the very center of my heart grew colder and more bleak until suddenly across the garden on perfumed waves of sound came the Tristan love song and filled my emptiness with a pain that was both hot and cold. I stood and let the flood dash over me as long as I could and then with ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... may I follow When friendships decay, And from love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This bleak ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... know the rapture of his kiss, the exquisite security of his enfolding arm. The To-come was before her—bleak, grey and bereft; the roseate hues of love's delight lay all in the Gone-by. Her love was of no avail. It had fluttered back to her, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... was slow, difficult, and intensely painful to the Irish, for Connaught was bleak, sterile, and desolate, and the weather was inclement. The natural protectors of many families had been killed or banished, and the women and children clung with frantic fondness to their old homes. But for the feelings ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... behind a bank of grey clouds, the northeast wind came whistling insistently through the trees:—even that feeling of spring in the air had vanished. It was just a bleak grey winter's day now. Crystal felt herself shivering with cold. She drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders, then with eyes still wet with tears, but small head held well erect, she rose to her feet and walked rapidly ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... sweep the sky clean; Sweep the house fronts, And leave them bleak in sleep. High up the empty moon Spills ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... and sleeping mist gradually awakens; the sighing and howling of the bleak winds are heard above; the vapor palpitates in the first rays of the coming sun, and a drifting ice-floe of curdling clouds drives wildly o'er this quickening sea of fog ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can be relied upon. And, what is very unpleasant, is the conduct of the Spaniards, who are striving for power here." On 11th November O'Hara reported that, in the absence of engineer officers, the forts had been injudiciously constructed; that their garrisons began to suffer from exposure to the bleak weather; that the broken and wooded country greatly favoured the advance of the enemy, and hampered all efforts to dislodge him; that the Spaniards and Sardinians had no artillery, tools, or camp equipments; and that the only means of securing Toulon was to have an army ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... old when the change came in my life. I remember the day was cold and bleak, an early spring day. My father had had an accident a few days before. In one of his unconscious fits he had fallen forward—I had left the room but for a moment—and struck his head sharply against one of the fire-irons. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... field with a solitary divine reading his breviary. The drive turned and turned again in great sloping curves; more divines were passed, and then there came a terrace with a balustrade and a view of the open country. The high red walls of the college faced bleak terraces: a square tower squatted in the middle of the building, and out of it rose the octagon of the bell-tower, and in the tower wall was the great oak door studded with ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... snow—the small bitter sifting snow that, encountered on the hill, stings like the ant and drifts in monstrous and impassable wreaths. Round about us yawned the glens, to me nameless, mysterious, choked to the throat with snow-mist that flapped and shook like grey rags. The fields were bleak and empty; the few houses that lay in the melancholy plain were on no particularly friendly terms with this convocation of Erse-men and wild kerns: they shut their doors steadfastly on our doings, and gave us not even ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... tender recollection. After wandering for several hours in the thickest mist upon this Novembry heath, and what by moorish ground—what by the dripping atmosphere being thoroughly soaked, and stiffening with cold, the author and Mr. Vanley discovered on a declivity of the bleak Mount Patrick a solitary hovel. It stood apart from all houses or dwellings; and even the shepherd on this particular night had stolen away (probably on a love-tryst): however, if the shepherd was gone, his sheep were not: and we ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me, but I am going to try; so it will be no small comfort to have your company just now, seeing that when you have your men and women aforesaid, you are busied with them, whereas it seems bleak, melancholy work, this talking to the wind (for I have begun)—yet I don't think I shall let you hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... over an unknown road; He himself has trodden it before. He hath drunk of every "brook by the way;" He himself hath "suffered being tempted;" He is "able to succour them that are tempted." He seems to say, "Fear not; I cannot lead you wrong; follow me in the bleak waste, the blackened wilderness, as well as by the green pastures and the still waters. Do you ask why I have left the sunny side of the valley—carpeted with flowers, and bathed in sunshine—leading you to some high mountain apart, some cheerless spot of sorrow? Trust me, I will lead ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... in at the open gate, hitched his horse in a warm corner by the kitchen door, and then stopped for a moment to enjoy the view. The situation of the little house, half a mile from any other, was beautiful in summer, but it was bleak enough in winter. In the small front dooryard stood three lofty, wind-blown poplars, all heading away from the sea, and between them you could look down the bay or across the salt-marshes, while in the opposite direction were to be seen the roofs and the glittering ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... how cheerless looked the earth when first I came above it, so dull and black, save where a few snowflakes had been drifted by the wintry winds; all else was bleak and bare. There was not a gleam of sunshine athwart the leaden sky to cheer us, nor a bird to meet us with a friendly greeting, for even the robins kept so near the houses for warmth and shelter, they came not to the spot where we grew, alone ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... fishing-village in Picardy, to the town of St. Valery-sur-Somme. It was in the month of February, and one of those luckless days on which cold, wind and rain all seem banded in league against the comfort of mankind: the sky, dull and lowering, presented to the eye nothing but a bleak, cheerless desert of gray, relieved only by troops of dark, inky clouds, which would at moments, as though flying the fury of a raging storm, roll pell-mell through the air like an army in rout, pouring down at the same time through the thick, black fog that covered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... children, they decided not to remain there. They then bade farewell to all that was near and dear to them in the old country and started across the ocean to America—the new land. After a voyage of two months, they reached the bleak, rocky coast of Massachusetts, and they knew that if they could come ashore safely, they could here worship God just as they ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... to quit the scenes of their short lived felicity, they bade a hasty adieu to the now fading beauties of Windermere; and, full of hope and expectation, eagerly turned towards the bleak hills of Scotland. They stopped for a short time at Edinburgh, to provide themselves with a carriage, and some other necessaries. There, too, she fortunately met with an English Abigail and footman, who, for double wages, were prevailed upon to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the hotel, but the hillsides are for the most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it; it is rich in rhododendrons and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... sleep severed his thoughts into fragments of horrible dreams. The next day he felt differently; Waymark's advice seemed more practical. In the afternoon he should have visited Harriet in the ward, but an insuperable repulsion kept him away, and for the first time. It was a bleak, cheerless day; the air was cold with the breath of the nearing winter; At night he found it impossible to sit in his own room, and dreaded to talk with any one. His thoughts were fixed upon one place; a great longing drew him forth, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Then the "Bertha Millner" caught the wind again and lay over quietly and contentedly to her work. The next tack brought the schooner close under Alcatraz. The sea became heavier, the breeze grew stiff and smelled of the outside ocean. Out beyond them to westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak vista of gray-green ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... to decide. Yes, you can detain me. If I go to that bleak and barren desert, it will merely be to court exile from that quarter of the globe in which you and I would have to live together and not separate. That I cannot stand. In Kamtchatka—Well, there is no knowing what ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... me go. I sail for the bleak North, for the peace of the frozen shore. Your laughter is untimely, my friends. You turn my farewell tunes into the welcome song of the Newcomer, And all things draw me back again into the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... sunbeams may be taught to dance. If not in written form exprest, 'Twas known at least to every guest, That, tho' not bidden to parade Their scenic powers in masquerade, (A pastime little found to thrive In the bleak fog of England's skies, Where wit's the thing we best contrive, As masqueraders, to disguise,) It yet was hoped-and well that hope Was answered by the young and gay— That in the toilet's task to-day Fancy should take her wildest scope;— That the rapt milliner should ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... an afternoon of bleak, early spring, Evelyn wandered alone on the shore where she had bidden Jim Willowby farewell. It was raining, and the sea was grey and desolate. The tide was coming in with a fierce roaring that seemed to fill the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the color flushed through his tan. "Why, you are like nothing in the world but a certain Alaska violet I once stumbled on. It was out of season, on a bleak mountainside, where, at the close of a miserable day, I was forced to make camp. A little thing stimulates a man sometimes, and the sight of that flower blooming there when violet time was gone, lifting its head next to a snow-field, nodding ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the heavy snows of a recent winter, a child harper trudged wearily down the Fifth avenue, on his way to the Five Points, where he was to pass the night. It was intensely cold, and the little fellow's strength was so exhausted by fatigue and the bleak night wind that he staggered under the weight of his harp. At length he sat down on the steps of a splendid mansion to rest himself. The house was brilliantly lighted, and he looked around timidly as he seated himself, expecting the usual command to move off. No one noticed him, however, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... high up against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... misery. What that meant I could not tell. Were we not away from such things as mouldering flesh and broken bones? It seemed not; and I climbed madly away from them. Quite suddenly I came to the top, a bleak platform of rock, where I fell prostrate on my ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... times when the weather was bad, and the whole settlement would sink into melancholia. These people were on the bleak hillside, facing the sea. Back of them, hedging them close, was the forest, dim, dark and mysterious. In this wood were bears, wolves, panthers, which in Winter, lured by the smell of food, would occasionally enter the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... and his sister Sue were now going farther down into the sunny South. They had left far behind the bleak and cold of the North where there was ice and snow when they had come away. In Georgia they had found soft winds and balmy skies, but now, as they were headed into Florida, they were to find it ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... backs of horses; but the horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too few, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to assist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... is of the kind that remains in the memory for a long time and is of a quality as moving in its sadness as anything MacDowell ever composed. Its suggested scene seems to be the bleak and icy winter ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... value of its own, and answers to some special requirement in its proper season under glass or in the open ground. In the darkest winter days we prize the glow of Tulips and Hyacinths for brightening our homes. And bleak days are not all past when Aconites and Snowdrops sparkle in beds and borders. The Anemones follow in March, and during the lengthening days of spring there are sumptuous beds of Hyacinths, Narcissi, and Tulips. When high summer begins to decline we have stately groups of Gladioli and many ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... It was bleak and drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... in a bleak house on the edge of a wild, lonely moor," began Migwan. "All winter long the storms howl around the house like angry spirits of the air. To amuse themselves in these long winter evenings this girl and her sisters make up stories about the ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... It was a bleak and empty region. There were no growing things there, not even trees with berries. There were no birds, there were no animals. As Odin, the Father of the Gods, and Loki, the doer of good and the doer of evil, ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... streamers of the aurora, which went racing swiftly back and forth along the northern horizon. Even when the sun rose, huge and fiery, in a haze of frozen moisture at the south, it did not seem to infuse any warmth or life into the bleak wintry landscape. It only drowned, in a dull red glare, the blue, tremulous streamers of the aurora and the white radiance of the moon and stars, tinged the snow with a faint colour like a stormy sunset, and lighted up a splendid mirage ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... he has discerned, I noted not whither I had strayed until a sudden chill wind striking my face revived in me a sense of my surroundings. I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion. Protruded at long intervals above it, stood strangely shaped and somber-colored rocks, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in Jerusalem, Greeting to Caius, his best friend in Rome! Salve! these presents will he borne to you By Lucius, who is wearied with this place, Sated with travel, looks upon the East As simply hateful—blazing, barren, bleak, And longs again to find himself in Rome, After the tumult of its streets, its trains Of slaves and clients, and its villas cool With marble porticoes beside the sea, And friends and banquets—more than all, its games— This life seems blank and flat. ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... was not fully known until after his departure from France. Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;—not to the smiling and fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bleak ocean waste, Through starless nights and dreary sunless days; Wherever currents led o'er pathless maze, I plied the oars of aimless toil, and faced Defeat impatiently, nor ever traced One ray of hope along the murky haze Of life's horizon, ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... the scene. The Sandhills lying to the north of Deal are before us, and the shadows of night are beginning to deepen over the bleak expanse of downs. A fortnight has ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Three bleak, pinched days later the army again took the road to Romney. Four miles from Unger's they began to climb Sleepy Creek Mountain, mounting the great, sparsely wooded slope like a long line of warrior ants. To either hand the view was very fine, North Mountain to the left, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... seen the bleak moon-like landscape through the viewports. They were eager to get out there and plant the flag of Earth and determine what the new world was like. There were only eight of them in the first landing party: others would follow once the ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... close to the churchyard when she spoke. The church, a dreary building of grey stone, was situated in a little valley, so as to be sheltered from the bleak winds blowing over the moorland all round it. The burial-ground advanced, from the side of the church, a little way up the slope of the hill. It was surrounded by a rough, low stone wall, and was bare and open to the sky, except at one extremity, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of the Ghetto was still upon her, blent with a passion of martyrdom that made her yearn for a lower social depth than was really necessary. But the more human aspects of the situation were paramount in the gray chillness of a bleak May dawn. Her resolution to cross the Atlantic forthwith seemed a little hasty, and though she did not flinch from it, she was not sorry to remember that she had not money enough for the journey. She must perforce stay in London till she had earned it; meantime she ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... when all without was bleak and stormy and all within were blithe and gay,—when song and story made the circuit of the festive board, filling up the chasms of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... weariness and discomfort for her guests in wide, unlimited prospects of sun-scorched earth. She marked the gray valley and the black mountains and the wide, red gateway of the desert, and the dim, shadowy peaks, blue as the sky they pierced. She was sorry when the bleak, gnarled cedar-trees shut ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Sir Walter Raleigh had the materials, at the Tower, to write a history; Lafayette, at Olmutz, lived in perpetual expectancy of release; Moore and Byron, children, flowers, birds, and the Muses cheered Leigh Hunt's year of durance: but in this bleak fortress, innocent and magnanimous men beheld the seasons come and go, night succeed day, and year follow year, with no cognizance of kindred or the world's doings,—no works of bard or sage,—no element of life,—but a grim, cold, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... caught his arm in a stony grip. Hours seemed to pass—the pain was past enduring; then the kindly cleft yawned once more, allowing him to jump into the garden below. Simultaneously he heard a crash as the inner rooms of the house fell; then climbed aloft, and for four days wandered among the bleak, wet hills. Thousands were ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... and the sunset, like a dome Against the glory of a world on fire, Now burned a sudden hill, Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, With nothing on it for the flame to kill Save one who moved and was alone up there To loom before the chaos and the glare As if he were the last god going home Unto his last desire. Dark, marvelous, ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... been here that has swept away all difficulties before it and clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of property must have done it. Give a man the sure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden." The italics are my own. When will Arthur Young have his tablet in Westminster ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Nicholas Nickleby. Martin Chuzzlewit. The Old Curiosity Shop. Barnaby Rudge. Dombey and Son. Christmas Books. Sketches by Boz. David Copperfield. American Notes and Pictures from Italy. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Bleak House. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... uninhabited. I could fancy that all this was newly-sprung vegetation. This asteroid had whirled in from the cold of the interplanetary space far outside our Solar System. A few years ago—as time might be measured astronomically, it was no more than yesterday—this fair landscape was congealed white and bleak, with a sweep of glacial ice. But the seeds of life miraculously were here. The miracle of life! Under the warming, germinating sunlight, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the flickering mirage the familiar forms of the Tihmah range, a ridge now broken into half a dozen blocks. I had ordered the caravan to march upon the Tuwayl el-Sk; but, after one hour and fifteen minutes, we found the tents pitched some three miles short of it, on a bleak and ugly wave of the Wghir. The Shaykhs swore, by all holy things, that this was the veritable Tuwayl; and a Bedawi, who declared that he knew where water lay in the neighbourhood, refused ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... gulf, but there was a drawbridge in one place and this the Royal Gardener let down until the outcasts had passed over it. Then he drew it up again and returned with his Roses to the greenhouse, leaving the four queerly assorted comrades to wander into the bleak and unknown country ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of Indian summer and then a drenching rain from the east, which stopped chopping. A black frost today, dark and bleak. Had a letter from Gordon yesterday, who is happy in learning so much that is new to him. He was at Bambray's for dinner last Sabbath and spent an evening at Dunlop's. He will make friends wherever ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective - a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would you freeze the people on this bleak December night! Let us be light, and warm, and merry, or I'll not ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens |
