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Carven   Listen
adjective
Carven  adj.  Wrought by carving; ornamented by carvings; carved. (Poetic) "A carven bowl well wrought of beechen tree." "The carven cedarn doors." "A screen of carven ivory."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Carven" Quotes from Famous Books



... house within with kingly pomp is dight, And in the midmost of the hall a banquet they prepare: Cloths laboured o'er with handicraft, and purple proud is there; Great is the silver on the board, and carven out of gold 640 The mighty deeds of father-folk, a long-drawn tale, is told, Brought down through many and many an one from ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... invented gravely In its bulk the fabric stood, Even as Love, that trusteth bravely In its own exceeding good To be better than the waste Of time's devices; grandly spaced, Seriously the fabric stood. But over it all a pleasure went Of carven delicate ornament, Wreathing up like ravishment, Mentioning in sculptures twined The blitheness Love hath in his mind; And like delighted senses were The windows, and the columns there Made the following sight to ache As the heart that did them make. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... his ease in a huge chair of carven ebony which might have been filched from some stately East Indiaman or a ship of the Grand Mogul himself. He had flung off his coat and the sleeves of a shirt of damask silk were rolled to the elbow. Instead of the great, mildewed sea-boots he wore slippers of crimson leather embroidered ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... listened to what they had to say, Pocahontas bade them go and continue their search. When she was alone she sat down, not on the carven chair a carpenter had made her in Jamestown, but on the floor, as she had so often sat about the lodge fire when ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... necromantic palace, dim and rich, Dim as a dream, rich as a reverie, I knew it all of old, surely I knew This floating twilight tinged with rose and blue, This moon-soft carven niche Whence the calm marble, wan as memory, Slopes to the wine-brimmed bath of cold dark fire Perfumed with ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers, But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed, As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's, One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... again the hall; The stairway leading to that room.—Then all The terror of that night of blood and crime Passes before me.— It is Catherine's time: The house De Herancour's. On floors, splashed red, Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed. Down carven corridors and rooms,—where couch And chairs lie shattered and black shadows crouch Torch-pierced with fear,—a sound of swords draws near— The stir of searching steel. What find they here, Torch-bearer, swordsman, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... he hath hope that when he shall have endured to the end his grievous plague he shall see once more his home, and at Apollo's fountain[19] joining in the feast give his soul to rejoice in her youth, and amid citizens who love his art, playing on his carven lute, shall enter upon peace, hurting and hurt of none. Then shall he tell how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow for Arkesilas, when of late he was the guest ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... over defined and excessively personified. The painted figure of that bearded ancient upon the Sistine Chapel, or William Blake's wild-haired, wild-eyed Trinity, convey no nearer sense of God to me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster from the worship of the South Sea Islanders. And the Miltonic fable of the offended creator and the sacrificial son! it cannot span the circle of my ideas; it is a little thing, and none the less little because it is intimate, flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit, like ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... Now take from me this carven ring of gold. On it is wrought: 'Be true to Rimenhild.' Wear it always on your finger, for my love's sake. The stone in it has such grace that never need you fear any wound nor shrink from any combat, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... the darkness, Sheard began to see more clearly the objects about him. A seated figure of the Pharaoh Seti I. surveyed him with a scorn but thinly veiled; beyond, two towering Assyrian bulls showed gigantic in the semi-light. He could discern, now, the whole length of the lofty hall—a carven avenue; and, as his gaze wandered along that dim vista, he detected a black shape emerging from the blacker ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... voyage, and even whilst Ridgwell and Christine stood with the other children waist-deep in the great carven hold of the sunken Spanish galleon, shovelling out golden doubloons and precious jewels, the sound of Lal's voice came across the water ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of rich furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special shop windows in Fifth Avenue—places where they sold magnificent gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous embroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite different, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan, and there were gleams ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... pleasure, Thirsting for honour and toil, fares forth on a perilous errand Led by the guiding of gods, and strong in the strength of Immortals. Thus have they led me to thee: from afar, unknowing, I marked thee, Shining, a snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of the sea-cliff; Carven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the craftsman. Likeness of Amphitrite, or far-famed Queen Cythereia. Curious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed in the sea-wind, Glistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in thy wailing. Speak again now—Oh ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... sunset he saw something white and gay gleaming through the boles of the oak-trees, and presently there was clear before him a most goodly house builded of white marble, carved all about with knots and imagery, and the carven folk were all painted of their lively colours, whether it were their raiment or their flesh, and the housings wherein they stood all done with gold and fair hues. Gay were the windows of the house; and there was ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... daughters.' And when the northern tribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace. They brought their women and their children: they brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long pleasurable ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... the Geatish men in the banquet-hall on bench assigned, sturdy-spirited, sat them down, hardy-hearted. A henchman attended, carried the carven cup in hand, served the clear mead. Oft minstrels sang blithe in Heorot. Heroes revelled, no dearth of ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... stone lay loose in its place, And a foot might hold in the chink between, The carven niche where the arms had been, And the iron rings in the tower's face; For the scarlet lilies lay broken round, Snapped through at the place where his tread would fall, As he slipped at dawn to the yielding ground, Near the flood that ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob

... at the chain, and a small golden cylinder was revealed, curiously carven. Its lightness told him ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... beauty.... Even in your room everything interests you, because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the objects about you,—the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to sleep;—the immense bed (lit—bateau) of heavy polished wood, with its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;— and its invariable companion, the little couch or sopha, similarly shaped but much narrower, used only for the siesta;— and the thick red earthen vessels (dobannes) ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... Founder! In that ample brow, What brooding weight of genius! In his eye, How strangely was the pathos edged with light! How oft, his churches roaming, flashed its beam From pillar on to pillar, resting long On carven imagery of flower or fruit, Or deep-dyed window whence the heavenly choirs Gave joy to men below! With what a zeal He drew the cunningest craftsmen from all climes To express his thoughts in form; while yet his hand, Like meanest hand among us, patient toiled In garden and in bakehouse, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... mob openly rejoiced when goods were levied upon. Indeed many of the poorer and plainer brethren had little sympathy when such articles as "a looking glass in wide gilt and mahogany frame, with ornamental corners" and "handsome walnut chairs deeply carven and with silken cushions" and "mahogany tea table with carved legs and crow feet" were sold for a quarter of their value. It shows that many of the Friends were not stinted in their household appointments, and must indeed have had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... breed, even so is rose-red Helen the glory of Lacedaemon. No other in her basket of wool winds forth such goodly work, and none cuts out, from between the mighty beams, a closer warp than that her shuttle weaves in the carven loom. Yea, and of a truth none other smites the lyre, hymning Artemis and broad-breasted Athene, with such skill as Helen, within whose ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... long and no moon rises, and nervous, still, is all the air, That small stiff figure moves again, silent amid the hushing grass; In the firm-carven lime tree's shade she moves, and meets her old thoughts there, Then in the deepening dark is lost, or her light ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the lips of ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed at the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat in meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together. Presently, however, struck by the beauty of the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Millicent, I believe I don't care. That carven block of stone has had a curious effect upon me. It has made me think as I have never done before. I want to take the clearest picture away ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world into the waters of which their anchors ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... never been into the church before, and was struck with the fine windows, and the monuments of the Guiscards, and the famous tomb of the Crusader in the wall of the chancel pew where they sat; and all through the service she gazed at his carven face, so exactly like Tristram's, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... "Oh—oh, I should like to see them!" He rose, made her a salaam of grace, parted the hedge once more and disappeared only to return bringing in his hands a curious box of carven ivory, which he set on the table between them and proceeded to unlock with a ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... they had survived. Beneath these booths were spread their goods; silks from Cos, bronze weapons and copper rods, or ingots from the rich mines of Cyprus, linens and muslins from Egypt; beads, idols, carven bowls, knives, glass ware, pottery in all shapes, and charms made of glazed faience or Egyptian stone; bales of the famous purple cloth of Tyre; surgical instruments, jewellery, and objects of toilet; scents, pots of rouge, and other unguents for the use of ladies ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... museum's hall, Upon a snowy bed of carven stone, A statue ever strange and mystical, With some fair ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... great bell responding!—how mighty her voice, though tongueless!—KO-NGAI! All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven perches; all the hundred little bells of the pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-NGAI!—all the green-and-gold tiles of the temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish above them are writhing ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... he was indeed. He was equipped in a wonderful solidity of armour, with a hard, carven helmet on his head, a splendid red-bossed shield swinging on his shoulder, a wide-grooved, straight sword clashing along his thigh. On his shoulders under the shield he carried a splendid scarlet mantle; over ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... the old gray walls, Soon the last stone will be gone, The olden church of the Recollects, We shall look no more upon; And though, perchance, some stately pile May rise its place to fill, With carven piers and lofty towers, Old Church, we shall miss ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... the entrance to the passage, that was impossible. It was easy enough to trace the entrance hall, but the carven beams of the roof had entirely gone, and there was not the slightest trace visible of the grand staircase or the corridor which ran to right and left. Smouldering ashes, calcined stone, and here and there the projecting charred stump of some beam; but ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... Nicholas Bullington, Nicholas Marttin, John Carter, Christopher Hall, David Ellis, uxor Ellis, John Frogmorton, Robert Marshall, Thomas Snow (orig. Swnow), John Smith, Lawrance Smalpage, Thomas Crosse, Thomas Prichard, Richard Crouch, Christopher Redhead, Henry Booth, Richard Carven, uxor Carven, John Howell, William Burtt, William Stocker, Nicholas Roote, Sara Kiddall, infants { Kiddall, { Kiddall, Edward Fisher, Richard Smith, John Wolrich, Mrs. Wolrich, Johathin Giles, Christopher Ripen, Thomas Banks, Frances Butcher, Henry Daivlen, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... himself upon his arm and looked at the two red sentinels. Not a muscle of either had stirred. They were so much carven bronze. Their rifles lay across their knees and they stared fixedly at the forest. But he knew that their eyes and ears were of the keenest and that but little could escape their attention. Yet they had not discovered the presence. He rose finally to his feet. The Indians heard ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... ancient Forest of Fontainebleau, the coach of the Chevalier de Bailleul, carven and gilt in elegant forms of the reign of Louis XVI., and driven with the spirit that belonged to the service of a grand ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... shadow of the Apostle, falling on the sick people, healed them by the Gate Beautiful. The Flight of Nicolete is a familiar and beautiful picture, the daisy flowers look black in the ivory moonlight against her feet, fair as Bombyca's "feet of carven ivory" in the Sicilian idyll, long ago. {4} It is characteristic of the poet that the two lovers begin to wrangle about which loves best, in the very mouth of danger, while Aucassin is yet in prison, and the patrol go down the ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang

... once been the shoes of one who lay here, a princess, dead thousands of years, and once very beautiful, as these carven symbols told. They were small and dainty and threaded with fine gold, and laced across with care about the feet of her who was once a woman and a princess and owner of much beauty, and who was in her life beloved, and in her death mourned; as these graven symbols said. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... tusker, my foe, wrought me trouble When targe upon targe I had carven: For the thin wand of slaughter was shattered And it sundered the ground of my handgrip. Loud bellowed the bear of the sea-king When he brake from his lair in the scabbard, At the hest of the singer, who seeketh The sweet hidden draught of ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... woods and around the shore were the white clusterings of little towns. Where the water filled in the end of a street's vista it was like an insert of blue enameling, and from the city's high places Mount Diavolo could be seen, a pointed gem, surmounting in final sharpness the hill's carven skyline. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... white with moonlight streaming through curtainless open windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat forms, uncovered and prone on their narrow beds, like carven figures of soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... rare flower blossoming in the dark. A single light, in a silver lamp hung by a silver chain, burnt before the altar; all else was dim; but they could see the dark stalls of the choir, with their carven canopies, over which hung the banners of old knights, that moved softly to and fro; beyond were the pillars of the aisles, glimmering faintly in a row. The roof and windows were dark, save where here and there a rib of stone or a tracery stood out very rich and dim. All about there was a ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sweet-smelling and good; it spoke to the heart. Putting a shawl over her head, she rolled the flowers in her apron from the frost, and stepped out into the brilliant day. The little cross-track between her house and the other was snowed up; but she took the road and, hurrying between banks of carven whiteness, went up Solon's path to the side door. She walked in upon him where he was standing over the kitchen stove, warming his hands at the first blaze. Susan's cheeks were red with the challenge of the stinging air, but she had the look of one who, living by a larger ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... He has at bottom the intense melancholy, the looking forward to the end of all, which is the ground-note of the poetry of Villon, and of Ronsard, as of the prose of Chateaubriand. The panelled library in Montaigne's chateau was carven with mottoes, which were to be charms against too great fear of death. "For my part," he says, "if a man could by any means avoid death, were it by hanging a calf-skin on his limbs, I am one that would not be ashamed of the shift." Happy it is, he thinks, that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... in the old-fashioned house in old-fashioned Hackney, where there were traces of the captain's wanderings in the shape of stuffed birds of gorgeous plumage, shells of iridescent tints, masses of well-bleached corals, spears and carven clubs from New Zealand, feather ornaments from Polynesia, boomerangs and nulla-nullas from Australia, ostrich eggs from the Cape, ivory carvings from China, a hideous suit of black iron armour from Japan, and carpets and rugs from India and Persia ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... cobwebbed house was scrubbed and furbished in the living chambers, the ancient silver was exhumed from mildewed cupboards, the heavy oil-paintings were dusted, a lively canary in a bright cage was hung on a marble pillar of the dining-room, over the carven angels; flowers were brought in, and at night, in the soft light of the candles, the traces of year-long neglect being subdued and hidden, a spirit of festivity and gaiety pervaded the house as of natural wont, while the Moorish ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... with me and from a carven arch filled with marble tracery rained radiance that revealed and hid. Pillars stood about me, wonderful with horses ramping forward as in the Siva Temple at Vellore. They appeared to spring from the ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... with the desert, with the burning heaps of carnation and orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilderness, the first brown villages glowing in the late radiance of the afternoon like carven things of bronze, the first oasis of palms, deep green as a wave of the sea and moving like a wave, the first wonder of Sahara warmth and Sahara distance. She passed through the golden door into the blue country, and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... food for furry friends She pass'd, her lamp and she, Till eaves and gable-ends Hid all that saffron sheen from me: Around my rosy tree Once more the silver-starry night was shining, With depths of heaven, dewy and free, And crystals of a carven moon declining. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... sion of the belle Renaissance francaise." "Its height," he goes on, "is divided between two stories, terminat- ing under the roof in a projecting entablature which imitates a row of machicolations. Carven chimneys and tall dormer windows, covered with imagery, rise from the roofs; turrets on brackets, of elegant shape, hang with the greatest lightness from the angles of the building. The soberness ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... cheat: Thou madest with high hope my heart to beat And then didst hurry off and bear with thee All of the gladness thou once gavest me. 'Tis half my heart I lack through this thy taking And what is left is good for naught but aching. Stonecutters, set me up a carven stone And let this sad inscription run thereon: Ursula Kochanowski lieth here, Her father's sorrow and her father's dear; For heedless Death hath acted here crisscross: She should have mourned my ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... impetuous spirit, the white flame That was her soul once, whither has it flown? Above her brow gray lichens blot her name Upon the carven stone. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... a carven man. Indeed, only by an added rigidity in his pose did he reward Paul Harley's intense scrutiny. A silence charged with drama was finally broken by the American. "Mr. Harley," he said, "you told me that you were up against the big proposition of ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... gather the rose that blossomed in his path, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When he called to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love words across the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of metal. When he was athirst and shouted to his cupbearer for drink, the red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the pulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo! at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of his harem, saying, 'Here ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees, The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly And sway like masts, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... or cells asleep Without mind? Or do they come to earth, their birth Rupturing the memory of previous being? Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours. But in any case why not plant willows for them, As well as for us? Marie Bateson You observe the carven hand With the index finger pointing heavenward. That is the direction, no doubt. But how shall one follow it? It is well to abstain from murder and lust, To forgive, do good to others, worship God Without graven images. But these are external means after all By which ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... and there, were mural paintings of knights in armour, and fat peasants drinking, dimmed and half obliterated. Beneath were legends and proverbs, printed in quaint, old-German characters; while across one end, like a frieze, ran a ledge carven with gargoyles, rude and misshapen. On the ledge were beer mugs of every size and description, with queer tops and crooked handles. Above, suspended from the ceiling by chains, hung a huge Fass; and from the throats of the gargoyles, dragon ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... and looked it over with real admiration. It was a flimsily beautiful and costly thing; whose ivory handle was deftly carven and set with several uncut stones; and whose deep fringe of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... searching dark eyes saw the end of this fight, this battle of the strong. The face fascinated him, though it awed him. He admired it, even as he detested the ardent strength of Detricand's face, where the wrinkles of dissipation had given way to the bronzed carven look ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... excitement had given way to tender memories of the dedication of Minerva's temple in her old home. Inside the spacious Roman portico, with its columns of African marble and its wonderful images of beasts and mortals and gods, and in front of the gleaming temple, with its doors of carven ivory and the sun's chariot poised above its gable peak, she had been conscious chiefly of a longing to see once more the homely market-place of Assisi, to climb the high steps to the exquisite temple-porch which faced southward toward the sunbathed valley, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... Gracious, with her free consent, Whose image was the sure defence of Troy;— Yea, for not even a God, how wroth soe'er, Had power to lay the City of Priam waste While that immortal shape stood warder there. No man had carven that celestial form, But Cronos' Son himself had cast it down From heaven to ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... Madonna lilies flourished like sculpture about the porch, and he admired their tall stems and leaves and carven blossoms, thinking how they would die without strife, without complaint. The briar filled the air with a sweet, apple-like smell; and far away the lake shone in the moonlight, just as it had a thousand years ago when the raiders returned ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... the things that were to him matters of everyday, touched him. She stood a moment in the door of the dining-room, gazing in delight at the long carven oak table, with Florentine candelabra at each end and a strip of filet across the center, at either side of which their plates were laid, separated by a vase of white alabaster, holding a few hothouse roses, crimson as blood. Untrained ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... you wear two," says Patteson, "one at your girdle, and one that nobody sees. We alle wear the unseen one, you know. Some have theirs of gold, alle carven and shaped, soe as you hardlie tell it for a cross ... like my lord cardinall, for instance ... but it is one, for alle that. And others, of iron, that eateth into their hearts ... methinketh Master Roper's must be one of 'em. For me, I'm content ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... finely carven features! Yes, but carved From some clear stuff, not like a woman's flesh, And colored like half-faded, white-rose leaves. 'Tis all too thin, and wan, and wanting blood, To take my taste. No fulness, and no flush! A watery half-moon in a wintry sky Looks less uncomfortably cold. And ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... woman passed before Sir Tristram, he beheld that she wore upon her thumb a very fair and shining ring, that bare a green stone set in wrought gold. And when he looked again he saw it was that ring of carven emerald that he had given to ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... residence in Shoreby was a tall, commodious, plastered mansion, framed in carven oak, and covered by a low-pitched roof of thatch. To the back there stretched a garden, full of fruit-trees, alleys, and thick arbours, and over-looked from the far end by the tower of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... found, nothing surprised and charmed him more than the greeting which the children of her public schools gave him. It spoke to him of a refined and graceful life, such as he could never have imagined in the young city so lately carven out the forests; and such proofs of the general culture must have done more than all the signs of material prosperity, all the objects of industry so proudly shown him, to make him regard Ohio (to use his own words) as the eighth wonder of the world. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... of carven angels a woman stood for a second looking down upon the man below. She had come quite suddenly from a door in the great gallery, and she paused for a moment on the topmost stair to survey the stranger ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Im Hexenlicht und Elfenschein Vhere blooty Druids omens trew From grin und screech of shaps dey slew; Or vhere der Norseman long of yore Vas carven eagles on de shore, As o'er him yell de Valkyr broot Und crows valk round knee teep im ploot, Vhile rabens schkreem o'er ruddy bay; Dere - ten pottles troonk - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral, Four angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders, The first with reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume Of beard that twinkled with frost, and hung to the icicled borders That fringed his girdle beneath: ancient ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... which sometimes, under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eyeballs, and breast like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational Demon would awake unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... same place like a carven woman. She waited for him with wide, harassed eyes. As he came ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... upon him. Nor was this mere fancy nor dream. Near him sat a monk, and from under the black hood the face that peered forth at him was gaunt, cadaverous, with eyes that seemed to burn straight through the lad. But for the eyes, this figure could well have been carven, so still and immovable did it sit there and gaze at the youth. Nor did the monk speak far many minutes even though he must have known that the boy ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... roof recall the Swiss chalet, but the side and back walls are of stone often heavily buttressed. The cattle occupy the ground-floor, and the first storey is reached often by an outside staircase. The carven tombstones with their ornaments resemble those of Celtic countries, and are found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... and afterwards wipes it very carefully with his handkerchief. MANSON stands, as though carven in marble, waiting for him to ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... his death: he is spoken for. He would not sail because, when he rode down Unto the ship, his horse stumbled and threw him, His face toward the Lithe and his own fields. Olaf the Peacock bade him be with him In his new mighty house so carven and bright, And leave this house to Rannveig and his sons: He said that would be well, yet never goes. Is he not thinking death would ride with him? Did not Njal offer to send his sons, Skarphedin ugly and brave and Hauskuld with him, To hold this house with Gunnar, ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... and thy soul and as wise and deft as be thy wrists and thine hands, and their very fellows. Now as to thy face: under that smooth forehead is thy nose, which is of measure, neither small nor great, straight, and lovely carven at the nostrils: thine eyen are as grey as a hawk's, but kind and serious, and nothing fierce nor shifting. Nay, now thou lettest thine eyelids fall, it is as fair with thy face as if they were open, so smooth and simple are they and with their long full lashes. But well are thine eyen ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... and quaintly carven balconies were noisy with shrill voices. Every self-respecting house was plastered with fresh mud; every window and doorway garlanded with marigold and jasmine buds; every brain, absorbed in the paramount speculation, as to how the sacrificial ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... up her little scarlet cloak from out the carven chest, and as Ezra came past the door, leading the little gray donkey, she flung it across her ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... straggling street was closed by the old church with its squat tower, whose carven doorways and capitals were wont to attract to the place many a traveler learned in archaeology; for it was a famous building in its way, and was honorably mentioned ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... a carven chest by the open window, where the asters sent out a spicy odour and the hum of bees was not too far distant, and dropped her chin into the cup of ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... old hall! built in the time of the Tudors, with a great carven fireplace, mullioned windows in deep square bays, and a ceiling carved with fans, shields, and roses. "Bow-pots" stood on the sills, full of rose-leaves and spices, huge antlers and trophies of weapons adorned the walls, and the polished floor, almost black with age, shone ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... blocks of coral. There was a statue or two of some indefinable white material, glistening like marble and yet so soft that it had been indented in several places by accidental pressure. There were fans of strangely-woven silk, with sticks of carven rock-crystal, and hand mirrors of polished copper set in frames of gems that he did not recognize. Upon the wall were mended bits of purple tapestry, embroidered or painted or woven in singular patterns of flora and birds that St. George could not ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... from the carven box, and walked back to the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know. She ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... at the dark old beauty of the Broodhuis, or at the wondrous carven fronts of other Spanish houses, or at the painted stories of the cathedral windows, or at the quaint colors of the shipping on the quay, or at the long dark aisles of trees that went away through the forest, where her steps had never wandered,—sometimes ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... our great hall there stood a vacant chair, Fashion'd by Merlin ere he past away, And carven with strange figures; and in and out The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll Of letters in a tongue no man could read And Merlin call'd it 'The Siege perilous,' Perilous for good and ill; 'for there,' he said, 'No man could sit but he ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round, and fat, and white; and hideous laughter seemed to have writhed its features into an eternal grin. From the eyes streamed rays of scarlet light, the mouth was a wide well of ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... tale was told there of the griefs of the lowly; Till he took up the word, mid the trembling of tyrants, As his calm voice and cold wrought death on ill doers— —E'en so might King Minos in marble there carven Mid old dreaming of Crete give doom on the dead, When the world and its deeds are dead too and buried.— But lo, as I looked, his clenched hands were loosened, His lips grew all soft, and his eyes were beholding Strange things we beheld not about and above him. So he sat for a while, and then ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... the queen to Tancred, looking at a statue in golden ivory, and then at the young Englishman, whose clear-cut features and hyacinthine locks curiously resembled those of the carven image. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... misfortune; a melancholy Jacques, stretched by the river bank, moralising on the bleeding deer; a fair Rosalind, chanting her saucy cuckoo-song; fools like Touchstone—not like those of our acquaintance, my friends; and the whole place, from centre to circumference, filled with mighty oak bolls, all carven with lovers' names,—if such a forest waved in wind, I say, I would, be my worldly prospects what they might, pack up at once, and cast in my lot with that vagabond company. For there I should find more gallant courtesies, finer sentiments, completer innocence and happiness, more wit ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... waiting. In his stall sat the rector with downcast eyes. Malling could not at that moment discern his expression. His large figure and important powerful head and face showed almost like those of a carven effigy in the lowered light of the chancel. The choirboys did not stir, and the small, fair man in the pulpit, raising his thin hands, and resting them on the marble ledge, continued quietly, taking up his sermon with a repetition ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... that every one has his own apartments and his own privacy secure, this disposition to own has found its release in a new direction. Men study and save and strive that they may leave behind them a series of panels in some public arcade, a row of carven figures along a terrace, a grove, a pavilion. Or they give themselves to the penetration of some still opaque riddle in phenomena as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work that was once the whole substance of social ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... done; the echoes of the following notes of the violin fainted and died among the carven angels of the roof. It was ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... the stallion, sinking, emerged again by means of the powerful beat of his legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman who rode him—a woman as white as the white silken slip of a bathing suit that molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept under the silken suit as she strove to keep her head above water. Her slim round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... sleeveless red tunic fell. Incredibly old the creature was—and by its corded muscles, its sinewy tendons, as incredibly powerful. It raised within me a half sick revulsion, loathing. But the eyes were not ancient, no. Irisless, lashless, black and brilliant, they blazed out of the face's carven web of wrinkles, intent upon Norhala and filled with a flame ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... From carven walls above me, smile lovers; many a pair. "Oh, take this rose and love me!" she has twined it in her hair. He advances, she retreating, pursues and holds her fast, The sculptor left them meeting, in ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... into the hall again, and stood for a moment like a carven statue looking at the maidens who wrought at packing what they might. She had not wept, but in her face was written sorrow beyond weeping. Yet almost did she weep, when I stood beside her and spoke, putting ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... whose hollow threshold the eye of fancy may see the ghosts of monks and the shadows of abbots pass noiselessly to and fro? What is a paltry piazza to a beautiful ambulatory of the thirteenth century—a long stone gallery or cloister repeated in two stories, with the interstices of its carven lattice now glazed, but with its long, low, narrow, charming vista still perfect and picturesque—with its flags worn away by monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched doorways opening from its inner side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals? What are the longest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! —While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears, And Hogni casts ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... the stone-paved courtyard of a ruined temple. In the centre lies a square pool, with wide rows of steps leading down to the water, now overgrown with lotus plants. Around the court rise long colonnades of pillars with grotesquely carven bases and capitals of luxuriant design. Beyond these appear green masses of dense tropical foliage, in which an ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... stood for a moment, he quiet as a carven statue and I restless but obedient to his wishes. When he stirred I carefully lit the candles, but I did not look at him till he had donned his cloak and pulled his hat well over his eyes. Then I turned, ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... minute, I did see it again; but whether it did be the shape of some utter monster of eternity—even as the Watchers about the Mighty Pyramid—or whether it did be no more than a carven mountain of rock, shaped unto the dire picturing of a Monster, I did have no knowing. But I made that I should get hence very quick, and I did turn me about in the bushes, and went upon my hands and knees; and so came at last a great ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... She had moved aside and away from him on her knees; her head remained turned, too, and her features were set as though carven out of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... years, and lo! the roots of grass Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass, The gilded ornaments, the carven stones Lay tumbled all ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... I remember, and the carven oak, The long and polished floors, the many stairs, Th' heraldic windows, and the velvet chairs, And portraits that I knew so ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West

... dwarfed nodosities of pine, Mixed with old alphabets, and faded lore Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood, Or gathered by the daughters when they walked Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous. Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead; Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road; And feebler than the doting knees of eld, His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane Across the war-walls of the Anakim, Made vain and shaken haste. Good need was his ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... eyes, flashing, fearless gazed To where 'mid pomp and splendor three there sate. One, 'neath a glittering crown, shrunk sore amazed; One cringed upon the carven throne of state, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... to his feet with a shout, and shook from his neck a little crab with a back like green velvet and legs like carven garnet. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... sleepless care oppressed, On many a night had risen, and addressed His hand to make him out of joy and moan An image of sweet sleep in carven stone, Light touch by touch, in weary moments planned, He would have wrought her with a patient hand, Not like her brother death, with massive limb And dreamless brow, unstartled, changeless, dim, But ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... regaining a clearer physical vision, he regained a clearer mental vision likewise. Purpose asserted itself as against mere blind acquiescence. Iglesias looked up, demanding as of right some measure of consolation, some object promising help. So doing, his eyes sought a certain carven oak panel set in an ebony frame. From his earliest childhood he remembered it, for it had hung in his mother's bedchamber; and in those far-away years, while she still had sufficient force to disregard opposition and make an open practice of prayer, she had kneeled before it when engaged in her devotions. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the cue for half the other homes of the ultra-aristocratic set. Annie's servants had been in the Von Behrens family for years; there was nothing in the Avenue house, or the Newport summer home, that was not as handsome, as old, as solid, as carven, as richly dull, or as purely shining, as human ingenuity could contrive to have it. Collectors saved their choicest discoveries for Annie; and there was no painter in the new world who would not have been proud to have Annie place a canvas of his ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... almost inconceivably numerous. The river front is nine hundred feet in length, with an elaborately decorated facade with carven statues and emblems. By 1860 the cost had exceeded by a ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... things with a restless religion, that wakes you up about 3 A.M. on a wintry dawn to pray shiveringly to a piece of wood, to the tune of a thumping drum. Some morning when the frost was on the cypress that carven image ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... the carven box which the shrieking oracle commended to me. "Take this," it said, "take this, and it will turn the blackness of exile ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... muscles of Prince's leg and shoulder and flank corded. The trembling passed; he was like a horse carven in bluish granite. He shook his head a little. Judith, her hand tightening upon the reins, held his head well up, the severe bit thwarting the attempt to get his ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... and when my lord Duke was announced he entered the saloon, to behold my lady sitting by the firelight in a carven gilded chair, her eyes upon the glowing coals, her thoughts plainly preoccupied. On hearing his name she slightly started, and on his entry rose and gave him her soft warm hand, which he did not kiss because its ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights—the sombre blazoned shields which cluster along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, Veit Stoss's masterpiece, the Annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... from its presence with mournful step and sorrowful countenance; whereupon the brethren, seeing themselves thus denuded of wealth they had hoped to enjoy, gave utterance to a groan doubtless much greater in volume than that emitted by the carven statue, which wooden figure may be seen to-day in the museum of the modern Castle of Sayn by any one who cares to spend the fifty ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... them, and, reaching a broad terrace, find myself face to face with a wonderful gate, topped by a tilted, peaked, many- cornered Chinese roof. It is all strangely carven, this gate. Dragons are inter-twined in a frieze above its open doors; and the panels of the doors themselves are similarly sculptured; and there are gargoyles— grotesque lion heads—protruding from the eaves. And the whole is grey, stone-coloured; to me, nevertheless, the carvings ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... in the place he lay as he were dead. His breast to-bursten with his saddle-bow. As black he lay as any coal or crow, So was the blood y-run into his face. Anon he was y-borne out of the place With hearte sore, to Theseus' palace. Then was he carven* out of his harness. *cut And in a bed y-brought full fair and blive* *quickly For he was yet in mem'ry and alive, And always crying ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... a rigid carven statue in the midst of a barren sandy waste in the vast cup of a towering volcano top—sand that was in reality coarse pumice and ash. This was a place of death, a place where raging fires had left nothing for plant or animal life. And, ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... long ropes of coral and of jade, And beaten gold that clung like coils of kisses love-inlaid; About my naked ankles tawny topaz chains you wound, With clasps of carven ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eye passed to the long table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony, and gleaming with wrought silver and gold. In the center of it was a huge carven bowl, with the glistening gleam of ferns and the red and purple of rare orchids, glowing from a light ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... in piteous wise She lifted up her look to ask, Except the ever-burning eyes His face was like a marble mask. And so it always meets her now; The tomb wherein at last he lies Shall bear such carven lips and brow, All save ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... world." He held up his carven obscenity. "He made the World out of himself. This is a make-like to ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... they are, and they wear a wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy of stature and wonderful in the casting of their great carven spears. Also do they excel in the use of the bow. Warlike and suspicious, scouting every inch of country before them, they come down by way of Dear Lake,—and the young Nor'wester at Fort Brisac has already sent forth ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... a figure fearsomely Celtic in its hideousness, resembling the gargoyles which peer down upon the traveller from the carven 'top-hamper' of so many Breton churches. Black and menacing of countenance, these demon-folk are armed with feline claws, and their feet end in hoofs like those of a satyr. Their dark elf-locks, small, gleaming eyes, red as carbuncles, and harsh, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... On a carven couch in slumber lay the Lady Gwineth Grey, Traces of a smile yet lingering on a cheek of rosy May— On the softest velvet slumbering, in a mist of golden hair, Trembling on her heaving bosom, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... yet sing on to him that hath ears to hear. When he returns to seek them, the shadowy door will open to his touch, the long-drawn aisles receding will guide his eye to the carven choir, and there they still stand, the sweet singers, content to repeat ancient psalm and new song to the prayer of the humblest whose heart would join ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... archery: Her liplets twain old wine contain, * And dews of fount-like purity: Her teeth resemble strings o' pearls, * Arrayed in line and fresh from sea: Her neck is like the neck of doe, * Pretty and carven perfectly: Her bosom is a marble slab * Whence rise two breasts like towers on lea: And on her stomach shows a crease * Perfumed with rich perfumery; Beneath which same there lurks a Thing * Limit of mine expectancy. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... stare Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there As in vague hope some alien lance of light Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight— The salt and bitter blood of her despair— Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair And grip toward God with anguish infinite. And O the carven mouth, with all its great Intensity of longing frozen fast In such a smile as well may designate The slowly-murdered heart, that, to the last, Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate Throbs Love's eternal lie—"Lo, I ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... her eyes, but in the darkness she saw again the smiling face of the woman who had ruined her life; she saw the graceful figure in the chapel medallion, the voluptuous parted lips of the carven angel who held the canopy over the pulpit, the delicately chiselled features of the Aphrodites and the nymphs which she had been forced to pass in the palace, and each one of which bore a resemblance to ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... and waved her sceptre, whereon all the company bowed thrice, then turned and breaking into some sweet, low chant that sounded like a lullaby, marched, rank after rank, across the width of the Sanctuary and through the carven doors which closed behind ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... head was certainly lower than the feet of a being who examined you sternly from the other side of the glass. Your head was also far below the sills of the mighty windows of the ground-floor. There were two storeys above the ground-floor, and above them a projecting eave of carven stone that threatened the uplifted eye like a menace. The tenth part of a slate, the merest chip of a corner, falling from the lofty summit of that pile, would have slain elephants. And all the facade was black, black with ages of carbonic deposit. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... out, when one morrow Dame Joan de Vaux brought word that the Queen, being a-cold, commanded her velvet mantle taken to her cabinet: and I, as the dame in waiting then on duty, took the same to her. I found her sat of a chair of carven wood, beside the brasier, and two gentlemen of the other side of the hearth. Behind her chair Dame Elizabeth waited, and I gave the mantle to her to cast over the Queen's shoulders. The gentlemen stood with their backs to the light, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... deserves, I bear this marble sphere, Whose hollowed husk, well polished, gleaming clear, Hides rarest fruit." Therewith the globe he showed, The half whereof smooth-sparkling was: Half glowed With carven work; embossed with pale leaves light, And delicately sculptured birds in flight, And clustered flowers frail. Lilith drew near With beaming eyes, and laid the graven sphere Against her smiling lips; ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... high admiration, never touch any chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. Its bare, shadowless walls, unadorned by carven columns or memorial statues, will stand incapable of affording support for those associations which endear every human work of worth, covering it with praise and remembrance, as the ivy clings to the stone, adding beauty to beauty,—associations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... They reached the carven rood-screen, and at a sign kneeled down. In a clear voice the clergyman began the service; presently, at another sign, the pair rose, advanced to the altar-rails and again knelt down. The moonlight, flowing through the ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... against King Harry," returned Robert, "no more than against a carven saint in a church, and he is about as much of a king as old stone King Edmund, or King Oswald, or whoever he is, over the porch. He is welcome to reign as long as he likes or lives, provided he lets our Duke ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Of carven figures there are several besides the standard bearer already mentioned. The best is a figure of Cybele, with elaborate draperies, but unfortunately headless; another, of Victory, holds a palm branch in the left hand, but the right ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... eyes gaze with longing on Kona; A fire-wreath glows aback of the district, And a robe of wonderful green 5 Lies the sea that has aproned my loins Off the point of Hana-malo. A dark burnished form is Hawaii, To one who stands on the mount— A hamper swung down from heaven, 10 A beautiful carven shape is the island— Thy mountains, thy splendor of herbage: Mauna-kea and Loa stand (in glory) apart, To him who looks from Maile-hahei; And Kilohana pillows for rest 15 ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... fool's talk," cried the archer; "for being a man of no learning myself, my tongue turns to blades and targets, even as my hand does. Know then that for every parchment in England there are twenty in France. For every statue, cut gem, shrine, carven screen, or what else might please the eye of a learned clerk, there are a good hundred to our one. At the spoiling of Carcasonne I have seen chambers stored with writing, though not one man in our Company could read them. Again, in Arles and Nimes, and other towns that I ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... lord of all lands near by, commanded for the closer knowledge of the gods that Their images should be carven in Runazar, and in all lands near by. And when Althazar's command, wafted abroad by trumpets, came tinkling in the ear of all the gods, right glad were They at the sound of it. Therefore men quarried marble from ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... power, as soul in thee increased! But, knowing this, in knowledge's despite I fret against the law severe that stains Thy spirit with eclipse; When—as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone - Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. Memnonian lips! Smitten with singing from thy mother's east, And murmurous with music not their own: Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone, and onyx now for the sun's mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... pointed out that these words were not carved deeply and regularly, like the rest of the inscription, but roughly scratched, as if with a sharp point. And that although merely so scratched, they had never been effaced, but were even more easily read than the carven script. ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards



Words linked to "Carven" :   uncarved, literature, sculpted, inscribed, engraved, incised, graven, sculptured



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