"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His sister, wife, and children yawned, With a long, slow, and drear ennui, All human patience far beyond; 715 Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and He only, deals with sin, considered as guilt. Here is the living secret and centre of all Christ's preciousness and power—that He died on the Cross; and in His spirit, which knew the drear desolation of being forsaken by God, and in His flesh, which bore the outward consequences of sin, in death as a sinful world knows it, 'bare our sins and carried our sorrows,' so that 'by His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... flat sapphire, void of wrath or glee, Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to bank The weary Mediterranean, drear to see. ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... making many books,' 'twas said, 'There is no end;' and who thereon The ever-running ink doth shed But proves the words of Solomon: Wherefore we now, for Colophon, From London's City drear and dark, In the year Eighteen-eighty-one, Reprint them at ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... tell One syllable to a soul:—and so farewell!" He galloped off without another word, And vanished where the road turned. Gawayne heard, Long after he had disappeared, the sound Of iron hoof-beats on the frozen ground, Till all died into silence, save those drear And hollow voices ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another. And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from Sneffels from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of the earth. The wondrous changes of this expedition had transported us to the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands. We had abandoned the region of eternal snows for that of infinite verdure, and had left over ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... it not good for the Christian's health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... away, only to New England; but without Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him, working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on new graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a coureur des bois on the prairies, again that he was ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... plainer, and yet more beautiful habiliments of your sires. Let the sturdy oak be your tailor; when you need a vernal gown, seek the spreading chestnut tree and from its upper branches pluck the clothing that you need, and when drear winter comes upon the scene hie you to the mountain top, and from the rich stock of Hemlock, Pine and Co., Tailors, By Special Appointment To Their Majesties, The Eternal Hills, gather the sartorial blessings that there ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... than nought Without my God—how desolate and drear! A mockery Earth with her vain splendors fraught— A gilded pageant every rolling sphere; The noonday sun with all his glories crowned, A sickly flame, would glimmer faint and pale; And all Earth's melodies, their sweetness drowned, Be but the ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... High expectation, high delights and deeds, Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved. And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast, And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout Of all-unarmed Achilles, aegis-crowned. And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores And seas and forests drear, island and dale And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st Or Bedevere, in farthest Lyonesse. Thou hadst a booth in Samarcand, whereat Side-looking Magians trafficked; thence, by night, An Afreet snatched thee, and with wings upbore Beyond ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spied and about he pried, Amid the bushes so dark and drear, Till sight he got of a little cot Where fire and light ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... ever strove to recover itself, and was ever borne away in the rush of invading fancies; but through it all was the nameless unrest, not an aching, nor a burning, nor a stinging, but a bodily grief, dark, drear, and nameless. How could they have borne ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, or ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... 585 Admiring PROSERPINE through dusky glades Led the fair phantom to Elysian shades, Clad with new form, with finer sense combined, And lit with purer flame the ethereal mind. —Erewhile, emerging from infernal night, 590 The bright Assurgent rises into light, Leaves the drear chambers of the insatiate tomb, And shines and charms with renovated bloom.— While wondering Loves the bursting grave surround, And edge with meeting wings the yawning ground, 595 Stretch their fair necks, and leaning o'er the brink View the pale regions of the dead, and shrink; ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... There where her knight in slumber lay; And in her lily hand was seen A band that seemed of the moonlight sheen. "We are one," she sang, as about his hair She twined it, and over her tresses fair. Beneath them the world lay dark and drear: But he felt the touch of her hand so dear, Uplifting him far above mortals' sight, While around him were shed her locks of light, Till a garden fair lay about him spread— And this was ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... what a drear dark close to my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed! Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's. Oh, lark, be day's ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... disposition toward the people they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and sad that lady grieved, In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear, And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... heart of the Caucasus mountains a wild storm was gathering. Drear shadows drooped and thickened above the Pass of Dariel,—that terrific gorge which like a mere thread seems to hang between the toppling frost-bound heights above and the black abysmal depths below,—clouds, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... worship God in desk and pew As conscience may to them dictate, Without control of king, or state, Or Papal "bull," or legate's rod— Only accountable to God. On Sunday night he reached Dunbar. From darkened sky gleamed not a star; The way he travelled o'er was drear, Made doubly so by Scotchmen's fear. At his approach like sheep they fled, Made frantic by an awful dread Of red-hot irons, spear, and sword, Of breasts thrust thro', and bodies gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... are here! Though your smiling turn to weeping, Though your skies grow cold and drear, Though your gentle winds are sleeping, April! April! you ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... suddenly, and filled me with a sense of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar mental experience, when the drear fact ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... I leave thee, thou land to my infancy dear, Ere I know aught of toil or of woe, For the clime of the stranger, the solitude drear, And a thousand ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his magic, Swept the gifted peasant on— Though his feet were on the greensward, Light from heaven around him shone; At his conjuration, demons Issued from their darkness drear; Hovering round on silver pinions, Angels stoop'd his songs to hear; Bow'd the Passions to his bidding, Terror gaunt, and Pity calm; Like the organ pour'd his thunder, Like the lute ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... god of slavery-the god we worship, has no use for such temples; public libraries are his prison; his civilization is like a dull dead march; he is the enemy of his own heart, vitiating and making drear whatever he touches. He wages war on art, science, civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples reared for the enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a cotton-bag his judgment-seat. But we ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Christmas!" Through the winter chill, The singing spring—hot summer and drear fall, You go your way, seeking for good, not ill, Remembering life's joy and not its gall; Clasping the hand that trembles, when you may, Spending your love whole-heartedly the while For those who need it now, nor wait that day When they no longer care ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My glory out ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... wealthy now, it's sad beyond a doubt; We cannot dodge prosperity, success has found us out. Your eye is very dull and drear, my brow is creased with care, We realize how hard it is to be a millionaire. The burden's heavy on our backs—you're thinking of your rents, I'm worrying if I'll invest in five or six per cents. We've limousines, and marble halls, and flunkeys by the score, We play the part . . . but say, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... electric with patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be expected of men who have been tried ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... this ancient place, Stands in a garden drear, A wreck with other wrecks; The Past is there, but no one sees a face ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... by our sides all the night. They are innocent of all intent of evil—of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was dry and yellow, and the hut itself looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet of her companion,—an aged dame of tall and imposing appearance, who, standing erect, looked down upon her with an air of mingled contempt and malevolence. The hut was rather dark, for ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... had sat staring out at the drear stretches of desert dripping under the dismal rain that streaked the car windows. The clouds hung leaden and gray close over the earth; the smoke from the engine trailed a funereal plume across the grease-wood covered ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... sitting his horse before him on the endless winter road was one not easily daunted by outward aspects. Nevertheless he had at this moment, in the back of his head, a weary consciousness that war was roseate only to young boys and girls, that the day was cold and drear, the general hostile, the earth overlaid with dull misery, that the immortals, if there were any, must be clamouring for the curtain to descend forever upon this shabby human stage, painful and sordid, with its strutting tragedians and its bellman's cry of World Drama! The ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... All the lonesome while. Oh the mile after mile, And never a stile! And never a tree or a stone! She has not a tear: Afar and anear It is all so drear, But she does not care, Her heart is ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... it not been for her, he would have fled before Mrs. Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Cayuga, and the silvery water so famed in song; but, in contrast to all this, she was shut up in a dingy car, whose one dim lamp sent forth a sickly ray and sicklier smell, while without all was gloomy, dark, and drear. No wonder, then, that when toward morning Maude, who missed her soft, nice bed, began to cry for Janet and for home, the mother too burst forth in tears and choking sobs, which could ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... stretched on the mat. A trumpet sounds through the fog, 5 Dimmed are the stars in the sky; When the night is clear, how they twinkle! Lani-kaula's torches look double, The torches that burn for Kane. Ghostly and drear the walls of Waipio 10 At the endless blasts of Kiha-pu. The king's awa fails to console him; 'Tis the all-night conching of Kiha-pu. Broken his sleep the whole winter; Downcast and sad, sad and downcast, 15 At loss to find a brave hunter Shall steal the damned conch from ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm, beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... days seemed to grow short and drear with deeper shadows than common, as the last were to see the boys go off for Shagarack. The fingers that knitted grew more tremulous, and the eyes that wrought early and late were dim with more than weariness; but neither fingers nor eyes gave themselves any holiday. The work was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... gifts, a good schooling; and, for his special mission, he doubtless "left school" just at the proper moment. Had he remained longer in slavery—had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of manhood and its passions, until the drear agony of slave-wife and slave-children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences—then, not only would his own history have had another termination, but the drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied; for I cannot resist the belief, that the boy who learned ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... voice hath breathed upon mine ear Thy name since last we met; No sound disturbed the silence drear, Where sleep entombed from year to year, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sage, who keeps in check His baser self, who lives at his own beck, Whom neither poverty nor dungeon drear Nor death itself can ever put in fear, Who can reject life's goods, resist desire, Strong, firmly braced, and in himself entire, A hard smooth ball that gives you ne'er a grip, 'Gainst whom when Fortune runs, she's sure to trip. Such are the marks of freedom: look them through, And tell ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... stillness fresh and audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,— "Pe-ree! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... they were ashen and sober, The streets they were dirty and drear, It was the dark month of October, In that most immemorial year. Like the skies, I was perfectly sober, But my thoughts they were palsied and sear, Yes, my ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, that they were ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... wearily the days and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The result was that he at length abandoned all hope of being exchanged, and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... cairn are fixed her eyes Where her murdered father lies, And a voice remote and drear She ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and in such lonesomeness, Lad would gladly have tossed aside all prejudices of caste,—and all his natural dislikes, and would have frolicked in mad joy with the veriest stranger. Anything was better than this drear solitude throughout the million hours before the first of the maids should be stirring or the first of the farmhands report for work. Yes, night was a disgusting time; and it had not one single redeeming ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... people, doomed by John Adair's decree? Some linger in the drear poor-house—some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch—back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high. None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch, Or shelter by a warm hearthstone ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... With this bell, instead of words, Wakens souls from life's illusions, Lightens this world's darkness drear. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Camball, and of Algarsife, And who had Canace to wife, That owned the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchieft in a comely cloud While rocking winds are piping loud, Or ushered with a shower still, When ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... little to meet his words of cheer and look of sympathy; and Sarah came and stood by his shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... the haven of his bed— There slept and moaned, cried out, and woke, and slept: Through all the netted labyrinth of his brain The fever shot its pent malignant fire. 'Twas evening when to passing consciousness He woke and saw his father by his side: His guardian form in every vision drear That followed, watching shone; and the healing face Of his true sister gleamed through all his pain, Soothing and strengthening with cloudy hope; Till, at the weary last of many days, He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... no one dream of that drear night to be, Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, The ship met ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... me, this dungeon still I see, This drear accursed masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, With glasses, boxes, round me stacked ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... old gentleman with a delicate face, who wore his own white hair, was bending over a book at a desk. The room was warmly furnished, the door of the stove stood open, and Wogan could see the logs blazing merrily. A chill wind swept across the lawn, very drear and ghostly. Wogan crept closer to the window. A great boar-hound rose at the old man's feet and growled; then the old man rose, and crossing to the window pressed his face against the panes with his ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... sometimes to the length of twenty, thirty, and even forty miles. Anything more grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals, as we passed across from bluff to bluff, it is impossible to conceive. Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's hell—so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... will calmly bend me to my doom, And wait the hour which is approaching fast, When triple light shall stream upon mine eyes, And heaven itself be opened up at last To him who dared foretell its mysteries. I have had visions in this drear eclipse Of outward consciousness, and clomb the skies, Striving to utter with my earthly lips What the diviner soul had half divined, Even as the Saint in his Apocalypse Who saw the inmost glory, where enshrined Sat He who fashioned glory. This hath ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... these forest-lands, yet in thy song is never a word of love! O blind! O blind! for I tell thee nought exists in this great world but by love. Behold now, these sighing trees love their lord the sun, and, through the drear winter, wait his coming with wide-stretched, yearning arms, crying aloud to him in every shuddering blast the tale of their great longing. And, after some while, he comes, and at his advent they clothe themselves anew in all their beauty, and with his warm breath thrilling through each fibre, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... With a grief so drear, That the years may stay When their graves are near; Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright, With love and with beauty, with life and with light, The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier, To the hearts that survive them, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... voluble secretary of the dead man, because, having no hatred left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... snow was deeply drifted Upon the ridges drear That lay for miles between me And the camp ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent fame, And cry, Lo, here! And name The Lady whose smiles inflame The sphere. Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid, And wedded Spouse, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... child and cat, Through the dire time of slaughter sat, By terror both spellbound; But when night came, a silence drear Fell on the coast; and far or near, No voice caught Edric's wakeful ear, Save water's lapping sound. He wandered from the stern to prow, Ate of the stores, and marvelled how He yet might reach the ground; Till low and lower sank the tide, Dark banks of mud spread ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Alps were hid, the wide lake looked drear. At length I caught a glimpse of the scenes among which I had lived, when first I stepped out from childhood into life. There on the shores of Bellerive stood Diodati; and our humble dwelling, Maison Ohapuis, nestled ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... winter-quarters. Again came December, and all our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would not work, leaving ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... He is the vilest miscreant That ever walked this world below A Momus, making his mock and mow, At Papist and at Protestant, Sneering at St. John and St. Paul, At God and Man, at one and all; And yet as hollow and false and drear, As a cracked pitcher to the ear, And ever growing worse and worse! Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse On ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... made their appearance over the German trenches, gleamed for a moment, and then went out leaving the landscape very dark and drear. We hurried on back to Ramscapelle, sentries popping up at intervals to enquire our business. Floods stretched on either side of the road as far as the eye could see. We were obliged to crawl at a snail's pace as it grew darker. Of course no lights of any sort were allowed, and the lines ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... of prey this Dragon doth eat; But his favourite food's poor people, But he 'd swallow a city, street by street, From cottage to church steeple. Like the Worm of Wear, this Dragon drear, Hath grown, and grown, and grown, Sir, And many a lair of dim despair The Worm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, ooh! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! An' forward tho' I canna see, I guess ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... dark ravine where the icicles hang from the rocks—for Love and Life must pass through strange drear places—there, where all is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands and held them against his beating little heart, and warmed them—and softly he ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... what glory streams! 'What majesty attends night's lovely queen! 'Fair laugh our vallies in the vernal beams; 'And mountains rise, and oceans roll between, 'And all conspire to beautify the scene. 'But, in the mental world, what chaos drear! 'What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien! 'O when shall that eternal morn appear, 'These dreadful forms to chace, this chaos dark ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... blackness hide Their depths beneath the waves of gloomy lakes And streams that sleep beneath the sulphurous flakes That drift o'er waters bottomless, and chasms; Where moveless depths receive Life's dying spasms. Here Silence sits supreme on a drear throne Of ebon hue, and joyless reigns alone O'er a wide waste of blackness,—solitude Black, at her feet, there sleeps the awful flood Of mystery which grasps all mortal souls, Where grisly horrors sit with crests of ghouls, And hateless welcome with their eyes of fire ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... are hid, the night is drear, The waves beat high, the storm is here; But you can sleep, my darling child, And know naught ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... whence we could look down upon the lovely lake. It was a complete surprise to us, as points of scenery were not much known or talked about then in Arizona. Ponds and lakes were unheard of. They did not seem to exist in that drear land of arid wastes. We never heard of water except that of the Colorado or the Gila or the tanks and basins, and irrigation ditches of the settlers. But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies above us. We feasted our eyes and our ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... drear, his hope was cross'd, 'Twas late, 'twas farr, the path was lost That reach'd the neighbour-town; With weary steps he quits the shades, Resolved, the darkling dome he treads, And ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... days are here Make things snug for Winter drear; Storehouse filled with everything To last until again ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... last day did come back, gray and drear. He saw suddenly once more. I think he must have been wandering the glen with his eyes shut, as one does shut them involuntarily against the hidden dangers of black night. How different was daylight from what he had expected! He looked, and then shut his dazed eyes again, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... throve In the Dale of our love; There the ox and the steed Fed down the mead; The grapes hung high 'Twixt earth and sky, And the apples fell Round the orchard well. Yet drear was the land there, and all was for nought; None put forth a hand there for what the year wrought, And raised it o'erflowing with gifts of the earth. For man's grief was growing beside of the mirth Of the springs and the summers that wasted their wealth; ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an exotic of the ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... winter's coming! Now his hoary head draws near; Winds are blowing, winds are blowing; All around looks cold and drear. Hope of spring must now support us; Winter's reign will pass away; Flowers will bloom, and birds will warble, Making glad the ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... in guileless youth, Flies tow'rds her Love with trusting wing, Bruises her heart 'gainst broken truth, And falls, like thee, a crippled thing. How man in bacchanalian sphere Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun, Then, by gradations dark and drear, Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one: How hearts from proud Ambition's height Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell— From blazing noon to pitchy night, With pangs a demon-tongue may tell: How aspirations glory-fraught Have gained the goal in ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... alone. Still by those laws shall he abide Which lives of youthful Brahmans guide, Obedient to the strictest rule That forms the young ascetic's school: And all the wondering world shall hear Of his stern life and penance drear; His care to nurse the holy fire And do the bidding of his sire. Then, seated on the Angas'(81) throne, Shall Lomapad to fame be known. But folly wrought by that great king A plague upon the land shall bring; No rain for many a year shall ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Hesiod sang. While far away under the white aegis of those snow-capped mountains lies Chaeronea and the Lion plain where with vain chivalry the Greeks strove to check Macedon first and afterwards Rome; Chaeronea, where in the Martinmas summer of Greek civilisation Plutarch rose from the drear waste of a dying religion as the aftermath rises when the mowers think they have left the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the sun graying the low clouds, from which fell a cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent, drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered figure that the dreaded stampede had crushed into a shape of which Whitey ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... thing they seem to mean: good friend, so dear To me in everything, come here to-night, Or else the hours will pass most dull and drear; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... breast are lost in the wide salt sea, and where we kissed and clung there lips unborn shall kiss and cling! How beautiful was their promise, doomed, like an unfruitful blossom, to wither, fall, and rot! and their fulfilment, ah, how drear! For all things end in darkness and in ashes, and those who sow in folly shall reap in sorrow. Ah! those nights ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... men: Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... not back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult in fame ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... hearts that wist not whence their comfort flowed, Whence fear was lightened of her fever-fit, Whence anguish of her life-compelling load. Yea, no man's head whereon the fire alit, Of all that passed along that sunset road Westward, no brow so drear, No eye so dull of cheer, No face so mean whereon that light abode, But as with alien pride Strange godhead glorified Each feature flushed from heaven with fire that showed The likeness of its own life wrought By strong transfiguration ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a bleak, drear month. Aviators of all the armies made daily scouting trips, but wasted little time in attacking each other. Few raids of importance took place on any of the fronts. But British airmen descended upon German positions in Belgium on several ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... her. She told me afterward that in all that sleep she never lost the knowledge of her grief; she did not come into it as a surprise. Frank had seemed to be with her, distant, sad, yet consoling; she felt that he was gone, but not utterly,—that there was drear separation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... pride; A gilded hall is thronged from side to side With fashion's train of beauteous dames, who smile And gaily, archly chat the happy while With gallant men who smile on them again. All seems forgotten—want and weary pain That fill the earth with all their drear distress; Yet many a heart beneath the silken dress Of its fair wearer hides its weariness 'Neath such bright smiles that none would ever guess What lies concealed; and handsome, manly eyes In which the hidden lovelight dreaming lies, Are telling o'er in silent ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... But we twain grow yet more glad, And apart no more may go When the grassy slope and low Dieth in the shingly sand: Then we wander hand in hand By the edges of the sea, And I weary more for thee Than if far apart we were, With a space of desert drear 'Twixt thy lips and mine, O love! Ah, my joy, my ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... here Over the lofty mountains? Surely your nest was there less drear, Taller the trees, the outlook clear;— Will you then only bring me Longings, but naught to ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... she not wander away to the wilds and the wastes of the deer, Or down to the measureless sea-flood, and the mountain marish drear? Nay, still shall she bide and behold him in the ancient happy place, And speak soft as the other women with wise and queenly face. Woe worth the while for her sorrow, and her hope of life forlorn! —Woe worth the while for her loving, and the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Sullivan advanced, burning and devastating, he came at length into the valley of the Genesee. This he made 'a scene of drear and sickening desolation. The Indians were hunted like wild beasts, till neither house nor fruit-tree, nor field of corn, nor inhabitant, remained in the whole country.' One hundred and twenty-eight houses were razed in the town of Genesee. Sullivan became known to the Indians as the 'Town Destroyer.' ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... are blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear; An' forward, tho' I canna see,[8-15] I guess ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the journalist replied with a drear autumnal cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am afraid to be in. I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and I don't dare to go where there is light ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... day when the slate-hued clouds hung low, and the valley was dark and drear with its dense leafless forests, when the mountains gloomed a sombre purple and no sound but the raucous cawing of crows broke upon the sullen air, Lillian's paroxysms of grief seemed to reach a climax. Their intensity ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... without a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... to the desert wild, Where all is parched with endless drought, For I had grown a wayward child, And now my sin had found me out;— He sent me to the desert drear, And, ah! my ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... deep sound shook the air, As when the tempest breaks Upon the peaks, while sunshine fair Is dreaming in the lakes. The birds shrieked on their wing; When rose a wind so drear, Its troubled spirit seemed to bring The shades of darkness near. We looked towards the windows old, Calm was the eve of June, On the summits shone the twilight's gold, And on Pilate ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... flowers and blossoms. The beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the season ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... by a carved old bed— The drape of green silk, all yellow and sere, The gold-coloured fringes dingy and drear; And she nods and nods her silvery head, And sometimes she looks with a half-drowsy air. To notice how Death may be ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... the ladies remarked it. Meanwhile the wheels of the carriage were no longer rattling over paving stones; the streets and houses of the city were left behind; a grey country, with houses scattered over it and trees here and there standing, desolate and drear enough, was to be seen from the carriage windows; but Wych Hazel hardly saw it. At last the houses began again to stand apparently in some regular order and took a more comfortable air; gardens and trees and shrubbery lay between the houses and around them; then suddenly the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the lands?" With eyes wild flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he is. Trembles with wrath my frame If I but faintly breathe his awful name." Lilith replied, "Meseemeth, master true Of every craft is He." Forth the two From that drear cavern passed. Ere the water's brim They gained, he plucked the wilding reeds, that slim Stood by a brook. "My pipe I make, one strain Harmonious to wake. Nor yet again Shalt thou such fresh notes hear. Music like mine Methinks thou hast not known in any time." He ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... trail had left a fever in his blood. He was smitten with the disease of Ishmael. Then, before all, and above all, he counted the northland his home. So, when everything the world could yield him lay at his feet, the drear, silent north trail only knew him. His interests in the golden world of Leaping Horse were left behind him, while he satisfied his passion in the far hidden back countries where man is a mere incident in the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the world, I might yet have remained where I was, an alien living indifferent to the common rule, like a monk of some shunned exotic order. But with convictions like mine, to do so would have brought the drear sense of derogation. All the miseries of the past were as nothing to that; there was but one manly course—to return and gird my loins for a new struggle with western life. Within a month from the time ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... can quench Life's Light, my dear, Drear, dark, and melancholy; Seek Light and Life and jocund cheer, And mirth and pleasing folly. Be thine, light-hearted folly, folly, folly, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your voice upon the wind, In dreamland you appear; But do you wonder that I find The day so long and drear? Lentis adhaerens brachiis come Once more my life to crown; Without thee 'tis too burdensome. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... bard of silver hair, He wanders in the valley drear, Whilst grief his mind consumes: His father's footsteps tries to trace In vain, for time does them efface; He only ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... have been the life in this greenwood realm, jolly the outlaws who danced and sang beneath its shades, merry as the day was long their hearts while summer ruled the year, while even in drear winter they had their caverns of refuge, their roaring wood-fires, and the spoils of the year's forays to carry them through the season of cold and storm. A follower of bold Robin might truly sing, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... summer ripens And the harvest is gathered in, And food for the bleak, drear days to come The ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... drear, He robes in the purest white, And with icicles shining with rainbow hues, He ...
— King Winter • Anonymous
... dreadful curse Of widowhood; the vigils, fasts, And penances; no life is worse Than hopeless life,—the while it lasts. Day follows day in one long round, Monotonous and blank and drear; Less painful were it to be bound On some bleak rock, for aye to hear— Without one chance of getting free— The ocean's melancholy voice! Mine be the sin,—if sin there be, But thou must make ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... comes not! 'tis in vain I wait; The crane's wild cry strikes on mine ear, The tempest howls, the hour is late, Dark is the raven night and drear:— And, as I thus stand sighing, The snowflakes round me flying Light on my sleeve, and freeze it crisp ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, a fool lies here Who tried to ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain—one of those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut the mortal coil. By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a fibrous vagueness ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... which had "existed for more than eight centuries under different forms, in poverty and in wealth, in meanness and in magnificence, in misfortune and success, finally succumbed to the royal will. The day came, and that a drear winter day, when its last mass was sung, its last censer waved, its last congregation bent in rapt and lowly adoration before the altar there; and, doubtless, as the last tones of that day's evensong died away in the vaulted roof, there were not wanting those who lingered in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... no common sound, born of that drear loneliness! No cavalryman can mistake the jingle of accoutrements or the dull thud of horses' hoofs. The road here must have curved sharply, for they were already so close upon us that, almost simultaneously ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... dozen, and royalties three, With right of free-warren (whatever that be); Rich pastures in front, and green woods in the rear, All in full leaf at the right time of year; About Christmas or so, they fall into the sear, And the prospect, of course, becomes rather more drear; But it's really delightful in spring-time,—and near The great gate Father Thames rolls sun-bright and clear. Cobham woods to the right,—on the opposite shore Landon Hill in the distance, ten miles off or more; Then you've Milton and Gravesend behind—and before You ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... travellers had reached the dreary waste called by the inhabitants Hammerton Heath. At some seasons of the year it was golden with gorse or purple with ling, but in this drear winter season it was bare and colourless, and utterly desolate. The outline of dark forests could be seen all around on the horizon; but the road led over the exposed ground, where not a tree broke the monotony ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green |
