"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transition between the mediaeval Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures the Book—in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser;—that sombre musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created to the schemes ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... owned them used them entirely for his own purposes; they betrayed none of that changing instinctive relation towards the human being—any human being—within their range, which makes the charm of so many faces. But they were sadder, more sombre, more restless; they thrilled her more than they had already thrilled her once, in the first moment of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and distinct from her, unchanged outwardly to her, but underneath a solid power of antagonism to her. Of which she became gradually aware. And it irritated her to be made aware of him as a separate power. She lapsed into a sort of sombre exclusion, a curious communion with mysterious powers, a sort of mystic, dark state which drove him and the child nearly mad. He walked about for days stiffened with resistance to her, stiff with a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... fall of the year clothes itself in gay colors, it is deemed an evidence of immaturity for women in the fall time of life to sport crimson and scarlet and orange. Sober grays (which mean old, mature), quiet brown, and even sombre blacks, are rather what are looked for. To dress young when people are old, deceives no one. There is a beauty of age as well as a beauty of youth. Those who live to be old have had their share of the former: why should they seek to deprive themselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... diffusing tints resembling the ruddy, soft, and melancholy hues of autumnal foliage; while these hues were further deepened by a richly carved ceiling of ebony, which, not reflecting but absorbing light, allayed the sunny radiance beneath, and imparted a sombre yet brilliant effect to the pictured walls, and glossy draperies, of the spacious apartment. Above the rich and lofty mantelpiece hung one of the last portraits of himself painted by the venerable Titian, and on the dark pannels around were suspended portraits of great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... all to consider Ann from the barn standpoint. If she wanted the tragic and sombre she should have it—in the sunlight and surrounded with love. So she no longer was obliged to depend on the queer little girls who fluttered like blind bats in the crude of their adolescent years. Lynda, Betty, Truedale, and Brace read bloodcurdling horrors to her ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... her dusky gloom. All was silent, save the low rushing of the Derwent stream, purling its way through dense groves, and winding round the stupendous rock of Matlock's Vale. As I paced along, the grave, sombre hue of evening fell full on the rocks, which rose in magnificent grandeur, and seemed to look with contempt on all around them. These beauties, combined with the gray tint of the stone, the cawing of the rooks, which nestle in the crevices and underwood, with now and then the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... to decipher in her countenance her sentiments at the omission. I wanted to find out whether in her existed a consciousness of her own talents. "If she thinks she did a clever thing in composing that devoir, she will now look mortified," thought I. Grave as usual, almost sombre, was her face; as usual, her eyes were fastened on the cahier open before her; there was something, I thought, of expectation in her attitude, as I concluded a brief review of the last devoir, and when, casting it from me and rubbing ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Spanish: 'Come, caballero; come to one who will be able to answer you;' and she led the way down amongst the ruins towards one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of this gloomy abode were illumined by a fire, the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the massy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men, and a decrepit ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of morning was now apparent above, yet the thick growth of the trees, whose clustering branches mingled in one dense mass overhead, made it still dark and sombre below; and Joe, to divert Sneak from his unconscionable gait, which, in his endeavours to keep up, often subjected him to the rude blows of elastic switches, and many twinges of overhanging grape vines, essayed to engage his ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... and, as I went, I breathed an air sweet with the smell of thyme and lavender and a thousand other scents, an air fraught with memories of sunny days and joyous youth, insomuch that I clenched my hands and hasted from the place. Past sombre trees, mighty of girth and branch, I hurried; past still pools, full of a moony radiance, where lilies floated; past marble fauns and dryads that peeped ghost-like from leafy solitudes; past sundial and carven bench, by clipped yew-hedges and winding walks until, screened ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Saul upon the throne Grew sorely dazed. Though brave the heart, the brain Swam in an ecstasy of wildering light— A helmless boat upon a troubled sea. Men nursed in gloom can rarely brook the sun; And many a life to sombre paths inured The sunshine of Prosperity hath quenched, As dewdrops glistening on the lowly sward Like priceless jewels ere the morning breaks, Melt into space when light and heat abound, As though they ne'er had been. Relentless fate! This ruthless law the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... do it," he exclaimed, triumphantly, as he looked round at his admiring family; but no sooner had he said these words than a terrible flash of lightning lit up the sombre room, a fearful peal of thunder made them all start to their feet, and Mrs. ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... before me. Under a glowing sky of summer, this air of the uplands has still a life which spurs to movement, which makes the heart bound. The dale is hidden; I see only the brown and purple wilderness, cutting against the blue with great round shoulders, and, far away to the west, an horizon of sombre heights. . ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... divinity. The Chinese themselves claim that she was worshipped six thousand years ago, and that she was the first deity made known to mankind. The brave Jesuit missionaries found her there, and it matters not her age; she is a credit to herself and her sex, and aids in cheering the sorrowful and sombre lives of millions in the far East." We also find "the saintly infant Zen-zai, so often met with in the arms of female representations of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... reges libero egressu memorabant; nobis in arcto et inglorius labor. Immota quippe aut modice lacessita pax maestae urbis res et princeps proferendi imperii incuriosus;"—[53] but he certainly had no cause to complain. The sombre annals of the Empire were not less amenable to a powerful dramatic treatment than the vigorous and aggressive youth of the Republic had been. Nor does the story of guilt and horror depicted in the Annals fall below ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... sweetest perfumes; their sanctity is revealed almost in spite of themselves; they are born saints as others are born kings or slaves, their life is set out against the golden background of a tryptich, and not against the sombre background of reality. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Nature wore a hardy countenance, as wild and as untamed as the savage landholders. Manhattan's twenty-two thousand acres of rock, lake and rolling table land, rising at places to a height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet, were covered with sombre forests, grassy knolls and dismal swamps. The trees were lofty; and old, decayed and withered limbs contrasted with the younger growth of branches; and wild flowers wasted their sweetness among the dead leaves and uncut herbage ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... sombre summer morning in which the grandfather and grandchild departed from the friendly roof of Mr. Merle, very dull and very sombre were the thoughts of little Sophy. She walked slowly behind the gray cripple, who had need to lean so heavily on his staff, and her eye ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In sombre black, and standing outside the scene, Signorelli has painted the portrait of himself, with fingers interlaced and firmly-planted feet, and behind, the milder, but still ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... his glass and turned it toward the island. The sombre shades of twilight had already gathered over the scene; but he saw through them quite distinctly a boat pulled by four men, while a fifth sat in the stern holding the tiller. The steersman kept the small island between them and the ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the meaning of happiness,' he said, extending his hand to Malkin; and, in spite of the smile, his face had a sombre cast. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Coeur-de-Lion; with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;—indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety break through. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... represents a rich landscape, in which noble tree-forms show sombre against a tumultuous sky—the latter an architectural mass of pale cloud, spanned by a vivid rainbow. Across the lower part of the picture is a scroll, on which are written, in musical notation, two bars from Chopin's Twentieth Prelude. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... was already fading into the sombre shadows of night, when two travellers might have been observed swiftly—at a pace of six miles in the hour—descending the rugged side of a mountain; the younger bounding from crag to crag with the agility of a fawn, while his companion, whose aged limbs ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... not unwilling to comply with the request, and so they sat on, the boy's red-gold curls making a gleam of brightness on the sombre black garments of widowhood ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the neighborhood; a little below it ran a small stream, which was now swollen above its banks, and rushing with mimic roar over the flat meadows beside it. The appearance of the bare slated building in such a night was particularly sombre, and to those, like me, who knew the purpose to which it was usually devoted, it was or ought to have been peculiarly so. There it stood, silent and gloomy, without any appearance of human life or enjoyment about or within ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... imperial purple of the night Is spread, wine-dark, above, But glistens with no gems of light, To hint of Heaven's love. A sombre pall hangs overhead, Fringed with lurid clouds of lead,— O'er the sleeping earth below One long, wide waste of silent snow, And the wind moans drearily As it wanders by, And the night wanes wearily In the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... and dignified, where maids were already moving noiselessly about the business of dinner. Here in the hall was the pleasant shade and coolness, the subtle drifting scent of early summer flowers, space, and the simplicity of dark polished floors and sombre rugs. The whole house seemed empty, lovely, silent, after the confusion of the terrace and the heat ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... proof that its author could handle a great theme in a manner that was worthy of its greatness. The work was one of the novelist's later writings—it was published in 1859—and is in many respects distinct from all his others. It stands by itself among Dickens's masterpieces, in sombre and splendid loneliness—a detached glory to its author, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... perfect of the artist's works, is subdued and sober; in the latter a scheme of soft and delicate tints was attempted, not with entire success. A similar temperance of colours marks the "Golden Stairs," first exhibited in 1880. In 1884, following the almost sombre "Wheel of Fortune" of the preceding year, appeared "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," in which Burne-Jones once more indulged his love of gorgeous colour, refined by the period of self-restraint. This masterpiece is now in the National collection. He next turned to two important ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some twenty-four years' standing, when "The Scarlet Letter" appeared. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather sombre life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his "Twice-Told Tales" and other short stories, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lips with such joyous confidence that the grave musician's sombre face brightened; but it swiftly darkened again, and he exclaimed, "We don't give such hasty work!" When the knight tried to tell him what he had in mind, the other brusquely interrupted with the request that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the further end of the room, leaving a wave of artificiality behind, or was it, Andrew Wilmore wondered, in a moment of half-dazed speculation, that it was they and the rest of the gay company who represented the real things, and he and his companion who were playing a sombre part in some unreal and gloomier world. Francis' voice, however, when he recommenced his diatribe, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only left him, as she went to the window, sitting there sombre. "I like, you know," he brought out as his eyes followed her, "your saying you're not proud! Thank God you ARE, my dear. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... destiny. Then he proceeded to tell us of the great raptor in its life of hopeless captivity; his stern, rugged countenance, deep bass voice, and grand mouth-filling polysllables suiting his subject well, and making his description seem to our minds a sombre magnificent picture never to be forgotten—at all events, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... angel children must be troopin' down the way, Singin' heavenly songs of welcome an' preparin' now to greet The soul that God had tinctured with an ever-lasting sweet; The world is robed in sadness an' is draped in sombre black; But joy must reign in Heaven now that Riley's ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... bright-burning fire, mending his moccasins. Something in his attitude made me pause. He was bareheaded, and his long, unkempt hair hung half way down to his shoulders. As he sat there in the red glow of the fire, with the sombre woods beyond and the lonely stretch of lake below, and I took note of his emaciated form and his features so haggard and drawn, I seemed for the first time to realise fully the condition to which the boy had been brought ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... against Popery, the Rev. Bernard Brimstone, and the Rev. Phineas Lucre, with many more on the side of truth. On that of Popery and falsehood there's the Rev. Father M'Stake, the Rev. Father O'Flary, the Rev. Father M'Fire, and the Rev. Nicholas O'Scorch, D.D. Dr. Sombre is to be second on our side; and Father M'Fud on the part of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... but one prevailing colour, to which all others should be adapted, either by harmonising with it, or by contrast; in the latter case the relieving color should be in small quantity, or it would overpower the other in effect, as a general rule, sombre negative colours show off a woman to the greatest advantage, just as the beauties of a painting are enhanced by being set in a dull frame; still, there are some occasions with which the gayer tints accord better, and as propriety and fitness are matters of high consideration, ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... affectionate words of parting. The funeral train left Washington on the 21st. Its passage through the principal Eastern States and cities of the Union was a most mournful and impressive spectacle. The heavily craped train, its sombre engine swathed in black, moved through the land like an eclipse. At every point vast crowds assembled to gain a tearful glimpse ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to the sombre beauty of that old gray town of the North? "Gray! why, it is gray, or gray and gold, or gray and gold and blue, or gray and gold and blue and green, or gray and gold and blue and green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... would know her by sight, though she had been in Guernsey; and it would excite less notice for a lady to be inquiring after Olivia. We immediately turned our steps toward Hanover Street, where we found her and Julia seated at some fancy-work in their sombre drawing-room. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... at each other. Hilda's face flushed to a sombre red. Mrs. Lessways brusquely left the room. Then Hilda could hear her rattling fussily at the kitchen range. After a few minutes Hilda followed her to the kitchen, which was now nearly in darkness. The figure of Mrs. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... life for months on end. In his eyes glowed the fire of an intense and honest, but fierce and narrow piety, and with that expression was mingled another, not of anger nor of sorrow, but of reproach, of judgment and of sombre triumph. His hands were strapped in front of him with a stirrup leather, and his head was bare. As the moon shone more clearly, Claverhouse saw other stains than those of peat upon his chest, and while he looked the red blood seemed to rise from wounds ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... passing through various chambers of the palace, now silent and sombre, but which I had traversed in former days, on grand court occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII., when they were glittering with all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great saloon, with high-vaulted ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... styled broad and shallow stairs—they were crowded with bronzed men in varied Eastern costume; Moors in fez and gay vest and red morocco slippers; Turks with turban and pipe; Cabyles from the mountains; Arabs from the plains; water-carriers with jar on shoulder; Jews in sombre robes; Jewesses with rich shawls and silk kerchiefs as headgear; donkeys with panniers that almost blocked the way; camels, and veiled women, and many other strange sights that our hero had up to that time only ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... distant only twenty or thirty miles. All around to the southeast the country is flat, and covered with forest, but near Senna a number of little abrupt conical hills diversify the scenery. To the west and north the country is also flat forest, which gives it a sombre appearance; but just in the haze of the horizon southwest by south, there rises a mountain range equal in height to Morumbala, and called Nyamonga. In a clear day another range beyond this may be seen, which is Gorongozo, once a station of the Jesuits. Gorongozo is famed for ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... life's roses Will the sombre cypress be twined, And wherever a joy reposes, A dream ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... prayer of midday, the Shah, on foot, escorted by an immense concourse of attendants, priests, and of the people, entered the precincts of the sanctuary. He was dressed in a dark suit, the sombre colours of which were adapted to the solemn looks of his face, and he held in his hand a long enamelled stick, curiously inlaid at the pommel. He had put by all ornament, wearing none of his customary jewellery, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... one of those long Irish faces, all in a straight line, with flat, slightly hollow cheeks, and a long chin. It was clean shaven, and a heavy lock of black hair was always falling over his eyes. It was his eyes that gave its sombre ecstatic character to his face. They were large, dark, deeply set, singularly shaped, and they seemed to smoulder like fires in caves, leaping and sinking out of the darkness. He was a tall, thin young man, and he wore a black jacket and a large, blue necktie, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the crowd, John and his followers made their way through the Damascus Gate into Jerusalem, and followed the Damascus Street to the Gate of Ephraim. An air of sombre misery pervaded the whole population. In their hearts the greater portion of the population had, for many months, been longing for the approach of the Romans. Even death would be preferable to the misery which they suffered. There were but few people in the ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... All longings and regrets had been put off with the Paris-made gown which the maid at that moment was carefully packing away. The order of nature seemed reversed; the butterfly had abandoned its gorgeous wings of gauze, and was habited in the sombre working garb of the grub. With her hands clasped behind her, the girl paced up and down the room, pouring forth words, two hundred to the minute, and sometimes more. Silently one stenographer, tiptoeing in, replaced ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... southward. On the east the silvery river was seen glancing through the shrubbery that adorned its banks. To the west lay a beautiful park and pleasure ground, while far away to the northward stretched the deep, dense forest, tall, dark and sombre. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... a long array of little girls in white muslin, with sashes blue or red. Half a dozen nuns kept watch over them, pacing sombre in white head-dresses and black gowns by the side of all that smiling troop of glad hearts and childish faces. All the little girls carried bannerets of bright colour, and all went bareheaded, after the manner of the district, where no ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... plays on the varying surface of the tree-tops, one sombre and little-varied hue colors the earth. Dead and moss-covered logs; mounds covered with decomposed vegetable substances, the graves of long-past generations of trees; cavities left by the fall of some uprooted trunk; dark fungi, that flourish around the decayed roots ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... however, the aspect of our surroundings changes. We leave this varied forest behind, and enter the region of the balsam, from the dark color of which the mountain takes its name. Above a certain line of elevation no trees are found save these beautiful yet sombre firs. They grow to an immense height and stand so thickly together that one marvels how any animal larger than a cat can thread its way among their stems. Overhead the boughs interlock in a canopy, making perpetual shade beneath. No shrubs of any kind ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... precisely the extent of the mischief threatened there. On my way to the Strand I met an old friend, one of my links with whom is his love of the Adams' work. He had not read the news, and I am sorry to say that I, in my selfish agitation, did not break it to him gently. Rallying, he accompanied me on my sombre quest. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... A sombre youth, glowering, and speaking only at the rarest times, Felipe was but negatively "loco." On shore he generally refused all conversation. He seemed to know that he was badly handicapped on land, where so many kinds of understanding are needed; but on the water his one talent set ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... was poetical in the lives of the early New-Englanders had something shy, if not sombre, about it. If their natures flowered, it was out of sight, like the fern. It was in the practical that they showed their true quality, as Englishmen are wont. It has been the fashion lately with a few feeble-minded persons to undervalue ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... intense frost. The early morning then exhibits columns of white vapour, like millions of Geysers spouting up to the sky, curling, twisting, shooting upwards, gracefully forming spirals and pyramids, amid the dark ground of the sombre heavens, and occasionally giving a peep of little lanes of the dark waters, all else ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... statue's built tell the gazer 'twas a cricket helped his crippled lyre; that when one string which made "love" sound soft, was snapt in twain, she perched upon the place left vacant and duly uttered, "Love, Love, Love", whene'er the bass asked the treble to atone for its somewhat sombre drone? ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... raised his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... place apart in this group of Catholic reformers. His mysticism is of a kind peculiar to himself. His Cathechisme chretien pour la Vie interieure, which is scarcely ever read outside St. Sulpice, is a most remarkable book, full of poesy and sombre philosophy, wavering from first to last between Louis de Leon and Spinoza. Olier's ideal of the Christian life is what he calls "the state ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Its Saracenic architecture, the rows of precious but useless little columns that load its front, the low Asiatic domes which rest upon its walls in the repose of a thousand years, the rude and gaudy mosaics, and above all the captured horses of Corinth which start from out the sombre mass in the glory of Grecian art, received from the solemn and appropriate light, a character of melancholy and mystery, that well comported with the thick recollections which crowd the mind as the eye gazes at this rare relic of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sound sense and genial feeling, we find the daughter worthy of such a father. Some of our more zealous Protestants professed at one time not a little alarm lest the lady nurses might be Papists in disguise; and certainly their 'regulation dresses,' all cut after one fashion, and of one sombre hue, did seem a little nun-like, and perhaps rather alarming. But the following passage—which, from the amusing mixture which it exhibits of strong good sense and half-indignant womanly feeling, our readers will, we are sure, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... their ways. It may be something in the color of the water: it may be something in the color of the banks: experience is too uniform to allow the fact itself to be questioned. Under Jack's direction, I select small flies about the size of green drakes: one a sombre gray, with a silver twist about him, a claret hackle, [Footnote: Claret hackle. A hackle is an artificial fly made of feathers.] a mallard wing, [Footnote: Mallard wing. A mallard is the drake of the wild duck. The artificial fly imitates its wing.] streaked faintly on the lower side with red ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... one arm toward her, and that obeying the gesture which was all but a command she came on down those four remaining steps. Jefferson Craig led her into the library, where a great fire sparkled and leaped and filled the room, otherwise sombre with books, full of welcoming cheer. He closed the door, then led her ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... a sombre dining-room with decanters and glasses, bedrooms with satin down quilts spread over the foot of the bed, and adjoining one of them a dressing-room with pomades and perfumes and rows of boots just as ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... they could keep out of his way. Dragut was not going to fight a general action at sea merely to please Doria; in this summer his luck stood to him, and he never came across this man, who, with a sombre hatred in his heart, was seeking him high and low. If the corsair were bold as a lion when occasion offered, he was no less as slippery as an eel when he desired to escape; to face twenty-two royal galleys ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... audience waited impatiently for his presence. The big and rather sombre house was quick with colour and with beauty. The celebrated "Diamond Horseshoe," the tiers of the galleries, and the floor of the house were vivid with dresses, shimmering and glinting with all the evasive shades of the spectrum, ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... eighty-four pieces of cannon. The duke's headquarters were at Brussels; and on his left, in and around Namur, lay Marshal Blucher, with about 80,000 men and two hundred cannon. Napoleon commenced operations by crossing the Sombre and taking Charleroi, which was garrisoned by Prussians. This accomplished, Napoleon hastened towards Brussels, resolving to strike a signal blow against the British. The Duke of Wellington was at a ball when ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... toward me, and I saw the faintest gleam of pleasure tremble in the sombre stillness of her face, and then the match went out in my hand, and we were again in complete darkness. But the little wail, which at the same instant rose from between her arms, filled up the pause as her sweet ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Breslau was of secluded, silent, sombre character, this time; nothing of stir in it but from work only: in marked contrast with the last, and its kindly visitors and gayeties. A Friedrich given up to his manifold businesses, to his silent sorrows. "I have passed my winter like ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... summit of Koralay, we had a fair view of the surrounding country. At least forty kraals, many of them deserted, lay within the range of sight. On all sides except the north-west and south-east was a mass of sombre rock and granite hill: the course of the valleys between the several ranges was denoted by a lively green, and the plains scattered in patches over the landscape shone with dull yellow, the effect of clay and stubble, whilst a light mist encased the prospect in a circlet of blue and silver. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... near it was observed that the bridegroom became more sombre and silent even than usual. He never left the House of Commons as long as it was open to him as a refuge. His Saturdays and his Sundays and his Wednesdays he filled up with work so various and unceasing that there was no time left for those pretty ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be. A whitebeam at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre boles of the pines. Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth—bracken and whortleberry and occasional bushes—for their spring illuminations, and the whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of The Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by day helped to make the town so ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... permanently installed; and for the future the indignity of opening doors, and "just stepping out" into Chancery Lane, would not await him. Lady Mason was dressed all in black,—but this was usual with her when she left home. To-day, however, there was about her something blacker and more sombre than usual. The veil which she wore was thick, and completely hid her face; and her voice, as she asked for Mr. Furnival, was low and plaintive. But, nevertheless, she had by no means laid aside the charm of womanhood; or ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... language of the flowers, the voices of the stars and to love and understand the lowliest things that God has made, bore him straight to the heart of England as surely as it swept his name into the holy of holies of artistic France, spoke to Russia's sombre soul and temporarily revolutionised the literature of the United States. His work belonged to no "school," and its charm was not due to "style"; therefore his books lost little in translation, for true genius speaks to every man ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... hastening toward at the express speed of sixty minutes an hour!" He stood looking down at the face and tasting this sombre reflection for a long time. When it palled on him, he roused ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... water gurgled musically. On the right bank, very far off, a cock crew. Swaying lightly under their feet, the raft floated on toward a point where the darkness dissolved into lighter tones, and the clouds took on themselves clearer shapes and less sombre hues. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the steep hill-sides are brought out in the brightest coloring of delicate light and shade by the golden orb of early morn; towering majestically sunwards, sheer up in front of me, high above all else, still more sombre heights stand out powerfully in solemn contrast against the pale blue of the spring sky, the effect in the distance being antithetical and weird, with the magnificent Ts'ang Shan[AY] standing up as a beautiful background of perpendicular ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... driver, backed his creaking vehicle to the sidewalk across which the slow procession of mourners filed. A minute later I was caught up by my mother's hand, and borne into a carriage, where I sat tightly wedged between two sombre females. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the kelu or deodar (Cedrus Libani), the glossy leaved mohru oak (Quercus dilatata), whose wood is used for making charcoal, and two small trees of the Heath order, Rhododendron arborea and Pieris ovalifolia. The former in April and May lightens up with its bright red flowers the sombre Simla forests. The kharshu or rusty-leaved oak (Quercus semecarpifolia) affects a colder climate than its more beautiful glossy-leaved relation, and may almost be considered sub-alpine. It is common on Hattu, and the oaks there ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... he was alone. The shadows crept up the mountain peaks that stand up like grim giants away off in the East, and twilight began to throw its grey mantle over the lake; still he was alone. The darkness began to gather around him; the forests along the shore to lose their distinctness and to stand in sombre and shadowy outline above the water; still no prospect of relief presented itself. The twilight faded from the West, the stars stole out in the heavens, the milky way stretched its belt of light across the sky, and there he ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges of the dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and a feeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower to tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of the upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed on to the floor of the forest. And I was glad to be back again in the forest from ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... the sombre alcoves of the shop. "I do think it's adorable of you to take me in," she said. "Dad has told me so much about you. He says I'm impossible. I suppose this is the literature he talks about. I want to ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... flashed over the sombre scene,—a rosy radiance deepening to brilliant streaks of fire. The dark heavens were torn asunder, and through them streamed flaring pennons of light,—waving, trembling, dancing, luminous ribbons ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... conjecture as to what his business could have been. Arriving at my room, I threw a lump of cannel coal upon the grate, lighted a cigar, and spent an hour in musings of every hue, from the brightest to the most sombre; being, in truth, not so very confident as at some former periods that this final step, which would mix me up irrevocably with the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that could possibly be taken. It was nothing short of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shared the antipathy felt for him by Sir Walter Scott; and although he would undoubtedly have sufficiently respected his genius to admit him into his Pantheon, yet he would certainly have drawn a veil between his mental eye and the grand but sombre figure of the exiled seer, who dreamed of the future empire of the world for his country, and of the world's harmonious development under her guidance. Byron loved and drew inspiration from Dante. He also loved Washington and Franklin, and ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... served no other purpose than to assemble the whole male population of Permatang Pasir on the shore—a sombre-faced throng, with an aloofness of manner and expression far from pleasing. The thatched piers were crowded with turbaned Mussulmen in their bajus or short jackets, full white trousers, and red sarongs or plaitless ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... colony of Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always at flood-tide. Faithful to her experience and convictions, the Queen smiled gladly on the marriage of affection between this gentle princess and the heir to the throne, and was present as a spectator, though still wearing her sombre weeds, at the splendid show of her son's wedding on March 10th, 1863. "Two things have struck me much," writes Dr. Macleod, from whose Journal we again quote: "one was the whole of the royal princesses weeping, though concealing their tears with their bouquets, as they saw their brother, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... flowed the tide of years, Now chilled with snows, now bright with roses, And many smiles were turned to tears, And sombre morns ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... sombre funeral-car Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array, My deeds in long procession go, that are As mourners of the man they helped to mar. I see it all in dreams, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... a fantastic "rockery" of skulls and shanks and ribs, and filled it in with earth, enough to furnish growth for trailing nasturtiums, whose bright red and yellow blossoms were strangely at variance with their sombre setting. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... constitution has been violently disturbed, and whose monarchy is situated in the far-off regions of unlimited space. The erratic course of Republican rule is proverbial. There is no stability, no regularity. To-day we may observe its brilliancy, which seems to laugh at and eclipse the sombre shining of more steady and enduring worlds; but ere to-morrow's moon has risen, it may have vanished into the regions of eternal night, and we look for its bright shining light in the councils of the nations, but it has ceased to shed its ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... Angela that Hugo's disgrace was to be no transient one. Her heart sank; she did not find that Richard's wrath was easy to appease when once thoroughly aroused. Again she looked at Brian, and it seemed to her that his face was paler and more sombre than she had ever ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Arizona's sombre face was unrelieved by any change of expression while he was speaking. There was no anger in his tone; just cold, calm purpose, and some contempt. And whatever feelings the half-breed may have had he seemed incapable of showing them, except in the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Johnson remained indifferent. He knew everybody's poetry, and was always ready to write anybody's Life. If he knew the facts of a poet's life—and his knowledge was enormous on such subjects—he found room for them; if he did not, he supplied their place with his own shrewd reflections and sombre philosophy of life. It thus comes about that Johnson is every bit as interesting when he is writing about Sprat, or Smith, or Fenton, as he is when he has got Milton or Gray in hand. He is also much less provoking. My own favourite Life is that of ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... erected to fence out the curious. The side furthest from the roadway, with its clumps of hazels, alder thicket, and chestnut wood in the distance was left open. Here, amid surroundings which lent a sombre realism to the pretence, Charlemagne could carve out a kingdom, Roland sound the horn of Roncesvalles, or the Maid herself win back to France the crown the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... more heavily veiled than usual. Her dress and hat were of sombre black, and her manner nervous and disturbed. She came slowly to-wards their end of the table, although she was obviously in search ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which is very well able to take care of itself. A wild, night-roaming gipsy like me is not expected to be a model, but one might certainly expect better things from folks who are so insultingly, aggressively righteous. One sombre and thoughtful Romany of my acquaintance said, "My brother, there are many things that I try to fight, and they knock me out of time in the first round." That is my own case exactly when I observe comfortable personages who deplore vice, and fill their pockets to bursting by shoving the vice ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to him who now holds the title, and that his other great estates, added to this territory, make him the largest landowner in Great Britain and probably in Europe. Just before reaching Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature—and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the line of Martians moving along the road, away from the City. Behind them the City was losing itself in the sombre tones of night, its black spires ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... creepers, and tangled underscrub at gradually widening distances from them. Whereupon they charged and lighted their pipes afresh, extinguished their torches, and, after allowing themselves a few minutes longer to enable their eyes to become accustomed to the dim, sombre twilight that alone pervaded those illimitable forest aisles, set out upon a course which they agreed would ultimately lead ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was a good time coming! The doctor's sombre face relaxed to a smile. His own life seemed almost worth living now just because he had been able to take a hand—yes, and play a few good cards—in this little game. Those things Karl had shown him today made it seem there was ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... of the column there rode a score or more of grave ironfaced men, clad in sombre homespun garments and armed with rifles. On reaching the base of the bluff they halted, and held ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Flying-fox," as it is usually called by Europeans) measures from three to four feet from point to point of its extended wings, and some of them have been seen wanting but a few inches of five feet in the alar expanse. These sombre-looking creatures feed chiefly on ripe fruits, the guava, the plantain, and the rose-apple, and are abundant in all the maritime districts, especially at the season when the silk-cotton tree, the pulun-imbul,[3] is putting forth its flower-buds, of which they are singularly fond. By ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... for Braddyll's allusion conjured up a sombre train of thought within his breast, awakening apprehensions which he could neither account for, nor shake off. Meanwhile, the cavalcade slowly approached the north-east gateway of the abbey—passing through crowds of kneeling and sorrowing bystanders;—but so deeply was the abbot engrossed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with an irresistible force. The great empires which followed each other in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a terrestrial kingdom, threw it into religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and follow its usages. Israel will henceforward have no other ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... complexion more bronzed; place a few furrows on the brow, slightly dim the look, sadden the lips, give height to the figure, and throw out the muscles in bolder relief; let the Italian costume of the days of Leo X. be exchanged for the sombre and plain uniform of a youth bred in the simplicity of rural life, who seeks no elegance in dress,—and, if the pensive and languid attitude be retained, you will have the striking likeness of our "Raphael" at the age ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... down its rough features to an almost delicate softness. The young maize—planted in a soil that has lain fallow, perhaps for a thousand years—is rapidly culming upward; and the rich sheen of the long lance-like leaves, as they bend gracefully over, hides from view the sombre hues of the earth. The forest trees appear with their foliage freshly expanded—some; as the tulip-tree, the dogwood, and the white magnolia, already in the act of inflorescence. The woods no longer maintain that ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... hills which encircle Florence smile cheerfully in the sunshine, clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian giants, lift their icy shields ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... creatures—found only among women—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind—we all make such arrangements, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... some seconds he was silent. When he spoke his voice was grave and sombre, as if he were burdened by a ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume, to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poet Rutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid and culture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admire a restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what was best in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation. Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any one was sick, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... "we find that the self-sacrificial vagaries of the rejected lover and of the religious devotee own a common origin and nature. The hook and spiny kennel of the fakir, the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites, the flagellum of the monk, the sombre garments of the nun, the silence of the Trappists, the defiantly hideous costume of the hallelujah lass, and the mortified sobriety of the district visitor, have at bottom the same origin as the rags of Cardenio, the cage of Don Quixote de la Mancha, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the sergeant's face underwent an extraordinary change. It filled with wonder, and then a grim alertness sprang to life all over him. He dropped his hand to his holster, and whipped out a big regulation 455 revolver, blue and sombre. The boys formed behind as under cover of a tower of strength, and the spy dashed ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... in his surmise. Such was the exact nature of the assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, received from the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door of their miserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruled the madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... would offer but a neutral tint in the landscape, here constitutes high lights as compared with the impenetrable shadows of the woods; and even the sky above, generally seen through the thick masses of evergreen, seems to be of a more sombre blue. In the deep gorges the black water of the Nagold foams and tumbles among the hollow rocks, or glides smoothly over the long and shallow races by which the jointed timber rafts are shot down to the Neckar, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the Thames with its fleet of steamers; thus, as it were, bringing the substantial piers of London Bridge within a stone's throw—if we may be allowed to pitch it so remarkably strong—of the once remote regions of the Beach[3], and annihilating, as it were, the distance between sombre southwark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was grand. The heights, the slopes, the fields, and the rugged crest opposite, were enveloped in smoke and fire from the bursting shell. The sombre roar ascended like the bellowing of a thousand bulls, leaped back from the rocks, and rolled away, in wild echoes through the hills. All the furies seemed let loose, and yet ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... 1872, reoccupied by the military in 1875, and finally abandoned and sold to private parties in 1877. In the fort and about it there were a few good, clean homes, which shone all the more brightly in their sombre surroundings. The ground occupied by the fort, by being carefully leveled and drained, was dry, though formerly a portion of the general swamp, showing how easily the whole town could have been improved. But in spite of disorder and squalor, shaded with clouds, washed and ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... always wore dark sombre dresses. But one day Jims found her in a pretty gown of pale primrose silk. It was very old and old-fashioned, but Jims did not know that. He capered round ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into the world to seek for fortune, taking with him his dear horse, Baunwa-iraki, his parrot, Kilkila, who had lived with him since he was born, besides the Carpenter-lad and the Goldsmith-lad, who had sworn never to leave their young master. So he journeyed north to a lonely place, all set with sombre trees. And the night was dark, so he set a watch, and the goldsmith took the first, while the young prince slept by the Carpenter-lad, on a couch of clean, sweet leaves. And lest the heart of the prince should sink, they sang ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... talked, in all, for a couple of hours. When she rose to leave, Alma, but for her sombre drapings, was totally changed from the limp, woebegone, shrinking girl who had at ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... of the city and country around Manila partakes both of a Spanish and an Oriental character. The sombre and heavy-looking churches with their awkward towers; the long lines of batteries mounted with heavy cannon; the massive houses, with ranges of balconies; and the light and airy cottages, elevated on posts, situated in the luxuriant groves of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... night diffused its starry shadows over the quiet sea, which with subdued murmur lulled in their sleep the great summer homes along the shore. The ship departed, carrying toward her sombre destiny Agrippina, absorbed in her smiling dreams. When the moment came and the wrecking machine was set to work, the vessel did not sink as fast as they had hoped: it listed, overturning people and things. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle round that sombre pool below, walling her ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... on his head, carrying Hardee's Tactics, from which to read the burial service. All had in their hands a bayonet, from which burned a tallow candle, in place of tapers. The procession marched up the steps in single file, all bearing themselves with the greatest solemnity and sombre dignity, followed by the sexton, with a frying-pan as a shovel, and took their places around the supposed corpse. Maffett began the duties by alluding to that part of the service where "it is allotted that all men shall die," etc., waving his hand in due ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... common throughout the northern world, is distinguished from its congener, the following, not only by the episporic character, but generally by its different peridium and more sombre colors. It never shows at maturity the brilliant golden yellow fluff that hangs in masses about the open and empty vases of T. favoginea, a fact not unnoted by Batsch, and rendering his figure and description ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the third line was reviewed. The President was followed by a large staff dressed in full uniform, which contrasted strongly with his own severely plain black. He wore a high silk hat and a plain frock coat. His face wore that peculiar sombre expression we see in all his photographs, but it lighted up into a half-smile as he occasionally lifted his hat in acknowledgment of ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... dining-hall with its white-washed walls—and the glare of the sun which pours in from numerous windows and open doors—the scene is enlivening, to say the least of it; while a singular contrast is supplied by the sombre appearance of the slaves who serve round ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... enough, except a few of the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some yew trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of the road and ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... was no lift—and rang her three short rings, which Peter, the Russian servant, was accustomed to expect. The door was opened at once, and she was taken through the quaint square hall into the master's own sitting-room, a richly sombre place of oak ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... pastures. It moved on, noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on the way,—a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments; two other servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and silver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this sombre equipage. Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through my mind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said, with a hollow, bitter laugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife, it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's disappearance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... the traveller's ever-present hope of seeing the beauties of a typical Northern sunset, and by some happy chance I placed my deck stool near an old tillicum, who was leaning on the rail, his pipe between his thin curved lips, his brown hands clasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea, as though they searched the future—or was it that they were ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... craving For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows About me in such radiance, the light, the strife Of music, hue and perfume of the rose. Oh garden of desire, where one awaits My coming with the sudden knowledge glowing Deep in my eyes, made sombre as the day Is somber in the summer noon of light. Now I perceive I am a sacred temple Long closed about the hidden flame of life, Closed with white ivories and gliding shapes Of river waves, and waves upon the sea Rising and gliding. Every magic ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... certainly, was significant foreshadowing of the general wrath to come, and it was therefore of less consequence that the portraits painted by him of Berghen, Horn, Montigny, and others, were so rarely relieved by the more flattering tints which he occasionally mingled with the sombre coloring of his other pictures. Especially with regard to Count Egmont, his conduct was somewhat perplexing and, at first sight, almost inscrutable. That nobleman had been most violent in opposition to his course, had drawn a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following as swiftly and silently as ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... oui! He loves her so well that he will strangle her one of these days when she says a word too much and he is in his sombre mood! Quiet as he is, I would not go too far with him, ce beau monsieur! He will not be patient ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... she became quiet, and picked up her sewing. She stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. Then she looked up at him—a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. He turned ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... the deepening shadows was only broken by the ringing strokes of the axe and the crack of the splitting wood. When he ceased the valley had faded into darkness, and the range with its sharp outlines was only faintly discernible against the sombre gray pall that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... consequences of such an event—and especially on their own interests. Few words passed in conversation—here and there an exclamation wrung from grief was answered by some neighbouring grief—a word every quarter of an hour —sombre and haggard eyes—movements quite involuntary of the hands— immobility of all other parts of the body. Those who already looked upon the event as favourable in vain exaggerated their gravity so as to make it resemble chagrin and severity; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "Yes, they are sombre and melancholy, but, to my mind, it is much more interesting to live amongst them than in new places. One cannot help thinking of the past, and the strange scenes that ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Some sombre evening, when I sit And feed in solitude at home, Perchance an ultra-bilious fit Paints all the world ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Sakoontala].—But the lady there— Who can she be, whose form of matchless grace Is half concealed beneath her flowing veil? Among the sombre hermits she appears Like a fresh bud ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... grassy cape we passed, And every reedy island, Even the bank'd cloud in the west That loomed a sombre highland; ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... small size, and its warm appearance in other respects, was furnished under foot with layers of heavy Turkey carpets, one laid upon another (according to a fashion then prevalent in Germany), and on the walls with tapestry. In this mode of hanging rooms, though sometimes heavy and sombre, there was a warmth sensible and apparent, as well as real, which peculiarly fitted it for winter apartments, and a massy splendor which accorded with the style of dress and furniture in that gorgeous age. One real disadvantage, however, it had as often ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... her low white forehead over which her full hair was simply parted, like a brown curtain, was slim and gentle-womanly. In spite of her plain lustreless silk dress, in spite of the formal frame of sombre heavy horsehair and mahogany furniture that seemed to set her off, she diffused an atmosphere of cleanly grace and prim refinement through the apartment. The priestess of this ascetic temple, the femininity of her closely covered arms, her pink ears, and a little serviceable morocco ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... and, under all, a new, vague dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the still, marble figures, the ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... His voice had grown sombre, and to Jimmie, gazing at him, it seemed that all the sorrows of the world were in his tired grey eyes. "Perhaps I'd ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair |
