"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brains in anxious councils of state; no one knew what it had been or done or been fashioned for; but it was a right royal thing. Yet perhaps it had never been more useful than it was now in this poor desolate room, sending down heat and comfort into the troop of children tumbled together on a wolfskin at its feet, who received frozen August among them with ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... glistening in the light of a clear September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a wild stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive scene—cold, desolate, awful. I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell, might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer about me and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... was spread over a burning village. Though it was miles away, it seemed to her that the wind brought cries of anguish to her ear, and prayers for mercy. Shivering, she turned her face back to the desolate peace of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... habits of the remaining subjects of AEacus. Some writers, however, suppose that the Myrmidons were a barbarous, but industrious people of Thessaly, who usually dwelt in caves, and who were brought thence by AEacus to people his island, which had been made desolate by a pestilence. The similarity of their name to the Greek word murmex, signifying 'an ant,' most probably gave occasion to the report that Jupiter had changed ants ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... it in one of the toes!" she lamented, and she fled back to their bench, alarming in her course the fears of a gendarme for the public security, and putting a baby in its nurse's arms into such doubts of its personal safety that it burst into a desolate cry. She laughed breathlessly as she rejoined Mrs. March. "That comes of having no pocket; I didn't suppose I could forget your sandals, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sounds of advancing civilisation first broke the stillness of this desolate region, the chief of the trading-post was seated at breakfast with his clerk. He was a tall, good-looking, young Englishman, named Reginald Redding. The clerk, Bob Smart, was a sturdy youth, who first saw the light among the mountains of Scotland. Doubtless he had been named Robert when ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... Master came up - in manner, face, or voice, no more the master that I knew, than I was he. He took me (I laid the little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left her with the chamber-women), in a carriage, furiously through the darkness, across the desolate Campagna. When it was day, and we stopped at a miserable post-house, all the horses had been hired twelve hours ago, and sent away in different directions. Mark me! by the Signor Dellombra, who had passed there in a carriage, with a ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens
... though I met with many delays and disasters; though one of my horses was lamed in shoeing by a smith, who came home drunk from a funeral; and though the back pannel of my carriage was broken by the pole of a chaise; and though one day I went without my dinner at a large desolate inn, where nothing was to be had but whiskey; and though one night I lay in a little smoky den, in which the meanest of my servants in England would have thought it impossible to sleep; and though I complained bitterly, and swore it ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... makes all this classical landscape gardening so desolate," he said to himself. "More desolate than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. We don't believe in Egyptian mythology, but the Egyptians did; and I suppose even the Druids believed in Druidism. But the eighteenth-century gentleman who built these temples didn't ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Then he remembered the desolate smithy in the narrow market-place and the dreary home, recollected that he was thirty years old, and still ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hardest to endure, would be something within herself, for which she had neither words nor true understanding, but which was more real than anything she could define, for it was in the very core of her heart and in the secret of her soul, a sort of despairing shame of herself and a desolate longing for something she could ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... denounced them. I knew the temper of some of the politicians in the free States. I knew the action of the South was not impulsive. I knew there was a reason for it. They said their capital was to be rendered worthless—their property to be destroyed, and their country made desolate. God forbid that I should chide them for ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Sir H. Fane will remain at Bombay, which is to be the head quarters of the Indian army while this business lasts. We only halted one day at Schwun; I rode in to look at the town, which was nearly desolate, as the inhabitants of every place invariably remove with their families on our arrival. There was, however, a fine old castle in ruins, which was well worth seeing, and must have been a place of some importance in former days; ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... may not be pleasant, Minnie. But the more wretched these poor creatures are, the greater is their need of aid and counsel. Come, let us walk over and see the poor woman; who knows but that we may be as sunbeams to a dark and desolate spirit?" ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... roofs in gusts are hurled The eddying drifts to the waste below; And still is the banner of storm unfurled, Till all the drowned and desolate world Lies dumb and white in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then, again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle through the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, which makes the snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... good as others that one sees, But he was fond of drinking and of ease; And would at nights to Sparta often roam, Leaving his sister desolate at home. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... not select a single spot in the neighborhood, favorable to quiet study, without having it made desolate or turned into a thoroughfare. The loveliest place I found at all was a footpath passing for about fifty feet through a fringe of low cedar, sweet gum trees, and shrubs loaded with pink lily-of-the-valley shaped blossoms. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... through a wild and desolate country, he arrived with his exhausted troops at Treves on the 29th, one day before the arrival of 10,000 French, who were advancing to occupy it. The garrison of 600 men in the citadel evacuated it at his approach. He ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... man are constructed, All that the body possesses, in beauty and pride of existence, All put together by love, are the elements there forming one. Afterwards hatred and strife come, and fatally tear them asunder, Once more they wander alone, on the desolate confines of life. So it is with the bushes and trees, and the water-inhabiting fishes, Wild animals roaming the mountains, and ships ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... of his late travels, of the vast Siberian forests and rivers, the desolate tundras, the lakes and marshes where the wild swans rear their broods, the flower carpet of the summer fields and the winter ice-mantle of Russia's northern sea. He talked as a man talks who avoids the subject that ...
— When William Came • Saki
... weakness, and a sense of some 'divinest anguish' which clung about the world and all things living, had their share, she was able to put into ascetic and passionate verse. It is sad-coloured and desolate, but when gleams of sunlight or of starlight pierce the clouds that hang generally above it, a rare and stormy beauty comes into the bare outlines, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... cried the Electress, casting her eyes around the room, "it does look a little dilapidated and desolate here, and care ought indeed to have been taken to refurnish your apartments and give them a more comfortable aspect. You know, Frederick, we only expect to tarry here for a short time, and think of returning ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... to a lonely goose travellin' alone acrost the country, 'cross lots, lonesome and despairin', travellin' along over a thorny way, and desolate, weighed down by melancholy and gloomy forebodin's, and takin' a occasional rest by standin' up on one cold foot and puttin' its weery head under its wing, with one round eye lookin' out for dangers that menaced it, and lookin', also, perhaps, for a possible mate, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... ninepins. A gleam of bright scarlet shot out from amongst them, and the Mayor stepped on to the balcony above the archway. The tumult died rapidly to absolute silence, a silence deeper than the silence of desolate places, because one saw the crowd and one's ears were still tingling with the echo of its shouts. It was as though all sound, all motion had been arrested by some enchantment, and in the midst of that silence one word was launched down ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... passages of his eloquence Mr. Gladstone once described the position of these races. 'They were like a shelving beach that restrained the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence behind which the cultivated earth can spread, and escape the incoming tide, and such was ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... wherein the vocal soloists could display their art, it needs not to speak at length, for some of these vices have not yet disappeared. In the language of Dante's guide through the Inferno, at one stage of their wanderings, when the sights were peculiarly mournful and desolate— ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... went out to meet the spirit of the sea—hating it, defying it, understanding its own futility, and the more hot from the sense of impotence. That died to desolation. She had never been so wholly desolate—the sea so mighty, she so powerless. Fate and human souls were ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... removed bodily, perhaps to serve some cockatoo bush farmer for a cucumber frame! And the result of this, more than any other circumstance, had been to give the saloon its desolate look; for, beneath the yawning aperture where once the skylight had stood, there was now an unsavoury mound of bird's droppings, near three feet high at its apex. This was now dust-dry; but the autumnal rains of bygone seasons had streamed upon ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... long been subject to the disease caused by this parasite, the recent influx of whites to these regions and the consequent movements of the natives have caused a great spread of the disease so that whole regions are now made desolate, the inhabitants dying or fleeing to escape the ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... by interior recollection are so great and the consequence of its absence so prejudicial that the Holy Ghost distinctly declares its absence to be the cause of all the evils that desolate the earth. "With desolation is the earth laid desolate because there is no one who thinketh in his heart." This is a terrible truth, but it is not the less real on that account. To be convinced of this you need only descend into your own heart, and you ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and lovely cemetery ... under the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the mossy walls and towers now mouldering and desolate which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered even in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death," he added, "to think of being buried in ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Are you men of love, or by lack of love are you shutting the door of the Kingdom against your sons with their fightings and their quarrelings?" Then, raising his hands high, he lifted his voice in a kind of wailing chant: "Woe unto you! Woe unto you! Your house is left unto you desolate, and the voice of love is crying over you. Ye would not! Ye would not! O, Lamb of God, have mercy upon us! O, Christ, with the pierced hands, save us!" Again he paused, looking upward, while the people ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... clearing. They were in an African village. But no voice was heard and no step broke the horrible silence. It was a village of death. The sun blazed on the charred heaps which now marked the sites of happy African homes; the gardens were desolate and utterly destroyed. The village was wiped out. Those who had submitted were far away, trudging through the forest, under the lash of the slaver; those who had been too old to walk or too brave to be taken without ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Romans, pouring in, began by slaying indiscriminately. Tiring of butchery, they turned their thoughts to plunder, but stood aghast at the houses filled with dead and putrefying corpses. The Temple of Herod was burnt, the city was desolate, while those whose miseries had not been relieved by death, were carried away into yet more miserable slavery or to a death more ignominious at Rome. As a Jewish city, Jerusalem ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... far as Brough under Stanemoor, and back by the great 'Nick,' and then athwart Cross Fell's desolate moor, but we had not taken the weather into our consideration, nor thought of possible sopping ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... and induce her to go abroad with a spirit capable of satisfaction, if not of pleasure? If this could be brought about, then time might do the rest. It would have been a delight to him to see his daughter married early, even though his own home might have been made desolate; but now he would be content if he thought he could look forward to some future settlement in life that might ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... 'Everything! The great rooms are perfectly desolate, no furniture, hardly any glass in the windows. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of men, will ye neither hear God's truth, nor suffer others to hear it? depart and take this for your portion, God shall shortly confound and disclose your hypocrisy within this realm; ye shall be abominable unto men, and your places and habitations shall be desolate." ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... drizzling rain fell; the day was drawing in. Lord Harry left the station, and started with quick step along the road, which stretched across a dreary desolate ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... seventeen leagues W. from Macasser, while returning from the Moluccas. On this occasion her goods were lost, which were not of much value, but they saved the money, being 2000 dollars, and all their provisions, remaining fourteen days on a desolate island, where they fitted up their boat, which brought themselves and their money to Bantam. All their goods and other things were left behind, and seized by the king of Macasser, who refused to make restitution. At Jacatra the Hector sunk in three fathoms water while ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate shores of the great Slave Lake. Twice in the year news comes from the outside world-news many, many months old—news borne by men and dogs through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket that covers ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... desolate place that the girl conceived her first impression of her father as a stern and silent man who burrowed among old graves like a mole. Robert Turold had fought a stout battle for the secret contained in those forgotten ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Down in a narrow cabin, in a little bed which has the appearance of a drawer in a commode, something formless and desolate rolls about, moaning, on the pillow. It is the chechia, the heroic chechia, now reduced to the vulgar status of a night-cap, and jammed down to the ears of a ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... palaces, colonnades, and other splendid architectural structures, which made it the admiration of all mankind. All this magnificence and beauty have, however, long since passed away. The island is now silent, deserted, and desolate, a dreary pasture, where cattle browse and feed, with stupid indifference, among the ancient ruins. Nothing living remains of the ancient scene of grandeur and beauty but the fountain. That still continues to ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... made her way down the ladder. She found her husband putting fresh logs on the fire and stirring the coals to a blaze, while the Captain hung his coat on the corner of the mantel-shelf to dry. She went up to him and held out her hand. "Captain Sanders," she said, "but for thee this might be a desolate household indeed this night." ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Her foodful fruits all withering in the germ, Her flocks and herds expiring on the lea, Her births abortive, while the fiery fiend Of deadly pestilence has swooped on her, Making the homes of Cadmus desolate, And gluts dark Hades with the wail of death. An equal of the gods, I and these youths That here sit on this earth, account thee not; But we account thee first of men to deal With visitation or ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... towards the avenue, which was guarded by a gate, and Michael having dismounted to open it, they entered between rows of ancient oak and chesnut, whose intermingled branches formed a lofty arch above. There was something so gloomy and desolate in the appearance of this avenue, and its lonely silence, that Emily almost shuddered as she passed along; and, recollecting the manner in which the peasant had mentioned the chateau, she gave a mysterious meaning to his words, such as she had ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of a portion of the band[14] attempting to escape was absolutely false. The Mexican soldiers alleged to have slain the Negroes were in fact a relief party sent out by the company which, being acquainted with the barren and desolate nature of the country which would have to be crossed in reaching the United States, surmised that the lives of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... earth with a splendour of beauty, which serves no other purpose than to minister to the delight of human existence. Amidst the riches with which man is surrounded, his destiny appears happier than in more desolate situations; we forget the sufferings of the individual in the profusion of beauty with which he is surrounded; and impute to the inhabitants of these delightful regions, those feelings of happiness which spring in our own minds from the contemplation of the scenery ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... signal to the others if they catch sight of anything." "And what do they do," he asked, "when they see the signal?" "They rush to the rescue," he said, "as quickly as they can." [2] Cyrus listened and looked, and he could see that large tracts lay desolate and untilled because of the war. That day they came back to camp and took their supper and slept. [3] But the next morning Tigranes presented himself with all his baggage in order and ready for the march, 4000 cavalry at his back, 10,000 bowmen, and as ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... five years old. And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by the chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus, the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education, made by ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... Cythera long is desolate; I know the winds have stripped the garden green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, for we seek ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... imagination to see spirits there at noonday."[43] Walpole's letter of about the same date, also to West,[44] is equally ecstatic. It is written "from a hamlet among the mountains of Savoy. . . Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious desolate prospects. . . But the road, West, the road! Winding round a prodigious mountain, surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below a torrent breaking ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Lest his hunger should o'ercome him, Lest his fasting should be fatal. But he tasted not, and touched not, Only said to her, "Nokomis, 190 Wait until the sun is setting, Till the darkness falls around us, Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Crying from the desolate marshes, Tells us that the day is ended." 195 Homeward weeping went Nokomis, Sorrowing for her Hiawatha, Fearing lest his strength should fail him, Lest his fasting should be fatal. He meanwhile sat weary waiting 200 For the coming of Mondamin, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... desolate experience," he said, long afterward, "watching there in the dark among those piles of freight; not a sound, not a living creature astir. But it was not a profitless one: I used to have inspirations as I sat there alone ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... departure to this day; and we have great reason to acknowledge the kind providence of Heaven in our merciful deliverance. When you inspect your little kingdom, you will find in it some little improvement, your flocks increased, and your subjects augmented, so that from a desolate island, as this was before your wonderful deliverance upon it, here is a visible prospect of its becoming a populous and well governed little kingdom, to your ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... many parts of England the wild duck is to be found, especially in those desolate fenny parts where water abounds. In Lincolnshire they are plentiful, and are annually taken in the decoys, which consist of ponds situate in the marshes, and surrounded with wood or reeds to prevent the birds ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... race, it meant making the last of the two landings allowed them. And it was a landing in a wild and desolate place, seemingly, for there was no sign of city or town below them. And just now, after her repairs, when everything was running smoothly, it behooved Dick and his associates to take advantage of every mile and minute they could gain. Otherwise some other ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... was about to withdraw, but I stopped him to request that he would come back before dark, and sit up that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be within call in case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my unwillingness to be left alone all night in the most desolate part of that desolate house, and we arranged that he should come in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... before our eyes! It was of us the prophet spake when he told how the wildernesses and solitary places should be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the lily. Whereas the church was widowed and desolate, her children have now to exclaim to her, Make room, enlarge thy borders! the place is too strait for us. The promise is fulfilling to her, In righteousness shalt thou be established: all thy children shall be taught of God: and great shall ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Arab hails, On his desolate way, The palm-tree which tells Where the cool fountains play, So thy presence is ever The herald of bliss, For there's love in thy smile, And there's joy in thy kiss. Thou hast won me—then wear me! Of thee, love, bereft, I should fade like a flower, Yes!—over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... to be the most desolate girl in the whole school, the one person who clung to her side being little Daisy Watson, whom she did not like ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... power over him. The coarse toil of the day was forgotten; his loved dependent animals in the wind-swept barn forgotten; the evening with his father and mother, the unalterable emptiness of it, the unkindness, the threatening tragedy, forgotten. Not that desolate room with firelight and candle; not the poor farmhouse; not the meagre farm, nor the whole broad Kentucky plateau of fields and woods, heavy with winter wealth, heavy with comfortable homesteads—any longer held him as domicile, or native region: he was gone far away into the company of ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... It was a dreary, desolate old house where he lived—massive, square, and gray. There were wooded banks and hollows just round it; but farther afield the chill, bare moorland stretched away toward the sea, broken here and there by sullen ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the title of Geographer. But the problems of France were intricate, and what most appealed to the judgment of Henry was the need of domestic reorganization after a {11} generation of slaughter which had left the land desolate. Hence, despite momentary impulses to vie with Spain and England in oversea expansion, he kept to the path of caution, avoiding any expenditure for colonies which could be made a drain upon the treasury, and ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... of disappointment at the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the artist will still find enough to delight the eye and fire the imagination in Spain. The ever transparent atmosphere, and the lovely cloud effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will hallow the desolate sierras for the artist at all seasons. The poet has only to wander among the former haunts of the exiled Moors, and view the crumbling monuments of his luxurious and artistic taste, to be equally ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... later Colonel Jeffreys arrived with the remainder of the fleet. He and his fellow commissioners found the whole country so ruined and desolate that they experienced considerable difficulty in securing a place of residence.[743] As the Governor disobeyed flatly the King's commands to entertain them at Green Spring,[744] they were compelled to accept the hospitality of Colonel Thomas ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the Countess ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... loggers who had been arrested on suspicion and were released from jail for this purpose. The "burial" is supposed to have taken place in the new cemetery; the body being carried thither in an auto truck. The union loggers who really dug the grave declare, however, that the interment took place at a desolate spot "somewhere along a railroad track." Another body was seen, covered with ashes in a cart, being taken away for burial on the morning of the twelfth. There are persistent rumors that more than ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... him; but the imagination of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him: if we can suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no angels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave:—and if we can think that it was only the influence of spectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we may, of course, reject the heathen Mythology in our privileged scorn: ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Desert, parched and dry, are found numerous cities of these little animals. With the exception of a few birds, reptiles, jackals and hyenas, they are the only inhabitants of this barren and desolate land. From the Arabs we learn that these little animals have extensive and intricate burrows, consisting of innumerable passages tunnelled out in the hard, dry soil. And these tunnels are the result of combined labour on the part of the entire community. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... dialect together. It made Mavering think of Dante, of the Inferno, to which he passed naturally from his self- denunciation for having been an infernal jackass. The inscription on the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life— his desolate, broken life—a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out his cigarette ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... now, isolated and looked upon as an unworthy member of the little society to which he belonged, he learned to find his sole happiness in that sweet communion which he had now solitary leisure to enjoy. His very troubles carried him to a throne of grace; his desolate condition made him feel that there was only One who never changed nor forsook His people; only One who could understand and feel for the infirmities and sorrows of a human creature; and though to the ungodly it is a terror to know ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... notice, however short and clumsily-worded, in any obscure provincial paper, but what has been cut out and carefully ticketed with its date by the poor, bereaved father,—so proud when he first read them—so desolate now. For one and all are full of praise of this great, unknown genius, which suddenly appeared amongst us. Conjecture as to the authorship ran about like wild-fire. People in London, smooth and polished ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... palace 'neath Italy's star-covered sky, Unblest by thy presence would desolate be; But cheered by the light of thy soft beaming eye, Ah! sweet were a tent in the desert with thee. For 'tis love—O! 'tis love which thus hallows the ground, And brightens the gloom of the anchorite's cell; And the Eden of earth—wheresoe'er it be found— Is the spot where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... side make the like inquisition: If on the left side you fall, then shall you not miss But to bring your body to utter perdition; For at man's hand, you know, there is no remission. Beside, your children fatherless, your wife desolate, Your goods and possessions ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, * * * * * There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone." —Hood's 'Sonnet ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... cohort of tyrants without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary scourges,—what' these twenty thousand desolate families, women and old men, must see their inheritances become the prey of national robbery! What! Madame Guillin, who was obliged to fly with horror from the land where monsters have burnt her dwelling, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is up, and their souls thoroughly roused within them; and we should as soon think of moralising in a ballad as in the midst of a charge of cavalry. If you are a Cavalier, write with the zeal of a Cavalier combating for his king at Naseby, and do not disgust us with melancholy whinings about the desolate hearths of the Ironsides. Forget for a time that you are a shareholder in a Life Assurance Company, and cleave to your immediate business of emptying as many saddles as possible. If you are out—as perhaps your great-grandfather was—with Prince Charles at Prestonpans, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the aulas were strewn with the debris of household stuff which the fleeing citizens had abandoned. A deserter had already told Glaucon of his father's death; he was not amazed therefore to find the house of his birth empty and desolate. But everywhere else, also, it was to call back memories of glad days never to return. Here was the school where crusty Pollicharmes had driven the "reading, writing, and music" into Democrates and himself between ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... out. And I reflected that it was nothing whatever to me now. With a rush of black smoke belching suddenly out of the funnel, and a mad swirl of paddle-wheels provoking a burst of weird and precipitated clapping, the tug shot out of the desolate arena. The rocky islets lay on the sea like the heaps of a cyclopean ruin on a plain; the centipedes and scorpions lurked under the stones; there was not a single blade of grass in sight anywhere, not a single lizard sunning ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... when their tale was done. "And now, Richard, my boy, what are you going to do? You see, we caught your horse—it was grazing about a mile away with the saddle twisted under its stomach—and wondered what white man could possibly have been riding it in this desolate place. Afterwards, however, one of my voor-loopers reported that he had seen two waggons yesterday afternoon trekking through the poort about five miles to the north there. The white men with them said that they were travelling towards the Cape, and pushing on to get out of ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... desolate sea stretched around them. Sometimes it was smooth and shining under the sun. Often it was torn by winds, and a gray sky hung over it, and the men were drenched with rain. Once they ran into a fog. For three days and nights they could not see sun or ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... thousands of figures he discovered upon sepulchral walls; how he penetrated into the bowels of the pyramid of Cephrenes, and found in the inmost chamber only the bones of a sacred bull; how he was honoured on his return to his native city; and how a desolate grave on an African shore was the end of his chapter—are matters of exciting adventure that are read by thousands of young ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... marked in amazement the advance of this great array. Once or twice these men gathered together, and a sputter of rifle fire broke out upon our left flank, but the great tide swept on and carried them with it. Often in this desolate land the herds of mottled springbok and of grey rekbok could be seen sweeping over the plain, or stopping with that curiosity upon which the hunter trades, to stare ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now, moored close to a tiny island. Arnold pulled up alongside and paused to reconnoiter. To all appearance, it was a derelict. There were no awnings, no carpets, no baskets of flowers. The outside was grievously in need of paint. It had an entirely uninhabited and desolate appearance. Arnold beached his boat upon the little island and swung himself up onto the deck. There was still no sign of any human occupancy. He descended into the saloon. The furniture there was mildewed and musty. Rain had come in through an open window, and the appearance of the little apartment ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by the result of that persuasive movement. The hand he had taken into his trembled, and she would not yield to the pressure of his arm. She hung her head as if desolate memories were crowding between him and her, and he saw that moisture glistened in ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... faculty and existence on every side, while it fills us with that supreme sense of countless unseen possibilities, and of the hidden, undefined movements of shadow and light over the spirit, without which the soul of man falls into hard and desolate sterility. In youth, perhaps, it is the latter aspect of Mr. Carlyle's teaching which first touches people, because youth is the time of indefinite aspiration; and it is easier, besides, to surrender ourselves passively to these vague emotional ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... UNCLE,—Though, please God! I am to see you so soon, I must write these few lines to prepare you for the trying, sad existence you will find it with your poor forlorn, desolate child—who drags on a weary, pleasureless existence! I am also anxious to repeat one thing, and that one is my firm resolve, my irrevocable decision, viz. that his wishes—his plans—about everything, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... barren and melancholy tract had been given up to the owl, the whippoorwill, and the moccasin, its original tenants. The plaintive cries of the night-birds alone break the gloomy silence of the desolate region, and the shadowy thicket stretching in every direction produces a depressing effect upon the feelings. Chancellorsville is in the centre of this singular territory, on the main road, or rather roads, running from Orange Court-House ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... only have seemed proportionate to the cause, so clearly did he prove the criminality of our supineness in the cause of God." The text was Isaiah's (liv. 2, 3) vision of the widowed church's tent stretching forth till her children inherited the nations and peopled the desolate cities, and the application to the reluctant brethren was couched in these two great maxims written ever since on the banners of the missionary ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... upon Henry, who, after a modest half-pint, lit his pipe and sauntered along the narrow High Street with his hands in his pockets. A short walk brought him to the white hurdles of the desolate market-place. Here the town as a town ended and gave place to a few large houses standing ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... were reduced; the Roman and Latin farmers were brought back to their desolate homesteads the exchequer was filled by the sale of a portion of the Campanian domains. The administration of the state was regulated anew and the disorders which had prevailed were done away; the repayment ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "they hate, they detest the Empire. Look at their desolate homes, their deserted fields! I tell you, the women of France alone, if they had a leader, would drive the usurper ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... number of small States which are compelled to look to the greater countries in alliance for financial support. There is Belgium, which until recently was a very rich country, devastated, desolate, and almost entirely in the hands of the enemy, with an army and a civil government to maintain, but with no revenue. We have to see that she does not suffer [cheers] until the period of restoration comes to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... foul birds awoke the two sleepers who stared about [20] them in bewilderment. The man staggered to his feet and looked down upon the plain which had been so desolate when sleep had overtaken him, and which was now traversed by this enormous body of men and of beasts. His face assumed an expression of incredulity as he gazed, and he passed his boney hand over his eyes. "This is what they call delirium, I guess," he muttered. The child ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "We are all desolate that you cannot go with us, Surigny," declared Dalny, also holding out his hand. Dan, too, shook hands with Surigny. Then the international plotter led the two Americans to ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... children when they are assembled around her, but complaints of her hard lot and miserable destiny; who is always brooding over past sorrows, or anticipating future evils; does all she can, unconsciously it may be, to make her hearth desolate, and to mar for ever domestic happiness. And the husband and father who brings to that hearth a morose frown, or a gloomy brow; who silences the prattling tongue of infancy by a stern command; who suffers the annoyances and cares of life to cut into his heart's core, and refuses to be comforted ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... could then go no farther. He had seen no signs of human habitation, and had not crossed a road or even a footpath. Since starting in the morning he had passed no more walls or fences, and, as far as his eye could reach through the driving rain, nothing was to be seen save a desolate expanse of moor and bog. He was, at any rate, free from pursuit for the time, and he thought more of obtaining food and shelter than of ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... right; I want a river like that which the ancients fabled—the river of forgetfulness—that I might go down into it and bathe, and come up a new man. It is not so much what I have done; it is what I am. Who shall save me from myself?" Oh, it is a desolate thing to think of the coffin when that thought is in all its misery before the soul. It is ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... a Widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God and continueth in supplications and prayers night ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... she was deserted, denied; her plea was a jest to right reason; her love, in which the child had once rejoiced, was superfluous, worthless, now that he had come to his own; her poor hearth, which his bright infantile smiles had richly illumined, was dark, desolate; the inexorable logic of law and worldly advantages was beyond her ken, and she felt that she had only rescued and cherished the little waif that she herself might be lacerated by grief and bereaved for his sake, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... lyon would not leave her desolate, But with her went along as a strong gard Of her chast person, and a faithfull mate Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard; And over her he kept both watch and ward, With the assistance of two valiant knightes, Prince ARTHURE, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... sad words, those who were present wept, and called down curses upon Li, and reviled him as an ingrate. And he, being both ashamed and desolate, shed tears of bitter repentance. He knelt down to beg for her forgiveness. But Shih-niang, holding the jewels in each hand, leaped into the yellow water ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... in visiting this desolate part of the country was to capture turtles. Here is the ground of the green and loggerhead turtles, and, according to Sandy, the hawksbill, from which the shell of commerce is taken, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... any of the many points of elevation that command a view of this desolate strath, you may descry, towards its western extremity, a small, rude, but massive stone bridge, grey with age; for it was erected in the time of that laird of Assynt who rendered himself for ever infamous by betraying the Duke of Montrose, who had sought and obtained the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... persuaded themselves that their prayers, their fasts, and their vigils, were less meritorious than the zeal which they expressed, and the dangers which they braved, in the defence of truth and innocence. [139] The monasteries of Egypt were seated in lonely and desolate places, on the summit of mountains, or in the islands of the Nile; and the sacred horn or trumpet of Tabenne was the well-known signal which assembled several thousand robust and determined monks, who, for the most part, had been the peasants ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and had he lived longer would have been one of the best knights known, and of the great love she had in him made she his body be embalmed when the Knight of the Dragon had slain him, he that is so cruel and maketh desolate all the lands and all the islands. The Damsel of the Circlet of Gold hath he defied in such sort that already hath he slain great part of her knights, and she is held fast in her castle, so that she durst not issue forth, insomuch that all the knights ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... am I, and English too, Scottish, in another view; Wide and narrow, small and great, Dreary, too, and desolate. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... see a soul to speak to. The highway was deserted, and the fields lay empty and desolate as far as an eye could reach. Not a toiling peasant was to ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Meeson might not be dying, after all. And if he did die, it was probable that his fate would be their fate also, and no record would remain of them or of Mr. Meeson's testamentary wishes. As things looked at present, there was every prospect of their all perishing miserably on that desolate shore. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... they sped at more than forty miles an hour over the vast elevated plains that were but barren wastes, growing every hour drearier and more desolate. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... early workmen trooping to their destinations, added to his troubles as day brightened. People stared at him in surprise as he went by with scared look and soaked hat and muddy clothes. For a long while he sought refuge against palings and among scaffoldings, his desolate brain haunted by the single remaining thought that he ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... was so; and Julio had fain Have been a warrior; but his very brain Grew fever'd at the sickly thought of death, And to be stricken with a want of breath!— To be the food of worms—inanimate, And cold as winter,—and as desolate! And then to waste away, and be no more Than the dark dust!—The thought was like a sore That gather'd in his heart; and he would say,— "A curse be on their laurels!" and decay Came over them; the deeds that they had done Had fallen with their fortunes; and anon Was ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... The moon threw a fitful gleam now and then through a rift in the sailing clouds. All was still and dark and desolate above and around the perishing man. Nothing with life was visible save a huge raven which wheeled to and fro with a solemn croak and ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... came to the plains of Quercy, which were very flat and desolate. There was not a brook, pond, or river to be seen. In the middle of the plain we came to a small village called Bastide-Murat. We spent the night in a barn belonging to ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... attack, seven or eight houses set on fire by the Versailles shells, seven or eight hundred Federals shot, a few women blown to pieces, and a few children killed, would suffice to restore these desolate spectres to life and joy. But, alas! hope for them is deferred; the last circular of Monsieur Thiers announces that the great military operations will not commence for several days. They must wait still longer yet. The people ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the tears falling slowly from his eyes, followed his sister up to the tower, and there they remained till evening, straining their eyes over the wide stretch of desolate-looking water. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... that broken pear-tree, swung the gate. And pleasant meetings there have been at this door, no doubt, and sorrowful partings too,—and hearts within have leaped at the sound of that gate, and merry tales have been told by that desolate hearth. In this little lonely unthought-of place, the mysterious world of the human soul has unfolded,—the drama of life been played, as grandly in the eyes of angels as in the proud halls where my life dawned. And there are hearts that cling to this desolate ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... Bodies of German soldiers lay in the trenches where they had fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were deserted, the streets desolate. It was an appalling panorama of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... first thought of going to the old cottage upon the Knoll Road. The afternoon was waning when they left the church-yard; when they came within sight of the cottage the sun had sunk behind the hills. In the red, wintry light, the place looked terribly desolate. Weeds had sprung up about the house, and their rank growth covered the very threshold, the shutters hung loose and broken, and a damp greenness had crept ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... minute after he had finished reading the strange note and had returned it to the envelope, along with the will. At last, speaking against a lump in his throat, he broke in on the desolate sobbing of ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... or desolate streams I don't give a tuppenny damlet; For, candidly, London revisited seems A very endurable hamlet; Though others may find her excitements too mild And sigh for things gladder or madder, I'm fully resolved that the call of the wild Shall find me as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... dancing, a life without care, and a climate without asperities, make up the sunny side of native life as pictured at Hilo. But there are dark moral shadows, the population is shrinking away, and rumours of leprosy are afloat, so that some of these fair homes may be desolate ere long. However many causes for regret exist, one must not forget that only forty years ago the people inhabiting this strip of land between the volcanic wilderness and the sea were a vicious, sensual, shameless herd, that no man among them, except their chiefs, had ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... was no Irene; her husband had been implicated in a plot, and had been sent to O——, one of the most desolate places in Siberia, and my sister ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution, died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband's first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been, would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father, have been ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... is locally termed the Kara Su, or black water. The stream and my road lead down a rocky defile between towering hills of rock and slaty formation, whose precipitous slopes vegetable nature seems to shun, and everything looks black and desolate, as though some blighting curse had fallen upon the place. Up this same rocky passage-way, eight summers ago, swarmed thousands of wretched refugees from the seat of war in Eastern Armenia; small oblong mounds of loose ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was well with his soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate winter aspect—then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... talking on different and indifferent things, when, on a sudden, we turned a corner upon the immediate country of Ayr. The sight was as rich as possible. I had no conception that the native place of Burns was so beautiful; the idea I had was more desolate: his 'Rigs of Barley' seemed always to me but a few strips of green on a cold hill—Oh, prejudice!—It was as rich as Devon. I endeavoured to drink in the prospect, that I might spin it out to you, as the silkworm makes silk from mulberry leaves. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Manitou rules the fortunes of the Indians. Tuavituk one day announced to the assembled Eskimos that something had been done to displease Torngak, and to punish them he had caused the storm to come that had so suddenly carried away the ice and left them marooned upon this desolate island, and here they would all perish eventually of starvation unless ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... not for beauty; I care not for riches: I am not the slave whom their tinsel bewitches: A bosom I seek That is true, like mine own,— Though pale be the cheek, And its roses all flown,— And the wearer be desolate, wretched, forlorn,— And alike from ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... of sorrowful hours The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers Alike for the friend and the foe; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day— Under the roses, the Blue; Under the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... to get his bearings was pointing out the various points on the desolate horizon. There were the African sharpshooters; further on, the chasseurs. The very large groups of graves were where the light infantry had charged with their bayonets on ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and the early morning drear, for all he was of the life of the desolate shores of Seal Bay, for all the comings and goings of the men of the trails, for whom he mostly entertained a more or less profound contempt, for Alroy Leclerc there was still a fascination attached to the mysterious ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum |
