"Donjon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... donjon was originally the central tower or "keep" of feudal castles; it was employed to detain prisoners of importance. Hence the modern meaning of ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... A castle wrought of childish fancy, More beauteous than the pen of romance Has pictured of the days of chivalry. But their little dreaming childhood, Painted no baronial robber. Saw no haughty plumed tiara, Heard no clank in Norman donjon. In the palace, dream-constructed, Where the little waifs lay nestled In each other's arms fraternal, Love had built a shining altar, War had laid aside his armor, And the knights that there assembled Were their little homeless brothers, Gathered from the ranks of ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... For within two generations of the Norman conquest, while the old wooden abbey, destroyed by fire, was being replaced by that noble pile of stone whose ruins are still standing, the French abbot of Crowland sent French monks to open a school under the new French donjon, in the little Roman town of Grante-brigge; whereby—so does all earnest work, however mistaken, grow and spread in this world, infinitely and for ever—St. Guthlac, by his canoe-voyage into Crowland Island, became ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... murdered,—two friars—ten, twenty; a whole convent had been assaulted, sacked, burnt,—all the monks had been killed, and all the nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where was it?"—"When was it?"—"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain, the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his spectacles. "Who was he?"—"What was he?"—"Where was he?"—He ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... discovered on my left hand a narrow streak of moonlight shining under a low door, through the nettles and brambles; I kicked a way through these obstacles, clearing the snow away with my feet, and then found that I was at the very foot of the keep—Hugh's donjon tower. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... intellect with her unsympathetic refinements and pitiful uncharities, and fear of all catholicity. She was gentility itself, without the spark of nature, and believing that she inhabited the castle towers of exclusiveness and social righteousness, she had made his home the donjon-keep of his knighthood, at once the loftiest domestic apartment and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... present is simply to preserve, to guard every stone, to prop if need be, but to disturb nothing, to stay from falling as long as human power can stay it, but to abstain from supplanting one jot or one tittle of the ancient work by the most perfect of modern copies—it is surely the donjon-keep of Falaise. But, like every other building in France, the birthplace of the Conqueror is hopelessly handed over to the demon of restoration. They who have turned all the ancient monuments of France upside down have come to Falaise also. They who were revelling ten years ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Giles's Pound: Whitford and Mitford joined the train, Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane, And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain Before the plug was found. Hobson and Jobson did not sleep, But ah! no trophy could they reap For both were in the Donjon Keep Of Bridewell's gloomy mound! E'en Higginbottom now was posed, For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed, Without, within, in hideous show, Devouring flames resistless glow, And blazing rafters downward go, And never halloo "Heads below!" Nor notice give at all. The firemen terrified are slow ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... great Saint Rollox stalk, like a pile of dingy chalk; Disappeared the cypress walk, and the flowers; And a donjon-keep arose, that might baffle any foes, With its men-at-arms ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun |
