"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help not merely his own solitary soul but all souls travailing through all the world, I might yet have remained where I was, an alien living indifferent to the common rule, like a monk of some shunned exotic order. But with convictions like mine, to do so would have brought the drear sense of derogation. All the miseries of the past were as nothing to that; there was but one manly course—to return and gird my loins for a new struggle with western life. Within a month from the time when this course was seen to be a duty, I was standing on the deck of a homeward-bound ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the Autumn days are here Make things snug for Winter drear; Storehouse filled with everything To last ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... madness wild Dwells in that drear and Atheist doom! But death of horror is despoiled, When Heaven ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... them are blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear; An' forward, tho' I canna see,[8-15] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sad that lady grieved, In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear, And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each other's ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... bring not back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult in ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... He only, deals with sin, considered as guilt. Here is the living secret and centre of all Christ's preciousness and power—that He died on the Cross; and in His spirit, which knew the drear desolation of being forsaken by God, and in His flesh, which bore the outward consequences of sin, in death as a sinful world knows it, 'bare our sins and carried our sorrows,' so that 'by His stripes we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... eagle, through the air a queen, And one far different, I ween, In temper, language, thought, and mien,— The magpie,—once a prairie cross'd. The by-path where they met was drear, And Madge gave up herself for lost; But having dined on ample cheer, The eagle bade her, "Never fear; You're welcome to my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... wisdom of Oedipus. If one with sharp axe lop the boughs of a great oak and mar the glorious form, even in the perishing of the fruit thereof it yet giveth token of that it was; whether at the last it come even to the winter fire, or whether with upright pillars in a master's house it stand, to serve drear service within alien walls, and the place thereof knoweth ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the air was electric with patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... monstrous foul-air sigh, For the outside heaven of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody. 'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), 'In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?— Such manner of ills as brute-flesh ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... led at once to the habitation of the witch. Here he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but supported by a long staff, the drear and sharp ascent. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... perseverance. As soon as I was out of sight of Mr. Smith and Coles I sat down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... striking the eye. The god of slavery-the god we worship, has no use for such temples; public libraries are his prison; his civilization is like a dull dead march; he is the enemy of his own heart, vitiating and making drear whatever he touches. He wages war on art, science, civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples reared for the enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a cotton-bag his judgment-seat. But we pride ourselves that we are a respectable people-what ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... bards beside In sage and solemn times have sung Of turneys and of trophies hung; Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Across the gulf that stretches far beneath Lies the dark valley of the shade of death— A land of deep forgetfulness,—a shore Which all must traverse, but return no more To this sad earth, to dissipate our dread, And tell the mighty secrets of the dead. Enough for us that those drear realms were trod By heavenly footsteps, that the Son of God Passed the dark bourne and vanquished Death, to save The weary ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please—with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments—so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the winter chill, The singing spring—hot summer and drear fall, You go your way, seeking for good, not ill, Remembering life's joy and not its gall; Clasping the hand that trembles, when you may, Spending your love whole-heartedly the while For those who need it now, nor wait that day ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... I wander round Amidst the grassy graves: 15 But all I hear Is the north-wind drear, And all I ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... And on the holy Hearth, 190 The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hart, and the hind: Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens, Though bleak thy dun islands appear, Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans, That roam on these mountains so drear! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... It was bleak and drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his face while this dismal looting went ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent fame, And cry, Lo, here! And name The Lady whose smiles inflame The sphere. Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid, And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought; For I will sing of nought Less sweet to ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Drear and desolate is it in winter, when the straits are filled with ice, which, in the shape of floe, and berg, and pinnacle, pass in ghostly procession to and fro, as the wind wafts them, or they feel the diurnal impetus of the tides they cover, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... time itself. Amorphous darkness! I fancied it gave me pain—a pain that light would at once have alleviated; and sometimes I felt as I had once done before, when laid upon a sick couch counting over the long drear hours of the night, and anxiously watching for the day. In this way slowly, and far from pleasantly, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or sigh, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... cold and chilly mist Broodeth o'er Winandermere, And the heaven-descended cloud hath kissed The still lake drear." ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... by the sense of beauty, showing in every line the genius of Keats and his exquisite workmanship. The sonnets "On the Sea," "When I have Fears," "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" and "To Sleep"; the fragment beginning "In a drear-nighted December"; the marvelous odes "On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale" and "To Autumn," in which he combines the simplicity of the old classics with the romance and magic of medieval writers,—there are no works in English of a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... ruddy light, and to Ruby, who had just escaped from a scene of such drear and dismal aspect, it appeared, what it really was, a place of the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... give you an English song,' and to the tune of 'Over the hills and far away,' which my good old grandfather used to hum as a favourite air in Marlborough's camp, I made some doggerel words:—'This long, long year, a prisoner drear; Ah, me! I'm tired of lingering here: I'll give a hundred guineas gay, To be over the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ought never to have indulged my wishes, but have grown gray in the same dull manner in which I was brought up! Because I once venture a step beyond the drear monotony of my past life, and look around me to see whether there be not some new source of enjoyment in store for ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, Forsook ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... band Drove with dire boding of their future woe. Broad are their pennons, of the human form Their neck and count'nance, arm'd with talons keen The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... ay, and before my door. Ah! dolorous day and drear! Ah! woe is me! Would God I were no more! My purchase was so dear! Ah! why that day did I to watch give o'er? For him my cherished fere With marjoram I ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... deed was done! He felt the warm blood flowing from his veins—he felt that with it also was sweeping by the miserable remnant of his buried existence. His thoughts wandered, and a happy insensibility overpowered him, and now his blessed spirit floated chainless and free beyond this drear prison. The necessities of this poor life ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... seasons shifted,—wet and warm and drear and dry; Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... bard of silver hair, He wanders in the valley drear, Whilst grief his mind consumes: His father's footsteps tries to trace In vain, for time does them efface; ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... lesson! Though the night be drear and long, To the darkest sorrow there comes a morrow, A right to every wrong. And as, when, having run his low course, the red Sun Comes charging gayly up here, The white shield of Winter shall shiver and splinter At the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals, as we passed across from bluff to bluff, it is impossible to conceive. Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's hell—so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Britons true To worship God in desk and pew As conscience may to them dictate, Without control of king, or state, Or Papal "bull," or legate's rod— Only accountable to God. On Sunday night he reached Dunbar. From darkened sky gleamed not a star; The way he travelled o'er was drear, Made doubly so by Scotchmen's fear. At his approach like sheep they fled, Made frantic by an awful dread Of red-hot irons, spear, and sword, Of breasts thrust thro', and bodies gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They bore away what ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... scared but stubborn, insisting that he had heard Elfigo call Estan from the house just before the shot was fired. The mother also had been badly frightened, but not at all stubborn. Indeed, she was not even certain of anything beyond the drear fact that her son was dead, and that he had fallen with the lamp in his hand, unarmed and unsuspecting. She was frightened at the unknown, terrible Law that had brought her there before the judge, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... office, Eddie at the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, that they were all astonished when ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... thank heaven for that, Madeline, else your way would have been far more drear, else your life might have known never a ray of sunlight, in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... blanket damp from the spray of heavy rain against the canvas earlier in the night. Soon, with slow dawn's approach, he could make out the dull white of his carbine and sabre against the mud-plastered chimney. In that drear dimness the boy shivered, with a sense of misery rather than from cold, and yearned as only sleepy youth can for the ease of a true bed and dry warm swooning to slumber. He was sustained by no mature sense ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... eternal snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the spring are here. It is not the cold, drear rain of autumn, but dancing, laughing rain that comes sweeping across the valley, touching the rice-fields lovingly, and bringing forth the young green leaves of the mulberry. I hear it patter upon the roof at night-time, and in the morning ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... we part;—for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The furniture indeed was changed, there was no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square beams intersecting the low ceiling,—all were impressed vividly on my memory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on the spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we saw you twelve All standing there before the Son of God, Full glorious men of great nobility; Archangels holy throned in majesty Did serve you; happy is it for the man Who may enjoy that bliss. High joy was there, Glory of warriors, an exalted life; Nor was there sorrow there for any man. Drear exile, open torment is the lot Of him who must be stranger to those joys, 890 And wander wretched when ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... or thoughtless hours, My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers, I ne'er could shut from sight The corpses of the tender things, With other drear imaginings, And little angel-flowers with wings Would haunt ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... bursts of mirth your audience shake; And yet to this, as all experience shows, No small amount of skill and talent goes. Your style must he concise, that what you say May flow on clear and smooth, nor lose its way, Stumbling and halting through a chaos drear Of cumbrous words, that load the weary ear; And you must pass from grave to gay,—now, like The rhetorician, vehemently strike, Now, like the poet, deal a lighter hit With easy playfulness and polished wit,— Veil the stern vigour of a soul ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Wherefore to succour and augment the fame Of that pure, virtuous, wise, and lovely may, Who like the star of day Shines mid the stars, or like the rising sun, Forth from my burning heart the words shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... jocund day departed, and suddenly a dark cloud mantled the heavens, and the moonless night was falling dismal and drear. Fabens was expected by sunset, and at the usual hour, Julia tripped to the wood-path with a light heart to meet him, and take his swinging hand in her own, as she was accustomed to do, and talk all the ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear— O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, 25 To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... journey—what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another. And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from Sneffels from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of the earth. The wondrous changes of this expedition had transported us to the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands. We had abandoned the region of eternal snows for that of infinite verdure, and had left over our heads the gray fog of the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Southern Europe, it may be affirmed that the idea of heightening any of the grander passions by association with the shadowy and darker forms of natural scenery, heaths, mountainous recesses, 'forests drear,' or the sad desolation of a silent sea-shore, of the desert, or of the ocean, is an idea not developed amongst them, nor capable of combining with their serious feelings. By the evidence of their literature, viz. of their poetry, their drama, their novels, it is ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the misty ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... fisher 'board some little bark, When all around is drear and dark, With shortened pipe beguiles the hour, Though bleak the wind and cold the show'r, Nor thinks the morn's approach too slow, Regardless of what tempests blow. Midst hills of sand, midst ditches, dikes, Midst cannons, muskets, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... waters, dark and drear, and thick and misty. How unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love! Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable youth! What could possibly have induced ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... an' greet, an' mak an unco maen.[32] In rangles[33] round, before the ingle's low, Frae gudame's[34] mouth auld-warld tales they hear, O' warlocks loupin round the wirrikow:[35] O' ghaists, that wine[36] in glen an kirkyard drear, Whilk touzles a' their tap, an' gars them shake ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Angelelli. Roma walked over to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... rapidly to the dismal plain, followed by her guide. She leaped her horse across the ditch and rode at full gallop across the drear expanse, seeming to take a savage pleasure in contemplating that vast image of desolation. Farrabesche was right. No power, no will could put to any use whatever that soil which resounded under the horses' feet as though it were hollow. This effect was produced by the natural ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... magenta. The deck, the bulwarks, the masts, and even Donovan, standing beside me, looked as if baptized in blood. It was as light as, even lighter than, when we had gone below. The cliffs on the island, drear and black by daylight, showed like mountains of red beef ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... flies, Nooks and corners dark and drear, That is where my pathway lies, Month by month and year by year; Buckets, boxes, brushes, boots, Near to me for ever dwell; No one lets me share the fruits Of the work I do so well; Boys and girls will often play In some clean and pleasant room, Making litter ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... low and drear, The April winds blow cold, The April rains fall gray and sheer, And yeanlings keep ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... thorn on the down Quivers naked and cold, And the mid-aged and old Pace the path there to town, In these words dry and drear It seems to them sighing: "O winter ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... and drear, November's leaf is red and sear; Late, gazing down the steepy linn, That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trill'd ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... once experience the drear loneliness that had sat on her like a dead weight the last month before she turned her back on Granville and its unhappy associations. For one thing, Bill Wagstaff kept her intellectually on the jump. He was always precipitating an argument or discussion of some sort, in which she ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... extreme of the prairie country, billowed like the sea, and from off the crest of its higher ridges, the wide level sweep of the plains was visible, extending like a vast brown ocean to the foothills of the far-away mountains. Yet the actual commencement of that drear, barren expanse was fully ten miles distant, while all about where he rode the conformation was irregular, comprising narrow valleys and swelling mounds, with here and there a sharp ravine, riven from the rock, and invisible until one drew up startled at its very brink. The general ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... pouring long and loud, The sea was drear and dim; A little fish was floating there: Our Captain ...
— Greybeards at Play • G. K. Chesterton
... glorious sons, And thine earls and thy dukes of battle and all thy mighty ones, To come to the house of the Goth-kings as honoured guests and dear And abide the winter over; that the dusky days and drear May be glorious with thy presence, that all folk may praise my life, And the friends that my fame hath gotten; and that this my new-wed wife Thine eyes may make the merrier till she bear my eldest born." Then speedily answered ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... my pleasure?" exclaimed Rosamund in the same drear voice, still staring at her father, who lay ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... far away, only to New England; but without Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him, working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on new graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a coureur des bois on the prairies, again that he was a voyageur ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... lines now reading, Think not, though from the world receding I joy my lonely days to lead in This Desart drear, That with remorse a conscience bleeding ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... when these dull eyes will give No response to another's heart, The world to them a void will be, Each day become more full of misery, How then, will this, my wish appear In those dark hours, that dungeon drear? My blighted youth, my sore distress, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... drear and lonely, love, And pleasant fancies flee, Then will the Muses only, love, Bestow a thought on me! Mine is a harp which Pleasure, love, To waken strives in vain; To Joy's entrancing measure, love, It ne'er can thrill again!— Why ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... days and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The result was that he at length abandoned ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... is o'er, the hart is slain! The gentlest hart that grac'd the plain; With breath of bugles sound his knell, Then lay him low in Death's drear dell! ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... had been married about a year and a quarter. Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring. That drear spectre of drought ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... tinsel star, Boxed all the time as such things are, And only used just once a year, Oh, life is very dull and drear! ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... listened to the waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from otherwhere, some region outside our planet, just as one of our modern philosophers has imagined ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... no mortal shall be known Except his holy sire alone. Still by those laws shall he abide Which lives of youthful Brahmans guide, Obedient to the strictest rule That forms the young ascetic's school: And all the wondering world shall hear Of his stern life and penance drear; His care to nurse the holy fire And do the bidding of his sire. Then, seated on the Angas'(81) throne, Shall Lomapad to fame be known. But folly wrought by that great king A plague upon the land shall bring; No rain for many a year shall fall And grievous drought shall ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... said she, "but even now Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, Made tuneable with every sweetest vow; And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear: How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear! Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, Those looks immortal, those complainings dear! Oh leave me not in this eternal woe, For if thou diest, my Love, I know not ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the syllogism which argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every thing by subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kabalastic dogma and wandered off into the drear vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a wisdom than a philosophical automaton, replying by means of springs, and uncoiling its theses like a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb but the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... for the deft action of brushes, motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval asceticism into something very like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... these open portals. The touch shall draw them to this fire, Nigher, nigher, By desire. Whoso shall stand on this hearth-stone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone. Whose home is dark and drear and old, Whose hearth is cold, This is his own. Flicker, flicker, flicker, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... my darling, strayed so far Into the realm of fantasy, - Let thy dear face shine like a star In love-light beaming over me. My melting soul is jealous, sweet, Of thy long silence' drear eclipse; O kiss me back with living lips, To life, love, lying at ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchieft in a comely cloud While rocking winds are ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out—like the poverty and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more shadowy. And down in the smoking-room he sat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, whatever the ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... up her head From the darkness dread and drear, Her light fled, Stony, dread, And her locks ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... the drear and long Time soothed thy fiercer woes, How plaintively thy mournful song Upon the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Roland's mouth is the bloody stain, Burst asunder his temple's vein; His horn he soundeth in anguish drear; King Karl and the Franks around him hear. Said Karl, "That horn is long of breath." Said Naimes, "'Tis Roland who travaileth. There is battle yonder by mine avow. He who betrayed him deceives you now. Arm, sire; ring forth your rallying cry, And stand your noble ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... all the madcaps gone? Why is the house so drear and lone? No merry whistle wakes the day, Nor evening rings with jocund play. No clanging bell, with hasty din, Precedes the shout, "Is Bertie in?" Or "Where is Fred?" "Can I see Jack?" "How soon will he be coming back? Or "Georgie asks may I go out," He has a treasure just ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... chanted the weird and doleful death lament. Four days and nights the dismal song was heard, beyond the blue wood smoke of Indian fires. Weeks of mourning passed, and all but one were comforted, but she sat all alone, and every morning she squatted on the sea grass at the shore, chanting that drear and mournful song. ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little star For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... whiten on the sea fields drear, And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap; But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear The half-hushed sobbing of the ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... true evangelist—does not linger on the wondrous intimation, but points to the vacant place, which would have been so drear but for his previous words, and bids them approach to verify his assurance, and with reverent wonder to gaze on the hallowed and now happy spot. A moment is granted for feeling to overflow, and certainty to be attained, and then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... her. She told me afterward that in all that sleep she never lost the knowledge of her grief; she did not come into it as a surprise. Frank had seemed to be with her, distant, sad, yet consoling; she felt that he was gone, but not utterly,—that there was drear separation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... all seemed as before; Of that cloud-Tophet overhead No trace was left: I saw instead The common round me, and the sky Above, stretched drear and emptily Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night, Except what brings the morning quite; When the armed angel, conscience-clear, His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear And gazes on the earth he guards, Safe one ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... devised to secure measure and restraint could have rescued from essential insignificance. No poet or landscape painter ever delighted more in the infinitely varied suggestiveness and exuberance of nature, or ever felt the formality of much that passes for art as more chill and drear. Hence in all his works we have the sense, first of all, of an overmastering sincerity; then of a prodigious wealth of fancy; then of a marvellous acquaintance with his material. His imagination has all the vivacity and tumultuousness of Rubens's, but its images, if not better ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... fall passed, when the catching and splitting and drying of fish was a distraction. Then came the winter—short, drear days, mere breaks in the night, when there was no relief from the silence and vasty space round about, and the dark was filled with the terrors of snow and great winds and loneliness. At last the spring ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... clouds are dark and drear, They moan about the lattice sore, And murmur sighs for evermore, That fill us with a chilly fear, Oft glancing at ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... school of hard mishap, Driven from the ease of fortune's lap. What schemes will nature not embrace T' avoid less shame of drear distress? Gold can the charms of youth bestow, And mask deformity with shew: Gold can avert the sting of shame, In Winter's arms create a flame: Can couple youth with hoary ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... thou art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee, But, och! I backward cast my ee On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... And wars and famines yet to be. And in my dreams I stood alone Upon a shelf of weedy stone, And saw before my shrinking eyes The dark, enormous breakers rise, And hover and fall with deafening thunder Of thwarted foam that echoed under The ledge, through many a cavern drear, With hollow sounds of wintry fear. And through the waters waste and grey, Thick-strown for many a league away, Out of the toiling sea arose Many a face and form of those Thin, elemental people dear Who live beyond our heavy sphere. ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... "A drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with the ebb ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... forget, The spot where first success he met; But he, the shepherd who, of yore, Has charm'd so many a list'ing ear, Came back, and was beloved no more. He found all changed and cold and drear A skilful hand had touch'd the flute; His pipe and he were ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... recognition. October faded softly by, with its keen fresh mornings, and cold memorial green-horizoned evenings, whose stars fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world, from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful shoreless sweep. November came, 'chill and drear,' with its heartless, hopeless nothingness; but as if to mock the poor competitors, rose, after three days of Scotch mist, in a lovely 'halcyon day' of 'St. Martin's summer,' through whose long shadows anxious young faces gathered in the quadrangle, or under the arcade, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the way the Earth goes round On its Axis, as we call it, Though no real stem is found. {117} And the two ends of the Axis Have been called the Poles, my dear; Yes, the North Pole and the South Pole, Where 'tis very cold and drear. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... no hatred left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... we pray With a grief so drear, That the years may stay When their graves are near; Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright, With love and with beauty, with life and with light, The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier, To the hearts that survive them, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, When the downward-dipping trails are dank and drear, Comes a breathing hard behind thee—snuffle-snuffle through the night— It is Fear, O ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... engines, snort all day," and where the pungent air poisons the blood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from a high roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends, all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor. Misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinions had overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails all the hope from her breast with which she had defied it. A wretched old man on the street inspires ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... when winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... revels there. So, also, lingered at "the Hive" some sweet faces and loving hearts besides those of my kin. The greenhouse, where I had spent so much of my time, was closed—the plants all gone. Up the rafters ran the vines I helped to plant, but when the winter came, drear and cold, only a few persons remained on the domain. The dining hall echoed to my voice in its emptiness, and the little reading room at the Hive was where we ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that radiant plain? I stumble now in miry ways; Dark clouds drift landward, big with rain, And lonely moors their summits raise. On, on with hurrying feet I range, And left and right in the dumb hillside Grey gorges open, drear and strange, And so I ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering away to black ashes; the untasted meal stood on the table. Seated by the window, in a drooping, spiritless way, as if never caring to stir again, sat bright Mollie, the ghost of her former self. Wan as a spirit, thin as a shadow, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... cold water from the well, and so went to my bed with a measure of self-respect, but even the "spare room" was hot and small, and the conditions of my mother's life saddened me. It was so hot and drear for her! ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... delegate of God, Whose words of balm, and guiding light. Would lead us, from earth's drear abode, To worlds with bliss for ever bright,— What have the spoils of mortal fight To do with themes 'tis thine to teach? Faith's saving grace—each sacred rite Thou know'st to practice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... that overhangs the dark, storm-beaten ocean of eternity. His human weakness is frighted by ghastly visions and indefinite horrors, against which his vain struggle only makes his forlorn feebleness more piteous and drear. The gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss of misery—a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off from among the living, by the doom of inevitable ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... winter's coming! Now his hoary head draws near; Winds are blowing, winds are blowing; All around looks cold and drear. Hope of spring must now support us; Winter's reign will pass away; Flowers will bloom, and birds will warble, ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... superb and feather'd hearse, Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse, 640 Which, to beholders from afar, Appear'd like a triumphal car, She rode, in a cast rainbow clad; There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid, Naked, as when (in those drear cells Where, self-bless'd, self-cursed, Madness dwells) Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape, Frenzy had perfected a rape, First brought her forth, before her time, Wild witness of her shame and crime, 650 Driving before an idol band Of drivelling Stuarts, hand in hand; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the happy time departed! Change came o'er it all too soon; In a cold and drear November Died the leafy wealth of June; Winter kill'd our summer roses; Discord marr'd a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... darkness that met his gaze. The room was draped in the grey of dawn, cold, harsh, lifeless. Every object on the wall was plainly visible in this drear light. The light green stripes in the wall paper were leaden in colour, the darker border above was almost blue in its greyness. For many minutes Hawkins remained motionless in his bed, seeking a ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... The drear days went by, and Tony lay like a veritable Samson shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse, sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the shock of hair and beard about a white face. Life went ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... where a tree has been burned down to be made into a canoe, these are the only traces of man,—a fabulous wild man to us. On either side, the primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to the "South Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... in aimless marching, Knowing scarcely where or why, Crossed they uplands drear and dry, That an unprotected sky Had ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... cold, drear March where the north star shines high overhead; but here, where it seems suddenly to have lost its balance and to have dropped low in the brilliant night, March is like June. It is June indeed, June with its wealth of grasses, its noble avenue of ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... lady With fifty frocks in wear, And rolling wheels, and rooms the best, And faithful maidens' care, And open lawns and shady For weathers warm or drear. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... good for the Christian's health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... heart was drear, his hope was cross'd, 'Twas late, 'twas farr, the path was lost That reach'd the neighbour-town; With weary steps he quits the shades, Resolved, the darkling dome he treads, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in profound and lasting loneliness, dips its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into an ocean illuminated now by the brief smile of summer but, for ten months out of the twelve, drear and utterly desolate. The most striking features of the off-shore islands is that they are islands of ice rather than of earth. Slightly rising above ocean-level, they exhibit one or two feet of sandy soil, and between this scant counterpane ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... will you here Over the lofty mountains? Surely your nest was there less drear, Taller the trees, the outlook clear;— Will you then only bring me Longings, but naught ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't wait till morning. You'll forgive ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson |
