"Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Years of training had made him capable of standing far more trying tests of his strength than this. The scout carefully turned his head from side to side, looking and listening. All was still, and his ear caught no ominous sound. Then he moistened his finger and held it over his head. Yes, there was the least possible breath of air stirring, as was told him by the fact that one side of the moistened finger was slightly chilled. Everywhere, right, left, in front or rear, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... blowy, continued very fine till Tuesday at four o'clock, when Papa came down and told me to prepare for a gale; an ominous black cloud had shown itself in the north-west horizon; this would not of itself have created much sensation, had it not been accompanied by an extraordinary fall in the barometer; it had, in fact, been falling for twenty-four ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... really beginning to look dark for Miss Catheron. The superintendent of the district, Mr. Ferrick, was filling his note-book with very ominous information. She had loved Sir Victor—she had hated Sir Victor's wife—they had led a cat-and-dog life from the first—an hour before the murder they had had a violent quarrel—Lady Catheron had threatened to make her husband turn ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... For all thou say'st is ominous: We were cursing; And that dire imprecation has thou fastened On Thebes, and thee, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... brought to bear. Often—in fact, if the truth were known, usually—they wait until ill health supplies the incentive. The man who is most receptive on the subject of health conservation, is, in the majority of cases, the man who has just had some ominous warning of coming ill health; although there is now a small but increasing number who do not wait so long, men who pride themselves on keeping "in the pink of condition." These are the men who are rewarded for their efforts by enjoying ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... merely dote, and play the fool: why yes, this is what I mean by growing young again: for what else is it to be a child than to be a fool and an idiot? It is the being such that makes that age so acceptable: for who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten? And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... could not stifle I concealed my selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my ominous and guilty love. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Amid this ominous stillness of nature I began to ascend the cone-strewn path. Evidently enough the extensive grounds had been neglected for years, and that few pedestrians and fewer vehicles ever sought Friar's Park was demonstrated ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... clouds that hung black and low, to the appointed place of assembly. The cold winds of autumn were driving in fitful blasts through the streets, striking a chill into the soul as well as the body. They seemed ominous of that black and bitter storm that was even now beginning to break in sorrow and death upon the followers of Christ. Before I reached the ruins the rain fell in heavy drops, and the wind was rising and swelling into a tempest. It seemed to me, in the frame I ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... much that is out of joint, much to justify doleful prophecies, in the social and religious conditions of the present age, but the signs of the times are not all ominous. At all events, nothing would be gained by a return to the monkish ideals of the past. The hope of the world lies in the further development and completer realization of those great principles of human ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... was turned toward the sea once again after his two years of landsman's hebetude, all his seaman's instinct, all his seaman's caution, revived. His nose snuffed the air, his eyes studied the whirls of the floating clouds. There was nothing especially ominous in sight. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to the chief's ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... tradition; and that other day in the year is the 1st of April. But, gentlemen, on that day the Prime Minister, speaking out,—I do not question for a moment his own sincere opinion,—made what I think one of the most unhappy and ominous allusions ever made by a Minister of this country. He quoted certain words, easily rendered as 'Empire and Liberty'—words (he said) of a Roman statesman, words descriptive of the State of Rome—and he quoted them as words which were capable of legitimate application to the position and circumstance ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... by O'Brien, an Irishman serving on an English naval vessel, that an elderly and respectable Malay woman, with whom he was conversing in an entirely unsuspecting manner, suddenly began to undress herself, and showed a most ominous and determined intention of stripping herself completely, and all because a by-standing friend had suddenly taken off his coat; at the same time she manifested the most violent anger at what she deemed this outrage to her sex, calling the astonished friend an abandoned ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that there is no alternative—" began the Judge, to be interrupted by the banging of the court-room door. He looked up, glaring at the offender with ominous eyes. The polite attendant from the outer corridor was advancing in great haste. He was not only in haste but ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a crowd began to collect in the neighbourhood of the jail. Martin, peering from behind a barred window, was not long in grasping the significance of this ominous gathering. He was the only inmate of the "calaboose"; therefore, he was in no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom so many different terms of opprobrium were being applied by certain loud-voiced citizens in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... for the special benefit of these "friends" of mine (with what ominous emphasis that name is sometimes used! "I must have a private interview with you, my young friend," says the bland Dr. Birch, "in my library, at 9 a.m. tomorrow. And you will please to be punctual!"), for their special benefit, I say, I will produce another ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... Indian drew himself up with a certain arrogance, but his narrow black moustache did not hide the fact that his lips were twitching with excitement. His dark eyes shone like the eyes of a beast, green and ominous. "But we have never spoken. I thought not. Now, Mr. Rivington, will you permit me to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... An ominous coolness now pervaded the atmosphere. Buckingham sat by the table, impatiently tapping the floor with his boot, his eyes growing dark at the delay. Hart still plumed himself before the mirror. His dress was rich; his sword was well balanced, a Damascus blade; his cloak hung gracefully; his big ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... his advances with an ominous scream, and Hitty hurried into the house to give him to the servant's charge, while she returned to the sitting-room, where the old man had seated himself in the rocking-chair, and was taking a mental inventory of the goods and chattels with a momentary keenness in his look that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Erling the Bold gathered his brow into an ominous frown, pressed his lips together, tossed his locks impatiently while he thought on these things and battered the iron mass on his anvil with the amount of energy that he would have expended in belabouring the head of King Harald himself, had ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... minutes later, having taken as much room as the width of the creek would permit, our helm was eased over and the Felicidad swept round toward the object of her first attack, which was the schooner flying French colours. A death-like and ominous silence now prevailed on board the four craft that we were so audaciously attacking, and not a man was to be seen on board either of them. This state of things continued until we were within forty fathoms of the nearest craft, when a ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... at him bravely, and resumed her watch of the windows of the castle. Here in the open, hidden from the courtyard beyond the bulk of the buildings, they could hear nothing of what was passing at the drawbridge gate. The silence seemed ominous. Had Windt's men succeeded in bridging the gap? As yet there were no signs of light in the castle windows, except the lurid reflections of the northern sky. But in any event there was no time to spare. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Bitter, fierce, ominous, his wrath loomed up in his heart. His fists gripped tight together, his teeth clenched. Oh, for a moment to have his hand upon the throat of S. Behrman, wringing the breath from him, wrenching out the red life of him—staining the street ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were in him marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek, in the dimness that stole over his eyes. "If this cleaving distrust from which I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy of evil to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Not for nothing does Unamuno live in the rust and saffron-colored town of Salamanca in the midst of bare red hills that bulge against an enormous flat sky in which the clouds look like piles of granite, like floating cathedrals, they are so solid, heavy, ominous. A country where barrenness and the sweep of cold wind and the lash of strong wine have made people's minds ingrow into the hereafter, where the clouds have been tramped by the angry feet of the destroying angel. A Patmos for a new Apocalypse. Unamuno is constantly attacking sturdily those ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... to build her nest in a bush beside the garden, and her mate began to make the sky ring with his song. The puzzle of the feathered tribe whose habits he couldn't fathom was the whip-poor-will. His mother seemed to dislike his ominous sound. But the soft mournful notes appealed to the Boy's fancy. Often at night he sat in the doorway of the cabin watching the gathering shadows and the flicker of the fire when supper was cooking, listening to the tireless song within a few feet ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the ominous prophecy Geirrod hastily drew his sword, intending to slay the insolent singer; but when he beheld the sudden transformation he started in dismay, tripped, fell upon the sharp blade, and perished as Odin had just foretold. Turning to Agnar, who, according to some accounts, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to a low, ominous pitch, and she paused as though to draw all the threads of memory into one firm grasp. Her look, too, changed. But it was a change quite ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had more to say, his hand drew me forward, his interpreting lips stirred. No. Not now. Here into the twilight alley broke an interruption: it came dual and ominous: we faced two bodeful forms—a woman's and a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... is light and versatile, And moods must change and tranquil breezes veer, And o'er this blissful hour there came a chill And sullen shadows slowly creeping near In lengthening lines, and murkier dusk took form Of all things ominous, disastrous, ill, And as a mid-day gloom portending storm, A lowering fate made prophecy of fear, And Atma knew the menace in the air, As ghostly shudderings of our fearful life Foretell the advent of th' assassin's knife. Low ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... wails the long recall; Derision stirs the deep abyss, Heaven's ominous silence over all. Return, return, O eager Hope, And face man's latter fall. Events, they make the dreamers quail; Satan's old age is strong and hale, A disciplined captain, gray in skill, And Raphael a white enthusiast ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... the beginning of the twentieth century that the monster "Standard Oil" loomed up before the people as the giant of all corporate things and that its ominous shadow seemed to dwarf all other institutions, public or private. In multitudinous forms ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... sat slowly up. His appearance was ominous. His face had become set as marble; there was a look in his eyes like the flashing of a light upon black metal. He contemplated his ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... occurred which impressed Mozart with an ominous chill. One night there came a stranger, singularly dressed in gray, with an order for a requiem to be composed without fail within a month. The visitor, without revealing his name, departed in mysterious gloom, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... scrambled Charlie and Juggie, the dead "spy" manifesting an unusual energy and scrambling after them, forgetting that his friends were in his rear and not in the closet. The next moment all heard an ominous descent from the second to the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... something ominous in these facts. Whether the secular press (not all papers are thus unfair) are influenced by partisan hatred of the truth or simply by a reckless regard for whatever is most popular, the facts are equally portentous. And if it be true that such publications are what the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... and it trembled Beneath her ominous paw; And while it shook, with a threatening look, She ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... an ominous silence brought on a coolness of the strangest kind. The Presidente might have admitted that her "little girl" was subject to epileptic fits. The President, thinking that Cecile ought not to be present, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... acting on his own account, for he, too, had heard the tiny, ominous sounds given out by the telephone and guessed their purport. First he ran to the massive transom that blocked the doorway and pushed. It was useless; not even an elephant could have stirred it. Then he stepped back, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... served—the invisible choir of boys' voices had just completed an enchanting stornello with an accompaniment of mandolines—when a stillness, strange and unaccountable, fell upon the company—a pause—an ominous hush, as though some person supreme in authority had suddenly entered the room and commanded "Silence!" No one seemed disposed to speak or to move, the very footsteps of the waiters were muffled in the velvet pile of the carpets—no sound was heard but the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... once—he dared not interrupt him now. A slight stir—a noise as of an opening box. Thank God, he was, at least, alive! Nonsense! Why should he not be alive? What could happen to him? And yet he knew that something was going to happen. The silence was ominous—unbearable; the air of the room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunderstorm were about to burst. He longed to hear the man raging and stamping. And yet he could not connect the thought of one so gay and full of gallant life, with the terrible ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has aples and you have none, and you make no nocturnal visits to his orchard; when you lunch-basket is without them, and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... certainly ceased out of London when we hear of it again. They had so utterly perished that not a single Celtic or Roman local name was left, except the two already mentioned—Thames and London. There is absolute silence in the chronicle. This ominous silence lasts from 457 to 609. We have, therefore, a hundred years from the departure of the Romans to the battle of Crayford, and 152 years more to the next mention of London; in all 250 years during ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... ominous click from behind. Ralph turned suddenly and seized his brother's arm as he was in the act of raising his rifle to his shoulder. The gun was lowered, and the intense face of Nick scowled at the author of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... a fine dagger, or a lance that struck his fancy, nothing will satisfy him except to order them all back and tell his cofather-in-law that he must needs have the lance or dagger, giving some sly reason, as, for instance, that his wife had an ominous dream last night. In one marriage feast that I witnessed, after all the bridegroom's people had left the house, the bride's father told his son to beat the dog. Whereupon he ordered the party back and told his cofather-in-law that it was passing strange that the dog ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the point of committing a great folly. This letter would of course accomplish the destruction of my hated creditor, but I doubt exceedingly if I would escape unharmed if I handed this ominous writing to the king. He would never forgive me for having discovered this affair, which he, of course, wishes to conceal from the whole world. The knowledge of such a secret would be most dangerous, and I prefer to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet, his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as Stingaree screwed round ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... sea again Mr. Stobell was discoursing, almost eloquently for him, upon drains. From drains to the shortcomings of the district council they progressed by natural and easy stages, and it was not until Miss Drewitt had withdrawn to the clearer atmosphere above that a sudden ominous silence ensued, which Mr. Chalk saw clearly he was expected ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the public movement where resistance would be vain; yet such conformity as need not be inconsistent with subsequent condemnation of the proceedings, nor incompatible with patriotic reserve founded on a belief that the rejoicings are premature and ominous. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he heard a curious noise — a far, faint sound such as he never before had heard. If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it. ... Probably some sort of unknown bird. ... Perhaps a bird ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... soon, my friend," rejoined the captain of the voyageurs, casting an eye back across the great lake, which lay black and ominous under a threatening sky, the sweep and swirl of its white caps ever racing hard after the frail craft, as though eager to break through its paper sides and tear away the human beings who ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... he argued within himself, that to the agency of "revenuers" was due that mysterious glow, more brilliant than any ordinary fire, steady, suffusive, continuous, rising in the dark wilderness, in the deep midnight, to reveal that ominous face overlooking all the countryside, with subtle flickers of laughter running athwart its wonted contortions, more weird and sinister in this ghastly glare than by day? And what significance might attend these strange ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... they were talking about the rain, which hadn't yet begun to fall, but which, judging from the ominous gray sky and black clouds, ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... feelings had sounded the depths of hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth and jaw immobile ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... out the condition of the women and children, of whom many are dying, and all are exposed to great dangers. If there was a chance of succeeding in the end, then we might hold out, but there is no such chance; there is no possibility of intervention, and the silence of the deputation is ominous. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... unlucky accident, occasioned by little Th-d the wine merchant overturning F-z-y in his tandem, compelled the latter to sell out of the army, but not without having lost a leg in the service. A determined patriot, he was still resolved to serve his country. A barrister on one leg might be thought ominous of his client's cause, or afford food for the raillery of his opponent. The bar was therefore rejected. But the church opened her arms to receive the dismembered son of Mars (a parson with a cork leg, or two wooden ones, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and his master, Jean Pelletier, had been in the habit of eating and drinking at the castle, and bad always laughed at the ominous stories told ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... to her more factitious than actual, stood the three contending and opposing forces. The thought came and went like a flash, for it was not a time for meditation, but for hurried and desperate action. The sense of something vast and ominous seemed to hang over the darkness, where, for a second or two, the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... I here protest by earth and heaven I holde your state right highlie and renowned And your faire sisters beauties and deserts To be most worthy the greatest king alive; Onlie an ominous vision troubled me And hindred the wisht speede I would have made (Not to dissolve it, though it were diferd,) By such portents as, least you thinke I faine, Lord Hardenbergh can witnesse is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... cried a cheery and cheeky voice coming round the jog; "oo'd a thought of meetin' a play hactor 'ere in the bush! Down, Muggins, down," the latter to a largish and wiry-looking terrier, the author of the ominous growls. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the distress of the South increased, the belief that Federal legislation was responsible for it increased likewise. The spread and deepening of this conviction in the Southern States precipitated among them an ominous crisis in their attachment to the Union. Nullification and an embittered sectionalism was the hateful legacy bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy. It left the South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters relating to her domestic interests. It left the North in a ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... were comfortably regaling ourselves: God knows how we were joking about the poor governor and his fortifications, both of which we promised ourselves to take in less than twenty-four hours. This was going on in the trenches, when we heard an ominous cry from the ramparts, repeated two or three times, of, 'Alerte on the walls!' This cry was followed by a discharge of cannon and musketry, and this discharge by a vigorous sally, which, after having filled up the trenches, pursued us as far ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... banging and tugging at the door, but never a jot did it stir, and after about five minutes of this futile work he appeared again at the window. The water was nearly on a level with the opening now, and rising moment by moment, while there were ominous ripping and rending sounds in Katherine's ice island, which warned her that the rescue must take place in the next few minutes if it was to be ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... up in line also facing to the cliff. There is no noise in their ranks. An ominous silence characterises the scene. In front is their chief mounted upon his coal-black steed; and upon him the eyes of all are fixed, as though they expected some signal, his face is pale, but its expression is stern ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... however, was but too true: the good folk of Windsorton had surrendered to the Boers. Intelligence of a more agreeable nature followed soon after. Cronje's repulse at Mafeking, and the British victory at Glencoe, made us hopeful at the end of a week, the beginning of which had looked so ominous; and nearly all things were to our satisfaction on Saturday night when the third part of our "time" had ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes. He stood a full minute without speaking—and you know how long ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... to the side, and peered at the coming boats, while Hilary stood fretting and fuming at his side. There was, however, something so ominous in the look of the boats, dimly-seen though they were through the murky night, that the lieutenant did give orders, and cutlasses and boarding-pikes were seized, the men then ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... from Rome. These arrive—and Tannhaeuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are heard; Tannhaeuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at the Tournament of Song—only now the madness ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... only we could be sure that it is not like so much in the book the outcome of her powerful imagination! Besides repeated complaints about her husband's ill-humour and frequent absences, we meet with the following ominous reflections on marriage:— ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... glad that it was such a wretched day—a hideous day for anyone's twenty-first birthday, ominous of all bad things, she thought. There was not a rift in the dull gray sky; the straight fine rain came down persistently, soaking into the sodden earth, and sending up an odour of dead leaves. The smooth shining laurels in the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... you ain't." Grimshaw's voice was low and hard. The game had ceased, and the four others were watching the two. "An', by the way things is framin', I don't expect you'll ever git there." There was something ominous in the man's words, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... a-tellin' me." Mr. Gibney's tones were ominous; he glared at his friend suspiciously as from the Maggie's cabin issued forth ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... that he was wearing a long motor-coat, of a smart cut, and a peaked cap which became him excellently, struck me as ominous. Had he caught the birds—our birds—after all, at the last moment, and had they been too cowardly ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... explained presently, Senor—at supper, to which the Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me," then, aside and below his breath, again the ominous word of reminder—"pays." "Most happily, your cousin's presence was the means of saving a fellow-creature's life. But, as I have said, the tale is long. Senor—permit," and in another second Lysbeth found herself walking down her own hall upon the arm of the Spaniard, while Dirk, her ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... when he had finished he listened to the same silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man glanced uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup or his fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant moment and were chilled in the succeeding one, for ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... in their basis of authority, although they owed their first awakening to him; and they were not truly Anabaptists, though they allied themselves at first with this movement, and earnestly laboured to check the ominous signs of Ranterism and Fanaticism, and the misguided "return" to millennial hopes and expectations, to which many of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping, she obeyed. "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy—you remember him, Doc—J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... denunciations of an administration which he regarded "as a civil and military failure." Lincoln's reelection, he said, "I shall consider the end of the Union in my day, or its reconstruction on terms worse than disunion." But Mr. Phillips's friendship ought to have been regarded by the Fremonters as ominous, for it was his custom always to act with a very small minority. Moreover he had long since ceased to give voice to the intelligence of his party or even fairly to represent it. How far it had ever been proper to call the Abolitionists a party may be doubted; before the war they had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... their broken rear Rages the Prussian's bloody spear. So fell a shriek was none, When Beresina's icy flood Reddened and thawed with flame and blood, And, pressing on thy desperate way, Raised oft and long their wild hurra, The children of the Don. Thine ear no yell of horror cleft So ominous, when, all bereft Of aid, the valiant Polack left - Ay, left by thee—found soldiers grave In Leipsic's corpse-encumbered wave. Fate, in those various perils past, Reserved thee still some future cast; On the dread die thou now hast thrown Hangs not a single field ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... to induce the son to write a letter in his favor; and so when he arrived in 1702 they were both sedulous in their attentions in the expectation of controlling him. A month had not passed, however, before this ominous entry was made in ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position and immediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with an ominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in a soft, ominous tone; "that's the bank. They give a fellow a post that keeps him going night and day, Sundays and holidays, knowing that if he gets up against it absolutely, some other mark will chip in and help him out. They get the greatest possible labor ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... surpasses most other wild animals! According to his mood he whines, he threatens, or warns by loud snorting. He roars with rage, and when in pain he cries, or he bawls and howls. In addition to this he threatens an enemy by snapping his jaws together with a mighty ominous clank, accompanied by a warning nasal whine. An angry bear will at times give a sudden rake with his claws to the ground, or the concrete on which he stands. Now, with all this facility for emotional expression, backed by an alert ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... other, "the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... ask the gallant gentlemen who vote for removal of woman's political disability if they have observed in the minds and manners of the women in the forefront of the movement nothing "ominous and drear." Are not these women different—I don't say worse, just different—from the best types of women of peace who are not exhibits and audibles? If they are different, is the difference of such a nature as to encourage a hope that activity in public affairs will work ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... bureaucratic system adopted by his own countrymen. He commends the English practice under which "the Home Government never interferes in the management of internal affairs," and it is earnestly to be hoped that the commendation is deserved, albeit of late years there have occasionally been some ominous signs of a tendency to govern India rather too much in detail from London. Speaking of the rapid development of Burmese trade, M. Dautremer says, in words which are manifestly intended to convey a criticism of his own Government, "This is an example of the use of colonies ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... he was oblig'd to turn off on the Right Hand to a Friends House, whither he was going to divert himself a Day or Two. They had not gone a Hundred Rood farther, but he stop'd and desired the Englishman if he wou'd take a pinch of Snuff, and then look'd backward and forward with an ominous Countenance, he Collar'd the Englishman, and drawing a small Pistol out of his Pocket, without any farther Ceremony, he cry'd Ou la vie, ou la Bourse. The Business was quickly over, and the Englishman robb'd of all his Stock, which was to the value of Nine Pounds English, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... the black coffin on trestles; the door open, for we had a fear of cats getting at the body,—we could glimpse the ominous black object as we sat down to breakfast. And I laid my head on the table and wept as much because of that sight as over the loss of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the structure of the milky way. If we proceeded on that method, we might say with perfect legitimacy that a friend of ours, who had slipped on the ice upon his door-step and cracked his skull, some months after dining with thirteen at the table, died because of that ominous feast. I know, in fact, one such instance; and I might, if I chose, contend with perfect logical propriety that the slip on the ice was no real accident. "There are no accidents," I might say, "for science. The whole history of the world converged to produce that slip. If anything had ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the mystery connected with the story, and it is the solving of this mystery that must constantly be kept in mind. "Who is the masked stranger?" "Who is the owner of the mysterious clutching hand," "Who is the mysterious and ominous personage who inevitably sends a telephone message of warning when about to strike down a new victim?" These are the questions that keep them guessing from week to week and draw them back to witness every episode. Your climax may be a thrilling ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... arias ("O figlio mio, che diro"), known more popularly by its French words, beginning, "Ah! mon fils." It has enjoyed a world-wide popularity, and still holds its place in all its original freshness and vigor. Fides hardly disappears before the ominous chant of the Anabaptists is heard again. He does not need much persuasion now. They make their compact in a quartet of magnificent power, which closes the act; and some of John's garments are left behind stained ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... entered the house. Bob had to go with the rest. The room was feebly illuminated by a small oil lamp. Bob noticed that they fastened the door with a huge chain. The fastening of that door was ominous to him, and the clanking of that chain smote him to the heart, and echoed drearily within his soul. It seemed to him now like real imprisonment, shut in here with chains and bars, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... had yet made on the Breton coast, when, just as they were within sight of the Point de Ray, which raises its bare and jagged head three hundred feet above the noisy waves which brawl at its base, an ominous cloud suddenly overspread the heavens, and the symptoms of a coming storm were but too apparent. With silent awe the solitary mariners beheld, sailing heavily along the darkening sky, two birds, of sable plumage, whose flight seemed directed towards the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures—dingy moths, silent but ominous night-jars, forlorn women of the town—ill-favored and ill-dressed, some of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to my arms. I threw off the ominous influence. I leaned to my sculls. The clammy black rocks began deliberately to march by me down-stream. I was making headway, and the more way I made, the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... to be 138; whereas if the noes had been content with the first error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that observation. This I have told you so minutely because it is the second fatall and ominous accident that hath fain out in the divisions about Sir G. Cartaret. Thursday was ordered for the second observation, the words of which are, Two hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred thirty and one thousand pounds thirteen shillings and ninepence, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... secretary to take the chair for a few minutes," he said, and there was something in his voice that meant business. Something ominous. The delegates pressed closer. The secretary took the chair. "I've got something to say ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... his sunken eyes as the sleepy steward rose, gave his bedside chair to Ailsa, and replaced the ominous screen. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... and the wind was increasing. The last gust had been preceded by an ominous roaring down the whole mountain-side, which continued for some time after the trees in the little valley had lapsed into silence. The air was filled with a faint, cool, sodden odor, as of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of silence ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... remotely came within the Squarcionesque influence, the true gift of the landscape-painter. Atmospheric conditions formed invariably an important element of his conceptions; and to see that this is so we need only remember the chilly solemnity of the landscape in the great Pieta of the Brera, the ominous sunset in our own Agony in the Garden of the National Gallery, the cheerful all-pervading glow of the beautiful little Sacred Conversation at the Uffizi, the mysterious illumination of the late Baptism of Christ in the Church of S. Corona ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... for two or three days. When I went back this afternoon, I got a look from Mrs. Nye that told me there was a row in the air. I was later than usual and rushed up to my room to change for dinner. The whole house seemed awfully quiet and ominous, like the air before a thunderstorm. I expected to be sent for at once to stand like a criminal before Grandfather and Grandmother—but nothing happened. All through dinner, while Gleave tottered about, they ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem of skull ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... particularly true of evolutionary philosophy, which was held as an article of faith, either consciously or sub-consciously, by the greater part of Western society. Not only did it deter men from realizing the ominous tendency of events but, more unhappily, it minimized their power to discriminate between what was good and bad in current society, and even reversed their sense of comparative values. If man was indeed progressing steadily from bad to ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... brought you?' exclaimed his sister, starting up anxiously, for something in the young man's look seemed ominous. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Galbraiths. All of them could be relied upon to meet the situation with ease and dignity. But Cynthia—what would be her attitude? Of late, when she had come over in the car with Mr. Snelling, she had maintained a distant politeness which would have been amusing had it not been ominous. He wondered how she would conduct herself today, not alone toward him but toward the girl whom she could not but regard as her rival. How much did she guess, he speculated, of the romance that was taking place in the rose-covered cottage on the bluff. And if she had guessed nothing, might not ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... voice of the enemy at last:—an ominous roar, growing inexorably louder every minute. At the sound his head took a more assured lift; his mouth a firmer line; and the fire of determination deepened ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogate all authority, the spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debating societies to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are ominous signs for the next period. Emancipated Russia must learn, if necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, that democracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience to just laws and ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... spoke these words the whole edifice shook, and I heard a noise as if a shower of great stones had crashed into the roof and sides of the building. The legislators quaked with fear and all looked toward the ceiling. All of this instantly reminded me of the thousand lords who looked at the ominous handwriting on the wall at ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... enough, but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... to themselves, and to a dead stop. When they looked round, he was making up to them with choleric strides. "What the deuce do you mean, sir, by having telegrams sent here?" cried Mr Wentworth, pitching at his son Frank an ominous ugly envelope, in blue and red, such as the unsophisticated mind naturally trembles at. "Beg your pardon, Gerald; but I never can keep my temper when I see a telegraph. I daresay it's something about Charley," said ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried. So much as gladness ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... to my companion where she leaned to the tiller, her long hair streaming out upon the wind, her lithe body a-sway to the pitching of the boat and steering as well as I myself. From her I gazed to windward where an ominous and ever-growing blackness filled me with no small apprehensions; wherefore I made fast all our loose gear, as oars, spare sail, spars and the like. Now in the bows were stowed her belongings, a leathern trunk and divers bundles, the which I proceeded to secure in their turn. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... was visible, he was surprised by the extreme thinness of the child, who seemed to be little more than skin and bone. When the little peasant had been put to bed, Benassis tapped the lad's chest, and listened to the ominous sounds made in this way by his fingers; then, after some deliberation, he drew back the coverlet over Jacques, stepped back a few paces, folded his arms across his chest, and closely ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Wells spoke with cold, almost ominous, curtesy and he would have shut the door in their faces if he had not caught the pitying look in a girl's eyes. A dull red crept into his face. Involuntarily he stepped toward Elizabeth Thorley. "If you hear anything of the child ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... he was leisurely viewin'' He spied the short ears and sharp eyes of old Bruin, Peering out 'mid the branches—a sight worth a dollar When the rifle is charged and the stomach is hollow; So he drew a bead on him, and sent him a missile, Which Brain perceived, by an ominous whistle, Was very near taking him plump in the eye, But he dodged just in time, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... barometer will prove correct, I fear," said Miss St. John, following them out on the piazza, for a thin scud was already veiling the stars, and there was an ominous moan ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the meaning of it? Surely it could not mean that this man was digging fresh pitfalls for the poor straying feet. She could not believe this,—she could only shudder as the ominous thought suggested itself. And Liz—nay, even Liz could not be weak enough ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play Canace Tasso may have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his blank verse, as likewise for ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... attacks of the German submarines upon the lives and property of American citizens had gone on; the protests of our Government were now sharp and ominous, and this nation was rapidly being drawn into a state ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... merely a sign of that energy and of that will's eventual fortunes. Dramatic terror and dramatic humour both depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its conscious intent. Everything in human life is ominous, even the voluntary acts. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature, but we may build up a world without meaning it. Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. A will that represents many active forces, and is skilful in divination and augury, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... as he was, it gave an ominous feeling. Why did she come here even in her sleep? What did that look mean? He ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... power, as well as the arms of England; but to paint him black, is perfect Jacobitism, and a manifest type of those who blacken the actions of the best Princes. It is not easy to distinguish, whether the other fowl painted over the punch-bowl, be a crow or raven? It is true, they have both been held ominous birds; but I rather take it to be the former; because it is the disposition of a crow, to pick out the eyes of other creatures; and often even of Christians, after they are dead; and is therefore drawn here, with a design to put the Jacobites in mind of their old practice, first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... within sight of the old grey walls. Silent and tragic, they stood up against the mist-veiled sky. The sunlight had turned to an ominous copper glow. And in that moment Olga was afraid, with that sick apprehension of evil that comes upon occasion even to the brave. She gave no sign of it, but it was coiled like a serpent about her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and craning their necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and his charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express the astonishment that filled him, when be was aware of an ominous shining of her eyes and trembling of her hand ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw me prepare to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path. I believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and other perilous chances of the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... signal to go on; but if it crossed the path, it was a bad omen, and a sign to retreat. Others saw their village god in the rainbow, others saw him in the shooting star; and in time of war the position of a rainbow and the direction of a shooting star were always ominous. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... meanwhile, Charly's deductions had been proved correct, for when the breeze freshened Dampier climbed into the shrouds. He had noticed the ominous blackness to windward, and knew what it meant, which was why he had hauled a reef in the schooner's mainsail down, and now kept her out a little from the ice. As the light faded he found it very difficult ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... said Will, for there was an ominous silence among the fishermen, who had been at work all this while apparently for nothing. Then all at once there was a loud cheer, for the shoal, a very large one, suddenly appeared at the top again, fretting the water as the fish swam here and there, shut-up as ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... room's far end. It was as he thought. The beast was not chained. The sleeping leopard's spotted hide heaved softly yet, with undisturbed breathing, and as Timokles watched across the space, he remembered the ominous words spoken to him on his entrance into this building: "Go in, O Christian! ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... closed in, the elements appeared in unison with the distracted condition of the kingdom. Dark clouds, seeming of ominous import to men's minds, gathered in the heavens, to be presently torn asunder and hurried in wild flight by tempestuous winds across the troubled sky. As night deepened, the gale steadily increased, until it raged in boundless fury above the whole island and the seas ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... which our guide had alluded. Unless we could stop our sledges before we should reach the mouth of the river we must inevitably be blown off the ice into three or four fathoms of water. Precisely such a disaster had given the river its ominous name, Leet and the Cossack Paderin, who were alone upon their respective sledges, and who did not get so far from the shore in the first place, finally succeeded with the aid of their spiked sticks in getting ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes. The drapery fluttered on the still outstretched arm of the tall object near the window;—a crack of this was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind stirred the hanging folds. In my excited state, I seemed to see something ominous in that arm pointing to the heavens. I thought of the figures in the Dance of Death at Basle, and that other on the panels of the covered Bridge at Lucerne, and it seemed to me that the grim mask who mingles with every crowd and glides over every threshold was pointing ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... diffame** of this man, *ominous **evil reputation Suspect his face, suspect his word also, Suspect the time in which he this began: Alas! her daughter, that she loved so, She weened* he would have it slain right tho,** *thought **then But natheless ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a few questions fired at the escaped prisoners, and as they managed to tell their story there were ominous growls and comments from ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... that some of the crew might still be awake and on deck; he therefore kept the three masts of the vessel in one, and crept up to her very gently from right astern. As he drew in under the shadow of her hull the complete darkness and silence in which the craft was wrapped seemed almost ominous and uncanny; but presently he detected a solitary figure on the poop, evidently on the watch, and a moment later saw that this figure was silently signalling to him to draw up under the counter. Obeying these silent signals, he found a rope dangling ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... An ominous murmur went round the room as the door closed behind them, and an air of suppressed resentment pervaded the place. One and all felt that an insult had been offered to Osterberg, an insult which they knew, since he was a theological student, he would be unable to respond to ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... side They floated; but, ere long, hov'ring aloft, Right o'er the midst of the assembled Chiefs They wheel'd around, clang'd all their num'rous plumes, And with a downward look eyeing the throng, Death boded, ominous; then rending each The other's face and neck, they sprang at once Toward the right, and darted through the town. Amazement universal, at that sight, 210 Seized the assembly, and with anxious thought Each scann'd the future; amidst ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the fight. Noon came. The fire of pickets died away. All eyes were turned to Seminary Ridge, For lo our sullen foemen—park on park— Had massed their grim artillery on our corps. Hoarse voices sunk to whispers or were hushed; The rugged hills stood listening in awe; So dread the ominous silence that I heard The hearts of soldiers throbbing along ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... western sea-rim, and there was still no sign of the captain's boat. On the shore an ominous silence prevailed, though now and then it would be broken by the weird, resonant boom of a conch-shell. The night was passed in the greatest anxiety by all on board, every man, musket in hand, keeping a ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return—and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over—and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... week passed without tidings from the absent Caliph, not only did both Giafer and Zobeideh lose hope of his return, but ominous rumours began to circulate secretly among the Court and the people, regarding the cause of the Caliph's absence. As a matter of course, Ibrahim, the next heir according to Moslem usage, was especially active both in prosecuting inquiries ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... as a shed flower fallen, nor heard The ominous entry, nor saw the other love, The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus dared At such an hour to lay her claim, above A stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed With misery, no ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... I began to be aware of the ominous distresses and disturbances connected with the affairs of the theater, that were to continue and increase until the miserable subject became literally the sauce to our daily bread; embittering my father's life with incessant care and harassing vexation; and of the haunting apprehension ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... The shelling of the back-areas continued; air-raids became more and more frequent. These were ominous signs. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... gate when he heard an ominous sound by his side. It was the cocking of Davy Crockett's rifle, and when he looked around he saw that Old Betsy was leveled, and that the sure eye of the Tennessean ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler |
