"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Afraid I'm most abominably late—had some difficulty in getting here—such a fog, don't you know! It's really uncommonly good of you to let me come and see your antiquities like this. If I am not mistaken, you have got together a collection of sepulchral objects worth coming any distance to study. [He glances round the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... sepulchral mound she had raised there yet lay the cross of boughs, the last work of him who slept beneath. Helga lifted up the cross, in pursuance of a sudden thought that came upon her. She planted it upon the burial mound, over the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... find its door as firmly closed as a door can be. He knocked on it, but a sepulchral echo was the ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... Providence, which gives wine and oil, had blessed us with that tolerant spirit which makes the countenance more pleasant and the heart more glad than these can do; if our Statute Book had never been defiled with such infamous laws, the sepulchral Spencer Perceval would have been hauled through the dirtiest horse-pond in Hampstead, had he ventured to propose them. But now persecution is good, because it exists; every law which originated in ignorance and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Legation, i. 284, quotes the 'famous sepulchral inscription of the Roman widow.' 'Ita peto vos Manes sanctissimi commendatum habeatis meum conjugem et velitis huic indulgentissimi esse horis nocturnis ut eum ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... he said, "I want you to understand that it will be all right to laugh tonight. Let me hear you laugh heartily, laugh right out, just as much as ever you want to, because" (and here his voice assumed the deep sepulchral tones of the preacher),-"when we think of the noble object for which the professor appears to-night, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... we are too apt to portray her, beauty bowered in willows, and bending over a sepulchral urn; neither is she a tragic queen, pathetic only in her weeds. She is an active, as well as passive virtue; an habitual, not an occasional sentiment. She should be as familiar to woman as her daily cross; for acquiescence in the detail of Providence is as much a duty, as submission to its result; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... have now arrived," said Max Graub, in a cautious sotto voce to Leroy, "at the end of your adventures! Behold the number Thirteen! Six lights at one end, six lights at the other,—that is twelve; and in the centre the Thirteenth—the red Eye looking into the sepulchral urn! It ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of the temple were those of the Sibyl's Temple at Tivoli, helped out by a dome, only the whole was a good deal smaller. Some ancient sepulchral reliefs were built into the wall, and about it all was a pleasant flavour of the grand tour. Cooper produced the key, and with some difficulty opened the heavy door. Inside there was a handsome ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... bells, and the rumble of railway trains. There was clanging and clashing of metal on every side, hauling of ropes, pitching and heaving of merchandise, with now a shrill scream from the throat of some dainty craft hard by, and again a hoarse sepulchral response from a larger vessel as it came or went. There was a buzz of human voices expressive of every sort of agitation and confusion, and quietly through it all, the great waves slapped against the shore with a heavy monotonous splashing, and bounded back in sullen ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... responsive. Endeavor to keep your voice free from such undesirable qualities as the harsh, breathy, sharp, rough, rigid, throaty, guttural, thin, shrill, nasal, unmusical, discordant, muffled, explosive, strained, inaudible, hollow, strident, sepulchral, and tremulous. ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the corpse a yellow robe is spread, The aloes bier is closed upon the dead; And, to preserve the hapless hero's name, Fragrant and fresh, that his unblemished fame Might live and bloom through all succeeding days, A mound sepulchral on the spot they raise, Formed like ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... only living beings in this part of the forest, it was impossible to account for the awful sounds that came from without. What made the wailing sound still more frightful was the fact that it all seemed a part of the wind that was now rising gradually. And the clearly uttered, sepulchral words made it all real enough. The wind never ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... That sepulchral groan had issued not from a mortal in the agony of impending death but from the smiling red lips of Viola Gwyn. The grewsome "death-rattle" was the result of the means she took to suppress a shriek of laughter by frantically clapping both ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Thornburghs. She believed he meant to stay another week or ten days in the valley. But in the spiritual exaltation of the night she felt herself equal to any conflict, any endurance, and she fell asleep, the hands clasped on her breast expressing a kind of resolute patience, like those of some old sepulchral monument. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... least, are turned outwards: this is contrary to the commonly received opinion that the turning inward symbolised the domestic rule over a monastic house. The head of one abbot rests on a square cushion. Four of these effigies are in the south choir aisle; one of them being beneath the Norman sepulchral arch raised to commemorate three abbots, John de Sais, who died in 1125, Martin of Bee, in 1155, and Andrew, in 1199. It seems unlikely that the one placed beneath the arch should represent one of those three, although usually assigned to the latest, Andrew. The next two in the aisle were ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... the table was urged in the same direction, each paroxysm of suffering, of moaning, of struggle, on the part of the psychic, being followed a few seconds later by absolute silence. It was in these moments of profound sepulchral hush that the heavy table lurched along the floor. It was a strange ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... who believed that she might still come back among us, and, with due assistance from some cognate susceptible spirit, explain to us the cause of her widowed husband's liberality. Alas, alas! if we may judge of the Romans by ourselves the true reason for such sepulchral grandeur would redound little to the credit of the lady Cecilia Metella herself or to that of Crassus, her ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... time to have it on the center-table in the vanilla," he said; "and now she's gone and got me so het up with interest that I got to take a hand, too. Now, fer instance, the furniture—" The old man hitched himself nearer to the architect, saying in sepulchral tones of parental anxiety: "'Tain't fer me to interfere, but I seen the stuff. I been down to the junction and see what they got. Well, say, ain't it pitiful, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be at peace with herself till she had made some amends; and when she had wished her brother good night, found her way to the nursery, where her old friend Sarah sat, keeping solemn watch over the little cot by the fire. One of her sepulchral whispers assured the aunt that he was doing nicely, but the thin white little face, and spare hand and arm, grieved Theodora's heart, and with no incredulity she listened to Sarah's description of the poor little fellow's troubles and sweet unconscious ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... instant did Vance hesitate. In tense, sepulchral tones, he demanded of the darkness, "Is the ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... and learned work is divided into four Parts. Part I. deals with The Primeval or Stone Period: Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral Memorials, Dwellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, &c. &c.; Part II., The Bronze Period: The Metallurgic Transition, Primitive Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic Habits, with other topics; Part III., The Iron Period: The Introduction of Iron, ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't it?" And another remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze on ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... things, we went down into the crypts, under the choir. These were very interesting, as far as we could see them; being more antique than anything above ground, but as dark as any cellar. There is here, in the midst of these sepulchral crypts, a spring of water, said to be very pure and delicious, owing to the limestone through which the rain that feeds its source is filtered. Near it is a stone trough, in which the monks ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reproachful image, standing suddenly beside me in the dock, just as she looked when I passed my last deception on her, that caused the tremor and affright, complacently attributed by that grave functionary to his own sepulchral eloquence. After all, her death cannot be exclusively laid to my charge. Those who tried her would not believe her story, and yet it was true as death. Had they not been so confident in their own unerring wisdom, they might have doomed her to ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... hall of generations dead Has something more sepulchral and more dread Than lurid glare from seven-branched chandelier Or table lone with stately dais near— Two rows of arches o'er a colonnade With knights on horseback all in mail arrayed, Each one disposed with pillar at his back And to another vis-a-vis. Nor lack The fittings all complete; in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of a gaunt old clerk in a shabby uniform, with a face as yellow as a lemon, hair that stood up like a brush, and pewtery eyes; the clerk said something in a sepulchral voice and shook a bony finger at him. And Navagin almost had an attack of inflammation ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Rachel. She has been playing at the New York Theatre, and caught a cold on that overventilated stage, as open to the winds as a sawmill, which will kill her within a year. With her are the singer, Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore Thomas. The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stoddard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talking of the operatic failure at the Academy of Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, of Mrs. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... There were at that time many lunatics in Judea, doubtless in consequence of the great mental excitement. These mad persons, who were permitted to go at large, as they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants. Jesus had great influence over these unfortunates.[8] A thousand singular incidents were related in connection with his cures, in which the credulity of the time gave itself full ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... was a settin' there, a tall, sepulchral lookin' female, that I had noticed at the breakfast-table, come up to ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and did exactly as Jack had instructed her to do. She heard a sepulchral voice say, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the room. The barking ceased, and I slept only to dream of snarling curs and 'dirty dogs' for ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... remarkable collection of those sepulchral and other monuments, which form so curious a feature in the scenery of these mountains and in the habits of their savage population. They are all placed in a fine grove of trees, occupying a hollow; where several acres are covered with gigantic, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Leon Gerome's tragic picture, and listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... friend, Hadrian was not unmindful of his own sepulchral monument, the present castle of St. Angelo. It served as a mausoleum for the imperial family. The ashes of Faustina (to whose memory her husband erected the beautiful temple bearing her name) were placed here, their urn guarded ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... gravity; then fixed his eyes on the pair, in silence; and then said in a tone so solemn it was almost sepulchral, "This very day, nearly a century and a half ago, Sir Richard Raby was beheaded for being true ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... commenced the sepulchral voice of the divine; "it has pleased the King of Heaven and earth to protect his people! The triumph of thy evil nature hath been short, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... that she had something to sell—a bit of carving or some intaglio supposed to be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present aesthetic craze, an honest penny ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... at her with strange, deep interest and curiosity, she related her sepulchral experiences of the night. When with pale cheeks and shuddering frame she described the six dark, shrouded forms that had come up out of the vault, bearing long shadowy coffins, which they carried in a slow procession down ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... asserted itself. In a sepulchral voice, he spoke: "One key to the right, in writing. One to the left to read. Hands up, Warren, you're wanted in Paris, and we have the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Sepulchral silence! And Connie knew that this was the dreadful Skull and Bones. Her teeth chattered as she stood there, irresolute in the intense ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... romantic movement. His group "The Moment of Peril" was followed by "The Genius of Poetry," "Eve," and other ideal works that mark his development. His busts, such as those of Lord Leighton and Queen Victoria; his statues, such as "Sir Richard Owen" and "Dr Philpott, bishop of Worcester"; his sepulchral monuments, such as that to Lord Leighton in St Paul's cathedral, a work of singular significance, refinement and beauty; and his memorial statues of Queen Victoria, at Hove and elsewhere, are examples of his power as a portraitist, sympathetic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Brocken's[315:2] sovran height, and saw Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills, A surging scene, and only limited By the blue distance. Heavily my way Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore, 5 Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard, The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound; And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly, Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct 10 From many a note of many a waterfall, And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he'd have every mother's son of us sent to jail or hanged, if he could," growled another voice on Snell's right, while from a mask on the left there came in sepulchral tones, the words, "It had better be hands off with you then, man," the speaker pointing significantly to Boyd's ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... without rising to his feet or allowing himself to be seen, uttered these words in such a sepulchral tone that they almost lifted the hair on the head of the criminal. He started, and stared ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... the solitary policeman, who directs them all with his severe but tolerant eye. He knows all the tram-drivers who go by, and his nicely graduated wink rewards the glances of the rubicund, jolly drivers of the hackneys and the decayed Jehus with purple faces and dismal hopefulness who drive sepulchral cabs for some reason which has no acquaintance with profit; nor are the ladies and gentlemen who saunter past foreign to his encyclopedic eye. Constantly his great head swings a slow recognition, constantly ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... he first came to astonish the parishioners. He parted his hair on the centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied to his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep sepulchral voice of unusual solemnity. Innumerable were the calls made by prudent mammas on our new curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he was assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily accepted. If his manner in the pulpit ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... sepulchral monuments in Ravenna which cannot be passed over unnoticed. The one is that of Theodoric the Goth, crowned by its semisphere of solid stone, a mighty tomb, well worthy of the conqueror and king. It stands ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Hung in long, sepulchral arches of stone, the black, besmoked bridge seemed a huge scarf of crape, festooning the river across. Similar funeral festoons spanned it to the west, while eastward, towards the sea, tiers and tiers of jetty colliers lay moored, side by side, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... looks up, and inquires in a sepulchral voice if I am ready for Sabbath school. It is time to go. I like the Sabbath school; there are bright young faces there, at all events. When I get out into the sunshine alone, I draw a long breath; I would turn a somersault up against Neighbor Penhallow's newly painted fence ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ray of perception; awkward, angular postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish frolics and friskings; sharp, shrill little whinnying squeals and squeaks, followed by lengthened, sepulchral "O-h's"—all formed together such an irresistibly ludicrous picture as made "Les Anglaises pour Rire" of Poitier and Brunet one of the most comical pieces of acting I have seen in all ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had yet really assailed it; but one of the peculiar properties of the preservative used by Doctor Pormont, is its pervading sepulchral odour. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Gabriel ran towards Rodin, while the prelate succeeded in making his escape. Rodin, stretched upon the carpet, his limbs twisted with fearful cramps, was writhing in the extremity of pain. The violence of his fall had, no doubt, roused him to consciousness, for he moaned, in a sepulchral voice: "They leave me to die—like a dog—the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... adapted to their purpose has been proved by the result. Thanks to the drains we have described, these sepulchral mounds have remained perfectly dry to the present day. Not only the coffins, with the objects in metal or terra-cotta they contained, but even the skeletons themselves have been preserved intact. A touch will reduce the latter to powder, but on the first ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Cargrim was admitted with certain solemnity by a sour-faced footman whose milk of human kindness had turned acid in the thunderstorms of Mrs Pansey's spite. This engaging Cerberus conducted the chaplain into a large and sepulchral drawing-room in which the good lady and Miss Norsham were partaking of afternoon tea. Mrs Pansey wore her customary skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened the room with a dress of white ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... aberrations of mind peculiar to travelers roused from sleep, by which they are impelled to get off at way-stations, I secured my traps against the contingencies liable to unchecked baggage, and creeping into the back of the sepulchral shelf called a bed, I enveloped myself after the fashion of Indian squaws and Egyptian mummies, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis, daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior reliefs are characterised by an ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... bridge to the left, and on the quiet roads, which lost themselves behind the Beguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead. Could it be that l'Intruse of whom she had just been reading, that fatal, unseen visitor, was even now crossing the sepulchral city; could it be that the short ripples upon the face of the dark water were her shadow, while she herself had reached the threshold of the villa, bringing with her the coveted gift of eternal sleep! The church bells chimed ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... IIIrd of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the Memnon of the Greeks,[51] (circa 1500-1466 B.C.,) had a number of large scarabs made, their object was not sepulchral nor were they to be used as talisman, but they apparently were made for the incising upon them, of purely historical inscriptions; such monuments are exceedingly rare and are almost limited to the time of ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... in the sepulchral tones of Bensley, the tragedian, were judged to have a depressing effect upon the audience—a conclusion which seems reasonable and probable enough, although Boswell suggested that "the dark ground might ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... his majesty in a sepulchral voice, as he extended his burning hand towards them, 'behold I am sore stricken. Last night they believed me dead, and the voice of mourning had arisen within the palace walls; but God hath spared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... sepulchral tone in the voice, and well there might be, for it was a voice from the grave. Floating on the damp autumnal air, and echoing round the forest of tombs, it died away over the moors, on the edge of which the old ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... later I sent him the plan for the journey, also a second copy of the translation which I had made of the hieroglyphical inscription on the Osiris or sepulchral figure. He acknowledged the receipt of the same in two letters, one written in Mrs Montefiore's handwriting, the other in his own. Mr Montefiore subsequently told me that his wife now commenced to take a special interest in antiquities, enriching ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... 15.-Specimen of Mr. Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments." Antiquarian solemnities ridiculed. Count-bishop Hervey. Martin ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stood gazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silence of the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that the grilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did not know; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, eerie feeling. It seemed like a place of waiting, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... were heard, which, as they approached, resounded with a sepulchral distinctness on the marble pavement. Presently a young man entered breathlessly, holding his hat in one hand and a white ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Here a wooden lion, there a stone statue; in one place, a range of things like coffeehouse boxes, covered a-top; in another, a parcel of ale-house benches; in a third, a puppet-show representation of a tin cascade; in a fourth, a gloomy cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault half lighted; in a fifth, a scanty flip of grass-plat, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of those readers who, whether their subject be a murder case or a funny anecdote, adopt a measured and sepulchral delivery which gives a suggestion of tragedy and horror to whatever they read. At the church which he attended on Sundays, of which he was one of the most influential and respected members, children would turn pale and snuggle up to ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... under the same roof with establishments of a very different and peculiarly unedifying order. The students had extraordinary privileges, which by all accounts they abused extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggered in the street "with their thumbs in their girdle," passed the night in riot, and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo in the romance of "Notre Dame de Paris." Villon tells us himself that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The bright sun and delicious air are quite exhilarating. We passed a fine flowing rivulet, called Levize, going into the Lake, and many smaller runnels of delicious cold water. On resting by a dark sepulchral grove, a tree attracted the attention, as nowhere else seen: it is called Bokonto, and said to bear eatable fruit. Many fine flowers were just bursting into full blossom. After about four hours' march we put ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... parting words had lashed him into fury again, had been examining the engravings on the walls with a studied delicacy during the recent painful scene, and was now leaning against the chimney-piece with his arms folded and a sepulchral ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the first thing to be done was to build huge piers, which partly encroach on the small sepulchral chapels between the larger apses. These piers now rise nearly to the level of the central aisle of the church where they are cut off unfinished; they must be about 80 or 90 feet in height. On the outer ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... his accounts were examined he fled to Foligno, where he soon died. We will not speak of him as an architect; as a sculptor he is known by statues of Adam and Eve in niches opposite the Giant's Staircase in the Ducal Palace, and by sepulchral monuments in the Church of the Frari. While his works cannot be highly praised for beauty, they do show the style of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... ascertained, these were either knights attached to the royal household or service, who wore gold or gilt collars, or esquires in the like position, who wore silver collars. I have made collections for a list of such pictures, effigies, and sepulchral brasses as exhibit livery collars, and shall be thankful for further communications. To [Greek: ph].'s question—"Who are the persons now privileged to wear these collars?" I believe the reply must be confined ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... make my wife believe that I was suddenly smitten with a passion for the stage. In this, I succeeded to a miracle; and to every question or suggestion found myself at liberty to reply in my most frog-like and sepulchral tones with some passage from the tragedy—any portion of which, as I soon took great pleasure in observing, would apply equally well to any particular subject. It is not to be supposed, however, that in the delivery ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his tormentors appeared in terrible guise. Each white, ghostly face was lighted up as by a tongue of fire; terrible eyes gleamed from under wide-crowned cavalry hats and a voice was heard, in a sepulchral whisper, "Nex' time we come fer you, we ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... no changes ye are mourning; 'Tis to the hopeless every star appears Like lamps in dark sepulchral vistas burning— And every dew-tipp'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable,—slowly fading, it may be,—dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness—but there? Shall that divine something, which, once awakened to be its own holy self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we loathe them now—shall this divine thing ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... perfect that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountains and waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That which was yesterday is not to-day; and let not that which is to-day ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. "What," she said, at last, in a faltering voice,—"what wild words ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... blood her own, she soothes the brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By mine ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... rest on thy head, In sunlight or starlight No marble shall shed Its shadow sepulchral Above thee,—no tomb Save Earth's grandest and vastest, May ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... And Egypt's thirsty field the covering deluge knows; But whence the wonder flows, O Father Nile! no mortal e'er did view. Along thy bank not any prayer is made To Jove for fruitful showers. On thee they call! Or in sepulchral shade, The life-reviving, sky-descended powers Of bright Osiris hail,— While, wildly chanting, the barbaric choir, With timbrels and strange ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... life, or transport me to my own fireside, I could not utter it. I was also rooted to the earth, as if by magic; and although instant tergiversation and flight had my most hearty concurrence, I could not move a limb, nor even raise my eyes off the sepulchral-looking object which lay before me. I now felt the perspiration fall from my face in torrents, and the strokes of my heart fell audibly on my ear. I even attempted to say, "God preserve me!" but my tongue was dumb and powerless, and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... that prancing ghost, that giggling death's head, which only a week before perhaps had still been young, affected him like a nightmare. And the thought that now his turn had come to stick it out in that sepulchral vault for five or six days or a week and experience the same horrors that the man there was telling about with a laugh intensified his discouragement into a passionate, throbbing indignation which he could scarcely control any more. He could have roared out, could ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... further end of the room something glowed uncannily. Then two figures stole into a patch of moonlight, one tall and tattered; the other enveloped in a long garment which resembled a girl's coat, and from out the darkness came a sepulchral whisper: ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Thus we started off, like modern day Innocents Abroad, with the Winnebago banner across the back of each car, and our green veils fluttering in the breeze. Mr. Evans waved the paper on which the bet was recorded significantly, and shouted "Remember!" in a sepulchral tone, and it was plain to be seen he was sure he would win the bet. He even tempted Fate so far as to throw an old rubber after us as we departed, instead of an old shoe, to bring us luck according to the Rain Jinx. It landed in the tonneau of our car and Sahwah pounced upon it as a favorable omen ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... man at the center who appeared to exercise a sort of command moved a step forward and raised both hands. The others lifted high their right arms and in a sepulchral voice the spokesman demanded, "Does ye all solemnly sw'ar, by ther dreadful oath ye've done tuck, with yore lives forfeit fer disloyalty or disobedience, ter try this wench on ther charge of outragin' decorum—an' practicin' ther foul charms ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Rev'd Jonas Tutchel, in a recent communication to the Bogus Four Corners Weekly Meridian, has endeavoured to show that this is the sepulchral inscription of Thorwald Eriksson, who, as is well known, was slain in Vinland by the natives. But I think he has been misled by a preconceived theory, and cannot but feel that he has thus made an ungracious return for my allowing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... opaque and almost sensible darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, perhaps, an emphatic crack from the old cabinet that was made by Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of the coals on the extinguished fire. It was a calm; or I know that I should have heard in the roar and clatter of the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ye if ye'd have some cider?" a sepulchral voice asked presently; "but I don't know now's I can get at it. I told John I shouldn't want any whilst he was away, and so he ain't got the spiggit in yet," to which Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin both replied that they were no hands for that drink, unless 't was a ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... before the first day—without form and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep. Not a ray of daylight anywhere, except the adulterated kind that comes mooching round corridors and prowling in at half-open doors, and floating through the sepulchral gloom like the sleepy eyes of the monsters that terrified me in the caves at Gob-ny-Deigan when I used to play ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her pocket and began to twine the ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have been written by himself, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... rank grass and stunted shrubs, among which an outrageously prickly variety of the cactus made itself conspicuously apparent to the touch; while, more than half hidden by the undergrowth, there were dotted here and there a few sepulchral stones and monuments in the very last stage of irretrievable dilapidation. Add to these sombre surroundings the melancholy sighing of the night-wind through the branches of the trees overhead, and the occasional weird cry of some nocturnal bird, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the top of which, in 1498, Charles VIII., ac- cording to an accepted tradition, knocked his head to such good purpose that he died. It was within the walls of Amboise that his widow, Anne of Brittany, already in mourning for three children, two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble at Tours, spent the first violence of that grief which was presently dispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor, Louis XII. Amboise was a fre- quent resort of the French Court during the sixteenth ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... on mine own, I would have turned and fled: But ah! my limbs were chilled to stone, As in a low, sepulchral tone The sheeted ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something—in fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there—putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs—with curiosity—though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... to see Herne the Hunter," said the figure, in a deep, sepulchral tone. "Ride hence to the haunted beechtree near the marsh, at the farther side of the forest, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the sound of a wheeled chair coming toward the living room and he made a pretense of staring aimlessly into the street. Presently a sepulchral voice broke the silence. He turned—Mrs. Hilmer was leaning forward in her chair, regarding him attentively, while the maid stood a little to one side. He had expected to come upon a huddle of blond plumpness, an inanimate mass of forceless flesh robbed of its bovine ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the fate of the two lovers, who yet appear enviable in their hard lot, for their love survives them, and by their death they have obtained an endless triumph over every separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral tone. "I sha'n't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though I know I'm past help. I will ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... feci. I may borrow the old sepulchral motto of the Roman matron. I stayed at home, and began the third volume of Chronicles, or rather the first volume of the Second Series.[72] This I pursued with little intermission from morning till night, yet only finished nine pages. Like the machinery of a steam-engine, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... ever feared? Is this the bishop, of whom within the present hour I stood in awe? Is this William, whose every glance struck me with his superiority? Alas, my brother! and is this horrid abode the reward for all your aspiring efforts? Are these sepulchral trappings the only testimonies of your greatness which you exhibit to me on my return? Did you foresee an end like this, while you treated me, and many more of your youthful companions, with haughtiness and contempt; while you ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... betrayed; it was really fulfilled, though not in the form intended, in his various occasional poems. In relation to the edifice that he aspired to construct, he likened these poems to little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses; they are really the completed work, much more firmly united by their common purpose than by any formal and visible nexus of words. Formally disconnected, they really, as we read and feel them, range themselves to spiritual music, as the component parts of a great ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... talked with the neighbors, who, roused by the continual blast of the post-horn, were curious to know how it happened that so many guests were departing by extra posts. Whereupon the host, in a hollow, sepulchral voice, his eyes glaring, and shrugging his shoulders, declared that there had been but one gentleman at the hotel, but nine times he had seen him drive away, and the devil must have a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below them, and an effort to recall in detail ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: "foreordination!" secondly: "predestination!" and thirdly: "the final perseverance of the saints!" And he will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... The sepulchral Pyramid, a little way out of the town, has an order for its basement, the pedestal of which, from point to point of its cap, is twenty-four feet, one inch. At each angle, is a column, engaged one fourth in the wall. The circumference ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... devotion of that kindred can it ever find repose. Each ghost must have shelter,—a fitting tomb;—each must have offerings. While honourably sheltered and properly nourished the spirit is pleased, and will aid in maintaining the good-fortune of its propitiators. But if refused the sepulchral home, the funeral rites, the offerings of food and fire and drink, the spirit will suffer from hunger and cold and thirst, and, becoming angered, will act malevolently and contrive misfortune for those ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the drooping, the timidity. She looked a living statue. She spoke with the solemn tone of a voice from a shrine. She stood more the sepulchral avenger of regicide than the sufferer from its convictions. Her grand voice, her fixed and marble countenance, and her silent step, gave the impression of a supernatural being, the genius of an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... According to the Roman custom the body had been already removed, the regulations of the city requiring that this should be done within twenty-four hours. The great black pedestals on which the lights had been placed were still standing, and lent a ghastly and sepulchral appearance to the whole. Numbers of servants in mourning liveries stood around an immense copper brazier in a corner, talking together in low tones, their voices dying away altogether as the Princess Sant' Ilario entered the open door of the hall. The man who came forward ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... deadly wine, Upon the bony lip, And arranged in spectral line, Our joyous numbers trip. See—attentive at her side, The ghastly lover woos his bride; Whilst sepulchral music flowing, Scares the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... taste for putty and paint which had been fatal to his predecessor. Voracity killed him, as it killed Scott's. He died unexpectedly before the kitchen-fire. "He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of Cuckoo!" The letter which told me this (31st of October) announced to me also that he was at a dead lock in his Christmas story: "Sick, bothered and depressed. Visions of Brighton come upon me; and I have a great mind to go there to finish my second part, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... himself, the boyarin put back the image into its former place, and then hastened to sprinkle his child with holy water which always stood ready in the oratory. Anastasia revived, and when she saw herself surrounded by her father and brother, in a dark, narrow, sepulchral place, she uttered a wild cry, and turned her dim eyes around. 'My life, my darling child, my dove! what aileth thee?' cried the father. 'Recollect thyself: thou art in the oratory. 'Tis plain some evil eye hath struck thee. Pray to the Holy Virgin: she, the merciful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... seldom occurred to Virginia to doubt the black woman's knowledge. She wanted her father to live! Life seemed so dizzily upset with no Matty, with no Milly Ann, and no—father, somewhere in the world. Matty's next words, spoken in a sepulchral whisper, bore down ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Blood tree of Teneriffe. This liliaceous plant attains a great age and enormous size. The resin obtained from this tree has been found in the sepulchral caves of the Cuanches, and hence it is supposed to have been used by them in embalming the dead. Trees of this species, at present in vigorous health, are supposed to be as old as the ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... Horace's Digentia, the stream he calls it whose icy waters freshen him, the stream of which Mandela drinks. (Ep. I, xviii, 104-105.) And there, on its opposite bank, is the modern village Bardela, identified with Mandela by a sepulchral inscription recently dug up. We turn northward, following the stream; the road becomes distressingly steep, recalling a line in which the poet speaks of returning homeward "to his mountain stronghold." (Sat. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... a torch at a sepulchral lamp, Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp, I bore it through the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... chewed his way laboriously through an extremely dead fish, then through a piece of meat, flabby and cold; then he found a very few lentils, stiff with insecticide, beneath a great deal of sauce; finally he savoured some ancient prunes, whose juice smelt of mould and was at the same time aquatic and sepulchral. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... The sepulchral halls of the catacombs do not resemble those of the Egyptians or those of the Etruscans; they are bare and severe. The Christians knew that a corpse had no bodily wants and so they did not adorn the tombs. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... effected by his prayer. At the instant, however, when the roots began to give way, he heard a groan coming up from the ground below, as if from a person in suffering. Immediately afterward a voice, in a mournful and sepulchral accent, began to beg him to go away, and cease disturbing the repose of the dead. "What you are tearing and lacerating," said the voice, "is not a tree, but a man. I am Polydorus. I was killed by the king of Thrace, and instead of burial, have been turned into ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... all his expectations and surpassed them. He had imagined it a sepulchral sheet of water, sunk between cavernous woods. And lo! it lay high in the light of day, broad-rimmed, with the forests diminishing as they shelved down to its waters. The mountains rimmed it, amethystine, remote, delicate ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to turn his face toward the open room, there came to his ears the most terrifying sound. Distinctly, plainly he heard a chuckle, almost at the bedside. A chuckle, hollow, sepulchral, mirthless. The hair on Hawkins's head stood straight on end. The impulse to hide beneath the covers was conquered by the irresistible desire to know ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... young women; the scene had always been played out in a drawing-room filled with bric-a-brac and heavy hangings, he in his long black afternoon coat. There had been a touch of solemnity in it, a weighty sense of responsibility that would have made their first kiss a little sepulchral. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... impression was more acute than lasting. The Cardinal's memory is a dim thing to-day. And he who descends into the crypt of that Cathedral which Manning never lived to see, will observe, in the quiet niche with the sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault like some forlorn and forgotten ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... that applause: And oft, slow pacing yon sepulchral gloom, With fond regret shall Meditation pause, And breathe these accents ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... expressions of Duck Island were in keeping with its general appearance, melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of the passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, were all beyond powers of written expression. The aspect ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... his hands over his eyes as if he saw something while he spoke, and then, letting his voice drop to an almost sepulchral ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... small torrent down the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a sepulchral child, 'All gone!' to have lapsed into a ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,—ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a low sepulchral tone, "it is a bequest from thy husband. It was his wife's last pledge—a seal of unchanging fidelity. He bade me seek his dame, and say, 'His last sigh was to her—his last wish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... continued year after year till all other interests in the General Assembly were overshadowed. The voice of the Church, once powerful in guiding public issues, was now despised; the tones were guttural, sepulchral, alarming, making the blood run in chills. Then came Cromwell and snuffed the Assembly out like a candle. It was sending forth ill—odored smoke and but little light. Are we surprised that God permitted him to quench ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... and hear my last testimony. I am about to die. The end draws near," were the sepulchral words that made him bring his song ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... a snake past the barn and down the hill, Many Eyes smiling serenely ahead of her. The silence continued deep and sepulchral all the way down the hill and quite to the edge of the woods, and then Nyoda suddenly exclaimed, "The supper basket! Who ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... caught, through an occasional gleam of light, the shadows of outlying monuments and ruins. As we crossed the silent-rolling Tiber, and the reverberations of the railway bridge smote on our ears with a hollow, sepulchral sound, we felt, almost with a shiver, that we were entering a city ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... that they were also used in the ceremonies of the Mysteries, for we see their forms represented on the vases themselves: Bacchus frequently holds a cantharus, Satyrs carry a diota. A few seem to have been expressly for sepulchral purposes. Some have supposed that these vases were intended to hold the ashes of the dead; but this could not have been their use, for they are only found in tombs in which the bodies have been buried without being burnt. The piety of the relations adorned ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... chambers wearily, Longing to leave its cold sepulchral aisles, Comest thou with thy calm assuring smiles, Like Nemesis to lead us tenderly Through all the dangers of the murky way, Unto the golden portals of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels |
