"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dispel the gloom that envelops them, and not being able to enlist the sympathy of the world which abandons and despises them, they are condemned to eke out a miserable existence in the disgust and wearisomeness of a sombre solitude. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... new then, and all the gay, flourishing towns and villages, which are now scattered in every direction, scarcely existed even in the minds of the first sanguine settlers. Dark woods and sombre swamps covered the surface; and what do you think we had instead of roads, when we wanted to go from one town to another? The first one who found his way along cut pieces of bark out of the trees, and others followed these ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... clouds. The darkness cast a sad gloom over the scene, which a few hours before had been "leaping in light, and alive with its own beauty." The yellow bank rose high on either side of the river, and formed a sombre wall, which seemed to keep the sojourner on the tide a ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... fringe of Jerusalem the Jaffa road was blocked not merely with the inhabitants of the City but with people who had followed in the Army's wake from Bethlehem. It was a picturesque throng. There were sombre-clad Jews of all nationalities, Armenians, Greeks, Russians, and all the peoples who make Jerusalem the most cosmopolitan of cities. To the many styles of European dress the brighter robes of the East gave vivid colour, and it was obvious from the remarkably free ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... uncle's apartment. "You're at home, now, you know," he said, in a kindly way, and took her hand, very cold and lax, in his for welcome. She could not answer, but made haste to follow Veronica to her room, whither the old woman led the way with a candle. It was a gloomily spacious chamber, with sombre walls and a lofty ceiling with a faded splendor of gilded paneling. Some tall, old-fashioned mirrors and bureaus stood about, with rugs before them on the stone floor; in the middle of the room was a bed curtained with mosquito-netting. Carved chairs were pushed here and there ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... forming the western boundary of Waveland, was a lovely inland lake, by the margin of which Clemence had been accustomed to spend many sad hours, since she had become a resident of the little village. A narrow foot-path, that led through the sombre woods, brought her to a sheltered spot upon the sloping shore, where she often came alone to pass an idle hour. She had come to regard this place as her own peculiar property, for no one had ever come here to interrupt her, or claim any portion ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... lived in London, I came to know children who went to school in Gower Street, and travelled backwards and forwards by omnibus—children who had no other recreation than an occasional visit to the Zoological Gardens, or a somewhat sombre walk up to Hampstead to see their aunt; and I have often regretted that they never had any experience of those perfect poetic pleasures which the boy enjoys whose childhood is spent in the country, and whose home is there. A country ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... break, saw the pass he was seeking several miles ahead. Reaching the mountain's edge at sunrise, they dismounted and began the perilous descent into the gorge. In two hours it was accomplished, and they entered the sombre shadows of the great canyon. They had begun to feel safe, when suddenly the man in front reined up his horse and pointed to several pony tracks in the sand. Souk dismounted and examined them, and, on looking ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... inapt. Round the edge are the ever-restless waves; on the surface the foam blown by fitful gusts of wind, the translucent play of sunbeams, and the clamour of storms lashing up the billows; but down in the sombre depths broods the resistless, immovable force which tinges with its reflection the dancing and play above, and is the genius and fascination, the mystery and tragedy of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... slothful, kings earnest and kings frivolous, kings saintly and kings licentious, kings good and sympathetic towards their people, kings egotistical and concerned solely about themselves, kings lovable and beloved, kings sombre and dreaded or detested. As we go forward and encounter them on our way, all these kingly characters will be seen appearing and acting in all their diversity and all their incoherence. Absolute monarchical power in France was, almost in every successive ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... felt his heart sink. Where our new house had made such a brave show a year before on the surface of the Barrier, there was now no house at all to be seen. All that met the eyes of the visitor was a sombre pile of ruins. But his anxiety quickly vanished when a man emerged from the confusion. The man was Lindstrom, and the supposed ruin was the most ingenious of all winter-quarters. Lindstrom was ignorant of the Fram's arrival, and the face he showed on seeing ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... "Bourgtheroulde" remains a pleasing and fantastic architectural mystery. Close by, through the quaint old streets of the Epicerie and "Gross Horloge", walked no doubt in their young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from their meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French tragedy,—and not very far away, up one of those little shadowy winding streets and out at the corner, stands the restored house of Diane de Poitiers, so sentient and alive in its ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... year of Cesare's death. The Duchess of Valentinois withdrew to La Motte-Feuilly, and for the seven years remaining of her life was never seen other than in mourning; her very house was equipped with sombre, funereal furniture, and so maintained until her end, which supports the view that she had conceived affection and respect for the husband of whom she had seen ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Answer, sombre beast and dreary, Where is Brown, the young, the cheery, Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force? You were at that last dread dak We must cover at a walk, Bring them back ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... palace outlined in fire, and alight from within like all other houses within view. The noise was bewildering. It was impossible to distinguish one sound from another. Voices, horns, drums, the tramp of a thousand footsteps on the rubber pavements, the sombre roll of wheels from the station behind—all united in one overwhelmingly solemn ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... He had now stood up. Craning his neck, so that the cords were tense and rigid, he remained motionless. His knees were bent, his underlip protruding. Only the eyes in his sombre countenance moved incessantly, peering in terror, like those of a hunted wild beast that itself is impatient to hunt its prey. The nostrils in his bull-dog face quivered, as if eager ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey night sky and stars looked in upon them through the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... night-life around the Mansion House went on normally with its fascinating air of a dead commercial city of sombre walls through which the inextinguishable activity of its millions streamed East and West in a ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... mad fellow?" screeched the arch-priest, his black eyes bright as knife points. "Save Atlans—?" Fierce questioning was in his sombre, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... any joy. Little then does he believe who life's pleasure owns, While he tarries in the towns, and but trifling ills, Proud and insolent with wine—how out-wearied I Often must outstay on the ocean path! Sombre grew the shade of night, and it snowed from northward, Frost the field enchained, fell the hail on earth, Coldest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... clear of the sombre wood, and had to commence another fight in the hollow of the slope they had to climb, for here the brambles and furze grew in their greatest luxuriance, and had woven so sturdy a hedge that it was next ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... was really to be pitied. He could not look upon the azure vault without a sombre terror: when asleep, he felt oscillations that made his head reel; and every night he had visions of being swung aloft ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... fall of the year clothes itself in gay colors, it is deemed an evidence of immaturity for women in the fall time of life to sport crimson and scarlet and orange. Sober grays (which mean old, mature), quiet brown, and even sombre blacks, are rather what are looked for. To dress young when people are old, deceives no one. There is a beauty of age as well as a beauty of youth. Those who live to be old have had their share of the former: why ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my father, quietly, and he left us staring in that heavy, sombre face before us—a face full of despair, but one to which we could not address ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... promptly answered, "Votes!" but he soon got going again. Ireland, he declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we don't trust you," came the swift ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... his eyes but they burned no longer. A power, akin to that which had often made anger or resentment fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the morgue and from that to the dark cobbled laneway at its side. He saw the word LOTTS on the wall of the lane and breathed slowly the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... of girlish spirits. Their emotions came and went with quick vicissitude, and sometimes combined to form a peculiar and delicious excitement, the mirth brightening the gloom into a sunny shower of feeling, and a rainbow in the mind. My own more sombre mood was tinged by theirs. With now a merry word and next a sad one, we trod among the tangled weeds, and almost hoped that our feet would sink into the hollow of a witch's grave. Such vestiges were to be found within ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instrument of conviction which none dared question. Heresy was blotted out from Spain,—and Spain was blotted out from the ranks of enlightened nations. Freedom of thought was at an end. The mind of the Spaniard was put in fetters. Spain, under the sombre shadow of this barbarity, was shut out from the light which was breaking over the remainder of Europe. Literature moved in narrow channels, philosophy was checked, the domain of science was closed, progress was at an end. Spain stood still while the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... lowering over Durlstone Point, and dark clouds were seen chasing each other rapidly across the sky, rising from a dark bank which rested on the western horizon, while white-crested seas began to rise up out of the sombre green ocean, every instant increasing in number. The wind whistled mournfully among the bushes and the few stunted trees, with tops bending inland, which fringed the cliffs, and the murmur of the waves on the beach below changed ere ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... thirteenth of October, a day ever memorable in the annals of Canada, broke cold and stormy. Low hung clouds mantled the sky and made the late dawn later still, and cast still darker shadows on the sombre clumps of spruce and pines that clothed the sides of the gorge, and on the sullen water that flowed between. A couple of fishermen of the neighbourhood who were serving in the militia had been permitted by the officer ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... belong the kelu or deodar (Cedrus Libani), the glossy leaved mohru oak (Quercus dilatata), whose wood is used for making charcoal, and two small trees of the Heath order, Rhododendron arborea and Pieris ovalifolia. The former in April and May lightens up with its bright red flowers the sombre Simla forests. The kharshu or rusty-leaved oak (Quercus semecarpifolia) affects a colder climate than its more beautiful glossy-leaved relation, and may almost be considered sub-alpine. It is common on Hattu, and the oaks there present ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... movement, the resultant of the various forces within it, was headed towards the healthy progress of Judaism. The most substantial product of this movement was the Neo-Hebraic literary renaissance which had already appeared in faint outlines on the sombre background of external oppression and internal obscurantism during the preceding period. The Haskalah, formerly anathematized, was now able to unfold all its creative powers. What in the time of Isaac Baer Levinsohn had been accomplished stealthily by a few isolated conspirators ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... threaded its way through the crowded street she rarely smiled, but her sombre eyes took in everything, and she "said things," as the boy put it, which he recalled and quoted years afterward. Incidentally she talked of herself, though always without giving him a clew as to who she was and where she came from. Several times, as a face in the ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... tactless prelate made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the carriage-wheels, as they rattled on, through the day, through the night, became as the wheels of a great clock, recording the hours. No change of weather varied the journey, after it had hardened into a sullen frost. In a sombre-yellow sky, they saw the Alpine ranges; and they saw enough of snow on nearer and much lower hill-tops and hill-sides, to sully, by contrast, the purity of lake, torrent, and waterfall, and make the villages look discoloured and dirty. But no snow ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the sea. To the first opinion we may subscribe, but doubt whether the objection ought to extend to the latter, especially if we remember the great height of the cliff on which Napoleon stands, and the usual sombre appearance of the ocean towards the last minute of sunset. The lower part of the figure, particularly the left leg, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... in the light, and that luxuriant influence passing on like a celestial presence, brightening everything! The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red: its different forms of trees, with raindrops glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. The verdant meadow-land, bright and glowing, seemed ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas, the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the cataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would have done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms at rest on the crags below, and dwarfed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... timidly in the sombre frame of the doorway, looking far over our heads. Then old Leggett came in front of her. There was a word of presentation to Miss Berham, our teacher, the vision was escorted to a seat at my left front, and I was bade to continue the reading lesson if I ever expected ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... them amid the fallen leaves. The world beyond the orchard was in a royal magnificence of colouring, under the vivid blue autumn sky. The big willow by the gate was a splendid golden dome, and the maples that were scattered through the spruce grove waved blood-red banners over the sombre cone-bearers. The Story Girl generally had her head garlanded with their leaves. They became her vastly. Neither Felicity nor Cecily could have worn them. Those two girls were of a domestic type that assorted ill with the wildfire in Nature's veins. But when the Story ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bier of sombre hue Adorned with broken lilies; crosses, tears; And on their beds a lost ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of May came, the three started off together for Galway, happy in spite of their boycotting. The girls at least were happy, though Frank was still somewhat sombre as he thought of the edict which Rachel O'Mahony had pronounced against him. When the boat arrived at the quay at Galway, Captain Clayton, with one of the officers of the West Bromwich, was there to meet it. "He is a wise man," whispered Edith to Ada, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... Roseate or sombre your humour as you patrol the reefs, it is liable to be changed in a flash into clashing tints by inadvertent contact with a warty ghoul of a sea-urchin, a single one of whose agonising spines never fails to bring ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Hook found him. He stood silent at the foot of the tree looking across the chamber at his enemy. Did no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The man was not wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord); and, let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic nature of the scene stirred him profoundly. Mastered by his better self ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... stealthy breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, are swept into ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... children into whose existence the ceaseless round of fast and feast, of prohibited and enjoyed pleasures, of varying species of food, brought change and relief! Imprisoned in the area of a few narrow streets, unlovely and sombre, muddy and ill-smelling, immured in dreary houses and surrounded with mean and depressing sights and sounds, the spirit of childhood took radiance and color from its own inner light and the alchemy ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... cloak that hung loosely upon their shoulders, displaying their magnificent proportions somewhat freely. They were much handsomer than the men, having splendid solemn eyes, very white teeth, and a remarkable dignity of gait. Their faces, however, wore the same sombre look as those of their husbands and brothers, and they did not chatter after the manner of their sex, but contented themselves with pointing out the peculiarities of the strangers in a few brief words to their ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... is here!" said Frida, "and yet how unlike the sombre appearance of the trees in the dear ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... down in its fathomless depths the stars glow and sparkle, like the sheen of a million of diamonds. Of the old forests and trees of fabulous growth, stretching away and away on every hand, throwing their sombre shadows far out over the water, in whose tangled recesses countless deer and moose, and panthers, and bears range, and among whose branches birds of unknown melody carol. That one side of this beautiful ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... as he rounded a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following as swiftly and silently ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... wonderful forward strides in his art as did Wagner with "The Flying Dutchman" and "Tannhaeuser." But that was not the opinion when they were produced. The former, although it is now acknowledged to be an exquisitely poetic treatment of the weird legend, was voted sombre and dull, and "Tannhaeuser" was simply a puzzle. After listening to "Tannhaeuser," Schumann declared that Wagner was unmusical! Unless a person is familiar with Wagner's life, it is impossible to believe how bitter was the opposition ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... officers. The rest of the panorama was made up of an immense view of forest below them, and upright masses of mountains above them. Over these, heavy bodies of mist were slowly sailing, giving a sombre appearance to the primeval woods which, in general, covered both mountains and plains. The atmosphere indicated an inter-tropical morning during the rainy season, and the sun shone resplendently between dense ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... also I had seen pictures of him in the newspapers, and had studied them with some care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you doing here?" were his ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. The upper windows of the great house flamed so as to make your eyes wink; the little river ran off noisily westward and was lost in sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old abbey church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Clavering St. Mary's to the present day) rose up in purple splendour. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's cast ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... bounding water-falls and tranquil lakes; fertile lands and savage wastes; sunny plains and frigid plateaux. There were the most rugged forms and the most graceful outlines; low perpendicular cliffs and gentle undulating slopes; rocky mountains and snowy mountains, sombre and solemn, or glittering and white, with walls, turrets, pinnacles, pyramids, domes, cones, and spires. There was every combination that the world can give, and every contrast ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... out of his inflamed eyes at the five women who all wore the garbs of the Sisters of Mercy, their white coiffes and tabliers contrasting sharply with the sombre habits of the Russian nuns who had gathered in the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, we may read the world's later history, and to-day they breathe the sombre reverential influence of a faith which sought to satisfy itself with the visible symbolizing of those half-poetical, half-superstitious conceptions with which the religion of the Middle Ages ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... I said, as I glanced round and noted that the sombre reflection from the walls of the chasm gave the faces of my companions a ghastly and ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they laugh and are merry even after they have children ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... voices stretched to breaking, these clear sharp voices threw into the darkness of the chant some whiteness of the dawn, joining their pure, soft sounds to the resonant tones of the basses, piercing as with a jet of living silver the sombre cataract of the deeper singers; they sharpened the wailing, strengthened and embittered the burning salt of tears, but they insinuated also a sort of protecting caress, balsamic freshness, lustral help; they lighted in the darkness those brief gleams which tinkle in the Angelus at ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... for dinner. Gowns are provided for the student in the robing-room, for the use of which a small term-fee is paid, and, thus habited, he is introduced into the Hall. But it is now no longer hushed and sombre, but a scene of brightness and bustle. The tables are spread for dinner in close and orderly array; wax-lights in profusion blaze upon them; a multitude of gowned men are lounging on the seats, or talking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... sailors pulled at the oar. They glided slowly past the sombre shores by the shimmering moonlight, the sound of the murmuring surf and the moaning pine-trees. In the gray of the morning, they came to the mouth of a river, probably the Nassau; and here a northeast wind set in with a violence that almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... the most famous painters—Francis Hals, Jordaens, Rembrandt, Metsu, Van Mieris—all belong to this time, and in some of the fine interiors represented by these Old Masters, in which embroidered curtains and rich coverings relieve the sombre colors of the dark carved oak furniture, there is a richness of effect which the artist could scarcely have imagined, but which he must have observed in the houses of the rich burghers ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... which I was now reminded by the howling of the storm within its high walls. Mrs. Blakesley had extemporised a bed for me on the old sofa; and the fire was already blazing away splendidly. I sat down beside it, and the sombre-hued Past rolled ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... natural courage had needs have a good cause, and confidence in the weapon to be used. Florence Kearney possessed all three; and though it was his first appearance in a duel, he had no fear for the result. Even the still, sombre scene, with the long grey moss hanging down from the dark cypress trees, like the drapery of a hearse, failed to inspire him with dread. If, at times, a slight nervousness came over him, it was instantly driven off by the thought of the insult he had received—and, perhaps also, a little by the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... trees lined the road, and the orange light came through the fretwork of their leaves and branches, and made the dust rising from the cattle and the people on the red roads and the deep shadows all aglow with warm, sombre colour; I would I could remember it exactly. One figure I can still see—there is an open space, green grass, and Corot like trees on either side reflected in water, and a girl carrying a black water-pot on her head, crosses the grass in the rays of the setting sun—a splash of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel; "he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to my room, to cover the open car when it rained." The Prosecutor disproves this by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and servants, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only by giving the horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly lost his way, and after thirteen hours ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... "Zauberfloete," had just been completed when a strange commission was given him. One day a tall, haggard-looking man, dressed in gray, with a very sombre expression of countenance, called upon Mozart, bringing with him an anonymous letter. This letter contained an inquiry as to the sum for which he would write a mass for the dead, and in how short a time this could be completed. Mozart consulted his wife, and the sum of fifty ducats was mentioned. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... very sombre smile. "If any of them should come this way," he said, "it is possible that they might not think it worth while to cease their search along the beach and come up to this particular spot, were it not that our boat ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... times, an evening sky— The twilight's gift—of sombre hue, All checkered wild and gorgeously With streaks of crimson, gold and blue;— A sky that strikes the soul with awe, And, though not brilliant as the sheen, Which in the east at morn we saw, Is far more glorious, I ween;— So glorious that, when night hath come ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... amidst the mist when we might rise into the clear blue above the obscuring pall? Only because we are still in some measure clinging to self, and still in some measure distrusting our Lord. If our faith were firm and full our 'glorying' would be constant. Do not be contented with the prevailing sombre type of Christian life which is always endeavouring, and always foiled, which is often doubting and often indifferent, but seek to live in the sunshine, and expatiate in the light, and 'rejoice in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ye sylvan gods that dwell Among these dim and sombre shades, Whose voices in the breezes swell And blend with noises of cascades, Watch over Sita, whom alone I leave, and keep her safe from harm, Till we return unto our own, I and my brother, arm ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... was John Williams, a hard-working, honorable Welshman, buried. His death furnished forth a sombre, dramatic entertainment such as he himself had ceremoniously attended many times. The funeral trotters whom he had seen at every funeral in the valley were now in at his death, and would be at each other's death, until the black and yellow earth claimed ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith. The following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter) seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life reach ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... ahead of her in a sombre reverie. "Don't think any more about it," she said, bitterly. "I will get over it. I am not worth troubling about. Don't you suppose I know how you feel about this world that I live in? And I'm part of it—I beat my wings, and try to get out, but I can't. I'm in it, and I'll ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... and the quiet English landscape seemed very fair to Clarissa Lovel in that serene light. She watched the shadowy fields flitting past; here and there a still pool, or a glimpse of running water; beyond, the sombre darkness of wooded hills; and above that dark background a calm starry sky. Who shall say what dim poetic thoughts were in her mind that night, as she looked at these things? Life was so new to her, the future such an unknown country—a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this brilliant fete of illuminations underwent a sensible abatement of splendour, then almost ceased. The walls assumed a crystallised though sombre appearance; mica was more closely mingled with the feldspar and quartz to form the proper rocky foundations of the earth, which bears without distortion or crushing the weight of the four terrestrial systems. We were immured ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... several new and therefore brilliantly red cart-wheels. The sun shone through the upper part of a high window, of which many of the panes were broken, right in upon the cart-wheels, which, glowing thus in the chimney under the sombre chimney-piece, added to the grotesque look of the whole assemblage of contrasts. The coffin and the carpenter stood in the twilight occasioned by the sharp division of light made by a lofty wing of the house that rose flanking the other window. The room was still wainscotted ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the enchanted ear of the multitude, professional and unprofessional, the essential vitality was there, the vitality embodied to the enchanted eye by the white figure with its drooping, pearl-wreathed head and face sunken in sombre ecstasy. She gave them all they craved:—passion, stormy struggle, the tears of hopeless love, the chill smile of lassitude in accepted defeat, the unappeasable longing for the past. They listened, and their hearts ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... not speak. She seemed to choke with excess of feeling. For an instant she stood still, trembling with agitation, then she sat down suddenly on a great couch covered with soft deer-skins and buffalo robes. There was deep in her the habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman. She had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted. Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her brain too much on fire for thought, passion ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... purest water—judged by our standards. He was addicted to cleaning his nails, amongst other things, with a prong of his fork at meals. . . . But one morning down in the Hulluch sector—it was stand to. Dawn was just spreading over the sky—grey and sombre; and lying at the bottom of the trench just where a boyau joined the front line, was this officer. His face was whiter than the chalk around him, but every now and then he grinned feebly. What was left of his body had been covered with his coat: because you ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... rather of a size suited to the closeness of the councils that had place within its walls. The floor was tessellated with alternate pieces of black and white marble; the walls were draped in one common and sombre dress of black cloth; a single lamp of dark bronze was suspended over a solitary table in its centre, which, like every other article of the scanty furniture, had the same melancholy covering as the walls. In the angles of the room there were projecting ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his feelings, wept bitterly, and resolved no longer to bear such treatment. Softly he undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad. It was a cold night. The stars seemed, to the boy's eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind; and the sombre shadows looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He softly reclosed the door, and having availed himself of the expiring light of the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... there was a suggestion of character beyond her years. Her face was dreamy and wayward, and almost gipsy in type. There was something rather disconcerting in the contrast between her air of inexperienced youth and the sombre intensity of her dark eyes, which seemed mature and disillusioned, like those of an older person. The slim lines of her figure had the lissome development of a girl who spent her days out ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... their merry game, for the wily dwarf Alberich has emerged from one of the sombre chasms. He is a Nibelung, a spirit of night and darkness, and slowly gropes his way to one of the upper ridges, whence he can see the graceful forms of the nymphs, watch their merry evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly admonish each other to keep watch over the ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... not all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many manuscripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... much larger inside than out. A gas-jet burnt in the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of rooms. I could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over a fire, and of a child crying. Then a tall, straight, wellmade, energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... I fear their sombre yellow deeps, Their whirling fringe of black, And he who gives a passion-flower Always asks ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... himself, the sombre, brooding man felt interest and sympathy in the dejection that was evident in Frank's voice and countenance. "Another dupe to affection," thought he, as if in apology to himself,—"of course, a dupe; he is honest and artless—at present." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize save women who have ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... when burned up by drought. Except scattered waving cocoanut palms which grew even on these hill-sides, no green thing was apparent, save in the ravines, where trees seemed to thrive, and so broke the monotony of tint with streaks of sombre verdure. Farther up, the peaks were thickly covered with a forest, which looked impenetrable. The abrupt contrast of the yellow lower land with this cap of tanglewood, itself at times covered, at times only dotted, with ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... similarity to Thukydides in style, arrangement, and emotional attitude. There remains one more bond of brotherhood,—the speeches. Just as the sombre story of the Peloponnesian conflict has for a prominent feature the pleas and counterpleas of contending parties, together with a few independent orations, so this Roman History is filled with public utterances of famous men, either singly or in pairs. Dio evinces ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... of its small size, and its warm appearance in other respects, was furnished under foot with layers of heavy Turkey carpets, one laid upon another (according to a fashion then prevalent in Germany), and on the walls with tapestry. In this mode of hanging rooms, though sometimes heavy and sombre, there was a warmth sensible and apparent, as well as real, which peculiarly fitted it for winter apartments, and a massy splendor which accorded with the style of dress and furniture in that gorgeous age. One real ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... noiseless use of the paddles, the light in their eye as they constantly stood up in the canoe to keep a hidden gaze upon the game ahead, watching its every movement as well as the local eddies and currents in the light evening breeze. All was so in keeping with the sombre leaden clouds overhead, and the grizzled sides of the ungainly brute, blending in with the background of weather-beaten tree trunks and the dull gray rocks. And so, silently and swiftly, stopping many times ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... days later. The banquet hoard and oleanders have been removed, every trace of the funeral has been carefully obliterated. Clear sunlight comes in from the garden windows in the background and lights up the spacious, sombre hall. The bushes and trees of the garden are coated with ice. The fire is burning as usual. Toward the end of the act the sunlight gradually vanishes and a light, gray dusk fills the hall. AUNT CLARA stands at the fireplace ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... (I forget what) to step into the court-yard, as I settled this account; and remember I walk'd down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning.—Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly—for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... need Of loving hearts to strengthen and to lead, When first are opened to her wondering eyes The world's fair fields and seeming paradise. She only sees the beauty—hears the song, Knows not the hidden snares, nor dreams of wrong. 'Tis woman's happiest time, and yet 'tis true A sombre tinge may mar its brightest hue. For girlhood too will have its doubts and fears, Will lose the past and long for coming years, And sad indeed when youth is left alone To face the coming future all unknown. ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick |
