"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peasant As he skirts some churchyard drear; And the goblins whisper pleasant Tales in Miss Rossetti's ear; Importuning her in strangest, Sweetest tones to buy their fruits:- O be careful that thou changest, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the gallant gentlemen who vote for removal of woman's political disability if they have observed in the minds and manners of the women in the forefront of the movement nothing "ominous and drear." Are not these women different—I don't say worse, just different—from the best types of women of peace who are not exhibits and audibles? If they are different, is the difference of such a nature as to encourage a hope that activity in public affairs will work an improvement in women generally? ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... seasons shifted,—wet and warm and drear and dry; Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... who art wont to bloom On January's front severe, And o'er the wintry desert drear To waft thy waste perfume! Come, thou shalt form my nosegay now, And I will bind thee round my brow; And, as I twine the mournful wreath, I'll weave a melancholy song, And sweet the strain shall be, and long— The ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... we left the Desert drear, To sail upon the Nile, In the Pasha's beautiful diabeheh Past many ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... tolerable camping ground where they spent the night. The next day on riding through the forest about three miles they found that it terminated, leaving a field of sand without a blade of grass or shrub growing upon it. It was nothing but sand, drear and desolate as far as the eye could reach. They were stupefied, and gazed sadly on the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... chill from off the hill; An eerie wind doth holloa; And near and near by surges drear The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... 60 That shall bring back its fragrance, or restore The tints of loveliness, that shine no more? How then for thee, who pinest in life's gloom, Abandoned child! can hope or virtue bloom! For thee, exposed amid the desert drear, Which no glad gales or vernal sunbeams cheer! Though some there are, who lift their head sublime, Nor heed the transient storms of fate or time; Too oft, alas! beneath unfriendly skies, The tender blossom shrinks its leaves, and dies! 70 Go, struggle with thy fate, pursue thy way;— Though ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... brushes, motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval asceticism into something very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men: Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest his deed make ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... before the gaze of one who had also hailed it in the bleak, drear dawn. This was not the gardener;—and there was neither man, woman, nor child in sight, during the swift run;—no freeman; but a prisoner in an upper room of the prison. Through its grated window, the only one on that side of the building, he had that morning for the first time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... cheerfully enough to Miss Plympton, but that was from a kindly desire to reassure her. In reality, she was overwhelmed with loneliness and melancholy. The aspect of the grounds below and of the drawing-room had struck a chill to her heart. This great drear house oppressed her, and the melancholy with which she had left Plympton Terrace now became intensified. The gloom that had overwhelmed her father seemed to rest upon her father's house, and descended thence upon her own spirit, strong ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... moldering fabric's deep recess At length they reach a court obscure and lone; It seemed a drear and desolate wilderness, The blackened walls with ivy all o'ergrown; The night-bird shrieked her note of wild distress, Disturb'd upon her solitary throne, As though indignant mortal step should dare, So led, at such an ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... up the hill, while the poet chanted a drear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp, fitting music for that melancholy band. They sought a home where all former ties of nature or society would be sundered, and all old distinctions levelled, and a cold and passionless security be substituted ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supper of piping hot stuff, too," declared Greg. "It's warm here in the tent, but the surrounding world is chill and drear. Nothing but ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... galloped off without another word, And vanished where the road turned. Gawayne heard, Long after he had disappeared, the sound Of iron hoof-beats on the frozen ground, Till all died into silence, save those drear And hollow voices from ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... with touch of magic gifted, To warm the hearts of chilly mortals Who stand without these open portals. The touch shall draw them to this fire, Nigher, nigher, By desire. Whoso shall stand on this hearth-stone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone. Whose home is dark and drear and old, Whose hearth is cold, This is his own. Flicker, flicker, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,— So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face What shall be said,—which, like a governing star, Gathers and garners from all things that are Their silent ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... as you will have to do if you penetrate far into the interior. They hunt and fish, saving their canned supplies for the winter, for the winter months are long and drear up in this ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... a Spenserian; he owned to Dryden in later years that "Spenser was his original," and in some of his earliest lines at Horton he dwells lovingly on "the sage and solemn tones" of the "Faerie Queen," its "forests and enchantments drear, where more is meant than meets the ear." But of the weakness and affectation which characterized Spenser's successors he had not a trace. In the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," the first results of his retirement at Horton, we catch again the fancy and melody of the Elizabethan verse, the wealth ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Gregory's office, Eddie at the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, that ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... "Stay"; and thus Backwards and forwards swung his mind between, Till, mastered by the sorrow and the spell, Frantic flies Nala, leaving there alone That tender-sleeper, sighing as she slept. He flies—the soulless prey of Kali flies; Still, while he hurries through the forest drear, Thinking upon that sweet face he hath left. Far distant (King!) was Nala, when, refreshed, The slender-waisted wakened, shuddering At the wood's silence; but when, seeking him, She found no Nala, sudden anguish seized Her frightened heart, and, lifting ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... sides all the night. They are innocent of all intent of evil—of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... what convulsive gratitude he appreciated her fond fidelity, he has expressed with that passionate richness of power which no other could ever equal. Four of his most splendid poems were composed for her and addressed to her. In the one beginning, "When all around grew drear and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... to mean: good friend, so dear To me in everything, come here to-night, Or else the hours will pass most dull and drear; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... In these drear wastes of sea-born land, these wilds where none may dwell but He, What visionary Pasts revive, what process of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... happened to be amiably disposed, one murmured vaguely, and affected conviction; and if one were not, one openly jeered and scoffed! Lavender was sentimental and wrote poetry in which "pale roses died, in the garden wide, and the wind blew drear, o'er the stricken mere." She had advanced to the dignity of long skirts, and dressed her hair—badly!—in the latest ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the summer ripens And the harvest is gathered in, And food for the bleak, drear days to come The toiling ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... in the drear Red eve of December are wind-swept and sere, Where a king by the stream in his agony lies, And the life of a land ebbs away as ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... roebuck, the hart, and the hind: Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens, Though bleak thy dun islands appear, Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans, That roam on these mountains so drear! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and not the drear shadow, The gentle and fortunate peace: But he who thus revels in rhyming Has shadows that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... when winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate in the Seven Dials, as most feather-fanciers do; or, he ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... The drear days went by, and Tony lay like a veritable Samson shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse, sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the shock of hair and beard ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... lonely wild Received her as she went; Hopeless, she clasp'd her fainting child, With thirst and sorrow spent. And in the wilderness so drear, She raised her voice on high, And sent forth that heart-stricken prayer "Let me not ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... after a while to the edge of a common, stretching before us, drear and brown, as far as my eye could reach. A wild, weird-looking flat, with no sign of cultivation; and the road running across it lying in deep ruts, where moss and grass were springing. As far as I could guess, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... making many books,' 'twas said, 'There is no end;' and who thereon The ever-running ink doth shed But proves the words of Solomon: Wherefore we now, for Colophon, From London's City drear and dark, In the year Eighteen-eighty-one, Reprint them at the ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... the air a queen, And one far different, I ween, In temper, language, thought, and mien,— The magpie,—once a prairie cross'd. The by-path where they met was drear, And Madge gave up herself for lost; But having dined on ample cheer, The eagle bade her, "Never fear; You're welcome to my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules the world,—right well may I, Who serve him in ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... snort all day," and where the pungent air poisons the blood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from a high roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends, all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor. Misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinions had overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails all the hope from her breast with which she had defied it. A wretched old man on the street inspires her to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... shadows. While she lay and thought, the sun had sunk behind the hill and left the great gulf nearly dark, and, as is common in South Africa, the heavy storm-cloud had crept across the blue sky and sealed the light from above. A drear wind came moaning up the gorge from the plains beyond; the heavy rain-drops began to fall one by one; the lightning flickered fitfully in the belly of the advancing cloud. The storm that John had feared ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... snows Round Alpine summits, eddying, rose, The Goth, bound Rome-wards; so the Hun, Crouch'd on his saddle, while the sun Went lurid down o'er flooded plains Through which the groaning Danube strains To the drear Euxine;—so pray all, Whom labours, self-ordain'd, enthrall; Because they to themselves propose On this side the all-common close A goal which, gain'd, may give repose. So pray they; and to stand again Where they stood once, to them were pain; Pain to thread back and to renew ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... impatient wandering of his gaze. 300 It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide. A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; 305 For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a wife needs a carriage, And opera-boxes and stalls, That money's the one thing in marriage, And cheques are as common as calls. They say women shy (like some horses) At vows made to love and obey; They tell you drear tales of divorces, And scandals, the talk ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... we part;—for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cold wind blows from the marshland near, And white things move, and the night grows drear, And they chatter and crouch and ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... sad glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... cheer and look of sympathy; and Sarah came and stood by his shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... who had Canace to wife, That owned the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchieft in a comely cloud While rocking ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... the Gallic, traveller, When far in Arab desert, drear, He found within the catacomb, Alive, the terrors of a tomb? While many a mummy, through the shade, In hieroglyphic stole arrayed, Seem'd to uprear the mystic head, And trace the gloom with ghostly tread; Thou heard'st him pour the stifled groan, Horror! his soul was ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... song and music held their revels there. So, also, lingered at "the Hive" some sweet faces and loving hearts besides those of my kin. The greenhouse, where I had spent so much of my time, was closed—the plants all gone. Up the rafters ran the vines I helped to plant, but when the winter came, drear and cold, only a few persons remained on the domain. The dining hall echoed to my voice in its emptiness, and the little reading room at the Hive was where we ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... in God's world so drear a place, Where the loud bitter cry is raised in vain; Where tears of penance come too late for grace, As on the uprooted ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... springeth From earth to beauty fair; Each tiny bird that wingeth Its course through trackless air; Each worm that crawls beneath thee, Each creature, great and small, Is worthy of thy loving; For God hath made them all. Should earthly friends forsake thee, And earth to thee look drear; Should morning's dark forebodings But fill thy soul with fear, Look up! and cheer thy spirit- Up to thy God above; He'll be thy ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... now is Winter. Winter, after all, Is not so drear as was my boding dream While Autumn gleamed its latest watery gleam On sapless leafage too inert to fall. Still leaves and berries clothe my garden wall Where ivy thrives on scantiest sunny beam; Still here a bud ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the eastern light, And fall of eve is drear, And cold the poor man lies at night, And so goes out ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... have thee near me, But when I think how drear Is each hope that used to cheer me, I cease to ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... we will not mature. A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor We seem when we are richest,—most secure Against all poverty the lifelong years We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears That, in despite of reason, still endure! Alas! the sermon of the rose we will Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; and cold grey twilight covered the mountain-side. There still sat the lone old woman, crouching over the mocking fire. Dark and drear was the hovel— floor it had none, save the damp, cold earth—nor was there a chimney or other outlet for the smoke, except a hole which a branch of the ill-favoured pine-tree had made in the roof, in one of his ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... the great wild country, cornfield, vineyards, sheep-ranges, open chase, till we arrive at last at the mountains; and climbing up among their pines, dip down into a yet vaster and wilder country, a red, drear, burnt-up plain, over which we ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... 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 paradise perhaps, or a drear gloomy waste, across which she must travel with bare bleeding feet. How should she know? She only knew that she was going home to a father who had never loved her, who had deferred the day of her coming as long as it was possible for him decently to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... pleasure?" exclaimed Rosamund in the same drear voice, still staring at her father, who lay before her on ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... have a dreadful, stern, metallic look about them, and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as they are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides, and dive into Pluto's drear domains—the iron-works—a god who, in the present state of railway speculation, might easily be confounded with Plutus; and with this and many other good resolutions, we returned to the hospitable care of our friend Mr Morgan, at the Angel. Next day was Sunday, and very wet. We ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... good for the Christian's health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... delights and deeds, Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved. And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast, And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout Of all-unarmed Achilles, aegis-crowned And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores And seas and forests drear, island and dale And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st Or Bedevere, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of the city crowd struck on her view as aimless and fruitless, and so very drear to look at? What was it all for?—seeing life was such a thing as she had found it. The wrench of coming away from Pleasant Valley had left her with a reaction of dull, stunned, and strained nerves; she was glad she had come away, glad she was no longer ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... keys have been won by R. C. Bruce at Harvard, Ellis Rivers at Yale, Clyde McDuffie and Rayford Logan at Williams, Charles Houston and John R. Pinkett at Amherst, Adelaide Cooke at Cornell, and Herman Drear at Bowdoin. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... remaining only! and she took a vow severe Of triratra, three nights' penance, holy fasts and vigils drear! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the days and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The result was that he at length abandoned ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... hid, the wide lake looked drear. At length I caught a glimpse of the scenes among which I had lived, when first I stepped out from childhood into life. There on the shores of Bellerive stood Diodati; and our humble dwelling, Maison Ohapuis, nestled close to the lake below. There ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... a garret, cold and dark and drear, And one who toils and toils with tireless pen, Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary—then He seeks the stars, pale, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... clouds and crags, dark pools and mountains drear, The wild-wood's silence, and the billow's roll, Great Nature rules, and claims with brow austere, The shudd'ring ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... impotent to return her embrace; its cold bark had no response for the caress of her cheek; the north wind that howled, the trees that swayed, the dead leaves that rustling fled, and the stream that murmured under its ice, gave but drear companionship. Had she yielded her mind to their influence, the desires of her heart might have been numbed to a transient despair more nearly akin to a virtuous resignation to circumstance than the revolt that was now rampant within her. She did not yield; ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the dark ravine where the icicles hang from the rocks—for Love and Life must pass through strange drear places—there, where all is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands and held them against his beating little heart, and warmed them—and softly he drew them ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... hellish war, A monument of man's stupendous hate! Can this have been a Paradise before, Now up-blown, blasted, drear and desolate? Aye, once with smiling and contented face She reigned a ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... upon the waters, dark and drear, and thick and misty. How unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love! Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable youth! What could possibly have induced you to be so very rash? And all from ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... to herself, the serpent now began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. The colours all inflam'd throughout her train, She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain: A deep volcanian yellow took the place Of all her milder-mooned body's grace; And, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... of the ravine soon hid us from the river, and we found ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... of things there always must be, a numerous class of supernumeraries, who from time to time, by the force of varying circumstances, are pushed and hustled off the stage, and shuffled into the side-scenes, the drear and dusky background of the world's proscenium. Of the thousands and tens of thousands thus rudely dealt with, he is surely not the worst who, wanting a better weapon, shoulders a birch-broom, and goes forth to make his own way in the world, by removing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... goes round On its Axis, as we call it, Though no real stem is found. {117} And the two ends of the Axis Have been called the Poles, my dear; Yes, the North Pole and the South Pole, Where 'tis very cold and drear. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... and scope to the imagination: we can only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments, so, in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... made their appearance over the German trenches, gleamed for a moment, and then went out leaving the landscape very dark and drear. We hurried on back to Ramscapelle, sentries popping up at intervals to enquire our business. Floods stretched on either side of the road as far as the eye could see. We were obliged to crawl at a snail's pace as it grew darker. Of course no ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... not I alone, He too our guest hath known, E'en as some headland on an iron-bound shore, Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge's roar, So is he buffeted on every side By drear misfortune's whelming tide, By every wind of heaven o'erborne Some from the sunset, some from orient morn, Some from the noonday glow. Some from Rhipean gloom of ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... before in boyhood; I had entertained her at bed and board for a year; for that space of time I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom, and holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she would discourse to me of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... this drear Thanksgiving-Day despondent beside his hearth. With a hundred hard lines furrowing his pale face, telling of the work of time and struggle and misfortune, he looked the incarnation of silent sorrow and hopelessness, waiting in quiet meekness for the coming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... you are so dear! Did you come trotting through all the snow To find my door, I should like to know? Or did you ride with the fairy team Of Santa Claus, of which children dream, Tucked all up in the furs so warm, Driving like mad over village and farm, O'er the country drear, o'er the city towers, Until you stopped at this house of ours? Did you think 'twas a little girl like me You were coming so fast thro' the snow to see? Well, whatever way you happened here, You are my pet and my treasure dear— Such a Christmas present! ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... the solemn room Where his Dead hath lately lain; And in the drear, oppressive gloom, Death-pallid with the dying moon, There pass before his brain, In blended visions manifold, The present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... took delight to roam In distant countries, far away from home; And frequently has dropped a silent tear O'er PARK'S great trials in the desert drear. Oh! who can read of all his heart-felt woes— His frequent sufferings, and his dying throes— And fail to drop a sympathetic tear For his sad end—without a friend ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... toward the people they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... voice upon the wind, In dreamland you appear; But do you wonder that I find The day so long and drear? Lentis adhaerens brachiis come Once more my life to crown; Without thee 'tis too burdensome. Come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... star so bright and clear Should illume the midnight drear, Then, according to tradition, Should a king of matchless vision -: Unto earth ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... them are blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear; An' forward, tho' I canna see,[8-15] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... fled, that radiant plain? I stumble now in miry ways; Dark clouds drift landward, big with rain, And lonely moors their summits raise. On, on with hurrying feet I range, And left and right in the dumb hillside Grey gorges open, drear and strange, And so I come ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... with a start. She had not heard King go, yet she knew that she was alone in the cave. Alone! She sat up, clutching her blankets about her. Objects all around her were plunged into darkness, but where the canvas let in the morning she saw a patch of drear, chill light. Full morning. Then by now Mark ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... not that serene decline Which makes the southern Autumn's day appear As if 't would to a second Spring resign The season, rather than to Winter drear,— Of in-door comforts still she hath a mine,— The sea-coal fires,[677] the "earliest of the year;"[678] Without doors, too, she may compete in mellow, As what is lost in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... south of France—aptly termed 'the austere south.' 'It is austere, grim, sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast yard—shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... but it was AEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a bleak, drear month. Aviators of all the armies made daily scouting trips, but wasted little time in attacking each other. Few raids of importance took place on any of the fronts. But British airmen descended upon German positions in Belgium on several occasions. Zeebrugge, Ostend, and Blankenberghe ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... a piece of canvas was stretched as a screen. The firing party stood at a little distance in front with their backs towards us. It was just daylight. A drizzling rain was falling and the country looked chilly and drear. The prisoner was seated on the box and his hands were handcuffed behind the post. He asked the A.P.M. if the helmet could be taken off, but this was mercifully refused him. A round piece of white paper was pinned over his heart by the doctor as ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... whitened here and there by irregular patches of alkali, but under the brooding night shadows lying brown, dull, forlorn beyond all expression, a trackless, deserted ocean of mystery, oppressive in its drear sombreness. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... shot into this prison drear A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught My look upon four faces mirrored clear; Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought. Then suddenly they rose as if they thought I did it hungering; 'Less our misery,' They cried, 'Should'st thou on us feed, who ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... over in Norway's distant realm, That land of ice and snow, Where the winter nights are long and drear, And the north winds fiercely blow, From many a low-thatched cottage roof, On Christmas eve, 'tis said, A sheaf of grain is hung on high, To feed the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... blackness of matter. The aurora borealis stands as the emblem for the magnetic attraction of Earth on spirit, the Christ soon to be born in the manger of the Goat; the descent of the Holy Ghost into material form, so that heavenly truth may illumine the drear speculum of earthly thought with the Divine iridescence of celestial light. It is the lowest arc of the cycle that reveals the new birth of death unto life—the divine egg of Brahma, containing the promise of the new law: "Peace on Earth, good ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... jailor, back to thy dungeons, again, To swing the red lash and rivet the chain! The form thou would'st fetter—returned to its God; The universe holdeth no realm of night More drear than her slavery— More merciless fiends than here stayed her flight— Joy! the hunted slave ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... unwholesome and drear, From attic and alley, from labor severe, For the poor and the famished doth kindness prepare A world ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... wealthy now, it's sad beyond a doubt; We cannot dodge prosperity, success has found us out. Your eye is very dull and drear, my brow is creased with care, We realize how hard it is to be a millionaire. The burden's heavy on our backs—you're thinking of your rents, I'm worrying if I'll invest in five or six per cents. We've limousines, and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... with her; and they know that I know Where they are, and what they do; they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me left in the drear Empty hall to lament in, for ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... they hound the hull, The sharks they dog the haglets' flight; With one consent the winds, the waves In hunt with fins and wings unite, While drear the harps in cordage sound Remindful ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... storms were howling o'er the ocean, Leafless trees and sombre landscape cold and drear, Bitter winds, and driving rains, or white commotion Of the whirling snow that drifted far and near; Then my heart, which had been strong, was bowed and broken, I was crushed with sudden sense of loss and fear, Dull as silence passed the days and brought no token Of a light to make the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... can see the desolate quiet of the vast arched halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet of her companion,—an aged dame of tall and imposing appearance, who, standing erect, looked down upon her with an air of mingled contempt and malevolence. The hut was rather dark, for ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... lie, no man can say; The flowers all are fallen away; The desert is so drear and grey, O ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, as he had told her he often ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... horrid, dark, and wild, and drear, Doth this gaping gulf appear! It seems the hue of hell to wear. The bellowing thunder bursts yon clouds, The moon with blood has stained her light! What forms are those in misty shrouds, That stalk before my sight? And now, hush! hush! The owl is hooting in yon bush; How yonder oak-tree's ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer |
