"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rolling thing before the whirlwind. It is painful to be compelled to inscribe upon such a shield the word "Desdichado." It is painful to remember how much misery must have passed through that heart, and how many sweat drops of agony must have stood, in desolate state, upon that brow. And it is most painful of all to feel that guilt, as well as misery, has been here, and that the sowing of the wind preceded the reaping ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... having been separated from him in a storm before he weathered Cape Horn, had put in at Rio de Janeiro, on the coast of Brazil, from whence they returned to Europe. A frigate commanded by captain Cheap, was shipwrecked on a desolate island in the South-Sea. Mr. Anson having undergone a dreadful tempest, which dispersed his fleet, arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez, where he was joined by the Gloucester, a ship of the line, a sloop, and a pink loaded with provisions. These were the remains ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... though he seemed, his quick eye was still on the watch, still directed by the restless suspicion of insanity. Minute after minute quietly elapsed, and as yet nothing was presented to his rapid observation but the desolate roadway, and the high, gloomy houses that bounded it on either side. It was soon, however, destined to be attracted by objects which startled the repose of the tranquil street with the tumult of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... know what it means until you have lived its life, and it has become part of yours. It spreads away farther than your eyes can follow it, for miles and miles. It is jade colour in spring, blue-green in early summer, desolate, scorching yellow-brown in winter, with dreadful black tracts of cinders, where it has been burned to let the young grass grow up. There is hardly a tree; there is scarcely a bird, except a vulture, a black speck high in the hot blue sky. There are flat-topped ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... had scarcely finished the term of his annual magistracy, when, on a slight pretence, he was condemned and executed; Domitilla was banished to a desolate island on the coast of Campania; and sentences either of death or of confiscation were pronounced against a great number of who were involved in the same accusation. The guilt imputed to their charge was that of Atheism and Jewish manners; a singular association of ideas, which cannot ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of this agonizing incompatibility. A widow brings up her son to manhood. He meets a strange woman, and goes off with and marries her, leaving his mother desolate. It does not occur to him that this is at all hard on her: he does it as a matter of course, and actually expects his mother to receive, on terms of special affection, the woman for whom she has been abandoned. If he shewed ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Radicofani and shadowy Amiata. It was in these double tiers of galleries, in the garden beneath and in the open inner square of the palazzo, that the great life of Italian aristocracy displayed itself. Four centuries ago these spaces, now so desolate in their immensity, echoed to the tread of serving-men, the songs of pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement of the court; spurs jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the loggia; knights ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... beautiful as Piazza della Signoria. Instead of Palazzo Pitti (so much more splendid is our civilisation than theirs) we are content with Buckingham Palace, and instead of Palazzo Riccardi we have made the desolate cold ugliness of Devonshire House. Our craftsmen have become machine-minders, our people, on the verge of starvation, as we admit, without order, with restraint, without the discipline of service, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... could do nothing for myself. I wrote to my aunt at Glasgow, and received no answer. Starvation stared me in the face, when I saw in a newspaper an advertisement addressed to me by Mr. Van Brandt. He implored me to write to him; he declared that his life without me was too desolate to be endured; he solemnly promised that there should be no interruption to my tranquillity if I would return to him. If I had only had myself to think of, I would have begged my bread in the streets rather than ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... other in consternation. They were marooned on a desolate, rocky, sparsely wooded island. Boats passed only at rare intervals, and a fortnight, or even a month, might elapse before an opportunity for rescue offered. Their provisions would scarcely last a week, and the island was ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... lesson to Morsfield on the one hand, and of the slow-and-sure postillion Joshua Abriett on the other, lulled Lord Ormont to a short repose in his desolate house. Of Weyburn he had a glancing thought, that the young man would be a good dog to guard the countess from a mad dog, as he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sustenance of the Israelites in the wilderness. The question has been raised: How were their flocks and herds provided for? In answer to this, the following remarks are in point: (1.) We are not to understand the word "wilderness" of an absolutely desolate region. It affords pasturage in patches. Robinson describes Wady Feiran, northwest of Sinai, as well watered, with gardens of fruit and palm trees; and he was assured by the Arabs that in rainy seasons grass springs up over the whole face of the desert. The whole northeastern ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of the covered winches, the foot of a mast. This was all he could see of his ship. Her middle structure, covered by the bridge which bore him, his mate, the closed wheelhouse where a man ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... me," she cried, "not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I have not even a home in which to hide my grief ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... library. But St. Alban's had never had a great historian of its own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west and north and south, all over the land, there were great writers holding up their proud heads. Out in the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries—aye, and written in the vernacular too. The lonely monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had its historian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William; and Worcester, which ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... soft-hearted turtles, hear What you alone profoundly will resent: A bird of your pure feather 'tis whom here Her desolate mate remaineth to lament, Whilst she is flown to meet her dearer love, And sing ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Maccabees. It is conjectured that the author of the Lamentations came into the world in the village which has retained his name amid these mountains; so much is certain, at least, that the melancholy of this desolate scene appears to pervade the compositions ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to the south is across a wild and desolate waste, frowned down upon on either hand by the savage crests of the grim sierras of the Guadarrama. It winds along gorges and ravines and rocky river-beds, and has always been, even in the days of Spanish power and glory, about as untamed and savagely ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the daring deed of putting Aegisthus to death: a proposal which Chrysothemis, not possessing the necessary courage, rejects as foolish, and after a violent altercation she re-enters the house. The chorus bewails Electra, now left utterly desolate. Orestes returns with Pylades and several servants bearing an urn with the pretended ashes of the deceased youth. Electra begs it of them, and laments over it in the most affecting language, which agitates Orestes to such a degree that he can no longer conceal himself; after some ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... then have been the ignorance of the masses of the population! We should scarcely believe that such a relapse could have taken place had we not seen the centres of civilization in the world successively succumbing, and the greatest cities becoming desolate, and did we not reflect that, but for such vicissitudes, mankind must have attained a far greater degree of excellence than has been ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in the year 18—, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive—the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the solitude, as if scared ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a still, melancholy snowfall, and this desolate land, with its low, rounded heights, soon lay under a deep covering. It did not add to our cheerfulness to see winter thus gently and noiselessly ushered in after an ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Then yon desolate eerie morasses, The haunts of the snipe and the hern - (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return) - Why, I see on them absolute ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... in my flight from day to day over so many wide and scattered oceans. I set myself to watch, accordingly, whence they would derive the first seeds of life, and what changes would take place under dint of time upon their desolate surface. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of Turkish rule (1396-1878) form a dark epoch in Bulgarian history. The invaders carried fire and sword through the land; towns, villages and monasteries were sacked and destroyed, and whole districts were converted into desolate wastes. The inhabitants of the plains fled to the mountains, where they founded new settlements. Many of the nobles embraced the creed of Islam, and were liberally rewarded for their apostasy; others, together with numbers of the priests and people, took refuge ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... home we encountered cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment. We were glad when the night came. On my narrow bed I moaned and wept, I felt so desolate and alone. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... negative, or those who desire to prevent them being made, his case would properly belong to the latter. Imagine the consternation created in a small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting among them of a helluo librorum with such propensities, armed with illimitable means, enabling him to desolate the land like some fiery dragon! What became of the chaotic mass of literature he had brought together no one knew. It was supposed to be congenial to his nature to have made a great bonfire of it before he left the world; but a little consideration ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... in September 1615, upon a shoal in the night, seventeen leagues W. from Macasser, while returning from the Moluccas. On this occasion her goods were lost, which were not of much value, but they saved the money, being 2000 dollars, and all their provisions, remaining fourteen days on a desolate island, where they fitted up their boat, which brought themselves and their money to Bantam. All their goods and other things were left behind, and seized by the king of Macasser, who refused to make restitution. At Jacatra the Hector sunk in three fathoms water while careening, her keel being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... labour as required, and it was quite possible that their help might be needed, since no men were available. So the picnic planned for the afternoon had had to be abandoned, and Norah was left somewhat desolate, since she could not take ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to have done, started off at a lively gait, followed by Buckskin Joe—the horse being determined to do some hunting on his own account—the last seen of him, he was a little ahead of the buffalo, and gaining slightly, leaving his late rider to his own reflections and the prospect of a tramp; his desolate condition was soon discovered and another horse warranted not to run under any provocation, was sent to him. It maybe stated here that three days afterwards, as I subsequently learned, Buckskin Joe, all saddled and bridled, turned ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... bison formed the chief feature in this desolate land; no other wild animal of the same size, in any part of the world, then existed in such incredible numbers. All the early travellers seem to have been almost equally impressed by the interminable seas of grass, the strange, shifting, treacherous plains rivers, and the swarming ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... lost her strength. She faded away as a beautiful fragile lily might, and Hunters' Brae was once more left desolate—yet not quite desolate, for there was the baby girl; and, thinking of her, the doctor resolved that she should take her mother's place with him. He would devote himself to her, he would try to avoid all the mistakes he had made with his sister, and, above all, her father should ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... has a better chance of being made unhappy by them than the backward, uninteresting, wrong-doing child. We can all sympathize, to some extent, with men and women; but how few can go back to the sympathies of childhood; can understand the desolate insignificance of not being one of the grown-up people; of being sent to bed, to be out of the way in the evening, and to school, to be out of the way in the morning; of manifold similar grievances and distresses, which ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Wait upon her as she ranges Round and through this Pile of state Overthrown and desolate! Now a step or two her way Is through space of open day, Where the enamoured sunny light Brightens her that was so bright; Now doth a delicate shadow fall, Falls upon her like a breath, From some lofty arch or wall, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... upon the desolate sea-shore of Cumberland, we dwelt a year, mourning the lost, seeking an avenue by which it might be found again and discovering none. Here our strength came back to us, and Leo's hair, that had been whitened in the horror of the Caves, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... them in going among these poor, helpless, hopeless ones of the world, bringing them comfort and aid and sympathy. Wherever Manuel went, there brightness followed; the sick were healed, the starving were fed, the lonely and desolate were strengthened and encouraged, and the people who knew no more of the Cardinal than that "he was a priest of some sort or other," began to watch eagerly for the appearance of the Cardinal's foundling, "the child that ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Oh! desolate mother, wailing for thy son, Be comforted. He was a chosen one. The Lord selected him from other men, Because the Eternal Eye discerned in him Some noble attribute, some spark divine, Some unseen quality, that was from God, And is a part of God, howe'er obscured By human ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... difficult and stony path, winding through bleak wastes of gray rock, till we reached a lofty pass in the mountain range. The wind swept through the narrow gateway with a force that almost unhorsed us. From the other side, a sublime but most desolate landscape opened to my view. Opposite, at ten miles' distance, rose a lofty ridge of naked rock, overhung with clouds. The country between was a chaotic jumble of stony hills, separated by deep chasms, with just a green patch here ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... means of writing and of sending us a letter, that he would have done so; but I could not help fancying that he must have been made prisoner by some savages, or carried into slavery by some Malays or Malagash or other eastern people, or perhaps that he had been wrecked on some desolate island from which he had no means of escaping. I reasoned thus: Fond as he was of the sea, after he had left his ship and virtually quitted the navy, he was not at all likely to live a shore life. It was much more probable ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was at an end that pool of the Boyne was like one bath of blood. His eyes blazed terribly in his head, and his face was fearful to look upon. Like a reed in a river so he quaked and trembled, and there went out from him a moaning like the moaning of winds through deep woods or desolate glens, or over the waste places of the earth when darkness is abroad. For the war-fury which the Northmen named after the Barserkers enwrapped and inflamed him, body and spirit, owing to those strenuous combats, and owing to the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... to pay the price. Si. But the poor lad, my half-wit brother Ferd, ugly, sinful, desolate—he will be left alone. Is it not? For him, if I restore all, there may still be kindness and a home at Sobrante, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... silence of sorrowful hours The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of the Black and the Grey Friars were sacked and rendered desolate, and the gorgeous edifice of the Carthusian ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... we had passed already, and which afforded no variety, unless when some tremendous peak of a Highland mountain appeared at a distance. We continued, however, to ride on without pause and even when night fell and overshadowed the desolate wilds which we traversed, we were, as I understood from Mr. Jarvie, still three miles and a bittock distant from the place where we were ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... enough, after all. There was no sham in Mary Lou's faint, after the funeral, and Virginia, drooping about the desolate house, looked shockingly pinched and thin. There was a family council in a day or two, and it was at this time that Susan meant to suggest that the boarding-house be ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... sought to speak a word to her when by chance they met and were alone, studied each change in her face, and read its signs. He was left to his own interpretation of them, but the signs he knew accurately. He knew that her pride had sunk, and that her heart was desolate. He believed that she had discovered her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the place and of the occasion. "No, my dear; I know very well what I owe to you, and I shall do my duty. As I said before, society can have no charms now for such a one as I am. All that social intercourse could ever do for me lies buried in my darling's grave. My heart is desolate, and must remain so. But I'm not going to immolate you on the altars of my grief. I shall force myself to go out ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... laid waste, their houses burned, their cattle stolen. They will be turned out of the cities penniless and homeless, and exchange the certainty of dying of hunger in the crowded city for the equal certainty of dying of hunger in the desolate wasted country. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... kiss will scarce fall Into one flower's gold cup; I think the bird will miss me, And give the summer up. O sweet place, desolate in tall Wild grass, have you forgot How her lips loved to kiss me, Now that they ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... has so saturated the very soil with its former existence that where there is nobody there are millions of ghosts, and that, if the sense of solitude is almost precluded, there is an abiding and depressing one of desolate desertion. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday,—than a set of miserable outcasts a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness three thousand miles ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to defend, and provide for, the fatherless children, and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed, ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... generous, sunny-hearted girl. Now he began to recall words that she had spoken of which he had never before taken heed. The rippling laugh, half like the notes of a silver bell, and half like the trilling of a bob-o-link's song, came back like music now into his desolate soul, making him all the more disconsolate that he was never again to hear it. But had she not looked wistfully into his eyes when he took her hand in the garden to say good-bye? Was such a thought not comforting now? Ah no. Too truly has our ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Madame to carry something heavier than that silly little whip, and now it's all over. She will never be able to control him again. Hephaestus will have to be killed, and I will be desolate. Ach, what ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... desolate, walked through the mess to his room. I heard him rinsing his hands. A chill ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... could possibly reduce it to; for which cause, he took no care of the mansion, and fell to lopping of every tree he could lay his hands on, so furiously, that he reduced immense tracts of woodland country to the desolate state I have just described. However, his son died before him, so that all his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the Arctic ice, offers for his redemption a series of pictures of self-sacrifice, tenderness, honor, courage, and piety. No hope of profit drew the seamen of all maritime nations into the dismal and desolate ice-floes that guard the frozen North. No lust for gold impelled them to brave the darkness, the cold, and the terrifying silence of the six-months Arctic night. The men who have—thus far unsuccessfully—fought with ice-bound ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... tired you with politics. As to news, we have not any at all. I shudder at the approach of winter, when I think I am to remain desolate. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... future. Those battered old spruces had a flourishing colony of young trees growing up all around and under the shade of their wings, and some day when a great wind breaks off the decayed old ones, there will be several vigorous half-grown young, to take their place, so the place will not be left desolate a day. If man would only take this hint in his own treatment of trees, leave the young ones to take the place of those he removes, we should not have to dread the wasteful destruction ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... good father, could you think so? Their presence, the presence of those who know what I was, and who yet love me tenderly, does not it, on the contrary, personify forgetfulness and pardon? Indeed, my father, would not my whole life have been made desolate, had you renounced for me ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... debris that had fallen into it when the forest had burned, and its shores were soft and muddy. After a time, when Baree stopped and looked about him, he could no longer see the green timber he had left. He was alone in that desolate wilderness of charred tree corpses. It was as still as death, too. Not the chirp of a bird broke the silence. In the soft ash he could not hear the fall of his own feet. But he was not frightened. There was the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... little-used gateway to the Bering that lies between Copper Island and the outlying Aleuts. They sailed upon a wild and desolate waste of leaden sea; a sea shrouded frequently with fog, and plentifully populated with those shipmen's horrors, foot-loose icebergs. And their fair ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... presence restrained her, but raising her head, she missed him, and felt lonely, desolate, deserted, almost fainting, and in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Berlin, which is now the most brilliant and most beautiful thoroughfare of that great city, was, in the year 1740, a wild and desolate region. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the shores of the desolate lough there had once stood a great castle, where lived a beautiful maiden called Eileen. Her father was the chieftain of a clan, and she was his only child. Many young lovers sought her, but she cared for none of them. ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them,—and is, "for all who are desolate and oppressed." ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... trail be conquered, with possible disaster in every mile and a sure heritage of suffering and pain in every step, but food sufficient to last 300 men for over four months had to be taken over those desolate wastes. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... this desolate part of the country was to capture turtles. Here is the ground of the green and loggerhead turtles, and, according to Sandy, the hawksbill, from which the shell of commerce is taken, is also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... one organic being over another. Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... conclusion of which was, that, however desolate and exposed a situation that might be for her dwelling, it was better than in "the haunts of men." This was said to have been written by the late Mr. Thomas Sheridan. I never heard by whom the music to it, which was very pretty, was composed; nor whether ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... Came in sight of Laramie Peak,[55] its dark outline resting against the clouds had a sublime appearance. Passed where they were diging a grave for a girl 12 years old; how hard it must be to leave ones children on these desolate plains, but "God will watch over all their dust till He shall bid it rise." [June 10—58th day] To-day & yesterday the roads very sandy & in some places hilly, had a small shower of rain, turned down to the river, nearly 2 ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... decks shared the fate of the great Admiral who went down with his sword in its sheath, and ended his threescore years and ten of hard service, in sight of shore. The many were taken, the few left; but although hundreds of homes were made desolate that day, there were some from whence the strain of thanksgiving ascended, tempered by the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... water is evaporated. Much of the country is absolutely without streams, and would be uninhabitable were it not for the kanats or kareezes—subterranean channels made by art for the conveyance of spring water to be used in irrigation. The most desolate portion of the mountain tract is towards the north and north-east, where it adjoins upon the third region, which is the worst of the three. This is a portion of the high tableland of Iran, the great ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected: [101] the city, and even ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... as for her, whatever might happen, she would die rather than destroy the happiness of a friend. Brigitte thanked her, and Madame Daniel, having set her conscience at ease, considered it no sin to render me desolate by ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... early hour, Mrs. Belmont began making preparations to occupy her new abode. From an extensive dealer she hired elegant furniture sufficient to furnish every apartment in the house; and, by noon that day, the rooms which had lately appeared so bare and desolate, presented an aspect of luxury and comfort. The naked walls were covered with fine paintings, in handsome frames; rich curtains were hung in the windows, and upon the floors were laid beautiful carpets.—The mirrors, sofas, chairs and cabinets were ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... blood. A fatal necessity sometimes imposes actions which public opinion condemns, but the heart excuses, for it alone understands them. Do not be angry at what you are about to read; never did words like these come out of a more desolate heart. During the whole day a post-chaise will wait for you at the rear of the Montigny plateau; a fire lighted upon the rock which you can see from your room will notify you of its presence. In a short time it can reach the Rhine. A person devoted to you will ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the vulgar, leering crowd; watch the jury, picked from the streets, file in and take their seats; hear the few, curt, routine words, cold as bullets, drop from the lips of the callous judge, the frail, desolate woman deserted by every soul, paying the price without murmur or protest—glad that ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... those passionless walls see and hear? How the smooth, studious, submissive priest yearned for power to work his will for one day! And as the cool, still morning sheared the lustre from his lamp-flame, how desolate he felt, with his hatred and despair and blaspheming rage! Evil passions are but poor company, in the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... people, not with these Provinces. Against England, upon land and sea, till Ireland is free... To Irishmen throughout these Provinces we appeal in the name of seven centuries of British iniquity and Irish misery and suffering, in the names of our murdered sires, our desolate homes, our desecrated altars, our million of famine graves, our insulted name and race—to stretch forth the hand of brotherhood in the holy cause of fatherland, and smite the tyrant where we can. We conjure you, our countrymen, who from misfortune ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... living man to see his heart beat. And upon that the people were in a fury and the court hissed with rage, and Vesalius was obliged to flee from Spain before the power of the Inquisition; and some say that he then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But on his return he was shipwrecked on a desolate island and perished miserably. Hubert, in his Vindiciae contra tyrannus reports this history to the eternal ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... have done a good march when we get to the railroad, 478 miles through a country desolate of forage carrying our own transport and one-half rations of forage, and frequently the men's rations. For two days running we had nine hours in the saddle without food. My throat was sore and swollen for a day or two, and I felt ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence. The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition and cruel might. Crowned force has governed ignorance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny—two vultures—have fed upon the liberties of man. From ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... and I suppose that this must be the prelude of our admitting the independence of South America; however, the mission is secret, but he is commissioned, and has the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary. It is a long and desolate prospect, but the scene will be new. He is not quite reconciled to it, but having no better prospect, I think he has done wise in accepting it; they give him two secretaries. I would not wish you to mention this appointment. I find Canning is by no means of opinion that France ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... immediately took up his abode in the warmest spot on that desolate sandbank, which was the centre of the mass of cowering and shivering men who sought shelter under the lee of the rocks, where he was all but squeezed to death, but where he felt comparatively warm, nevertheless. When the ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... explanations: she extricated herself from the tinker party, and, filled with a righteous wrath, went forth to look for her son. From a plantation three fields away came the asphyxiated bleats of the horn and the desolate bawls of Patsey Crimmeen. Mrs. Alexander decided that it was better for the present to leave the personnel of the Craffroe Hunt to their ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... I left by train for Cologne, Germany. By 1:00 o'clock we entered a desolate section of country consisting of barren sandy soil, scanty crops, and dwarfish shrubs and trees. On our way, I formed the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman who moved from Holland to this country nineteen years ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... more barbarous than those of Banda, for if it were not for the human shape, they differ in nothing from brutes. Their colour is whiter, owing to the air being colder. This island produces cloves, which likewise grow on several small and desolate islands on its coast. The body of the tree resembles the box-tree, and has leaves almost like the bay tree. When the cloves are ripe, the inhabitants beat them off the tree with long canes, having previously laid matts under the tree to receive them. The soil is sandy, and so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... behind are the blasted peel which the seer of Ercildoune himself inhabited, "the Broom of the Cowdenknowes," the pastoral valley of the Leader, and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To the eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as the eye travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few miles westward, Melrose, "like some tall rock with lichens grey," appears clasped amidst the windings of the Tweed; and the distance presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... here on Friday, being drowned out of Twickenham. I find the town desolate, and no news in it, but that the ministry give up the Irish -tax-some say, because it will not pass in Ireland; others, because the city of London would have petitioned against it; and some, because there ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... sea, to a place called Gulcheman, or the dwelling of the men beyond the mountains. Some believe this country is divided into two provinces; one that is pleasant and filled with every thing delightful, the abode of the good; the other desolate and devoid of every comfort, the dwelling of the wicked. Others again conceive that all enjoy eternal pleasure after this life, and that the deeds done in the body have no influence on the future lot. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... suite of book-rooms above, is a similar suite below stairs: but the general appearance of the latter is comparatively cold, desolate, and sombre. The light comes in, to the right, less abundantly; and, in the first two rooms, the garniture of the volumes is less brilliant and attractive. In short, these first two lower rooms may be considered rather as the depot for the cataloguing and forwarding of all modern books ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... more water beyond; naught but a vast space into which the vessel must topple and go on falling to the end of time. The great sirens were silent, for the fog of the night before had lifted, laying bare a desolate plain. The ship was sliding into oblivion, magnificently indifferent to the catastrophe that awaited its arrival at the edge of the universe. And she was sailing the sea alone. All other ships had passed over that sinister ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was desolate, like a desert, only without sand, and led to nowhere except the still more desolate sea-coast; nobody ever crossed it. Whatever mystery there was about the tower, it and the sky and the ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... Before the desolate prison of Olmuetz fades from our view, let one laurel wreath be placed upon the head of young Felix Pontonnier, sixteen years old when he became the servant of Lafayette, whom he faithfully followed into prison. He was with Lafayette when he was arrested and was bidden to look after his master's ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corses. A number of skeletons, left on the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the whole. It seemed as if death had here fixed his empire; it was that terrible redoubt, the conquest and the grave of Caulaincourt. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... headlong into danger for my sake. I shudder at the thought of where I would be now, but for your effort to save me. No man could have done more, or proved himself more staunch and true. We are in danger yet, adrift here in the heart of this desolate sea, but such peril is nothing compared with what I have escaped. I am glad, sincerely glad; I have prayed God in thankfulness, I feel that your skill and courage will bring us safely to land. I am no longer afraid, for I have ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews? Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had but you and H—— and M——, and let me enjoy ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... all the weakness of infancy, and all the vices of maturer age. I confess, the sight of those manufactories, which have suddenly sprung up, like fungous excrescences, in the bosom of these wild and desolate scenes, impressed me with as much horror and amazement as the sudden appearance of the stocking manufactory struck into the mind of Rousseau, when, in a lonely valley of the Alps, he had just congratulated himself on finding a spot ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... It was a desolate day, gray and overcast. The shore-line was blurred out before Felicia had so much as a fair look at it. The wind blew, raw and cold, but she shook her head when they suggested she let them take her into the cabin. She just lay ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and insuperable wall, made of iron and copper, of great thickness and height; and that to the present time they are confined there; that, notwithstanding they are a dwarfish race,—viz. from two to three feet in height only—they will one day come out and desolate the world. As Lord Mayor's Day is just approaching, perhaps some of the visiters of Gog and Magog on that occasion may decide this matter. It is almost akin to our nursery quibble of the giants hearing the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... noted Swiss valley in the canton of the Grisons, stretches about 65 m. between the Lepontine or Rhaetian Alps; is divided into the Lower Engadine, wild and desolate, and the Upper Engadine, fertile and populous, and a favourite health resort; the river Inn flows through it, its waters collected ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... all of them. There was not a sign of life to be seen. On every side there was nothing but the cold whiteness—a coldness and a whiteness that was like death itself. They walked on for more than a mile, and saw nothing but the desolate waste. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... of my party had gone. The tembe, so lately a busy scene, had already assumed a naked, desolate appearance. I turned towards the Arabs, lifted my hat, and said again, "Farewell," then faced about for the south, followed by my four young gun-bearers, Selim, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Manitou rules the fortunes of the Indians. Tuavituk one day announced to the assembled Eskimos that something had been done to displease Torngak, and to punish them he had caused the storm to come that had so suddenly carried away the ice and left them marooned upon this desolate island, and here they would all perish eventually of starvation unless Torngak ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... swelled with a strange yearning longing, not exactly grief, and large tears dropped from her eyes as she thought less of her mother than of her noble-hearted father; and the words came back to her in which Father Malcolm Stewart, in his own bitter grief, had told the desolate children to remember that their father was waiting for them in Paradise. Even Jean was so touched by the music and carried out of herself that she forgot the spectators, forgot the effect she was to produce, forgot ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... position Spenser was brought into communication with the powerful English chiefs on the Council of Munster, and also with the leading men among the Undertakers as they were called, among whom more than half a million of acres of the escheated and desolate lands of the fallen Desmond were to be divided, on condition of each Undertaker settling on his estate a proportionate number of English gentlemen, yeomen, artisans and labourers with their families, who were to bring the ruined province into order and cultivation. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Phinney's Hill looked desolate and mournful when the buggy containing Judge Baxter and his two companions drove into the yard. The wagon belonging to Mr. Hallett, the undertaker, was at the front door, and Hallett and his assistant were loading in the folding ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her innermost life—from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery land in poetry and art-onward through her restless, dreamy, aspiring youth-onward—onward—till now, through all that constitutes the glorious reality that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... away, and the dawn broke upon the desolate sea. Presently the sun came up, for which at first we were thankful, for we were chilled to the bone, but soon its heat grew intolerable, since we had neither food nor water in the boat, and already ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... into the water, and for a distance out into the floor of the desert there was bunch grass, mesquite, and greasewood, where the cattle might find grazing for the night. Beyond the stretch of grass spread the dead, gray dust, of the desert, desolate in the filmy, mystic ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... among wires and chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; or—and the simile leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of suggestion—a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to the moon. He could fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats upon the tiles at night, rising and falling with weird intervals of sound, and this music, muffled by distance and the trees, made him ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood still and shouted again; but my voice was getting choked with tears, as I thought of the desolate helpless death I was to die, and how little they at home, sitting round the warm, red, bright fire, wotted what was become of me,—and how my poor father would grieve for me—it would surely kill him—it would break his heart, poor old man! Aunt Fanny ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... if anything could be done. With the sense of my desperate condition came also a horrible sense of the ludicrous. What would my principals in London think of their continental agent shivering, without a rag on, upon the desolate banks of the Danube? Here was I, a man well known upon 'Change, with four thousand pounds in the three-and-a-half per cents, the idea of which had been a comfort to me for many a long year, ready to forfeit the whole sum in exchange ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... of intervention, which would have the effect of reviving French trade and obtaining cotton. I should suppose he would think it desirable to go to great lengths to stop the war; because he believes that the South will not give in until the whole country is made desolate and that the North will very soon be led to proclaim immediate emancipation, which would stop the cultivation of cotton for ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... is over,—the pageant melts from the fancy,—monarch, priest, and warrior return into oblivion with the poor Moslems over whom they exulted. The hall of their triumph is waste and desolate. The bat flits about its twilight vault, and the owl hoots from the neighboring ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... border of the department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, and exactly in the most desolate and miserable part, was erected an arch of triumph, which seemed a miracle fallen from heaven in the midst of those plains uncultivated and burned up by the sun. A guard of honor awaited their Majesties, ranged around this rural monument, at their head ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... aware that I had not been watching alone. A desolate-looking figure, crouching at a little distance, half hidden by a gorse-bush, was watching too, watching intently. She got up as I turned and came towards me, her uncouth garments whipped ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... more sullen. Darker and darker were the schemes he brooded over in his desolate home, or discussed with others at the meetings of the union. Even Mary did not escape his ill-temper. Once he struck her. And yet Mary was the one being on earth he devotedly loved. What would he have thought had he known that his daughter had listened ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... end to end, in the hope of finding what he sought; for he had made up his mind that this strange couple were lodged somewhere in the waste of bog and heather. But he failed to find the least trace of them; and indeed the moor is wide now and was far wider and wilder and more desolate in those days, before there was a fence or a ditch to be found in the whole of it. Then stag-hunting began, and Colonel George felt confident that with so many people galloping over the moorland in all directions he ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... when Harold and Jerry were at the park, he was taking his walk as usual, though very slowly, for he felt weak and sick, and, oh, so inexpressibly lonely and desolate that it seemed to him he would gladly lie ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... retracing my way. I only provided myself with a small stock of provisions, and immediately mounted one of the horses from the captain's stable, which brought me past the rocky pass in a good hour. The road towards the temples here turns off to the right into desolate, barren mountain valleys, whose death-like stillness was unbroken by the breathing of an animal, or the song of a bird. This place was well calculated ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... The most desolate pang was struck into the girl's heart. Here she was, twenty-two—soon twenty-three—and not a creature loved her; none but Otto; and would even he forgive? If she began weeping in these woods alone, it would mean death or madness. Hastily she trod the thoughts out like a burning paper; hastily ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my wife, "how pale, how cold, how utterly desolate she looked, you would think less hardly of her. As soon as she observed me, a slight scream escaped her; and then she glanced eagerly and tremblingly around like a startled fawn. Her husband had passed out of the shop to give, I think, some direction to the coachman. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... far from having those delicate habits of intelligence and spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky, in that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly desolate, that after a moment of immobility and revery he turned back abruptly. There are instants ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in proportion to the constant strife by which it was assailed. I had that! THAT could not be taken from me. THAT kept me from sinking into the slave the tool, the sycophant, perhaps the brute; THAT prompted me to hard study in secret places; THAT strengthened my heart, when, desolate and striving against necessity, I saw nothing of the smiles of society, and felt nothing of the bounties of life. Then came my final emancipation—my success—my triumph! My independence was assailed no longer. My talents were no longer doubted or denied. My reluctant neighbors sent ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... starter was significant, but more was to come. Guard mounting was hurried through that morning, for the air was sharply cold and a northerly wind was beginning to moan through the garrison and whirl the snow in drifts over the desolate prairie. Captains Truman and Pollock, the former as old and the latter as new officer of the day, appeared in fur caps and heavy overcoats and stood at the desk where Colonel Pegleg for months past had administered the affairs of the post. The former raised his hand in salute ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the ill-tempered prophet, thought she "did well to be angry." She imagined herself deserted and betrayed in all her tenderest feelings, her husband a rebel, her home made desolate, her sons and daughters supporting their father's imprudent views. She could only see one alternative before her; she must choose between her country and her religion, or ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... have an end, even the most unpleasant—though it must be confessed their finality is generally lingering. Thus our desolate voyage through that seething cauldron, known to geographers and schoolboys as the Red Sea, at length approached ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... paysages en l'air,' and with this view he visited every place in Italy and Sicily that Virgil has mentioned. Sometimes, it is true, modern civilisation, or modern barbarism, has completely altered the aspect of the scene; the 'desolate shore of Drepanum,' for instance ('Drepani illaetabilis ora') is now covered with thriving manufactories and stucco villas, and the 'bird-haunted forest' through which the Tiber flowed into the sea has long ago disappeared. Still, on the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... are so near us; but in short, sir, I was commander of that ship; my men have mutinied against me; they have been hardly prevailed on not to murder me, and at last have set me on shore in this desolate place, with these two men with me—one my mate, the other a passenger; where we expected to perish, believing the place to be uninhabited, and know not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. The scenery undergoes decay, too—the decay of age assisted and perfected by a conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second act are by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns, mouldy, grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are still recognisable in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenery together convey a profound illusion of that long lapse of time: they make you live it yourself! You leave the theatre with the weight of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole, steadily ascending and steadily forcing his way ever deeper into the heart of the stupendous mountain labyrinth that lay to the eastward. And ever as they went the air grew keener and more biting, the aspect of the country wilder and more desolate, the quebradas more appalling in their fathomless depth. The precipices became more lofty and difficult to scale, the mountain torrents more impetuous and dangerous to cross, the primitive suspension bridges more dilapidated and precarious, the patches ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... towards the avenue, which was guarded by a gate, and Michael having dismounted to open it, they entered between rows of ancient oak and chesnut, whose intermingled branches formed a lofty arch above. There was something so gloomy and desolate in the appearance of this avenue, and its lonely silence, that Emily almost shuddered as she passed along; and, recollecting the manner in which the peasant had mentioned the chateau, she gave a mysterious meaning to his words, such as she had not suspected when he uttered ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... and came in a few hours to a country where there were no mountains more—only hills, with great stretches of desolate heath. Here and there was a village, but that brought him little pleasure, for the people were rougher and worse mannered than those in the mountains, and as he passed through, the children came ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... came out to superintend the closing of her house for the winter. He called at Southlook on the day of her arrival. He was struck at once by the curious change in her appearance and manner. There was something bleak and desolate in the vividly brilliant face: the tired, wistful, harassed look of one who has begun to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... him? Would not some good angel bear it to him? Even then she stumbled, and fell forward on her knees; but, ere she sank quite down, she threw forth a wild, piercing, despairing cry, giving to it her whole desolate soul— ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... so many charmed legends, and are fresh and frequent in that month—the Fairy Rings! They thought, poor boys! that it was a good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected them, as in the old time they had often protected the desolate and outcast. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
