"Desolation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Granite Pillar.' No appearance of human life or labour exists around; the whole is a desert, over which these columnar formations—resembling a city of the Titans, crumbling slowly into dust—hold an empire of solitude and death. The imagination is oppressed with a sense of utter desolation that withers every ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... face you behold the confidence and pride of those who, accustomed to conquest, are about to extend their dominion over new territories, and to whom war is a game of pleasure rather than a dark hazard, that may end in utter desolation and ruin. Intrenched within these massy walls, the people of this gay capital cannot realise war. Its sounds have ever been afar off, beyond the wide sweep of the deserts; and will be now, so they judge—and they are scarcely turned for a moment, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed of newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged to deliver to soldiers at the front. He was passing in a winged tank along those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his daily papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly than had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank turned a somersault, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to that bliss aspire, Must win their way through blood and fire. The writhings of a wounded heart Are fiercer than a foeman's dart. Oft in Life's stillest shade reclining, In Desolation unrepining, Without a hope on earth to find A mirror in an answering mind, Meek souls there are, who little dream Their daily strife an Angel's theme, Or that the rod they take so calm Shall prove in Heaven ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... He painted the desolation of the church, during the late period of her distresses, in the most affecting colours. He described her, like Hagar watching the waning life of her infant amid the fountainless desert; like Judah, under her palm-tree, mourning for the devastation of her temple; ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair woman herself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, Yeobright sat lonely at Blooms-End. He had fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending off Fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for some sound or signal of her return. Were Eustacia still at Mistover the very ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... pointed out to you your duty—a duty which you were forced to perform afterwards by necessity. Then be it so; let me perish on these black rocks, as I shall, and my bones be whitened by the chilly blasts which howl over their desolation. But mark me, cruel and vindictive man! I shall not be the only one whose bones will bleach there. I prophesy that many others will share my fate, and even you, Admiral, may be of the number,—if I mistake not, we ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... beloved mistresses their lost sheep, their outcast, miserable boy. She did not reason the matter out, but she felt it, and felt that in making her in some degree His instrument God had been very good to her in the midst of her desolation. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence; and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a want of something unpossessed, as few ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... The desolation of his outlook was appalling. And during his weary hours of solitude the hopelessness of it stirred him to a bitterness that at moments became almost insanely profane. Shadows, too, crept into his mind. Ugly shadows that gained ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... is true of individuals. It may seem now winter and desolation with you. Your hearts have been ploughed and harrowed and are now frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a blade of grass, not a bird to sing,—and it is hard to believe that any brighter flowers, any greener herbage, shall spring up, than those which have been torn away: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... malaria and solitude. The very existence of Paestum was unknown, except to wandering herdsmen and fishers coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these revolutions, and in the midst of this total desolation, the only relics of the antique city are three Greek temples, those very temples where the Hellenes, barbarised by their Lucanian neighbours, met to mourn for their lost liberty. It is almost impossible to trace more than the mere circuit of the walls of Poseidonia. Its port, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... its head against his shoulder, the beautiful creature uttering its peculiar purring sound as Rob threw an arm round its neck and began to caress it, ready as he was out there to cling to anything in his weariness and desolation. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... tranquillity; occasions for gladness, uplifting, and love; reasons for wonder and gratitude—seeing that the vast bulk of mankind, in whose name we would fain lift our voice, have not even the time or assurance to drain to the dregs the misery and desolation of life. Not to them is it given to linger over the inward rejoicing, the profound consolation, that the satisfied thinker has slowly and painfully acquired, that he knows how to prize. Thus has it often been urged against moralists, among them Epictetus, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pass into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... but at last she looked out of window, and I told her I only wanted to know what could be done for her child, and would send a doctor. Then she told me how to open the door. Poor thing! I found her the picture of desolation, in the midst of the dreary kitchen, with the child gasping on her lap; all the pretence of widowhood gone, and her hair hanging loose about her face, which was quite white with hunger, and her great eyes looked wild, like the glare of a wild beast's in a den. I spoke to ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... world—such, at least, as they saw it then—was doomed, Scripture and their own reason taught them. They did not merely believe, but see, in the misery and confusion, the desolation and degradation around them, that all that was in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, was not of the Father, but of the world; that the world was passing away, and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... news had reached him on landing. There were troubles on every side. On the 11th of October he wrote the "Epistle to a Friend" ("Oh, banish care," &c.) and the lines "To Thyrza," which, with other elegies, were appended to the second edition of Childe Harold (April 17, 1812). It was this cry of desolation, this open profession of melancholy, which at first excited the interest of contemporaries, and has since been decried as morbid and unreal. No one who has read his letters can doubt the sincerity of his grief, but it is no less true that he measured and appraised its literary significance. He could ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... ramparts from the roofs of the houses in close proximity to the walls. If, however, they could gain admittance by none of these means, and time was of no consideration, they would resign themselves to a lengthy siege, and the blockade would commence by a systematic desolation of the surrounding country, in which the villages scattered over the plain would be burnt, the vines torn up, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... much that I intend to return to it; but I must confess that its fascinations depend rather upon what it has not than upon what it has, and Ito says that it would kill him to spend even two days there. It looks like the end of all things, as if loneliness and desolation could go no farther. A sandy stretch on three sides, a river arrested in its progress to the sea, and compelled to wander tediously in search of an outlet by the height and mass of the beach thrown up by the Pacific, a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... are born and mighty planets die And hissing comets scorch the brow of space, The Universe keeps its eternal calm. Through patient preparation, year on year, The earth endures the travail of the Spring And Winter's desolation. So our souls In grand submission to a higher law Should move serene through all the ills of ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... folly. All this, however, quadrates with the character of a good republican; as he hates England, why not murder English?" In April, 1803, Dennie denounced Democratic Government, and prophesied that of it would come "civil war, desolation and anarchy." His pranks had now become too broad to bear with, and on the Fourth of July this latest publication of his was condemned as "an inflammatory and seditious libel," and a bill of indictment was found. The case was tried in November, 1805, Ingersoll and Hopkinson appearing for the defence. ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the desolation of winter. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the night of his memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and boisterous rudeness with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at St. Clement's Church on the day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that occasion Johnson uttered his first and only ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the distant fires and lights which give to the vicinity of certain manufactories so preternatural an appearance, streaming red and wild over the waste. So abandoned by man appeared the spot, that you found it difficult to imagine that it was only from human fires that its bleak and barren desolation was illumined. For miles along the moor you detected no vestige of any habitation; but as you approached the verge nearest to the town, you could just perceive at a little distance from the main road, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his eyes and glanced from city to city, to Albert, Bapaume, and Arras, his gaze moved over a plain with its harvest of desolation lying forlorn and ungathered, lit by the flashing clouds and the moon and peering rockets. He turned ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... fell into an uncontrollable fit of weeping at the sense of her own desolation and helplessness, and Mrs. Curtis came to comfort her, and tell her affectionately of having gone through the like feelings, and of the repeated but most comfortable words of promise to the fatherless and the widow—words that had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prison. Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which I have no power to remove or alleviate,—these are the ideas, the feelings, which the sight of those walls excites; yet, perhaps, if not certainly, they contain less of that extreme desolation than the morbid fancy is apt to paint. There will be found order, cleanliness, food, clothing, warmth, refuge for the homeless, medicine and attendance for the sick, rest and sufficiency for old age, and sympathy, the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... away aching desolation overwhelmed her. Brian's face with its passion and pain rose before her dry, burning eyes. Then darkness came, blotting out the sunshine; the little stream trickling into its stony basin seemed to grow into a roaring cataract, the waters to rush into ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... have done anything towards improving the church is a fact that speaks as plainly as possible of its being already in good condition. Had there been anything like the desolation that some accounts pretend, Ernulf would have spared no exertions in his endeavours to put things right. He came from Canterbury, where he was Prior, and where he had already distinguished himself as a zealous builder; but all that is recorded as due to him at Burgh is the completion ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... object to the cruel tyranny and oppression with which we have been governed, and demand our freedom. Your march through the country has been marked by violence and outrage of every conceivable description, and you have left in your track nothing but death and desolation. The measure of your iniquity is full, and Cuba will endure no more. Your General Weyler has declared a war of extermination against Cubans, and you who execute his murderous mandate must pay the penalty. Yet, since ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... of it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection and in the recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal. He is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his authority ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... on the humble plan used in the building of Scotch cottages about a century ago, the greater part of them had been long deserted; and their fallen roofs, blackened gables, and ruinous walls, showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters, varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed still inhabited, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... returns, and the familiar song of the birds shall sweeten the renewing woods afresh for a million springs. Apollo weeping over the beauteous and darling boy, his slain and drooped Hyacinthus, is the sun shorn of his fierce beams and mourning over the annual wintry desolation: it is also Nature bewailing the remediless loss of man, her favorite companion. It was these general analogies and suggestions, striking the imagination, affecting the heart, enlisting the reason, wrought ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... every stay, From Hope exil'd, with Woe I keep My vigils, each sad sorrowing day, And wake, each dreary night, to weep!— By Penury chill'd poetic powers, No voice to soothe, no hand to save, And snatch a victim from the grave,— Around me Desolation lours, And glaring, midst the deep'ning gloom, Despair and Famine urge ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of many fair cities of antiquity, whose nameless ruins encumber the plains of Europe and Asia, and awaken the fruitless inquiry of the traveler? They have sunk into dust and silence—they have perished from remembrance for want of a historian! The philanthropist may weep over their desolation—the poet may wander among their mouldering arches and broken columns, and indulge the visionary flights of his fancy—but alas! alas! the modern historian, whose pen, like my own, is doomed to confine itself to dull ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... them in the eyes of the inhabitants so suspicious an appearance, that no one would harbour them; and while her husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring admittance, the afflicted duchess was compelled to betake herself to the shelter of a church porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and want of every thing, was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the circumstance, she gave the name of Peregrine. Bertie meantime, addressing himself in Latin to two young scholars whom he overheard speaking together in that language, obtained a direction to a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... swaying carriage brought the travellers nearer, Victoria could see deep red and brown stripes, separated by narrow bands of white. For background, there was a knot of trees; for they had come south of El Aghouat to the strange region of dayas, where the stony desolation is broken by little emerald hollows, running with water, like big round bowls stuck full ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... immediately after my return from France to London, when I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country, especially in great towns and cities, as contrasted with the quiet, and I may say the desolation, that the Revolution had produced in France. This must be borne in mind, or else the reader may think that in this and the succeeding Sonnets I have exaggerated the mischief engendered and fostered among us by undisturbed wealth. It would not be easy to conceive ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... popular on their coronation day. Kobad was certainly no exception to the general rule. His subjects rejoiced at the termination of a war which had always been a serious drain on the population, and which latterly had brought ruin and desolation upon the hearths and homes of thousands. The general emptying of the prisons was an act that cannot be called statesman-like; but it had a specious appearance of liberality, and was probably viewed with favor by the mass of the people. A ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... mark whom I was asked to join. It was about one o'clock in the morning. The shutters were up. For some reason or other the electric light was not switched on, and the big room was lit up only by a few tall candles, just enough for us to see each other's faces by. I saw in those faces the awful desolation of men whose country, torn in three, found itself engaged in the contest with no will of its own, and not even the power to assert itself at the cost of life. All the past was gone, and there was no future, whatever happened; no road ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... for a little while from that blackened waste across the sea, which had been trodden into desolation under the heel of a ruthless aggressor and was still shrieking as with the screams of hell. He had gone there willingly, eagerly, enthusiastically, doing the work and sharing the risk of every other soldier of the King, and he would go back, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... been one or two seasons in my life during which I have felt as if the darkness of sorrow and desolation that crushed my inmost heart could never pass away until death should make me cease to feel. The present ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... are deeply sown within their breasts, and that, if they saw any probability that her Majesty's troops would be subdued, they would at once go over to the rebels; and after asking what has brought this state of things about—what led to the war on the frontier—the desolation of some of the finest districts—desecration of their homesteads, and the spilling of the best blood of the colonists—attributes it to the want of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... earnestness, that if he were that moment convinced—a conviction, the possibility of which, indeed, he could not realize to himself—that the New Testament was a forgery from beginning to end—wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through some manifestation of his being towards man, either in time past or future, or in the hidden ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... furniture were used to feed bonfires. Doors were torn from their hinges, windows dashed in, costly mirrors broken with hammers. Destruction swept the island, all its improvements being ruthlessly destroyed. For months the mansion stood, an eyesore of desolation, until some hand, moved by the last impulse of savagery, set it on fire, and it was ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has, however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked of the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for the other gods,* his ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... south, and there form a colony of free men.' His wife wept as she listened to him, and I myself wept as I looked at her. Oh! how much the outpourings of confidence console and fortify minds that are in desolation. I drew a rapid sketch of the resources and hopes of Liberty in the south. A serene expression of joy spread over Roland's brow: he squeezed my hand, and we traced on a map of France the limits of this empire of Liberty, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a decorously ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the purpose of setting fire to the little towns, villages, and hamlets which lay in the route, and the rich crops with which the land was then covered. The whole country was in a blaze. Those who were ordered to preside at this work of destruction seemed eager to spread desolation on every side, as if they could thereby avenge themselves for their reverses, and find in such dreadful havoc an alleviation of their sufferings. We were constantly surrounded by plunderers, incendiaries, and the dying, who, stretched ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more than his own life or all that a thousand lives might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had come into his life from the desolation and unhappiness of ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... weeds and grass. But as they neared the mining district the soil was bleak and barren. The mountain rivers were dry, and their beds made yawning gaps as though the earth had violently shuddered at her own desolation. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... itself into one round of boyish homesickness and desolation; then gradually, as the marvellous healing properties of youth began to stir, a new feeling awakened in his mind—a sense of curiosity concerning the strange old man whom fate, by a twist of the wheel, had made the arbiter of his life. Even to one ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... broods Profoundly o'er these solitudes; Nought but the lapsing of the floods Breaks the deep stillness of the woods; A sense of desolation reigns O'er these unpeopled forest plains. Where sounds of life ne'er wake a tone Of cheerful praise round Nature's throne, Man finds himself ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... we burn and slaughter, Spread desolation wide, If still, by land and water, Thou fightest ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... them to go away with his daughter. It is said that several, in their despair, hung themselves, fearing to be taken from their parents. Sons were separated from fathers, daughters from mothers, and all departed with deep groans and maledictions, and in Paris there reigned a desolation like that of Egypt. Not a few, of superior birth, being forced to go away, even made wills whereby they left their possessions to the churches, and demanded that, so soon as the young girl should have entered Spain, their wills ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... grasped the arms of her chair convulsively. She looked at her aunt with desolation in her dark-ringed eyes. The last thing she had ever intended was to mention the mysterious and disastrous fate that had befallen her; yet she ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is everything to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction; once let them thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow? ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... locked up and sequestered from vulgar use, except on occasions of memorable affliction, where everything is purposely in disorder—broken—shattered—mutilated: to typify, by symbols appalling to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled on Jerusalem, and the ravages of the boar within the vineyards of Judea. My mother, as a Hebrew princess, maintained all traditional customs. Even in this wretched suburb she had her 'chamber of desolation.' There it was that I and my ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Cook's tourists' interpreter, while our quartermasters reaped a harvest of small change from personally conducted parties. But when the move was made—that move which carried us some mile and a half down the stream to be tied up to an altogether muddier and shabbier quay—then indeed the desolation of solitude became our lot. It was a complete and soundless stagnation; for as we had the ship ready for sea to the smallest detail, as the frost was hard and the days short, we were absolutely idle—idle to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... greeted her with a deplorable copiousness of tact. Most tactfully they avoided any reference to Constance's loss; but by their tone, their glances, at Constance and at each other, and their heroically restrained sighs, they spread desolation as though they had been spreading ashes instead of butter on bread. The assistants, too, had a special demeanour for the poor lone widow which was excessively trying to her. She wished to be natural, and she would have succeeded, had they not all of them apparently conspired together to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... done that hand could do, She rested, and her desolation came Upon her, and she wept ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... sui generis—quite unlike anything else in the world. The vast undulating plain called the Campagna is divided among very few proprietors in comparison to its extent, who hold immense estates, which are more profitable than the appearance of the country, smitten to all seeming with a curse of desolation, would lead a stranger to suppose. These huge properties are held mainly by the great Roman papal families and by monastic corporations whose monasteries are within the city. In either case the property is practically inalienable, and has been passed from father to son for generations, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... widowed man had seemed in the big, empty house during those chill, sorrow-stricken, February days! No wonder he had sought escape from his desolation in another marriage—his loneliness without the lovely little mother must have been unbearable. What was the new wife like, he wondered? Was she like the lady of the manor he remembered? Could there be another such gentle, tender, flower-like ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... village, loveliest of the lawn, 35 Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain: 40 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But chok'd with sedges, works its weedy way. Along thy glades, a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... rapid succession, and the density of the population was in agreeable contrast to the desolation of many parts of the lower Amoor. It was a panorama of houses, temples, groves, and fields, with a surrounding of rich meadows and gentle hills. There was a range of low mountains in the background, but on the Russian shore the flat ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to the trenches north of the Sainte Lesse salient. A north wind, according to season, brought snow or rain or fog upon British, French, Belgian and Boche alike. Winds of the south carried distant exhalations from orchards and green fields into the pitted waste of ashes where that monstrous desolation stretched away beneath a thundering iron rain which beat all day, all night upon the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... by this first intimation that her father's house was no longer her home. A more real sense of desolation came upon her. Under its cold influence she began to collect herself, and to feel her pride rising like a barrier between her and ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... wagon with his eye, marvelling greatly as to the nature of its concealed contents, until it had also gained the summit of the eminence, and in its turn disappeared behind the swell of the land. Then he turned to gaze at the desolation of the scene around him. The absence of human forms would have scarce created a sensation in the bosom of one so long accustomed to solitude, had not the site of the deserted camp furnished such strong memorials ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... God. A Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore their children to the Holy Land; greater than either of them, however, was the Macedonian through whom the desolation of Judea and the Temple was avenged. The special distinction of the men was that they were chosen by the Lord, each for a divine purpose; and that they were Gentiles does not lessen their glory. Do not lose sight of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... miserable appearance baffles all description. I have not seen six cabins out of six hundred, where the windows have been whole. Old hats, old clothes, old boards, old fragments of blanket and paper, are stuffed into the broken glass; and their air is misery and desolation. It pains the eye to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat; and never to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks, of elm and pine and sycamore and logwood, steeped in its unwholesome water; where the frogs ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... his knees, accompanied by all his domestic servants, he held it upwards to the flames, and invoked Father Francis to his assistance. At the same instant the fire was extinguished of itself; and the town in this manner preserved from desolation, when it was ready to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted him, and made him turn to the guide ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... had looked forward, then, even to that bitter time—far off, she prayed God!—when she would be alone—a woman no longer young, without parents, husband, or child, or smiling home. She doubted not that her father had written this letter to counsel and comfort her at such a season of desolation, years after he was ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... looking from Peter to the mound, then at the wide sweep of the ranges about. The whole world was spread before him in utter silence; range beyond range, desert beyond desert into a violet distance so great that the fancy staggered in contemplating it. For the first time a feeling of utter desolation swept over Roger. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... she left Steel's Corner, Leam turned up into the wood, making for the old hiding-place where she and Alick had so often sat in the first days of her desolation and when he had been her sole comforter. She was very sorrowful, and oppressed with doubts and self-reproaches. As she climbed the steep wood-path, her eyes fixed on the ground, her empty basket in her hand, and her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... nearing Ritzen. Across the mysterious desolation she discerned its many lights. It was a city in a plain, and the far hills mounted guard around it, but she saw them only dimly in the ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... (no witch was ever burned in New England), hundreds of innocent men and women were imprisoned, or fled into exile or hiding places, their homes were broken up, their estates were ruined, and their families and friends were left in sorrow, anxiety, and desolation; and all this terrorism was wrought at the instance of the chief men in the communities, ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... glooming to purple, the gelid water writhed nakedly. Spectral islands elbowed each other, to peer at us as we flitted past. Still more wraithlike the mainland, fringed to the sea foam with saturnine pine, faded away into fastnesses of impregnable desolation. There was a sense of deathlike passivity in the land, of overwhelming vastitude, of unconquerable loneliness. It was as if I had felt for the first time the Spirit of the Wild; the Wild where God broods amid His silence; the Wild, His infinite ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... weary months it was our portion to live amid the scenes of destruction, desolation, poverty, want and woe; sometimes in tents, sometimes without; and so much rain and mud, and such a lack of the commonest comforts for a time, until we could build houses to shelter ourselves and those around us. Without a safe and with a dry-goods box for a desk, we conducted ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... set out, and, with few interruptions, arrived at a place half-way up the mountain called The Hermitage. Here they rested, and leaving their horses behind, walked on over a barren region to the foot of the cone. All around was the abomination of desolation. Craggy rocks, huge, disjointed masses of shattered lava-blocks, cooled off into the most grotesque shapes, mixed with ashes, scoriae, and pumice-stones. The cone towered frowningly above their heads. Looking up, the aspect was not ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... his way into the still smouldering hut, and began to busy himself with preparations, whilst Stane looked round again. The darkness, and the figures lying in the snow gave the scene an indescribable air of desolation, and for a moment he stood without moving; then, as something occurred to him, he began to walk towards the place where he had been struck down. Three figures lay there huddled grotesquely in the snow, and to one of them he owed his life. Which of them was it? Two of ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow, when peace will have to ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... shall be smitten with hail; the locusts shall eat up every green thing in the land; and at last all the first-born of Egypt shall die in one night, and the land be filled with mourning, horror, and desolation, before the anger of this terrible God, who will destroy and destroy ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... there was an awe-inspiring menace in its dry, bleaching, monotonous levels. He felt more keenly than ever his own helplessness in such a situation and congratulated himself on having fallen in with his two guides. He wondered that the plain had not impressed him more deeply with its desolation and barrenness when he came out to the ranch. But he had no doubt of the ability and good faith of his two companions and he drew his horse a little nearer to ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... its value is nil. Artsybashev and Andreyev were very second-rate writers; they had no knowledge of their art and their taste was deplorably bad and crude, but at least they were in a way, sincere, and gave expression to the genuine vacuum and desolation of their hearts. But around them sprung up a literature which sold as well and better than they did, but was openly meretricious and, fortunately, ephemeral. If it has done nothing else the great Revolution of 1917 has at least done ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... could stand in the center of Hiroshima and get a view of the most of the city; the hills prevented a similar overall view in Nagasaki. Hiroshima impressed itself on one's mind as a vast expanse of desolation; but nothing as vivid was left ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... defiant in her desolation, some subtle thread of association, guided, perhaps, by the invisible fingers of her guardian angel, led her mind to a favorite couplet ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... were covered deep with fallen leaves, and the naked branches spoke of the desolation of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... done so only a few minutes before I left Kachi at 21,000 feet. The cold was intense. The stars were extraordinarily brilliant and the moon shone bright for a while over the panorama around me, and though it was a view of utter desolation, it had nevertheless a curious indescribable fascination. Below me, to the south, were mountainous masses buried in snow, and to the South-West and North-East were peaks even higher than the one on which I stood. To the north stretched the immense, dreary Tibetan plateau with undulations and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... on the little place; A beehive round it was, without a trace Of occupant or owner; standing dim Among the gloomy trees it seemed to Him A final desolation, the last word Wherewith the lips of silence had been stirred. Chaste and remote, so tiny and so shy, So new withal, so lost to any eye, So pac't of memories all innocent Of days and nights that in it had been spent In blithe communion, Adam, Eve, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... support; Alette's father has been now dead two years: Alette removed to some near relatives, in order after a certain time, to give her hand to a man whom she has long loved; and I sought in travel to dissipate the feeling of desolation which had seized on my heart. It was at this moment that business, or rather Providence, conducted me to you. Admiration, and an interest whose power I cannot describe, drew me towards you; perhaps, unknown to me, darkly operated in me the delightful ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... King Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ever when freemen shall stand, Between their loved homes and the war's desolation; Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto, "In God is our trust." And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, O'er the land ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... all the general aspect of the country on this side of the valley of Mexico, suffice it to say, that there is a universal air of dreariness, vastiness, and desolation. The country is flat, but always enlivened by the surrounding mountains, like an uninteresting painting in a diamond frame; and yet it is not wholly uninteresting. It has a character peculiar to itself, great plains of maguey, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... raised in them an ambition to share in the powers of government. The struggles which ensued, first between the Fujiwara and Taira, and then between the Taira and Minamoto, continued to keep the country embroiled for more than a century. The suffering and desolation resulting from these weary internecine wars can only be paralleled by such conflicts as that between the White and Red Roses in England, or the Thirty Years' War in Germany. Of these struggles it will be possible to give only ...
— Japan • David Murray
... passed through valleys, on first descending from the mountains, where the yellow oat-grass (or Anthisteria) resembled a ripe crop of grain. But this resemblance to the emblem of plenty made the desolation of these hopeless solitudes only the more apparent, abandoned as they then were alike by man, beast, and bird. No living thing remained in these valleys, for water, that element so essential to life, was a want too obvious in the dismal silence (for not an ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation of it all, "this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o' mad country. Like a grate when the fire's put out by the sun." He shaded his eyes against the moonlight. "An' there's a loony dancin' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... remain on the other. For you have heaped up crime upon crime. I find none of you thirsty, but you are all the worse for drinking. The cup is full, and the present generation shall know it. When desolation comes over the land, then let him who is in the valley flee to the mountain, and let him who is in the field not return into the city, and let him who is on the roof not come down, in order to fetch his coat from the house. Fire and sword will ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... in the London house that he had taken and join in social life, or go away to some quiet retreat, and be seen no more." It was in a modified form the story of the "fervid youth grown man," in his own "Daniel Bartoli," who in his desolation, after ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Examining it more carefully he saw that the pressure was threatening to open up a wide crack in the gate; and, child as he was, he knew that if it were not stopped that little stream would soon become a cascade, a great sheet of water, a torrent, and then a terrible inundation which would end in desolation and death. So the little fellow did not hesitate. He determined to try and prevent the mischief. Reaching up to the hole he placed his finger in it, but soon he found that the wood was rotten, and that ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... yet before these people when they would begin to realise that they called in vain on their God, that they had no monopoly of the Almighty, that the God of their fathers fights no longer on the side of the Boers, but on that of the big battalions. This will be the desolation of downfall. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... for him.[484] But it was too late, for the wrath of the Lord, coming everywhere upon them, pursued them even unto destruction.[485] How, in a few days, is their memorial perished with resounding noise;[486] how are they brought into desolation, they are consumed in a moment, they are punished for their iniquity.[487] A great miracle to-day is the extinction of that generation, so quickly wrought, especially for those who knew their pride and power.[488] And many other signs truly[489] were there by which God glorified His name and ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... to marry. He is a general favorite, but turned to me as to a friend and teacher. He is poor, and it was possible for me to guarantee him a good education. I began to help him from the longings of a lonely life. I wanted a son and a friend in my inward desolation. I craved the companionship of this pure and happy nature. I felt such a reverence for him that I hoped to find the sensuous element in me purged away by his purity. I am, indeed, utterly incapable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of my life. I must turn to the work of peace now. I have no fireplace over which to hang the trusty blade. It is better to bury it here in the mountains in the midst of desolation, and forever to forget ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... piano was open, the bacchanal from 'Orphee aux Enfers' on the music-shelf, and the gaudy hangings surrounding that scene of desolation, the chairs overturned, as if in fear, reminded one of the saloon of a wrecked packet-boat, of one of those ghostly nights of watching when one is suddenly informed, in the midst of a fete at sea, that the ship has sprung a leak, that she is taking ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... feminine malice and spite she could not readily forgive another of her own sex for being beautiful, refined and attractive. She said emphatically, that "it was well that, in this world, pride could sometimes be humbled;" but for all that, the memory of that day so long ago, passed alone in her desolation and sorrowful widowhood, lent a pitying sadness to her voice that placed her infinitely above these other soulless ones of her sex, with their cold eyes ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... for his wife, so Mary gave her her seat on the cart, and walked with Lucy three miles beyond, where we heard that Lilly and the children had arrived in a cart, early in the day. All the talk by the roadside was of burning homes, houses knocked to pieces by balls, famine, murder, desolation; so I comforted myself singing, "Better days are coming" and "I hope to die shouting, the Lord will provide"; while Lucy toiled through the sun and dust, and answered with a chorus of "I'm a-runnin', ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... unjust to deny that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns to his real business, that he creates a powerful story. One may almost be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit. But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... DEAR NEPHEW AND NIECE,—I am most grievously and fearfully concerned to hear of your sad condition in consequence of the terrible and needless war that is now spreading misery, desolation, and perhaps famine all over the Empire, just to gratify the unbounded ambition of one man. We wish you and your three children could fly over to us and be in safety. Really, if you get at all alarmed, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... is it then to me, if impious War— Array'd in flames, like to the Prince of Fiends— Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats Enlink'd to waste and desolation?" ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry—Weird Melancholy. A poem like "L'Allegro" could never be written by an Australian. It is too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the sight of these bright mountains; something life-like, that prevented us from feeling the extreme and real desolation by which we were surrounded. At times we could not help fancying that we were in a thickly-populated country—a country of vast wealth and civilisation, as appeared from its architectural grandeur. Yet in reality we were journeying through the wildest of earth's dominions, where ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... son without peer? But yourselves shall partake my affliction; Easier far will it be for the pitiless sword of the Argives, Now he is dead, to make havoc of you. For myself, ere I witness Ilion storm'd in their wrath, and the fulness of her desolation, Oh, may the Destiny yield me to enter ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... dead white moon above. I sat down upon the edge of the sink, and with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous shadows began to turn over my plans. In the morning I would gather some provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me, push out into the desolation of the high sea once more. I felt that for Montgomery there was no help; that he was, in truth, half akin to these Beast ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... hound upon one of the principal natives, and the Indian was torn to pieces, whereupon the chief, indignant at his friend's death, caused a boatload of Spaniards to be killed, thus giving Ovando a welcome excuse for the invasion. Four hundred Spaniards dealt death and desolation throughout the region, pursuing the Indians into the mountains and forests and sparing neither women nor children. When at last they captured and hung an aged Indian woman revered as a prophetess, the terrified aborigines ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the destruction of Troy. Conteining the Founders and foundation of the sayde Citie, with the causes and manner of the first and second spoyles and sacking thereof by Hercules and his followers: and the third and last vtter desolation and ruine, effected by Menelaus, and all the notable Worthies of Greece. Here also are mentioned the rising and flourishing of sundry Kings with their Realmes, as also the decay and ouerthrow of diuers ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... past few weeks while leading the expedition in the retreat to the southward. When they had decided upon the track of the morrow's advance they sat down for a moment upon the crest of a hummock to breathe themselves, their elbows on their knees, looking off to the south over the desolation of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... "The Germans drew their gods by their own character, who loved nothing so much themselves as to display their strength and power in battle, and to signalize their vengeance upon their enemies by slaughter and desolation." There remain to this day some traces of the worship paid to Odin in the name given by almost all the people of the north to the fourth day of the week, which was formerly consecrated to him. It is called ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... more crowned by the inhabitants. His brother Pedro, attempting to assassinate him, fell by his hand, and all the consequences of the English expedition were undone—all, save the wasting disease that preyed on England's heir, and the desolation at the orphaned hearth ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... companion and leader and instructor; prophet of good hope, teacher of good cheer. His figure mingles with my household life, and with the life of my country. I can hardly imagine either without him. He has pictured for us the infinite desolation of the man without a country. But when his time shall come, what will be the desolation of the country without ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Beauty in desolation was her pride, Her crowned array a glory that had been; She faltered tow'rds us like a swan that died, But although ruined she ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... whole world looked gray and cheerless. Again, as on the night before, he heard the rattle of a train in the distance. High up through the drenched murky air, a bird sped across the river, and somehow its disappearance among the hills left Tom with a sinking feeling of utter desolation. In Temple Camp, on a day like this, they would be in ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... itself! There lay the blackened remnants of the wheels and Roman candles, and a large hole was burned in the side of the room. The overalls of the boys, which hung just above, were burned, some one leg, some both; and the room looked like desolation. ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the richest in Greece, was plundered of its treasures and consigned to the flames. Corinth was specially distinguished for its perfection in the arts of painting and sculpture, and the poet ANTIP'ATER, of Sidon, thus describes the desolation of the city after its destruction by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... thought, without kindling the passions to fierce excitement. The storm which burst with all its fury on the Continent, wrapping nations in the flames of civil war, prostrating, withering, and overwhelming civil institutions, and marking its path with desolation did but exert a salutary influence in England. The lightning was seen flashing in the distant horizon, the rolling thunder could be heard afar off, but the fury of the storm fell at a distance; the atmosphere was purified ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... as a lusty event; for neither could I live to see Athens revive, nor have I much faith in two such bloody-minded vultures, cock and hen, as Catherine and Joseph, conquering for the benefit of humanity; nor does my Christianity admire the propagation of the Gospel by the mouth of cannon. What desolation of peasants and their families by the episodes of forage and quarters! Oh! I wish Catherine and Joseph were brought to Westminster-hall and worried by Sheridan! I hope, too, that the poor Begums are alive to hear of his speech; it will be some comfort, though I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to me, Philemon! I have done what I threatened. I have made the sacrifice. Our child is no longer ours, and now, perhaps, he may live. But oh, my breaking heart! my empty arms! Help me to bear my desolation, for it is for life. We will ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... wheel, which was broken by it, for when, after two hours' delay, we tried to start and had gone a little way, there was another crash and the paddle-wheel fell down. You may be sure we did little sleeping that night. It was an inexpressible desolation to think that we might never again see those we loved. No one knows how much one thinks, and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the figures of the Jewish martyrs of old Ukraina, Gogol can only discern "miserable, terror-stricken creatures." Thus one of the principal founders of Russian fiction set up in its very center the repelling scarecrow of a Jew, an abomination of desolation, which poured the poison of hatred into the hearts of the Russian readers and determined to a certain extent the literary types ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... At long intervals were tables and chairs of jet-black oak, in all sorts and states of decay. On one or two remained the fragments of some crimson velvet,—on the back of one, remnants of a coat of arms! And here, entirely in keeping with the scene of desolation, were the first signs of human life—an old man with a grey beard, leaning upon a stick, who walked slowly back and forth, ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... easy to conquer. No man or woman can conquer it alone. Historians tell us that when the first passenger rocket started out for Mars, Space Fear took men by surprise in the same way your fear gripped you. The loneliness, the utter desolation of space, was too much for a human mind ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... time laboured upward and onward through the snow—which was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth elsewhere—and they were still labouring upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the commandant of the fortress had terrible tales to tell of Ulugh Ali's raid on the island, and the horrors that the Turks had perpetrated in the villages, which now presented a scene of ruin and desolation. Gil d'Andrada rejoined the fleet there. He had not seen the Turkish armament, but he had obtained news of it from coasters and fishermen. He estimated from these reports that it was inferior in numbers to the Christian fleet, and he had learned that, as if conscious of its weakness, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the river. It is wide and in fine condition so we dash along to where, on the up trip, the first glimpse is gained of the Crystal Range, its two chief peaks, Pyramid and Agassiz, dominating the landscape from this side as they do from Desolation Valley on the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... its plains the powder "spoke," and the burning douars lighted the roads that their owners had plundered so often. Neither old nor young were spared, and great basketsful of human heads were sent to Red Marrakesh, to be spiked upon the wall by the J'maa Effina. When the desolation was complete from end to end of the province, the Shareefian troops were withdrawn, the few remaining folk of R'hamna were sent north and south to other provinces, the n'zalas were established in ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... than I might seem to need it. Good night!" and even then she gave me a rose, with the same coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed her hand. I left her wilting in the big chair, staring hard into the fireplace that Clem had rilled ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... M. Darpent gave his word for us, and obtained for us a pass. And, oh! it was a sad sight to see the great courts and long galleries left all dreary and empty. It made me think of Whitehall and of Windsor, though we little knew that at that very time there was worse there than even desolation. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... questions in her mind about the use of money and the duties of rich people. So much work a little money here had done! It was not like the same place. It was a humble place doubtless, and would always be that; but there was cozy warmth instead of desolation; and comfortable tidiness and neatness instead of the wretched condition of things which had made Matilda's heart sick once; and the poor woman herself was decently dressed, and her face had brightened up wonderfully. Matilda read to her, and ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... with rocks, and made away with, after any fashion that might come most readily to the hands of brutes devoid of light, of mercy, of conscience, and apparently of fear. It must have been a terrible sight to see, for those who had first broken in upon the scene of desolation. In the course of the next morning it had become known to the police, and it was soon rumoured throughout England and Ireland that there had been ten murderers engaged in the bloody fray. It must have been ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... sane being must, from these,—not death itself, tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant, kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the affairs of living men. The desolation ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries, to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... Wild Goose, the Curlew, the Stork, the Bittern, the Sandpiper, etc., awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by the land birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; their wings are the shape ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... arrangement, by Paul Delaroche), the Virgin, kneeling at some distance, and a little above, contemplates her dead Son. The expression and attitude are those of intense anguish, and only anguish. It is the bereaved Mother; it is a craving desolation, which is in the highest degree human and tragic; but it is not the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... there on the verge of mysteries, beyond our comprehension; but this we know—that it was our sin and the world's, made His by His willing identifying of Himself with us, which built up that black wall of separation. That hour of utter desolation, forsaken by God, deserted by men, was the hour of the world's redemption. And Jesus Christ was forsaken by God and deserted by men, that you and I might never be either the one or the other, but might find in His sweet and constant companionship ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... in the mountains; how Hugh set the trap for the young grizzly, and more wonderful, how he tamed him and made him his friend and servant; how Father Montfort saved the three men who were snowed up in Desolation Gulch, and brought them out one by one on his shoulders, just as their last biscuit was gone and they had sat down to die,—on and on went the tale, for it was a story without an end. On and on went the girls, too, unconscious of their going, forgetting to think they were tired, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... him his pistol, the only defence he could have retained against hostile attack, and lying on the bare ground, resigned to his fate, urgently requested them to leave him. Imagination, with all the aid of poetical fancy, can conceive no position to exceed this in utter desolation. It has been said, and many may think, they ought not to have separated. No consideration, or argument, should have induced his two companions to abandon him. It was indeed a trying alternative, but falling in with the blacks appeared to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... have equally inspired the respect of both. He has equally secured the confidence of every class of citizens in a wise civil administration of affairs. He has carried the territory from a state of war and desolation, which it presented at the close of 1815, when the whole population was less than three thousand souls, to a state of sound prosperity, which, in a few years, will develop resources that must class us one of the first ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... my spring. Was there another spring? I knew their noisy desolation well, Drinking it up as a ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman |
