"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother-of-pearl, its sheen and glory unfrittered with a single idiotic trimming; on her breast a large diamond cross. Her head was an Athenian sculpture—no chignon, but the tight coils of antiquity; at their side, one diamond star sparkled vivid flame, by its contrast with those polished ebon snakes. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... gray Appears, while clots of flying foam Break from its muddy monochrome, And a light blinks up far away. I sigh: "My eyes now as all day Behold her ebon loops of hair!" Like bursting bonds the wind responds, "Nay, wait for tresses ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... I'd fondly woo Those merry, dark-eyed girls, With faces of ebon hue, And teeth like eastern pearls! One vowed my love she would repay— Her heart my song had won— When winter snows had passed away, And smiled the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... pale moonlight. For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed of ebon and ivory." ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swans. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily forget;—their curving torsos might have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains contrived at the angle ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... lyre, Refining, as with great Apollo's fire, His people's gift of song. And thereupon, This Negro singer, come to Helicon Constrained the masters, listening to admire, And roused a race to wonder and aspire, Gazing which way their honest voice was gone, With ebon face uplit of glory's crest. Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet, Who brought the cabin's mirth, the tuneful night, But faced the morning, beautiful with light, To die while shadows yet fell toward the west, And leave his laurels ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... that with Ceres suits; That other loads the trees with happy fruits, A fourth with grass, unbidden, decks the ground: Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crown'd; India black ebon and white iv'ry bears; And soft Idume weeps her od'rous tears: Thus Pontus sends her beaver stones from far: And naked Spaniards temper steel for war: Epirus for th' Elean chariot breeds (In hopes of palms) a race of running ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was reflected from the glossy ebon of her hide, spotted with stains of a duller black. For an instant she remained motionless, crouching upon her thick-set limbs, with her head close to the floor, as if calculating the distance of the leap by which she was to reach the horse; then suddenly ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Cuchulain would look from the judge to the judged as they crouched back or strained forward, the good and the bad all in the same tremble of fear, all unknowing which way their doom might lead. They did not look at each other. They looked at the judge high on his ebon throne, and they could not look away from him. There were those who knew, guessed clearly their doom; abashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who were uncertain—rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... minister to-night; Let him who wills prefer his right, And unto the most worthy hand We will commit the ebon wand." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Involves each countenance with clouds of night! What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, And sable mist creeps ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... seemed hurrying all men, all horses, all vehicles on the land. As ant-hills, the bridge arches crawled with processions of carts, coaches, drays, every sort of wheeled, rumbling thing, the noses of the horses behind touching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the thither ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... some wild beast. They ran up stairs to give the alarm, but when they returned the bird had flown, and while a fruitless search was instituted throughout the basement, Mary was in her own room, hastily removing the ebon tinge from her face. Such were a few among the many wild pranks of the mischief spirits, invented to while away the time. Quite different from this was the employment of the "sisterhood." A number of the older pupils of the school ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... hot but triumphant in a petticoat that crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of blacking—so recent that they entertained some concern lest it trickle down their heated faces in disfiguring rivulets. Mary's white dress rustled as crisply as did her mother's petticoat and her hair, crimped ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... was obeying these instructions Jerry himself was piling up on his lank arm a pyramid of wood, and together the two ascended the stairway and tiptoed through the kitchen. As they went the boy caught a glimpse of gleaming porcelain walls; ebon-hued stoves resplendent with nickel trimmings; a blue and white tiled floor; and smart little window hangings that ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... aqueducts, great pillars, gleamed around, And ruined capitals: then was seen a group Of granite elephants 'neath a dome to stoop, Shapeless, giant forms to view arise, Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties! Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries: O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon-trees; Temples, where seated on their rich tiled thrones, Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones; Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare, Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees Great ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... side of the counter. He swallows his drink greedily, singing to himself between the gulps.] "Oh, the gals! Oh, the gals! I am awfully fond of the gals! [Putting his empty glass upon the counter and making for the door on the left.] Be they ebon or blond, Of the gals I am fond; I am dreadfully ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... the Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning. The hush of the immense armament— the glare of the torches, lighting the ebon faces and giant forms of their bearers—the majestic appearance of the king himself—the heroic aspect of Muza—the bare head and glittering banner of Almamen—all combined with the circumstances ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... lake it became wider and was intersected by a road. Here it was that the bridge spanned the hollow. And here it was, right in the hollow near the bridge, that Ebon Berry had his rural garage. Along this road the old bus lumbered daily, bringing new arrivals to camp and ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of the mountain tops like big black horns, do they long for the azure sea and lemon groves? No wonder they call the peaks the 'Horns of The Old One'; or that when my light falls upon them I think of ebon fangs protruding from white guns, and call the place 'The Mouth of Hell.' If those boys but show their heads above the crest the awful silence is broken by the roar of guns. What a life! Always under potential ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... desertion. But with this man beside her, who, she knew, would do anything he could to help, the place did not look quite so bad to Gladys as it had done the day before. There was a ray of light now where, before, ebon blackness had prevailed. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... his trophies fits, A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying: And in the midst himself full proudly sits, Himself in awful majesty arraying: Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow, And ready shafts; deadly those weapons show; Yet sweet the death ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... that time he had transported forty-eight ingots to the edge of the great boulder, carrying upon each trip a load which might well have staggered two ordinary men, yet his giant frame showed no evidence of fatigue, as he helped to raise his ebon warriors to the hill top with the rope that had been brought ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... much from the cold as poor Gahra. His ebon skin has turned ashen gray, he shivers continually, can hardly speak, and sits on his mule ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... left than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds shone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles on either side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now shallower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals of a yard or two, and it is they which make ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... maiden, like the cane straight and brown, Seeing the spot of beauty in waterlilies' cups Is of the poets fabled to be all beauty's crown? Yea, and I see all lovers the swarthy-coloured mole, Under the ebon pupil, do honour and renown. Why, then, do censors blame me for loving one who's all A mole? May Allah rid me of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the sky grew darker, and as gloom gathered above so it increased below, till all the sea spread out a smooth ebon mass. Darkness settled down, and the sun's face was thus obscured, and a preternatural gloom gathered upon the face of nature. Overhead vast black clouds went sweeping past, covering all things, faster and faster, till at last far down in the northern ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... ............Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn ............'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, ............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; ............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, ............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men heart-easing Mirth; Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... attention to dressing their ebon-black hair. None are so poor or humble as to forget this inexpensive ornamentation. Nature has endowed them with a profusion of covering for the head, and they wear no other. It is not very fine, to be sure, but always ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... blue and 'kerchief red, And took from Night the key of Sleep's abode; For Night within that mansion had bestow'd The Hours of day; now, turn and turn about, Morn takes the key and lets the Day-hours out; Laughing, they issue from the ebon gate, And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state, Some watchman, wed to one who chars all day, Takes to his lodging's door his creeping way; His rib, arising, lets him in to sleep, While she emerges to scrub, dust, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside was illuminated wildly as lightning wrote ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakwa himself is there; And round the feast in the Sacred Ring, [48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their teepee alone and fasted, ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name; and in truth Lola ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... false and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wines on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink. To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... were full, even for an orientalist, but neither sparkling nor prominent, soft as the thrush's. It was only when moved by joy, surprise, or sorrow, that the star-like iris dilated and glistened, and then its effect was most eloquent and magical. The distinct ebon-lashes which curtained them were singularly long and beautiful; and when she slept they pressed against her pale ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... rose trees, in full bloom, attested the glorious wealth of June. On the broad portico, to welcome us, stood the host, with his fresh, charming wife, and, a little retired, a white-headed butler. Greetings over with host and lady, this delightful creature, with ebon face beaming hospitality, advanced, holding a salver, on which rested a huge silver goblet filled with Virginia's nectar, mint julep. Quantities of cracked ice rattled refreshingly in the goblet; sprigs of fragrant mint peered above ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... race pure, any of them would form a fit subject for the sculptor who would wish to immortalize in marble an Antinous, a Hylas, a Daphnis, or an Apollo. The women are as beautiful as the men are handsome. They have clear ebon skins, not coal-black, but of an inky hue. Their ornaments consist of spiral rings of brass pendent from the ears, brass ring collars about the necks, and a spiral cincture of brass wire about their loins for the purpose of retaining their calf and goat skins, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... repute stared inquisitively for a moment, and then moved off slowly with the inimitable gait of these ebon specimens of mankind, increasing his pace almost to a run once out of the female's ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Southern Belle was no Southern Belle at all, but the James H. Peabody! He had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle, what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of compensation would be ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... from one of the swirling eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... I have seen when on the breast of Thames A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames, In some calm evening of delightful May, With music give a farewell to the day, Or as they would (with an admired tone) Greet night's ascension to her ebon throne.' ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... while overhead, the giant cloud crept upward slowly, slowly toward the zenith, spreading east and west without a break. One half of the valley had vanished in the blackest shadow, and still the gilded edge swung steadily on, with the slow, resistless sweep of misty legions upon legions, armed in ebon mail; vast billows of night that drowned the scattered stars that met them, one by one. Then it struck the full moon and blotted it from sight. The world of the little valley dropped into night, and all was dark as Erebus. A breath of wind whispered through the forest, and died ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... Prince Ember led his beloved to the King. Never had the Shadow Witch looked more beautiful. Her ebon hair fell like a rich cloak over her grey robes; her cheek was mantled by a crimson flush; her dark eyes gleamed with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... banks and bars, where their tough, interlacing roots soon form an almost impregnable barrier to the onslaught of the flood. Only a stone's throw away there stood a great old black willow, with a sturdy trunk of ebon hue, crowned with a mass of soft green leafage, lighter where the breeze lifted up the under side to the sunlight. Many times, doubtless, the winds had shorn and the sleet had rudely trimmed this old veteran, but there remained full life and vigor, even more attractive ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... to another musical trial of skill, and that to lively conversation. At length, when the solitary sound of one o'clock had long since resounded on the ebon ear of night, and the next signal of the advance of time was close approaching, Mannering, whose impatience had long subsided into disappointment and despair, looked at his watch, and said, "We must now give them up"—when ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Ugh!—so chilly. Here! Send for Dr. ROBSON ROOSTEM PASHA!" cried the Baron, clapping his hands, and a thousand ebon slaves bounded off to execute his commands. Had they not done so, they themselves might have suffered the fate intended for the commands, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... darkness spreads her jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In deep Cimmerian ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ebon west came presently another flare of light, a quick, spreading flush, like a flicker from a monster candle; it was followed by ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... nor salient character; wooden warehouses, Malay shanties, and white-washed streets being merely attractive from the ever-changing scheme of colour painted by varieties of race and costume. Tamils of ebon blackness drive picturesque teams of humped white oxen in red waggons laden with purple sugar-cane. Noble-looking Sikhs, in spotless linen, stride past with kingly gait. Brown Siamese, in many-coloured scarves and turbans gleaming with gold thread, chaffer and bargain at open stalls with ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Not that one! That controls the sunray tanks, and should you pull it too far down, all Kadabra would be consumed by heat before I could replace it. Come away! Come away! You know not with what mighty powers you play. This is the lever that you seek. Note well the symbol inlaid in white upon its ebon surface." ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cerberus, and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy, Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There under Ebon shades and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces more To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; Or ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Larbi's melodies were, they created an atmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled up out of the heart of the Eastern world and, when the player was invisible as now, suggested an ebon faun couched in hot sand at the foot of a palm tree and making music to listening sunbeams and amorous spirits ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... fancy of the more purely romantic poets haunted the dusk rather than the ebon blackness of midnight, and listened more to the nightingale than to the screech-owl. They were quietists, and their imagery was crepuscular. They loved the twilight, with its beetle and bat, solitude, shade, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... for the most part. I should not complain;" and the young girl relapsed into thoughtful silence. The pale fire-light glowed on her delicate features. One tiny white hand rested on the cushioned arm of the chair, and the large, melancholy blue eyes were fixed on the glowing blaze within the shining ebon grate. The profile was strictly Grecian in outline, and the soft, silken hair fell in a shower of golden ripples over her small, sloping shoulders. Her lips were vermilion red, and disclosed two rows of tiny pearls whenever ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of wind. Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave, and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... speak de English ver' good. I Mercedes Morales, an' I like ver' much de brav' Americanos. I like de red hair, too, senor—in Mexico it all de same color like dis," and she shook out her own curling ebon locks in sudden shower. "I tink de red hair vas ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... round Miss Fortescue's neck, the Lady Ellen Fortescue, promised fair to inherit all her father's beauty and peculiar grace, and endeared her to her young mother's heart with an increased warmth of love, while the dark flashing eyes of Lord Manvers and his glossy, flowing, ebon curls rendered him, Edward declared, the perfect likeness of his mother, and therefore he was the father's pet. Round Mr. Hamilton were grouped, in attitudes which an artist might have been glad to catch for natural grace, about three or four younger grandchildren, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... trees, clothed from the base to the summit with wild vines, that hung in graceful festoons from the topmost branches to the water's edge. The dark shadows of the mountains, thrown upon the water, as they towered to the height of some thousand feet above us, gave to the surface of the river an ebon hue. The sunbeams, dancing through the thick, quivering foliage, fell in stars of gold, or long lines of dazzling brightness, upon the deep black waters, producing the most novel and beautiful effects. It was a scene over which the spirit of peace might brood in silent ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... language? and a sense Of breathless being?—darken'd and intense As midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth! Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors—and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the most awkward manner, partly by way of salutation and partly to avoid striking his head against the low deck-beams. He was dark-complexioned, bushy whiskered, with keen restless black eyes, and a shock of ebon hair very imperfectly concealed by a black-and-red-striped fisherman's cap of knitted worsted, which he removed deferentially the moment his eye fell upon us. He wore large gold ear-rings in his ears, and ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre through the obscurity of the night, they easily fancied they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush, and ready to spring on them. But it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp of horses, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dream-realm of joy, the central form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster—"Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... sixtieth year, and though many threads of silver mingled with his ebon-black hair, he held himself as erect as a youth, while his thin, sharply-cut features expressed the unyielding determination, which explained his son's and grandson's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a king that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne? Or by what reason or what right divine, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... take its next Sunday out fur-belowed from hip to heel. Parasols are parachutes; sandals, black bandages; large bonnets, straw sheds, and small ones, nonentities. So it is with colours: green becomes more green, blue more blue, orange more orange, and crimson more flaming, when sported by these ebon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... I do dat, massa leetenant. Not pleasant place to take swim," answered the man, with a broad grin on his ebon features, showing his ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple-branches, mute: With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... (Thatched with miscanthus) "Obana sakafuki" (And eularia) "Kuro-ki mochi" (Of ebon timbers built, a house) "Tsukureru yado wa" (Will live a myriad ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... tender eyes, His ruddy lips that ever smiled, His glittering teeth betwixt, And flowing robe embroidered o'er, With leaves and blossoms mixed. He wore a chaplet of the rose; His palfrey, white and sleek, Was marked with many an ebon spot, And many a purple streak; Of jasper was his saddle-bow, His housings sapphire stone, And brightly in his stirrup glanced The purple calcedon. Fast rode the gallant cavalier, As youthful horsemen ride; "Peyre Vidal! know that I am Love," The blooming ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... clung with trembling to his side, while she listened to the narration of the terrible overthrow of those gorgeous cities, and the rescue of her brother's household, and beheld in the distance the seething and silent grave of millions, sending up a swaying column of ebon cloud, like incense, to God's burning indignation ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... Irish—he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by another clang, louder and more brattling than the first. The solid walls of the dungeon were shaken, and the heavy columns rocked; while, to Alizon's affrighted gaze, it seemed as if the sable statue arose upon its ebon throne, and stretched out its arm menacingly towards her. The poor girl was saved from further ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... undertakers or physicians, and, bending their solemn heads to each other, whispered ominously among themselves; and the mists hung on the common; and the cottage lights went out one by one; and the earth and heaven grew black, but for some twinkling useless stars, which freckled the ebon countenance of the latter; and the air grew colder; and about two o'clock the moon appeared, a dismal pale-faced rake, walking solitary through the deserted sky; and about four, mayhap, the Dawn (wretched 'prentice-boy!) ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cross of curiously carved old ivory, yellow with time, and sloped above a dark-red prie-dieu, furnished duly, with rich missal and ebon rosary—hung the picture whose dim outline had drawn my eyes before—the picture which moved, fell away with the wall and let in phantoms. Imperfectly seen, I had taken it for a Madonna; revealed by clearer light, it proved ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... open window. Harriet had dressed her in a blue calico wrapper, which made her wan face still more ghastly, and the folds of black hair, which the gentle fingers of the kind nurse had disentangled, lay thick about her forehead, like an ebon wreath on the brow of a statue. Her elbows rested on the arms of the easy-chair, and the weary head leaned upon the hands. Before her lay the flower garden, brilliant and fragrant; further on a row of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... spirit is their power, and they his slaves In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell; And keep their state from palaces to graves, 390 In all resorts of men—invisible, But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell To tyrant or impostor bids them rise, Black winged demon forms—whom, from the hell, His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies, 395 He loosens to their dark and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Laura followed to where, further on, a bedroom door stood open, which presently closed upon them both. It was a spacious room, with pale, high-hung draperies, a scent of flowers, such things as an etching of Greuze, an ivory and ebon crucifix over the bed. Captain Filbert remembered the crucifix afterward with a feeling almost intense, also some silver-backed brushes on the toilet table. Across the open window a couple of bars of sunset glowed red and gold, and a tall palm of the garden cut all ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... club windows on the Ponte Vecchio; Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.'s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of clattering spurs, into the Maremma. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... wildly round, And crashing cedars falling shake the ground. Now Tsil-lattu her black wings spreads o'er all, Dark shrouding all the forest with her pall, And from his steed for safety each dismounts, And o'er their heads now break the ebon founts. But hark! what is that dreadful roaring noise? The dragons come! Their flaming crests they poise Above, and nearer blaze their eyes of fire, And see! upon them ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... look-out for him, and try to ascertain his haunts that he might catch him if he could. Passing under the frowning batteries of the old fortifications, we landed at a handsome wharf among a crowd of people of various tints, from the white skin of the European to the ebon one of the sons of Africa, and habited in every variety of Eastern costume—Englishmen in white dresses wisely shading their heads under japanned umbrellas; Parsees, Chinese, Caffres, and Chetties from the coast of Coromandel, wearing prodigious ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... season; ye have breathed Rich benedictions o'er us; ye have wreathed Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard In many places;—some has been upstirr'd From out its crystal dwelling in a lake, By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake, Nested and quiet in a valley mild, Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild About the earth: happy are ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... know the fading nature of all sublunary enjoyments, yet when I retire shortly it will be but to protract the fierce pleasure of this night by recollection. Full well I know that Morpheus will wave his ebon ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth of hair. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... drove past the cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had turned ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... and presently saw them both from a distance against the vastness of the gold. Bushes and shrubs, and two or three giant pine trees, between the summit of Drouva and the plain, showed black, and the figures of woman and child were almost ebon. Dion watched them. He could not see any features. The two were now like carved things which could move, and only by their movements could they tell him anything. The gun over the boy's shoulder was like ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound. I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We were silent as figures ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... day gives place to sweeter night, And twinkling stars come out on high, Like sentinels in armor bright, To watch amid the ebon sky; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... child, a little Fairy Prince, Let loose from Elfland for our heart's delight; Ah! was it yesterday or four years since He beamed upon our sight? Four years—and yet it seems but yesterday Since the blue wonder of his baby eyes. Beneath their ebon-fringed canopies, Subdued us to ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... seeks,—the blind old king, And asks from him permission straight. "My daughter, night with ebon wing Hovers above; the hour is late. My son is active, brave, and strong, Conversant with the woods, he knows Each path; methinks it would be wrong For thee to venture where he goes, Weak and defenceless as thou art, At such a time. If thou wert near Thou might'st ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... to him for a long time as if he was marching and reeling on through the woods, stumbling over roots and fallen trunks, breaking out into open fields upon the full run, then pursuing a road, or rambling hopelessly down by the ebon-hued river,—and as if he was doing all this with some great and urgent purpose of rescuing somebody from a terrible fate. He must go on foot,—there was no other way,—and everything depended on his getting to a certain point by a certain time. The worst of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... by this time had entirely worn off his face, and although his hair was still several shades darker than of old, it differed even more widely from the ebon hue that it had been when he was in prison. Thus, although he recognised three or four men upon the benches who had been fellow occupants of his cell, he had no fear whatever of their detecting in the commander of the galley their late companion ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... in to congratulate the beautiful girl, whose face had been haunting him ever since that time when the sun lighted it up, as it lay amidst its glory of ebon hair upon his breast. He heard these last words, and stood apart, modestly ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... writing ink, printing ink, printer's ink, Indian ink, India ink. V. be black &c. adj.; render -black &c. adj. blacken, infuscate[obs3], denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch[obs3]; smirch; darken &c. 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous[obs3], jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous[obs3], pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. black as jet &c. n., black as my hat, black as a shoe, black as a tinker's pot, black as November, black as thunder, black as midnight; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... as I look down to the damned fiends, Fiends, look on me! and thou, dread god of hell, With ebon sceptre strike this hateful earth, And make it swallow ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... rushing down a declivity of from ten to twenty-five degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... hypocrisy, a stubborn and despotic will—all hidden under the specious gloss of a generous, warm, and impassioned nature. Physically her organization was as deceptive as it was morally. Her large black eyes—which, by turns languished and beamed with beauty beneath their ebon lashes—could feign to admiration all the kindling fires of voluptuousness. And yet, the burning impulses of love beat not in her frozen bosom; never could a surprise of either the heart or the senses disturb the stern and pitiless schemes of this ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... And nights of ebon blackness, laced with lustres From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat, Where wan rills warble over glistening marble; Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet— These ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... power to wreak revenge! The charms I had From my own mother, that grim Colchian queen, From Hecate, that bound dark gods to me To do my bidding, I have buried them, Ay, and for love of thee!—have sunk them deep In the dim bosom of our mother Earth; The ebon wand, the veil of bloody hue, Gone!—and I stand here helpless, to my foes No more a thing of terror, but ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... from long use With tobacco's balmy juice From snowy white to ebon turned By the incense daily burned. Laid at night within thy case Of velvet soft—thy resting place— Whence with leering, stained ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... few indeed were the women who would not have called him so. His hair, long like his friend's, was of a dark chestnut, with gold gleaming through it where the sun fell, inclining to curl, and singularly soft and silken in its texture. His large, clear, dark-blue, happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of frank courage and open loyalty. His complexion was fair, and somewhat pale, and his lips in laughing showed teeth exquisitely white and even. But ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my selfe thy sacrifice By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes, Which now are alter'd white, And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the gellie's left. Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you, Then swearing to ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... lattice; Dancing girl; Drooping lash and ebon curl. Silver tassel; Scented room; Almond "glad"-eye-look. Queersome figures prowling ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave |
