"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colored folks had their parties and festivities as well, their mistresses superintending the suppers and decorating the tables with their own hands, while ladies and gentlemen from the mansion came to look on, an attention which was considered a compliment by the ebon guests. And the Christmas season rarely passed without a colored wedding, the holidays being specially chosen for this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... bare and white, And the air is crisp and chill; While the ebon wings of night Are ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... broad in proportion, came towards us, bowing and stooping in 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 was attired in a thick dreadnought jacket over a black-and-red- striped ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... worshipp'd forms, the Genii of the Wood! But see, the regal plumes, the couch of state! [o] Still, where it moves, the wise in council wait! See now borne forth the monstrous mask of gold, [Footnote 1] And ebon chair [also Footnote 1] of many a serpent-fold; These now exchang'd for gifts that thrice surpass The wondrous ring, and lamp, and horse of brass. [p] What long-drawn tube transports the gazer home, [Footnote 2] Kindling with stars at noon the ethereal ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... bank,—their feet to the shore, and their heads on the top of the escarpment,—like patients on a reclining bed, and strongly marked, each by its broad bar of yellow light and of dark shadow, like the ebon and ivory buttresses of the poet. This little vignette, I would have said to the landscape painter, represents the boulder-clay, after its precipitous banks—worn down, by the frosts and rains of centuries, into parallel runnels, that gradually widened ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the Great Seal itself, so rich and so elaborate were its materials and embroidery; and in the other she at length took a glass which was suspended from her neck by a chain-cable of gold, and glanced with a flashing eye, as dark as her ebon curls and as brilliant as her well-rouged cheek, at ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... sails high 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 Wakawa 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 ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... to lose their life In seeking to obtain her as a wife. Her beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect form, and noble, easy grace, Her flowing ebon locks and radiant face. Her charms defy all portraiture: no hand Can reproduce her air of sweet command. Yet e'en such counterfeits, from foreign parts Attract fresh suitors,—win all hearts. But she, whose outward semblance thus appears To be Love's temple, such fierce hatred bears To all ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... appearance in Fore Street—he being so tall and the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon face ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... where thou dwellest in sunless dwelling within the mansions of Pluto. And let Pluto know, the God with ebon locks, and the old man, the ferryman of the dead, who sits intent upon his oar and his rudder, that he is conducting by far the most excellent of women in his two-oared boat over the lake of Acheron. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... after that, a long silent rest. When Nathaniel slowly climbed up out of the ebon shadows again the first consciousness that came to him was that the word-demons had stopped their beating against his brain and that he no longer heard the voice of the king. His relief was so great that he breathed a restful sigh. Something ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... ached for the Australians And the Borriobooli-Ghalians, And the poor dear Amahagger, Yes, it did; And she loved the black Numidian, And the ebon Abyssinian, And the charcoal-coloured Guinean, Oh, she did! And she said she'd cross the seas With a ship of bread and cheese For those starving ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and, turning, saw in the corral one of those glorious brutes which Bud Lee had spoken of to Trevors as "clean spirit." From the instant her eyes filled to the massive beauty of him, she knew who he was: Night Shade, sprung from the union of Mountain King and Black Empress; regal-blooded, ebon-black from silken fetlock to flowing mane; a splendid four-year-old destined to tread his proud way to a first prize at the coming State fair at Sacramento, a horse many stock-fanciers ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... remember Arthur Darrell, of Christchurch, Frank, the man that used to speak at the Union, and was always raving about ebon ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... telling tales of the Emerald Isle, for they feared a negro as they would 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 had seated themselves ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the nearer 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 ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... us suffer so 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
... constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] 60 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 and purple scarfs by ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... trod the park with a princely air, I filled my crop with the richest fare; I cawed all day 'mid a lordly crew, And I made more noise in the world than you! The sun shone forth on my ebon wing; I looked ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... 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
... the kind!" replied Fanny, with a dignity somewhat impaired by her ebon countenance ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... difference. He straddled time. He was at one and the same instant all modern, all imminently primitive, capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of remaining modern for as long as he could with his will master the study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... 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 cheeks, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... robes unsewn The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies, Trailing behind him with a restless moan Like cattle ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... ravine a few rods above our camping ground, which tore off the top and splintered its massive trunk to the ground. The awful crash frightened me nearly out of my wits. I screamed with all the power of voice I possessed, for I thought the ebon paw of Satan was upon me. The panther then set up the most unearthly scream I had ever heard leaped from the rook, and seemed to make the forest jar at every scream, until he was far away on the lake shore. The clap of thunder awoke my father and mother. The chief, hearing the screams ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... they breathe salubrious. Strangers to the licentious appetites which frequently proceed from a depraved imagination, they cheerfully receive the bounteous gifts of nature, and when night sways her ebon ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... quickness of thought his spear arm flew back, and then shot forward with all the force of the sinewy muscles that rolled beneath the shimmering ebon hide. True to its mark the iron-shod weapon flew, transfixing Numa's sleek carcass from the right groin to beneath the left shoulder. With a hideous scream of rage and pain the brute turned again upon the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... including that of Sam Williams. On the ground about the caldron were scattered chips and sticks and bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixed quantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himself in seeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebon surface. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... brooding darkness spreads her jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... invention, And pressed her hands against her side Her bursting merriment to hide. To hear our Gascon talk, no Sue Nor Poll in town but that he knew; With each he'd passed a blissful night More to their own than his delight. This one he loved for she was fair, That for her glossy ebon hair. One miss, to tame his cruel rigour, Had brought him gifts.—She owned his vigour In short it wanted but his gaze To set each trembling heart ablaze. His strength surpassed his luck,—the test— In one short night ten times he'd blessed A dame who gratefully expressed ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... straight to his Eastern heart, had awakened his soul to a new life. His glance travelled over the vision before him, from the little Persian slipper that peeped below the drapery of Kashmir silk to the small classic head with its crown of ebon locks; yet he dared not meet the glance of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... selfish, a deep 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
... his neck, ran to dress, and reappeared an hour after, as fair as the joy which was expressed on her every feature. I could have wished she had used a little powder, but Esther was jealous of her ebon tresses, which displayed the whiteness of her skin to admiration. The chief aim of women in making their toilette is to please men, but how poor is the judgment of most men in such matters compared to the unerring instinct of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in his wanderings, Bob Whites, Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting Southern songs on the way to the ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... beware, then he had spoke, And, hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944 The Destinies will curse thee for this stroke; They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck'st a flower. Love's golden arrow at him shoull have fled, And not Death's ebon dart, to strike him ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... awful head, O sovran BLANC! The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshipped ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sir, leaves me free to act as I please towards the world's chief soul and radiancy. I shall do as I please, sir; I shall read Louisa and Ruth and Laodamia and the Female Vagrant, none daring to make me afraid. A single tress of ebon hair, a single beam of a dove-like eye, shall be enough to fortify my heart against all your legal lore, your scorn, your ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... delicate that she fairly sparkled, she took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed, uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes, long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating the white. Dark, shining, she was a night ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... (Thatched with miscanthus) "Obana sakafuki" (And eularia) "Kuro-ki mochi" (Of ebon timbers built, a house) "Tsukureru yado wa" (Will live a myriad years.) ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... rising rapidly, because, 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 Putman Serviss
... intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I will enflame thy Noble Liuer, and make thee rage. Thy Dol, and Helen of thy noble thoghts is in base Durance, and contagious prison: Hall'd thither by most Mechanicall and durty hand. Rowze vppe Reuenge from Ebon den, with fell Alecto's Snake, for Dol is in. Pistol, speakes nought ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 of a building, or in the thick walls bordering ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... top and along the swelling branches decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass. It was very witch-like, of a witch ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... about him. He, in the most friendly way, led Jack into his house. It was very neatly built of bamboo, of considerable size, oblong in shape, and divided into four or five rooms. In one was a table, with some chairs; and the negro, having given some orders in a loud voice to several ebon-hued damsels, who appeared at the door, in a short time several dishes of meat and grain were placed on it. "Come you eat," said the host. Jack stuck his fork into the meat. It was not a hare, or a rabbit, or a pig, or a kid. He could not help ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... a 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
... turn the blue drove the grey. The walls of the white church were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But the shells came too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince of Peace was ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... is dark as jet, ladye, Thy cheek is sharp and high, And there's a cruel leer, love, Within thy rolling eye: These tangled ebon tresses No comb hath e'er gone through; And thy forehead, it is furrowed ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... me unto the silken down On the cheeks of a dusky 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 ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... quick, lurid glare is the flash that precedes the cannon's roar. And listen! that loud report that makes the earth tremble and jar and sway, is but the bursting of a shell, as it screams through the dark, tempestuous night. That black, ebon cloud, where the lurid lightning flickers and flares, that is rolling through the heavens, is the smoke of battle; beneath is being enacted a carnage of blood and death. Listen! the soldiers are charging now. The flashes and roaring now are blended with the shouts of soldiers ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... cordage became black cobwebs on the sky, then melted away and vanished altogether. At the same time, the water, which the boats had troubled, grew smooth again, reflecting the sunset glow, with the sombre hull and ebon spars painted upon it, until Frank saw the spectre of a double ship suspended in ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... the artists, in their desire to flatter, ordinarily assign to women, as well as from the attractiveness of Sarah, even in advanced age. When a Theban king contracted marriage with an Ethiopian of ebon blackness, we are entitled to assume a political motive; and the most probable political motive under the circumstances of the time was the desire for military assistance. Though in the early wars between the Kashi ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... spread 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 fire and for three years within ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... 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 eldest not exceeding ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... with ebon heads That climb the slender fence along, As black as ink, as thick as weeds, Ye ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... seem to sigh, Bend the meek knee, and lift the imploring eye. —And now the Sorceress bares her shrivel'd hand, And circles thrice in air her ebon wand; Flush'd with new life descending statues talk, 280 The pliant marble softening as they walk; With deeper sobs reviving lovers breathe, Fair bosoms rise, and soft hearts pant beneath; With warmer lips relenting damsels ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... quit the 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 so near,— "Pe-wee! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black— An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest it. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... in the frozen North where HECCLA glows, And melts in torrents his coeval snows; O'er isles and oceans sheds a sanguine light, Or shoots red stars amid the ebon night; When, at his base intomb'd, with bellowing sound 150 Fell GIESAR roar'd, and struggling shook the ground; Pour'd from red nostrils, with her scalding breath, A boiling deluge o'er the blasted heath; And, wide in air, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 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
... it doesn't matter now ..." He laughed softly. "A week ago a canoe-party arrived from Ebon. There were two chiefs. Of course they came to my house to trade. They had plenty of money. There were about a hundred natives belonging to them. The younger man was chief of Likieb—a flash buck. The first day he saw Le-jennabon he had a lot too much to say ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Our eyes, that long e'en now for the fresh green Of sprouting forests, and the far blue stretch Of regal mountains piled along the sky, Must see, for many an eve, the level sun Sheathe, with his latest gold, the heaving brine, By thousand ripples shivered, or Night's pomp Brooding in silence, ebon and profound, Upon the murmuring darkness of the deep, Broken by flashings, that the parted wave Sends white and star-like throujch its bursting foam. Yet not more dear the opening dawn of heaven Poured on the earth in an Italian May, When souls take wings upon the scented air Of starry ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... 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 ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... fruits of mellow autumn glow'd Upon the ebon board; The blood that grape of Burgundy In other days had pour'd, Gleam'd from its crystal vase—but all Untasted stood ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be obliterated. The stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebon ether in vast, ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... for the dinner, which was served to us on old silver dishes, blackened and battered. The exile, my darling pet, is like the railing, emaciated! He is pale and silent, and bears traces of suffering. At thirty-seven he might be fifty. The once beautiful ebon locks of youth are streaked with white like a lark's wing. His fine blue eyes are cavernous; he is a little deaf, which suggests the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... luxurious barges, stuffed with cushions soft enough to satisfy the most jaded voluptuary. At shore, a sight awaited them calculated to stir every instinct of patriotism in their noble bosoms. On a richly chased ebon throne sat the viceroy in person, clad in all the panoply of power. A delicate edge of starched white linen, a sight which had not met their eyes for many a weary week, peeped from beneath his gaudier accoutrements; the ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... lashes and wondering, with a little thrill of pain, if he has a sweetheart in his own land, of whom he is so sadly dreaming. She thanks him for the song in a voice low and sweet as the musical ripple of the sacred river among the reeds—she dazzles him with her great Egyptian eyes, those ebon orbs in which ever lurks the sensuous splendor of a summer night's high moon. Her hand strays carelessly among his curls as she punctuates with sighs and tears his oft-told tale of unkind brethren, the gloomy cave, the coat of many colors dipped ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in yours. I should imagine ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... its ebon case His violin the Minstrel drew, And having tuned its strings anew, Now held it close in his embrace, And poising in his outstretched hand The bow, like a magician's wand, He paused, and said, with beaming face: "Last night my story was too long; To-day I give you but a song, An old tradition ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 have themselves been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... in twilight gloom with scowling mien The demon PAIN, convokes his court unseen; Whips, fetters, flames, pourtray'd on sculptur'd stone, In dread festoons, adorn his ebon throne; Each side a cohort of diseases stands, And shudd'ring Fever leads the ghastly bands; 110 O'er all Despair expands his raven wings, And guilt-stain'd Conscience darts ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bacchus, 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 steeds. This is th' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of silver spans The ebon-rippled water-way, And like a lost moon's errant ray Strikes ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... 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 upward from ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... uncertain Rembrandt glare of the chamber-candle, its gorgeous palm-leaf pattern and soft folds made a by no means unpicturesque or unbecoming drapery, in conjunction with the girl's grand, soft, un-English eyes, and equally un-English ebon hair. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there seemed to be more daylight 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 ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... green fire darted from the blackness and thrust its point into the heart of the zenith; following it, leaped into the sky a host of the sparkling spears of light, and now the blackness was like an ebon hand, brandishing a thousand javelins of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... all, a very solemn sort of life. It has a very serious ending. A great universe whirls away with its ebon-faced mysteries piled from central caves to highest heavens—a universe, with all its mysteries, of hardest reality and baldest truth. A man, looking up to the cold, clear, unswerving stars, out yonder ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... a man of much sensibility, though he is so satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so that her ebon curls ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... the mantling mists that circle round the tomb, Where bitter groans resound for aye amid the starless gloom; Who saw the cities of the blest, and with as fearless tread Paced through the ebon halls of hell, the mansions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... conscious air of proprietorship of the British Empire, khaki-clad Tommy Atkins comes down the pier, attended by the inevitable fox terrier. Following close on his heels is a towering man of ebon complexion, with three stripes of ashes and the wafer of humility on his forehead. He is barefooted, and his solitary garment is a piece of cotton with which he has girded his loins; he is abundantly lacquered with cocoanut oil, to protect him from contracting a cold from the too rigorous "spicy ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... 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 that ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... 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 to be a woman's portrait in a nun's dress. The face, though not beautiful, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... smoking at the 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. In the midst of the street, under our very window, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... flout the ruins gray. When the broken arches are dark 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; Wnen silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the howlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, Then go—but go alone the while— Then view St. David's[2] ruined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... equal satisfaction, Thy mother's blind contentment with her son." While half-seduced, half-chafed, his mind was shaken As with conflicting gusts a choppy sea, His eyes, still greedy of their visions, Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat, And to the ebon threshold of each house, Conjured forth the man that each was planned for: Great creatures smiling with his father's smile, Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied, Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains, Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold. His spirit ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne? Or by what reason or what right divine, Can ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... her forehead Love 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 appear'd, lovely ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... mind's eye hung masses of glossy black hair, waving along the brows and falling over the shoulders in curling clusters. Within this ebon framework were features to mock the sculptor's chisel. The mouth, with its delicate rose-coloured ellipse; the nose, with smooth straight outline, and small recurvant nostril; the arching brows of jet; the long fringes upon the eyelids; all were vividly before me, and all unlike ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... side. Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did a credit to his side of the Church. But our friend the parson was discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie could hardly have been ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope |
