"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the confidence in Heaven's ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... manner in which he wrote The Raven is incredible, being probably one of his solemn and sombre jokes; equally incredible is Trollope's confession of his humdrum, mechanical methods of work. Doubtless he believed he was telling the whole truth, but only here and there in his Autobiography does he permit to peep out touches of light, which ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... white laborers, the master and his family often being the only whites present the year around. Fanny Kemble's "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation," 1838-39, gives an interesting though somewhat sombre picture of the conditions prevailing on the rice plantations ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... regrets, felt his eyes fill with tears. At the very same place which Franklin and his companions passed full of energy and hope, there only remained a block of marble in remembrance! And notwithstanding this sombre warning of destiny, the Forward was going to follow in the track of the Erebus and the Terror. Hatteras was the first to rouse himself from the perilous contemplation, and quickly climbed a rather steep hill, almost ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... light of evening flickered through a window painted in sombre colours commemorating the achievements of Satan upon Earth. High up in the wall the window stood, and the streaming lights of candles ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... complaint. Resignation took the form of stoicism. A sort of dogged taciturnity was measurably relieved by the never-failing spirit of camaraderie. There was even a touch of bravado in the attitude of these people toward each other,—as of courage kept up by scoffing. Even Death, on his sombre visits, was regarded with a strange derision by those who continued to spin. They had cheated him not once but many times, and they mocked ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... have Hoeflinger, who did not seem to be in a hurry, catch up with him. Whenever he saw people on the road he tooted violently, while Hoeflinger tinkled his little bell. When workingmen greeted Hoeflinger, Pratteler responded with sombre mien, as if he were going to a battle. When they made a joke, his brow contracted in a frown. What was there to jest and laugh at, where they should rise in revolt against reaction? Everywhere he saw too much peaceful comfort. He was determined ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her into a stately room packed with masterpieces of art; gleaming marbles and sombre bronze in groups of bewildering beauty, with every inch of wall-space crowded with canvases in massive gold frames glowing with the soft radiance ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... and with the memory of home and work room, manufactory or great shop, all alike sombre and depressing, the cleanliness of Paris, enforced by countless municipal regulations, is at first a constant surprise. The French workwoman, even of the lowest order, shares in the national characteristic which demands a fair exterior whatever may be the interior condition, and ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... throughout the country. We are, however, in a position to state that there has been trouble between Hilda Smith and the Newcastle Directors for some time past. It appears that Newcastle's brilliant full-back objected to wearing the Newcastle jersey, on the plea that its sombre colour-scheme did not suit her complexion. She pointed out that Fanny Robinson, the Newcastle goal-keeper, wore an all-red jersey and that, as the shade chosen was most becoming to anyone with dark hair, she (Hilda ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... sombre. He had meant to follow the highway till the turn for Holywood, and now he had to change his plan. But above all, he had recognised the colours of Earl Risingham, and he knew that the battle had gone finally against the rose of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stood on the grass outside the window. The lamplight from within shone on her upturned face with its saucy, confiding smile. Her head was uncovered and gleamed golden in the radiance. She was wearing a very ancient fur cloak belonging to her mother, and she glowed like a rose in the sombre drapery. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... chair by the hearth, watched them curiously. At first it was merely the exuberant spirits of their release and the unaccustomed altitude that inspired them, but their countenances grew more and more sombre, their eyes wilder, their voices more war-like. They were no longer doing a stunt, they were atavistic. Their voices ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... a Watteau's brush—the sun just sinking behind the orchard trees gilding the edge of each leaf, shone on the dark red of John Johnstone's dress, warmed the sombre hue of fair Betty's lincoln green, and played on the blue and primrose of Mistress Mary's flower-like costume. It was a fair picture, and no eye could rest on a goodlier couple than the tall lithe young man, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... arrived; might have noted the cheerful flow of talk which enlivened the board, in distinction from the stiff silence or bitter repartee which once chilled her. As she responded to the smiles hovering now about Eloise's lovely lips, she might have remembered the once sombre sadness of those eyes. Even Mrs. Evringham had buried the Macbethian dagger, and wore the meek and patient air of one misunderstood; but nothing would have amazed the child so much as to be told that she had had anything to do with ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... answered, "Votes!" but he soon got going again. Ireland, he declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we don't trust you," came the swift reply from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... done, and the rooks in their sombre cloaks and hoods, and the magpies in their courtly black satin and white velvet, pounced on the morsels, and retired with them to the branches ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... hours of suspense, full of sombre thoughts and the most melancholy ideas, I could not help fancying that I was going to be plunged in one of these horrible dens, where the wretched inhabitants feed on idle hopes or become the prey of panic fears. The Tribunal might well ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Breslau was of secluded, silent, sombre character, this time; nothing of stir in it but from work only: in marked contrast with the last, and its kindly visitors and gayeties. A Friedrich given up to his manifold businesses, to his silent sorrows. "I have ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... International Relish, I know of none that he declined, but it was evident to me that he moved but half-heartedly in this higher circle. On one occasion, too, he appeared in the trousers of a lounge-suit of tweeds instead of his dress trousers, and with tan boots. The trousers, to be sure, were of a sombre hue, but the brown boots were quite too dreadfully unmistakable. After this I may say that I looked for anything, and my worst ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... forest which lay before them was in its gayest autumn dress, but in the sombre light of the approaching storm, its brilliant leaves looked faded and faint. The deep reds and many tinted yellows of the foliage formed a beautiful picture, but these were the colors of decay and death, and told that the end of their life and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... for Braddyll's allusion conjured up a sombre train of thought within his breast, awakening apprehensions which he could neither account for, nor shake off. Meanwhile, the cavalcade slowly approached the north-east gateway of the abbey—passing through crowds of kneeling and sorrowing ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... altitude, with a fair number of minor undulations on the way to diversify it. I will not describe the route, though it is one of the most beautiful I have ever travelled—rocky hills, ruined castles, huge, straight-stemmed pines that clamber up green slopes, or halt in sombre line against steeps of broken crag; the reality surpasses my poor powers of description. And the people I passed on the road were almost as quaint and picturesque in their way as the hills and the villages—the men in red-lined jackets; the women in black petticoats, short-waisted ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... as I was entering the old gateway, I saw a beautiful young girl sitting in its shadow selling oranges. She was my Agnes. Walking that same evening through the sombre depths of the gorge, I met "Old Elsie," walking erect and tall, with her piercing black eyes, Roman nose, and silver hair,—walking with determination in every step, and spinning like one of the Fates glittering silver flax from a distaff ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited every body she saw. The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but, not fine enough, and there are few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great jet d'eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... from their sight. The meagre pleasures which we allowed ourselves—sympathizing looks, words spoken in whispers not to wake the count, hopes and fears repeated and again repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated—stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the close ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the indifferent—are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously evil liver, those who have suffered at his hands or been violently scandalised by his conduct may perhaps find a sombre pleasure in consigning him to Hell, which, indeed, might otherwise have to put up its shutters. But though the doors of Heaven may be closed against a few exceptional scoundrels, they are nowadays thrown open to all the rest of Mankind; ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... in France, in the department of the Sombre and Meuse, where the Austrians and the French fought a battle in the year 1794, in which the former were defeated. This victory is ascribed to the information obtained in consequence of reconnoitering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... brother-in-law. "I've lost my coin and that's the end of it. I don't intend to have the evening spoiled for a thing like that. Music! ladies, music and a jolly air! No more dumps." And with as hearty a laugh as he could command in face of the sombre looks he encountered on every side, he led the way back ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... building on which they had expended much of their ammunition for the purpose of destroying their officers. The rest of the panorama was made up of an immense view of forest below them, and upright masses of mountains above them. Over these, heavy bodies of mist were slowly sailing, giving a sombre appearance to the primeval woods which, in general, covered both mountains and plains. The atmosphere indicated an inter-tropical morning during the rainy season, and the sun shone resplendently ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... foam and bubbles from a rapid, the surface ruffled by a fresh breeze, and shadowed by drifting clouds. I have frequently seen bass dart like an arrow and seize the bait from a distance of thirty feet. A sombre suit of clothes, the hue of which mingles with the foliage or verdure, is a wise precaution, for fish undoubtedly see, ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... casting him down an oubliettes, ever haunted the fatal tower, first as a sleep-walker, then as a restless ghost—moaning and gibbering to himself, and tearing at a walled-up door with bleeding hands. The train of thought thereby suggested was so very sombre, that I preferred returning to my cabin, and climbing into an unfurnished berth, to spending more minutes in that weird company. I never made the man out satisfactorily afterwards. It is possible that he was one of the few who scarcely showed on deck, till we were in sight of land; but rather, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... and hot, and breathless, when the dance came to an end. The sun had been gone a long time, and all the pink shades had slowly turned to grey; the creek had lost its radiant colour, and looked like a silver mirror, and so desolate and sombre, that no one could have imagined it to have been the scene of ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... forsakes each dale: 'Mis Cyclopean pulse of hell Giant cauldrons vomit vapours green And skirr thro' bristling lanes and halls: Whilst beacons die and shrood each soul, Dank tears drop on a fatal bell, Wrought by a Titan's sombre queen, Where graven vypers soop the walls With blood from maidens scourged as toll. Sentinel silence then holds gloom! Vile squats curse roaring pools inflame, A swarthy gump leers at the damn'd, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... but the music saddened his heart yet more, for there was no inward response of gratitude and joy. The bright green of the Spring foliage and of the waving grass seemed dark and gloomy, as he gazed upon it through tearful eyes. His mourning spirit gave its own sombre interpretation to all the lovely scenes of nature. He deeply felt that he was a wretched sinner against God, and he could not see how God could be merciful to one who had so grievously transgressed. He scarcely dared to hope for the pardon of his iniquities, and was in almost utter despair ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... less dirty than the portion of the vessel in which I was destined to live. The bulwarks, companion-hatch, and other parts had, to be sure, once upon a time been painted green, but the dust from the coal, which formed her usual cargo, had reduced every portion to one sombre hue, which even the salt seas not unfrequently breaking over her deck had failed to ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... at her and then at me. His face was hard and sombre; there was no relenting there. 'Perhaps it will be better,' he returned slowly. 'Yes, you may go, but do not stay long with her. I may want to speak to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou hast drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... all things with its yellow haze, and is burning to brightest gold the reddish tinge in the girl's hair as she moves with dallying steps through the green fields. She is dressed in a white gown, decked with ribbons of sombre tint, and wears upon her head a huge poky bonnet, from which her face peeps out, half earnest, half coquettish, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... have the gas lighted in the parlor, and even Uncle Leonard came in there sometimes and sat after dinner, before he went up into that dreary library above. I think he rather enjoyed hearing us talk gayly across his sombre board; he certainly became softer and more human toward me after Richard came to be so constantly a guest. He gave me more money to spend, (that was always the expression of his feelings, his language, so to speak;) ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... bald and shapeless asceticism, who is so excessively penetrated with the reality, the duties, the claims, and the constant hazards of civilisation, as to find in himself no chord responsive to that sombre pensiveness into which Obermann's unfathomable melancholy and impotence of will deepened, as he meditated on the mean shadows which men are content to chase for happiness, and on all the pigmy progeny of giant effort? ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... at an angle which gave Mr. Grimston a view of the tips of shaggy eyebrows, a broad nose, and that peculiar kind of protruding lower lip before which timid people quail. As there was no response, Mr. Grimston looked round vaguely on the sombre, handsome furnishings, fixing his gaze at last on the lithographed portrait of Mr. van Tromp senior, the founder of the house, hanging above ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... deception's art, Hope to conceal and jealousy, False confidence or doubt to impart, Sombre or glad in turn to be, Haughty appear, subservient, Obsequious or indifferent! What languor would his silence show, How full of fire his speech would glow! How artless was the note which spoke Of love again, and yet again; How deftly ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Hawkins and "Young Mars" Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it. The moon rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled crash of a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Towsley's reflections became so sombre that some very unusual tears crept into his eyes. This fact restored him to a sense of his ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... hand, very cold and lax, in his for welcome. She could not answer, but made haste to follow Veronica to her room, whither the old woman led the way with a candle. It was a gloomily spacious chamber, with sombre walls and a lofty ceiling with a faded splendor of gilded paneling. Some tall, old-fashioned mirrors and bureaus stood about, with rugs before them on the stone floor; in the middle of the room was ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... this darkness. There are only exhaled slightly sulphurous white vapours, chiefly steam. The dismal aspect of this black and silent gulf, in which our view was lost—its dark moist sides, along which crept, in a languid and monotonous manner, long flakes of vapour of a sombre gray—the great crater to which this narrow gulf is attached, with its confused heap of diverse substances, coloured yellow, gray, red, like the image of chaos—all presented around us an aspect ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... see it, one unheralded high-noon, as if it were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world. So it is, still much depends on how the world is going to treat it. The flower blows, if sunshine greets and warms it. But let the sky be grey, sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom—cometh not, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... made its way. Snow rested on the surrounding heights, and the ground was crisp with frost. The foliage which still clung to the deciduous trees exhibited the most gorgeous colours, the brightest red, pink, yellow, and purple tints contrasting with the sombre hues of the pines covering the lower slopes ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... driver who had promptly fallen asleep again. On we went as in borne on air, so soft was my bed, now beneath the far-flung branches of trees, sometimes so low that I could have touched them with my hand, now, beneath a sky heavy with sombre masses of flying cloud or bright with the soft radience of the moon. On I went, careless alike of destination, of time, and of future, content to lie there upon the hay, and rest. And so, lulled ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... In a morning, I'm always sullen, and to-day is as sombre as myself. Rain and mist are worse than a sirocco, particularly in a beef-eating and beer-drinking country. My bookseller, Cawthorne, has just left me, and tells me, with a most important face, that he is in treaty for a novel of Madame D'Arblay's, for which 1000 guineas are asked! He ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... after a darkness thick and heavy brooded over the settlement. The sombre pines encompassing the village seemed to close threateningly about it as if to reclaim the wilderness that had been wrested from them. A low rustling as of dead leaves, and the damp breath of forest odors filled the lonely street. Emboldened by the darkness other ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... day dawned bleakly, literally blown piecemeal from out darkness as bleak, the Happy Family rose shiveringly and with sombre disapproval of whatever met their blood-shot eyes; dressed hurriedly in the chill of flapping tent and went out to stagger drunkenly over to where Patsy, in the mess-tent, was trying vainly to keep the biscuits from becoming dust-sprinkled, and sundry ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... solitary, silent, River of Death, who shall live in sight of your blackness? Who may sing aloud at his toil, whether he dig, or plant, or plough, or trap, or fish? Beautiful though the grand sweep and headlong rush of the fall, the people of the settlement avoid its sombre majesty and farms were none and smaller clearings few along the upper St. Ignace. A quarter of a mile back from the fall lay the village, holding a cluster of poor houses, a shop or two, a blacksmith's forge, a ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... in that direction, however, was not cheering. Mountain succeeded mountain in irregular succession, rugged and bleak—the dark precipices and sombre pine-woods looking blacker by contrast with the newly-fallen snow. Some of the hills were wooded to their summits; others, bristling and castellated in outline, afforded no hold to the roots of trees, and stood out in naked sterility. Everywhere the land seemed to have put on its ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... Once again through the sombre inert wainscoting, exactly as if a soul had creaked, the Senior Surgeon sensed the threatening, intrusive presence of an unseen personality. Once again he strode across the room and jerked the door open ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... attention than before to agriculture proper and the raising of crops which would directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the case with ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... back involuntarily over their shoulders into the dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their track. Save for this one vivid spot all was sombre ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... speak. She clung to her father, looking at him with anxious, sombre eyes; but he laughed and ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... property. The younger woman, whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others in the drawing for her portrait, is Meyer's second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, whom he married about 1512, and with whom he was painted by Holbein in 1516. The sombre garments of both women are echoed by the black of Meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur. Meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a wonderful piece of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... up stream a silvery stone bridge, just mellowed by time, spanned the river with many fair arches. Through these the coming river peeped sparkling a long way above, then came meandering and shining down; loitered cool and sombre under the dark vaults, then glistened on again crookedly to the spot where sat its two fairest visitors that day; but at that very point flung off its serpentine habits, and shot straight away in a broad stream ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... plumes wave from the heads of the horses, and flowing black drapery covers their bodies and legs. Even their heads are draped in black, nothing being perceptible but their eyes. The coffin lies exposed on the top of the hearse, and is also similarly draped. This combination of sombre plumage and drapery has a singularly mournful appearance. Priests stand on steps attached to the hearse holding images of the Savior over the coffin; others follow in the rear, comforting the friends and relatives of the deceased. A wild, monotonous chant is sung from time to time ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... quiver. Then she looked at herself in a mirror with serious attention. She held herself sidewise, her neck turned over her shoulder, to follow with her eyes the spring of her fine form in its sheath-like black satin gown, around which floated a light tunic studded with pearls wherein sombre lights scintillated. She went nearer, curious to know her face of that day. The mirror returned her look with tranquillity, as if this amiable woman whom she examined, and who was not unpleasing to her, lived without either acute joy or ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... confess it!" cried Ferrier, as he carried off his papers. But his gayety soon departed. He stood awhile at the window in his room, looking out upon the sodden park—a rather gray and sombre figure. Over his ugly impressiveness a veil of weariness had dropped. Politics and the strife of parties, the devices of enemies and the dissatisfaction of friends—his soul was tired of them. And the emergence of this possible love-affair—for the moment, ardent and deep as were the man's affections ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Uffizi is a most life-like portrait of sombre colouring, but not highly finished. Here we have the same black cap and long hair; the dress is a painter's blouse of a blue-grey, which well brings out the flesh tints. The face is intelligent, but not refined; the clear dark eyes bespeak the artist spirit, but the full ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... and dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn—silent and sombre almost to moroseness. But Randal had no ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... is pitched back in the throat is dark, sombre, and unattractive. The tone must be pitched forward, but do not force it forward. You will recall that our first principle was ease. Think the tone forward and out. Believe it is going forward, and allow it to flow easily. You can tell whether you are placing your tone forward ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for a heroine; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sweet, mine ears are clogged to all sweet sounds save thine own voice, and mine eyes blinded to all sights but thee, else had I heard that nightingale, and seen the golden-vestured morning sun itself steal from its sombre east before its time for jealousy that thou art twice ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... seemed to say 'twas minded him to greet. He took it up, unknowing what it meant; And soon his thoughts pursued their former bent. Of far-off, sombre German woods he dreamed; He saw the waving tree-tops of the north, He saw the comrades to their tryst go forth. Each word true as their own sharp weapons seemed, As much for friendship as for war their worth. Then ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... grandeur. Beginning in the splendid glitter of Solomon's reign, the monarchy passed with unsteady gait across the centuries, menaced by foes without and within, and ended at last in the irretrievable disaster of exile. But through the sombre march of history, a divine purpose was being accomplished. The disaster which swallowed up the nation renewed and spiritualized the religion, and thus the seeming ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... the meal, there was an evident desire on his part to appear cheerful and unconcerned; he talked more freely than usual, and even made many light and jesting remarks. But the veil assumed was too thin. Harriet's eyes saw through it, and rested only upon the sombre reality beneath. As they were rising from ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of The Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by day helped to make the town so bright, and went to bed early and slept ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... street. A continuous flower-bed ran all round the house close to its walls, planted full of geraniums, heliotrope, nasturtiums, mignonette, and pansies. Every window and balcony boasted its box of ferns or flowers; and in spite of the squareness of the building, and the sombre green-gray with which it was painted, the general effect was of cheerfulness, and shade broken by color,—an effect which is ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... increasing her speed. I was eagerly looking out for the coast; at length it came in sight—its distant outline rendered indistinct by the misty pall which hung over it. As we drew nearer, its forest covered heights had a particularly gloomy and sombre appearance, which made me think of the cruelties I had heard were practised on those shores, of the barbarous slave trade, of the fearful idolatries of its dark-skinned children, of its wild beasts, and of its deadly fevers. There ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long stocking in her lap—a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no recollection, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... aroused from his sombre reflections by his host, who rushed into the apartment crying out, "The Spaniards! ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Robert Ashe's sombre eyes smiled a kindly welcome as he looked into the radiant young faces of his daughter's guests. As each girl was presented to him he shook hands with her in a hearty, whole-souled way that completely dispelled any feeling of constraint on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... considered too long already. It only remains for me now to get all my people happy as soon as possible. Zany and Chunk 'make up,' and a good deal of their characteristic love-making will be worked in to relieve the rather sombre state of things at this stage. Whately returns with his empty sleeve, more of a hero than ever in his own eyes and his mother's. Miss Lou thinks him strangely thoughtful and considerate in keeping away, as he does, after a few short visits at The Oaks. The truth is, he is wofully ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the trees grew thinner, and I emerged upon a bare, low headland running out into the sombre water. The night was calm and clear, and the reflection of the growing multitude of the stars shivered in the tranquil heaving of the sea. Some way out, the wash upon an irregular band of reef shone with ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Roseate or sombre your humour as you patrol the reefs, it is liable to be changed in a flash into clashing tints by inadvertent contact with a warty ghoul of a sea-urchin, a single one of whose agonising spines never fails to bring you face to face with one of the vividest realities of life. A slim ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of the snow-capped sierras on their right, the ruddy blush of the peaks on their left—upon the summits of which the last rays of the vanished sun still lingered, to change to purest white even as they gazed—and every clump of sombre olive vegetation between. To the right and left of them, a few miles apart, two streams, having their sources in the neighbouring mountains, discharged into the lake; and so perfectly still was the air that the murmur of their waters came faint but ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to Fifty-ninth streets, the avenue presents a continuous line of magnificent mansions. There are a few marble, yellow stone, and brick buildings, but the prevailing material is brown stone. The general appearance of the street is magnificent, but sombre, owing to the dark color of the stone. Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and has not its ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Jeff nodded, with sombre meaning. He was always a pessimistically inclined man; and, in his rough way, he had conceived a good deal of affection and respect for ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the middle of the ballad, he perceived, close to the door, immovable and pale, the beautiful face of Lelia. [FOOTNOTE: This name of the heroine of one of her romances is often given to George Sand. See Vol. I., p. 338.] She fixed her passionate and sombre eyes upon him; the impressionable artist felt at the same time pain and pleasure... others might listen to him: he played ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the hut the figure came to a halt. Thus it stood, immovable, a grey sombre shadow in the darkness of night. Then, after a long pause, high above the voice of the rising wind the howl of the wolf rang out. It came like a cry of woe from a lost soul; deep-toned, it lifted upon the air, only to fall and die ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... will say we have found it. [Looks down into the gorge.] How uncanny it looks down there! It is as if the fog were shunning the gully, so inky black!... See how sombre the ravine looks! ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... till the land, whither it was bound, should rise like a soft shadow over the horizon; till the shadow became a shape, and at last the tall cliffs, with the green downs above, the glittering plain, the sombre forest, loomed out above one, just beyond where the waves whitened on the loud sea-beaches, and the sound of the breakers came harmoniously over the waste of waters, like the soft tolling of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lost, therefore, in repairing to the sombre and substantial mansion already described. It was during the latter days of the venerable "Poppy Lownds," as the worthy old jailer was called, who for so long a succession of years had presided over the internal police of the prison. He was a kind-hearted old gentleman; and ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... forming the western boundary of Waveland, was a lovely inland lake, by the margin of which Clemence had been accustomed to spend many sad hours, since she had become a resident of the little village. A narrow foot-path, that led through the sombre woods, brought her to a sheltered spot upon the sloping shore, where she often came alone to pass an idle hour. She had come to regard this place as her own peculiar property, for no one had ever come here to interrupt her, or claim ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... why they did not care to speak. And even the girls, discreet in ribbons and shining boots, thought less of kisses than they generally did on Sunday. The older people, sober by temperament, became sombre under the influence of sad, breathless sky, and breathless waters. The coldness that lay in the bosom of nature soon found its way to the responsive bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and body. Her face had not a line in it of strain or sorrow. Faint pink tinted her cheeks. Her pink-linen gown, open in a low V, showed the perfect contour and creaminess of her breast. The restless, adoring eyes of her husband came back to her always with that glance, vigilant and sombre, that was ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... owes its origin to the endless suggestions of the deep black shadows which belong to these artificial lights. There is this objection to be urged to the theory, that Rembrandt was also a good painter of his own flat Dutch landscape, painting it, however, rather under the sombre dimness of clouds and tempests than in the brightness of sunshine. But whatever its source, there is a charm so widely felt in that wonderfully perfect surrounding of uncertainty, suspicion, and alarm, with which Rembrandt has encompassed so many of his otherwise prosaic, coarse, and sometimes ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... aspirings. In later life, a new spirit, partaking of that which was our earliest, returns to us. The solitude which delighted us in youth, but which, when the thoughts that make solitude a fairy land are darkened by affliction, becomes a fearful and sombre void, resumes its old spell, as the more morbid and urgent memory of that affliction crumbles away by time. Content is a hermit; but so also is Apathy. Youth loves the solitary couch, which it surrounds with dreams. Age, or Experience (which is the mind's age), loves the same ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... altered. She spoke particularly of Walter Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... she played on the harp for Le Gardeur the airs which she knew he liked best. His sombre mood yielded to her fond exertions, and she had the reward of drawing at last a smile from his eyes as well as from his lips. The last she knew might be simulated, the former she felt was real, for the smile of the eye is the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Answer, sombre beast and dreary, Where is Brown, the young, the cheery, Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force? You were at that last dread dak We must cover at a walk, Bring them back to me, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness, and was thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world was touched with sombre bronze; westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening white mist of half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... this must be the abode of the Oracle, and just as the sun was setting he reached its outermost gates. The whole castle was surrounded by a deep moat, and the drawbridge and the gates, and even the water in the moat, were all of the same sombre hue as the walls and towers. Upon the gate hung a huge bell, upon which was ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... Everard's listless hand, and, with his head bowed upon his bosom, he suffered his horse to move at a foot's pace up the sombre avenue. Deep in thought, he heeded not the movement of the steed ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... dark on Burnt Ridge. Seen from below, the whole serrated crest that had glittered in the sunset as if its interstices were eaten by consuming fires, now, closed up its ranks of blackened shafts and became again harsh and sombre chevaux de frise against the sky. A faint glow still lingered over the red valley road, as if it were its own reflection, rather than any light from beyond the darkened ridge. Night was already creeping up out of remote canyons and along the furrowed flanks of the mountain, or settling ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Thoas," those rapidly changing expressions of the features, those statuesque attitudes melting into each other, which we all remember in Rachel, indicated a common origin. It needed not the added eloquence of words and the sombre music of the voice to tell the tragic story of the victim of the Eumenides. After listening to the recitation, I was not surprised to learn that the young student was to appear, under the auspices of his teacher, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, but ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... The sky was overcast and threatening. We were travelling directly west again, and no sunlight entered here, even when the sun shone. The walls had lost their brighter reds, and what colour they had was dark and sombre, a dirty brown and dark green predominating. The mythology of the ancients, with their Inferno and their River Styx, could hardly conjure anything more supernatural or impressive than this ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... general name of "Egdon Heath," which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... overwhelmed with the volume of colour. Bosky trees lined the road, and the orange light came through the fretwork of their leaves and branches, and made the dust rising from the cattle and the people on the red roads and the deep shadows all aglow with warm, sombre colour; I would I could remember it exactly. One figure I can still see—there is an open space, green grass, and Corot like trees on either side reflected in water, and a girl carrying a black water-pot on her ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... falls into my lap as I sit over the brook, on a log—a single leaf, gilded about its border, in the centre a crimson flush, fast swallowing up the original greenness; the whole will presently be bronzed and sombre. O, Leaf! how art thou mummified! We do not think of these little things of Nature. Look at this leaf. What is its record? How many generations, think you, are numbered in its ancestry? A perpetual intermarriage has not weakened its fibres. The anatomy of this leaf is perfect, and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... mask of the mummy, in fact, gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer. The disappearance of the old hero did not produce many changes in the position of affairs in Egypt: Minephtah from this time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... men presented a singular contrast. One, with his black hair, swarthy skin, slender limbs and sombre eyes, was the type of the Southern race which counts among its ancestors Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Spaniards. The other, with his rosy skin, large blue eyes, and hands dimpled like a woman's, was the type of that race of temperate ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... up now, but we cannot see it for the hills and buildings. My goodness, see that!" and the Englishman pointed to the east. A flood of delicate pink light was now pouring into the vast body of gray and was slowly driving the more sombre color toward the west. The line of separation was marked—so marked, indeed, that it seemed a vast, rose-colored billow rolling, widening and sweeping onward like a swell of the ocean shoreward. On it came rapidly, till the whole landscape was magically ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... cold, fine, chilling rain. Through it the wagon trains crossed, the artillery with a sombre noise, the wounded who must be carried, the long column of infantry, the advance, the main, the rear. The corps of Stonewall Jackson was the last to ford the river. He sat on Little Sorrel, midway of the stream, and watched his troops go onward in the steady, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... coals of the campfire, which cast a red reflection on the tall, sombre pines in back of them, they voted Dick a capital cook, and the supper one of the best they had eaten since they left the station where they had done fire ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... compensation the forest itself is remarkably beautiful. Its undergrowth, though dense, is very low and even, not more than a foot or so off the ground; and in the Hunting Moon the leaves of this undergrowth have turned to purest yellow, without touch or trace of red, so that the sombre forest is carpeted with gold. Here and there shows a birch or aspen, also bright, pure light yellow, as though a brilliant sun were striking down through painted windows. Groups of yellow-leafed larches add to the splendour. And close to the ground ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... there to meet him, nerved and calm as a spirit of the past, in that great quiet sarcophagus of books—at least, I so deceived myself to believe. I had made up my mind, during the time I had been sitting alone in that sombre room, as to what I would say to him, and how clearly and concisely I would array my wrongs in words, and pronounce his sentence. But, when he came, all this was forgotten. A tumult of wild feeling surged through my brain. My very tongue grew icy, and trembled in my ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... small, white-painted sloop. Nothing romantic about it. No hint of adventure. A splendid pictorial argument against the alleged joys of small-boat sailing. Possibly that is what Cloudesley and I thought, that sombre, leaden morning as we turned out to cook breakfast and wash decks. The latter was my stunt, but one look at the dirty water overside and another at my fresh-painted deck, deterred me. After breakfast, we started a game of chess. The tide ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... it, then?—Can you not get used to the life one leads here? Is it too gloomy here?—It is true the castle is very old and very sombre.... It is very cold, and very deep. And all those who dwell in it, are already old. And the country may seem gloomy too, with all its forests, all its old forests without light. But that may all be enlivened if we ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... stars. The ancient forest stretched around us on every side, and a foreboding sadness sunk upon my heart. Memory was busy with the events of many years. I retraced step by step the pilgrimage of my past life, until arriving at that passage in its sombre history, I gazed through tears upon the singularly savage scene around me, and secretly marvelled, "What ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the young girl was necessarily of the most limited and uncostly character; and, though she was dressed for a ceremonious dinner, her attire consisted merely of a sombre-hued barege, made with the severest simplicity, and gaining its only pretension to full dress by disclosing her white, finely-moulded neck and arms. Her sole ornament was the bracelet which ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Had her words touched him, had she said what was best for the welfare of the girl who was so dear to her, and whose departure she felt so keenly? How would she fare at this man's hands? What lay behind his stern face and sombre tragic eyes? Her lips moved in silent prayer, but when she spoke her voice was ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... only the flesh that he had put on, but also the clothes, that made him hard to recognise. In the old days, an imitation fur coat had seemed to be as integral a part of him as were his ill-shorn lantern jaws. But now his costume was a model of rich and sombre moderation, drawing, not calling, attention to itself. He looked like a banker. Any one would have been proud to ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... two before had been heard the muffled click of a hammer. Feet scuffled down the stairs, outside the dining-room door, and along the passage. And then the door was opened, and in low, decent undertaker's voice, red-nosed, sombre, well-fed Mr. Mortmain told them that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... he said. "The proof is a terrible one, but I require this proof. I must descend into the tomb to obtain it: well, then, I will descend into the tomb. I must consult the sombre oracle of death concerning the mysteries of life: well, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... interspersed in the most picturesque fashion, with knolls richly clad with larch, oak, or hazel; while here and there the gleam of the River Earn betrays her course, where she has emerged from sombre wood, or deep and rocky gorge. In spring-time the eye is delighted and refreshed with the varieties of green—from the deep and sombre shade of the Scotch pine and the almost yellow and brown of the young oak to the exquisite freshness ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... meet for him who rules to drive away his stress— He, being god, should lightnings hurl and make a wilderness— But, haste! for night is darkling—soon, the festival it brings; Already see the hydra show its tongues and sombre wings, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, And white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Pichincha. So encircled is this sequestered spot, the traveler, approaching by the Guayaquil road, sees only a part of it, and is disappointed; and even when standing on Panecillo, with the entire city spread out before him, he is not wholly satisfied. Buried between treeless, sombre sierras, and isolated from the rest of the world by impassable roads and gigantic Cordilleras, Quito appears to us of the commercial nineteenth century as useless as the old feudal towns perched on the mountains of Middle Europe. Not a chimney rises above the red-tiled roofs, telling of homely ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... occasional outbursts of merriment from De Croix and his equally reckless companion grew gradually less frequent, and appeared more forced. The constant and never-ending toil of our progress, the depressing gloom of the sombre primeval forest on every side of us, the knowledge of possible peril lurking in each league of this haunted silence, weighed upon us all, and at last closed the lips of even the ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... sombre Petersburg morning looks in at the dingy windows. By the stove, the granny is pouring out the children's tea. Only the eldest, Vassya, drinks out of a glass, for the others the tea is poured out into saucers. Yegoritch is squatting ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... from her death-sleep: some forward sun-rays broke through the clouds of this sombre sky of Scotland; the snow melted, the lake broke its ice-crust, the first buds opened, the green turf reappeared; everything came out of its prison at the joyous approach of spring, and it was a great grief to Mary to see that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the cargo was to be made. There was no moon. The sun set red and lowering over Durlstone Point, and dark clouds were seen chasing each other rapidly across the sky, rising from a dark bank which rested on the western horizon, while white-crested seas began to rise up out of the sombre green ocean, every instant increasing in number. The wind whistled mournfully among the bushes and the few stunted trees, with tops bending inland, which fringed the cliffs, and the murmur of the waves on the beach below changed ere long into ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... cloth; lips, fingers and ears, the tongue in her open mouth—all creeks for the blood were ebbed dry. Her awful eyes, fixed and sombre stars, threatened to gulf her in their dark. Love was drowned in ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... deepened, in the gathering shade Beneath that old titanic cypress row, Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below, Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed, Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow Grew less and patterning ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... had just arrived at the conclusion that he might, and would, safely encounter his bugbear Cornelia. If the professor invited him to tea, and to spend the evening, he was resolved to accept; and, at that moment, he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder, and, turning quickly round, recognized the sombre figure of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... bazaars clustered about its holiest sanctuaries form its most sombre quarter. Dusk falls there early, and oil-lanterns twinkle in the merchants' niches while the clear African daylight still lies on the gardens of upper Fez. This twilight adds to the mystery of the souks, making them, in spite of profane noise ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... desirable as an associate with luminous colors. Black does not associate as well with two colors, one of which is luminous and the other sombre, as when associated with ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... countenance of the sick woman stood out like a figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of tarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a crackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber, where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolled from the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some catastrophe. At the sound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting posture. She opened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... laboured and painful, her gaze more concentrated and searching, and when her cousin exclaimed: "Oh, mother! she is an angel! I have always known it. She is unlike everybody else!" Electra's heart seemed to stand still; and from that moment a sombre curtain fell between the girl's eyes and God's sunshine. She rose, and a silent yet terrible struggle took place in her passionate soul. Justice and jealousy wrestled briefly; she would be just though every star fell from her sky, and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... passed was very beautiful, commencing with dark-green ilex, glistening holly, and sombre brown oak, interspersed with groups of the dainty, graceful, white-stemmed birch, and wreathed with festoons of the scarlet Himalayan vine. As we mounted higher, trees became fewer and the foliage less luxuriant, till at length only oaks were to be seen, their ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... satisfying than that of the dour and dark rocks of Tintagel and the Land's End. And if Wessex cannot boast the sustained grandeur of the stern face that England turns to the Atlantic waves, the romantic arch of Durdle Door, the majestic hill-cliff that rises above the green cleft of Arish Mel, and the sombre precipices of St. Aldhelm's, with the smiling loveliness of the Wessex lanes and hamlets behind them, will be ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... little else; and, before proceeding to examine the residuum of truth that probably exists in connection with this subject, it will be well for us briefly to examine the other and darker side of this curious relic of mediaeval superstition, and to see it in its most sombre hues. A belief for which more than nine million persons were either burned or hanged since it sprang into being; in whose cause five hundred persons were executed in three months in 1515 in Geneva alone, is not to be put aside as unworthy of a moment's ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... trail, he scanned the ground very carefully. It was still flat, notwithstanding some rocky patches. The shade was deep, and as far as the eye reached, nothing moved; nothing suspicious was seen, nay, nothing that bore life, except the sombre vegetation. The wind increased in force; the pines faintly murmured from time to time; a blast penetrated beneath them to the surface of the soil, chasing the dry needles in fitful whirls or playing with the tall bunch-grasses that ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... proceed to Siligoree, where I arrived at 6 a.m. on the 13th. Hitherto I bad not seen the mountains, so uniformly had they been shrouded by dense wreaths of vapour: here, however, when within eight miles of their base, I caught a first glimpse of the outer range—sombre masses, of far from picturesque outline, clothed everywhere ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... quietly, and moved in silence towards the bed. She nodded an affectionate welcome. He returned her greeting eagerly, and all his constraint was loosed away, and he felt at ease, and happy. Her face was very pale indeed against the glittering blackness of her eyes, and her sombre disordered hair and untidy dress; but it did not show fatigue nor extreme anxiety; it was a face of calm meekness. The sleeves of her dress were reversed, showing the forearms, which gave her an appearance of deshabille, homely, intimate, confiding. "So it was common property ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... amid life's roses Will the sombre cypress be twined, And wherever a joy reposes, A dream of sorrow ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him—a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal, fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and Fulkeward, noting his ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... was always ready to write anybody's Life. If he knew the facts of a poet's life—and his knowledge was enormous on such subjects—he found room for them; if he did not, he supplied their place with his own shrewd reflections and sombre philosophy of life. It thus comes about that Johnson is every bit as interesting when he is writing about Sprat, or Smith, or Fenton, as he is when he has got Milton or Gray in hand. He is also much ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... this desponding reflection, he moves off from the scaffold; and, making his way among the mausoleums, once more approaches the spot where the South American banyan casts its sombre ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... I can't help it. It is depressing to be the only prisoners in a black van; I should have said "passengers," but the sombre character of the omnibus suggests "Black Maria;" it is depressing (I repeat to myself), to be the only two passengers driving through a dead town at night-time, as if we were the very personification of "the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... shoulder, till the road curled up into the depths of a broad pine-wood, through which it cut, thin, and dead straight, and cool, and strangely solemn. In a flash it had become the nave of a cathedral, immense, solitary. Sombre and straight and tall, the walls rose up to where the swaying roof sobered the mellow sunshine and only let it pass dim and so, sacred. The wanton breeze, caught in the maze of tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive organist, learned to draw ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... There was a sombre silence. Faversham broke it. "I must see the nurses," he said to Lydia; "but again, I beg of you to go! ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... candour—of her saying what other writers cannot help thinking, though they may not like to express the thought. Readers of Persuasion are well aware that the author made room for cases (at all events, in the lives of women) where such disappointments, though they may not kill, yet give a sombre tone to the life and spirits of the sufferer through a long ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... The porcelain of tea paraphernalia caught the glow of the fire; a reading lamp burned on a centre table, shedding subdued lustre over ceiling, walls, books, and over the floor where lay a few ancient rugs of Beloochistan, themselves full of mysterious, sombre fire. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... was blotted out from Spain,—and Spain was blotted out from the ranks of enlightened nations. Freedom of thought was at an end. The mind of the Spaniard was put in fetters. Spain, under the sombre shadow of this barbarity, was shut out from the light which was breaking over the remainder of Europe. Literature moved in narrow channels, philosophy was checked, the domain of science was closed, progress was at an end. Spain stood still while the rest of the world was ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the divan, her knees clasped around with her arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows, formidably contracted downward, toward ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... fired the passion of Asad-Reis—as he then was, one of the captains of the famous Ali-Basha. There were streaks of red in her heavy black tresses, her skin was of a soft pearliness that seemed translucent, her eyes were large, of a golden-brown, agleam with sombre fires, her lips were full and sensuous. She was tall and of a shape that in Europe would have been accounted perfect, which is to say that she was a thought too slender for Oriental taste; she moved along beside her lord with a sinuous, languorous grace, gently stirring ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini |
