"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter very much to Arthur just then where he was going, or what was to become of him. He knew his father and mother were going away, and that he was to be left all alone, quite alone it seemed to him, and a very desolate, forlorn feeling fell over his heart, and seemed to make him ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... estimate, about 5 square miles. Further knowledge may explain the discrepancy from Marco's dimension, but this must be the park of which he speaks.[3] The woods and fountains have disappeared, like the temples and palaces; all is dreary and desolate, though still abounding in the game which was one of Kublai's attractions to the spot. A small monastery, occupied by six or seven wretched Lamas, is the only building that remains in the vicinity. The river Shangtu, which lower down becomes the Lan [or Loan]-Ho, was formerly navigated ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... blood—as far as the eye can reach, no vegetation appears on the surface of the gloomy desert, covered with sand and stones, like the ancient bed of some dried-up ocean. A silence as of death broods over this desolate tract. Sometimes, gigantic black vultures, with red unfeathered necks, luminous yellow eyes, stooping from their lofty flight in the midst of these solitudes, come to make their bloody feast on the prey they have carried off ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore, By a lonely isle, by a far Azore, There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek, On the barren sands of a desolate creek. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... secretly. He is vivacious and sprightly. He is famous. He has already had an affair with Finfin, the fille de chambre, and poor Finfin is desolate. He is noble. She knows he is the son of Madame la Baronne Couturiere. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was the blast he blew upon his horn, nor did he cease playing until his music had restored him to a more natural mood than that in which the interview with Laval left him. The prison was becoming a less startling image of desolate dreariness to him. And Adolphus was the master-spirit in his family. If he was gay, it was barely possible for his wife and child to be sad. Of the prison not one word was spoken by either. They had not revealed to each other their inmost mind when they went into Laval's quarters; they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the houses all with the same story of failure. They were weary with wakefulness and the heavy tramp. After a hasty meal they carefully searched the ground within two or three miles of the house. The whole day was spent in this; and at nightfall the party came back to the desolate house without hope. The mother, almost frantic, called for Lucy, and nothing but the echoes gave answer. One by one the neighbors went to their own homes and cares. The conviction forced itself upon the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... have you go, dear friends," said Mr. Maynard. "We shall be desolate, indeed, without your merry faces, but the time is ripe. It's nine o'clock, and Christmas morning comes apace. So flee, skip, skiddoo, vamoose, and exit! Hang up your stockings, and perhaps Santa Claus may observe them. But ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... same proportion favorable to the unprecedented growth of England's power upon the ocean. The opposition, and indeed some of the ministry, also thought that so commanding and important a position as Havana was poorly paid for by the cession of the yet desolate and unproductive region called Florida. Porto Rico was suggested, Florida accepted. There were other minor points of difference, into which it is unnecessary to enter. It could scarcely be denied that with the commanding military control of the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Lacey's heart at the mention of Fanny's name, but he continued to inquire concerning his friends in Kentucky. Before the party closed, Florence, Mabel and Lida had each managed to repeat to him all the conversation which he had overheard in the first part of the evening, never once thinking how desolate was the heart which beat beneath the calm manner and gay laugh of him who listened to their ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... the house might be rat-ridden and desolate. The coulee might wear always the look of emptiness; but here, under the bluff by the spring, and in the room Jean called hers, one felt the air of occupancy that gave the lie to all ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... Mandoville, and they wrote books about their travels as they would have done if they had travelled in Thibet; and very curious reading those books are now after the lapse of something over a century. The whole of the Highlands were wild, unfrequented, and desolate, under the rude jurisdiction of the heads of the great Highland houses, whose clansmen, as savage and as desperately courageous as Sioux or Pawnees, offered their lords an almost idolatrous devotion. Nominally the clans were under the authority of the English Crown ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... his old ships. As Pearson stood listening the footsteps ceased; silence, then a deep sigh, and they began again. The young man sighed in sympathy and wearily climbed to his den. The prospect of chimneys and roofs across the way was never more desolate ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... long before she found that there was another wanderer in this desolate and lonely place. She met with a white hunter named Garrison; and very much surprised must he have been when his eyes first fell upon her,—almost as much surprised, perhaps, as if he had come upon a stranded ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... Mr. President, this will not do. If we are to tear down all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... enriched by some of the best blood that ever flowed through mortal veins. That part with which we have most to do is the group of islands lying off its coast, but Lindisfarne and the Farne Islands are interesting, not so much because of the wild and desolate grandeur of their rocks, as because two persons have lived and wrought there. St. Cuthbert and Grace Darling—two widely different persons indeed—the man, the dreamer and the saint, and the simple strong-hearted maiden, living at long distances from each other, but both doing the work possible ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... breakfast at Mrs. Holt's house, from which the guests departed quickly as soon as the bride and bridegroom had been taken away to the railway station. But when the others were gone Miss Altifiorla remained,—out of kindness. Mrs. Holt need make no stranger of her, and it would be so desolate for her to be alone. So surmised Miss Altifiorla. "I suppose," said she, when she had fastened up the pink ribbons so that they might not be soiled by the trifle with which she prepared to regale herself while she asked the question, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... dinghy and a few seconds later had once more embarked and were speeding toward the desolate and forsaken bungalow. Somehow they managed to get ashore in the dinghy without anyone being spilled over the side in their desperate hurry and a minute later were pounding at ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... wind was blowing, and the dust swirled about his feet. The road gleamed white and deserted before him. He swung along it, erect and British, caring nothing for dust or cold. From far away, in the direction of the jungle, there came the desolate cry of a jackal; but near at hand there was no sound but the rush of the wind past his ears and the swish of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... side of peace. My ministers earnestly strove to allay the causes of the strife and to appease differences with which my empire was not concerned. Had I stood aside when in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities made desolate, when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction, I should have sacrificed my honor and given to destruction the liberties of my ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... stood up in the swaying skiff, keeping her balance as if she were dancing; then, the motion, perhaps, throwing her back into her old identity, she sprang to the shore like a cat. Sarp laid Miss Emma beside her, and then shot away, back over all the desolate reaches and lonely shining pools; and Flor, with a little wail of despair, hid her face on the ground, that her weakened and bewildered little mistress might not see the flood of tears that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... nurse and watched the scene. It was a strange picture—the unaccustomed flood, the dark mass of the house, and the tree tops standing out of the water, the bright moonlight, which seemed to make the scene almost more desolate, and the curious craft in which they were sitting. The scene deeply impressed itself ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... loveliest snow ranges and snow-draped forest—and at 7 p.m. we hauled up, in drizzle and fog, at the domicile which had been engaged for us ten months before. Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate place, the most unendurable place!—and the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meagre, and the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara (Spaulding) sat down forlorn, and cried, and I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and bitter fate Had fallen on me in my tender years. I seemed an aimless wanderer doomed to grope In vain among the darkling years and die. One only star shone through the shadowy mists. The moon that wandered in the gloomy heavens Was robed in shrouds; the rugged, looming hills Looked desolate;—the silent river seemed A somber chasm, while my own pet lamb, Mourning disconsolate among the trees, As if he followed some dim phantom-form, Bleated in vain and would not heed my call. On weary hands I bent my weary head; In gloomy sadness fell ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... more frequently roused into fury; insomuch that several, according to authentic information, instigated by a savage compassion, laid violent hands upon their own wives and children. On the succeeding day, a vast silence all around, desolate hills, the distant smoke of burning houses, and not a living soul descried by the scouts, displayed more amply the face of victory. After parties had been detached to all quarters without discovering any certain tracks of the enemy's flight, or any bodies of them ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... but what became of the sweetnesses of life, his fine house, his grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his; he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur it might still retain to soon became as desolate a looking house as any misanthrope could wish to see. Where were the grand entertainments and the grand company? There are no grand entertainments where there is no money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments—and there lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... fierce wild pirates, called Danes, who used to come sailing across the North Sea in ships with carved swans' heads at the prow, and hundreds of fighting men aboard. Their own country was bleak and desolate, and they were greedy and wanted the pleasant English land. So they used to come and land in all sorts of places along the sea-shore, and then they would march across the fields and kill the peaceful farmers, and set fire to their houses, and take their sheep and cows. Or sometimes they would ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... his name, and, buckling his haversack, he put it on his back, paid his bill, and set out on foot to make a hasty ascent of the culminating point of the Albula Pass, which leads into the Engadine Valley. One would have difficulty in finding throughout the Alps a more completely barren, rugged, desolate spot, than this portion of the Albula Pass. The highway lies among masses of rocks, heaped up in terrible disorder. Arrived at the culminating point, Count Abel felt the necessity of taking breath. He clambered up a little hillock, where he seated himself. At his feet were wide open ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... an all-wise god. Ravens carried to him the news from earth. His temples were stone altars on desolate heaths, and human sacrifices ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... she said, in a new tone. "The Hotel du Danube is nearer still. But come in my car. Mademoiselle Ingate can return in yours. Do not desolate me." ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of the house, as had been said, was an orchard, at the other was a large garden. If the desolate appearance of the house was likely to raise oppressive feelings in a stranger's mind, how much more this garden! It was a large oblong piece of ground, the walls of which enclosed the western end of the house completely. One of them ran parallel ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they who enter never leave it. There are ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... was but a repetition of that first day's staging—the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off as ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate. The entry in Miss Carmichael's diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling you, in strictest confidence, 'Dere Diary'—as the little boy called you—that when I so lightly severed my connection ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... our beloved friends to the ship, and drove back on a cold, dry evening, a forlorn party, to the desolate house. But from that time dear Bishop Patteson roused himself from his natural depression (for to whom could the loss be greater than to him?) and set himself to cheer and comfort us all. How gentle and sympathising he was! He let me give him ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scene of the opera is laid in New England. Riccardo, the governor of Boston, loves Amelia, the wife of his secretary, Renato. After a scene in a fortune-teller's hut, in which Riccardo's death is predicted, the lovers meet in a desolate spot on the seashore. Thither also comes Renato, who has discovered a plot against his chief and hastens to warn him of his danger. In order to save Riccardo's life Renato resorts to the time-honoured device of an exchange of cloaks. Thus effectually ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers—evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... same time, facilitated domestic treason. It was no longer necessary for an agent from Saint Germains to cross the sea in a fishing boat, under the constant dread of being intercepted by a cruiser. It was no longer necessary for him to land on a desolate beach, to lodge in a thatched hovel, to dress himself like a carter, or to travel up to town on foot. He came openly by the Calais packet, walked into the best inn at Dover, and ordered posthorses for London. Meanwhile young Englishmen of quality and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be good and nice directly. She did not allude to my desolate position or say anything without tact, but she asked me to lunch as if I had been a queen and would honor her by accepting. For some reason I could see Lady Ver did not wish me to go—she made all sorts of excuses about wanting me herself—but ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... down his water-bag, at the bottom of the little, desolate valley of gravel through which the fugitives were now toiling. All did the same, and all sat down—or ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... unwelcome she was as a girl when sons were wanted. She showed me how her troubles as a daughter bound to her mother's side differed from those of a boy cast out upon the world of school and college life. My desolate neglect seemed to me a paradise compared to that contact with a millstone under which her soul was ground until the day when her good aunt, her true mother, had saved her from this misery, the ever-recurring pain of which she now related to me; misery ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the window where Nancy waved good-by to her lover, and there were the flower-beds into which he had fallen headlong from his horse,—only a desolate corner now with the grass and tall weeds grown quite up to the scaling wall, and the wooden shutters tightly closed. I wondered whether they had ever been ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... unfaithful reconcilement which was made between them; whereupon Mutianus advanced many of the friends of Antonius, Simul amicis ejus praefecturas et tribunatus largitur: wherein, under pretence to strengthen him, he did desolate him, and ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... suppose that this must be the prelude of our admitting the independence of South America; however, the mission is secret, but he is commissioned, and has the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary. It is a long and desolate prospect, but the scene will be new. He is not quite reconciled to it, but having no better prospect, I think he has done wise in accepting it; they give him two secretaries. I would not wish you to mention this appointment. I find Canning is by ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... him in the name of the people of India, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... recurred to Chichikov long-unknown, long-unfamiliar feelings. Something seemed to be striving to come to life again in him—something dim and remote, something which had been crushed out of his boyhood by the dreary, deadening education of his youthful days, by his desolate home, by his subsequent lack of family ties, by the poverty and niggardliness of his early impressions, by the grim eye of fate—an eye which had always seemed to be regarding him as through a misty, mournful, frost-encrusted window-pane, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... his neck so as to see better through the narrow opening that served them as a lookout, "some toney, strikes me, considerin' the desolate country round-about this section. Must be his high-hat tastes foller him, no matter where he goes—sorter dude, I'd call ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... that I think we could not count half a dozen on our way to Senlis, and those seemed absorbed in deadly thought and silence, neither looking at us, nor caring to encounter our looks. The road, the fields, the hamlets, all appeared deserted. Desolate and lone was the universal air. I have since concluded that the people of these parts had separated into two divisions; one of which had hastily escaped, to save their lives and loyalty, while the other had hurried to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... closing in upon a stormy March day; rain and sleet falling fast while a blustering northeast wind sent them sweeping across the desolate-looking fields and gardens, and over the wet road where a hack was lumbering along, drawn by two weary-looking steeds; its solitary passenger sighing and groaning with impatience over its slow progress ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve, coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that she was the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present—to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of gold, Bravely defying winter's cold, When dreary north winds shrilly whistle Over the desolate fields of thistle; Thou comest to bless in beauty's ways, With memories of summer days, When at the touch of gentle showers, Decked were the fields in myriad flowers; Yet more than all I praise to-day This blossom bright, Since on her breast ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... husband. At present, the domain belongs to her son, Prince Eugene, by whom the house has lately been stripped of its furniture. Many of the fine trees in the park have also been cut down, and the whole appears neglected and desolate. His mother did not like Navarre: he himself never saw it: the queen of Holland alone used occasionally to reside here.—The principal beauty of the place lies in its woods; and these we saw to the greatest advantage. It was impossible for earth or sky to look more ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Fergus spent all the gold he brought with him, and then sold all the Countess Cathleen bade him sell—lands, castles, forests, pastures, timber—all but one lonely castle in the desolate woods, where she dwelt among her own people, with the dying folk thronging round her gates and in her halls. Good bargains Fergus made also, for he was a shrewd and loyal steward, and the saints must have touched the hearts of the English merchants, so that they gave ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... his consent to their prolonged stay in the old home, though he did it with repugnance. The farm Mussainen, which in fact he had bought that same day, was in so desolate a condition that it seemed dangerous for wife and children to stay there in the cold autumn days. Above all, the most needful repairs had to be made. Carpenter, mason, and builder had to be fetched ere it was ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... years were completed, the widower had to return to his desolate home and make the best he could of the fragments of peace and happiness left to him. Leam was nineteen: it was time for her to be taken from school and given the protection of her father's house. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark terror the great city which was full of men is become mute and desolate. The proud liner scrapes along the surface of the frozen berg and crumples like a ship of cards. There is a splash, a cry, a white face, a lifted arm, and then all the pride and splendor, all the hopes and fears, the gorgeous dreams, the daring thoughts are gone. But the ice ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of one so famous in that neighbourhood. [Note prefixed.—The history of Rob Roy is sufficiently known; his grave is near the head of Loch Ketterine, in one of those small pinfold-like burial-grounds, of neglected and desolate appearance, which the traveller meets with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... corporation of Bristol, and has the exclusive right of fishing round its shores. The Steep Holme is a lofty and barren rock, tenanted alone by the cormorant and the sea-mew: it is smaller than the Flat Holme. The following lines are so beautifully descriptive of this lonely and desolate spot, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... name—feared me, Andreas, the man of God. I was a heathen then, as thou art; I worshipped the gods of the North, and the hammer of Thor was my symbol on the ocean. I spared none who stood in my way. These hands have dripped with the blood of my foes, and many a widow have I left desolate." ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty, vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,—enough to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance. Yet, even at such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... along one of the upper walks because it was desolate, and he could there speak to her, as he thought, without being heard. She had, almost unconsciously, made a faint attempt to lead him down upon the lawn, no doubt feeling averse to private conversation at the moment; but he had persevered, and had ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of Paradise That desolate region, overgrown with thorn And thistle rank—a trackless waste forlorn, Unblessed by God, o'erarched by sullen skies, There stand that guilty pair, now sadly wise, Their hearts with grief, their feet with briers torn, Vainly their faded innocence they mourn, And toward ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... leaden, lowering,— Grey purple shadows fading on the hills; Dreary and desolate the far expanse And gloomy sameness of the open plain. A peasant woman, in white wimpled hood, White vest, and scarlet petticoat, surveys The meadow, with rough ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay, even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. Is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have among them some that are held for wise men, who never wear any clothes all their life long, and who bear the snow of Caucasus, and the piercing cold of winter, without any pain; and who if they come ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... remarkable that Titus did not people this now desolate country of Judea, but ordered it to be all sold; nor indeed is it properly peopled at this day, but lies ready for its old inhabitants the Jews, at their future restoration. See Literal Accomplishment ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... outskirts of the city Horner had observed a high, rocky, desolate hill which seemed suited to his purpose. He took a street car and travelled for an hour with the bundle on his knees. Little his fellow-passengers guessed of the wealth of romance, loyalty, freedom, and spacious memory hidden in that common-looking bundle on the knees of the gaunt-faced, gray-eyed ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... land, flat and desolate, dank and dirty-looking. The flat, dull, dirty marsh country seemed to be without life; the very grass seemed blighted. And we were drifting ashore to it, fast drifting ashore to the tune ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... to be cheerful, but feeling very blue and desolate he ate a solitary dinner and went again to the theater to ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... flowed towards the sea with an angry rush; our vehicle was refreshing itself before the door, and the horse and driver had taken refuge in the stable. The tops of the surrounding hills were hidden in mist; everywhere the rain roared. The scene was dreary and desolate in the extreme. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... and that to me seemed only the first step. I could not believe that the new freedom, the new England would be made by such women. Their make-believe merriment, all this riotous celebrating of the world's stupendous Victory—what, after all, was it? And for me the desolate answer "Waste!" rang ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... loss of his men sees, His companion Olivier calls, and speaks: "Sir and comrade, in God's Name, That you keeps, Such good vassals you see lie here in heaps; For France the Douce, fair country, may we weep, Of such barons long desolate she'll be. Ah! King and friend, wherefore are you not here? How, Oliver, brother, can we achieve? And by what means our news to him repeat?" Says Oliver: "I know not how to seek; Rather I'ld die than shame come ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... bridle-path wound up from the road, the country grew more rugged, the vegetation more scanty, and the stones more plentiful. It was a wilderness of rocky desolation; as far as one could see there was no sign of humanity, not a soul upon the solitary road, not a living thing upon the desolate hills that rose on either side in jagged points to the sky. Corona talked a little with the head-keeper who rode beside her with a slack rein, letting his small mountain horse pick its own way over the rough path. He told her that few people ever passed that way. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... aside awhile as it is, And on the other side make the like inquisition: If on the left side you fall, then shall you not miss But to bring your body to utter perdition; For at man's hand, you know, there is no remission. Beside, your children fatherless, your wife desolate, Your goods and possessions ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... occupation, whatever it may be, or to her children when they are assembled around her, but complaints of her hard lot and miserable destiny; who is always brooding over past sorrows, or anticipating future evils; does all she can, unconsciously it may be, to make her hearth desolate, and to mar for ever domestic happiness. And the husband and father who brings to that hearth a morose frown, or a gloomy brow; who silences the prattling tongue of infancy by a stern command; who suffers the annoyances and cares of life to cut into his heart's core, and refuses ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... spread out as a map beneath them, its pleasant fields and its busy towns seeming only as specks in the dim distance. But when they looked forward, hoping there to see a like map of fair Italy, only the rocks and the ice, and the narrow pathway, and the desolate mountain ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... remaining abroad, for when the news got to him his uncle had been long buried, and there seemed to him no need of his return. It was easier to forget, or to persuade himself that he forgot, Nell, while he was sailing from port to port, or shooting big game in the wild and desolate places of the earth, than it would be in England. If Nell had still been pledged to him, how differently he would have received this gift which the gods had bestowed on him! To have been able to go to her and say: "Nell, you will ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Castle of Otranto, which unites the marvellous and the terrible, and by a scene of mere natural horror in Smollett's Count Fathom. The story Sir Bertrand is an attempt to combine the two kinds of horror in one composition. A knight, wandering in darkness on a desolate and dreary moor, hears the tolling of a bell, and, guided by a glimmering light, finds "an antique mansion" with turrets at the corners. As he approaches the porch, the light glides away. All is dark and still. The light reappears and the bell tolls. As Sir Bertrand enters the castle, the door closes ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... for a week, and at last one night, when I was at the helm, we dashed on the rocks of a desolate island. I was pitched right over the mountains, and fell into the sea on the other side of the island. I swam on shore, and got into a cave, where I fell fast asleep. The next morning I found that there was nothing to eat except rats, and they were plentiful; but they were ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I wait? Oh, love, how can I wait Until the sunlight of your eyes shall shine Upon my world that seems so desolate? Until your hand-clasp warms my blood like wine; Until you come again, oh, love of ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... presenting a picture of rural abundance, mingled with rural comfort, that one seldom sees in the old world, where the absence of enclosures, and the concentration of the dwellings in villages, leave the fields naked and with a desolate appearance, in spite of their high tillage ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the brilliancy of the complexion of London. The flare of electricity in the region of the theatres made a midnight summer in the empty heart of September, and recalled the gayety of the season for the moment to the desolate metropolis. But this splendor was always so massed and so vivid that even in the height of the season it was one of the things that distinguished itself among the various immense impressions. The impressions ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... mischievous confusion between St. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), the merest tyro in hagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home when the Virgin was born. He had been hustled out of the temple for having no children, and had fled desolate and dismayed into the wilderness. It shows how silly people are, for all the time he was going, if they had only waited a little, to be the father of the most remarkable person of purely human origin ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... $1.29 apiece. All the Wagon and artillery horses and wagons, also, were loaned to the soldiers and divided by lot. A few days' rations had been issued, and with this and the clothes on their back, this remnant at a once grand army bent their steps towards their desolate homes. It was found advisable to move by different routs and in such numbers as was most agreeable and convenient. Once away from the confines of the army, they took by-ways and cross country, roads, avoiding as much as possible ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... more closely I twice saw the soft round prints of the great sand-coloured cats, and my eyes began now to roam afield in the expectation of perhaps seeing those which had made the marks. No; the open valley that twenty or thirty years earlier might have been alive with game was absolutely desolate; not one of the vast herds which used to roam there, as the old Boers had often told me, was to ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the weather and the barrenness of the country. Steady downpours of rain changed to blinding storms of sleet and snow. Swollen streams, heaps of abandoned baggage, and huge snow-drifts repeatedly blocked the line of march. The gaunt and desolate country, which the army had ravaged and pillaged during the summer's invasion, now grimly mocked the retreating host. It was a land truly inhospitable and dreary beyond description. Exhaustion overcame thousands of troopers, who dropped by the wayside and beneath ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Yser with frightful destruction of life. Air engines, sea engines, and land engines deathsweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... vale to the industry of the cultivator. Some of them bear fine large trees, which have as yet escaped the axe, and upon the sides of most there are scattered patches and fringes of natural copsewood, above and around which the banks of the stream arise, somewhat desolate in the colder months, but in summer glowing with dark purple heath, or with the golden lustre of the broom and gorse. This is a sort of scenery peculiar to those countries, which abound, like Scotland, in hills ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... at the head of the village street now, upon a slight eminence. I pointed backwards to the prison-like building, standing grim and desolate ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... don't want the schooner wrecked. I only said if it had been, and because you young gents was talking the other day about being on a desolate island to play Robinson ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Background: This desolate, mountainous island was named after a Dutch whaling captain who indisputably discovered it in 1614 (earlier claims are inconclusive). Visited only occasionally by seal hunters and trappers over the following centuries, the island came under Norwegian sovereignty in 1929. The long dormant Beerenberg ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... ruins of a village called Er Ram, (a very common name in Palestine; but this is not Ramoth-Gilead;) and at half an hour to the north was an inhabited village called Nimrin, from which the stream flowed to us.—See Jer. xlviii. 34: "The waters of Nimrin shall be desolate." ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... no hint of those desolate feelings in his mind now. And after all, he thought, why should there be? He was not a Garvian any longer. He was a Star ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... they occupied first the Romanized area of the island. As the Romano-Britons retired from the south and east, as Silchester was evacuated in despair[2] and Bath and Wroxeter were stormed and left desolate, the very centres of Romanized life were extinguished. Not a single one remained an inhabited town. Destruction fell even on Canterbury, where the legends tell of intercourse between Briton or Saxon, and on London, where ecclesiastical writers fondly place fifth- and sixth-century bishops. Both ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... in gusts are hurled The eddying drifts to the waste below; And still is the banner of storm unfurled, Till all the drowned and desolate world Lies dumb and white in a trance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... in visiting this desolate part of the country was to capture turtles. Here is the ground of the green and loggerhead turtles, and, according to Sandy, the hawksbill, from which the shell of commerce is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... between which they passed in town were small and desolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and wide street. They crossed the railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farm country. The big piebald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started to trot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm. Kennicott drove with clucks ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... because he was away from home so much. He was absent the greater part of the time; for a glazier, even if he were a better workman than my grandfather, could not make a living in Yuchovitch. He became a country peddler, trading between Polotzk and Yuchovitch, and taking in all the desolate little hamlets scattered along that route. Fifteen rubles' worth of goods was a big bill to carry out of Polotzk. The stock consisted of cheap pottery, tobacco, matches, boot grease, and axle grease. These he bartered for country produce, including grains in small quantity, bristles, rags, and bones. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... sympathy as it may happen. But at all other times the Union Parliament abdicates, or at least it "governs" Ireland as men are said sometimes to drive motor-cars, in a drowse. Three days—or is it two?—are given to Irish Estimates, and on each of these occasions the Chamber is as desolate as a grazing ranch in Meath. Honourable members snatch at the opportunity of cultivating their souls in the theatres, clubs, restaurants, and other centres of culture in which London abounds. The Irish Party is compelled ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and keeping himself shut up in his room when he was not at work, he left people very little chance to talk with him. But they conjectured that he and Marcia had an understanding; and some of the ladies used such scant opportunity as he gave them to make sly allusions to her absence and his desolate condition. They were confirmed in their surmise by the fact, known from actual observation, that Bartley had not spoken a word to any other young ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Kwong, our pet rickshaw-boy, to bring us here and we soon found that foreigners were not expected and not wanted. No one of the suave shop attendants could speak English, nor did they make the slightest attempt to wait on us. We wandered round, rather desolate, followed by looks of curiosity and disdain on the part of the clerks, and the wholly undisguised amusement and contempt of the high-class Chinese and Manchu women, who, with their liveried servants, were making the rounds of the various floors. ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the danger was of selecting, out of the symbols that crowded around one on every side, merely those that ministered to one's own satisfaction and contentment. The sad horror of that other place, the little bare place of desolate graves—that must be a symbol as well, that must stand as a witness of some part of the awful mind of God, of the strange flaw or rent that seems to run through His world. It may be more comfortable, more luxurious to detach the symbol that testifies to the satisfaction of our needs; but not thus ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... desolate civil strife are before us, and we must set it all down briefly and drily. The prelude to the troubles was played by the Huguenots, who in 1560, guided by La Renaudie, a Perigord gentleman, formed a plot ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... builders and profound scholars. When the Spaniards sent them from their country, after they had lived there for seven hundred years, they lost their best citizens, and the most beautiful and highly cultivated part of Spain was henceforth to be comparatively desolate. On all the great section of Andalusia, the most southern part of Spain, the Moors left marks in buildings and in cultivation, that it will take centuries ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... I am coming to this house when I please. I am going to give you the protection of my life. Every dollar I have, every moment of my time shall be yours if you need it. Ah, Ruth, how I have loved you through the desolate years since you sent me away! Men have called me cold and selfish and ambitious, when I was lying awake at night eating my heart out dreaming of you. Every hour of work, every step I've climbed in the struggle of life, was with your face smiling on me from the past. All my hopes and ambitions I ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... native tongue and his. So convinced is he that the native idiom of the people is the shortest road to their heart and understanding, that he has prepared a catechism and Christian doctrine in the modern Mixtec, which has been printed. The town itself is desolate; the plaza is much too large, and dwarfs the buildings which surround it, and signs of desolation and decay mark everything. With the fondness which Mexicans show for high-sounding and pious inscriptions, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Nol was a quiet and sensible man whom it did her good to talk with. He advised her to go away and take up her old occupation. It was not well for her to haunt the desolate pier, watching for the return of a dead man, he said. Glory Goldie answered that she would not dare leave until her father had been laid in consecrated ground. But August would not hear of this. The first time he talked with her nothing ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... all hope had been in the morning. But that instinct told her that her mother was becoming incapable of argument, she would have asked her why her views were so essentially changed in so few hours. This inability of reason in poor Bell made Sylvia feel very desolate. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and then returned to the train and proceeded to Carcarana, the next station on the line. Now, however, instead of the rich pasture lands and flourishing crops which we had hitherto seen on all sides, our road lay through a desolate-looking district, bearing too evident signs of the destructive power of the locust. People travelling with us tell us that, less than a week ago, the pasture here was as fresh and green as could be desired, and the various crops were a foot high; but that, in the short space of a few hours, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the prairie blew down the empty street. Blocks of square-fronted houses stood out harshly against the snow, which sparkled here and there in a ray of light. The settlement looked ugly and very desolate, and Sadie studied it with a feeling of weariness and disgust. It seemed strange that she had once thought it a lively place, but this was before she met Charnock, who had taught ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... look in her face with lack-lustre eyes, wondering what the deuce the woman meant, she threw herself back upon her own standard, and knew that she had not come up to it. Even now she could not come up to it. Her heart ought to be desolate; life ought to hold nothing for her but perhaps resignation, perhaps despair. She ought to be beyond all feeling for what was to come. Yet she was not so. On the contrary, new ideas, new plans, had welled up into her mind,—how many, how few hours after she had laid down the charge, in which ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... soft-hearted turtles, hear What you alone profoundly will resent: A bird of your pure feather 'tis whom here Her desolate mate remaineth to lament, Whilst she is flown to meet her dearer love, And sing among the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was like a ray of light dividing the dark. Looking at Ulick, she was startled by the conviction of his indispensability in her life, and the knowledge that she must repel him was an acute affliction, a desolate despair. It seemed cruel and disastrous that she might not love him, for it was only through love that she could get to understand him, and life without knowledge of him ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... More precious than silver and gold, Or all that this earth can afford. But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a sabbath appeared. Ye winds, that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I must visit no more. My Friends, do they now and then send A wish or a thought after me? O tell me I yet have a friend, Though a friend I am never ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... find our talents not of the great and ruling kind, our conduct at least is conformable to our faculties. No man's life pays the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate widow weeps tears of blood over our ignorance. Scrupulous and sober in a well-grounded distrust of ourselves, we would keep in the port of peace and security; and perhaps in recommending to others something of the same diffidence, we should show ourselves more charitable to their welfare ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... saying that such parts of the world produce little foodstuffs. We must not take the word "unproductive" either too literally or too seriously, however, for Dame Nature has a way of secreting some of her choice treasures in places so forbidding and so desolate that only the most resolute and daring men even search for them. For instance, the mineral once much used by the makers of carbonated or "soda" water comes from a part of Greenland that is so bleak, cold, and inhospitable that no human beings can long exist there unless food and fuel are brought ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... his bent brows linger'd Averill, His face magnetic to the hand from which Livid he pluck'd it forth, and labor'd thro' His brief prayer-prelude, gave the verse 'Behold, Your house is left unto you desolate!' But lapsed into so long a pause again As half amazed half frighted all his flock: Then from his height and loneliness of grief Bore down in flood, and dash'd his angry heart Against ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... desolate, terrible, at once a call to arms and a funeral dirge. And now every termite in the dim, cavernous chamber began the battle dance Jim and Dennis had seen performed by the termite guard when it was confronted by the horde of ants. Not moving their feet, they commenced to sway back and forth, while ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... Mrs. van Warmelo had the courage to live alone with her daughter Hansie in such a wild and desolate spot, and they wondered still more when they heard of the alarming experience the two ladies had the very first night they spent in ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... in which he was born, and the night in which it was said there is a man child conceived? 'For now,' he says, 'I should have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then had I been at rest with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or as an hidden untimely birth, I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... exquisite air of antique cultivation and soft rural beauty. The very sward is moss-like. Thoroughly wild country, indeed, unless bold and mountainous, does not often please one. It is apt to be bare, unattractive, and desolate. Witness the Veldt, the Steppes, the prairies. You may go through miles and miles of the States and Canada, where the wildness for the most part rather repels than delights you. I do not say everywhere; in places the wilderness will blossom like a rose; boggy margins of lakes, fallen ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... this tie. She is left a widow, perhaps without a sufficient provision; but she is not desolate. The pang of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow into melancholy resignation, her heart turns to her children with redoubled fondness, and, anxious to provide for them, affection gives a sacred, heroic cast to her maternal duties. She thinks that not only the eye sees her virtuous ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of its attractions, there are few persons, other than a young enthusiast on his first voyage, who, after passing several weeks on the ocean, are not ready to greet with gladness the sight of land, although it may be a desolate shore or a barren island. Its very aspect fills the heart with joy, and excites feelings of gratitude to Him, whose protecting hand has led you safely through the dangers to which those who frequent the waste of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... The four Indians bearing the stretcher followed after Suma-theek and in a long single line the remaining Apaches followed, joining Suma-theek in the death chant which is the very soul cry of the desolate: ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... prisoners with their baggage and plunder, and drove them through the forest southward, braining with their hatchets any who gave out on the march. An old woman, who had escaped out of the midst of the flames of St. Ignace, made her way to St. Michel, a large town not far from the desolate site of St. Joseph. Here she found about seven hundred Huron warriors, hastily mustered. She set them on the track of the retreating Iroquois, and they took up the chase,—but evidently with no great eagerness ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... trustworthy critics hold an intermediate position, and affirm that the Hebrew Scriptures show a general belief in the separate existence of the spirit, not indeed as experiencing rewards and punishments, but as surviving in the common silence and gloom of the under world, a desolate empire of darkness yawning beneath all graves and peopled with dream ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to those works, and the Mahayanists to the book Prajna-paramita, as well as to Manjusri and Kwan-shih-yin. He found the country in which are the sacred sites of Sravasti, Kapilavastu and Kusinara sparsely inhabited and desolate, but this seems to have been due to general causes, not specially to the decay of religion. He mentions that ninety-six[237] varieties of erroneous views are found among the Buddhists, which points to the existence of numerous but not acutely hostile sects and says that there ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ship answered to the one on the land, and Godfrey returned sadly to Will Tree, feeling perhaps more desolate than he had ever ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... tough vegetables, and insipid wine which have an international reputation, so to speak. But above all, he was to have the horror, every evening upon going to his room, of passing through those uniform and desolate corridors, faintly lighted by gas, where before each door are pairs of cosmopolitan shoes—heavy alpine shoes, filthy German boots, the conjugal boots of my lord and my lady, which make one think, by their size, of the troglodyte giants—awaiting, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... had occurred was this: Farwell had reached across the desolate stretches that divided him from his one friend and got a response. He had impressed upon John Boswell that he could not come in person to Kenmore, but he could meet a certain needy young person and convey her to safety in the States. And he had asked a question that for months had ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... cultivated grounds, which creep up the mountain to a height of between two and three thousand feet, above which is virgin forest, reaching nearly to the summit, which on the side next the town is covered with a high reedy grass. On the further side it is more elevated, of a bare and desolate aspect, with a slight depression marking the position of the crater. From this part descends a black scoriaceous tract; very rugged, and covered with a scanty vegetation of scattered bushes as far down as the sea. This is the lava of the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... semi-circle with their muzzles all pointing towards the entrance, stood some six or eight field-pieces; on each side and in front were bare looking, white-washed buildings. The ground and the houses looked equally dirty, and the whole aspect of the place was desolate and ruinous. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... only settlement of any size in this little-known region, though there are numerous fishing-hamlets scattered about. The soldiers improvised their camps along the bank. A wild scene was presented when night fell on the 16th—the glare of the bivouac, extending far along the desolate water-side; the concourse of savage figures in the lurid gloom, with here and there in the distance the gigantic shape of an illuminated warship. We worked well into the night, and were at it again when the sun rose—a glorious sunrise, pouring over ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... the Academicians who appeared the last at the top of the steps was a man of great height but bent figure, with hollow cheeks and pale face lighted by pale blue eyes with a strange expression, both hard and desolate at the same time. He advanced alone, and his heavy gait and dragging step gave him the appearance of a man sixty years of age, while in other ways he retained a certain youthfulness. It was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... On the desolate summits of Mont Blanc or the Finsteraarhorn this clambering apparel would have seemed very natural, but on the Rigi-Kulm ten feet from ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... years of anguish which were now about to desolate France may, perhaps, be said to have begun by the scene in which the son of the furrier of the two queens was sent on the perilous errand which makes him the chief figure of our present Study. The danger into which this zealous Reformer was about to fall became imminent the very morning ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac |
