"Desolation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front rooms were closed, and dusty desolation reigned. She knew every detail of the melancholy squalor of it, the dragging hours, the nights of lying awake listening to the occasional passing of belated cabs, or the squeaks and nibbling of mice ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had been empty for two years, and the great point was to preserve its air of desolation. No outside arrangement was touched; the torn remnants of some balcony hangings were left fluttering in the wind; the closed windows and the closed doors, the absence of smoke from the chimneys and of lights ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... grandest in the kingdom, considering the extent of the ground on which they stand. The vast fragments of the King's Tower, the round towers leaning as if ready to fall, the broken walls, and vast pieces of them tumbled down into the vale below, form such a scene of havoc and desolation, as strikes every curious spectator ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... further list of closured stations Elicits further protestations. Blank desolation, grim and stark, Broods sadly o'er Carpenders Park, And Friezland, as perhaps is meet, Is suffering badly from cold feet. The population of Rhosneigr Is raging like a wounded tiger; And those who used to book at Llong Are using language, loud and strong, While ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... glorious Temple! I tell you that not one stone of this building shall remain on the other. For you have heaped up crime upon crime. I find none of you thirsty, but you are all the worse for drinking. The cup is full, and the present generation shall know it. When desolation comes over the land, then let him who is in the valley flee to the mountain, and let him who is in the field not return into the city, and let him who is on the roof not come down, in order to fetch his coat from the house. Fire and sword will meet him. Woe ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths, Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds; Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer, Will dare to soil her virgin purity. Yea, there where very desolation dwells, By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades, She may pass on with unblenched majesty, 430 Be it not done in pride, or in presumption. Some say no evil thing that walks by night, In fog or ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... and the two brothers looked out of Gluck's little window in the morning. The Treasure Valley was one mass of ruin and desolation. The inundation had swept away trees, crops, and cattle, and left, in their stead, a waste of red sand and gray mud. The two brothers crept, shivering and horror-struck, into the kitchen. The water had gutted the whole first floor: corn, money, almost every movable thing had been ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of those evenings at Hale Castle, when George Fairfax had abandoned her to pay duty to his betrothed, and of the desolation of spirit that had come upon her in the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... ever been active in the great business of reform; some traces of which activity were manifest in the statute-book. But the reforms which Burke had ever advocated were founded in justice; those which the French regenerators had adopted were subversive of all order, and tended only to anarchy and desolation. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... river that had carried his mother away brought him a little comfort in his desolation, for down by the water's edge, cast up on the sand by a circling eddy, he found a dead sucker. He ate it with relish, and felt better in spite of himself. It made a very large meal for a lynx of his size, and by the time he had finished it he began to be drowsy, so he picked out the driest ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... only her husband's prostration with grief and desolation that drew her off, to do her best with her pretty childish caresses and soothings; and when the two had been sent to their own home, Mrs. Evelyn was so calm that her friend felt she might be left with her daughter for the night, and returned, bringing her tender ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "The abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet," observed Henderson, who had caught a fragment of the conversation. "I'm in his form, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... effeminacy, it is certain that the people of Asia have, in general, been the unresisting prey of every invader. At this time several fierce and barbarous nations had broken in upon its territory, and, after covering its fertile plains with carnage and desolation, were contending with ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the charm of its colour, the fascination of the prospects of its hillside High Street, no town in Surrey, and perhaps only Oxford in England, is comparable with it. But between the railway station and the High Street it is desolation and blank walls. A few pretty old cottages jut out over a narrow pavement; beyond a huddled roof or two rises the tower of St. Nicholas' Church, umber and solid; nearly all else is tumbled down ugliness, broken brickwork, mud and shaggy grass. A clear space, a level green, a bed of flowers—what ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... clasped in each other's arms they admitted the extent of their desolation. Life had been robbed of a magic,—a mystery. The solid friendship of years of mutual trust and understanding was the background of so much lovely folly, so many unrealized possibilities, so many nebulous desires and dreams that the sudden dissolution of their circle was ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... belongs to Nelly Fane, with her long black curls, biscuit-coloured legs and arms, and large, melting dark eyes. At the time the thought of being separated from this imperious little beauty meant for me an abomination of desolation too dreadful to be contemplated. But, looking back upon the circumstances of my suit, I think it likely my heart had never been captivated but for jealousy, and my trick of seeing myself as the first ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... trade. They forced the natives to buy dear and to sell cheap. They insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country. They covered with their protection a set of native dependants who ranged through the provinces, spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all the power of his master; and his master was armed with all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the two stood together near the binnacle, watching the boat rising and falling like a cork over the long hummocks of swell as she swept rapidly down toward the wreck, "what think you of that for a sight? Is it not a very perfect picture of ruin and desolation? A few days ago—it can scarcely be more—that craft floated buoyantly and all ataunto, 'walking the waters like a thing of life,' her decks presenting an animated picture of busy activity, as her crew went hither and thither about ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... encroaching upon the level of the lake, have, in course of time, given birth to ample promontories of sweeping outline, that contrast boldly with the longitudinal base of the steeps on the opposite shore; while their flat or gently-sloping surfaces never fail to introduce, into the midst of desolation and barrenness, the elements of fertility, even where the habitations of men may not have ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... The desolation of his outlook was appalling. And during his weary hours of solitude the hopelessness of it stirred him to a bitterness that at moments became almost insanely profane. Shadows, too, crept into his mind. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... situation to obtain some alteration in their feelings. Thaddeus was too miserable awake not to view with eagerness the bed on which he trusted that, for a few hours at least, he might lose the consciousness of his desolation, with its ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the ill-fated city. There the unfortunate inhabitants were found just where they were overtaken by death. Some were discovered in lofty attics and some in deep cellars, whither they had fled before the approaching desolation. Others were found in the streets, through which they were fleeing in wild despair when the tide of volcanic gases and the storm of falling ashes overwhelmed them. But the Roman sentinel was standing at his post, his skeleton-hand still grasping the hilt of his sword, his attitude ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Scripture, with much strength and manliness of expression, although so as not to escape the charge of fanaticism. The nineteenth chapter of Jeremiah was the portion of Scripture which he selected; in which, under the type of breaking a potter's vessel, the prophet presages the desolation of the Jews. The lecturer was not naturally eloquent; but a strong, deep, and sincere conviction of the truth of what he said supplied him with language of energy and fire, as he drew parallel between the abominations ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... little wagons, drawn by plodding old horses, guided by plodding men. Beyond, the salt river gleamed with a keen brightness like steel. The sky above it was dull and brooding. The wind was going down. The whole landscape was desolate, and with a strange, ragged, ignominious desolation. The earth looked despoiled, insulted, dissected, as if her sacred inner parts were laid bare by these poor pygmies, the tools of a few capitalists grubbing at her vitals for the clay which ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has many errors, is still a-gropin' after the light! Do you counsel me to set aside the sacred and time honored rules of our church, and allow the Sabbath to go by unregarded, have the sanctuary desecrated, the cause of religion languish—I cannot believe it. Think of the widespread desolation it would cause if, as the ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... into the calamities of a civil war? He has read history to little account who has not learned that such a warfare is, in its nature, not only cruel, but protracted. It is like letting loose the hurricane. Passion and poverty, carnage and crime, desolation and death, become the condition of a hitherto happy people. For thirty years Germany was ravaged, and millions slain by a contest occasioned by a difference in religious opinions. For more than ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... toward each other, the men devoted to their women and the women repaying them with interest, till out of the perfectly cloudless sky one day a bolt descended, without a whisper of warning, and brought ruin and desolation ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the laughable part of dupes, unless that mask of youth concealed a most polluted soul, if there had been any unhappy episode in her life, if she had endured the horrors of violation, and gone through all the horrors of desolation, fear and shame, would not something visible, something disgusting, attacks of low spirits, and of gloom, and disgust with everything have remained, which would have shown the progress of some mysterious malady, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was born at Florence. A city of flowers and gay festivities, the home of a cultured pleasure-loving people, it was the frequent scene of feuds and factions handed down from sire to son. The hatred they engendered and the desolation they caused may be understood from the reading of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy whose scene is laid in Verona in the year 1303 and to the families concerned in which Dante makes allusion in the sixth canto of his Purgatorio. But Verona and Florence ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... may have done the same thing, and our country may be left, like a stranded vessel, to rot upon the beach! Her furnaces extinguished, her manufactories deserted, her cities decayed, the hum of her busy population silenced, she may present a spectacle of desolation like that of so many other famous nations which have risen, culminated, and set ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... cette incarnation, faudra-t-il encore que je fasse pour vous, et de quelle part vient la terreur, qui vous trouble ainsi? A ces mots du grand Vishnou: "C'est le demon Ravana, reprirent les Dieux; c'est lui, Vishnou, cette desolation des mondes, qui nous inspire un tel effroi. Enveloppe-toi d'un corps, humain, et qu'il te plaise arracher du monde cette blessante epine; car nul autre que toi parmi les habitants du ciel n'est capable d'immoler ce pecheur. Sache que longtemps ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... this old monastic establishment, would seem to reside the very genius of that spirit of desolation which had touched me unpleasantly in the hour of my arrival in Crossleys. I determined to ascertain by inquiries amongst the local tradespeople, none of whom I had hitherto met, by what means the fact that no one resided at Friar's Park was concealed from those whose ordinary business ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... treachery of Hole-in-the-Day. For a moment the utmost consternation prevailed among the Indians, but revenge was the second thought, and rapidly were their preparations made to seek the scene of the murder. The distance was accomplished in a short time, and the desolation ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... out-buildings and the large barns and stables told that it had once been the seat of wealth, and the wild waste of sassafras that covered the broad fields gave it an air of desolation that greatly excited my interest. Entirely oblivious of my proximity, the negro went on calling "Whoo-oop, heah!" until along the path, walking very slowly and with great dignity, appeared a noble-looking ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... needless to say, we marked with interest the lines of their forts, so terribly near our little town. We noted the farmhouse lately the headquarters of General Snyman, standing naked and alone. Formerly surrounded by a flourishing orchard and a carefully tended garden, it was now the picture of desolation. The ground was trampled by many feet of men and horses; straw, forage, packing-cases, and rubbish of all kinds, were strewn about, and absolutely hid the soil from view. Away on the hill beyond I spied the tiny house and hospital where I had spent six weary nights and days; and between these ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... frost before the usual time (in a country, too, where the commencement of its two seasons is in general scarcely less regular than that of the wet and dry seasons between the tropics) which caused, and the desolation which accompanied, the flight from Moscow." One can make no other comment upon this than that if it really be wisdom which statesmen would do well to lay to heart, the late Dr. Cumming must have been the most profound instructor in statesmanship that the world has ever seen. A prime minister ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... left there came upon them, in that cozy, little, two-room apartment, a feeling of desolation and vastness, and a terrible loneliness such as they had never dreamed of in the great twelve-room house in Winnebago. They kept close to each other. They toiled up the winding stairs together and stood a moment on the balcony, feigning ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... universal harmony. Can that ever be achieved by a disunited Christendom? The nations are rivals. Their rivalry persisted at the Peace Conference, disappointing all the hopes of idealists. Must it not always persist, must not horrible carnage, awful desolation, ruinous destruction, and, at any rate, dangerous and provocative rivalries, always dog the steps of humanity ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... The music that lieth hid in lamentation, The song that is heard in the deep hearts of the dead, That the Lord of dead men 'mid his dancing singeth, And never joy-cry, never joy it bringeth; Woe for the house of Kings in desolation, Woe for the light of the ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... yet, perhaps, for many a cycle of years, to spread misery and desolation around me; and yet I love you with a feeling which has in it more of gratefulness and unselfishness than ever yet found a home within my breast. I would fain have you, although you cannot save me; there may yet be a chance, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... more than sixty miles, totally uncultivated and unproductive, remains bare to the present day." This is believed to have been written about 1135, and would give us grounds for believing that the desolation continued for over sixty years. A vivid light is thrown on the destruction wrought at Pickering by the record in the Domesday Book, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... odious name of heretics were unworthy the protection of the laws; and that, though good and loyal citizens, they ought to be punished by the civil magistrate. This doctrine, so alien to the spirit of the New Testament, has often spread desolation and terror throughout whole provinces; and has led to the deliberate murder of a hundredfold more Christians than were destroyed by pagan Rome. Even the fathers of the Reformation did not escape from the influence of an intolerant training; but that Bible ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... form is not more observable than the indications of a philosophy which has chilled the spiritual faculties. The supernatural is gone. Nature is a vast machine which moves by fixed laws impressed upon it by a Creator. The soul feels chilled with the desolation of a universe wherein it cannot reach forth by prayer to a loving Father. Scripture is displaced by science. Doubt has passed into unbelief. The universe is viewed by the cold materialism which arraigns spiritual ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... the day came for the presentation of Piccinni's opera, "Roland," and the family broke into tears when he went to the theatre. He alone was calm in the midst of this desolation, reassured his wife, and departed with his friends. He returned home in a triumph, which was perhaps greater than the work deserved, but certainly not greater than so ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and this man apart was removed. There was nothing to prevent them marrying. George was conscious of a vast depression. The last strand of the rope had parted, and he was drifting alone out into the ocean of desolation. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Elector Palatine saw from the towers of his castle at Manheim two cities and twenty-five villages at the same time in flames. This awful destruction was perpetrated upon the defenseless inhabitants, that the armies of the emperor, encountering entire desolation, might be deprived of subsistence. It was nothing to Turenne that thousands of women and children should be cast houseless into ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the same sort of damn liar you always were, Tode," answered Jim—but without conviction. There was something terrific about that desolation. Nothing within a thousand miles of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... god has assign'd to me this tribulation— Loss of a son without peer? But yourselves shall partake my affliction; Easier far will it be for the pitiless sword of the Argives, Now he is dead, to make havoc of you. For myself, ere I witness Ilion storm'd in their wrath, and the fulness of her desolation, Oh, may the Destiny yield me to enter the dwelling ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... only a fleeting call; Nature has placed grave obstacles in the way of Boscastle's ever becoming a fashionable watering-place. Its charm is unique and undeniable; but it appeals to the artist, the sturdy pedestrian and climber, the lover of solitude that at times is absolute desolation, rather than to the parent of a family. But the desolation, if that is not too stern a word to use, only applies to the coast; the Valency Valley is verdant and beautiful. It runs among furze and bracken by the riverside, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... belong to a southern continent; but, in fact, it is an island, and that of no great extent. If our commander had not been unwilling to deprive M. Kerguelen of the honour of its bearing his name, he would have been disposed, from its sterility, to call it the Island of Desolation. ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... property, there seems no doubt that the area of cultivation will spread and something of the ancient prosperity return. The land is immensely fertile: it is only Ottoman misrule, which here, as everywhere else, has left desolation in the place of prosperity and death in place of life. The rainfall is adequate, the climate suitable to those who will naturally spread there: it needs only freedom from the murderous tyranny that has bled it for centuries past, to guarantee its ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... This air of desolation had infected Lady Vernon, too. Her temper, never of the mildest disposition, now became exceedingly irritable, and finding little consolation forthcoming from Sir Benedict, she vented her spleen with all those with whom she came into contact, and finally shut herself up ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... that had been kindled in the room was very low, and the lady received but a momentary impression of a man's figure bowed over a white table. She chose a chair at once with her back towards him, and resting her brow on her forefinger, disposed herself for desolation. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... soothe and console her; she remained perfectly still, her face hid in her arms, and replied not to her anxious questionings. A long silence ensued, and Mary wept. A feeling of desolation began to creep over her; a second time she was to be thrown on the wide, cold world. She thought of her uncle's generosity and unvaried kindness during the many years she had dwelt under his roof, and scarcely felt that it was not her own. And then there stole up the image of her lost ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... did not want truth such as this; she would have preferred that he should utter the poor, common falsehoods. Hungry for passionate love, she heard with a sense of desolation all this calm reasoning. That Jasper was of cold temperament she had often feared; yet there was always the consoling thought that she did not see with perfect clearness into his nature. Now and then had come a flash, a hint of possibilities. She had looked forward ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... weirdness and desolation of the spot struck him. He wished, yet dreaded, to advance. Something in the grief of the mourner whose sobs he had heard had seized upon his heart-strings, and yet, as he hesitated, the sounds came again, and forgetting that his intrusion might not prove altogether welcome, he pressed ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the desolation which reigned between the Strand and the City in that fatal summer, now drawing to its melancholy close. More than once in her brief pilgrimage Angela drew back, shuddering, from the embrasure of a door, or the inlet to some narrow alley, at sight of death lying on the threshold, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... longest, most gloomy night Jack North ever knew. He saw nor heard nothing of the steamer during the long hours of darkness and desolation. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... sat alone in her desolation and shame, the thought of self-destruction had surged up in the lava of other tumultuous thoughts occasioned by the artist's scorn, and at first she had shrunk from it with natural and instinctive dread. But the awful thought began to fascinate ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... that fate should have let that ceremony go on to the end which would spread ruin and desolation before it! ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... tent stood at a little distance from the rest of the camp, for the reason that solitude at times has its charms. When the lamp outside the tent door was extinguished, and all was enveloped in darkness and fog to an overwhelming degree, a feeling of loneliness and desolation stole over me, though it soon left me when I thought of the glories of the coming day, when all the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Desolation, Fireless hearths, and lifeless homes; Over orphans' heartsick sorrows, Patriot ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... bells; places inaccessible to the present, a border-land of the past, and which, as Alfieri says, thinking of those many times when he must have reined in his horse, and vaguely and wistfully looked out on to the green desolation islanded with ruins and traversed by the vast procession of the aqueducts, invited one to meditate, and cry, and be a poet. And sometimes—we know it from the sonnets to his horse Fido, who had, Alfieri tells us, carried the beloved burden of his lady—Alfieri did not ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... in his mutilated state, having undergone an amputation of the leg and thigh on the field of battle, who can wonder at the desolation of Madame Victor when he resolved to sustain the risk of such an offer? Presently, what was my emotion at the sudden and abrupt entrance into the room of an officer of the king's garde du corps! in the self-same uniform as that from which I had parted with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... All her forlorn, unprotected youth, the more forlorn that in her father's lifetime it was under a certain hollow sham of protection; the total desolation afterward, exposed to every insult of the bitter world, or at least that bitter portion of it which is always ready to trample down a woman if she is helpless, and to hunt her down if she is strong enough to help herself—all this ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... silently in the petition of her heart. I saw in profile a girl's troubled face charged with mystery, a slim, tall, weary figure all in white against the flame, a cheek's pure oval, the tense curve of a proud neck, a mass of severely snodded russet hair. So I recalled her afterward, picture of desolation seeking comfort, but at the moment when I blundered on her my presence seemed profanity and no time was found for appraisement. Abashed I came to a halt, and was for tiptoeing back to the door; but hearing me ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... seemed sliding away aching desolation overwhelmed her. Brian's face with its passion and pain rose before her dry, burning eyes. Then darkness came, blotting out the sunshine; the little stream trickling into its stony basin seemed to grow into a roaring cataract, the waters to rush into her ears ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... his left hand,—said very little that all the world might not have heard. But he did say one such word. "It has been so dreary to me, the last month!" Emily of course had no answer to make to this. She could not tell him that her desolation had been infinitely worse than his, and that she had sometimes felt as though her very heart would break. "I wonder whether it must always be like this with me," he said,—and then he went back to the theatres, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Spezzia—grows ever grander. The castle is a ruin, still capable of partial habitation, and now undergoing repair—the state in which a ruin looks most sordid and forlorn. How strange it is, too, that, to enforce this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling ever to such antique masonry! Here are the henbane, the sow-thistle, the wild cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce Acqua, at Les Baux, we never missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the massive portals, where portcullises still threaten, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... our rear and to our left ran range upon range of low, even-topped hills of unimaginable barrenness, the approach to which lay over a vast plain, broken by innumerable smaller hills, grand in its utter desolation; and in front of us stretched a level, shimmering expanse of sand as far as the silvery ribbon of the Gulf of Suez, beyond which, and dominating the whole scene, the gaunt, black mass of Gebel Atakah (Mountain of Deliverance) thrust its mighty ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... illiberality in these remarks; they are put forward to advocate the rights of our own destitute countrymen—to claim for them a share of the lavish commiseration bestowed on others—to call attention to the desolation of their hearths—the wreck of their comforts—the awful condition of their starving and dependent families—and to give the really charitable an opportunity of reserving some of their kindnesses for home consumption. Let ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... saw Louvain in the ashes of her desolation. We were just back then from the German trenches before Antwerp; and the hollow sounds of the big guns which were fired there at spaced intervals came to our ears as we rode over the road leading out from Brussels, like the boomings of ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... for my employer, he addressed himself to the Marquis de Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte, and knew all about the Holy Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their interview, but the archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my desolation I told the marquis the history of my life, and by him was sent to Paris, with plenty of money in my pocket, to enter the service of a young friend of his in the army. My first sight of the city was a disappointment which I have never got over, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... arms upon the high chairback and laid his face down upon them, like a woman who is hurt to the point of tears and yet will not weep. His booted feet were thrust toward the dying coals, his whole attitude spoke of utter desolation—of a loneliness ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... change ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat. This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in 1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden, inaugurating (let us hope) ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... varmints, to be sure; or what-all the abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. We ain't more than a cat's jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert every other into a blessing, or heal its sting—death alone has no cure. It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it destroys its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation. When those we love have passed into eternity, 'life is the desert and the solitude' in which we are forced to linger—but never find ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... which from their size and isolation are more beautiful than young ones and are little likely to be injurious to health, and ends them by raising mounds and sticking into them dense belts of quick-growing trees like poplars to hide as speedily as possible the desolation of bricks and mortar he has created. It is this senseless outdoor work of the builder and his nurseryman which stands most in need of revision from time to time in suburban residences, but which rarely receives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... born in Pennsylvania; after graduating in medicine, joined the Kane expedition in search of Franklin in 1853, and subsequently made two other voyages to the Arctic regions, accounts of which are given in his "An Arctic Boat-journey," "The Land of Desolation," &c.; subsequently he served as a surgeon during the Civil War, and sat in the New ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... stand in the center of Hiroshima and get a view of the most of the city; the hills prevented a similar overall view in Nagasaki. Hiroshima impressed itself on one's mind as a vast expanse of desolation; but nothing as vivid was left in one's memory ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... distracted body that he well might be. For a twelvemonth ago he had lost his wife and both his elder children in one week, and his pair of two-year-old twins were now all that stood between himself and world-wide desolation. At the front door his frantic rush was met and baffled by a choking puff, which sent him fleeing round in hopes that entrance might be more possible through the back; and on the way he came face to face with the wrathful visages of his son ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... which belongs to death, we find in the sensation of loneliness which attaches to it. Have we ever seen a ship preparing to sail with its load of pauper emigrants to a distant colony? If we have we know what that desolation is which comes from feeling unfriended on a new and untried excursion. All beyond the seas, to the ignorant poor man, is a strange land. They are going away from the helps and the friendships and the companionships of life, scarcely knowing what is before them. And it is in such a moment, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... recrossed it, for two centuries, farther south. In British America Mackenzie had already penetrated to the Pacific, while Hearne had made a far more noteworthy and difficult trip than Mackenzie, when he wandered over the terrible desolation of the Barren Grounds, which lie under the Arctic circle. But no man had ever crossed or explored that part of the continent which the United States had just acquired; a part far better fitted to be the home of our stock than the regions to the north or south. It was the explorations of Lewis ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the river. It became the capital of the colony. Before long Isabella, on the north coast, was entirely abandoned. Trees soon grew upon the streets and through the roofs of the houses. It presented a scene of wild desolation, and ghosts were believed to wander in crowds through the abandoned city. Ruins of the house of Columbus, of the church, and the fort can still be traced out by those who penetrate into the dense jungle which now covers that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... his hands, by assault, and was leveled with the ground, and the temple was destroyed. Zedekiah, in attempting to escape, was taken, had his eyes put out, and was carried captive to Babylon, together with the whole nation, and the country was reduced to utter desolation. It was not, however, repeopled by heathen settlers, as was Samaria. The small remnant that remained, under the guidance of Jeremiah, recovered some civil rights, and supported themselves by the cultivation of the land, and in their bitter misery learned those lessons which ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... wretched mortal from the dust; Beyond man's home condition they! with eyes Intent, and voice desponding, and unheard By Aroar, though he tarried at his side. "They know me not," cried Gebir, "O my sires, Ye know me not! they answer not, nor hear. How distant are they still! what sad extent Of desolation must we overcome! Aroar, what wretch that nearest us? what wretch Is that with eyebrows white, and slanting brow? Listen! him yonder who bound down supine, Shrinks yelling from that sword there engine-hung; ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... beasts of burden, and many months' provision.. moreover, 'tis a foolish, fancy crossed my mind at best,—for what should I, the Laureate of Al-Kyris, do in other lands? Besides, my departure would indeed be the desolation of the city,—well may Al-Kyris fall when Sah-luma no longer abides within it! Seawards the way lies open,—maybe, in days to come, we twain may take ship and sail hence for a brief sojourn to those distant western shores, whence thou, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... India was not a thin nonentity, void of all content. The Rishis of India asserted emphatically, "To know him in this life is to be true; not to know him in this life is the desolation of death." [Footnote: Iha chet avedit atha satyamasti, nachet iha avedit mahati vinashtih.] How to know him then? "By realising him in each and all." [Footnote: Bhuteshu bhuteshu vichintva.] Not only in nature but in ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... picture, I can see the black wavering lines of the walls in the fields sinking into the drifts! the snow billowed over the graves by the church where I preached! the banks of snow around the houses! the white desolation everywhere! I ask myself at times if the people are still there. Yes, I feel as blessedly remote from that terrible winter as if I had died away from it, and were ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... seemed eloquent with voices of the dead. The rest of the House had gone for a run. He was all alone. His head fell forward on his hands. The captaincy he had tried so hard to gain had ended in pitiable failure. It was the desolation, the utter desolation!... ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the prophet Jeremiah weeping over Jerusalem, for I sat down on a rock, and viewing the desolation around me, wept also. Then I dried my wet cheeks, and there and then set about clearing the ruin. But it was a great task, and would take several days before I could clear the debris and recover such goods and chattels as were not totally destroyed. I ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... before the grass grew over it. Alfred, he says, "restauravit et habitabilem fecit." "To make a town habitable" implies that it was uninhabited; "to restore it" implies that at some previous period it had been what the great king then made it once more. How long this condition of desolation prevailed within the Roman wall we have no information. Unfortunately no successful attempt has been made to discriminate between the Roman masonry, that of Alfred, and that of the successive mediaeval repairs, in the recent examinations of what is ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... time, such as Falkland, or the Spencers (Sunderland), or the Comptons (Northampton), who felt and owned their paramount duty to lie in public self-dedication, and died therefore, and oftentimes left their inheritances a desolation. 'Thus far'—oh heavens! with what bitterness I said this, knowing it a thing undeniable by W. W. or by Sir George—you, the peerages that pretend to try conclusions with the English, you—French, German, Walloon, Spanish, Scottish—are able to do so simply because you are faineans, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Sunday) Colonel Napier and his Unknown set out on horseback on an excursion to the ruins of Italica. As they sat on a ruined wall of the Convent of San Isidoro, contemplating the scene of ruin and desolation around, "the 'Unknown' began to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting with great emphasis and effect" some lines that the scene called up ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering; while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our spirit, of the peril in which it places so many of our fellow-creatures; and, "God help the poor souls at sea!" rises ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of the Farnese palace to the distant vista of trees beyond the river. With its infrequent traffic the street, even in the daytime, was like some sepulchral corridor where the past was crumbling into dust, and when night fell its desolation quite appalled Pierre. You did not meet a soul, you did not see a light in any window, and the glimmering gas lamps, few and far between, seemed powerless to pierce the gloom. On either hand the doors were barred and bolted, and not a sound, not a breath ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fill me with care, allure and entangle me, that I cannot have free access to Thee, nor enjoy that sweet intercourse which is always near at hand to the blessed spirits. Let my deep sighing come before Thee, and my manifold desolation on ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... the foam, like a wisp of snow, and brought the murmur more clearly to the ear of the listener, shutting out for the time, the faint hollow roar that was wafted from the region of pines and cedars. It was a picture of lonely grandeur and desolation, made all the more impressive by the tiny bits of life, showing in the few ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... floe had given way at last, and broken into many floating islets of varied size, had become a scene of life and animation, in striking contrast to its late icy desolation. In every direction geese, singly and in flocks, fed along the edges of the still immovable inner ice-fields; swam placidly among the narrow leads, or in huge bodies blackened the open pools or the projecting points of ice. Among them, too, wheeled many flocks of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... desire to rid themselves of the strange feeling of desolation that brooded over the familiar rooms that sent the girls to the attic as soon as Agnes left. Mam Daphne had brought the mail, as she often did in rainy weather, and gone again. The sight of the letter addressed to Agnes had given rise to Wilma's usual supposition, and then silence followed ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... down immediately, and in the Gold Parlour she found the Lady Lucy Raincy—Lady Lucy in tears, Lady Lucy in a pleasant fluffy desolation of woe. She flung her arms about the girl's neck and wept freely on ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... streamed in line, square, and triangle, with flashes of flying gold and the lurid stain of blood. And then ourselves—three modern Englishmen in a modern English boat—seeming to jar upon and look out of tone with that measureless desolation; and in front of us the noble buck limned out upon a background ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... as well as they liked to hear hers. She made a point of visiting every fresh batch of children, after they had been duly fumigated and disinfected, and she seemed to take a horrible and unnatural delight in the ghastly details of desolation and death which were revealed in the artless narratives ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Verteneglio, and in 1686, as there were not enough citizens to constitute a council, they had to add strangers to make a quorum. Angelo Morosini, podesta of Capodistria in 1646, described it as "Goddess of desolation and refuge of solitude itself." Parenzo was so severely smitten that only thirty persons remained. At Pola in 1631 there were but 300 persons left, including the garrison of foreigners, and of the citizens but three families. This was the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... The sun was just setting in a radiance of glory behind the dark spruce forest that hid the great unknown, unexplored Labrador wilderness which stretched away a thousand miles to the rocky shores of Hudson's Bay and the bleak desolation of Ungava. With their back to the forest and the setting sun, drawn up in martial line stood the eight or ten whitewashed log buildings of the Hudson's Bay Company Post, just as they had stood for a hundred years, and just as they stand to-day, looking out upon the wide waters of Eskimo Bay, which ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... silent now; the very bareness and desolation of the scene sickened Beatrice to the soul. No guests were here now—they were not likely to be. A polite manager was saying something to the bride, but she did not ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... its way than this sailorman's brief and fragmentary description of his life in the wilderness. He had heard from steam whaler skippers a little about the tundra that fringes the Polar Sea, the vast desolation frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence chequered only by times of dire scarcity ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... had spent its fury, when the pall of night came over the stricken city. Human wolves crept from their hiding places and began their work of prowling amid the ruins and robbing the dead. All night long they held high carnival amid the scenes of terror and desolation. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... engendered in a free, urban, industrial society. The passion of the war touched everything. The churches were strongholds of the national cause. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions kept camp and home in close touch. But under all this stir was the tragedy of wide-spread desolation and bereavement. The multitudinous slaughter of campaigns like the Wilderness had an awful background ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... impalpable, unlovely, soul-crushing suggestions of space illimitable; dancing and shimmering in the heat waves, it seems struggling to escape. When the wind blows, the dust-devils play tag among the low sage and greasewood; the Joshua trees, rising in the midst of this desolation, stretch forth their fantastically twisted and withered arms, seeming to invoke a curse on nature herself while warning the traveler that the heritage of this land is death. There is a bearing down of one's spirit in the midst of all this loneliness and desolation ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... contrary forces, which give their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again. He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of which he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power which accomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... French: "are they not very villainous people?" "Yes," answered our unhappy countrymen. "Well," continued she, "these robbers carried me off, notwithstanding the efforts of my unhappy father, who defended me with courage; they then carried desolation into our village, which a moment before enjoyed tranquillity and happiness; on this sad day we saw whole families carried off, and we were all conducted to that horrible market at St. Louis, where the whites carry on the execrable trade of dealers in men; chance favored me, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... Boer would have succeeded in finding the way back, but I soon lost my way altogether. I lost the traces of the horse's hoofs, and the dongas looked to me so different that in one place where a donga branched off I did not know which to follow. An intense feeling of desolation took possession of me. Lost in a wilderness without food or water! I thought of the twelve or thirteen men who got lost in this wood on a hunting expedition, and of whom only one was saved. A great fear came upon me. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... neither written to nor heard from, and she dared not hope to meet him. She fancied a wish to have tidings of his marriage: it would be peace; if in desolation. Now that she had confessed and given her pledge to Emma, she had so far broken with him as to render the holding him chained a cruelty, and his reserve whispered of a rational acceptance of the end between them. She thanked him for it; an act whereby ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Aloft in air the granite took upon itself the most fantastic shapes, and assumed those misty tints that give to high mountains a dim resemblance to clouds in the sky. The bare, bleak cliffs, with the fearful rents in their sides, pictures of wild and barren desolation, contrasted strongly with the pretty view of the valley; and so strange were the shapes they assumed, that one of the cliffs had been called "The Capuchin," because it was so like a monk. Sometimes these sharp-pointed peaks, these mighty masses of rock, and ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... chin, Not in slow-oozing drops of clotted gore, But in a pelting shower of crimson hue. Such is the wreck, not of a single life, But of a husband's and a wife's in one. The grandeur of this house in happier hours Was grandeur worthy of the name. To-day Sorrow and desolation, death and shame, All evils for which man has names ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... both had torches, so that there was ample light as we passed through the passage and entered the Chamber where the sarcophagus had stood. The first thing noticeable was the emptiness of the place. Despite all its magnificent adornment, the tomb was made a desolation by the absence of the great sarcophagus, to hold which it was hewn in the rock; of the chest with the alabaster jars; of the tables which had held the implements and food for the use of the dead, and ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... vigorous man, despite his age. He looked frank and intelligent, but one guessed that there was a hidden bitterness and desolation in him. He wore a black cassock with red ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the end we came upon a wilderness of open ground, with half-finished villas dotted about, and a hideous litter of boards, wheelbarrows, and building materials of all sorts scattered in every direction. At one corner of this scene of desolation, stood a great overgrown dismal house, plastered with drab-colored stucco, and surrounded by a naked, unfinished garden, without a shrub or a flower in it, frightful to behold. On the open iron gate that led into this inclosure ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the wretched dog continued to howl. What possessed the poor little creature? In the stillness of the early morning the long-drawn, disconsolate sounds rose and tell with a dirge-like hint of desolation. He must be silenced somehow; ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... him but desolation, said Taterleg, a country so rough that it tried a horse to travel it. Ranchhouses were farther apart as a man proceeded, and beyond that, mountains. It looked to Taterleg as if he'd ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... his sack, proceeded upon his journey, and travelling for many days he at last reached a country so barren and rocky that not a single living thing grew upon it—everywhere reigned grim desolation. And in the midst of this dead region he ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... desolation, through which Mannering's road had lain on the preceding evening, was excluded from the view by some rising ground, and the landscape showed a pleasing alternation of hill and dale, intersected by a river, which was ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... in it He had been writing letters, evidently, for an unfinished one lay on the table. She stood a moment quite still in the silent room. Manske had gone to find the coachman, and she could hear his steps on the stones beneath the open windows. The desolation of the deserted room, the terrible sense of misfortune worse than death that brooded over it, struck her like a blow that for ever destroyed her cheerful youth. She never forgot the look and the feeling of that room. She went to the writing-table, dropped on her knees, and laid her cheek, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... walking, he shivered. There was something hostile in the air which made him hesitate, and he felt that invisible forces barred his way. Unseen hands seemed to draw him back. No one would go near now to gather the cocoa-nuts, and they lay rotting on the ground. Everywhere was desolation. The bush was encroaching, and it looked as though very soon the primeval forest would regain possession of that strip of land which had been snatched from it at the cost of so much labour. He had the sensation that here was the abode of ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... be rebuilt, indeed. But I think that, whether or no, a golden fence should be built around it, and it should forever and for all time be preserved as a monument to the wanton wickedness of the Hun. It should serve and stand, in its stark desolation, as a tribute, dedicated to the Kultur of Germany. No painter could depict the frightfulness of that city of the dead. No camera could make you see as it is. Only your eyes can do that for you. And even then you cannot realize it all at once. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... of silk and velvet. Two discouraged servants remained with her, out of a staff of twelve. Once there had been ten gardeners; now there was none; and the one hope left for this lost palace of sleep was in a new ownership. The whole place smelt of decay and desolation, yet to Hannaford it was more attractive than such a beautiful and prosperous domain as Schuyler's Stellamare. The sad loveliness of the old house and the old garden made a special appeal to him. He wanted to save the Chateau Lontana from ruin, and felt superstitiously that the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... many reasons—because it is real, intimate, confidential; because it narrates a tragic experience that is all too common in actual life; because its tragedy is enhanced by dramatic contrasts, the splendour of the bright, breezy, sunlit garden contrasting with the road of ashen spiritual desolation the soul must take; the splendour of the gorgeous stiff brocade and the futility of the blank, soft, imprisoned flesh; the obstreperous heart, beating in joyous harmony with the rhythm of the swaying flowers, changed by one written word into a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... 'I have no desire for literary distinction,' said he; 'no ambition. My original wish was to pass my life in easy, quiet obscurity—with her whom I loved. I was disappointed in my wish; she was removed, who constituted my only felicity in this life: desolation came to my heart, and misery to my head. To escape from the latter I had recourse to Chinese. By degrees the misery left my head, but the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... termination of the last and the commencement of the present century, the world was roused into an interest and enthusiasm, which now we can scarcely appreciate or account for; the sympathies of England were awakened by the terrible revolutions of France, and the desolation of Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which our youth now would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is everything to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction; once let them thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the river, over there, was a semblance of civilization. That is to say, men wore white linen, avoided murder, and frequently paid their gambling debts. But on this west side stood wilderness, not the kind one reads about as being eventually conquered by white men; no, the real grim desolation, where the ax cuts but leaves no blaze, where the pioneer disappears and few or none follow. The pioneer has always been a successful pugilist, but in this part of Burma fate, out of pure admiration for the pygmy's gameness, decided to call the battle a draw. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... the deep!" But when that dark day burst upon them, and nature with one angry sweep transformed that splendid palace into a floating death-chamber; when ocean lifted up this triumph of man's skill, and shook it like a toy; the interest which hung over that awful desolation—the interest to which your hearts flow out with painful sympathy to-night—was in nothing that man had achieved, but in humanity itself. All the workmanship, all the material splendor, all the skill, were nothing compared with one heart beating amidst that tempest; compared with ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... to the north-west, the horses being a little fresher than for some days past. Halted at four o'clock, having gone ten miles through a country which, for barrenness and desolation, can I think have no equal; it was a continued scrub, and where there was timber it chiefly consisted of small cypress: we saw no water as usual, but stopped on some burnt grass near the base of a low range of stony hills west of Peel's range, from which we are distant eight or ten miles. These ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... lived to rejoice when the day of triumph came; but the name of this woman was found upon no heroic roll, nor is it on the page of any history that men have since written, although she made heroes of cowards, and helped to stay the wave of desolation which, in the dark days of '76, threatened ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to the young girl on one of those dreary autumn nights when all the desolation of the dying summer, and none of the exhilaration of the approaching winter, is in the air. She had been labouring all day under a cloud of depression which hovered over her heart and brain and threatened to wholly envelop her; and the letter from ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in which I saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the Lutherans, and the Romanists. In the two latter were generally found the richest people of the community, though they were the least numerous. They, therefore, would have suffered the most, had a battle been fought in the city. Nothing could have been more horrible than such an event—desolation and destruction would have been brought into every house. Yet, strange as it may seem, all parties were willing and eager to fight. Fresh articles were drawn up, and approved by those who represented the Lutheran and Romanist parties. The Prince resolved early in the morning to ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... cattle-trucks, which can hardly be said to have changed their use! Trains in which is heaped up the desolation of these people torn from their homes, and how quickly become as beasts! Misery has stripped them of all their human attributes. We take them food and drink, and that is how they become exposed: the man drinks without remembering his ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... and battlements arise, Turrets and arches nodding to their fall, Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes, And mimic desolation covers all. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... seemed to think that he had any duty towards her, beyond the obvious one of civility in public. All thought of Piers Ingham had been resolutely crushed down, except when it came—as it sometimes did—in the form of a dream of bliss from which she awoke to desolation. A miserable day was sure to follow one of those dreams. The only other moment when she allowed herself to think of him was in her ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict on Bohemia:[26]—in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's teeth:—in that book, the ambition which makes such ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... topmost platform the Aztec warriors were drawn up to dispute his passage. From their elevated position they showered down heavy stones, beams, and burning rafters, which thundering along the stairway overturned the ascending Spaniards and carried desolation through their ranks. The more fortunate, eluding or springing over these obstacles, succeeded in gaining the first terrace, where they fell upon their enemies and compelled them to give way, and then, aided by a brisk fire from the musketeers below, they pressed on, forcing their ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... with the majesty of the great mountains, nor the solemnity of the great plains, but with that nearer, more intimate relationship which is the peculiar property of the foothill country. Here was neither the flatness that, with a change of mood, could become in a moment desolation, nor the aloofness of eternal rocks towering into cold space, but the friendship of hills that could be climbed, and trees that lisped in the light wind, and water that babbled playfully over gravel ridges gleaming in the August sunshine. The girl drew a great breath of the pure air and was ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... drive the people through flame and smoke and desolation. They had fire in front of them, fire behind them, and fire to left and right of them, and saw only destruction ahead of them. Yet, after taking them through all these horrors, he finally led them to a green spot in the forest, where it was peaceful and cool and safe. In the centre of a flowery ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... to think of Myra Beckwith; his mind felt blood-stained, no fit place for the thought of her. There, where the thought of her had shone for months, a steady, heart-warming flame, was only a dull desolation which he dared ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... magnificent Madeley Court, Salop[1] (now, alas! in the last stage of desolation and decay, surrounded by coal-fields and undermined by pits), is honeycombed with places for concealment and escape. A ruinous apartment at the top of the house, known as "the chapel" (only a few years ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... prevent it from becoming a means of dissemination of crime, of filth, of disease. They stand by the new-fledged proselyte to work, to encourage perseverance. They follow him to the country colony, the abomination of desolation to one who has walked the London pavements and found his heaven in the gin-palace and the music-hall, to stimulate effort. They accompany him to the colony to remind him that true freedom is not licence, that the conditions of success are a change of mind ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... and turn them into pastures, evicting all the tenants, is essential to the rights of property. This has been said in connection with the great absentee proprietors. According to this theory of proprietorship, the only one recognised by law, Lord Lansdowne may legally spread desolation over a large part of Kerry; Lord Fitzwilliam may send the ploughshare of ruin through the hearths of half the county Wicklow; Lord Digby, in the King's County, may restore to the bog of Allen vast tracts reclaimed during many generations ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... build an empire on the ruins of the Ten Commandments, are as blind to discern the laws of human nature as they are awkward to raise the horoscope of events. This Western Continent, under God, may it please the despots, is not going to barbarism and desolation. That good missionary of freedom as well as religion, whom New England sent to California in the person of Thomas Starr King, writes us that Mount Shasta is ascertained to be higher than Mont Blanc. Some other elevations than of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... distressed nations and to rescue from the fangs of tyranny the powerful states of Britain, Spain, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands? Shall she, like another Phaethon, madly ascend the chariot of Empire, and spread desolation and horror over the world? Shall she attempt to restrain the career of a nation, which my honorable colleague represents to have been irresistible, and which he declares has appalled the British lion and ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where, after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver. 28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto the day or time in which ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine |
