"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told they would save his life. Then he was led outside and far away by Snake and Yellin' Kid. In a short time Fah Moo was a very sick Celestial, but after that he grew rapidly better and came creeping back to the kitchen, somewhat pale, wan and drawn, but no longer ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... her face bound me faster in a dungeon of utter hopelessness. My sweet day-dreams and midnight rhapsodies trooped back to mock at me. I felt that I must bow broken under anguish or else steel myself and shout back cynical derision to the whole wan troop of torturing regrets. And all the time, she was caressing that thing in her hand and looking down at it with a fondness, which I—poor fool—thought that I alone could inspire. I suppose if I could ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the laboratory. He was an enthusiastic, but unskilful, chemist. The only thing he could do with any real certainty was to make oxygen. But he had ambitions beyond that feat, and was continually experimenting in a reckless way which made the chemistry master look wan and uneasy. He was bending over a complicated mixture of tubes, acids, and Bunsen burners when Dunstable found him. It was after school, so that the laboratory was empty, but ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... bird's early crying, They began Thy Crucifying, O Thou of face as woeful wan, As the far-flown ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... "G'wan now, Miss Brewster—I'm no infant!" scoffed Sary. "Don' cher know a fat bein' mustn't tech milk 'cause it's ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... without another word. Blanche held her book before her face until he had disappeared. Then it slipped from her fingers. She looked hard into a cluster of roses, and she saw only two figures—always the same figures. Her eyes were set, her face was wan and old. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then, all outlets thus secured save one, At last she took to the open, stood and stared With her wan face to see where God might wait— And there found Caponsacchi wait as well For the precious something at perdition's edge, He only was predestinate to save . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... a splendid fire," rejoined Clare, looking into his face with a wan smile, "and we're ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... at Rio de Janeiro on the 7th of February; and sailed thence on the 4th of March; arriving in the channel without any interruption, save what was given by a French privateer which chased her when within forty-eight hours sail of the land. The natives Bennillong and Yem-mer-ra-wan-nie were well, but not sufficiently divested of the genuine, natural love for liberty and their native country, to prefer London with its pleasures and its abundance to the woods of New South Wales. They requested that their wives might be taught ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... "Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother's bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, Resting the grass amid and upon, To be leaned and to ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... besht dresh, Cordalia," said her mother. "It'll soon be wore out, an' ye'll git no other, wid your father oidle, an' no wan airnin' a pinny but you an' Johnny an' Sarah Rosabel. Fwhere are ...
— Different Girls • Various
... only facts,' cried the King of the Bill-Stickers, recovering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that had suddenly fallen upon him, 'come in and welcome! If it had been income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you out of the wan, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... was; he broke his neck once, when the net had been forgotten. They all do it—ils se cassent le cou tous, tot ou tard! Allons toi t'as peur, toi?" Chat noir's great back was quivering with fear; he had no taste, himself, for shapes like these, spectral and wan as ghosts, walking about in the sun. He took us as far away as possible, and as quickly, from these reminders of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... The sad tidings to tell you!— An orphan you were Ere this misery befell you; And far in yon wild, Where the dead-tapers hover, So cold, cold and wan Lies the corpse of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... sheep below With fingers nice inserting, and above, 490 With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd The nerve, which in its quick vibration sang Clear as the swallow's voice. Keen anguish seized The suitors, wan grew ev'ry cheek, and Jove Gave him his rolling thunder for a sign. That omen, granted to him by the son Of wily Saturn, with delight he heard. He took a shaft that at the table-side Lay ready drawn; but in his quiver's womb 500 The rest yet slept, by those Achaians proud To be, ere long, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... how a gentle maid's wan fingers clasp The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand; Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks; But the sweet dream has vanished! hush! ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... payment for it. A couple of shillings would purchase them coal and food, and they were much in need of both. John was sitting by the scanty fire, with his daughter's shawl over his shoulders, looking wan, wasted, and desponding. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... beautiful, did not answer; nevertheless she seemed scarcely less affected by his sudden appearance and his strange address. She swayed on her feet, and had she not grasped a chair would have fallen. A burning flush for an instant lit up her wan cheek, to disappear at the first sound of her father's voice. He had followed Bercy into the room, and his tone was ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk rose, and the well attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the night was stark black and loud with clashing waters. A fitful wind played in gusts now grim, now groping, like a lost thing blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore a few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly, withdrawn in vast remoteness; those near at hand, of the anchored shipping, skipped and swayed and flickered in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have been more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He broke surface and dropped a ten pound ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... clear, Made strange by the breathless waiting for the deeds that are drawing anear. For woe had grown into will, and wrath was bared of its sheath, And stark in the streets of London stood the crop of the dragon's teeth. Where then in my dream were the poor and the wall of faces wan? Here and here by my side, shoulder to shoulder of man, Hope in the simple folk, hope in the hearts of the wise, For the happy life to follow, or death and the ending of lies, Hope is awake in the faces angerless now ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... she thought how Maxwell would laugh when she told him the fear of being spoken to had kept her from suicide; and she sat waiting for him to come with such an inward haggardness that she was astonished, at sight of herself in the glass, to find that she wan looking very much as usual. Maxwell certainly noticed no difference when he came in and flung himself wearily on the lounge, and made no attempt to break the silence of their meeting; they had kissed, of course, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... days agone For storm, wherein the Sweeping One, Midst rain of swords, and the darts' breath, Blew o'er all a gale of death. Now a maimed, one-footed man On rollers' steed through waters wan Out to Iceland must I go; Ah, the ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Columbus, who was sleeping uneasily, his curious big head and long, thin hair making a strange picture against the pillow. His face looked more meagre and his eyes more sunken than ever before, but there was a feverish flush on his wan cheeks, and the slender hands moved uneasily on the outside of the blue coverlet, the puny arms were bare to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... away and far away, Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold, Many a wide circle and many a wan star away, Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... did ye say? Hats, John Graeme, I think ye should be proud o' wan o' yours marryin' a Granahan. Money or no money, that's a nice way ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read the letter, at ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... that," declared Andy Flinn, laughing. "Three nights did he play the same joke, and then they got on to him. Wan officer do be sneakin' up to the loft, while the rist pretended to be huntin' around downstairs. He discovered the sthring, cript downstairs again, wint out on the sly, and, be the powers, followed it ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... and Ned began to bestir himself, he missed the cheery "Good-morning" of his companion, who was not able to lift his head from his pillow of palmetto. His wan smile went to Ned's heart, and the boy had to busy himself with the fire to hide his emotion. Every hour of that day he watched over the invalid, and from time to time tempted him with bits of broiled bird, heron soup and sips of hot tea made from leaves of the sweet ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry, To her proud soul no common fear can bring: Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King, Her soul aflame ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... even for that which she feared; she wanted to have it over, and she raised herself on her elbow, and listened with acute impatience: at last the door was thrown wide open, and bright and gay as ever, in came Cecilia, but at the first sight of Helen on her bed, wan and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... always been somewhat shadowy and wan, had always been slight and slim and small. But was she always as wan and slight as she now seemed? or did he observe it the more from the contrast it presented to Cherry's blooming beauty, to which his eyes had grown used? ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the Cascine at six o'clock of a foggy morning; the light bad, the ground heavy from a night's rain. The marchese wore black, I remember, and looked horrible; a wan, doomed face, a mouth drawn down at one corner, a slavered, untidy red beard; and those wide fish-eyes of his which seemed to see nothing. Count Giraldi bore himself gallantly, as he always did. I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... thanks to Lady Morley-Frere, Mary Darragh, and the other busybodies who had the royal ear, and hated me. If I coquetted with the King 'twas but to see my heart's real master frown, and his face grow wan and sad, for by those very tokens I knew that ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... hour before dawn grew colder and blacker. A great silence seemed wedged down between the ebony hills. The stars were wan. No cry of wolf or moan of wind disturbed the stillness. And the stars grew warmer. The black east changed and paled. Dawn was at hand. An opaque and obscure grayness filled the world; all had changed, except that strange, oppressive, and vast ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... her throat: "'tis after. Oh, Eve," she gasped, "ain't it too awful to think of their cuttin' up his poor dead body into bits? Call theyselves doctors!" she burst out—"the gashly lot! I'll never let wan o' their name come nighst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or one o'clock, and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours before it was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came, he could not even ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... said, with a deep breath. "It is true that I do not know. And I am—afraid." A wan little smile that was more piteous than tears curved her lips: for "afraid" seemed strange coming from her, the fearless child of the hills and dales. "If—if I said 'yes'—Ah, but I do not!" she broke off as he made to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... sight, and weary of waiting, not without some fear that- -as the Negroes would have put it—'If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... flat he crept to the threshold. Yes, it was really a corridor, but endless in length. A wan light illumined it: lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling lightened at intervals the dull hue of the atmosphere—the distance was veiled in shadow. Not a single door appeared in the whole extent! Only on one ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... departure alone kept back the threatened storm. Even Nancy in the kitchen had been heard to say that, "if the scented dandy didn't kape out ov her kitchen wid his imperdent speeches, she would give him wan blow wid her fist that would spoil his beauty for him," and threatened to "give warnin'" if the mistress did not keep him ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... his communication, Caleb feebly stretched his wan hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his kindness. Now, the Secretary had lived in modern capitals for many years, was trained in diplomacy, and had schooled himself never to appear surprised. But the Princess Kalora fairly bowled him over. He had pictured her as a wan and waxen creature, who would be carried to the hotel in a closed carriage or ambulance, there to recline by the windowside and look out at the rustling leaves. He had decided, after hours of deliberation, that the etiquette of the situation would be for some member ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... just rung and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat full upon the gleaming shoulders of his waterproof and upon his upturned features. It was a wan, sensitive, clear-cut face, with some subtle, nameless peculiarity in its expression, something of the startled horse in the white-rimmed eye, something too of the helpless child in the drawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. The man-servant knew the stranger ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you be seated, and try this pie of mother's own making, with a slice of home-cured ham (father is a great rearer of pigs; and the brothers of Leighs Priory, who know what good living is, always come to him for his primest bacon and ham). You look as if you needed a good meal, for your face is but wan this morning. Mother scarce looked to see you on your ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... comes paddling up, A face so wild and wan: "Ah, Trim, he's there! Make haste, take care; And ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various
... lights and crimson are cast over the grey-green world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields. Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are confused; wonderful ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man—wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... now deere Soueraigne And our gracious Mother, Why doth your Highnes looke so pale and wan? Tamo. Haue I not reason thinke you to looke pale. These two haue tic'd me hither to this place, A barren, detested vale you see it is. The Trees though Sommer, yet forlorne and leane, Ore-come with Mosse, and balefull Misselto. Heere neuer shines ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... away; before many minutes were over Leah's wan face brightened a little, and her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of gloriest past The warrior sickening turns. To list to the sound of the wailing blast, As the wan lamp dimly burns: For the daring might of the lion-hearted With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... dynasty which preceded that of Kau, B.C. 1766 to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Kau. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have a single ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Washin'ton, mem?" Rhoda asked. "I thought, maybe, you was old enough. Misc Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River a-crossin' to 'Napolis. He was a-swarin' at the cappen of the piriauger and a dammin' of the Eas'n Shu, and he said they wan't no good rudes in Marylan' nohow; that the Wes'n Shu was all red mud, an' the Eas'n Shu yaller mud, an' the bay was jus' pizen. Misc Somers say she don't think it was Gineral Washin'ton, caze he cuss so. She goin' to find out when she kin git a book an' somebody to read outen it ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a wan smile. "Yes, that is so. But it still is very slowly we go when I measure with my thoughts the swiftness. In my thoughts we ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the hall who had a more stately step, none who looked more proud. He waited not for salutation, but strode across the hall of state, and fronted Marmion, as peer meets peer. Beneath the cowl was a face so wan, so worn, a cheek so sunken, and an eye so wild, that the mother would not have known her child, much less ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... wan smile at his partner, sitting on the bottom of an upturned pail, as he said this. Then he reached for his hip pocket and drew out a revolver, which he handed, butt-end forward, to the professor, who, not knowing his friend carried such an instrument, instinctively ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,—"light to the last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lo! the lamp's wan fitful light, Glide,—gliding round the golden rim! Restored to life, now glancing bright, Now just expiring, faint and dim! Like a spirit loath to die, Contending with its destiny. All dark! a momentary veil Is o'er the sleeper! now a pale Uncertain beauty glimmers faint, And now the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... adventure," said the ever gay Mrs. Elmsley, as Waunangee, after having shaken hands with herself, departed with Ronayne. "Really, my dear, he is a fine looking, and certainly a warm-hearted fellow, that Wau—Wan—what's ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... of the morning, he appeared to Lily like a drowned man, with a puffed-out face, swollen eyes and wan cheeks. To think that she belonged to that! Lily spat at him in contempt. Oh, rather sleep with lizards and guinea-pigs than that; rather with a woolly dog, like Poland, that Parisienne! Oh, to get rid of ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... she had had to take it. "She doesn't want to die. Think of her age. Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. Think of all she is. Think of all she has. She lies there stiffening herself and clinging to it all. So I thank God—!" the poor lady wound up with a wan inconsequence. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... we don't raich the top of the hill, it'll be because it hasn't got wan," answered Gahogan. Stilton ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... the long lean frame was thrown upon the couch, and "tired Nature's sweet restorer" held him briefly in her arms, the smile of hopefulness on the wan cheek told that, despite all the terrible difficulties of the situation, the sleeper was sustained by a strong and cheerful belief in the Providence of God, the Patriotism of the People, and the efficacy of his Inaugural Peace-offering ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents' feet for hours together, with his little hands patiently folded in each other, and his thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pine away, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been a joyless one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which, child as he was, he had never known in this world, they were his parents, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... it wor a gun bein' cocked. Dat must 'a' been de black box heah, suh. Gorry! but I's glad it wan't dem white trash from de town. I's jest a-gittin' ready tuh vamoose outen heah right smart now. I's gwine tuh Chattanooga, tuh jine my darter. An' dat grub yuh guv me'll kerry me part ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... love was false while mine was true." Aflood with tears he cried: "It was not so, 'Twas your false love my true love falsely slew - For 'twas your love that was the first to go." Thus did we stand and said no more for shame Till I, seeing his cheek so wan and wet, Sobbed thus: "So be it; my love shall bear the blame; Let us inter them honourably." And yet I swear by all truth human and divine 'Twas his that in its death ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained dry, and her cheeks were burning. She rose at length and began to undress, but for this she found herself unequal. She entered the couch and sat up in it—her hands crossed upon her lap—her face wan, wild, the very picture of hopelessness if not desperation! The words of her weak mother had tortured her; but what was this agony to that which was occasioned by ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... courtesy,—where, when not sleeping, black soldiers and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little street was fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had the air of doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their occupants, and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats, poured in from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies, disappeared into the shops with a sort of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... who had but recently risen from a bed of pain, was wan and pale; his tall and stately form had shrunk, his massive head was bowed, his raven locks had ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the Marsh. The wan film of the winter grasses had faded off the April green before the innings became noisy with bleating, and the new-born lambs could match their whiteness with the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds—flamingos of the sky—floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it the reflected light turned it to pink which to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the little book won no attention; it is not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death. They are not living and breathing people, these persons of the fables; they are but shadows, beautiful and faint, and their poem is fit reading ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... his body thin, and his face pale and wan, his temper sour and sullen, seldom caring to speak, and when he did it was with peevishness and ill-nature;—every thing was to him an object of disquiet; nothing of delight; and he seemed, in all respects, like one who was weary of the ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... hand had been laid upon the brow of him who had just come home. Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber. They looked at him with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... ill from her depression of spirits that she could only travel to her new place of detention in a litter and under the care of a physician. On reaching Highgate she had become unfit to proceed, her pulse weak, her countenance pale and wan. The doctor left her there and returned to town, where he reported to the king that the lady was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... unfadingly. Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells! I look on the white sea of the saints. I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom. All beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy everlasting. Colourless peace! Oh, my beloved! So walkest thou for my soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy spotless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his own—those in ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... to loathe all sustenance; her cheeks grew wan, her bright eyes lost their splendour, the roses vanished from her lips, and her delicate limbs could hardly support their burden; in a word, her sole consolation was limited to the prospect of depositing ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... when he returned to Hendlip, he was met by two wan, gaunt men, whose countenances showed privation and suffering. They gave their names as William Andrews and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... fire was burning. Heavy clouds of smoke went up from them in the still, pure atmosphere, like aerial columns, while the flames, paling in the beams of the morning sun, flew up through the reek as though striving to rise above it, with wan and changeful gleams of red and yellow, now curling down, and now writhing upward like snakes. Of all these fires there was not one from which the smoke did not mount straight to heaven, though each burned to a different god; and Melissa regarded it as a happy sign that none ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... numbed to sense to the full the unpleasantness of my condition.... Presently there came a dawning light which gradually grew stronger. I did not seem to have eyes, but was conscious of the ray seemingly through the walls of my body. Slowly it increased, to a sickly wan filter of grey. It was light shining through water, a light which would have been no light to a human being. To me it was intense and fearsome, seemed to reach centres of me that were sensitive beyond ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... levers, her long round arms moving with unexpected power, and only the hunter himself could tire her out. As for him, he was not happy unless he was working, and at times he made the screw spin again under his fierce strokes, whenever his eyes fell on the wan faces of his young companions stewing in the insufferable heat. He shortened the journey by twenty-four hours, for on the afternoon of the fourth day the woman, for the first time, showed signs ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... water, displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the days, when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a brilliancy unknown in our foggy clime. It did not look like a wan flat surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds, looked like hills ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... yet greater zest to the luxury of their mutual trust that Duke Carl added to his announcement of the purposed place and time of the event a pretended test of the girl's devotion. He tells her the story of the aged wizard, meagre and wan, to whom she must find her way alone for the purpose of asking a question all-important to himself. The fierce old man will try to escape with terrible threats, will turn, or half turn, into repulsive animals. She must cling the faster; ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the thousands and thousands and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and putting her left arm very lightly on his shoulder. It was all that she could do for him, but it was in order that she might do this that she had been summoned from London to his side. He was wan and worn and pale,—a man evidently dying, the oil of whose lamp was all burned out; but still as he turned his eyes up to the woman's face there was a remnant of that look of graceful faineant nobility ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Sanchez, whom he had known five years, and described as a "durrty cross betune a skunk and a spitbox," a greaser Indian who would knife his best friend. As for 'Tonio, whom he had known ever since he came to Arizona in '65, and once held to be "the wan good Indian in it," 'Tonio had made him believe he too held Sanchez in contempt. Yet, to all appearance, the two, who up to this night had been confined entirely apart, had gone together. One of the counts in the unwritten indictments against McDowell was ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... meant much. It would have meant a million times more if the "boys" could have flashed back a helio to the wan old General who used to be such a noise in the world—"Same to you, General." The boys somehow liked him. The defects of Sam Hughes were of the sort that soldiers love. He was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something breathed to him, telling ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... in the trees, The wan stars burn and pale— Oh Rose, come forth!—upon the breeze I hear the nightingale Unfold the crimson waves that lie In darkness rosy dim, And swing thy fragrant censer high, Oh royal ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the two men, a wan smile straying from one to the other, exhausted by her suppressed emotions. Suddenly, without a word, she held out her hand to Graydon. In her deepest soul, she loved this manly, strong-hearted young fellow. She knew, after ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... them. What was their surprise one day, at catching in a thicket of mangrove trees, a glimpse of a man in Spanish attire. They entered, and found the unfortunate Ojeda; he lay on the matted roots of the trees; he was speechless, wan, and wasted; but his hand still grasped his sword. They restored him with wine and a warm fire; he recounted the story of his rash expedition; of his struggles among rocks and forests to reach the shore; and he bitterly ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... with the cross-currents of the China Sea. As the only lady passenger I had very comfortable quarters, and the kindest attention from French officers and Annamese stewards. The second afternoon there came a welcome diversion when the boat put into Kwang-chou-wan, two hundred miles southwest of Hong Kong, to visit the new free port of Fort Bayard, the commercial and military station which the French are creating in the cession they secured from China in 1898, and which, if all goes well, is some ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... fancies, for which there was more than good reason, had disturbed him only too successfully, and he was as full of apprehension as one who has a league with Mephistopheles. Charlotte told him nothing of what made her likewise so wan and anxious, but drove off to the castle, as had been planned, about nine o'clock, leaving her brother and his friend at ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... along the line we're winnin' this time. The Jocks has got right away for'ard, an' the Ghurkies is in wid their killin' knives on our left. An' the Irish is in front av all. Glory be! 'Tis a big foight this time, an' it's winnin' we are. Me good arm's gone I know, but I'd rather be here wid wan arm than annywhere else wid two. An' what's an arm or a man more or less in the world? We're winnin', ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... forgotten the fact that she was very fair and very good to look at; she found, half-consciously, that her beauty had its drawbacks. There did not seem to be any reason why she should spare her strength in any way. So, a little wan and tremulous, she appeared at the early morning service, and then, after walking back in any weather, there was a dull little breakfast, and soon after that she got to work. Every post brought begging letters in crowds, and these hurt her dreadfully. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of aspect, I ran and stumbled along the cliffs. Dead Man's Rock lay below wrapped in a curtain of mist. Thick clouds were rolling up from seaward; the grey light of returning day made sea, sky and land seem colourless and wan. But for me there was no sight but Polkimbra ahead. As I gained the little village I ran down the hill to the "Lugger" and knocked upon the door. Heavens! how long it was before I was answered. At last the landlady's head appeared at an upper window. With a few words ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if drawn by the tip of a brush, ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... dun Night her shadowy veil has spread, See want and infamy as forth they come, Lead their wan daughter from her branded home, To woo the stranger for unhallow'd bread. Poor outcast! o'er thy sickly-tinted cheek And half-clad form, what havock want hath made; And the sweet lustre of thine eye doth fade, And all thy soul's sad sorrow seems to speak. O miserable state! ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... Admiral at head of column. I went to him. Men looked at me as I passed them. I was ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to say, "Is it so this strange land does them? But those first ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our fortune! Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and happiness." But some had more thoughtful ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only there was the police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her conscience, then, that was gnawing at her—because of the police! Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, who had sobbed and thanked her Maker because she had ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... it consists of wan sailmaker's needle, a ball o' twine, and a clasp-knife. Set me down with these before a roll o' canvass and I'll make ye ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne |
