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Gloom   Listen
verb
Gloom  v. t.  
1.
To render gloomy or dark; to obscure; to darken. "A bow window... gloomed with limes." "A black yew gloomed the stagnant air."
2.
To fill with gloom; to make sad, dismal, or sullen. "Such a mood as that which lately gloomed Your fancy." "What sorrows gloomed that parting day."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gloom" Quotes from Famous Books



... Joash tossed and tumbled. He was in a fitful slumber when Mrs. Baker called her husband to supper. The meal was anything but a cheerful one. They talked but little. Over the home, ordinarily so cheerful, had settled a gloom that weighed upon them. ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Methuen's repulse and the terrible losses in the Highland brigade, and of Gatacre's disaster, cast a greater gloom over Buller's army than their own failure had done. The one topic of conversation among the officers was, what would be the feeling in England, and whether there would be any inclination to patch up another dishonourable peace like that after Majuba. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty

... heard leaped from the rook, and seemed to make the forest jar at every scream, until he was far away on the lake shore. The clap of thunder awoke my father and mother. The chief, hearing the screams of the panther, seized his weapons of war and tried in vain to penetrate the surrounding gloom, for the blackness of the storm-cloud made the forest a dungeon, occasionally illuminated by flashes of electric fire from the arching clouds over our heads, which could not be penetrated by mortal eye. The chief again ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... air with me, and let us walk to Central Park," continued Mr. DIBBLE, shaking off his momentary fit of gloom, "I have strange things to tell you both. I have to teach you, in justice to a much-injured man, that we have, in our hearts, cruelly wronged that excellent and devout Mr. BUMSTEAD, by suspecting him of a crime whereof he is now proved innocent at least I suspected him. To-morrow night ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various

... world, ruins of recent date lay side by side with the relics of past ages; the churches were sacked, burned, and destroyed; the solitary and indestructible basilicas stood almost alone, mournfully erect amidst these scenes of carnage and gloom; and the eyes of the people of Rome were wistfully directed towards that tutelary power, which has ever been to them a pledge of prosperity and peace, and whose removal the signal of war and ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure—carved from the ocean and the wilderness—its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars—until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base—while startled kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful cast on a bleak and unknown ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... hand as the latter resigned himself to the steward, and was half led, half supported, through the gloom of the lower deck. Senor Perkins remained for an instant gazing after him with even more than his usual benevolence. Suddenly his arm was touched almost rudely. He turned, and encountered the lowering eyes ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... The unnumbered brood of Care? No trial spared, no fall! Feuds, battles, murders, rage, Envy, and last of all, Despised, dim, friendless age! Ay, there all evils, crowded in one room, Each at his worst of ill, augment the gloom. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre.[87] Rosamund Grey written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly this ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... with horrors thronged Within it yawned, and many a chasm unseen Waited the unwary treader. Cry of wolf Pierced the cold air, and gibbering ghosts were heard; And o'er the black marsh passed those wandering lights That lure lost feet. A thousand pathways wound From gloom to gloom. One only led to light: That ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... they went down—like ghosts through the stage of a theatre—soon disappearing in the gloom below, and leaving upon the rock-strewn platform no trace to show that human foot had ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... saw himself in it, his name surrounded with a glamour of pathetic romance, as the sad widower with a mystery darkening his past and future. It was an agreeable gloom into which he fell. Self-pity warmed him and loosened his fierceness. He sighed with regret for his ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... came the sound of a snapping twig. The man started, staring into the gloom, when suddenly into the soft light of the dying embers stepped Jeanne Lacombie. He ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... his routine; he had eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken out and come in when he was brought in; but he had lived shut up within himself, aloof in his sorrow. For the first time in all those eighteen months he had come out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh's key had turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... and singular constructure left no doubt of its having been a part of the original monastery. It was supported by the mouldering arches of the cloisters, dark, Gothic, and opening on the minster sanctuary, not only by casement windows that shed a dim midday gloom, but by a narrow winding staircase, at the foot of which an iron-spiked door led to the long gloomy path of cloistered solitude. This place remained in the situation in which I describe it in the year 1776, and probably may, in a more ruined state, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... especially there are great opportunities for manufacturing, and the time has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the stockholders of the factory and their employes. Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this country and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over their heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the aristocratic money-owner himself is so far above that he will never descend ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... of Ireland when 1846 closed in cold and gloom over its sickening, starving population. The year expired in the midst of the most frightful social condition to which any European people had ever been reduced. O'Connell too truly described it, in one of his strange ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... simple accident of an overdose of Kentucky rye in his mint julep after church. The overdose had sent him to sleep too soon after his Sunday dinner, and when he had awakened from his heavy and by no means quiet slumber, he had found himself confronting a world of gloom. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... and without moving a muscle of her face she would put her leg tip on his seat and push him. One scene they watched well back in their dark box, his arm round her waist. It was a little pathetic love-play and well done, and in the gloom he played with the curls at her ears and neck with his ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... got to do something," said Hornby with momentary gloom, "and I think farming's about the best thing I can do. One gets a lot of shooting and riding yon know. And then there are tennis parties and dances. And you make a pot of money, there's no ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... earth: and in the hour of need the general on whom so much depended died of some poisonous medicine with which he had endeavoured to cure himself of indigestion. Abu Anga was buried in his red-brick house at Gallabat amid the lamentations of his brave black soldiers, and gloom pervaded the whole army. But, since the enemy were approaching, the danger had to be faced. The Khalifa appointed Zeki Tummal, one of Anga's lieutenants, to the command of the forces at Gallabat, which by strenuous exertions he brought up to a total of 85,000 ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... not less bright for the gloom overhanging the despised and abominated Lutherans. But in an instant, as by the touch of a magician's wand, they were turned into the funereal tapers of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... was in sight in this quiet corner. He bounded on to the bench to be nearer—if she should come. If she were there hiding in the shadows. This was maddening—unbearable. He would climb the balustrade to see. Then out of the blackest gloom came a laugh of silver. A soft laugh that was almost a caress. And suddenly she crept close and leant down over ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... insanity; but it was given to him to make this stern yet half-pleading appeal to the Czar's better nature. And who shall say that the example of constancy which the aged King displayed amidst the gathering gloom of his public and private life did not ultimately bear fruit in the later and grander phase of Alexander's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind devils to raise their straight columns. A first long shaft of sunlight shot through a pass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the dust-moted air, and laid its warmth on the rawhide. Senor Johnson roused himself from his gloom to speak his first ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... have another miniature glass—a fairy glass—of noyau," she said gaily. In this volatile creature, the funereal gloom of the moment before, and the suspense of an adventure on which all her future was staked, disappeared in a moment. She ran and returned with another tiny glass, which, with an eloquent or tender little speech, I placed to my lips ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... motives to discontent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom and furious disorder prevail by fits: the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity; as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order would become ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... miles off, as near a wood, Of deepest gloom I stray'd; Struck by strange sounds, I wond'ring stood, They echoed from ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley

... those days, not from an artistic point of view exactly, but from reasons cogent enough in the estimation of the cave men. But the cave was warm and safe and the sharp eyes of its inhabitants, accustomed to the semi-darkness, found slight difficulty in discerning objects in the gloom. Very content with their habitation were all the family and Red-Spot particularly, as a chatelaine should, felt much ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... and a half was fraught with delirious happiness and excitement. Foster bowled magnificently, Bradford managed to keep a length; the whole side fielded splendidly. Wicket after wicket fell. Victory became a certainty. Gloom descended over the Buller's side. Round the pavilion infants with magenta hat ribbons yelled themselves hoarse. It was one of those occasions in which eternity seems compressed into an hour. Half-past six came. No one went up ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... utmost to pierce the gloom, but the fog had settled down again, the night was dark, and the boy could scarcely see the waves breaking on the shore not twenty ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... and so intelligent; even the crowded haunts of labour and suffering among which she glided like an angel, blessing and blessed; they rose before her—those touching images of the past—and her eyes were suffused with tears, of tenderness, not of gloom. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... I met you," he said to Pelle with his unchanging expression of gloom. "Have you seen anything ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... had rebuked him the last time he had spoken slightingly of his brother in her presence! A sudden fear and doubt of herself, startled her physically as well as morally. She turned from the shadowy abyss of the dark water as if the mystery and the gloom of it had been answerable for the emotions which had taken her by surprise. Abruptly closing the window, she threw aside her shawl, and lit the candles on the mantelpiece, impelled by a sudden craving for light in ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... this favor! I, who had prayed so often on bended knees and with tearful eyes for the ultimate conversion of my father. When I placed the lighted candle in his dying hand and saw him receive the last rites of Holy Church, I felt that all the gloom and sorrow of my heart had been lifted and dispelled ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... devote their lives to teaching the blind to read and the dumb to speak, adverse comment by anyone speaking with sincerity and briefest knowledge of the facts would be impossible. These missions of mercy shine as great beacons of Christianity through the gloom of heathen darkness. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... the falling gloom; Then came a soldier gallant in her stead, Swinging a beaver with a swaling plume, A ribboned ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... duty to your Majesty. He knows well what that feeling of working under the impression of trouble and annoyance is, but if the first gloom is brushed away, confidence and hope and spirits return, and things begin to appear more cheerful. Lord Melbourne is much obliged by your Majesty's enquiries. He slept well, but waked early, which he always does now, and which is a sure sign ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... was not wholly dark, for there was a moon behind the clouds; but beyond a certain limited distance of the sea lay in gloom, only the steady wash of the incoming waves telling of the vast reach of water ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... moment her short-lived strength failed her, and she sank once more. I looked all around—the shore was only a few yards off. A short distance away was a high, cone-shaped mass of ice, whose white sheen was distinct amid the gloom. I ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... house's desolation, He could not bear the gloom, The vanishing encounter and evasion Of things that were and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... gathering there; his long black hair, scattered over the pillow, set off the young man's hollowed and pale temples to great advantage. It could be easily perceived that fever was the principal occupant of that chamber. Guiche was dreaming. His wandering mind was pursuing, through gloom and mystery, one of those wild creations which delirium engenders. Two or three drops of blood, still liquid, stained the floor. Manicamp hurriedly ran up the stairs, but paused at the threshold of the door, looked into the room, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... our Lord's last supper and 34:30 his last spiritual breakfast with his disciples in the bright morning hours at the joyful meeting on the shore of the Galilean Sea! His gloom 35:1 had passed into glory, and His disciples' grief into repent- ance, - hearts chastened and pride rebuked. Convinced 35:3 of the fruitlessness of their toil in the dark and wakened by their Master's voice, they changed their methods, turned away ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... just and severe indignation and resentment even in this life upon his and their enemies.—Let us behold the one wafted over the dark river in the arms of a Redeemer (though sometimes on a bloody bottom) unto the flowery banks of Emmanuel's land;—while the other is with an awful gloom of horror hurled head-long into the pit of destruction. Let us by faith apprehend those thousands of thousands at Christ's right hand, singing, Allelujah, true and righteous are his judgments; he hath judged the great whore, and avenged the blood of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... as impartially constituted as possible, with Elbridge Gerry as chairman; and On the 5th of July, after a recess of three days, the committee reported in favour of the compromise. Fresh objections on the part of the large states were now offered by Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, and gloom again overhung the convention. Gerry said that, while he did not fully approve of the compromise, he had nevertheless supported it, because he felt sure that if nothing were done war and confusion must ensue, the old confederation being already virtually at an ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last, My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... prior, who had been executed for adherence to the Stuart family in 1745-6; and the motto, HAUD OBLIVISCENDUM, seemed to intimate a tone of mundane feeling and recollection of injuries, which made it at least doubtful whether, even in the quiet and gloom of the cloister, Father Hugo had forgotten the sufferings and injuries ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... their fragments, their waifs and strays and remnants, to go home. The men were harnessing their horses, filling their carts. It was all a clamorous, sunny, odd sort of picture amidst the quaint and ancient buildings. Then they went into the church, into the gloom and silence out of the stir. The doctor made the young ones a sign to hush. There were women on their knees, and on the steps of the altar a priest of dignified aspect, and a file of acolytes, awfully ugly, the very refuse ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... peers out into the dark, And childish faces—frightened at the gloom— Grow awed and vacant as they turn to mark The father's as he passes through the room: The gate latch clatters, and wee baby Bess Whispers, "The ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... shone and glittered until it could shine no farther; if of oak, every leaf and moulding spoke of elbow-grease, and clean, fresh- smelling polish; if it were a fabric of wool or cotton, it was invariably of some shade of rose, shedding, as it were, an aspect of summer in the midst of November gloom. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... vengeance, and the farms and merchandise of its citizens were seized as first-fruits of its plunder. The darkness which on that fatal morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as they sang in choir was but a presage of the gloom which fell on the religious houses. From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban's rose the same cry of havoc and rapine. But the plunder of monk and burgess was little to the vast sentence of confiscation which the mere fact of rebellion was held to have passed on all the adherents ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... to rest; the gloom of night was settling over the forest. Calhoun saw the shadows thicken among the trees. The darkness of death would ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... his back had been turned to her during the single moment that she had stood at the window. What should she do now? She was quite certain that he could not see her, as she stood far back in the room, within the gloom of the dark walls. And then there was the river between him and her. So she stood and watched, as one might watch a coming enemy, or a lover who was too bold. There was a little punt or raft moored against the bank just opposite to the gateway of the warehouse, which often lay ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... fact that I could pity some one other than myself helped to raise my spirits. At any rate I managed to shake off a little of my gloom and tramped on up the Lane, feeling more like a human being and less like a yellow dog. Less as I should imagine a yellow dog ought to feel, I mean, for, as a matter of fact, most yellow dogs of my acquaintance seem to be as happy ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... of this canyon land are on a giant scale, strange and weird. The streams run at depths almost inaccessible, lashing the rocks which beset their channels, rolling in rapids and plunging in falls, and making a wild music which but adds to the gloom of the solitude. The little valleys nestling along the streams are diversified by bordering willows, clumps of box elder, and small groves ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... was dark. With the stick he tapped the walls and roof. A startled cluck and the rush of wings heralded the flight of two birds, alarmed by the noise. Soon his eyes, more accustomed to the gloom, made out that the place was about thirty feet deep, ten feet wide in the center, and seven or eight ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... at home, but it is quite another thing to capture such oneself-to feel it struggling between one's fingers, and to gaze upon its fresh and living beauty, a bright gem shirring out amid the silent gloom of a dark and tangled forest. The village of Dobbo held that evening at least one ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... gloom, beauty without piety, freedom with open shops, sunshine without duty,—these to the masses are some of the chief joys of the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... plainly defined, little wisps of mist or cloud were streaming up along the furrowed channels of the mountain walls. As we entered the lake of cloud the sunlight became fainter, uprushes of cold mists struck us, gloom settled, denser and denser grew the fog, drops of condensed vapor dripped from the trees under which we passed. At the bottom of the valley, we could scarcely see a dozen yards in any direction. We were passing along meadows, like those of New England, with brakes, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... for a moment—with much work already accomplished, but his hardest life-task before him; still in the noon of manhood, a fine martial figure, standing, spear in hand, full in the sunlight, though all the scene around him was wrapped in gloom—a noble, commanding shape, entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great powers, however unscrupulous, must always command. A dark, meridional physiognomy, a quick; alert, imposing head; jet black, close-clipped hair; a bold eagle's face, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... salvation; and that he and others, who had taken part in their imprisonment, had acted most iniquitously. For what now could be more evident than that the apostles were the servants of the Most High God? When everything around them was enveloped in the gloom of midnight, they seemed able to tell what was passing all over the prison. How strange that, when the jailer was about to kill himself, a voice should issue from a different apartment saying—Do thyself no harm! How strange ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... The rest drew together particularly near, round the fire; Hugh at his father's shoulder, and Fleda kneeling on the rug between her uncle and aunt with a hand on each; and there was not one of them whose gloom was not lightened by her bright face and cheerful words of hope that in the new scenes they were going to, "they would all be ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... Jag Ear is thirsty—and bury Wrath of God fittingly—give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, a kind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck his head through the blue blanket ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... sky, the sighing of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under foot, the lapping of the cold water on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and fro, now in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel at the shoulder whenever the pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers down at him through the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... minister materials to the workings of his imagination, so, in return, his imagination supplied that dark colouring under which he so often disguised his true aspect from the world. To such a perverse length, indeed, did he carry this fancy for self-defamation, that if (as sometimes, in his moments of gloom, he persuaded himself,) there was any tendency to derangement in his mental conformation[1], on this point alone could it be pronounced to have manifested itself.[2] In the early part of my acquaintance with him, when he most gave way to this humour,—for it was observable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... house then stood not far beyond the gloom and rumours of the town, among high garden-wall, bright all summer-time with Golden-rod, and brown-and-golden Wall-flower—Flos Parietis, as the children's Latin-reading father taught them to call it, while he was with them. Tracing back the threads of his complex spiritual habit, as he was ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... closed at early candle-light; the fashionable inhabitants had retired into the country, or into the second-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air of tender gloom settled upon the Common. The streets were almost empty, and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins and the uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under the flooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without any increase ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... river, on their right they could already hear the wind moaning and tearing through the trees which sheltered Burwood. The nature which an hour ago had seemed to him so full of stimulus and exhilaration had taken to itself a note of gloom and mourning; for he was at the age when Nature is the mere docile responsive mirror of the spirit, when all her forces and powers are made for us, and are only there to play chorus ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume, The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed, nor see, what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... no watch, so he counted the seconds. The ten minutes seemed an hour to him. At last they passed and he opened the passage again. For some reason he expected to see Harry and the young woman climb through, but only the form of the boy appeared in the gloom. He waited a moment to be sure that the girl did not follow, and then closed the passage. As the stone settled into place, the form moved quickly to the door and rapped three times. Almost instantly it swung open and the jailor with his lantern stood without. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... less could I but see James happy, but his sad silence increases my own pain. He is always gentle and kind, devoted to the children; full of respect and quiet attentions for me; but how changed from the bright youth of former years. How distant that season—through what a fearful gloom I look back upon the brightness of those summer years! How often I ask myself if I am indeed the dreaming girl who, in her chamber at Neathcote watching the stars out in a vigil which was like a charmed vision, believing that life was to be one ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... rapidity in the pleasant company of our new friends. When the gloom of the growing twilight reminded us of the fading day, we could hardly realize this fact. We wished to stay there another day; but when the following morning rose fair and beautiful in the clear heavens, the wind ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... concerned with, and with which I scrupulously forbear from dealing. But there are moments when a great horror comes upon some men's minds, and a vision of a lonely and childless old age rises before them in the gloom of a dreary twilight, or when the mists of autumn hide the sunbeams, and they think, "If desolation were to come upon our homes, where could we hide the stricken head and broken heart?" To that question—a morbid ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... they were lumbering down the crooked streets. Soon they were out of the town and jogging quietly along the quiet lanes; the driver leaned forward to get a light from his passenger's pipe; his face for a moment showed ruddy in the glow of the one lamp, then it sunk into gloom again. Captain Polkington did not notice; he did not notice the voices in intermittent talk, or the fume of their tobacco that hung on the moist air and mingled with the scent of the drooping violets in his coat. He knew nothing and was aware of ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... moment for a great boy, but the providence that watched over Tommy until it tired of him came to his aid in the nick of time. It took the form of the Painted Lady, who appeared suddenly out of the gloom of the Double Dykes. Two of the children jumped, and the third clenched her little fists to defend her mamma if Tommy cast a word at her. But he did not; his mouth remained foolishly open. The Painted Lady had been talking cheerfully ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... grew too long. With a shrugging effort she surmounted herself and looked again toward the alien figure looming unconcerned in the gloom. A warm, super-personal sense of friendliness came upon her. Her intellect awoke to inquiries. She began to question him of his days away, and soon he was talking freely enough, between pulls of ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety, for had she not said the very words they had spoken together before? had she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested? Susan, on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for life; and in the gloom of her eyes you might have ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... over-hanging, jagged rocks, with openings to the rolling plain beyond, made it an ideal point for the sneaking, cowardly savages to attack the weary pilgrims and freighters. The very atmosphere seemed to produce a feeling of gloom and approaching disaster. The emigrants had been repeatedly instructed by the commander at Fort Carney to corral with one of the trains. Many of the bullwhackers were desperate men, so that the poor pilgrims were in danger from two sources, and very seldom camped near either ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. On that principle, those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That is ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... be said, for through the gloom the white plume and gold-laced uniform of the marquis were seen. He had missed them, and come back to look ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom; Lost, or only heard in silence from the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... health; 455 With soft assuasive eloquence expands Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands; Leads stern-ey'd Justice to the dark domains, If not to fever, to relax the chains; Or guides awaken'd Mercy through the gloom, 460 And shews the prison, sister to the tomb!— Gives to her babes the self-devoted wife, To her fond husband liberty and life!— —The Spirits of the Good, who bend from high Wide o'er these earthly scenes their partial eye, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... in my quiet room, And the windows are open wide and free To let in the south wind's kiss for me, While I rock in the softly gathering gloom, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... strong man rejoicing to run a race, and every thing will be astir with the notes of preparation for that day, for which all other days were made, the approach of it will be, to the lost, a deepening gloom, its arrival the settling down of interminable night. Instead of entering into their bodies with transport, as the righteous do, they will each be like a prisoner removed from one jail to another with new bars and bolts. If it be not unreasonable to suppose that the appearance of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... sight of strangers. Here the charvadar lighted a vast white linen lantern, which he proceeded to carry in front of the two riders. He seemed to know where he was going, for he led the way without a pause through long blank silent streets of indescribable filth and smells. The gloom of them was deepened by jutting balconies, and by innumerable badgirs that cut out a strange black fretwork against amazing stars. At last the three stopped in front of a gate in the vicinity of the citadel. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... superior, and is much closer in its rendering of atmospheric effects to the "Adrastus and Hypsipyle." The figures, on the other hand, are weak, very unequal in size, and feebly expressed, except the Madonna, who has charm. The lights and shadows are treated in a masterly way, and contrasts of gloom and sunlight enhance the solemnity of the scene. The general tone is rich ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... they urged on their tired animals, a spear of light seemed to pierce the gathering gloom ahead of them. At the sight of it the horses threw up their heads and put forward their ears. The spear grew brighter. Then it pierced the mist. All at once a puff of wind brushed aside the white clinging wreaths of vapor ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... conscious that the original cause of my depression was entirely inadequate, in itself, to produce the result which had followed. Under this feeling, I made an effort to rally myself, but in vain; and sank lower from the very struggle to rise above the gloom that overshadowed me. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... course, quite back to the time when the Hyde Street hill had been in an opulent heyday, but the flavor of its quality had trickled through to his generation. This was the section where his mother had languished in the prim gloom of her lamp-shaded parlor before his father's discreet advances. The house was gone ... replaced by a bay-windowed, jig-sawed horror of the '80s, but the garden still smiled, its quaint fragrance reenforced ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... exalted heroism, refined policy, and sympathetic humanity. Yet now the prospect begins to change; and all the splendor of this august assemblage, will soon be overcast by sudden and impenetrable clouds; and American greatness be obliterated and swallowed up by one enormity. Slavery diffuses the gloom, and casts around us the deepest shade of approaching darkness. No longer shall the united states of America be famed for liberty. Oppression pervades their bowels; and while they exhibit a fair exterior to the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... footpath and plunged into the dense undergrowth. The trees were mostly straight-stemmed giants of teak, branchless for some distance from the ground. Each strove to thrust its head above the others through the leafy canopy overhead, fighting for its share of the life-giving sunlight. In the green gloom below tangled masses of bushes, covered with large, bell-shaped flowers and tall grasses in which lurked countless thorny plants obstructed the view between the tree-trunks. Above and below was a bewildering confusion of creepers forming an intricate network, swinging from ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery itself,—by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... in, and was for the moment quite taken by surprise at the evident gaiety of the crowd. It seemed so incongruous to hear laughter at a private view, where it is now usual to behave with the embarrassed and respectful gloom appropriate to a visit of condolence (with the corpse in ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... tamas. The name of the moon-dog, and, by transfer, the dog of the night, is Cy[a]ma or Cy[a]va "black," not Cabala, nor Carvara. The association of the two dogs with day and night is the association of sun and moon with their respective diurnal divisions, and nothing more. Of Cimmerian gloom there can be nothing in the myth primarily, because it deals at the beginning with heaven, and not with hell; with an auspicious, and not a gloomy, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield

... mood how can I bear, when wind and rain despondency enhance? How sudden break forth wind and rain, and help to make the autumntide! Fright snaps my autumn dreams, those dreams which under my lattice I dreamt. A sad autumnal gloom enclasps my heart, and drives all sleep away! In person I approach the autumn screen to snuff the weeping wick. The tearful candles with a flickering flame consume on their short stands. They stir up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... accident. My father was born in Maine on the Canada line. But my mother was French. I'm her daughter. I love sunlight and flowers, music and foolishness—and dream of troubadours who sing under my window. I hate long faces and gloom. But my father has ambition. I love him, and so ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... afar to worship his God according to his own will. The very hearth where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol, the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... a greasy cook? Or give to meat the time of play? While ev'ry trout gulps down a hook, And poor dumb beasts harsh butchers slay? Why seek the dull, sauce-smelling gloom, Of the beef-haunted dining room; Where D——r gives to every guest With lib'ral hand whate'er is best; While you in vain th' insurance must invoke To give ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... seed-time, growth, and harvest; it has always been responsible for all the beauty and goodness of the earth; it is itself splendid to look upon. It goes away and stays longer and longer, leaving the land in cold and gloom; it returns bringing the long fair days and resurrection of spring. A Japanese legend tells how the hidden sun was lured out by an image made of a copper plate with saplings radiating from it like sunbeams, and a fire ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... gravy ingredients, another there as he minced chicken, yet another in still another direction as he arranged a bowl of vegetables. Schmitz's head swirled first in one direction, then in another. Aching he was to reduce the universe to his perpetual state of gloom. But chefs he stood in awe of. He dared silence only me, and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... the encircling gloom Lead Thou me on. The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... last, thank Heaven! I shut the great gate upon us both and locked it! Again that strange undesired laugh broke from my lips involuntarily, and the echoes of the charnel house responded to it with unearthly and ghastly distinctness. Nina clung to me in the dense gloom. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... ordinary mortal a very different fate was reserved. He had to descend after death into the underground world of Hades, where the spirits of the dead flitted about like bats in the darkness, with dust only for their food. It was a land of gloom and forgetfulness, defended by seven gates and seven warders, who prevented the dead from breaking forth from their prison-house and devouring the living under the form of vampires. The goddess Allat presided over it, keeping watch ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... the only one who had noticed Pancha's improved looks and high spirits. Behind the scenes the failure of "The Gray Lady" had produced dejection and rasped tempers. She alone seemed to escape the prevailing gloom. She came in at night smiling, left a trail of notes behind her as she walked to her dressing room, and from there clear scales and mellow bars rose spasmodically as she dressed. Usually holding herself aloof, she was friendly, made jokes in the wings, chatted with the chorus, and when ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... by a consciousness that some one was in the room and, sitting up, staring through the gloom, heard a movement near the door, a rustle, a little ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint Margaret's. And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride with them, and because they never had any time left over from being thorough and business-like to spend on the children themselves, they never failed to leave a shaft of gloom behind them on Trustee Day. The contagious ward always escaped by virtue of its own power of self-defense; but the shaft started at the door of the surgical ward and went widening along through the medical and the convalescent ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... itself. At the very first blush of my new prosperity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old, will recollect themselves and toady me again. You, who know me, will comprehend that I speak of these things only as having served, in a measure, to lighten the gloom of unhappiness, by a gentle and not unpleasant sentiment of mingled pity, merriment and contempt. That, as the inevitable consequence of so long an illness, I have been in want of money, it would be folly in me to deny—but that I have ever materially suffered ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... just passed through a little wood; and in its friendly gloom, he had put his arm round his wife so that they had lingered a little, loth to leave its shelter. But now they had emerged again upon the radiance of the fell-side, and he had found a stone for ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Gloom" :   bareness, atmosphere, apprehension, cloud, somberness, glumness, gloomy, ambiance, nakedness, gloominess, semidarkness, bleakness, dread



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