"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the good Padre was well lodged and entertained in a very neat wayside cottage on a desolate and solitary road. Later he learned that there was no such cottage in that region, and, we are told, he concluded that his entertainers were Joseph, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... I had abandoned this desolate wonder (but with its influence strong upon me) that I left the town of Mende, down on the noise of its river, and began to climb the opposing mountain of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Priscilla, Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to myself, that if ever There were angels on earth, as there are angels in heaven, Two have I seen and known; and the angel whose name is Priscilla Holds in my desolate life the place which the other abandoned. Long have I cherished the thought, but never have dared to reveal it, Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for the most part. Go to the damsel Priscilla, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... when she was supposed to be asleep, Myrtle crept from her bed, turned on the electric light and gloated over her treasures, which she had almost feared might vanish into thin air and leave her as desolate as before. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... the black plague, scarcely a third part of the population remained alive; and the Venetians engaged ships at a high rate to retreat to the islands; so that, after the plague had carried off three-fourths of her inhabitants, their proud city was left forlorn and desolate. In Florence it was prohibited to publish the numbers of the dead and to toll the bells at their funerals, in order that the living might not abandon themselves ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were deserted, the streets desolate. It was an appalling panorama of the ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... becomes a fruitful field, and the millennium seems just at hand; and then the spiritual tide recedes, the forces of evil are emboldened, they mass themselves and again sweep over the heritage of the Lord, leaving it waste and desolate, and the battle must be ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat companies, and their only amusements ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... The house-boat was in sight now, moored close to a tiny island. Arnold pulled up alongside and paused to reconnoiter. To all appearance, it was a derelict. There were no awnings, no carpets, no baskets of flowers. The outside was grievously in need of paint. It had an entirely uninhabited and desolate appearance. Arnold beached his boat upon the little island and swung himself up onto the deck. There was still no sign of any human occupancy. He descended into the saloon. The furniture there was mildewed and musty. Rain had come in through an open window, and the appearance of the little apartment ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning, arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize these rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up without being penetrated ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... days, before the era of Goolam Shah Kalora, a small state almost independent of the Ameers of Sind. On the left bank of the mouths of the river these bhulls are very numerous and form by far the most fertile portion of the surrounding district. They bear a most dreary, desolate, and swampy appearance—are intersected in all directions by streams of salt and brackish water, and are generally surrounded by low dykes or embankments, in order to regulate the influx and reflux of the river and sea. Yet from these dreary swamps a very considerable portion of the rice ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Island, Cook steered east and discovered South Georgia, named after the king. He followed the north coast of this desolate and ice-clad island, obtaining more refreshment in the shape of seals, penguins, and shags—unpalatable, but welcome food to men who had so long subsisted on bad salt meat. From South Georgia the ship's head was once more turned southwards, and before many ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... a century earlier would have been Fletcher's rival, compels his clipped fancy to the conventional discipline of prose, (Maid Marian turned nun,) and waters his poetic wine with doctrinal eloquence. Milton is saved from making total shipwreck of his large-utteranced genius on the desolate Noman's Land of a religious epic only by the lucky help of Satan and his colleagues, with whom, as foiled rebels and republicans, he cannot conceal his sympathy. As purely poet, Shakspeare would have come too late, had his lot fallen in that generation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... there the previous winter, after a march of over seven hundred miles from Massachusetts, the hillside, which now bloomed, was desolate and bleak. But few buildings had been erected, and about the only provisions obtainable were corn meal and water. All that had been changed as by magic, and many of the poor fellows had not known such comfort since leaving their homes in England, ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... road, leading west, and followed it over a heather moor, which changed after a mile or two into a peat-bog with piles of peat recently cut. We kept on going, until about five o'clock in the morning we came to a house. It looked desolate and unoccupied, and when we got close to it we found that it had been badly damaged by fire. But it made a good shelter for us, and we went into what had been the living-room, and lay down and slept. The floor was ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... brooding over another distress, one caused by gnawing hunger, he felt his master draw down. Also, the others came to a stop. With the men dismounted, he swept eyes over the scene. But he saw nothing that appeared to warrant pause. The place was dead and desolate, barren of all that which had invariably met his gaze when pausing with his mistress. But when one of the men began to build a fire, while the others flung off light saddle-bags from the little gray and the sorrel—an exceptionally rangy horse—he came in a way to understand. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... notes. She asked God for daily bread for everyone in the immense Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for the spirit, and she stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged. And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the spirit of that prayer, wept. Everybody wept. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... do," said he, "and good reason have I to know; and well I knew those that lived in it, ruined, and black, and desolate, as Ballycloran is now:" and between Drumsna and Boyle, he gave me the heads of the following story. And, reader, if I thought it would ever be your good fortune to hear the history of Ballycloran from the guard of the Boyle coach, I would ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... forthwith (i.e., to the offer of the Rev. J. Crombie Brown to take the children), and set about preparations in good earnest. This was about the end of January. On the tenth of February they embarked, and after stopping the night on board I tore myself from my darlings to return to my desolate lodgings to contemplate my solitary journey, and to go to my husband and home childless." Of her it may be said, She ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... his last birthday still there; "and there is that sad clock which stopped just before he died." Who that has seen in Germany these faded wreaths, with their crushed, soiled streamers of white riband, can forget the desolate aspect which they lend to any room ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... forgot my woes, my pains. No ghastly deed taunted me with its memory, no dark cloud hung in the skies. I felt my Gertrude's lips against mine; I felt that her life was given to me. I was no longer alone and desolate; a pure, beautiful woman had trusted me so fully, so truly, that hope dawned in my sky, and ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best—or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago—the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil—everything they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... walking the quarter-deck of one of his old ships. As Pearson stood listening the footsteps ceased; silence, then a deep sigh, and they began again. The young man sighed in sympathy and wearily climbed to his den. The prospect of chimneys and roofs across the way was never more desolate ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... motion; he voices the wonderment of man before the complex problem of Mont Blanc. But his mind has never participated in the revels on the mountain, he has not lost and barely recovered his soul in adventurous crevasses. He retains something of the old horror of the desolate heights— ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... The place contained two desolate camellias, with leaves in the same proportion as those on trees in the earlier ages of illumination, and one scraggy, leafless geranium, besides a green and stagnant tank, where a goldfish moved about, flapping and gasping, as the boy ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head and crossed himself. For a long time he rode in silence, meditating upon this unwelcome intelligence, grieved to think that such a desolate home-coming ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... believe we have talked you over—every one of you—till I know you all as well as if I lived in the castle and called you by your Christian names. Do you know, Mr. Kearney'—and his voice trembled now as he spoke—'that to a lone and desolate man like myself, who has no home, and scarcely a country, there is something indescribably touching in the mere picture of the fireside, and the family gathered round it, talking over little homely ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "we shall meet again." He then took leave of her with an affectionate look, which fell as a sunbeam upon her desolate heart, and, leading the boy by the hand, turned quickly toward the door. She looked after them in silence and with clasped hands. As the door opened, the emperor turned again with a parting but ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... entertainment, and was always ready to comply with our wishes; hence he granted us what it is usually difficult to obtain—permission to visit the celebrated estate of Longwood, where Napoleon closed his splendid career, in powerless and desolate loneliness. We rode thither one fine morning, on horseback. The little town of St. James lies in a ravine between two high, steep, barren lava-rocks; its pleasant situation and cheerful aspect presenting a striking contrast with the gloom of its immediate environs. By a serpentine ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... his hand as he spoke towards the livid roofs of the Palazzo delle Finanze, that vast and desolate steppe, as though he could see the harvest of glory all stripped off and bankruptcy appear with its fearful, threatening bareness. Restrained tears were dimming his eyes, and he looked superbly pitiful with his expression of baffled hope and grievous ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fly away; he turned round over our heads continually, and continued his cries. Never have any groans of suffering pained me so much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this poor bird ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... disappearing and for ever disappearing population. Towns like Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war. Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States enters with an adequate and responsible organization ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the desolate old creature—the tears rushed to my eyes; but there was no moisture in hers. No rain from the heart could filter through ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... ruins of the cathedral, we did not need darkness and falling rain to depress us further, or to make the scene more desolate. One lacking in all reverence would have been shocked. The wanton waste, the senseless brutality in such destruction would have moved a statue. Walls as thick as the ramparts of a fort had been blown into powdered chalk. There were great breaches in them through which you could ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... was St Joseph, on the east shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the St Joseph river. This was the most inaccessible of the posts on the Great Lakes. The garrison here lived lonely lives. Around them were thick forests and swamps, and in front the desolate waters of the sea-like lake. The Indians about St Joseph had long been under the influence of the French. This place had been visited by La Salle; and here in 1688 the Jesuit Allouez had established a mission. In 1763 the post was held by Ensign Francis Schlosser and fourteen men. For months ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... was it with the myrtle warblers, I venture to assert, though on this point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home as they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest a particular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delighting especially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the window panes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seen hawking back and forth against ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... to see his heart beat. And upon that the people were in a fury and the court hissed with rage, and Vesalius was obliged to flee from Spain before the power of the Inquisition; and some say that he then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But on his return he was shipwrecked on a desolate island and perished miserably. Hubert, in his Vindiciae contra tyrannus reports this history to the eternal shame of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... her anchorage on this desolate shore on an evening of singular beauty. It was difficult to tell when she was on her way, so quietly did she move through the glassy waters, over which the sun went down in burnished gold, leaving the sky without a cloud. The light of the beach fires ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... was smooth work. Toward evening the troops of our corps arrived on their old ground, now to be our home until the opening of spring, and at once fell to work to restore to some degree of comfort that most desolate of scenes, an abandoned camp. Unfortunately, on leaving the place, little thinking that they were so soon to return, they had burned everything combustible, and thus a strip of board or a piece of timber ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... same level, and obliged to take their turn to fetch water, and explore the island for food. The work of exploring was soon over—there was not a bird, nor a quadruped, nor a single tree to be seen. All was barren and desolate. The low parts were scattered over with stones and sand, and a few stunted weeds, rocks, ferns, and other plants. The top of the mountain was found to consist of a fragment of original table-land, very marshy, and full of deep sloughs, intersected with small rills of water, pure and pellucid ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Quite pathless were the desolate mountains of Tango, for no one ever went into them except once in a while a poor woodcutter or charcoal-burner; yet Raiko and his men set out with stout hearts. There were no bridges over the streams, and frightful precipices abounded. Once they had to stop and build a bridge by felling ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... When the Spaniards sent them from their country, after they had lived there for seven hundred years, they lost their best citizens, and the most beautiful and highly cultivated part of Spain was henceforth to be comparatively desolate. On all the great section of Andalusia, the most southern part of Spain, the Moors left marks in buildings and in cultivation, that it will take centuries ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... he endeavoured to snatch from evil by the sacrifice of his only Son, will quarrel about tenets which no one understands, and will tear each other to pieces like wild-beasts. Horrible atrocities, surpassing all the abominations perpetrated by men since they first sprung into existence, will desolate unhappy Europe. My hopes appear to you too bold,—I read it in your doubting countenances; but listen to me whilst I explain. Religious disagreements will give rise to these frenzies. Then first will Fanaticism, the wild son of Hatred and Superstition, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... and surrender entirely to us, before the veil be taken off, and [the punishment of] sin light upon you. For we shall have no mercy upon him that complains, nor be moved by him that weeps. We have wasted countries, we have destroyed men, we have made children orphans, and the land desolate. It is your business to run away; ours to pursue; nor can you escape our swords, nor fly from our arrows. Our horses are racers; our arrows strike home; our swords pierce like lightning; our fortifications are like mountains, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... at the house where his honeymoon was spent and a good part of Pickwick planned. In the latter end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble fields from Higham to the marshes lying further down the Thames, he would often visit the desolate churchyard where little Pip was so terribly frightened by the convict. Or, descending the long slope from Gadshill to Strood, and crossing Rochester Bridge—over the balustrades of which Mr. Pickwick leaned in agreeable reverie when he was ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... Thin streets and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, Have flung a desolate cloud ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... misery is abandoned by God. It was never better sustained; but nature is, as it were, left a little alone, and makes all these ravages without the soul in itself taking any part in them. This poor desolate bride, running hither and thither in search of her Beloved, not only soils herself grievously, as I have said, by falling into faults of surprise and self-esteem, but she wounds herself with the thorns that come in her way. She becomes so wearied at length that she ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... adherents of the prophet, who in a case of emergency would give them succor, and would furnish food and camels. But it was, as the Bedouins reckoned, about five days' journey to Assuan over a road which became more and more desolate, and every stop visibly diminished their supplies for man ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was, that, however desolate and exposed a situation that might be for her dwelling, it was better than in "the haunts of men." This was said to have been written by the late Mr. Thomas Sheridan. I never heard by whom the music to it, which was very pretty, was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... account of Beginnings centres around the production by the gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal), of a great number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion of the vivifying waters.... In the process of life's production besides Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the savages of the mainland opposite who had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and, either driven by the currents or by contrary winds, had made the island, and had been on shore, but were gone away again to sea; being as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Spaniards as soon as Malong was defeated), resolved after holding a council of war to go immediately to Ilocos for the purpose of destroying Manzano. But he with few men because many had been lost in several frays, retired to some desolate places where he built a fort. Our captains attacked him, however, full in front, and inspired by their example the soldiers and Indians, and conquered him. Many of the enemy were slaughtered, and we on our side did not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... Constitutional rights. The innocent must not suffer, nor women and children be the victims." Before him were some who felt toward the people of the South as Greek toward barbarian. But Douglas foresaw that the horrors of war must invade and desolate the homes of those whom he still held dear. There is no more lovable and admirable side of his personality than this tenderness for the helpless and innocent. Had he but lived to temper justice with mercy, what a power for good might he ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... of the dead were like the bulletins of a fierce campaign. As the end of the year approached, villages and rural districts, which had been prosperous and populous a year before, were desolate. In some places the loss amounted to half the resident population. Even the poorhouses shut up, and paupers did not escape. More than one in six perished of the unaccustomed food. The people did not everywhere consent to die patiently. In Armagh and Down groups of men went ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... height, he would suddenly see Virginia's pale, thoughtful face. Her eyes, dimmed with tears, and full of reproach, would seem to be gazing at him questioningly, wonderingly, that he should have so degraded himself. With a cry of disgust, he would spring up from his chair and go back to his desolate home. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the Montauk appeared more desolate than ever, after the departure of so many of her passengers. So long as her decks were thronged there was an air of life about her, that served to lessen disquietude, but now that she was left by all in the steerage, and by so many in the cabins, those who ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... were worn by mature men, some gray, all grave and resolute; husbands and fathers with the memory of wives and children tugging at their heart-strings; homes left desolate behind them, and before them the grim certainty of danger, hardship, and perhaps a captivity worse than death. Little of the glamour of romance about the war now: they saw what it was, a long, hard task; and here were the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... that lady played Edna had entitled "Solitude." It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the piece was something else, but she called it "Solitude." When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... showmen, conjurors, pea-and-thimblers, and trampers generally. I think of opening my new book on the coast of Cornwall, in some terribly dreary iron-bound spot. I hope to have finished the American book before the end of next month; and we will then together fly down into that desolate region." Our friends having Academy engagements to detain them, we had to delay a little; and I meanwhile turn back to his letters to observe his progress with his Notes, and other employments or enjoyments of the interval. They require ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... pilgrim to tarry and rest within their refreshing shade; no garden, gay with flowers, rang with childish laughter, as the little ones plucked their fragrant blossoms; but rugged hills, frowning rocks, and desolate sand beaches, assumed the place of waving woods, smiling corn-fields, and blooming orchards; while for the melodious notes of woodland songsters, was heard the wild cry of the stormy petrel, or the shrill scream ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... whole of Oa went up in smoke and flame. Nothing was spared, not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a horse, nor a chicken. The boundary walls, emerging black and desolate above the embers of the village, alone survived the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... bursting forth and overwhelming civilisation in a common ruin. Just as the earth's volcanic forces now and again threaten to tear their way through the crust, so now the immemorial feuds of Moslems and Christians, of Greeks, Servians, Bulgars, Wallachs, and Turks, promised to desolate the slopes of the Balkans, of Rhodope and the Pindus, and to spread the lava tide of war over the half of the Continent. The Russians and Bulgars, swarming over Roumelia, glutted their revenge for past defeats ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... drink and disease, especially smallpox and cholera. The former was terribly fatal. The Indians knew nothing of its nature or treatment, and during the nineteenth century the tribes along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers suffered severely. Even in my own day I have seen and talked with the few desolate ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... to the desolate home, she must not linger over her grief for she was needed there as comforter. Her mother had disappeared into the sanctuary of her room where she was seeking strength from the source that had never failed her in all life's trials ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... forward, as before. Doubtless it is fancy, but it seems to me now that the remaining distance was made in a chill fog; that I was uncomfortably cold; that the way was longer than ever before, and the town, when we reached it, cheerless, forbidding, and desolate. It must have been early in the evening, yet I do not recollect a light in any of the houses nor a living thing in the streets. Dorrimore explained at some length how he happened to be there, and where he had been during the years that had elapsed since I had seen him. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... automobile bringing up the rear. There were other men on the flank and in front, and a captain commanded. The day was wintry and gloomy. Heavy clouds obscured the sky, and the slush was deep in the roads. A desolate wind moaned through the leafless trees, and afar the cannon ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The desolate expanse around the gulch, was all but without motion. The icy breeze tore tiny puffs of dust from grotesque, angling drifts of soil, nearly waterless for eons. Patches of drab lichen grew here and there ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... got to the nursery, she was very glad she had come. Fixie was sitting in a corner looking very desolate, for Martha was busy looking over the linen, as it was Saturday, and his head was "a'ting dedfully," he said. He brightened up when he saw Bee and what she had brought, and for more than an hour the two children sat perfectly happy and content examining the wonderful beads, and making up ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... With a low, desolate moaning sound she wrung the hands he released and raised her face to his. He kissed her upon the brow, the eyes and the mouth. "Good-by, my life, my love, my heart," he said. "We were ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... he was telling the boy how he had been out alone on a desolate hill all night; how he heard the beasts roaring round him, and not one of them came near him. "Did you see him?" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... that no modern or no Greek of the Anthology could exceed, the ardent desire which he felt for the sight of his child, from whom he happened to be separated: I have a little one, a tender nestling, with whom I have left my heart. I dwell far from him; how desolate I feel in the absence of that little person and that little face. He longs for me, and I long for him; for me he weeps, and I weep for him. Our affectionate wishes are weary with passing from him to me, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... to wait, to patiently watch for an opportunity, pledging himself to do all that legal skill could effect; and nobly he has redeemed his promise to the desolate, friendless, broken-hearted woman who appealed to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... January, 1504, Francesco de Porras broke into the cabin. He complained bitterly that they were kept to die in that desolate place, and accused the Admiral as if it were his fault. He told Columbus, that they had determined to go back to Spain; and then, lifting his voice, he shouted, "I am for Castile; who will follow me?" The mutinous crew instantly replied that they would ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... disappeared, and the cab dragged its way between truck farms, with desolate-looking glass-covered beds, and pools of water, half-caked with ice, and bare ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... in the kings name, to the cities and townes next about the place, where the field was fought: with charge that in no case they should conuey themselues, and their goods out of their dwellings, where they might abide safely without all feare of danger, and not leaue the countrey desolate to the possession of so vile and barbarous an enemie, as was the Tartar nation, terming themselues in all reproachful maner. For notwithstanding he had lost his carriages, with some few straglers that had marched disorderly, yet he doubted ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... provided by devoted accessories for the severe journey, and accompanied by a guide who knew the forest ways, he set out, a fugitive from justice. Both he and his pilot carried pistols in holster and provisions in saddle-bags. Their route lay through a desolate region sparsely settled by pioneers, and not yet relinquished by wandering aborigines, nor by the bear and the catamount. The month of February was spent before they reached the valley of the Tombigbee, a distance of two hundred ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some other great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the country. But it having been afterwards discovered, that the imperial crown was the palladium, which by its immobility could preserve peace in the empire, it was thought expedient to deliver his imperial person, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... I remember," said Linda. "That is why when Marian and Eileen and Donald and all my world went past and left me standing desolate, and my work piled up until I couldn't see my way, I just started right out to ask you if you would help me with the proof. Of course I knew you would be glad to do that and I thought if you really meant in your heart that ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... community, toiling earnestly and faithfully under wise direction, might in time bring some comfort and prosperity into a desolate land. Ireland had once been known as the Isle of Saints. Now, despoiled by warring kings, pagan Danes and finally the Norman adventurers under Strongbow, the people were in some districts hardly ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... generations, been found unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground, a Church so odious, that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of property, were generally regarded as fair play, a Church, whose ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets, such a Church, on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the State which allied itself with such ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sight of Puno had satisfied me that we had come to the most desolate spot in the world, Nature's remains seemed to have been brought there and left without burial. The ground was thickly covered with a short, wild grass and appeared to be the natural dwelling place of ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... a cheerless and stormy ocean, monotonous in its uniform tint. Now and then showers of cold hail or rain tore away from this chaos, and, pitched hither and thither by howling winds, swept across the town or over the desolate fields. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... of Israel had come to its fated end. Its king and people had been carried away captives in accordance with the cruel policy of the great Eastern despotisms, which had so much to do with weakening them by their very conquests. The land had lain desolate and uncultivated for many years, savage beasts had increased in the untilled solitudes, even as weeds and nettles grew in the gardens and vineyards of Samaria. At last the king of Assyria resolved to people ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it out in a blinding swirl. Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the desolate fissure that was the opening ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the phoebe-bird, builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge, near the top of a mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping was it with the mossy character of the rock, and I have had a growing affection for the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... It made Mavering think of Dante, of the Inferno, to which he passed naturally from his self- denunciation for having been an infernal jackass. The inscription on the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life— his desolate, broken life—a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out his cigarette case. The Italians ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their skin-clothing, as if suddenly cut off by the hand of death. The survivors, from fear of infection, had left the remains of their relatives unburied. It was an affecting scene in such a remote and desolate region, separated from all communication with the human race. Near the huts was the burial-ground, with several well-formed graves of heaps of stones. On one lay a spear, which one of the officers of the "Assistance" took up, to bring away. Some of the crew ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... cover the ground between one division and another along a hundred miles of front, with long walks often at the journey's end and a wet way back. Sometimes we were soaked to the skin on the journey home. Often we were so cold and numbed in those long wild drives up desolate roads that our limbs lost consciousness and the wind cut into us like knives. We were working against time, always against time, and another tire-burst would mean that no despatch could be written of a great battle on the British front, or only a short record written in the wildest ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... casements, behind which, in summer, there should surely be the largest bowls of roses. I saw the old house last in a frosty December sunset, surrounded by floodwater, with farm horses splashing up the road, and plovers crying round the edges of the stream. It looked desolate enough; but three hundred years ago it was a fine house, at one time the property of the Austens of Shalford, and later passing into the hands of the trustees of Henry Smith, the "Dog Smith" who gave so much to Surrey charities, and about whom Aubrey heard ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... from several causes, the chief and most important being the almost complete withdrawal of moderately well-to-do people from the locality. The neighbourhood has become so exclusively inhabited by the poorest of the poor, and by the desolate immigrants from all countries, that the higher phases of bookselling have little chance of flourishing. Mr. E. George informs us that fifteen or twenty years ago he frequently sold in one day books to the value of L15 to genuine residents of the East ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the fog, and that the prisoners, having won their freedom, were celebrating their delivery in true Puritan style. Whether they were driven on to the rocky coast of Labrador, or whether they found a home in some desolate land whence no kingly cruelty could harry them, is what must remain ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ambition there was offered an equal weight of fine silver, and upon the head of the child-prince was set the reward of ten times his weight in pure gold. Yet in noisome swamps and forests, hidden in caves, lying on desolate islands, and concealing themselves in every kind of solitary place were those who daily prostrated themselves to the memory of Tung Kwei and by a sign acknowledged the authority of his infant son Kwo Kam. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... was making preparations to march against him, for burning the towns and villages, and destroying the corn and forage, between Dumblane and Perth. This act of destruction, from the effects of which the desolate village of Auchterarder has never recovered, was determined on, in order that the enemy might be incommoded as much as possible upon their march; it added to the miseries of a people already impoverished by the taxes and contributions ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... timely and salutary warning. "Your kingdom," he wrote to him, "at first exhausted by the agents of your authority, is now torn by your enemies; thus the caterpillar destroys what has escaped the grasshopper. The kingdom of Sicily and Naples has not been wanting in men to desolate it; where now are they that will defend it?" This letter of the Pope's announced storms ready to break forth. Many of those who had called Charles to the throne regretted the house of Swabia, and directed their new hopes toward Italy, strengthening Conradin, heir ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... shrink, neither man nor woman; the loftiest genius cannot ignore them; the sublimest charity must begin with them. They are their own exceeding great reward; their self-sacrifice is infinite joy; and the selfishness which discards them is repaid by loneliness and a desolate old age. Yet these, though the most tender and intimate portion of human life, do not form its whole. It is given to noble souls to crave other interests also, added spheres, not necessarily alien from these; larger ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to water, air, and earth, are indispensable to human existence; they are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening ranges of dark mountain, which in nearly all ages of the world men have looked upon with aversion, or with terror, and shrunk back from as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are in reality sources ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... fairly demented," exclaimed the register—a chin-whiskered, grizzled old fellow, sitting on a stump and hugging his knee with a desolate, bereaved look—"talkin' 'bout the stray-book, an' all the records gone! What will folks do 'bout thar deeds, an' mortgages, an' sech? An' that thar keerful index ez I had made—ez straight ez a ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... luxuriate, as if the ungrateful Mazarin had thought it a good idea to let the Parisians perceive the solitude and disorder were, with misery and despair, the fit accompaniments of fallen monarchy; the immense courtyards, formerly silent and desolate, were now thronged with courtiers whose horses were pacing and prancing to and fro. The carriages were filled with young and beautiful women, who awaited the opportunity of saluting, as she passed, the daughter of that daughter of France who, during her widowhood and exile, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pain swept across his face, as some phrase, implying rather than expressing Warwick's love or Sylvia's longing, escaped the narrator's lips, and when she described their parting on that very spot, his eye went from her to the hearth her words seemed to make desolate, with a glance she never could forget. But when the last question was answered, the last appeal for pardon brokenly uttered, nothing but the pale pride remained; and his voice was cold and quiet as ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... more autumn; late in October. But I was reconciled to my habitation; the walls of the new part of the building no longer looked bare and desolate; the debris had been so far cleared away by M. de la Tourelle's desire as to make me a little flower-garden, in which I tried to cultivate those plants that I remembered as growing at home. Amante and I had moved ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... misfortune to be under his baneful protection. They returned home at holiday time with regret, and the recommencement of their scholastic duties was a source of delight. The mother died, and all at home was desolate. The violence of their father seemed to increase from indulgence; and the youths, who were verging into manhood, proved that no small portion of the parent's fiery disposition had been transmitted to them, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all are doomed to lie sleepless, Many a desolate night, And dream of approaching conquests And ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... something. He knew all about every single house. They were beyond the farms and tillage by now; but on the heath, where self-sown birch and aspen trees stood fluttering restlessly in the summer air, there stood desolate new houses with bare, plastered walls, and not so much as a henbane in the window or a bit of curtain. The fields round them were as stony as a newly-mended road, and the crops were a sad sight; the corn was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... nations. He was caged and transported to that far rock which in his school-essay at Autun he had described thus: "St. Helena is a small island!" He found it so. For nearly six years his captivity continued until his stormy career ended in a May hurricane that might well have shaken the desolate foundations of his ocean-girt prison. Then the historical tide rolled on without him. France was transformed into the old image, but her soul was still imperial. At last the bones of her great dead were recovered, to be placed ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... desolate for 100 years. During that period the lands were constantly being seized by different intruders. It was not till the time of Alfred the Great, who came to the throne in 871, that the invasions of the Danes were finally checked, and tranquillity restored ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... currents, stagnating upon its surface, and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted it. [Footnote: This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni (Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana, edition of 1835, p. xiii.), from which also I borrow most of the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... behind a large rock, Carthoris watched the thing before him. It was a huge banth, one of those savage Barsoomian lions that roam the desolate hills of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and taller than he had ever appeared before, with bright and glittering arms. Astonished at the vision he had spoken thus: "O king, for what reason or with what object have you left us exposed to an unjust and hateful suspicion, and left the whole city desolate and plunged in the deepest grief?" He answered, "It pleased the gods, Proculus, that I should spend thus much time among mankind, and after founding a city of the greatest power and glory should return to heaven ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... The treeless, desolate land, which, a moment before, was full of struggling goblins and men, became as quiet as the blue sky above. Nothing but some rounded rocks or stones, in groups, marked the spot where the bloodless battle of imps and ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... was an earthen crock, and two candles, and beneath this, on the floor, was a sawed-off gun and two pistols, with a small supply of powder and balls, the former wrapped in an oiled cloth. It was in truth a gloomy, desolate hole, although dry enough. For want of something better to do I went over and picked up the pistols; the lock of one was broken, but the other seemed serviceable, and, after snapping the flint, I loaded the weapon, and slipped it ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... why he had held on so long. It was some time since they had found Verneille lying high upon the desolate range, and this was still the only thing which seemed to bear out his comrade's story. The latter had only a few very hazy recollections to guide him, and during the last week he had not come upon ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Club, where there was tennis and the new game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretch of sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horse picked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that lay scattered about for acres. A wagon road led across this waste land toward the crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense of repose, of vast quiet. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... white farm-houses to the village, all speaking of cheer and freedom to the prosperous and the happy, but to the unfortunate and the indebted, of meshes invisible but strong as steel. But, before, no lonesome marshes, no desolate forest, no farm or village street, but the free blue ocean, rolling and tumbling still from the force of an ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... the adored companions of Christian's childhood, themselves scarcely less adored than were their parents. Seated, as was their practice, in a well-chosen position, that combined seclusion with a commanding view of the detested hounds, they had not ceased (as was also their practice) from loud and desolate barking, an exercise that in the case of Dooley, the younger and more highly-strung of the couple, was accustomed to develop into a sustained contralto wail. As Christian and Larry left the kennel yard, this moment had been reached. Dooley's nose was in the air, her mouth ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... have brought a wise helper." Gray Brother trotted off and dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that Mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry of all the jungle—the hunting howl ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... through the Stuttgart archives, to ferret out forgotten books in dusty old book-shops, to fit together the links in the chain of events of the woman's story, to haunt the scenes of bygone splendour in deserted palace and castle, old-world garden and desolate mansion; such has been the delightful labour which has gone to the telling of the true history of the Graevenitz. The Land-despoiler the downtrodden peasantry and indignant burghers named her, for ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed—as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth—to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping and ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... stood between them and us. Not one shot broke the stillness of the night. As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sides. There were neither doors nor windows in this wall; just a few holes here and there. At certain spots it appeared to have been riddled with shot; at others it was cracked and hanging over as though it had been shaken by an earthquake. It had the bare, crumbling and desolate aspect of places ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the discovery of a Boy Scout," laughed Will. "The more Boy Scouts we come across in this desolate land the happier ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... doom of Rome, A.D. 455, forty-five years after the Gothic invasion. The haughty city had met the fate she had inflicted upon her rivals. And she never would probably have arisen from her fall, but would have remained ruined and desolate, had not her great bishop, rising with the greatness of the crisis, and inspired with the old imperishable idea of national unity, which had for three hundred years sustained the crumbling empire, exclaimed to the rude spoliators, now converted ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... successfully passed through regions of privation and peril) delight even to recall their former discouragements, and, without the shame that luxuriates alone in little minds, undisguisedly to tell of seasons, indelible in their memories, when, in the prostration of hope, the wide world appeared one desolate waste! but they ultimately found, that these seasons of darkness, (however tenaciously retained by memory) in better times often administer a new and refreshing zest to present enjoyment. Despair, therefore ill becomes one who has follies ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... late barley is not yet gathered in; horses, drawing great yellow waggons, and old-fashioned Cotswold labourers are busy amongst the sheaves; and there is an air of activity and animation in the fields that is absent a month or two later. Bleak and desolate does this country sometimes look in winter, though when the sun shines it is fair enough. And suddenly, as we ride along, a lovely valley is seen below: old-world farmhouses and gabled cottages come into view, nestling amid stately elms ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and his wife chide him, and say: 'We did not deal with thee as thou dealest with those who are left desolate, and have none to succour them. Wherefore art thou so cruel to ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... parts of England the wild duck is to be found, especially in those desolate fenny parts where water abounds. In Lincolnshire they are plentiful, and are annually taken in the decoys, which consist of ponds situate in the marshes, and surrounded with wood or reeds to prevent the birds which frequent them from, being disturbed. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... also started. It was lonely and desolate work, for with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single living creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain. Evidently it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-looking cobra or two we saw no reptiles. ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Irving's rendering is worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the storm, how to pierce the tumult with the cries of human distress, how to escape the ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be a King on the desolate heath, and to make the royalty gleam through the angry darkness, were the problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one and all, even with redundance of faculty and skill. At the end of the heath scene the man is more remembered than the storm. It has been objected that ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of young men, with incredible earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. Is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have amongst them some that are held for wise men, who never wear any clothes all their life long, and who bear the snow of Caucasus, and the piercing cold of winter, without any pain: and who if they come in contact with fire endure being burned without a groan. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... went on Aloysius, gently—"But you must resist it, my son! I know what it would mean to you—the restoration of your grand old home—that home which received a Roman Emperor in the long ago days of history and which presents now to your eyes so desolate a picture with its crumbling walls and decaying gardens beautiful in their wild desolation!—yes, I know all this!—I know how you would like to rehabilitate the ancient family and make the venerable genealogical tree sprout forth into fresh leaves and branches by marriage with this ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... lank as rods, Stark as the toddy trees, Swarming as when from the bursting pods Scatter the ripened peas, Flaming pupil and naked claw, Gaunt and desolate, maimed and raw, Cats by courtesy, but, ye gods! Never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... reported my empty net to Mrs. Mussel on returning, she emitted a little desolate cluck. She foresees her Christian room rent overdue, poor thing. The kind little S.F. dropped in and bade me be of good cheer. She's a brick, and I feel so ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... time, entirely independent of the grand prince of Novgorod, whose supremacy was, in general, but an empty and powerless title. As Daniel was one of the nearest neighbors of Andre, and reigned over a desolate and impoverished realm, the grand prince was disposed to bring him into subjection. But neither of the princes dared to march their armies without first appealing to their Mogol masters. Daniel sent an embassador to the Mogol camp, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... centuries of Turkish rule (1396-1878) form a dark epoch in Bulgarian history. The invaders carried fire and sword through the land; towns, villages and monasteries were sacked and destroyed, and whole districts were converted into desolate wastes. The inhabitants of the plains fled to the mountains, where they founded new settlements. Many of the nobles embraced the creed of Islam, and were liberally rewarded for their apostasy; others, together ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the cold wind but remained leaning over the water. In the distance trains rumbled interminably, giving him a sense of vast desolate distances. The village clock struck eight. The bell had a soft note like the bass string of a guitar. In the darkness Fuselli could almost see the girl's face grimacing with its broad impertinent lips. He thought of the sombre barracks ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... with a woman on either side supporting her. And she walked round and round her husband, with the tears rolling down her face, and she wailed the widow's wail, with her very heart in it. Why had he gone away and left her desolate? His was the spirit of fragrance like the scented sandal-wood; his was the arm of strength like the lock that barred the door. Gone was the scent of the sandal, broken and open the door; why had the bird flown and left but the empty cage? ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... track. In brief, they were lost. There might be a road running past the saucer ten yards from its brim in any quarter. There might not. Possibly there was a town or village immediately adjacent. Quite as possibly the Downs billowed away for desolate miles on ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... rise to trains of reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller; and the farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild and desolate the country he is exploring, the greater the difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these subjects of his earliest studies in science; so much keener is the delight with which he recognises them, and the more lasting is the impression which they leave. At ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... 'Continue to keep open the house in which we have passed so many happy hours, and let the ancient home of our race still afford a shelter to us,' I shall feel myself bound to do so; but if both my mother and my brother agree to a departure from it, and that its hearth shall be left cold and desolate, be it so. I will not stand in the way of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... laughed with the great hazel eyes he has, and showed his white teeth;—and now his beauty would be spoiled, and he'd never care for me again, seeing I hadn't cared for him. And the wind began to come up; and it was so lonesome and desolate in that little bed-room down-stairs, I felt as if we were all buried alive; and I couldn't get to sleep; and when the sleet and snow began to rattle on the pane, I thought there wasn't any one to see me and I'd better cry to keep it company; and so I sobbed off ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... dreary. He was so human in his inclinations, so pitifully dependent upon his environment; and since he had stepped from the train three years ago, these rough people had taken him at his face value; desired nor cared for nothing but what he chose to give. Desolate St. Ange ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... so sinister a country or a swamp so vast and desolate. It seemed more black than dusky, and the gloom lay not in the obscure light of thick-set spruce, pine, and hemlock, but in the shaggy, monstrous, and forbidding growth which appeared to be soiled with some common dye, water, earth, tree-trunks, foliage—all wore the same inky ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... or twenty years old, and a very handsome woman. I was hurriedly informed that the murder trial was in progress at St. Augustine; that Ashlock had given his testimony, and had availed himself of the chance to take a wife to share with him the solitude of his desolate hut on the beach at Indian River. He had brought ashore his wife, her sister, and their chests, with the mail, and had orders to return immediately to the steamer (Gaston or Harney) to bring ashore some soldiers belonging to another company, E (Braggs), ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... was at this instant launched. Richard Burke, the adored centre of all his father's hopes and affections, was seized with illness and died (August 1794). We cannot look without tragic emotion on the pathos of the scene, which left the remnant of the old man's days desolate and void. A Roman poet has described in touching words the woe of the aged Nestor, as he beheld the funeral pile of his son, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Weary and desolate, he haunted restaurants and hotels, in the vague hope that chance might some day yield him a glimpse of her, as a gambler clings to a faint prospect of redeeming his fortunes through some wonderful and unexpected revulsion of luck. But the days passed without the slightest encouragement, ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... arch, entered the ruined hall, and looked down on the roaring sea below. It still rained, the wind swept furiously through the decaying arches of the banqueting hall and waved the long grass on the desolate battlements. Far below, the sea foamed white on the breakers and sent up an unceasing boom. It was the most mournful and desolate picture I ever beheld. There were some low dungeons yet entire, and rude stairways, where, by stooping down, I could ascend nearly to the top of one ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... getting late in the season. It was quite too cool to sit out on deck in the evening, and our garden began to look desolate. ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... may believe, even for so hardy a tramp as Borrow, and the tone of the following extract from one of his rough notebooks in my possession may perhaps be explained by the circumstance. Borrow is on the way to Loch Laggan and visits a desolate churchyard, Coll Harrie, to see the tomb of John Macdonnel or ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Life is ended for me and I do not know how I can face the desolate future. Walter and I have quarrelled and our engagement is broken. He is gone and my ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... indefinite burden and complicated the delicate situation. I saw no safety for us but in careful hiding until Craig could return, a squad of hard-riding troopers at his back. To permit the girl to venture forward alone through the desolate country we were in, overrun as I knew it to be by irregular bands whose sole purpose was plunder, and whose treatment of women had made my blood run cold as I listened to its recital, was not to be ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... a dwelling was perched on the top of a hill overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of pine-barrens there was as yet neither garden nor inclosure near it; and a wilder, more desolate and savage-looking home could hardly have been ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett |
