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Drear   Listen
adjective
Drear  adj.  Dismal; gloomy with solitude. "A drear and dying sound."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books



... third flight of rickety stairs the old gentleman sees a shabbily dressed woman, and as he glances at the surroundings his soul sickens. All is drear and desolate. The apartment is cold, and a few coals seem trying to keep a little glow that the poor creature may not succumb to the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... nest, the same Who from the Strophades the Trojan band Drove with dire boding of their future woe. Broad are their pennons, of the human form Their neck and count'nance, arm'd with talons keen The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... lie, no man can say; The flowers all are fallen away; The desert is so drear and grey, O Marta ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... hollow sound booming suddenly on my ears startled me—one! two! three! I counted the strokes up to twelve. It was some church bell tolling the hour. My pleasing fancies dispersed—I again faced the drear reality of my position. Twelve o'clock! Midday or midnight? I could not tell. I began to calculate. It was early morning when I had been taken ill—not much past eight when I had met the monk and sought his assistance for the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... searched for him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... for the victors who have reached success, to stand As targets for the arrows shot by envious failure's hand. I'm sorry for the generous hearts who freely shared their wine, But drink alone the gall of tears in fortune's drear decline. ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Sullivan advanced, burning and devastating, he came at length into the valley of the Genesee. This he made 'a scene of drear and sickening desolation. The Indians were hunted like wild beasts, till neither house nor fruit-tree, nor field of corn, nor inhabitant, remained in the whole country.' One hundred and twenty-eight houses were ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... disclose the caverns, Dungeons drear beneath the seas, Toying with the proudest navies, Hurling down the giant trees: He who curbs your wildest fury, Calms you like to infant's breath, As a lamb Himself surrendered, Bowed ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris

... grace to Hindostan: O climax to this age's wondrous story, Full of new hope to India, and to Man In heathendom's dark places! For the light Of our Jerusalem shall now shine there Brighter than ever since the world began:— Yet by a way chaotic, drear and gory Travelled this blessing; as a martyr might Wrestling to heaven through tortures unaware: Our Empress Queen! for thee thy people's pray'r All round the globe to God ascends united, That He ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... hath not that serene decline Which makes the southern Autumn's day appear As if 't would to a second Spring resign The season, rather than to Winter drear,— Of in-door comforts still she hath a mine,— The sea-coal fires,[677] the "earliest of the year;"[678] Without doors, too, she may compete in mellow, As what is lost in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... free? The sage, who keeps in check His baser self, who lives at his own beck, Whom neither poverty nor dungeon drear Nor death itself can ever put in fear, Who can reject life's goods, resist desire, Strong, firmly braced, and in himself entire, A hard smooth ball that gives you ne'er a grip, 'Gainst whom when Fortune runs, she's sure to trip. Such are the marks of freedom: look ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... pale shadow saith to God in heaven: "I am an orphan and no king at all; I was a weary prisoner yestereven, My father's murderers fed my soul with gall. Not me, O Lord, the regal name beseems. Last night I fell asleep in dungeon drear, But then I saw my mother in my dreams, Say, shall I find ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... hellish war, A monument of man's stupendous hate! Can this have been a Paradise before, Now up-blown, blasted, drear and desolate? Aye, once with smiling and contented face She reigned a queen above a ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... blessed ray All thought of hopeless sorrow flies, Despair and anguish melt away Where'er its healing beams arise. How dark our sinful world would be— A flowerless desert, dry and drear! Did not this light, O God, from thee Its gloom dispel, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear; Late, gazing down the steepy linn, That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; Now, murmuring ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... once, our mother-sphere The world, her fixed foredoomed oval tracing, Rolling and rolling on and resting never, While like a phantom fell, behind her pacing The unfurled flag of night, her shadow drear Fled as she fled ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... surroundings; for all this suburb lying between the arsenal and the zoological garden was at that time a desolate and barren waste. The entire region, extending from the new gate to the far-distant Behren Street, was an immense mass of sand, whose drear appearance had often offended Frederick while he was still the prince royal. Nothing was to be seen, where now appear majestic palaces and monuments, the opera house and the catholic church, but sand and heaps of rubbish. Frederick William the First had done much to ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... biting and cutting like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... not the drear shadow, The gentle and fortunate peace: But he who thus revels in rhyming Has shadows that never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... where on mountain waves the snowbirds scream, Where more than Thule's winter barbs the breeze, Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleam Lights the drear May-day of Antarctic seas; ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... A cloudy stream is flowing, And a hard, steel blast is blowing; Bitterer now than I remember Ever to have felt or seen, In the depths of drear December, When the white doth hide the green. March, April, May. B.W. PROCTER ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... the gray branches of the oaks, starlit, I hear the heavy murmurs of the winds, Like the low plains of evil witches, held By drear enchantments from their demon loves. Another night-time, and I shall have found A refuge ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... jewel-sceptres vail, And from their treasures scatter pearled hail; Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans, And all his priesthood moans, Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale. Into these regions came I, following him, Sick-hearted, weary—so I took a whim To stray away into these forests drear, Alone, without a peer: And I have told thee all thou ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... the canoe floated almost of its own volition into a dead and distorted strip of country. Black water which gave off an evil odor covered almost half an acre of ground. From this arose the twisted, gaunt gray skeletons of dead oaks. To complete the drear picture a row of rusty-black vultures sat along the broad naked limb of the nearest of these hulks, their red-raw heads upraised as they croaked and sidled ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... not back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... could sit partially upright and gaze unsteadily about. The girl yet remained motionless at his feet, her thick hair, a mass of red gold in the sunshine, completely concealing her face, her slender figure quivering to sobs of utter exhaustion. Before them stretched the barren plain, brown, desolate, drear, offering in all its wide expanse no hopeful promise of rescue, no slightest suggestion even of water, excepting a fringe of irregular trees, barely discernible against the horizon. That lorn, deserted waste, shimmering beneath the sun-rays, the heat waves already ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain—one of those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut the mortal coil. By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange and its surrounding ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... not hear it? Is it howling wind? The tram-car rattling o'er the stony street? The groans of M.P.'s wearily confined To the dull House when night and morning meet, Dragged to Divisions drear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various

... him who dares intrude Upon our midnight solitude! Woe to him whose faith is broken— Better he had never spoken. 'Ere twelve moons shall pass away, Thou wilt he beneath our sway. Drear the doom, and dark the fate Of him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... was dumb with a sort of consternation. Mrs. Braddock hesitated for a moment, and then said to him, drear ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... Ship's Run divides them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills in misty distance from our kinder place. 'Tis a lusty stretch of gray water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir its rage. In evil weather 'tis wide as space; when a nor'easter lifts the white dust of the sea, clouding Blow-me-down-Billy of the main-land in a swirl of mist and spume, there is no departure; nor is there ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... in the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the misty ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... at last the summer ripens And the harvest is gathered in, And food for the bleak, drear days to ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... heartache—ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill The drear sand levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name; ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... does it mean to us that Spring is here? We asked ourselves within the great grey hall. We shall not feel the magic of her call; This day, like others, will be dull and drear. And then you sang . . . and brought so very near, The fragrant world beyond the prison wall, The tender fields, the trees and grass, and all The hopes and dreams that every ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin

... therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning my shaggy overcoat, and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible rain-drops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful auguries, innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry shame upon me, I should turn back within doors, resume my elbow-chair, my slippers, and ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... on, because it knows we can't. I mean, what is the use of it if we do go out? It is like salt water to the thirsty man. He feels the moisture he so needs, and then realizes the maddening parching which is a hundred times worse than his original state. Life's one long drear, and—and I sometimes wish it were all over ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... shades of forests dark, Our loved isle will appear An Eden, whose delicious bloom Will make the wild more drear. And you in solitude will weep O'er scenes beloved in vain, And pine away your life to view Once more ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... certain distinguished old man of soldier-like aspect would pass them on horseback, and gaze at their two tall British figures with a look of curious and benign interest, as if he mentally wished them well, and well away from this drear limbo of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... on the moon as I tread the drear wild, And feel that my mother now thinks of her child As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door Thro' the woodbine whose fragrance shall cheer me no more. Home, home, sweet, ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd

... to discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the "Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the arrival of the teamster with the chests the night before. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... of the most dramatic incidents of the period. They had travelled half the night, coming from the Palais Royal only to find a palace awaiting them which was unheated and unfurnished though the time was mid-January. Always drear and gaunt it was immeasurably so on this occasion. Mazarin had made no provision for the queen's arrival; there, were neither beds, tables nor linen in their proper places, no servants, no attendants of any kind, only the guardians of the palace. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... stood in the middle of the room, hesitating, the priest who had admitted me passed by and took up his station at the foot of the bed. He motioned me to stand a little nearer, and suddenly the drear silence of the room was broken by the low, monotonous chant of prayers. I bowed my head, and kneeling by the bedside I took up the responses, and once for a moment clasped the white, cold hand which lay upon the coverlet, and which was all that I ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... had long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an exotic ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... a moor, Barren, and wide, and drear, and desolate, She roam'd a wanderer thro' the cheerless night. Far thro' the silence of the unbroken plain The bittern's boom was heard, hoarse, heavy, deep, It made most fitting music to the scene. Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind, Swept shadowing; ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... intent I fix my eyes, Where human nature in vast ruin lies: With pensive mind I search the drear abode, Where the great conqu'ror has his spoils bestow'd; There there the offspring of six thousand years In endless numbers to my view appears: Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust, And nations mix with their primeval dust: Insatiate still ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... altar A thousand hearts lie prone, In this drear life of shadows They yearn for thee alone. All hoping to recover From life's distress and smart, If thou, oh holy Mother, Wilt take them to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... upon those drear cliffs that had so nearly proved her monumental pile and shuddered. It ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... voice upon the wind, In dreamland you appear; But do you wonder that I find The day so long and drear? Lentis adhaerens brachiis come Once more my life to crown; Without thee 'tis too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various

... is cold and drear and strange With none who with me tarry, I hope that soon we can arrange To ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, a fool lies here Who tried to ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... dank, and drear, They found him, on the floor - It leads from Richmond Buildings—near The Royalty stage-door. With brandy cold and brandy hot They plied him, starved and wet, And made him sergeant on the spot - The Men of ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... 110 By the torments of thy lake, From my heart right earnestly Satan, I conjure thee, Zezegot seluece soter, Unto thee my prayer I make, 115 Lucifer, listen to my prayer! By the mists of liquid fire That thy regions drear distil, By the vipers, snakes that fill All its wells, abysses dire, 120 By the pangs relentlessly Given by thee To the prisoners of thy pit, By the shrieks of those in it That unceasing echo still, 125 Beelzebub, I ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... a boy as to be on the continual lookout for rewards of merit. On the contrary, the day of reckoning meant with him the day of punishment. He had heard recounted an unpleasant superstition that when the red sunsets were flaming round the western mountains, and the valleys were dark and drear, and the abysses and gorges gloomed full of witches and weird spirits, Satan himself might be descried, walking the crags, and spitting fire, and deporting himself generally in such a manner as to cause great apprehension to a small person who could ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he, who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him, and his friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice blessed, because his night shall ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... out the shell Sit ye, my Courtmen bold, Whilst I go to the mountain drear, Speech with the Dead ...
— Young Swaigder, or The Force of Runes - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchieft ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... sight of Mr. Smith and Coles I sat down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... across the lawn and looked into the room. An old gentleman with a delicate face, who wore his own white hair, was bending over a book at a desk. The room was warmly furnished, the door of the stove stood open, and Wogan could see the logs blazing merrily. A chill wind swept across the lawn, very drear and ghostly. Wogan crept closer to the window. A great boar-hound rose at the old man's feet and growled; then the old man rose, and crossing to the window pressed his face against the panes with his hands curved about his eyes. Wogan stepped forward and stood within the fan of ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... the Gallic, traveller, When far in Arab desert, drear, He found within the catacomb, Alive, the terrors of a tomb? While many a mummy, through the shade, In hieroglyphic stole arrayed, Seem'd to uprear the mystic head, And trace the gloom with ghostly tread; Thou heard'st him pour ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... of that drear night to be, Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... he felt convinced that had it not been for her, he would have fled before Mrs. Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. But there grew up in Owen's silent, lonely breast a great and overmastering ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... the gossips say, "Alone from dusk till midnight stay Within the church-porch drear and dark, Upon the vigil of Saint Mark, And, lovely maiden! you shall see What youth your husband ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... were ashen and sober, The streets they were dirty and drear, It was the dark month of October, In that most immemorial year. Like the skies, I was perfectly sober, But my thoughts they were palsied and sear, Yes, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... Sweetheart mine, Lone and drear, bereft of thee, Sweetheart mine, I shall hear thy voice no more, Never see thee cross the moor, With thy pail at morn or eve ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... will wake at midnight drear From out a dream of death, And find no dear head pillowed near, No sound of peaceful breath! May no weak wailing words arise, No bitter thoughts awake To see the tears in Memory's eyes: For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... upon the waters, dark and drear, and thick and misty. How unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love! Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable youth! What could possibly have induced you to be so very rash? And all from that ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... "A drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... youngest leaves must fall, When summer beams have ceased to play; And may not sorrow spread her pall, When joy, and hope, and love decay? Earth's loveliest scenes; The boons of heaven most cherished; Fields dressed in gladdening greens, Are drear, when hope has perished: Spring's beauteousness, Followed by summer's glory, May fade without the power to bless, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... Socialists, little consolation to the unemployed and ill-employed workers. "Figures, be they never so dazzling, and numbers, be they never so round, will not feed the hungry, house the homeless, or bring light and warmth into the drear, precarious lives of the mass of our people. The increase of trade means only an increase of production, and not necessarily of persons employed or wages gained. With the rapid concentration of industries and the perfection of labour-saving devices, production has been enormously increased ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... tunes have sung Of Turneys and of Trophies hung, Of Forests, and inchantments drear, Where more is meant ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... a strange thing," he answered, "but so it had been from my boyhood. Is the danger close and drear, is the ship upon the reef, then some one pours for me wine! Some one, do I ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... that will not send them back again without a gift? And they with naked feet and looks askance come homewards, and sorely they upbraid me when they have gone on a vain journey, and listless again in the bottom of their empty coffer they dwell with heads bowed over their chilly knees, where is their drear abode, when portionless they return." How far happier was the prisoned goat-herd, Comatas, in the fragrant cedar chest where the blunt-faced bees from the meadow fed him with food of tender flowers, because still the Muse dropped sweet nectar on ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... of Chicago. Phi Beta Kappa keys have been won by R. C. Bruce at Harvard, Ellis Rivers at Yale, Clyde McDuffie and Rayford Logan at Williams, Charles Houston and John R. Pinkett at Amherst, Adelaide Cooke at Cornell, and Herman Drear at Bowdoin. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... by the curate enlightened the child concerning sin and the Vicarious Sacrifice. This was when the leaves were falling from the trees in the park—a drear, dark night: the wind sweeping the streets in violent gusts, the rain lashing the windowpanes. Night had come unnoticed—swiftly, intensely: in the curate's study a change from gray twilight to firelit shadows. The boy ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... Sir Julien," she answered. "I have waited because I have thought that there was a chance that he might come, and to sup alone is a drear thing. If monsieur really—Ah! Behold! After all, it is he! It is he ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866. To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought, through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see his wretched and guilty ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that lady grieved, In Cumnor Hall, so lone and drear; And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be expected of men who have ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,— "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... conscience may to them dictate, Without control of king, or state, Or Papal "bull," or legate's rod— Only accountable to God. On Sunday night he reached Dunbar. From darkened sky gleamed not a star; The way he travelled o'er was drear, Made doubly so by Scotchmen's fear. At his approach like sheep they fled, Made frantic by an awful dread Of red-hot irons, spear, and sword, Of breasts thrust thro', and bodies gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They bore away what pleased ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... passed, soundlessly, through eerie labyrinths and ways which might have served as types of Coleridge's "caverns measureless to man," so utterly drear they stretched ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... rain began to fall and an overcast sky, cold and bleak, dropped lower and lower until it covered the dripping park like a sombre mantle. The glass in the hood of the hansom kept out the biting rain, but the drear approach of a wet evening was not to be denied. For nearly three hours Hugh and Grace had been driven through the park and up the Riverside, killing time with a nervous energy that was beginning to tell. The electric lights were coming on; ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... that as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington, Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... in profound and lasting loneliness, dips its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into an ocean illuminated now by the brief smile of summer but, for ten months out of the twelve, drear and utterly desolate. The most striking features of the off-shore islands is that they are islands of ice rather than of earth. Slightly rising above ocean-level, they exhibit one or two feet of sandy soil, and between this scant counterpane ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... that were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street Or rises to shake the ivied walls ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... chilling, has just set in from the north-east; a drenching rain begins to fall, the ships in the harbour ride ill at ease; the sudden gusts of wind, sweeping through the narrow streets of the city, lighted here and there by the sickly light of an old-fashioned lamp, bespread the scene with drear. At a second-story window, lighted by a taper burning on the sill, sits Franconia, alone, waiting the return of M'Carstrow. M'Carstrow is enjoying his night orgies! He cares neither for the pelting storm, the anxiety of his wife, nor ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... at midday things were no better. They had seen nothing more to disturb them, but the thoughts of both had turned upon the night, so long and drear, which was to come; and the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... emerge too rapidly from youth's enchanting realm. Only—and the word shadows so wide a space—can he do anything to make good the birthright he has unwittingly taken? She is rich, accomplished, and pretty, worth a dozen like Polly, it seems to him. Must her life be drear and wintry, except as she rambles into the pleasaunce of others? He could give up the seductive delights that have never been his, yet he has come to a time when home and love, wife and child, have a sacred meaning, and are the joys of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... he had spoken thus, before he stirred, 25 I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs Of desolation I had seen and heard In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines: Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed, Can Life still live? By ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... are memories clinging Round every breast that beats to hope and fear In this drear world, until the death's knell, ringing, Chimes with heart-moanings o'er the solemn bier; Then come love's pilgrims to the sad shrine, bringing The choicest offering of the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... line of eternal snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... length the drear and long Time soothed thy fiercer woes, How plaintively thy mournful song Upon ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... once experience the drear loneliness that had sat on her like a dead weight the last month before she turned her back on Granville and its unhappy associations. For one thing, Bill Wagstaff kept her intellectually on the jump. He was always precipitating an argument or discussion of some sort, in which she ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... farewell to the parting year, Another's come to Nature dear. In every place, thy brightening face Does welcome winter's snowy drear. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... above that dark background a calm starry sky. Who shall say what dim poetic thoughts were in her mind that night, as she looked at these things? Life was so new to her, the future such an unknown country—a paradise perhaps, or a drear gloomy waste, across which she must travel with bare bleeding feet. How should she know? She only knew that she was going home to a father who had never loved her, who had deferred the day of her coming as long as it was possible for ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But, och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, I guess ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... men the most miserable. So, too, was the later poet wrong when he listened to the waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from otherwhere, some region outside our planet, just as ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee, But, och! I backward cast my ee On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, whatever the ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... Earth, And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... ask the gallant gentlemen who vote for removal of woman's political disability if they have observed in the minds and manners of the women in the forefront of the movement nothing "ominous and drear." Are not these women different—I don't say worse, just different—from the best types of women of peace who are not exhibits and audibles? If they are different, is the difference of such a nature as to encourage a hope that activity in public affairs will work ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... very depressed frame of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again there came to him that odor of mustiness—of all smells the most eerie and drear—which he had noticed on his arrival. Somehow, as long as Nur-el-Din had been there, he had not remarked the appalling loneliness of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled Where thou, O seer! art set; Thy realm of thought is drear and cold— The world ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... is wide and thou art young. Thou hast time to win thy spurs and bring home noble spoil to lay at thy lady's feet. Only let not pride stand in the way of her happiness and thine own. Thou hast said that life is dark and drear unless it be shared with some loved one. Then how canst thou hold back, when thou hast confessed thine own love and learned that hers is thine? Take it, and be grateful for the treasure thou hast won, ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... The drear days went by, and Tony lay like a veritable Samson shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse, sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the shock of hair and beard about a white ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... peered cautiously out. The sky was dull and hazy and a steady, drizzling rain fell. There is something about a drear, rainy day which "gets" one, if he has but a makeshift shelter; and this bleak, gray morning carried poor Tom's mind back with a rush to rainy days at his beloved Temple Camp when scouts were wont to gather in tent ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... when we slapped his back with friendly roar Aesop awaited him without the door,— Aesop the Greek, who made dull masters laugh With little tales of FOX and DOG and CALF. And be it said, mid these his pranks so odd With something nigh to chivalry he trod And oft the drear and driven would defend— The little shopgirls' knight unto the end. Yea, he had passed, ere we could understand The blade of Sidney glimmered in his hand. Yea, ere we knew, Sir Philip's sword was drawn With valiant cut and thrust, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... habitation of the witch. Here he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but supported by a long staff, the drear ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... country, billowed like the sea, and from off the crest of its higher ridges, the wide level sweep of the plains was visible, extending like a vast brown ocean to the foothills of the far-away mountains. Yet the actual commencement of that drear, barren expanse was fully ten miles distant, while all about where he rode the conformation was irregular, comprising narrow valleys and swelling mounds, with here and there a sharp ravine, riven from the rock, and invisible until one drew ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... Trinity! be near Through the hours of darkness drear. When the help of man is far Ye more clearly present are. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Watch o'er our defenceless heads, Let your angels' guardian host Keep all evil from our beds, Till the flood of morning rays Wake as to a song ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... days and nights the dismal song was heard, beyond the blue wood smoke of Indian fires. Weeks of mourning passed, and all but one were comforted, but she sat all alone, and every morning she squatted on the sea grass at the shore, chanting that drear and mournful song. ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... blackest clouds around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, Forsook ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the utmost rim Of the drear waste, whereto the roadways led, She saw in piling outline, huge and dim, The walled and towered dwellings of the dead And the grim house of Hades. Then she broke Once more fierce-footed through the noisome press; But ere she reached the goal of her distress, Her pierced ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... fared until evensong, and then they came to a waste land, where their way led through a narrow darkling valley. And at the head thereof they entered upon a wide land, black and drear to the very skies, and beside the way was a black hawthorn, and thereon hung a black banner and a black shield, and by it, stuck upright, was a long black spear, and beside it was a great black horse covered with silk, and a black stone ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... aspect of the case confronted Wade and gripped his soul. He seemed to feel himself changing inwardly, as if a gray, gloomy, sodden hand, as intangible as a ghostly dream, had taken him bodily from himself and was now leading him into shadows, into drear, lonely, dark solitude, where all was cold and bleak; and on and on over naked shingles that marked the world of tragedy. Here he must tell his tale, and as he plodded on his relentless leader forced him to tell ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... drear and dark, And reason half withheld her ray— And hope but shed a dying spark, Which more misled my lonely way, * * * * * * * Thou wert the solitary star Which rose and set ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... ruddy light, and to Ruby, who had just escaped from a scene of such drear and dismal aspect, it appeared, what it really was, a place ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... my friend," I said,— "Be patient!" Overhead The skies were drear and dim; And lo! the thought of him Smiled on my heart—and then The sun shone ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... he was old. Every dart that struck her pierced deep into his own flesh, and a premonition of the coming ruin overwhelmed him with bitter grief. It was this very grief, however, that raised him to rebel. The old vacillating temper that he had shown in days gone by was his no longer. Drear and dismal though the prospect was, he did not hesitate, but threw himself into the encounter heart and soul. From this time forth, with all his cunning and sagacity, he was the steadfast leader of ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... seasons shifted,—wet and warm and drear and dry; Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar Power forgoes his ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... falls on Molly. She forgets all the cruel words that have been said, while a terrible compassion for the loneliness, the utter barrenness of his drear ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... fastin' mou, Grumble an' greet, an' mak an unco maen.[32] In rangles[33] round, before the ingle's low, Frae gudame's[34] mouth auld-warld tales they hear, O' warlocks loupin round the wirrikow:[35] O' ghaists, that wine[36] in glen an kirkyard drear, Whilk touzles a' their tap, an' gars them shake ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... sometimes. Sometimes something waves a magic wand over his being, and from the recesses of his soul dim things arise and walk. At unexpected moments they come, and he grows aware of the issues of his mysterious life, and his heart shakes and shivers like a lightning-shattered tree. In that drear light all earthly things seem far, and all unseen things draw near and take shape and awe him, and he knows not what is true and what is false, neither can he trace the edge that marks off the Spirit from the Life. Then it ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... hath a chime all cannot hear, And none can love him better than I; For he sings to me when the land is drear, And makes it cheerful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... is the time! Speed, friend; no longer wait To scatter loving smiles and words of cheer To those around whose lives are drear; They may not need you in the far-off ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... of the spring are here. It is not the cold, drear rain of autumn, but dancing, laughing rain that comes sweeping across the valley, touching the rice-fields lovingly, and bringing forth the young green leaves of the mulberry. I hear it patter upon ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... from the progress of experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Edam is at the mouth of the Y, its name really being Ydam. The size of its Groote Kerk indicates something of this past importance, for it is immense: a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, cold and drear enough, but a little humanised by some coloured glass from Gouda, often in very bad condition. In the days when this church was built Edam had twenty-five thousand inhabitants: now there ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... upon the shore, And everything is drear; The rolling waves around him roar, The angry clouds their torrents pour, His friends are gone forevermore, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... stern, metallic look about them, and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as they are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides, and dive into Pluto's drear domains—the iron-works—a god who, in the present state of railway speculation, might easily be confounded with Plutus; and with this and many other good resolutions, we returned to the hospitable care of our friend Mr Morgan, at the Angel. Next day was Sunday, and very wet. We slipped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... night. Giver of fruits! for such thou shalt be styled, Sweet Prophetess of Summer, coming forth From the slant shadow of the wintry earth, In thy car drawn by snowy-breasted swallows! Another kiss, & then again farewel! Winter in losing thee has lost its all, And will be doubly bare, & hoar, & drear, Its bleak winds whistling o'er the cold pinched ground Which neither flower or grass will decorate. And as my tears fall first, so shall the trees Shed their changed leaves upon your six months tomb: The clouded air will hide from Phoebus' eye The dreadful change ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... on the down Quivers naked and cold, And the mid-aged and old Pace the path there to town, In these words dry and drear It seems to them sighing: "O winter ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... the solemn pines and listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... of thought, philosopher, Too long hast thou been dreaming Unlightened, in this chamber drear, While summer's sun is beaming! Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson



Words linked to "Drear" :   dreary, sorry, uncheerful, grim, cheerless, disconsolate, depressing



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