"Gloom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osborne with anxiety. With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, how was he to extract that money from the governor, of which George was consumedly in want? He began ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his manners and rose to his feet— after all, it was only a moment or two—he saw that Miss Vesta was standing behind her niece, a little gray figure melting into the gloom of the twilight hall. The two now entered ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... the whole western sky an atmosphere of intense crimson light, with scattered golden clouds, and surrounded by a deep violet splendor. The extremities of the plain, from the eye being dazzled with this central effulgence, lay in a solemn and nearly impenetrable gloom. The castle in ruins, seen by this light, looked peculiarly beautiful and impressive. In the court on the wall was an inscription, purporting that a society in honor of the military career of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, in whose territory and in that of Baden the Odenwald chiefly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... necessity for great care in the appointment of army officers, because if, after being commissioned, they had any organic trouble, they were disqualified for further discharge of their duty, and would be retired on three-fourths pay without rendering any real service to the government. She listened with gloom to my explanation, and asked me to look at the papers. I took them in her presence and went through them. I found that the young man had, on the basis of 100, made 93 per cent in all his mental examinations. That isn't done by every candidate ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... the heavy clothing, blankets and food had not come up, and perhaps would not arrive until the next day. Gloom as dark as the night itself began to spread among the young troops, but Jackson gave them little time for bemoaning their fate. Fires were quickly built from fallen wood. The men found warmth and a certain mental relief in gathering ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the girl these were days of gloom, but Frank, on the other hand, was strangely happy and content. His passion for Lady Eleanor was still unabated, and though, to gratify his father, he had consented to marry Lady Emily, he had already taken such steps to prevent their ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and, after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, descried the opening of the outfall drain opposite me. It was large enough for lean men like me and Agathemer to crawl through, but certainly barely large enough. I could see, after some moments, the lower ends of the drain pipes, two dozen or more, dipping ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and black, wreathing and sidling eastwards, from steamers and chimneys. The gigantic elevators and other harbour buildings stood mistily in this inferno, their heads clear and sinister above the mirk. It was impossible to decide whether an enormous mass of pitchy and Tartarian gloom was being slowly moulded by diabolic invisible hands into a city, or a city, the desperate and damned abode of a loveless race, was disintegrating into its proper fume and dusty chaos. With relief we turned outwards to the nobility of the St ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... aided by his natural sagacity, he soon saw all the use that might be made of the physical and moral prostration of the boarder. Certain beforehand that Hardy would not take the hint, he spoke to him frequently of the gloom of the house, advising him affectionately to leave it, if he felt oppressed by its monotony, or at all events to seek beyond its walls for some pleasure and amusement. To speak of pleasure and amusement to this unfortunate man, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the Plains of Abraham. It rained during the greater part of the proceedings and this, together with the cancellation of the proposed Reception, for which fifteen hundred invitations had been issued, threw a measure of gloom over the City. But neither the rain nor the sad death of the President of the United States could be helped and certainly the Duke never flinched from the discomforts of the former. There were some five thousand troops on the ground under command of Major-General O'Grady-Haly ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... revulsion of feeling against her grandchild, and he thought Orion's wish to remove the little girl fully justified. But, on learning that she was to be placed under Paula's care, he seemed startled, and gazed at the floor in such sullen gloom that the other easily guessed what was going on in his mind. In fact, the physician suspected that the child was to serve merely as an excuse for the more frequent meetings of the lovers. Unable to bury this apprehension in his own breast he started to his feet, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lands such news is especially bitter, and to recover from such a shock and sense of irreparable loss seems almost impossible. The mind, unsatisfied with details of the sad event, is left in shadow which deepens into heavy gloom. Mr. Martyn was all alone and felt it keenly and inexpressibly. Some of his most intimate and sympathetic friends at this time, realizing how it was not good for him to be alone, encouraged him to renew his matrimonial offer to his ever beloved ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... be yours now,—the rank, the wealth, the position, the power of spending money, and tribes of friends anxious to share your prosperity. Hitherto you have only seen the gloom of this place, which to you has of course been dull. Now it will be lighted up, and you ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Pope. In contrast with it the north of the New World— Puritan, prosperous, powerful, progressive—presents probably the most remarkable evidence earth affords of the blessings of Protestantism, while the results of Roman Catholicism left to itself are writ large in letters of gloom across the priest-ridden, lax and superstitious South. Her cities, among the gayest and grossest in the world, her ecclesiastics enormously wealthy and strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans under the tyranny of a priesthood which, in ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... harshly to her after that first day. His manner was gentle and indulgent; but it seemed as if his love had died, leaving in its place only a pitiful tenderness, strangely blended with sadness and gloom. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable state of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen. They find an advantage too; for it is a general, popular error, to imagine the loudest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... against the windows outside and made little drifts on the sills. The fire had gone out and the bitter storm beat against the casements and howled in the chimney, and the dusk of the night began to mingle with the thick white flakes, and brought upon the solitary man a great gloom and horror of loneliness. It seemed to him that his life was done, and his strength gone from him. He had labored in vain for years, for this end, and he had failed to attain it. It were better to have died than to suffer the ignominy of this defeat. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... this he had removed with Mrs. U. to the village of Weston Underwood. His health had again given way; and in 1791 Mrs. U. became paralytic, and the object of his assiduous and affectionate care. A settled gloom with occasional brighter intervals was now falling upon him. He strove to fight it by engaging in various translations, and in revising his Homer, and undertaking a new ed. of Milton, which last was, however, left unfinished. In 1794 a pension of L300 was ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... illumined only her, and covered with her shadow the low ceiling,—a shadow that seemed to hang above her like a pall ready to fall from ghostly fingers and smother her in its folds; the others lounged about the room and waited on her pen, in gloom they, their faces gleaming from that dusk demoniacly. It was a concealed room, entered by secret ways, unknown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... audible to any one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are confused; wonderful days of flawless purity are intermingled with storm and gloom. At last the time comes when a great snowfall has to be expected. There is hard frost in the early morning, and at nine o'clock the thermometer stands at 2 deg.. The sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly with films of cirrus and of stratus in the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... no pomp now, no military guard, or blazing torches. All about us was gloom and silence, the houses fronting the narrow passage black, although a gleam of fire revealed the surface of the water below. The rough paving made walking difficult, and I tripped twice during the descent, once wrenching an ankle, but with no outcry. ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... itself. So, resplendent in his gold-laced uniform and the smartly imposing hat of his rank and office, let him enter and make his bow,—Admiral Sir. Peter Warren, by your leave, Knight of the Bath, Member of Parliament, destined to lie at last in the stately gloom of the Abbey, with the rest of the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... circumstances, some predisposing causes of melancholy, he refused to sit down under the curse and let it poison his life, but took vigorous measures with himself and his surroundings; cultivated cheerfulness as a duty, and repelled gloom as a disease. He "tried always to live in the Present and the Future, and to look upon the Past as so much dirty linen." After reading Burke, and praising his "beautiful and fruitful imagination," he says—"With the politics of so remote a period I do not concern myself." He had a robust ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... improvise a lantern in many of its parts, it was but a few minutes before she was ready to set out. Realizing then that her mission was one of peril, and that she might not again look upon those dear faces, she kissed each of them affectionately, and amid their sobs, hurried out into the gloom, into the descending floods, toward the rushing torrents—drenched to the skin, on she passed toward the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find the waters rushing along high above and beyond the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... brother! Brooding on fancy's eggs. God did not send The light that all day long gladdened the earth, Flashed from the snowy peak, and on the spire Transformed the weathercock into a star, That you should gloom within stone walls all day. At dawn to-morrow, take your staff, and come: We will salute the breezes, as they rise And leave their lofty beds, laden with odours Of melting snow, and fresh damp earth, and ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... India is no exception; although evening in that country is peculiar and distinctive, and has the drawback that the twilight of the tropics is so brief. You are reading a book with ease, and ten minutes afterwards you can scarcely distinguish a letter. The sudden fall of night resembles the gloom produced by the rapid gathering of clouds before a thunderstorm in England, and gives for the moment a certain sense of sadness. In the last half-hour before sunset you see people hurrying along the roads and the many footpaths which intersect each other ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... in darkness. The Green, as he passed along it on the free-wheel run, merged away through gloom into obscurity. Points of light from the houses showed here and there. The windows of his home had lamplight through their lattices. The drive was soft with ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... darkness, obscurity, gloom, shadows; retreat, seclusion; screen, protection, curtain, awning, blind; spirit, ghost, specter, phantom, manes; minute ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... close against each other, and with firm trunks resembling torsos, launched forth to heaven despairing appeals with their bare arms and furious threats, like a group of Titans struck motionless in the midst of their rage. An atmosphere of gloom, a feverish languor, brooded over the pools, whose sheets of water were cut into flakes by the overshadowing thorn-trees. The lichens on their banks, where the wolves come to drink, are of the colour of sulphur, burnt, as it were, by the footprints of witches, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... parent. Many an anxious day and sleepless night did she watch at his bedside. She moistened the parched lips, and cooled the fevered brow, and raised the drooping head on its pillow. Every change in her patient for better or worse brought a corresponding sunshine or gloom to her heart. It was filial love that prompted all this. Her father died and she followed his remains to the grave. Though not a Catholic, standing by the bier she burst those chains which a cruel ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... spread wide among the rocks in shallows, or eddies in deep, dark pools, was the ancient, long, covered, wooden bridge, striding diagonally from rock to rock on stone columns, a dusky tunnel through the air, a passage of gloom flecked with glints of sunlight, that struggled in crosscurrents through the interstices of the boards, and set dancing the motes and the dust in a golden haze, a stuffy passage with odors a century old—who does not know the pungent smell of an old bridge?—a structure ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... success two heroes so different, the young poet displayed both that love and power of versatility by which he was afterwards impelled, on a grander scale, to present himself under such opposite aspects to the world;—the gloom of Penruddock, and the whim of Tristram, being types, as it were, of the two extremes, between which his own character, in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... that when the storms, by which the world is at present agitated, shall have subsided, the light of truth will break through the dark gloom of oppression—cruelty and injustice will not only hear, but obey, the voice of reason and religion; and in these United States the practice of the people will be conformable to their declaration—"That ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of Lake Taupo. Paganel took the post of leader, and his wonderful instinct shone out anew in this difficult mountain journey. His nyctalopia was a great advantage, his cat-like sight enabling him to distinguish the smallest object in the deepest gloom. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... curve, dim lights began to appear on the masts and prows of the ships; but darkness brooded over the coast. Only in the three fortified guardhouses, which had been hastily erected here, the feeble light of a lantern illumined the gloom. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... varied splendours of the days and scenes of Arden returned in our memories, the spell of the Forest came upon us, and the mysterious cadence of the rain, falling from leaf to leaf, added another and deeper tone to the harmony of our Forest life. The gloom had gone; we had all the delight of a new ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... movements of the northern tribes and the Scythian marauders, the fall of the Western Empire, the history of the civil law, the establishment of the Gothic monarchies, the rise and spread of Mohammedanism, the obscurity of the middle age deepening into gloom, the crusades, the dawning of letters, and the inauguration of the modern era after the fall of Constantinople,—the detailed history of a thousand years. It is difficult to conceive that any one should suggest such a task to himself; it is astonishing to think that, with ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... at any moment; and as the clouds rose slowly with a threatening aspect, no calculation could be made on which side the tempest would come. The lightnings illumined the heavens, serving to render the gloom more conspicuous, and the deep-toned rumblings of the thunder ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... was a signal conquest. Napoleon hastened to the Kremlin, mounted to the top of the lofty tower of Ivan, and from its height looked with eyes of pride on the far-extending city. It was grand, that vision of palatial mansions, but it was mournful in its silence and gloom, the tramp of soldiery its only sound, the flutter of multitudes of birds—ravens and crows, which haunted the city in thousands—its only sign of life. Two days before Moscow had been one of the busiest cities in the world. Now it was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... could span The gloom that bound me stark and grim (No melancholy pierced me through Before the 7.32 Had ravished Barbara from view), And yet I brooked it like a man Until ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... musician's head swung a hammock from which hung a leg; other hammocks hanging in the semi-gloom called up suggestions of lemurs and arboreal bats. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its light forward past the heel of the bowsprit to the knightheads, lighting here a naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from which protruded a pipe, here a breast covered ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... this tossing sea, Who are the sculptors of his lot condign, Who form the page of each man's destiny? Oh, Love, the greatest of the great of thee Have said, thou sacrificest all to bless, That in thee is a gloom, and are not we Designed for thee, and born but to caress? And those—they know thee not—who can ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... men, what woe is this ye suffer, shrouded in night are your heads and your faces and knees, and kindled is the voice of wailing and the path is full of phantoms and full is the court, the shadows of men hasting hellwards beneath the gloom, and the sun is perished out of heaven, and an evil ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... on a lofty mountain-side along which the road is cut, with a deep glen lying 2500 feet below us wrapped in the shades of evening. It seems to be quite night down there, and the trees are so shrouded in gloom that I can scarcely discern them in the bottom of that awful chasm. I can only clearly see defined against the sky above me, the rugged masses of overhanging ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... hollows of the dark, little windows. The baker's boy had long since mounted his broad basket, as if it were an ornamental head-dress, and whistling, had turned a sharp corner, swallowed up, he also, by the sudden gloom that lay between the narrow streets. The sloop-owners had linked arms with the defeated captains, and were walking off toward their respective boats, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... with loud Ethiopian howls of dismay. The housemaid came running; and soon it was known throughout the quarters and at the stables that Miss Jemmy was going far away to live, and would never come back any more. There had not been such excitement of gloom at Storm since Basil Kildare was brought into the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... and my full baskets shall overflow with it. This will be that new Light, that new Sun, which shall rise when the sun of this our day shall set, and shall give light to those who are in darkness and in gloom because the sun of this our day gives ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... voice had died out, and the surprise faded from his mind, he found himself believing that she had spoken the truth, for he had but little vanity, and soon her refusal seemed a natural thing to him. He slipped through all the grades of despondency until he reached a bottom of absolute gloom. Failure seemed to mark the whole of his life; he had failed with Katharine, and now he had failed with Mary. Up at once sprang the thought of Katharine, and with it a sense of exulting freedom, but this he checked instantly. No good had ever come to him from ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... farewell? Great Singer, crowned With lustrous laurel, facing that far light, In whose white radiance dark seems whelmed and drowned, And death a passing shade, of meaning slight; Sunset, and evening star, and that clear call, The twilight shadow, and the evening bell, Bring naught of gloom for thee. Whate'er befall Thou must indeed fare well. But we—we have but memories now, and love The plaint of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... stair-door open for him. Sommers looked at her searchingly, curious to find where this power lay. Her face had grown white and set. The features and the figure were those of a large woman. Her hair, bronzed in the sunlight as he remembered, was dark in the gloom of this room. The plain, symmetrical arrangement of the hair above the large brow and features made her seem older than she was. The deep-set eyes, the quivering lips, and the thin nostrils gave life to the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... ungainly forms of the old nurse and her husband harmonized well with the mellow gloom about them; and the infant Nellie completed the scene, like the spot of sunlight in the foreground of a picture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... succeeding, and at last decided on that which seemed to promise success. The dusk rapidly closed in upon us as we sat in thoughtful conversation, after which the woman rose, and, having scanned the plain near the hut as well as she could in the gloom, motioned to us ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her thoughts. It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed the Ashley high road. There were fewer houses. The farms were larger, and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut. But there was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain. She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about a quarter ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... poet of the North Sea Plain: he discovered its peculiar beauty. While the tragic note predominates, joy and humor nevertheless abound, and at the beginning of his poems Storm himself significantly placed his Oktoberlied, written in the political gloom and uncertainty of the fall of 1848. While realizing fully its inherent tragic elements, Storm loved and glorified life and thirstily drank in its beauty to the very last. This is the keynote ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... frozen flood lies as inert and motionless as a corpse. Even at Ust-kutsk, nearly 3000 miles from the Arctic Ocean, the stream is as broad as an arm of the sea, which enhances the general impression of gloom and desolation. But in this world everything is comparative, and we little dreamt, when reviling the Lena, that a time was coming when we should look back even upon this apparently earthly Erebus as a ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... said, "Ethel, you are a fool," and hobbled on to Mr. Cattermole's picture hard by. "What splendid colour; what a romantic gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand!" Lady Kew could delight in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist, who used to come ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would shiver until the bed rattled again. Strange lights would dance before my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall me by its dense gloom. All at once, while gazing at a frightful creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... and overcast; and still the footsore monarch laboured slowly on. He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. All his sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. At intervals he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless drifting blur, there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it, and bringing clouds in battalions from the west. The air presently grew cold, and then heavy drops of rain came, pattering at first like shot, but soon settling into a hard and steady fall that made the day dark and chill, tingeing the whole wilderness with gloom and desolation. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... like a wax figure. 'I have torn out my hair by the roots to give it a "done up" look, and have I succeeded? and shall I wear any flowers with this lace surplice? and what on earth shall I do with my hands? they're so black they will cast a gloom over the stage. Perhaps I can wrap my handkerchief carelessly round one, and I'll keep the other round your waist, considerable, tucked under your Watteau pleat. Will ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the house, often bending his eyes in the direction in which he had last seen his wife, as if he would fain trace her lovely form, in the gloom of the evening, still floating through the vacant space. Don Augustin received him with warmth, and for many minutes his mind was amused by relating to his new kinsman plans for the future. The exclusive old Spaniard listened to his glowing but true ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the arts and sciences are flourishing, and which is beginning to yield to our research, for one, where the irradiating beams of the sun of science have yet to be announced by the bright star of hope? Why should we leave a land illuminated with the blaze of gospel light, for one enshrouded in pagan gloom? Why should we, who are in tolerable circumstances in America, who enjoy many of the comforts of life, and are evidently on the advanced march of mind, cast away these certain, real, and growing advantages, for those which are precarious and chimerical? Why ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... strove to chase the gloom from her brow, that she might not darken by its shadow the bright sunshine of her child's early life, and with an effort at cheerfulness she exclaimed: "Now go, Willie, and get the pretty book Cousin Elizabeth gave you, and see if you can read ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... they rushed on, despite orders to remain in the battery, like a pack of hounds after a fox (wrote Hood);[264] whereupon the French rushed upon them, driving them back with heavy loss. O'Hara, while striving to retrieve the day, was wounded and captured. His mantle of gloom devolved upon Major-General David Dundas, a desponding officer, who had recently requested leave to return on furlough on the ground of ill health and inability to cope with the work. This general's letters to his ever confident relative, Henry Dundas, at Whitehall, were always ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and at odd hours, he had very little to say: he seemed rather preoccupied and introspective. He is another of your plaguedly reserved people, who when they have anything on hand wrap it up in Egyptian darkness and Cimmerian gloom. That is the correct thing in a woman—in Clarice at least: in a man I don't like it. My soul, now, is as open as the day, and when I have struck any new ideas or discoveries, I would willingly stand on a house-top—if it were flat—and proclaim them for the benefit of the world. Even my uncompleted ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... opening, laid its bosom bare, Loud thunders roll'd, and lightning stream'd; The owl at Freedom's window scream'd, The screech-owl, prophet dire, whose breath Brings sickness, and whose note is death; 160 The churchyard teem'd, and from the tomb, All sad and silent, through the gloom The ghosts of men, in former times, Whose public virtues were their crimes, Indignant stalk'd; sorrow and rage Blank'd their pale cheeks; in his own age The prop of Freedom, Hampden there Felt after death the generous care; Sidney by grief from ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... arranged, and call their masquerading, modesty. Cowards fig themselves out fiercely as "salvage men," and make us believe that they are warriors. Fools look very solemnly out from the dusk of the leaves, and we fancy in the gloom that they are sages. And many a man sets a great wreath about his pate and struts abroad a hero, whose claims we would all of us laugh at, could we but remove the ornament and ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... of cloud with ragged, crystal fringes of rain, the diamond gleams struck out from snow peaks; and yet, despite this ethereal radiance, there was a strange solemnity about the wide reaches of Spanish country, a rich gloom that brooded over the landscape with its thoughtful colouring, never for a moment ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A gloom came over the room. There was only a flickering gleam from one of Solomon John's candles that he had ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... awakening and turning his head toward the troop, while James and John are buried in profound slumber, laid in magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves, however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which from the Angel's presence is spread over ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... last night, or thereabouts, I sat on our rampart and gazed upon the prospect around, shaded with gloom. The doctor was with me, and we ran over every subject—the past, present, and the future. Such a scene—a rude fort in the interior of Borneo; such a night, dark but starlight—leaves an indelible impression on the mind, which recurs to move it even after ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the daytime they saw nothing except an occasional puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. At night there were distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom, and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent but ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... foliage of the Common. Below her, and robbed from that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the people crowding into these. Most of them had homes to go to! In the gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk through the mass. And presently the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beams of time-darkened oak, its long, narrow windows of small square panes, its black fireplace, lifeless without the flames, and its dark, grim mahogany bar stretching halfway across the south side of the room. The white floor, well sanded and polished, seemed only to accentuate the general gloom, and the great clock, ticking solemnly behind the bar, seemed to be marking time for a funeral dirge. But suddenly all changed to brightness when Betty entered. Pickering was talking to me, standing ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... was pitch dark inside, and for the moment the doctor's son could see nothing. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he saw a broken table and an old bench, and several ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... nearer fast, and nearer, Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still, and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... that she was not a pureblood Indian— I was told her father was a dark mulatto. She was always very civil to our party, showing us the best paths, explaining the virtues and uses of different plants, and so forth. I was much amused at the accounts she gave of the place. Her solitary life and the gloom of the woods seemed to have filled her with superstitious fancies. She said gold was contained in the bed of the brook, and that the murmur of the water over the little cascades was the voice of the "water-mother" ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... mountains and had joy of these sights. Higher and higher he soared until, looking toward the South, he saw the flaming land of Muspelheim. Higher and higher still he soared. With his falcon's eyes he saw the gleam of Surtur's flaming sword. All the fire of Muspelheim and all the gloom of Joetunheim would one day be brought against Asgard and against Midgard. But Loki was no longer dismayed to think of the ruin of Asgard's beauty and the ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... make the attempt. Even if it turned out to be a failure he believed he could elude any pursuer in the gloom of the cave entrance, and manage to reach the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... enacted in Scotland, the memory whereof has been in great measure lost or obscured by the deep tragedies which followed it. It is, as it were, the evening of the night of persecution—a sort of twilight, dark indeed to us, but light as the noonday when compared with the midnight gloom which followed. This fact, of its being the very threshold of persecution, lends it, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... times Sunday commenced when the sun went down on Saturday night and closed when the sun went down on Sunday night. We commenced Saturday to get a good ready. And when the sun went down Saturday night there was a gloom deeper than midnight that fell upon the house. You could not crack hickory nuts then. And if you were caught chewing gum, it was only another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart. Well, after a while we got to bed sadly ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the town was full of gloom and excitement, for it was but a few days previous that the Roman Catholics endeavoured to murder Gavazzi, while delivering one of his anti-Romanistic lectures, which, whatever their merits or demerits, were most certainly very injudicious, considering the elements of which the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... SWIFT! who made so merry with the Nine; With thy far bolder Muse, Oh, shelter mine! When she is style'd a slattern, and a trollop;— Force stubborn Gravity to doff his gloom; Point to thy Caelia, and thy Dressing-Room, Thy Nymph at ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... was only the faint glimmer from his own little lamp to light up the gloom, and the noises in the shaft ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the farther end of it; but there was a feeling that when Caldigate and Mrs. Smith were together it would not be civil to intrude upon their privacy. At this time it was dark; but their eyes had become used to the gloom, and each could see the other's face. 'Love you!' she repeated, looking up at him, speaking in a very low voice, but yet, oh so clearly, so that not a fraction of a sound was lost to his ears, with no ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Christian church turned this festival, so far as possible, into a celebration of the birth of Christ. Among the Slavonians this festival was called Kolyada; and the sun—a female deity—was supposed to array herself in holiday robes and head-dress, when the gloom of the long nights began to yield to the cheerful lights of the lengthening days, to seat herself in her chariot, and drive her steeds briskly towards summer. She, like the festival, was called Kolyada; and in some places the people ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... To gloom and passion prone, without a rhyme, Inane and madlike was he many a time, His outer self, forsooth, fine may have been, But one wild, howling waste his mind within: Addled his brain that nothing he could see; A dunce! to read essays so loth to be! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Death, who can dash the chalice from the lips Of Pleasure's votary, and hush the lyre While poetry is breathing on its strings; Death, who can quench the spirit which portrays Beauty's resemblance on the marble urn, Will steep my feelings in oblivion's gloom, Ere wintry winds disperse the sunny leaves That cluster round the bosom of the rose. But I have communed with enchanting shapes, And felt the silver gush of many a song Amid the air, until my spirit seem'd Instinct ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... things moving around. My blood would curdle as I watched some enormous antenna bar my path, or saw some frightful pincer snap shut in the shadow of some cavity! A thousand specks of light glittered in the midst of the gloom. They were the eyes of gigantic crustaceans crouching in their lairs, giant lobsters rearing up like spear carriers and moving their claws with a scrap-iron clanking, titanic crabs aiming their bodies like cannons on their carriages, and hideous devilfish ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Gonzales seemed to throw a gloom over the entire camp; for it forced all to realize how beset with danger was every step we took, and how easily it might have been one of us, lying cold in death, ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... have any right to be walking in human paths: sometimes forms of avowed terror; sometimes, which is a case of far more danger, appearances that mimic the shapes of men, and even of friends or comrades. This is a case much dwelt on by the old travellers, and which throws a gloom over the spirits of all Bedouins, and of every cafila or caravan. We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to use an expressive term of the ballad poetry) arises to any small party assembling in a single room of a vast desolate mansion: how the timid among them fancy continually ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Here is the royal vault of the Bourbons. Your glance can enter only a narrow grated window, through which a little twilight filters. If a lamp were not lighted at the back, the eye would distinguish nothing. By the doubtful gleam of this sepulchral lamp, you succeed in making out in the gloom the coffins placed on trestles of iron; to the left that of the Duke of Berry, then the two little coffins of his children, dead at birth; then in two rows those of Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, daughters of Louis XV., those ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... while the jailer remained at the door, and the barrels of muskets were seen shining in the gloom of the corridor. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... of the inner grotto the bone-coloured rock bears some resemblance to a vast pair of yawning jaws. Downward from this sinister portal the cavern-floor slopes into a deeper and darker aperture. And within it, as one's eyes become accustomed to the gloom, a still larger vision of stone towers is disclosed; and beyond them, in a nook of the grotto, three other statues of Jizo smile, each one with a torii before it. Here I have the misfortune to upset first one stone- pile and then another, while ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... deceased prior, who had been executed for adherence to the Stuart family in 1745-6; and the motto, HAUD OBLIVISCENDUM, seemed to intimate a tone of mundane feeling and recollection of injuries, which made it at least doubtful whether, even in the quiet and gloom of the cloister, Father Hugo had forgotten the sufferings and injuries of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... between the pleasure of remembering Gail's gay company and the gloom of understanding the complete implications of the Colonel's clarifying lectures. Against the background of his remarks, I could find myself appreciating the Ghopal-Klueng-Natalenko reasoning: the only way to ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Pines, he received the usual welcome, but neither its undemonstrative affection nor the restful quiet of the old home could soothe or satisfy him that night. But if his host and hostess noted the gloom on his face or his restless manner they made no comments and asked ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Cossack, enveloped in gloom, steamed noiselessly out of New York harbor, and turned her prow to the South. And when she had entered the high sea, Captain McCall from his bridge aloft sent a message down ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... there? To be happy is to have reached the goal. Peter was a little sad about Hilary, who seemed as far as ever from that goal. Why? Peter wondered. Couldn't one be happy in this lovable water-city, which had, after all, green ways of shadow and gloom between the peeling brick walls of ancient houses, and, beyond, the broad spaces of the sea? Couldn't one be happy here even if the babies did poise muddy feet on a table-cloth, not, after all, otherwise clean; and even if the poor boarders wouldn't pay their rent and the rich Jews would buy ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... the velum of canvas of the ancient gigantic structure in Rome, except that here, nature outdoing all art, spread the lovely awning over the whole vast and cavernous auditorium a mile or more across. The gloom of the interior threw the retreating slopes into a mysterious shadow in which it were easy to imagine them peopled with ranks of ghostly auditors gazing upon the stage. It was there, full in our faces, that the most startling ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... will do anything I can." I smiled, eager to lift the gloom plainly visible on her face, in contrast to her usual ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth; an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The lines of roofs and sidewalks sharp ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... room abruptly, and the orphan lay in the gathering gloom of twilight, perplexed, distressed, and wondering how she could avoid all the angularities of this amiable character, under whose roof fate seemed to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... but could hear no sound, and at length fancied that I must have been mistaken. It was just on the point of striking eight bells, and I was leaning over the bulwarks, when I thought I saw two objects through the gloom. I kept my eyes fixed on them. Dick ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... warlike and the wise; The mind that thought for Britain's weal, The hand that grasped the victor steel? The vernal sun new life bestows Even on the meanest flower that blows; But vainly, vainly may he shine, Where glory weeps o'er Nelson's shrine; And vainly pierce the solemn gloom, That shrouds, O Pitt, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting than any of the previous nights had furnished. Moreover, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had left seemed as narrow as a lane and absolutely riotous with life. The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of the Chinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps of nondescript merchandise overflowed the gloom of the long range of arcades, and the fiery serenity of sunset took the middle of the street from end to end with a glow like the reflection of a fire. It fell on the bright colors and the dark faces of the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... adorn the gloomy shades with their brilliant flowers. Among the most beautiful is the oncidium, of a yellow hue, often seen—apparently suspended in air between the stems of two trees—shining in the gloom, as if its petals were of gold. In reality it grows at the end of a wire-like stalk a yard and a half long, springing from a cluster of thick leaves on the bark of a tree; others have white and spotted blossoms, growing sometimes on rotten logs floating on the water, or on ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... news from Fredericksburg has cast a shadow over the army. We did hope that Burnside would be successful, and thus brighten the prospect for a speedy peace; but we are in deeper gloom now than ever. The repulse at Fredericksburg, while it has disabled thousands, has disheartened, if not demoralized a great army, and given confidence and strength to the rebels every-where. It may be, however, that this defeat ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... 7th century, the era of deepest intellectual gloom, philosophy was at an entire stand-still. Light arises with the 8th, when we are introduced to the Cathedral and Cloister Schools of Charlemagne; and the 9th saw these schools fully established, and an educational reform completed that was to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... from his apparently sad meditations; his fine, dark eyes were lightened by a grateful smile as he looked at Mr. Heron. It seemed as though he were glad that something had been suggested that he could do. But the smile was succeeded by a still more settled look of gloom. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shall readily assign the true reason of a scruple, which arose not so much from a superiority of reason, as from a want of ingenuity. The only temples in Germany were dark and ancient groves, consecrated by the reverence of succeeding generations. Their secret gloom, the imagined residence of an invisible power, by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, impressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror; [63] and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, had been taught by experience the use of every artifice ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... same evening at the end of a perfunctory dinner. MRS MARCH sits at the dining-table with her back to the windows, MARY opposite the hearth, and MR MARCH with his back to it. JOHNNY is not present. Silence and gloom. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their sails, and on the fifth of May bade farewell to the primitive hospitalities of Newport, steered along the rugged coasts of New England, and surveyed, ill pleased, the surf-beaten rocks, the pine-tree and the fir, the shadows and the gloom of mighty forests. Here man and nature alike were savage and repellent. Perhaps some plundering straggler from the fishing-banks, some manstealer like the Portuguese Cortereal, or some kidnapper of children ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the Master of the Harvest heard nothing, so the gloom did not pass from his face. Going to his comfortable home he repeated to his wife the dark words, that the drought would ruin the harvest, for the corn was not ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... opposite directions, Cass past the splash of light thrown across the road by the windows of the Hanover Inn, and on toward the scattered lights of Nancepean, Mark into the gloom of the deep lane down to Church Cove. It was a warm and humid evening that brought out the smell of the ferns and earth in the high banks on either side, and presently at the bottom of the hill the smell of the seaweed heaped up ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... singularly beautiful and attractive; which will still testify what high literary promise lay in him. The ruddiest glow of young enthusiasm, of noble incipient spiritual manhood reigns over them; once more a divine Universe unveiling itself in gloom and splendor, in auroral firelight and many-tinted shadow, full of hope and full of awe, to a young melodious pious heart just arrived upon it. Often enough the delineation has a certain flowing completeness, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... brightly in the grate, the softened lights diffused a mild radiance through the room, and the old impression of gloom was utterly absent when Vinton's parents entered. Neither Mrs. Arnold nor her husband was quite able to hide the surprise and embarrassment felt at the unexpected summons, but Mr. Arnold went promptly to the bedside, and, taking his son's hand, said huskily, "I'll come any time ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... perfect recluse in disposition. So I was under the impression that I was being punished by the invisible powers, which I was conscious of eminently deserving. The small painting shows this idea of Purgatorial arrest by a clever touch here and there, without depicting a frown or positive gloom. The patronizing demeanor of an artist at work upon a portrait, which we all know so well,—the inevitable effect of his faith in himself, the very breath of artistic endeavor, without which he would lounge through life asking, "Of what use is it to attempt?"—made ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... attempts at cheerfulness, the gloom of their disappointment hung heavy upon them, and it was rather a silent group that gathered in the wigwam after supper. Chris and the captain soon sought their beds and ere long their loud, regular breathing told that they had found solace for the disappointment of the day. The two ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... feast—one was 'Absent Friends,' drunk in a wistful silence, and the other, the caterer's health, greeted with vociferous enthusiasm. A few fields off the wood had been collecting all day for the Christmas camp-fire of the 10th Hussars, and by ten o'clock the blaze of it was mounting high into the murky gloom. A right merry and social gathering it was round the bright glow of this Yule log in a far-off land. The flames danced on the wide circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks.... The songs ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... were covered with pictures painted in violent hues; blues and reds and greens jarring against one another and lighting up the gloom of the place. The stone benches were always crowded, the sunlight came in through the door in a long bright beam, casting a dancing shadow of vine leaves on the further wall. There a painter had made a joyous figure of the young Bacchus ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Virginia; and in the subsequent year, they were followed by sixty of the same description. They were received by the young planters as a blessing which substituted domestic happiness for the cheerless gloom of solitude; and the face of the country was essentially changed.[34] The prospect of becoming parents was accompanied with the anxieties for the welfare of their children; and the education of youth soon became an object of attention. The necessity of seminaries of learning was felt, and several ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the work forward. Miss Eunice did not wish her girls to look upon religion and the church's service as a thing of gloom. She knew that God has "given us all things richly to enjoy," and that the way to hallow pleasure and prevent its being hurtful is "in all ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... the left of Minos, and melting into distance behind him, is seen the shadowy region of Purgatory. Four bright stars—the Cardinal Virtues—give a delicate and cheering light amid the gloom. A group of figures loaded with the burthen of their sins are about to plunge into the lake of purgatorial waters, in the hope of depositing them there. A boat wafted by the wings of an Angel is bearing departed, souls toward Heaven; and near ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... specific heat of air at constant pressure and at constant volume, the idea of an absolute zero of temperature had not been broached; but the genius of the man, while it made him lament the want of knowledge which he felt must be attainable, also enabled him to penetrate the gloom by which he was surrounded, and enunciate propositions respecting the theory of heat engines, which the knowledge we now possess enables us to admit as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... little while ago another had gone north on the breast of it, and that if he hastened it would help him to overtake her. He felt the throb of new life in his body. His eyes shone strangely in the semi-gloom. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... and a coolie had climbed, and plunged into the dense undergrowth which was so high that it nearly closed over the riders' heads. The sudden change from the blinding glare of the sun to the enchanting green gloom of the forest, from the intense heat to the refreshing coolness of the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... reminder. "And you brought ME back." He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom. "Whom has Chad brought? He's full of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah," he added, "the first thing this morning. So I'm square. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... over the pile of rocks and dirt and, stooping, stepped within the cavern. The girl was immediately behind him. Back five feet from the opening the interior was dark as night: the cavern walls, gray at the mouth, slowly paled and faded and were obliterated in the gloom. But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other habitant. But the walls themselves, where the light from without revealed ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... harem if so might be, Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see, All frosted there in the shine o' the moon— Dead for a Scarabee And a recollection that came too late. O Fate! They buried him where he lay, He sleeps awaiting the Day, In state, And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan, Gloom over the grave and then move on. Dead for ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... dagger from its sheath? He breasts his charger at the leap— He pricketh him full sharp and deep: He leaps, and then with heaving flank Gains footing on the other bank: A moment—'mid the pass's gloom, Vanish both veil and dancing plume— It seems a dream. No! there is proof, The clatter of a flying hoof, And too, the lady's steed remains, With empty seat, and flying reins; And then is borne to that wild rout, A long and proud triumphant shout. And he who led the pirate band, Urg'd ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave. The loathly alligators, lounging in the slime, lifted their horny eyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness. Lines of tall herons stood dimly in the growing gloom, like white fantastic ghosts, watching the passage of the doomed boat. All was foul, sullen, weird as witches' dream. If Amyas had seen a crew of skeletons glide down the stream behind him, with Satan standing at the helm, he would have scarcely been surprised. What fitter ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... looked round at Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for good or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in gloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that in reality only sets ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... sage Ulysses' brow. Thus with accoutrements and arms supplied, They left their brother chiefs, and took their way. Then close beside their path, by Pallas sent, Rose, on the right, a heron; through the gloom They saw it not indeed, but heard the cry. The fav'ring sign with joy Ulysses hail'd, And thus to Pallas pray'd: "Hear me, thou child Of aegis-bearing Jove, who still hast stood In ev'ry peril at my side, whose eye My ev'ry movement sees; now, Goddess, now ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... leap to festal bloom, And swallow-swift the traffic skims O'er sudden shoals of light and gloom, Made lovelier ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... in a row by the lake are smiting their heads against the dismal sky; the crows with their draggled wings are silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river is haunted by a deepening gloom. ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... glass at night, But all your race will gibber at your back! Look—in the gloom—that shade is Mad Johanna, And yonder Thing, that moves so deathly slow, Is the pale ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... You are very good, sir," murmured Aurelia, oppressed by the gloom and the peculiar atmosphere, cool—for the windows were open behind the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fence, or to play golf, or to go to Upper Egypt or the Engadine, or anything that fancy may dictate and opportunity suggest. So the kind physician advises his mournful self- tormentor, and then he himself flies round the corner and consults some brother-healer about his own subjective gloom. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... at eleven last night, fell from five till eight this morning, not in drops, but in streams, and in the middle of it a heavy pall of blackness (said to be a total eclipse) enfolded all things in a lurid gloom. Any detention is exasperating within one day of my journey's end, and I hear without equanimity that there are great difficulties ahead, and that our getting through in three or even four days is doubtful. I hope you will not be tired of the monotony of my letters. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... movement in the rear, toward the mausoleum itself. We turned, but it was too late. Two dark figures slunk through the gloom, bearing something between them. Kennedy slipped the leash off Schaef and she shot out like ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... I have felt any thing like bad spirits in Canada: I followed the ship with my eyes till it turned Point Levi, and, when I lost sight of it, felt as if I had lost every thing dear to me on earth. I am not particular: I see a gloom on every countenance; I have been at church, and think I never saw so many dejected ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... world's history, Mrs. Parker, when butter is a dollar a pound and blue-denim over-alls sell freely for three dollars a pair, I think we ought to do something to dissipate the general gloom. I want to celebrate my return to civil life, and my more recent return from the grave. Also, I would just as lief indicate to the county at large that, outside of business hours, we constitute a very happy little family here; so if you all please, I shall announce a fiesta in honor ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... breakfast. You will hardly be in time for your train," suggested Aunt Sloman in a voice that had in it all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds had gathered heavily during the parlor scene, and some large drops were rattling ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... when, reduced to a worse level than the lowest brute in the scale of creation, he lies wallowing in the kennel, your saintly lawgivers lift up their hands to heaven, and exclaim for a law which shall convert the day intended for rest and cheerfulness, into one of universal gloom, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... the two merchants in London, everything was so substantial, well kept, and comfortable, that the two friends were greatly struck by it. It was now October, and great wood fires blazed in the hall below and in all the upstairs rooms, and these quite dispelled any air of gloom that might otherwise have been caused by the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty |
