"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew; What time hot Sirius glows, And Egypt's thirsty field the covering deluge knows; But whence the wonder flows, O Father Nile! no mortal e'er did view. Along thy bank not any prayer is made To Jove for fruitful showers. On thee they call! Or in sepulchral shade, The life-reviving, sky-descended powers Of bright Osiris hail,— While, wildly chanting, the barbaric choir, With timbrels and strange ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... dim, sepulchral light penetrated the vertical gallery, which became wider and wider. I could make out to the right and left long dark corridors like immense tunnels, from which awful and horrid vapors poured out. Tongues of fire, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... made as to the issue of the trial in all the neighbouring coffee-houses. Ennui, impatience, disgust sat on almost every countenance. The figures passing and repassing, rendered more ghastly by the pallid lights, and who in a slow, sepulchral voice pronounced only the word—Death; others calculating if they should have time to go to dinner before they gave their verdict; women pricking cards with pins in order to count the votes; some of the deputies ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the shadow of death over the Greeks without any clear hope of immortality. The restriction of the color on their vases to dim red (or yellow) with black and white, is greatly connected with their sepulchral use, and with all the melancholy of Greek tragic thought; and in this gloom the failure of color-perception is partly noble, partly base: noble, in its earnestness, which raises the design of Greek vases as far above the designing of mere colorist nations like the Chinese, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... dishevelled blankets. A golden lizard, the very genius of desolate stillness, had stopped breathless upon the threshold of one cabin; a squirrel peeped impudently into the window of another; a woodpecker, with the general flavor of undertaking which distinguishes that bird, withheld his sepulchral hammer from the coffin-lid of the roof on which he was professionally engaged, as we passed. For a moment I half regretted that I had not accepted the invitation to the river-bed; but, the next moment, a breeze swept up the long, dark canyon, and the waiting files ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... was unclean and the woman who was impure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns, stand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek, and hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping with fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and infernal voices crying, "Unclean! ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... correctly. Here, listen to this. Now here's a little incident I found this evening that interests me immensely. It proves to my mind one of two points I hold in regard to Marshal Ney. Listen," and he read at length from his book, a dry, sepulchral monotone that grated on the ear until ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... silk became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the Sabbath had commenced. 'The forge was mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses and the bustle of men in a moment ceased. A deep, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... connexion with the posture of the figure, to set the question at rest. The monument, in its original state, must have been not inferior in any respect to the best of the same period in Westminster Abbey; and the curious reader is referred for farther particulars of it to "The Sepulchral Antiquities of Great Britain, by Edward Blore, F.S.A." London, 4to, 1826: where may also be found interesting details of some of the other tombs and effigies in the cemetery of the first house ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... in time," said Amelia behind her mask, and in a supposed-to-be-sepulchral voice. "The sawney is all prepared to don her costume. Hither, slave! and see that she dons the costume quickly, for we ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... torn from ancient mastabas, were set over windows and doors, and stone colossi of kings and gods leered and threatened from dusky corners. Sarcophagi of black basalt, red porphyry and pink-veined alabaster, cunningly carved, were disposed as they had been found in the pits of the dead, with the sepulchral vases and the ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... had yet really assailed it; but one of the peculiar properties of the preservative used by Doctor Pormont, is its pervading sepulchral odour. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... idea, it is astonishing how rapidly it gained possession of my judgment, altering the whole tenor of my thoughts, and if not exactly transforming the situation into one of cheerfulness and ease, at least robbing it of much of that sepulchral character which had hitherto made it so nearly unbearable to me. The surroundings, too, seemed to partake of the new spirit of life which had seized me. The room looked less shadowy, and lost some of that element of mystery which had made its dimly ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... impiously good, With blood her own, she soothes the brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By mine be punish'd; on their funeral biers "His must be laid; one sinning house must fall, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... are Essays on Vulgar Errors (Pseudoxia Epidemica), and Hydriotaphica or Urne burial; the latter suggested by the exhumation of some sepulchral remains in Norfolk, which led him to treat with great learning of the funeral rites of all nations. To this he afterwards added The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunxial Lozenge, in which, in the language of Coleridge, he finds quincunxes "in heaven above, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to the Under-World, Where demon shades sit with their pinions furled Along the cavern's walls with poisonous breath, In rows here mark the labyrinths of Death. The King with torch upraised, the pathway finds, Along the way of mortal souls he winds, Where shades sepulchral, soundless rise amid Dark gulfs that yawn, and in the blackness hide Their depths beneath the waves of gloomy lakes And streams that sleep beneath the sulphurous flakes That drift o'er waters bottomless, and chasms; Where moveless depths receive Life's dying ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... who love Scott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavors to disguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and mercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imagination which culminate in "Castle Dangerous" cast a Stygian hue over "St. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... quite forgotten my misfortune, and was beginning to think how well I should like to have Fanny O'Conor for my wife. In this frame of mind I was bending over towards her as a servant took away a plate from the other side, when a sepulchral note sounded in my ear. It was like the memento mori of the old Roman;—as though some one pointed in the midst of my bliss to the sword hung over my head by a thread. It was the voice of Larry, whispering in his agony just ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... On the sepulchral mound she had raised there yet lay the cross of boughs, the last work of him who slept beneath. Helga lifted up the cross, in pursuance of a sudden thought that came upon her. She planted it upon the burial mound, over the priest and the dead ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... heavily than before. So far as any outward object or circumstance could be said to be in harmony with his mood, the dismal lane, the failing light, the bitter air, were at that moment sympathetic to him. The tomb itself is not more sepulchral than certain streets and places in Prague on a dark winter's afternoon. In the certainty that the last and the greatest of misfortunes had befallen him, the Wanderer turned back into the gloomy by-way ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... surround, and will follow after them; never thought on their own place between the past and future; on the continuity of labor that unites all the generations into one whole; on the common end and aim, only to be realized by the common effort; on the spiritual post-sepulchral life even on earth of the individual, through the thoughts he transmits to his fellows; and, it may be— when he lives devoted and dies. in faith—through the guardian agency he is allowed to exercise over the loved ones ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... opened just far enough to permit a very diminutive call-boy to be squeezed through—seem to lead to unexplored regions. But stranger than even the clerk, or the undefined but yet perfectly tangible weirdness of the doors is the tinkling of a sepulchral bell, and the responsive tramp of a heavy-heeled boot. And strangest of all is a huge black board whereon are marked the figures from one to twenty, over some of which the word 'Out' is written; and the visitor notices with ever-increasing ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... vilor or farm within the district is derived from them." The church build at the end of the village, was erected at the formation of the parish by bishop Ralph in 1230. It has a nave and north aisle with a small sepulchral chapel appendant. In this portion of the church which belongs to the manor of Dedisham, is a curiously sculptured female figure, destitute of any inscription, but traditionally said, to belong to a member of the family of Tregoz.—There ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... Gothic city; and, in fact, ideal heroic statues of the early Renaissance are fortunately not only ugly, but comparatively few in number. There remained, therefore, for sculpture, unless contented to dwindle down into brass and gold miniature work, no regular employment save that connected with sepulchral monuments. During the real Middle Ages, and in the still Gothic north, the ornamentation of a tomb belonged to architecture: from the superb miniature minsters, pillared and pinnacled and sculptured, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... tinges A silent, cold, sepulchral stone; And evening throws her crimson fringes But round his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... had almost walked into it. Now she parted the bushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral echo. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think of looking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come. And in a little while—a very little while—Antony would ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... the artist of those few imperfect plates, had thrown as much light on the infancy of earth and its tribes as by the "shining words" that flowed from his calm, starry knowledge! Plates and copies, all rested now in peace and dust, "housed with darkness and with death," on the sepulchral shelves of the lobby to which they were consigned,—rays intercepted, world incompleted. The Prometheus was bound, and the fire he had stolen from heaven lay imbedded in the flints of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which Uncle Jack and the Anti-Publisher ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man's voice seemed to put spirit into the other men. "Cristo! a pretty time for parson stuff!" Tonet jeered with a sepulchral laugh, and the two sailors began to curse at the old man with blasphemous obscenities. Danger, instead of crushing them, seemed to translate despair into raving impiety. The skipper shrugged his shoulders indifferently. A good Christian ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... stood a number of mortuary chapels, gloomy and ugly. An exception to this dull magnificence in death was a marble slab, newly set against the wall, in memory of a Lucifero—one of that family, still eminent, to which belonged the sacrilegious bishop. The design was a good imitation of those noble sepulchral tablets which abound in the museum at Athens; a figure taking leave of others as if going on a journey. The Lucifers had shown good taste in their choice of the old Greek symbol; no better adornment of a ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... corridor round the great court are the ancient marbles or Muse Lapidaire, one of the best in Europe. The sepulchral inscriptions form a most interesting series of epitaphs, in many instances most tender and affecting. Indeed, reading these records of the love of kindred among the ancient heathen, from the Augustan age upwards, one would incline to believe that the Romans of that day were already ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... ween, that his heart beat as loud and his eye shone as bright as Edith's, when he saw who had watched for his footsteps on the sepulchral knoll; Love, forgetful of the presence of Death;—so has it ever been, so ever shall it be! He hastened his stride, and bounded up the gentle hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came round the knees of Edith. Then Harold shook the bird from his wrist, and it fell, with ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did not answer. She laid a compelling hand on Mrs. Bean's shoulder and turned her so that she looked straight at the small group of home-stayers down on the wharf. She pointed a sepulchral finger, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... valleys, meads, no changes ye are mourning; 'Tis to the hopeless every star appears Like lamps in dark sepulchral vistas burning— And every dew-tipp'd flower is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... was so close that I could hear its breathing, and then it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it had come upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke the sepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on the part of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and I felt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and down until it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then, subdued, ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... (who died in 1299) built the chapel of SS. Ambrogio and Margherita, which was used as the sepulchral chapel of the family. It opens to the nave, with two pointed arches with an oculus above. In the middle of the side wall, between two sarcophagi of white marble, is that of Allegranza di Rho, second wife of Moschino della Torre and mother of the Patriarch Gastone. She died July 23, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... towards the walls of Nice. It was inhabited by a people, whom Ptolomy and Pliny call the Vedantij: but these were undoubtedly mixed with a Roman colony, as appears by the monuments which still remain; I mean the ruins of an amphitheatre, a temple of Apollo, baths, aqueducts, sepulchral, and other stones, with inscriptions, and a great number of medals which the peasants have found by accident, in digging and labouring the vineyards and cornfields, which now cover the ground where the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... The heart's sepulchral stone away, Be this our resurrection day, The singing Easter of the soul: O Gentle Master of the Wise Teach us ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... towards Rodin, while the prelate succeeded in making his escape. Rodin, stretched upon the carpet, his limbs twisted with fearful cramps, was writhing in the extremity of pain. The violence of his fall had, no doubt, roused him to consciousness, for he moaned, in a sepulchral voice: "They leave me to die—like a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. There are four ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... state of the abbey,[109] and even in that of Ducarel's time, there is, and was, a great dearth of sepulchral monuments. Indeed I know not whether you need be detained another minute within the interior; except it be, to add your share of admiration to that which has been long and justly bestowed on the huge organ[110] at the west end of the nave, which is considered to be the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... officers crowded close to him. In sepulchral tones, Pulido exclaimed dramatically. He spoke as though he were initiating Roddy ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and close beside it pale light spread out upon the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... way of making conversation, asked him if he was interested in all those outdoor games. But his voice dropped to the sepulchral and confidential, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... new romantic movement. His group "The Moment of Peril" was followed by "The Genius of Poetry," "Eve," and other ideal works that mark his development. His busts, such as those of Lord Leighton and Queen Victoria; his statues, such as "Sir Richard Owen" and "Dr Philpott, bishop of Worcester"; his sepulchral monuments, such as that to Lord Leighton in St Paul's cathedral, a work of singular significance, refinement and beauty; and his memorial statues of Queen Victoria, at Hove and elsewhere, are examples of his power as a portraitist, sympathetic in feeling, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the poor ghost is insulted. Night after night on the stage his effigy appears—cadaverous, sepulchral—no longer as Shakspere must have represented him, aerial, shadowy, gracious, the thin corporeal husk of an eternal—shall I say ineffaceable?—sorrow! It is no hollow monotone that can rightly upbear such ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... proceeded towards what she supposed an old grave, took down her spade, and commenced her operations. After a good deal of toil she arrived at the object of her labour. Raising the first head, or rather skull, that came in her way, she was about to make it her own property, when a hollow, wild, sepulchral voice exclaimed, "That is my head; let it alone!" Not wishing to dispute the claimant's title to this head, and supposing she could be otherwise provided, she very good- naturedly returned it and took up another. "That is my father's head," bellowed the same voice. Wishing, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... then among our party who believed that she might still come back among us, and, with due assistance from some cognate susceptible spirit, explain to us the cause of her widowed husband's liberality. Alas, alas! if we may judge of the Romans by ourselves the true reason for such sepulchral grandeur would redound little to the credit of the lady Cecilia Metella herself or to that of Crassus, her bereaved and ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... banner of white ornamented with a great tortoise—the sacred animal of Chinese religion—with gold eyes and claws. All round the side of the room were set coloured lights, shaded and dim. Coming from the bright outer sunlight, the place in its shadowed state seemed half- sepulchral. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... voice, when suddenly his tormentors appeared in terrible guise. Each white, ghostly face was lighted up as by a tongue of fire; terrible eyes gleamed from under wide-crowned cavalry hats and a voice was heard, in a sepulchral whisper, "Nex' time we come fer you, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... place I failed to find the burrowing owl, although there can be little doubt of his presence there, especially out on the plains. Not far from Denver one of these uncanny, sepulchral birds was seen, having been frightened from her tunnel as I came stalking near it. She flew over the brow of the hill in her smooth, silent way, and uttered no syllable of protest as I examined her domicile—or, rather, the outside of it. Scattered about the dark doorway were a ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... tried to escape. But he had not gone a step when he felt himself seized by the arm, and heard two sepulchral ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... scarce begun the solemn service, when a great flash of lightning filled the small close room, followed by a roar of thunder that drowned for a time the sepulchral voice of the clergyman. Fifine drew nearer to her lover and looked pleadingly into his face. But something in his eyes chilled and repelled her, she knew ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... just as well, for men who have three or four highly critical and possibly hostile meetings to address later in the day are not likely to waste good things upon an assembly who probably cannot hear them, and will only say "Hear, hear!" in sepulchral ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... atrium, in one of which was the sarcophagus of Claudia Hermione, the renowned pantomimist. The best discovery, that of pagan tombs exactly on the line with that of S. Peter's, was made in the presence of Grimaldi, November 9, 1616. "On that day," he says, "I entered a square sepulchral room (10 ft. x 11 ft.), the ceiling of which was ornamented with designs in painted stucco. There was a medallion in the centre, with a figure in high relief. The door opened on the Via Cornelia, which was on the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... for us to know; and probably, if capable of speech, she could tell us the strangest stories of air and water. Gifted, or afflicted, as she is with such terribly penetrant power of sense, her notion of apparent realities must be worse than sepulchral. Small wonder if she howl at the moon that shines upon such ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... within Stonehenge. Each minute the stones appear to increase in bulk, and the problem of their coming grows more inscrutable. Then if wearied with such vastness, the eye may wander over the surrounding plain, broken in almost every direction by the sepulchral mounds, or Barrows, which cluster to the number of two hundred or more about the venerable stone circle. The connection between Stonehenge and the Barrows, seems almost irresistible. The hands which raised those huge monoliths ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... you are, gentlemen," said the tall man on the grey horse. His voice was deep and sepulchral, with an occasional flutter of tenderness like a glint of light ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Lascar moving about, undoing the fastenings of the tent, and striking a light. A thought suddenly struck me, and, with an impulse I could then ascribe to nothing short of desperation, though its effects were so providential, I uttered, in a loud, but sepulchral tone, "Kulassi! Lascar." "Sahib!" was the instantaneous response, and my heart beat quicker at the success of my attempt. I lay still again, for the reptile, evidently roused, made a movement, and its head, as I suppose, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... almost sepulchral silence, and when the morning broke, the City of Boston, at a scarcely reduced speed, was ploughing her way through great banks of white fog. The decks, the promenade rails, every exposed part of the steamer, were glistening with wet. Up on the bridge, three officers ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heard, mingled with a gurgling as of wine being poured. Looking up, we beheld, through arrow-slits and port-holes, three masks, cross-legged seated in the abdomen, and holding stout wassail. But instantly upon descrying us, they vanished deeper into the interior; and presently was heard a sepulchral chant, and many groans ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... shoot!" said Joe, in low, sepulchral tones, his head thrust between Sneak's legs, whither he had crawled unobserved, and was now peering out at ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her, in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault. The image of an armed knight is graven Upon it, clad in perfect panoply— Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, Grauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield. Around, in Gothic ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... her burial sod As the cell of sepulchral sleep, It shall be as the shrine of a radiant god, And the pilgrim shall visit that blest abode To worship, and not to weep; And as he turns his steps aside, Thus shall he breathe his vow: 'Here sleeps a self-devoted bride, Of old to ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me together; or shall I communicate with one at a time?" demanded Doortje, in her husky, sepulchral voice; which, it struck me, obtained its peculiar tones partly from nature, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... martyrs are preserved in cases placed round the church. Large sections of the walls in the church are shelved and divided into pigeon holes, each containing a skull! I saw no less than 600 or 700 of these skulls (by actual count). The bones "are worked into the walls in a species of sepulchral mosaic." These bones, it is said, had been in their graves about 400 years. The old pictures of the apostles are painted upon slates, one of them bearing ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... commanded the gypsy in sepulchral tones. "If you attempt to pass, the snake will strike you and the owl will tear you. The spirit of wisdom is in our presence. The Stone God has already told me your fate. It is worth your ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... long, so long that Bertram, uneasy and suffering, called him again and again, but without response. Half an hour—an hour passed, and then he feebly and painfully crept to the doorway of the tomb. He saw Atma prostrate on the damp sepulchral mould, his face buried in his hands, and beside him lay still, and cold, and lifeless, a girl attired in bridal finery, with jewels gleaming on her dark hair and on her ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... scene before the palace of Brabantio was received with sepulchral silence. When that of the Council of Ten came, and the narration of the vicissitudes of Othello was ended, the public broke forth in prolonged applause. Then I said to myself, "A good beginning is half the work." At the close of the first act, my adversaries, who were such solely on account ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... at this sepulchral-looking personage, then at each other interrogatively, and began to feel very uncomfortable. The magpie, perched upon the hanging shelf, suddenly flapped his wings, and repeated, in his turn, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that met our eyes on looking around. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees and we were accustomed to the contemplation of each other's emaciated figures, but the ghastly countenances, dilated eye-balls, and sepulchral voices of Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could bear.' Franklin, on his part, was equally dismayed at the appearance of Richardson and Hepburn. {104} 'We were all shocked,' he says in his journal, ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... door of the mill, as from a sepulchral tavern, blew a cold wind like the very breath of death upon me, just when that pang shot, in absolute pain, through my heart. For a wind had arisen from behind the mill, and we were in its shelter save where a window behind and the door beside me allowed free passage to the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... poor girl. On the second occasion the icy hand of her godfather was laid upon her shoulder, causing her the most horrible distress, an indefinable sensation. "You must obey the dead," he said, in a sepulchral voice. "Tears," said Ursula, relating her dreams, "fell from his ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral voice; "I shan't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... consequences of his furious temper. The living paid him his dues in pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. When their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish frolics and friskings; sharp, shrill little whinnying squeals and squeaks, followed by lengthened, sepulchral "O-h's"—all formed together such an irresistibly ludicrous picture as made "Les Anglaises pour Rire" of Poitier and Brunet one of the most comical pieces of acting I have ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... I shall have to languish in purgatory much longer," the sepulchral voice replied with a deep sigh; but the next moment the ghost yelled out in terror: "Oh! Good Lord!" and began to run away as fast as it could. A shrill whistle was heard, and then another, and the police director laid ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... George Fennell was lying on the straw upon the floor. He had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking apprehensively to see what the opening of the door would reveal as the cause of this interruption to the usually sepulchral stillness of the jail. Reuben was standing in the middle of the floor, eagerly gazing in the same direction. Perez sprang to his brother's side, his face beautiful with the joy of the deliverer. If he had been a Frenchman, or an Italian, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... purchases of food and tobacco, but as his conversational powers did not seem to go beyond a sepulchral "Yah", which he used indifferently for yes and no, neither Katherine nor Phil could get much information out of him. When he had gone, Miles came back from wood-cutting on the slopes above the portage, and was immediately started ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the Roman Campagna. In this garb, they look like antique Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might have represented the last survivor of that vanished race, hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over his lost life ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my playful footsteps trod, Where now my head must lay; The meed of pity will be shed In dew-drops o'er my narrow bed, By nightly skies and storms alone; No mortal eye will deign to steep With tears the dark sepulchral deep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... steeply-sloping banks and winding shores, looks more like a river than a strait, and it everywhere discloses evidence of the residence of an almost pre-historic people in relics of nations that inhabited its banks before the invasion of the Romans. There are hill-forts, sepulchral mounds, pillars of stone, rude pottery, weapons of stone and bronze; and in that early day Mona itself, as Anglesea was called, was a sacred island. Here were fierce struggles between Roman and Briton, and Tacitus tells of the invasion of Mona by the Romans and the desperate conflicts ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... as we are too apt to portray her, beauty bowered in willows, and bending over a sepulchral urn; neither is she a tragic queen, pathetic only in her weeds. She is an active, as well as passive virtue; an habitual, not an occasional sentiment. She should be as familiar to woman as her daily cross; for acquiescence in the detail of Providence is as much a ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... "In the Gloaming" in a deep, rich contralto voice which seemed fraught with a weird, melancholy power. When I say that her voice was ineffably sympathetic I would not have you confound this quality either with the sepulchral or the aspirated tone which usually is made to do duty for sympathy, especially in contralto voices. Every note was as distinct, as brilliantly resonant, as a cello in a master's hand. So clear, so full the notes rang out that ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... three days most people leave the city in a kind of panic. The stillness is awful. A longer stay would reduce one to a state of melancholy madness. A few poets, however, have been able to endure, and even to love, the sepulchral stillness of the city. But to appreciate Venice one must ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... was entirely concealed by voluminous hangings which in no wise lessened the effect of its mournful tones. Eighteen sepulchral silver lamps were suspended by chains from lances, bearing on their points flags taken from the enemy. On the pilasters of the nave were fastened trophies of arms, composed of banners captured in the numerous engagements which had made ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... That sepulchral groan had issued not from a mortal in the agony of impending death but from the smiling red lips of Viola Gwyn. The grewsome "death-rattle" was the result of the means she took to suppress a shriek of laughter by frantically clapping both ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... that every stone was washed with juices of herbs, and contained a medical power; and that Merlin, the magician, at the request of King Arthur, transported them from Ireland, and erected them in circles on the plain of Amesbury, as a sepulchral monument for the Britons treacherously slain by Hengist. This fable is thus delivered, without decoration, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... said he, in a hollow and sepulchral voice, "that could do it." Father Magauran, who was present, looked at him with surprise; as indeed did every one who had got ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... me for some minutes in silence: There was something petrifying in her regard. At length in a low sepulchral voice She pronounced ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... in the least. He lived almost continuously on that portion of the mental plane which had to do with the far-distant past, and only concerned himself with physical existence, when it consisted of mummies and mystic beetles, sepulchral ornaments, pictured documents, hawk-headed deities and suchlike things of almost inconceivable antiquity. He rarely walked abroad and was invariably late for meals, save when he missed any particular one altogether, which happened frequently. Absent-minded in conversation, untidy in dress, unpractical ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to do, and to which I cared not to ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... unchristian grief, which sobs when the grave closes over the bier of a departed loved one: but the soul flies upward to a more spiritual affection, and refuses to surrender the hold which it had upon the love and interest of the spirit that has fled. Cold and dark as the sepulchral vault is the belief that sympathy is at an end when the body is shrouded in decay, and that no further interchange of friendly offices may take place between those who have lain down to sleep in peace and us, who for awhile strew fading ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... in a spacious abbey, where they were received with the greatest hospitality. The good abbot, for the purpose of detaining his guests another day, exhibited to them the whole of the apartments, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, in which they beheld a vast sepulchral monument, covered with a superb pall, fringed with gold, and surrounded by twenty waxen tapers in golden candlesticks, while a vast silver censer, constantly burning, filled the air with fumes of incense. The guests naturally ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of this art.[7] There were at that time many lunatics in Judea, doubtless in consequence of the great mental excitement. These mad persons, who were permitted to go at large, as they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants. Jesus had great influence over these unfortunates.[8] A thousand singular incidents were related in connection with his cures, in which the credulity of the time ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... by some of its common appearances. Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... table was urged in the same direction, each paroxysm of suffering, of moaning, of struggle, on the part of the psychic, being followed a few seconds later by absolute silence. It was in these moments of profound sepulchral hush that the heavy table lurched along the floor. It was a ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... trees, and it seldom occurred to Virginia to doubt the black woman's knowledge. She wanted her father to live! Life seemed so dizzily upset with no Matty, with no Milly Ann, and no—father, somewhere in the world. Matty's next words, spoken in a sepulchral whisper, bore down on ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... of the Volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus—small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!—rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... chairs and tables, and these were all of black bamboo arranged in two long sociable rows from every window. Between the chairs stood an occasional table, suggestive of something eatable or drinkable to come, and on every table and nearly every chair were sepulchral ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Vivian with a sepulchral voice, "'tis all over with me: I have been thinking what would come next. This is too much: I am already dead. Have Boreall arrested; the chain of circumstantial evidence ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the thing was only too apparent. One had only to look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing suggestive of her own ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... woods, and occasionally revealing her wan and wasted crescent through gaps in the clouds. Waning in her last quarter, and struggling amid banks of vapour, she yet retained sufficient, magnitude and lustre, when risen a few more degrees, to dispel the almost sepulchral darkness that had hitherto invested the ruins, and thus proved a more effectual protection to the travellers than their own courage. Of this Roland was well aware; and he watched the increasing light with sullen and gloomy forebodings; though still exhorting his two supporters to hope ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... like us they dread the bosom Of chill earth's sepulchral gloom; They will find them where to blossom, And perhaps select ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... he, "I know them." His face was almost sepulchral as he answered her, and as she looked at him she perceived that a slight quiver came upon his lips as she pronounced with peculiar clearness the two last names ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... the priests mingles with the grand knell of death that sweeps through the air. All is profoundly impressive: the procession of priests, with their burning tapers; the drapery of black on the horses; the coffin with its dead; the weeping mourners; the sepulchral chant; the sudden cessation of all the business of life, and the rapt attention of the multitude; the deep, grand, death-knell of the bells; the glitter of domes and cupolas on every side; the green-roofed sea of houses; the winding streets, and the costumes of the people—form a spectacle ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... sometimes under the same roof with establishments of a very different and peculiarly unedifying order. The students had extraordinary privileges, which by all accounts they abused extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggered in the street "with their thumbs in their girdle," passed the night in riot, and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo in the romance of "Notre Dame de Paris." Villon tells us himself that he was among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like coffeehouse boxes, covered a-top; in another, a parcel of ale-house benches; in a third, a puppet-show representation of a tin cascade; in a fourth, a gloomy cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault half lighted; in a fifth, a scanty flip of grass-plat, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... he positively loathed, nor could it be reasonably expected that the confidence necessary for a declaration was to be forgotten by so sepulchral a form ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... long prepared for such a message. Too well I know my judges. After all Their cruel treatment I can well conceive They dare not now restore my liberty. I know their aim: they mean to keep me here In everlasting bondage, and to bury, In the sepulchral darkness of my prison, My vengeance with me, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... crimson splendor in the farewell rays of the setting sun. No painter's brush could do justice to the prismatic tints which hover around the higher peaks. But this flood of glory is soon followed by the pure whiteness of death. "Like a gigantic ghost shrouded in sepulchral sheets, the mountain now hovers in the background of the landscape, towering ghastly through the twilight until darkness ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... modelled after Mrs. Renshaw's well known poem, "A Symphony". The various precepts are without exception sound and commendable. Helene E. Hoffman presents a brief but pleasing critique of Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial; or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk". It is refreshing to discover a modern reader who can still appreciate the quaint literature of the seventeenth century, and Miss Hoffman is to be thanked for her sympathetic review of the pompous, Latinised ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... asserted itself. In a sepulchral voice, he spoke: "One key to the right, in writing. One to the left to read. Hands up, Warren, you're wanted in Paris, and we have the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... as cupboards. But probably these are due to later occupants. The Baron de Baye, who explored these caves, picked up worked flints, showing that their primitive occupants had been men of the prehistoric age, and other caves associated with them that were sepulchral were indisputably of the Neolithic age. [Footnote: De Baye (J.), ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... with an ardent enthusiasm for the work that they were taking under him. Hence the body-snatching and other stories. Mondino continued to be held in high estimation by the Bolognese for centuries after his death. Dr. Pilcher calls attention to the fact that his sepulchral tablet, which is in the portico of the Church of San Vitari in Bologna, and a replica of which he was allowed to have made in order to bring it to America, is the only one of the sepulchral tablets in the great churches of Florence, San Domenico, San Martino, the Cathedral and the Cloister ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... his pocket-knife under the window and raised it a little, and then placed his lips to the crack, and spoke in a sepulchral tone, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... suppressed but volcanic, working towards a change. Once or twice he staggered me by answering some casual question in a tone which, to say the least of it, suggested an ungainly attempt at facetiousness. A look at his sepulchral face would reassure me, but did not clear up the mystery. Something ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of these sepulchral monuments were erected in the fourth and fifth centuries, they indicate a remarkable freedom from superstitions with which the religion of the New Testament has been since defiled. These witnesses to the faith of the early Church of Rome altogether ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... last!" he said, in a tone that was already sepulchral. "Canst tell me, boy, why they had golden rods to measure the city?" His nurse had been reading to him a chapter of the Revelations which had been selected by himself. "Thou seest, lad, the wall itself was of jasper and the city was of pure ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they ranged the coffins justly, Each with fitting rank and stamp, And with shows of court precedence Mocked the grave's sepulchral damp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... modern England. You may urge, that I ought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some points, tell you the facts ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Sepulchral silence! And Connie knew that this was the dreadful Skull and Bones. Her teeth chattered as she stood there, irresolute in ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... sepulchral monuments showed the magnificence and luxury of this city, being adorned with statues of birds and horses. But the wealth and boundless generosity of Gellias, one of its inhabitants, is almost incredible. He entertained the people with spectacles and feasts; and, during a famine, prevented ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... animals, of tramps, of everything natural that might invade a pasture; then as a sepulchral cry broke once more upon the air, she remembered all the tales she had ever heard of Things that visited one ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... without; it drove the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper an the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... On the first floor there was a suite of spacious rooms, still roofed over, and very dark because of the shuttered windows. I penetrated into these chambers, and I felt an almost delicious terror when I heard my footsteps echoing through the sepulchral stillness of the place. Then I would pass in review before the strange Gothic paintings and the half-effaced frescoes that still retained traces of gilt ornamentation; the fabled monsters and garlands of impossible flowers ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the chapter-house, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... still stands, a noble monument of the art of the sixth century, outside the walls of the north-east corner of Ravenna. This edifice, which belongs to the same class of sepulchral buildings as the tomb of Hadrian (now better known as the Castle of S. Angelo), is built of squared marble stones, and consists of two storeys, the lower one a decagon, the upper one circular. The roof is composed of one enormous block of Istrian marble 33 ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... one to the other of them his sympathies veered. The sepulchral voice of the man seemed to express Hastings' own thoughts; yet her sweet appeal awoke resentful fury for what words he dared say to her. If only Hastings might explain, when she stared so reproachfully, that it was only ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... water-hole. He's alone—he's looking for something. He rides in circles. He's off his horse and bending over—What? A skeleton! Yes, it's the skeleton of one of them other Mexicans." Strange's voice became positively sepulchral as his spirit control took fuller possession of his earthly shell and as his visions resolved themselves into clearer outline. "See! He swears an oath to avenge. And now—the scene changes. Everything dissolves. I'm in ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach |
