"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this great altitude, loses the sun-god's touch and strikes upon the cheek keen as the ether of the limitless heavens. A while ago, only in the distant valley winding to the south could foliage be seen. Now, all in those depths is merged in sombre shade, and not a leaf or tree breaks for miles the grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... storm? The Spectacle of Pleasure, the parade of clothes, estates, motor-cars, luxury and vanity in the sight of the workers is the culminating irritant of Labour. So long as that goes on, this sombre resolve to which we are all awakening, this sombre resolve rather to wreck the whole fabric than to continue patiently at work, will gather strength. It does not matter that such a resolve is hopeless and unseasonable; we are dealing here with the profounder ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel; "he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to my room, to cover the open car when it rained." The Prosecutor disproves this by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and servants, asked if his master was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cable's length, on one of the quarters of the Montauk, was a ship careering before the gale like themselves, though carrying more canvas, and consequently driving faster through the water. The sudden appearance of this vessel in the sombre light of the morning, when objects were seen distinctly but without the glare of day; the dark hull, relieved by a single narrow line of white paint, dotted with ports; the glossy hammock-cloths, and all those other coverings of dark ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... reinstate in strength and ripe dignity a volume which he would have taken to pieces, and redressed like an age-worn woman in a fashionable gown. So far did his son's superior taste work upon his, that at length, if he opened a new binding, however sombre, and saw a time-browned paper and old type within, the sight would give him ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the eaves and roofs, spread out more freely in the little Piazza del Ayuntamiento, bringing out of the shadows the ugly front of the Archbishop's Palace, and the towers of the municipal buildings capped with black slate, a sombre erection of the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of creeping-plants and the interlaced branches which years of neglect had allowed to cover it almost entirely; while the thick, luxuriant branches of the bread-fruit and other trees spread above it, and flung a deep, sombre shadow over the spot, as if to guard it from the heat and the light of day. We conversed long and in whispers about this strange habitation ere we ventured to approach it; and when at length we did so it was, at least on my part, with ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Sylvia's, also I had seen pictures of him in the newspapers, and had studied them with some care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you doing here?" were his first ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... though small and insignificant in itself, has a pleasing appearance, as it rushes over the rocks, and through the trees and shrubs. This mountain is thickly clothed with wood, which in many places not only excludes the rays of the sun, but produces a sombre, gloomy appearance; this, with the occasional plaintive coo of the mountain dove, (the only sound heard at this height,) creates in the mind sensations of pleasing melancholy. In some parts an open space ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... half awake. It was Stefan's sudden question which thoroughly aroused him. The dawn had come and a dim light was in the chamber, strangely dim and sombre after the light and movement in his dream. He looked across at Maritza's corner and ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... when we crossed the bridge of the Neckar, and plunged into the crowded streets of Heidelberg. Notwithstanding the obscurity, we got a glimpse of the proud old ruin overhanging the place, looking grand and sombre in ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave shadows used to come over his changeable face often enough too. There was Margaret, with her sombre beauty; and old Theresa with her worn old face. I think there was a certain indescribable reserve of gravity upon them all, but there was not one whose lips did not part in a white line when looking ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... stair of Milosis, and such the city beyond. No wonder they named it the 'Frowning City', for certainly those mighty works in solid granite did seem to frown down upon our littleness in their sombre splendour. This was so even in the sunshine, but when the storm-clouds gathered on her imperial brow Milosis looked more like a supernatural dwelling-place, or some imagining of a poet's brain, than what she is — a mortal city, carven by the patient genius of generations out of the red ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... YORK. Unto you greetings and salutation and worship, you dear, sweet little rightly-named Joy! I can see you now almost as vividly as I saw you that night when you sat flashing and beaming upon those sombre swallow-tails. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a low, sombre voice, speaking as though to herself. "Well, I suppose it's better for me to know—not to go on hoping, and hoping, and hoping. It means less misery ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Wolf's lips with such joyous confidence that the grave musician's sombre face brightened; but it swiftly darkened again, and he exclaimed, "We don't give such hasty work!" When the knight tried to tell him what he had in mind, the other brusquely interrupted with the request that he would first aid him in a more important ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... province." At all events, when the Emperor parted with all his provinces by abdicating his throne, he retained some of Titian's pictures. When he betook himself to gardening, watchmaking, and manifold masses at San Yuste, the sole luxury to be found in his simple apartments, with their hangings of sombre brown, was that master's St. Jerome, meditating in a cavern scooped in the cliffs of a green and pleasant valley—a fitting emblem of his own retreat. Before this appropriate picture, or the "Glory," which hung in the church ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... accompanied by her excellent mother. She has since married —— Hemans, Esq., then an Adjutant in the army. A great number of her pieces have appeared in the Monthly Magazine, as well as the New Monthly, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her conversation and manner, which made her the delight and charm of every society with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... His height was unremarkable, but he had immensely powerful shoulders, and a bull-like breadth of chest, that imparted a certain air of arrogance to his gait. His black brows met shaggily over eyes of sombre brown. Undeniably ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... grenadier at his gentleman's shaving elbow. "I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth," said he, with sombre dignity. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... miniature, icy cold, black, solitary, silent, River of Death, who shall live in sight of your blackness? Who may sing aloud at his toil, whether he dig, or plant, or plough, or trap, or fish? Beautiful though the grand sweep and headlong rush of the fall, the people of the settlement avoid its sombre majesty and farms were none and smaller clearings few along the upper St. Ignace. A quarter of a mile back from the fall lay the village, holding a cluster of poor houses, a shop or two, a blacksmith's forge, a large and well-conducted summer hotel patronized ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... luncheon with an air of relief. He was a man of little more than middle-age, powerfully built, inclined to be sombre, with features of a legal type, heavily jawed. "Always tactful, dear hostess," he murmured. "As a matter of fact, nothing but the circumstance that it was your invitation and that Madame Selarne was to be present, brought me here to-day. It is so hard to avoid speaking of the great things, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... departed from his eyes. An elegant gentleman was Mr. Wilding, tall, and seeming even taller by virtue of his exceeding slenderness. He had the courage to wear his own hair, which was of a dark brown and very luxuriant; dark brown too were his sombre eyes, low-lidded and set at a downward slant. From those odd eyes of his, his countenance gathered an air of superciliousness tempered by a gentle melancholy. For the rest, it was scored by lines ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... but a sad Paris. Rather it is a busy Paris; a Paris that stays indoors and works. For an hour or two after twilight the crowds come out; Sunday also they throng the boulevards. And the theatres are always well filled; and there the bright dress uniforms of the men overcome the sombre gowns of the women and the scenes in lobbies and foyers are not far from brilliant. Bands and orchestras play in the theatres, but the music lacks fire. It is beautiful music, carefully done, artistically executed, but the orchestras are made up for the most ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Her first novel, Alcidamie, not to be confounded with the earlier Alcidiane, was a scarcely concealed utilising of the famous scandal about Tancrede de Rohan (Mlle. des Jardins' mother had been a dependant on the Rohan family, and she herself was much befriended by that formidable and sombre-fated enchantress, Mme. de Montbazon). In fact, common as is the real or imputed "key"-interest in these romances from the Astree onwards, none seems to have borrowed more from at least gossip than this. Her later performances, Les Annales Galantes de la Grece (said to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... determined to know his fate before he reached Viola's home. When midway the bridge he pulled his reins and the horse stood still. The dark waters of the small river swept on beneath them. Night had just begun to spread out her sombre wings, bedecked with silent stars. Just in front of them, as they looked out upon the center of the river, the river took a bend which brought a shore directly facing them. A green lawn began from the shore and ran back to be lost ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... by a number of men who proclaimed his virtues and power in loud voices. He was seated in a chair carried by sixteen men; his guards, the officers of his household, standard and umbrella bearers, and musicians accompanied him. He was clothed in a robe of sombre-coloured silk, and wore a velvet cap, very similar in shape to that of Scotch mountaineers. A large pearl was conspicuous on his forehead, and was the only jewel or ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... rounded a point, he thought he saw far down the lake, against the blue of the sky and above the sombre forest, a flutter of red. At the same moment be glanced behind him to see if he were still free from pursuit. Alas! He was not. Two canoes, each urged by half a dozen gleaming paddles, were following as swiftly and silently as sharks ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the pines—like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we seemed midway between ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... courtyard of a Japanese temple, in the solemn half-light of the sombre firs, there stands a large stone basin, cut from a single block, and filled to the brim with water. The trees, the basin, and a few stone lanterns—so called from their form, and not their function, for they have votive pebbles where we should look for wicks—are the sole ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... you and I will tell you all about it. She lives up in one of your most desolate streets, Lafayette Place, I think, they call it, and in such a sombre house that it looks as if the windows had never been opened. Her mother is dead, and such a faded, hopeless-looking woman takes care of the house, a relation of the father's, I understand, who is a business friend of George's, and with whom he tells me he ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... as a woman's; but the lines in his face were graven deep, without effeminacy, and his slender neck was muscled like a wrestler's. In dress he was not unlike the men about him—Texas boots, a broad sombrero, and a canvas coat to turn the rain,—but his manner was that of another world, a sombre, scholarly repose such as you would look for in the reference room of the Boston Public Library; and he crouched back in his corner like a shy, retiring mouse. For a moment the cowman regarded him intently, as if seeking for ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize save women ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Maud, who in general objected to people's doing as they liked, had replied; and it bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were many explanations, and they were all amusing—amusing, that is, in the line of the sombre and brooding amusement, cultivated by Kate in her actual high retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday; but Mrs. Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as to make it possible to her niece to see him alone. She saw him, however, on the Sunday ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... dreadful prisons I fancied myself in the times of the martyrs, and gladly would I have chosen this sombre abode for my dwelling if there had been any question of confessing my faith. Presently the guide's voice roused me from my reverie, and I crossed the "Bridge of Sighs," so called because of the sighs ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... the sombre night is dumb, Hushed the loud chrysanthemum, Sister, sleep! Sleep, the lissom lily saith, Sleep, the ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the primitive world-history are suffused in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism: as if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4). We notice a shy, timid spirit, which belongs ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... rather ridiculous his adventure with Henry Grey. In a far distant day he would tell Ann. As he halted at the foot of the steps, he thought of his only interview with Lincoln. The tall figure with the sombre face left in his memory that haunting sense of the unusual of which others had spoken and which was apt to disappear ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Answer, sombre beast and dreary, Where is Brown, the young, the cheery, Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force? You were at that last dread dak We must cover at a walk, Bring them back ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Some sombre-hued birds on the ground fly into the air as they approach. The transformation from dark feathers to brilliant yellow plumage as they spread their wings in flight is pleasing ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its waters to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise, as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of sombre majesty:— ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... few moments the door was thrown open, and a spruce, dapper looking gentleman, clothed in sombre colored garments, irreproachable linen, and carrying a small merino bag in ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... with sombre meaning. He was always a pessimistically inclined man; and, in his rough way, he had conceived a good deal of affection and respect ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... usually lined with Phynotomi and Sitones both an indeterminate grey, and Otiorhynchi, black or tan-coloured. Now I have sometimes happened to unearth from her cells a collection of veritable jewels which, thanks to their bright metallic lustre, made a most striking contrast with the sombre Otiorhynchus. These were the Rhynchites (R. betuleti), who roll the vine-leaves into cigars. Equally magnificent, some of them were azure blue, others copper gilt, for the cigar-roller has a twofold colouring. How did the Cerceris manage to recognize in these jewels the Weevil, the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... twitched, and deep in the dead eyes a sombre fire glowed. It warmed his cold humour to read so plainly the thought hidden behind the smooth words. But to a mind as fertile as the King's that very thought was a suggestion. It would be well that this La Mothe should clearly understand all ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the king and the governess of his children. It was whispered at the petit lever, confirmed at the grand entree, and was common gossip by the time that the king had returned from chapel. Back into wardrobe and drawer went the flaring silks and the feathered hats, and out once more came the sombre coat and the matronly dress. Scudery and Calpernedi gave place to the missal and St. Thomas a Kempis, while Bourdaloue, after preaching for a week to empty benches, found his chapel packed to the last seat with weary gentlemen and taper-bearing ladies. By midday there was ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mabel would understand any of this if she heard it. She has a robust and coarse-textured mind curiously contrasted with her pale, delicate features and sombre black eyes. She was one of those people who seem suddenly to transmute themselves into totally different beings the moment one speaks to them. As the author did one evening, after peering absently through the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... stepped forward, Mr. Whitmore had instantly shot out his right hand to the door—against which Mr. Rogers, however, had planted his foot—with a gesture as if to slam it in our faces. But the sombre apparition of the Rector seemed to freeze him where he stood—or all of him but his left hand which, grasping the candlestick, slowly and as if involuntarily lifted it above the level of his eyes. Then, before the Rector had concluded, he lowered ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stern and sombre, gray-haired figure he, And standing midst the wreck of youthful dreams Sees he at times through battle smoke the gleams Of rippling waves on blue Ionian Sea? Thinks he not sadly on the days now gone, And dreams ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... top of the ridge they had climbed, the man and the pup alone looked down on the camp, for the weary little "Injun" had fallen asleep. Had he been awake, the all to be seen would have been of little promise. Great, sombre mountains towered darkly up on every side, roofed over by an arch of sky amazingly brilliant with stars. Below, the darkness was the denser for the depth of the hollow in the hills. Vaguely the one ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the poem; but the drawings of Italian landscape, so sure in outline, so vivid in colour; the views of old Italian city life, rich in the tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, the Titianesque portraits ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... throat of the little creature which had excited our admiration shone with the most brilliant tints, though the rest of the body was of a more sombre hue. The upper parts of the body were of a pale, dusky green, except the wings, which were of the purple-brown tint common to humming-birds in general. The head and throat were of the most resplendent hue, with an emerald green triangular patch on the throat, while a broad collar ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... shivering, I stopped to glance about me full of sick apprehension. For all I knew, this might be the very wood where my youthful father had staggered and fallen, to tear at the tender grass with dying fingers; these sombre, leafy aisles perhaps had echoed to the shot—his gasping moan that had borne his young spirit up to the Infinite! At this thought, Horror leapt upon me, wherefore I sought to flee these gloomy shades, only to trip and fall heavily, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... night was clear though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open[779]—and went forth Into a gallery of a sombre hue, Long, furnished with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth; But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his broad brow contracted; his face became as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart; thinking perhaps, as simple characters ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... lower corridor with sombre tread. He would cut belly at the garden pond. With some surprise he noted an amado open at the end of the ro[u]ka. Voices were heard. Standing at the opening he saw lanterns. Some frenzied women had raised a ladder to the garden wall. They would thus escape, but the knife-like ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... night, nothing in the way of provisions was found; the guard and the corps which had been there before the battle had devoured everything. No provisions were left of those taken along from Moscow. The army passed a sombre and bitter cold night in a forest; great fires were lighted, horse meat was roasted, and the soldiers of Prince Eugene and of Marshal Davout, especially the latter who had been on their feet for three days, slept profoundly around great ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... invention of the "soft" pedal, which is intended not solely to reduce the intensity of tone in the pianoforte—that may be accomplished by a modification of force in striking the note—but to give the tones a darker, more sombre quality, or colour. To vary the tone-colour, a violinist or 'cellist draws the bow across the strings close to, or distant from, the bridge, in accordance with his desire for a reed-like or flute-like quality of tone. Anyone who has listened to the performance ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... delicious effect of her singing as we were drifting along in the sombre twilight, better than by quoting Buchanan Read's charming lines, which I dare say you have ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... standing to and fro close to the Pyramid, which I have before described as a dark rocky lump 240 feet high. Its western side is a sombre storm-beaten cliff, whilst to the east it slopes away almost to the water's edge. A few patches of coarse grass may be seen on some sheltered spots. Sealers, I am informed, have landed upon it on certain rare occasions of fine weather, and have been repaid for ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited every body she saw. The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but, not fine enough, and there are few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great jet d'eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... caves; but their rugged brows still caught the red glare of evening. The flush rose higher and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the pigeons ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... meet. For I hope," said Mrs. Krill, smoothing her face to a smile—it had grown rather sombre—"that we shall often meet again. You must come and see us. We have taken a ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... thrill of awe," etc. The Western Barbarian had stood there, gazed, and felt no thrill. "The privileged guest," said the grave historian, "passing in review the lineaments of the illustrious owners of Stukeley, as he slowly paces the sombre gallery, must be conscious of emotions of no ordinary character," etc., etc. The Barbarian had been conscious of no such emotions. And it was for this reason, and believing he MIGHT experience them if left there in solitude, with no distracting or extraneous ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was a big, broad shouldered man, reddish haired and ruddy cheeked, with cool grey eyes; his sandy mustache was closely cropped and turned up ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. Despite his colouring, his face was somewhat sombre—even stern—when in repose. It was his fine, enveloping smile that made friends for him wherever he listed, with men and with women. More frequently than otherwise it made more than friends of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was really to be pitied. He could not look upon the azure vault without a sombre terror: when asleep, he felt oscillations that made his head reel; and every night he had visions of being swung ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... and stale, not because they are old, but because we cease to see them. Whole vibrant significant worlds around us disappear within the sombre mists of familiarity. Whichever way we look the roads are dull and barren. There is a tree at our gate we have not seen in years: a flower blooms in our door-yard more wonderful than the shining ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... grave, and their almost universal and rapidly increasing decay doesn't relieve their gloom. Nothing indeed can well be sadder than the great collection of Tintorets at San Rocco. Incurable blackness is settling fast upon all of them, and they frown at you across the sombre splendour of their great chambers like gaunt twilight phantoms of pictures. To our children's children Tintoret, as things are going, can be hardly more than a name; and such of them as shall miss the tragic ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... emerald carpet of bilberry and ling. These two flowers are pure white, and the raiment of the moors is that of a bride prepared to meet her bridegroom, the sun. By July the white has passed, and the moors have assumed once more a sombre hue. But August follows, and once again they burst into flower. No longer is their vesture white and virginal; now they bloom as a matron and a queen, gloriously arrayed in a seamless robe of ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... scirocco-day, thought the priest, as he came up on to the flat roof. Overhead, instead of the clear blue proper to that hour of the morning, lay a pale yellow sky darkening even to brown at the horizon. Thabor, before him, hung distant and sombre seen through the impalpable atmosphere of sand, and across the plain, as he glanced behind him, beyond the white streak of Nain nothing was visible except the pale outline of the tops of the hills against the sky. Even at this morning hour, too, the air was hot and breathless, broken only ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... looking Baku—a town of recent creation, approached through a desert of sand and stones, where neither vegetable nor animal life can possibly find an existence. Viewed from the sea, Baku presents a distinctly picturesque appearance, with its sombre citadel, numerous minarets, and the palace of the princes of bygone days towering above the old town, where the houses look as if they were piled the one above the other—the new or Russian quarter being at the base, and lining the shore of ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... desolation; its waters expanding in their highland solitude, amidst a wide waste of moors, without one green spot to refresh the eye, without a house or tree—all mournful in the brown hue of its far-stretching bogs, and the gray uniformity of its rocks; the surrounding mountains even partook of the sombre character of the place; their forms without grandeur, their ranges continuous and without elevation. The lake itself was certainly as fine as rocky shores and numerous islands could make it: but it was encompassed with such dreariness; it was deformed ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... He knew the kind of hat his mother wanted, and he had noted her quickly suppressed look of disappointment at the sombre hat donated by Mrs. Hudgers on the day of ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... chattered and laughed—chattered and laughed, seeing an ordinary game between the King and a marker; while I, for whom the court had grown sombre as a dungeon, saw a villain struggling in his own toils, livid with the fear of death, and tortured by horrible apprehensions. Use and habit were still so powerful with the man that he played on mechanically with his hands, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... the trees from which Cedar Lodge derives its name was still standing. This lonely giant, sombre exile from Libanus, overshadowed all that remained of the formerly extensive garden and sensibly darkened the back of the house. Its foliage, spread like a deep pile carpet upon the wide horizontal branches, was worn and sparse, showing small promise of self-renewal. Yet though starved ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... leaving, caressed the dogs, and said good-bye to the cat, quitted the house on the Three-Notched Road. At the gate they turned, and, standing beneath the mimosa, looked back across the yard where the flowers had been touched by the frost, to the house and the sombre pines. They stood in silence. Jacqueline thought of the first evening beneath the mimosa, of the July dusk, and the cry of the whip-poor-will. Rand thought, suddenly and inconsequently, of his father and mother, standing ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... opened when Elizabeth lost one of her most valuable allies by the murder of the Regent Murray, assassinated by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. Murray's figure in history is a sombre one, and the sombreness is thrown into the greater relief by the picturesque brilliancy of his hapless sister. It was his fate to fight on the gloomy side; to stand at the head of a nobility conspicuously sordid and unprincipled, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... why should I tell her?" said Dame Elsie, as she turned to go into the house, and left the child sitting on the mossy parapet that overlooked the gorge. Thence she could see far off, not only down the dim, sombre abyss, but out to the blue Mediterranean beyond, now calmly lying in swathing-bands of purple, gold, and orange, while the smoky cloud that overhung Vesuvius became silver and rose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... drink, Jim,' says the Colonel, an' his face has a cloud of regrets onto it; 'take four fingers of this red-eye an' cheer up. You-all assoomes too sombre a view of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... through the water, gradually increasing her speed. I was eagerly looking out for the coast; at length it came in sight—its distant outline rendered indistinct by the misty pall which hung over it. As we drew nearer, its forest covered heights had a particularly gloomy and sombre appearance, which made me think of the cruelties I had heard were practised on those shores, of the barbarous slave trade, of the fearful idolatries of its dark-skinned children, of its wild beasts, and ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... names: "Green-head," "Wild Duck." Adult male, in fall, winter, and spring, beautifully colored; summer, resembles female—sombre. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... stand before my mirror at night before I go to bed and admire my own sombre beauty. I let my hair fall in a black cloud over my shoulders, then I braid it slowly with bare arms lifted in graceful poses. I sway my hips like Carmen, I thrust red flowers into my bosom. I move my head ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... silent street by the river, shaded almost to a twilight by the thick foliage, with the old houses all about us, seemed to invite reminiscence, or dreams of the stern and respectable old burghers and burgesses in sombre clothing, wide brimmed hats, and stiffly starched linen ruffs about their necks as rendered by Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens and Jordaens. They must have been veritable domestic despots, magnates of the household, but certainly there must have been something ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... Henry's carelessness, his state apparel was not very apparently dissimilar from his ordinary dress, being generally of dark rich crimson, blue, or russet, with the St. Andrew's cross in white silk on his breast, or else the ruddy lion, but never conspicuously; and the sombre hues always seemed particularly well to suit ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the case ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of Treslong's followers was indeed extraordinary. Every man was attired in the gorgeous vestments of the plundered churches — in gold and embroidered cassocks, glittering robes, or the sombre cowls and garments of Capuchin friars. As they sailed along their wild sea songs rose in the air, mingled with shouts for vengeance on the Spaniards ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... were the trees. At last they rode on almost bare highland, where the dean could look in every direction. He gazed out over immeasurable tracts of land, which went up and down in mountains and valleys covered with sombre forests. It was so dark that he had difficulty in seeing any orderly arrangement; but presently he could make out ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... through the late radiant afternoon they went until the sun sank and the carriage stopped before a gate. While the pickaninny was opening it, another carriage went swiftly behind them, and the Major called out cleanly to the occupants—a quiet, sombre, dignified-looking man and two handsome boys and a little girl. "They're my neighbors, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... I shall sail with you; For I have often traveled in my dreams To far-off Norway, where you live mid snow And ice and sombre woods of towering pines. There should come mirth and laughter in the hall, If I could have my say, I promise you; For I am merry;—have you ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Irma and I sat together in the jutting window, where, as the night darkened and the curtains of the clouds drew down to meet the sombre tree-tops, a kind of black despair came over me. Would "King George" really do any good? Would I prove myself stout and brave when the moment came? Would the beacon we had prepared really burn, and, supposing it did, would any one see it, drowned ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... sight of the encampment veered swiftly to the north into the smouldering sun. Van Brunt could not follow them. He pulled out his watch. It was an hour past midnight. The northward clouds flushed bloodily, and rays of sombre-red shot southward, firing the gloomy woods with a lurid radiance. The air was in breathless calm, not a needle quivered, and the least sounds of the camp were distinct and clear as trumpet calls. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... and even that was so short as to be barely decent. Six months—yet in that space of time much might happen—things undreamed of and undesired—slow tortures carefully measured out, punishment sudden and heavy! Wrapped in these sombre musings I walked beside him in profound silence. The moon shone brilliantly; groups of girls danced on the shore with their lovers, to the sound of a flute and mandoline—far off across the bay the sound ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... people had put on gala raiment. From the outer fringe of Jerusalem the Jaffa road was blocked not merely with the inhabitants of the City but with people who had followed in the Army's wake from Bethlehem. It was a picturesque throng. There were sombre-clad Jews of all nationalities, Armenians, Greeks, Russians, and all the peoples who make Jerusalem the most cosmopolitan of cities. To the many styles of European dress the brighter robes of the East gave vivid colour, and it was obvious from the remarkably free and spontaneous ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... somewhat more at home when he gets among the Actors and Musicians: though his head is still running upon ORPHEUS and EURYDICE and PLUTO, and other sombre personages; who are ever thrusting themselves in where we least expect them, and who chill every rising emotion ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... banquet hoard and oleanders have been removed, every trace of the funeral has been carefully obliterated. Clear sunlight comes in from the garden windows in the background and lights up the spacious, sombre hall. The bushes and trees of the garden are coated with ice. The fire is burning as usual. Toward the end of the act the sunlight gradually vanishes and a light, gray dusk fills the hall. AUNT CLARA stands at the fireplace with her arms folded over her waist, and looks ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... terror, she could only wait and watch. Nearer it came and nearer. It was gliding into the last bar of light Immediately in front of her! It was on her! God of mercy, it was a Dominican friar! The moon shone clear and cold upon his gaunt figure and his sombre robes. The poor girl threw up her hands, gave one terrible scream of horror, which rang through the old house, and sank senseless to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this is the place for Marie now; indeed, dear girl, she knew that well herself. The Marquis pressed her hard to stay, and I said nothing; but Marie insisted on coming home. I thought Henri looked somewhat more sombre than is his wont, as he was leading her down the steps: but he cannot, must not, think of love now, Victorine. La Vendee now ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... woman in the world, but I've nevertheless done for you what was necessary." And then as her now quite sombre gravity only made him stare: "To start you it was necessary. From me it has the weight." He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. "Don't you understand me? I've told the proper lie for you." Still he only showed her his flushed strained smile; in ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... "rockery" of skulls and shanks and ribs, and filled it in with earth, enough to furnish growth for trailing nasturtiums, whose bright red and yellow blossoms were strangely at variance with their sombre setting. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... musk duck: the plumage is very sombre and loose looking—not so thick as most other ducks; the tail, too, is singular, little more than a small fan of short quills. The head of the male has a kind of black leathery excrescence under the bill that gives it an odd expression, and the whole bird has a strange odour ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... whistling; another passed, calling hoarsely the news from the afternoon papers. A muffin man rang his bell, a small boy clattered his stick against the area bailing. The whole world marched on, unmoved and unnoticing. In this sombre apartment alone tragedy reigned in sinister silence. On the sofa, Lord Dorminster, who only half an hour ago had seemed to be in the prime of life and health, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stairs and crossing the courtyard, entered St. Honore. I was in a maze what I was to expect from him; and overjoyed as I was at my present deliverance, had a sneaking fear that I might be courting a worse fate in this inquiry; so grim and secretive was my guide's face, and so much did that sombre dress—which gave him somewhat of the character of an inquisitor—add to the weight of his silence. However, when he had crossed St. Honore and entered a lane leading to the river, he halted and turned ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers. There it was no longer a matter of sincere colouring. It was like another art altogether. That sombre theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own, a continued vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... Then the little sombre figure at Powhatan's feet rose and stood with the firelight shining on her face and dark hair and asked ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... flame and glance, A beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance That wrap mankind Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not be, Whate'er be shaped and fixed within Zeus' ruling mind— Dark as a solemn grove, with sombre leafage shaded, His paths of purpose wind, A marvel to ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... passed was very beautiful, commencing with dark-green ilex, glistening holly, and sombre brown oak, interspersed with groups of the dainty, graceful, white-stemmed birch, and wreathed with festoons of the scarlet Himalayan vine. As we mounted higher, trees became fewer and the foliage less luxuriant, till at length only oaks were to be seen, their ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... having spread over the whole feather; in the most advanced, however, nearly all the feathers were fully coloured with the red of the breeding-plumage. This red plumage remains till the autumn, when it is replaced, after the moult, by the more sombre and less handsome grey of the winter plumage. Though the Bar-tailed Godwit goes far north to breed, not breeding much nearer than Lapland and the north of Norway and Sweden, both old and young soon show themselves again in the Channel Islands on their return journey, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... open a folding door, ushered us at once into a spacious and lofty saloon, which offered a brilliant contrast to the quaint and sombre apartments we had traversed. It was elegantly furnished, and the walls hung with paintings, yet something of its original architecture had been preserved and blended with modern embellishments. There were the stone-shafted casements and the deep bow-window of former times. The carved and ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... He stood silent at the foot of the tree looking across the chamber at his enemy. Did no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The man was not wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord); and, let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic nature of the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... round to the north, sinking closer to the horizon. The heavens in that quarter grew red and bloody. The shadows lengthened, the light dimmed, and in the sombre recesses of the forest life slowly died away. Even the wild fowl in the river softened their raucous chatter and feigned the nightly farce of going to bed. Only the tribesmen increased their clamor, war-drums booming and voices raised in savage folk songs. But as the sun ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... without having the least doubt in my mind that the only thing he could do was to descend once more from the throne. I communicated to him all the particulars I had just received, and I did not hesitate to advise him to follow the only course worthy of him. He listened to me with a sombre air, and though he was in some measure master of himself, the agitation of his mind and the sense of his position betrayed themselves in his face and in all his motions. 'I know,' said I, 'that your Majesty may still keep the sword drawn, but with whom, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Marguerite was still alive. He saw her constantly reappearing in a funny way among the sombre preoccupations with which war was overshadowing ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... phases of virtue and its rewards. Beauty he replaced with ugliness; dreary squalor was the setting for crippled body and deformed mind. The heavy twilight of Scandinavian insanity touched his pages where sombre shapes born out of Jewish Russia moved like anachronisms through the unpolluted sunshine of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... this brilliant fete of illuminations underwent a sensible abatement of splendour, then almost ceased. The walls assumed a crystallised though sombre appearance; mica was more closely mingled with the feldspar and quartz to form the proper rocky foundations of the earth, which bears without distortion or crushing the weight of the four terrestrial systems. We were immured within ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... an evening of early October 1851 when I crossed the Rhone on my way to the Alps. It had rained heavily during the day, and sombre clouds still rested on the towers of Lyons behind me. The river was in flood, and the lamps on the bridge threw a troubled gleam upon the impetuous current as it rolled underneath. It was impossible not to recollect that this was the stream on the banks of which Irenaeus, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... door quietly, and moved in silence towards the bed. She nodded an affectionate welcome. He returned her greeting eagerly, and all his constraint was loosed away, and he felt at ease, and happy. Her face was very pale indeed against the glittering blackness of her eyes, and her sombre disordered hair and untidy dress; but it did not show fatigue nor extreme anxiety; it was a face of calm meekness. The sleeves of her dress were reversed, showing the forearms, which gave her an appearance of deshabille, homely, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... monotony. Strict injunctions had been given by the doctors to avoid exciting me; and consequently, every one that came in walked on tiptoe, spoke in whispers, and left me in five minutes. Reading was absolutely forbidden; and with a sombre half-light to sit in, and chicken broth to support nature, I dragged out as dreary an existence as any gentleman ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... best to be obedient." She became more and more pleasing to him, and he tried to please her by presenting to her a variety of pretty pictures and playthings, and by consulting her wishes in whatever she desired. She was still wearing the dress of mourning, of sombre color and of soft material, and it was only now at last that she began to smile a little, and this filled Genji with delight. He now had to return to the eastern wing, and Violet, for the first time, went to the casement and looked out on the scenery around. The trees covered with ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... is all one heavy dull hue in the sombre evening light, and against it the sharp glints of fire as the shrapnel bursts, and the round puff-balls of white smoke show vividly. Every now and then a great curtain of murky vapour goes up to show where the old lyddite-slinger in the rear is depositing his contributions. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Jack Glover who caught her and carried her to the sofa. She woke with a confused idea that somebody was trying to hypnotise her, and she opened her eyes to look upon the sombre face ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... human affections. As a literary artist of the "dark and touching mode of painting," which Carleton has set down as the chief characteristic of his brother novelist, Griffin has few equals and no superior. To depict the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he especially delights. He does not delay the progress of the plot to impress upon his reader the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... and when he crossed the threshold and sat down in his armchair, his love for his house had surprised him, and he sat like one enchanted by his own fireside, lost in admiration of the old mahogany bookcase with the inlaid panels, that he had bought at an auction. How sombre and quaint it looked, furnished with his books that he had had bound in Dublin, and what pleasure it always was to him to see a ray lighting up the parchment bindings! He had hung some engravings on his walls, and these had become very dear to him; and there were some spoons, bought ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... though once or twice they thought they heard distant sounds, these might be caused by the passage of a wild animal through the bushes. The sentries were all vigilant. It was the first time that the Sussex lads had been in face of an enemy, and the stillness of the night, the sombre forest in front of them, and the possibility of a savage and unknown foe lurking there, kept them thoroughly on the alert. Once or twice Wulf and Osgod went forward to examine some bush that had seemed to the imagination of a sentry to have moved, but ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... pond to whose edge Leonard and Ruth presently came was a narrow piece of clear water held in between Bylow Hill and the loftier cliff beyond by an old stone dam long unused. Rude ledges of sombre rock underlay its depths and lined and shelved its sides. Broad beeches and dark hemlocks overhung it. At every turn it mirrored back the slanting forms of the white and the yellow birch, or slept under green mantles of lily pads. It bore a haunted air even in the floweriest days of the year, when ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... water of the Senegal is fresh: we quenched our thirst at our pleasure. We stopped at last; it was only eight o'clock in the morning. We had no shelter during the whole day, except some trees, which were of a kind unknown to me, and which had a sombre foliage. I frequently went into the river, but without venturing too far from the bank, for fear of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... this scene, "Les Terreurs de Thoas," those rapidly changing expressions of the features, those statuesque attitudes melting into each other, which we all remember in Rachel, indicated a common origin. It needed not the added eloquence of words and the sombre music of the voice to tell the tragic story of the victim of the Eumenides. After listening to the recitation, I was not surprised to learn that the young student was to appear, under the auspices of his teacher, at the Theatre ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Shakespeare's mastery in the development of the heroic nature amid heroic circumstances; and had he chosen, from English history, to deal with Coeur-de-Lion or Edward the First, the innate quality of his subject would doubtless have called into play something of that profound and sombre power which in Julius Caesar and Macbeth has sounded the depths of mighty character. True, on the whole, to fact, it is another side of kingship which he has made prominent in his English histories. The irony [186] of kingship—average human nature, flung with a wonderfully pathetic ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... mist thin, invisible to the human eye; yet strong enough to change the sun into a mere glowing red disc, a disc vertical and hot, rolling down to the edge of the horizontal and cold-looking disc of the shining sea. Then the edges touched and the circular expanse of water took on suddenly a tint, sombre, like a frown; deep, like the brooding ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... sense of adventure) that he would rather do it when we arrived—if we ever did. I was by no means so delicate; I bought a varied selection of pork-pies at a little shop that was open (why was that shop open?—it is all a mystery), and ate them as we went along. The beginning was sombre and irritating. I was annoyed, not with people, but with things, like a baby; with the motor for breaking down and with Sunday for being Sunday. And the sight of the northern slums expanded and ennobled, but did not decrease, my gloom: Whitechapel ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... her beauty, and that stamp of royal grace which comes with kingly blood and the daily exercise of power? Like the rich wonders of the robe she wore, her very barbarism, of which now I saw but the better side, drew and dazzled my mind's eye, giving her woman's tenderness some new quality, sombre and strange, an eastern richness which is lacking in our well schooled English women, that at one and the same stroke touched both the imagination and the senses, and through them enthralled ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... which consists in not always employing pleasing tints, but of sometimes taking advantage of the effects to be derived from impure hues, as Poussin did in his "Deluge." In this work, neither black nor white, blue, red, nor yellow appears; the whole mass being, with little variation, of a sombre grey, the true resemblance of a dark and humid atmosphere, by which every object is rendered indistinct and almost colourless. This absence of colour, however, is a merit, and not a fault. Vandyke employed such means with admirable effect in the background of a Crucifixion, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... of sunset was already fading into the sombre shadows of night, when two travellers might have been observed swiftly—at a pace of six miles in the hour—descending the rugged side of a mountain; the younger bounding from crag to crag with the agility of a fawn, while his companion, whose aged limbs seemed ill at ease in the heavy chain armour ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... expansive, merry, ardent, enthusiastic, young in heart and mind, a thoroughly open nature. Her husband, on the other hand, was of a morose, sombre, melancholy, reserved nature. In spite of her superior intelligence Hortense had a sort of childlike air; but Louis, though young in years, had the character and appearance of an old man. As much ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... appeared the woodland scenery around me! The sombre green of pines, and the equally dark though glossy foliage of oaks, were beautifully enlivened by lighter greens, and by the brilliant hues of the sassafras-tree. Here climbed in tantalizing beauty—tempting as insidious ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... remarkably intelligent countenance came up and asked me if I should like to see the inside. I told him I should, whereupon he said that he was the clerk and would admit me with pleasure. Taking a key out of his pocket he unlocked the door of the church and we went in. The inside was sombre, not so much owing to the gloominess of the day as the heaviness of the architecture. It presented something in the form of a cross. I soon found the clerk what his countenance represented him to be, a highly intelligent person. His answers to my questions ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of cheek, she was saying aloud, in a tone cold as ice, "And indeed, most excellent Gabinius, you must pardon me for being startled; for all that I know of you tells me that you are likely to find a sombre Vestal sorry ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... evident to me that he moved but half-heartedly in this higher circle. On one occasion, too, he appeared in the trousers of a lounge-suit of tweeds instead of his dress trousers, and with tan boots. The trousers, to be sure, were of a sombre hue, but the brown boots were quite too dreadfully unmistakable. After this I may say that I looked for anything, and my ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... sombre evening, when I sit And feed in solitude at home, Perchance an ultra-bilious fit Paints all the ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various |
