"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not touched upon. Marcus Clarke could never have shown the Australian people so much of the beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in Geoffry Hamlyn. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the country to be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonely specks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend the contrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left on the mind of the reader. Australian scenery awed and depressed him. With ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... nurse exclaimed, "Dr. Trip ain't in it." But the surgeon's face wore a preoccupied, sombre look, irresponsive to the nurse's admiration. While she helped the interne with the complicated dressing, the little nurse made ready for removal to the ward. Then when one of the ward tenders had wheeled the muffled figure into the corridor, she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... not sombre and sedate as is our Upper House, but simplicity itself—no gilded throne, no Lord Chancellor in wig and gown, no offensive officialism. It looks like a huge auction room, the auctioneer being the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to pass during the fifth month of the year 1665, that a great terror fell upon the city of London; even as a sombre cloud darkens the midday sky. For it was whispered abroad a plague had come amongst the people, fears of which had been entertained, and signs of which had been obvious for some time. During the previous November a few persons had fallen victims ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry Street—Imagination Street—the street where lovely ladies look ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Elizabeth, the English nation became more and more a people of one book, and that book the Bible. As, deeply dyed with Calvinism, they read over and over its sacred pages, they became a serious, sombre, purposeful—and almost fanatic people. The faults and extravagances of the Puritan party and of the later Commonwealth do not at this time concern us. It is with their purposefulness, their determination to make the church a home of ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... firm step and an outward composure of manner. She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited means. The dress was a sombre grayish beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side. Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beastly, NAN, that's wot it is. Wy, blimy, Narrer ill-lighted streets is our best friends. Yer dingy nooks and slums, sombre and slimy, Is gifts wot Prowidence most kyindly sends To give hus chaps a chance of perks and pickins; But if the Town's chock-full of "arc" and "glow," With you and me, NAN, it will play the dickens. We must turn 'onest, NAN, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... was downright alarmed, and rang hastily for his people. He committed her to the charge of Mrs. Milton. It seemed cruel to demand any further explanation from her just then; so brave a girl, who had gone so far with him, would be sure to tell him sooner or later. Meantime he sat sombre and agitated, oppressed by a strange sense of awe and mystery, and vague misgiving. While he brooded thus, a footman brought him in a card upon a salver: "The Reverend Alleyn Meredith." "Do I know this ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. The upper windows of the great house flamed so as to make your eyes wink; the little river ran off noisily westward and was lost in sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old abbey church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Clavering St. Mary's to the present day) rose up in purple splendour. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's cast long blue shadows over ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... succeeded each other in Western Asia annihilated all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Taking our departure from the town on the following morning, we observed that the fog, covering the surrounding landscape with a thick, impenetrable veil, increased in density until it seemed as if from moment to moment additional tints of sombre gray were united to the haze. In fact, after a while we were unable to discern the outline of the coast, having to pursue our way ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... but the lighthouse gleam over his head faintly outlined the swells, as one by one they tossed their spray up to where he stood; back of him the welcome glow of Uncle Terry's home, and all around the wide ocean, dark and sombre. What a change from the busy hive of men he had left that morning! Only a brief space was he left to contemplate it, when he heard a voice ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... youth. When he sprang upon the table and sang his old camp-song, "The Drum," he looked the boy they remembered at Valley Forge and Morristown. There was only one member of the company who was unelectrified by the gay abandon of the evening, and his sombre appearance was so marked in contrast that it was widely commented on afterward. Burr frequently leaned forward and stared at Hamilton in amazement. As the hilarity waxed, his taciturnity deepened, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stood around and looked at him with jaws that were drooping helplessly. The air seemed laden with a sombre uncertainty that had not yet succeeded in penetrating the nature ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... spoke I became suddenly aware that the gas-lights were paling, and glancing towards the window on my left I saw the splendour of the sunrise breaking fresh and clear over the city of diabolical night, where in the sombre eastern sky— ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... up, and had breakfasted; after this there was nearly a whole tedious hour to endure whilst the horses were laden by torch-light; but this had an end, and at last we went on once more. Cloaked, and sombre, at first we made our sullen way through the darkness, with scarcely one barter of words, but soon the genial morn burst down from heaven, and stirred the blood so gladly through our veins, that the very Suridgees, with all their troubles, could now look up for an instant, and almost seem to believe ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... grated on the women's nerves as he talked loudly and incessantly, and they listened. Maria kept her face hidden in her hands, but Gemma held herself erect as ever, and she did not move when the two girls came in, though her sombre eyes were full ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... for more than a year, and in her sombre trailing weeds was a wonder to behold. She lived in her father's house, and saw no company, but sat or walked and drove with her sister Anne, and visited the poor. The perfect stateliness of her decorum was more talked about than any levity would have been; those who ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as he looked earnestly at the house round which these memories hung. Standing on an angle formed by the bending river, and the little creek, and behind a screen of trees—elms almost too old to feel the sap of spring, a chestnut or two, and a few laurels and sombre firs, that had cracked with their roots the grey garden wall and sprawled down to the beach below—the stained and yellow frontage looked down towards the busy harbour, as it seemed with a sense of serene decay, haunted but without disquietude, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... darkness thick and heavy brooded over the settlement. The sombre pines encompassing the village seemed to close threateningly about it as if to reclaim the wilderness that had been wrested from them. A low rustling as of dead leaves, and the damp breath of forest odors filled the lonely street. Emboldened by the darkness ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... entre ses mains puissantes. Il fait que tout prospre aux mes innocentes, Tandis qu'en ses projets l'orgueilleux est tromp. De mes faibles attraits le Roi parut frapp. 70 Il m'observa longtemps dans un sombre silence; Et le Ciel, qui pour moi fit pencher la balance, Dans ce temps-l sans doute agissait sur son coeur. Enfin, avec des yeux o rgnait la douceur: Soyez reine, dit-il; et ds ce moment mme 75 De sa main sur mon ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... glance they might have been mistaken for mother and daughter, as the elder woman was clad in a sombre black velvet dress, and had a pale, thin face, crowned with heavy masses of grey hair. On closer inspection, however, one perceived that Julia Lester was far from old—indeed, not more than about forty-five, and with a peculiarly gentle, almost child-like expression, which ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... been told by every generation, handed down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night and day, and the chronicle has changed its complexion somewhat in every age. Like some great building that has suffered many modifications of successive generations of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in Flanders ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... night train down from Paris. Early in the morning I woke up to find myself in the gorges of the Alps, high peaks with romantic Italian-looking settings soaring on every side. At noon we reached Lake Geneva, lying slate-coloured and sombre beneath a wintry sky. That afternoon I saw ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... n'ai pas besoin de ta lueur, car je connais ma route! Elle a pu me paraitre sombre au dbut, quand mes yeux n'taient point accoutums ses rudes contours; mais, depuis un an, elle est pour moi blouissante de clart. On a beau me l'allonger chaque jour, on n'arrivera pas me l'obscurcir. On a beau y multiplier les ronces et les pierres, aprs lesquelles ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Rab continued to feel a sense of depression, sadness and anxiety; during his walks with the medical student he was "sombre and mild; declined doing battle—submitted to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Gregorian," Mr. Amarinth repeated. "All combinations of sounds convey a sense of colour to the mind. Gregorians are obviously of a rich and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn is a ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... drop it," put in his brother-in-law. "I've lost my coin and that's the end of it. I don't intend to have the evening spoiled for a thing like that. Music! ladies, music and a jolly air! No more dumps." And with as hearty a laugh as he could command in face of the sombre looks he encountered on every side, he led the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... sat alone there in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew. With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him. Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Paglia) and contemplated the Bridge of Sighs. Because one does not stand on the Bridge of Sighs but in it, for it is merely dark passages lit by gratings. But to stand on the Ponte di Paglia on the Riva and gaze up the sombre Rio del Palazzo with the famous arch poised high over it is one of the first duties of all visitors to Venice and ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... thing, as Milly knew he would, and turned out a creditable imitation of a Paris shop, with stucco marbles, black woodwork, and glass everywhere, even to red plush sofas along the walls and a row of little tables and chairs in front. It had a very gay appearance—"distinguished" in its sombre setting. "No one could help walking in to buy a cake, could ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... a higher order, stood Like an extinct volcano in his mood; 140 Silent, and sad, and savage,—with the trace Of passion reeking from his clouded face; Till lifting up again his sombre eye, It glanced on Torquil, who leaned faintly by. "And is it thus?" he cried, "unhappy boy! And thee, too, thee—my madness must destroy!" He said, and strode to where young Torquil stood, Yet dabbled with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... into a stately room packed with masterpieces of art; gleaming marbles and sombre bronze in groups of bewildering beauty, with every inch of wall-space crowded with canvases in massive gold frames glowing with the soft radiance of concealed ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... was a certain sombre satisfaction in reflecting that her traits of frailty should call forth such enthrallingly sinister comments. "Lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet"—"before, it's too ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... the Apostle's long demonstration that the Gospel is the revelation of 'the righteousness of God from faith to faith,' and is thereby 'the power of God unto salvation.' What a contrast there is between the beginning and the end of his argument! It started with sombre, sad words about man's sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of God. It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph; like some stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy moorlands, and foaming ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Claire Lepage's account of him, and 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?" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... pre-eminent as the leading timber tree of the Western Australian forests. For constructive work necessitating contact with soil and water jarrahwood has no native equal. A jarrah forest is dull, sombre, and uninteresting to the eye. In first-class forests the trees attain a height of from 90 ft. to 120 ft., with good stems 3 ft. to 5 ft. in diameter. The tree is practically confined to the south-western division of the colony, where the heaviest rains of the season fall. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... scarcely keep back a smile at sight of her incongruous attire. Her gown was a cotton one of a washed out indigo-blue, with large polka spots that had once been white, before the other color had beclouded them. Over this, as if apologizing and condoning, streamed the sombre veil, more suitable for a widow than for that round-faced child. But Lucy drew it about her with a tender touch, as she sat apart, and Camille could plainly note her ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... thoughtfully graduated to indicate the time which had elapsed since Sir Timothy's decease. She wore a violet silk of sombre hue, ornamented by a black silk apron and a black lace scarf. The velvet bow which served so very imperfectly as a skull-cap was also violet, intimating a semi-assuaged, but respectfully lengthened, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... and association. For although the sullen tone of his mind was not fully brought out until he wrote Childe Harold, it is yet evident from his Hours of Idleness that he was tuned to that key before he went abroad. The dark colouring of his mind was plainly imbibed in a mountainous region, from sombre heaths, and in the midst of rudeness and grandeur. He had no taste for more cheerful images, and there are neither rural objects nor villagery in the scenes he describes, but only loneness ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... With the slap-dash economy of effort which he had learned of Van Roon, when that ill-fated genius was in Chelsea, Mac had caught the salient curves and angles of Mrs. Carville as she stooped over her scaldino, had caught to a surprising degree the sombre expression of her face and the tigerish energy of her crouched body. I studied it with great pleasure for a moment, and then it recurred to me that he had not been with us at the window. I say recurred, though I had known it all along, and my ejaculation, for that matter, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... at the height of this engagement was sombre, magnificent, and unique. The day was perfectly clear, and you could see right down the coast as far as Sedd-ul-Bahr. There the warships of the first division were blazing away at Aki Baba and the hills around it, covering their summits with a great white cloud ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... on, the scenery became more solemn and awe-inspiring. Pines that looked very gloomy in the late afternoon mingled with the chestnuts, while black rocks, faintly flushed with heather towards the sky, reared their jagged outlines above the sombre foliage. All the while the water in the gorge moaned or roared. It was growing very dusk when the walls on either hand rose like ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sat eyeing a beam of sombre city sunlight on the dusty carpet. She could only suppose that the offending "he" was Wilfrid; but, why he should be so, she could not guess: and how to plead for him, divided ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the lee rigging, handing their eyes to shield the wind and spray. Faint as yet against the sombre monotone of sea and sky, a long line of breaking water leapt to their gaze, then vanished, as the staggering barque drove to the trough; again—again; there could be no doubt. Breakers! On a ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... inspiration through the bright links of suggestion by which one art lends itself to another. The two great Polish poets, Nierncewicz and Mickiewicz (the latter the Dante of the Slavic race), exiles from their unhappy land, feed their sombre sorrow, and find in the wild, Oriental rhythms of the player only melancholy memories of the past. Perhaps Victor Hugo, Balzac, Lamartine, or the aged Chateaubriand, also drop in by-and-by, to recognize, in the music, echoes of the daring romanticism which they opposed to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the long passage which led from his quarters to the oak hall, whistling sotto voce a bar or two of the Schumann as he went; then his manner became sombre as he crossed the polished boards and entered the passage beyond which led to ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... placed at the end of the vault on tressels, and not in niches like the others. These it was necessary to remove, to form behind them the chamber in which they were ultimately to be deposited. Stephen, finding the place and proceedings in keeping with the sombre colours of his mind, waited ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... light, remarks that the rays prevent us from seizing the outline of a bright object, that then the flame is enveloped by a bright halo; then by a second one less vivid, and so on until the tones become dull and sombre. In short, to make myself understood, his picture seen from distance ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... called by Europeans) measures from three to four feet from point to point of its extended wings, and some of them have been seen wanting but a few inches of five feet in the alar expanse. These sombre-looking creatures feed chiefly on ripe fruits, the guava, the plantain, and the rose-apple, and are abundant in all the maritime districts, especially at the season when the silk-cotton tree, the pulun-imbul,[3] is putting forth its flower-buds, of which they are singularly fond. By day they ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... station at Viazma, where I arrived one morning at sunrise, I had some twenty miles to drive, and as soon as I got clear of the little town I began my observations. What I saw around me seemed to contradict the sombre accounts I had received. The villages through which I passed had not at all the look of dilapidation and misery which I expected. On the contrary, the houses were larger and better constructed than they used to be, and each of them had a chimney! That latter fact ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... mature fall of the year clothes itself in gay colors, it is deemed an evidence of immaturity for women in the fall time of life to sport crimson and scarlet and orange. Sober grays (which mean old, mature), quiet brown, and even sombre blacks, are rather what are looked for. To dress young when people are old, deceives no one. There is a beauty of age as well as a beauty of youth. Those who live to be old have had their share of the former: why should they seek to deprive ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Twickenham; but as we have already said something of the charming and thoroughly English scenes which surround Sudbrook, we shall add nothing further upon that subject now—though the blossoming horse chestnuts and the sombre cedars of Richmond Park, the bright stretches of the Thames, and the quaint gateways and terraces of Ham House, the startled deer and the gorse-covered common, all picture themselves before our mind at the mention of those walks, and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... grasped Simmons's hand, over which hung a fall of antique lace; "I have loved music all my days. It is an additional bond between us, sir. And the costume is quite in keeping with your art. How delightful it would be, my dear sir, if we could discard forever the sombre clothes of our day and go back to the velvets and silks Of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... those left at the Hutted Knoll. They had built three or four skiffs, one small batteau, and a couple of canoes. These were all in the water, in waiting for the disappearance of the ice; which was now reduced to a mass of stalactites in form, greenish and sombre in hue, as they floated in a body, but clear and bright when separated and exposed to the sun. The south winds began to prevail, and the shore was glittering with the fast-melting piles of the frozen fluid, though it would have been vain yet to attempt ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... schools, is the most startling artistic apparition of his century. And to the century he has summed up so plastically and emotionally he has also propounded questions that only the unborn years may answer. He has a hundred faults to which he opposes one imperious excellence—a genius, sombre, magical, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the condition of the willow boughs Oliver agreed as to the cause, and said that they must remember to warn the Baron's shepherds that the Bushmen, who had not been seen for some time, were about. Soon afterwards they emerged from the sombre firs and crossed a wide and sloping ground, almost bare of trees, where a forest fire last year had swept away the underwood. A verdant growth of grass was now springing up. Here they could canter side by side. The sunshine poured ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... 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 ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... gratified Pixie's keen sense of what it dramatically termed "a situation" to place herself in this point of vantage and act the part of audience; and to-day, though no one more interesting than a gardener was likely to appear, she yet made instinctively for the accustomed place. The sombre green of the yew was more in accord with her mood than the riot of blossom in the gardens beyond, and she was out of sight of those terrible upper windows. At any moment, as it seemed, a hand from within might stretch out to lower those blinds ... Could one live through ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... very unpalatable medicine, and the critic realized it as he looked at the sombre face ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the sombre Haco, and he pointed to the long array that now gleamed from the wood through which the Saxon kinsmen had passed the night before; and scarcely were these cohorts in view, than lo! from a third quarter advanced the glittering knighthood under the Duke. All three divisions came on ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as the 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 ghastly, desolate, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... beautiful, the worldly, the joyous. As he rose slowly to his feet, he looked half despairingly around. It was a stern religion which they loved, this handful of weatherbeaten farmers and their underlings. Their womenkind were made as unlovely as possible, with flat hair, sombre and ill-made clothes. Their surroundings were whitewashed and text-hung walls, and in their hearts was the love for narrow ways. He gave out his text slowly and with heavy heart. Then he paused, and, glancing once more round the little building, met again the soft, languid fire of those full ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... is a little stone sort of shed with two arched openings, and from it you look into the tiny church with its crucifixes and relics, or out to great, bold, sombre Martinswand, as you like best; and in this spot Findelkind would sit hour after hour while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... not write its events in detail. What I have already mentioned will do as a sample. Late in the afternoon—it was the afternoon of a September day, the first fine one after a three days' storm—we reached the cape, just as the short sombre twilight of an autumn day settled down on land and sea. As the horse trudged laboriously along through the heavy piece of sand connecting the cape and the mainland, I was almost terrified by the great sound of waves, whose spray tossed up in vast spouts from every rocky ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... universal sombre tint of desert animals is a beautiful example of the imperious working of our modern Deus ex machina, natural selection. The more uniform in hue is the environment of any particular region, the more uniform in hue must be all its inhabitants. In the arctic snows, for example, we find ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... great calm settled on Jeanne's face. The lamp cast a sunny light upon it, and it regained its exquisite though somewhat lengthy oval. Jeanne's fine eyes, now closed, had large, bluish, transparent lids, which veiled—one could divine it—a sombre, flashing glance. A light breathing came from her slender nose, while round her somewhat large mouth played a vague smile. She slept thus, amidst her outspread tresses, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked then, a timid, tremulous knock,—for last night's fear was creeping over me. The noise startled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Where the sombre azimuths are booming, Flecked with argent elemental foam, And the stately colocynths are blooming In a salicylic monochrome; There, transported on pellucid pinions, Sick of common sense I seek repose, Far from the disconsolate dominions Tainted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... the background of the picture, you will perceive that it is already of a dusky, sombre hue; now, this being of a meditative and grave character, has been denominated by our academy the 'brown-study color'; and it would clearly have been supererogatory to lay the same tint upon it. No, sir; we avoid repetitions even in our prayers, deeming ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... children into whose existence the ceaseless round of fast and feast, of prohibited and enjoyed pleasures, of varying species of food, brought change and relief! Imprisoned in the area of a few narrow streets, unlovely and sombre, muddy and ill-smelling, immured in dreary houses and surrounded with mean and depressing sights and sounds, the spirit of childhood took radiance and color from its own inner light and the alchemy of youth could still ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of industry and commerce, that all distinction in them seems to be reduced to a strange colorlessness; while the primordial animal cravings, greedy, earth-born, fumble after their aims across the sad and littered stage of sombre scenery. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... stood our guide and boatman, his sombre eye steady on the south-by-east. Around the horizon of his countenance there spread a dark and six-days' beard, like a slowly rising thunder-cloud; ever and anon there was a gleam of white teeth, like ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... reflections were sombre. I saw my resources all but exhausted, and I began to meditate a journey to Lisbon. If my fortune had been inexhaustible, the Hanoverians might have held me in their silken fetters to the end of my days. It seemed to me as if I loved them more like ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The sombre woods are richly sad, Their leaves are red and gold: Are thoughts in solemn splendour clad Signs that we men ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Miss Abingdon's sombre reflections when her friend, the vicar's wife, came in for a morning call. She thought that Mrs. Wrottesley's brown merino dress and bonnet, and constraining mantle which rendered all movements of the arms ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... scurrying rush of little school-boys from a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they laugh and are merry even after they have children ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... however, are full of poignant episodes. For instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood when he found out what sort of man his father really was—a sombre event in the life of any boy, much more so for ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... mists, dark chasms, hidden echoes; but he perceived something of its vastness and immensity; he had broken down the poor frail fences of his soul, and was in contact with reality. He did not doubt that he seemed to the younger generation an elderly and sombre personage, stumbling down the dark descent of life, with youth and brightness behind him; but that descent appeared to himself to be rather an upward-rising road, over dim mountains, the air glowing about him with some far-off sunrise. Poetry, art, religion—they ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... area of the Big Water, but was better worth while when you got there. Her little tract lay beyond the more prosaic reaches that were furnished chiefly in the light green of deciduous trees; it was part of a long stretch thickly set for miles with the dark and sombre green of pines. Our nature-lover had taken, the year before, a neglected and dilapidated old farmhouse and had made it into what her friends and habitues liked to call a bungalow. The house had been put up—in the rustic spirit which ignores all considerations of landscape and outlook—behind ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... murdered his master by casting him down an oubliettes, ever haunted the fatal tower, first as a sleep-walker, then as a restless ghost—moaning and gibbering to himself, and tearing at a walled-up door with bleeding hands. The train of thought thereby suggested was so very sombre, that I preferred returning to my cabin, and climbing into an unfurnished berth, to spending more minutes in that weird company. I never made the man out satisfactorily afterwards. It is possible that he was one of the few who scarcely showed on deck, till we were in sight of land; but rather, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... (I forget what) to step into the court-yard, as I settled this account; and remember I walk'd down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning.—Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly—for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure. He was dressed in a sombre yet rich style, in black frock-coat, shining hat, neat brown gaiters, and well-cut pearl-grey trousers. Yet his actions were in absurd contrast to the dignity of his dress and features, for he was running hard, with occasional little ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey night sky and stars looked in upon them ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... contradictory chin marring by its prominence the otherwise perfect oval of the face. I wondered if Anthony had as noble a throat as this collarless galabeah left uncovered, reminding myself that I could not at all recall Anthony's throat. Then, as the sombre eyes turned to me, drawn perhaps by my stare, I was stunned, flabbergasted, what you will, by realizing that Anthony himself was looking at me from ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City, connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the Union, like a checker-board, "with the sombre sadness of right-angles," as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints could not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxons. In this strange country, where the people are certainly not up to the level of their ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... foot of the bed was a small writing-table, with a penny bottle of ink on it. A few coloured prints and engravings —representing, for example, Louis Philippe and his family, and people perishing on a raft—broke the tedium of the walls. The first impression on Sophia's eye was one of sombre splendour. Everything had the air of being richly ornamented, draped, looped, carved, twisted, brocaded into gorgeousness. The dark crimson bed- hangings fell from massive rosettes in majestic folds. The counterpane was covered with lace. The window-curtains had amplitude ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... see nobody, and hid himself from view. Later, he returned to his capital and entered upon a long period of mourning, to the sincerity of which his heartfelt sorrow bore even plainer testimony than his sombre garb of woe. His royal neighbours all sent ambassadors with messages of condolence, and when the ceremonies proper to these occasions were at length over, he proclaimed a period of peace. He released his subjects from military service, and devoted ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... insubordination, disturbing public rule and private peace. For waving pendants, flowing draperies, brilliant colours, eagles' feathers, herons' plumes, feasts or festivals so splendid in imagination, let naked limbs, scanty, sombre garments to elude discovery by the foe, bits of heath stuck in bonnets if they had them, precarious sustenance, abject humility and all those hardships inseparable from uncultivated tribes and countries be instituted as a ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... crape-veiled women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... together; they all look very happy, but I think Mrs. Campbell is the most so of any. At a little distance from this last small circle stands our old friend, Girly, now grown beyond all recognition into a pleasing and promising womanhood; and away in the misty background a long-forgotten trio loom out in sombre sullenness; they are Mrs. Hampden, and Fred and the 'solicitous brother.' Fred is a hopeless dyspeptic, who can give his mind to nothing else but his digestion, which unfortunate circumstance frets his new disenchanted parent and provokes his no ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... scene, though sombre and sad, was far from depressing, but they all felt the change. John Hislop seemed to feel it more than all the rest; for besides being deeply religious, he was deeply in love. His nearest and dearest friend, Heney—happy, hilarious Heney—knew, and he swore softly whenever a ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... Louis Rey, 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 up, and stood in the inn-yard, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... popularly believed, had been built on the site of an ancient burial-ground. Every one used to say it was haunted, and the Holkitts had great trouble in getting servants. The appearance of the haunted house did not belie its reputation, for its grey walls, sombre garden, gloomy hall, dark passages and staircase, and sinister-looking attics could not have been more thoroughly suggestive of all kinds of ghostly phenomena. Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the place, no matter how hot and bright the sun, was cold ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Sombre and rich, the skies; Great glooms, and starry plains. Gently the night wind sighs; Else ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... things in the infinite, with the consequent loss of personality, individuality, and all moral responsibility, had a most depressing effect upon the character of the people who embraced this strange system. This is so manifest that it may be plainly read in the sombre ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was never sombre. She always seemed to remember, even in her bright ribbons and silks, the days of her girlhood, when half the young men in the county were wild about her. When she moved she wafted towards you a perfume of sweet ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fingers. "Ah, oui! He loves her so well that he will strangle her one of these days when she says a word too much and he is in his sombre mood! Quiet as he is, I would not go too far with him, ce beau monsieur! He will not be ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Gare du Nord, coming direct from far-off Glencardine, and had driven there in an auto-cab to keep an appointment made by telegram. As he paced the big room, with its dark-green walls, its Turkey carpet, and sombre furniture, his companions regarded him in wonder. They instinctively knew that he had some news of importance to impart. There was one absentee. Until his arrival Goslin refused to ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... odd smile. "A man who is about to die will do many things that would be madness in a man who has life before him," he said. His eyes gazed into his friend's eyes with sombre meaning. "I finished the records ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... je n'ai pas besoin de ta lueur, car je connais ma route! Elle a pu me paraitre sombre au debut, quand mes yeux n'etaient point accoutumes a ses rudes contours; mais, depuis un an, elle est pour moi eblouissante de clarte. On a beau me l'allonger chaque jour, on n'arrivera pas a me l'obscurcir. On a beau y multiplier les ronces et les pierres, apres lesquelles je laisse de ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... lakes has its own character and therefore its own charm. One is bright and friendly, with wooded hills around it, and silver beaches, and red berries of the rowan-tree fringing the shores. Another is sombre and lonely, set in a circle of dark firs and larches, with sighing, trembling reeds along the bank. Another is only a round bowl of crystal water, the colour of an aquamarine, transparent and joyful as the sudden smile on the face of a child. Another is surrounded by fire-scarred ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... been discovered of the same appearance. Some were dyed purple, others painted with the bright colours of the sky and sea, or the shining of the stars, yet others green as grass. Many were exceeding pale, many again exceeding dark and sombre, the whole so ordered that the eye found in these devices every one of the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... seer himself, sometimes that of one dear to him. This type of prevision is so common in the literature of the subject, and its object is so obvious, that we need hardly cite examples of it; but one or two instances in which the prophetic sight, though clearly useful, was yet of a less sombre character, will prove not uninteresting to the reader. The following is culled from that storehouse of the student of the uncanny, Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature, ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... with clear-eyed frankness. Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the sombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... a rarely gifted mortal, to whom the triple portal Of Music, Art, and Poesy had opened years before, With a look of sombre feeling, depths within his soul revealing, Leaving room for no appealing, he decided o'er and o'er The old, old vexing questions of the why and the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... for there was a peculiarly sombre frown upon Yussuf's brow, which suggested that he was thinking over Mr Burne's suspicions of the previous evening, and his ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... His voice had grown sombre, and to Jimmie, gazing at him, it seemed that all the sorrows of the world were in his tired grey eyes. "Perhaps ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... apart, and there comes a sudden indrawing of breath from all, for no garden is there now. In its place is an endless wood of great trees; the nearest of them has come close to the window. It is a sombre wood, with splashes of moonshine and of blackness standing ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... number of the other species of Fagus and of the Winter's Bark, is quite inconsiderable. This beech keeps its leaves throughout the year; but its foliage is of a peculiar brownish-green colour, with a tinge of yellow. As the whole landscape is thus coloured, it has a sombre, dull appearance; nor is it often enlivened by the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a thousand reasons for ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... presented; but those were bright and joyous days, and our school-yard resounded with the merry laugh and frolicsome mirth of childhood; yet they leave not that abiding impression upon the mind that characterizes incidents of a more sombre hue. But we will leave the dear old school house with all its treasured memories that link it with the past, and pursue our way in some other direction. It is hard to stop where so many images crowd upon the mind, and come stealing ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows is painted the name of the ship, and her port of register. The lower masts of this vessel are short and stout, the top-masts are of great height, the extreme points of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... group I notice some quite new, or freshly planed unpainted white wood, standing beside others grey or even black with age; and there are many, still older from whose surface all the characters have disappeared. Others are lying on the sombre clay. Hundreds stand so loose in the soil that the least breeze ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the door. Was it the ghost of Madame Richard who stood there pale, cold, and in the sombre garb ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... already. It only remains for me now to get all my people happy as soon as possible. Zany and Chunk 'make up,' and a good deal of their characteristic love-making will be worked in to relieve the rather sombre state of things at this stage. Whately returns with his empty sleeve, more of a hero than ever in his own eyes and his mother's. Miss Lou thinks him strangely thoughtful and considerate in keeping away, as he does, after a few short visits at The ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... out a spiritual vapour, like a cloud, which surrounds one. These are all in different colours, and the colours change with the thoughts we think. Black and purple are the gloomy, morose colours; deep blue and the paler shades show a sombre outlook on life; green is more cheerful, though still serious; yellow and orange show ambition and envy, and red and white are emblematic of all the virtues—red of the noble, martial qualities of man and white of the angelic disposition of woman," he concluded, with a meaning glance at ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... His later writings were incomprehensible. When we were living in England, he passed through the midst of us on one of his aimless, mysterious journeys round the world; and when I was in New York, in 1884, I met him, looking pale, sombre, nervous, but little touched by age. He died a few years later. He conceived the highest admiration for my father's genius, and a deep affection for him personally; but he told me, during our talk, that he was convinced that there was some secret in my father's life which ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the night, unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... quivered; 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 are apt to think, that there was something immodest in unveiling ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... had refused to accompany him, for it was the hour when she usually sat with Isabel. She glanced at Eustace swiftly as he sat down, half-expecting a message from the sick-room. But he said nothing, merely leaning back in the wicker-chair, and fixing his eyes upon the sombre splendour of endless waters upon which hers had been resting. There was a massive look about him, as of a strong man deliberately bent to some gigantic task. A little tremor went through her as furtively she watched him. His silence, unlike the silences of Scott, was disquieting. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... street, where death is so gay, so vain, so richly adorned, where the monuments arose amid the foliage of trees perennially green, which they had endeavored, but without success, to render serious and sombre, where the mausolea are pavilions and dining-rooms, in which the inscriptions recall whole narratives of life and even love affairs, there stood spacious inns and sumptuous villas—for instance, those of Arrius Diomed and Cicero. This Arrius Diomed was one of the freedmen ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... goddesses, 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 wear a tiresome resemblance. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... her sister's head went down again. She could think of nothing to say. "I can't help thinking that our life would be that," Martie went on presently, raising her sombre face to rest it on one hand, her elbows propped on the table. "Everything would be wonderful, just because we love each other so! He writes, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... inlet with a wall of forest overshadowing it on each side; we enter it, and at a distance of two or three hundred yards a glorious sheet of water bursts upon the view. The scenery of Cayambe is very picturesque. The land, on the two sides visible of the lake, is high, and clothed with sombre woods, varied here and there with a white-washed house, in the middle of a green patch of clearing, belonging to settlers. In striking contrast to these dark, rolling forests, is the vivid, light green and cheerful foliage ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... 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
... and artfully arranged that they wore the appearance of study and preparation. This brilliant, resplendent creature, in every respect the opposite to George Grenville, showy where Grenville was solid, fluent where he was formal, glittering and even glowing where he was sober or sombre, fascinating where he was repellent, gracious where he was sullen, and polished where he was rude, was nevertheless destined to share Grenville's hateful task and Grenville's deserved condemnation. Such enthusiasm as Parliament ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... your comrades' praise— All that romance that seemed so fair Grows dim, and you are left to bear The prose of duty's sombre ways And labour of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation! Ah, fate and sea! To you ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Sombre become the skies, the winds of fall Sing dangerously through the hissing grass; Sunlight and clouds in slow procession pass Over the tress, then comes an interval Of utter calm, the air is a morass Of humid ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits, of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny—more powerful than sportive—found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... their dress, habitations, and implements, so picturesque and unique, as well as the gallant gentlemen in the costume of that picturesque age, it seems almost to border on romance. But there is a dark side to the picture. The sombre veil of uncertainty hangs over the fate of two entire colonies, which, if lifted, would consecrate this spot to the extremes of suffering and bloodshed. It was, no doubt, better to have these scenes buried in oblivion, and for each succeeding ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... love as our benefactor, whom we cannot but admire as our superior: it was a sense of frightful anomaly, of putrescence in beauty and splendour, of death in life and life in death, which made the English psychologist-poets savage and sombre, cynical and wrathful and hopeless. The influence is the same on all, and the difference of attitude is slight, and due to individual characters; but the gloom is the same in each of them. In Webster—no mere grisly inventor of Radcliffian horrors, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... and weary. Around his sombre eyes were chocolate-coloured hollows. His thick raven hair was disordered. He had lost heavily, and, bidding a curt good-bye to the others, he strode off. In a moment I had ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... prelate made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... quite foreign to her hitherto. The little school-teacher had turned shy again and said never a word, but, as he opened the gate to let her pass through, she saw the old, old telltale look in his sombre eyes. Her mother ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox |
