"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first touch of dawn came into the sky, that unnatural wind ceased, in a single moment; and I could see no sign of the hand. The dawn came slowly, and presently the wan light filled all the room, and made the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle look more unearthly. Yet, it was not until the day had fully come, that I made any attempt to leave the barrier, for I did not know but that there was some method abroad, in the sudden stopping of ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... late," Barton observed, reluctantly. He liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying patients would be ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... the ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as the fields ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... holier part of what was once herself; all that was true and noble, womanly and pure, from the deep waters of oblivion to which that damning appetite has consigned them, rise to haunt her now, pale, wan, and spectre-like. Oh! to sit down, side by side with her former self; to see herself as she used to be before the tempter crept into the Eden of her heart; to look despairingly up to the height whence she had fallen, so wrecked in moral strength ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all things heard, Hand of harper, tone of bird, Sound of woods at sundawn stirr'd, Welling water's winsome ward, Wind in warm wan weather," ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove, Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Hubbard Went to the Cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; When she got there The Cupboard wan bare. And so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... not be broken. She sat quite still beside him, her hands clasped childlike in her lap, listening with parted lips. The dusk deepened, and the golden moon hung over the surrounding wall and flooded the garden in wan hoary light. The pool lay a lake of silver in a black fringe of trees. The night flowers breathed forth drowsy perfume, making heavy the summer air. Nicanor's voice rolled on, endlessly through ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... virgin-minded studious Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,— Those blue eyes had survived so much! While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the scene as it was revealed by the momentary light of one of the last matches. Maqueda sat by Oliver. His arm was about her waist, her head rested upon his shoulder, her long hair flowed loose, her large and tender eyes stared from her white, wan face up toward his face, which was ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... evidently listening, and there was a look of joyous expectancy in her face. Underneath, on the margin of the canvas, was written in charcoal, "Hope." The other represented the same figure, darkly dressed, with a wan, hopeless look in her face, standing on a rock at the edge of an angry sea, over which she was gazing; while the sky overhead was dark and sombre without a rift in the hurrying clouds. It ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... young man, pressing his wan and wasted fingers over his heart—"till then, no more dreams, no more strain upon my life—it would break! Oh, monsieur, how small is my prison—how low the window—how narrow are the doors! To think that so much pride, splendor, and happiness should be able ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... down her poor wan cheek on the merciful old book, as on her mother's breast, and gave up all the tangled skein of life into the hands of Infinite Pity. There seemed a consoling presence in the room, and her tired ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... awful sight than the sight of a strong man in tears, God grant I may ne'er behold it, for surely I should die of pity. Doth it please God that I resemble Abraham in the matter of age, if in none other, ne'er will that scene fade from my memory—my lady, so wan and white and narrow, like a tall lily over which a rude wind hath swept, and at her knee the strong man, bowed as a little lad that saith his prayers, clasping her kirtle and her hands, as though one sinking in deep waters were to grasp at a floating stem of flowers for support. ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... thing. But the woman would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only there was the police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her conscience, then, that was gnawing at her—because of the police! Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... cabin, I beheld my shadow in a mirror. I should not have known myself. My whole body was as white as if it had been lime-washed; but I remembered the flour. My face alone was to be seen, and that was almost as white as the rest—white, and wan, and bony as that of a skeleton! I saw that suffering and meagre fare had made sad ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... nor engage in manufactures, nor cultivate the soil: they lived by botching and brokage. How they lived at all surprises me. Want, filth, and the infected atmosphere of their dens, had impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the semblance of humanity. They might have been taken for brutes; yet they were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... lave me rigimint, sorr? Me wid three years' sarvis an' sorra intry in my shate at all, only two, wan time I was dthronk wid a cowld in me nose, sorr. Me lave me rigimint? It was the rigimint lift me, sorr. As I tell ye just now, we'd bin marchin' an' fightin' for wakes and wakes, an' it was tired I was, sorr, bate ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... dining-room! I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry-thoughts for the old hags! How I would stuff the big wan-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... was dreary and dilapidated, with a partly shuttered front. The green-stained walls and a mask of ivy gave the place a resemblance to a large ivy-grown tomb. Charles's spirits were depressed as he looked at it. There was something so wan and melancholy in its appearance that his high anticipations rapidly faded. In the face of that reality he could no longer picture a silver-haired gracious old lady welcoming Sisily with tears in her eyes for the sake of her dead mother. The human qualities ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Wan, and with rather dark circles under their eyes, the girls got breakfast the next morning. The meal put them in better spirits, and when they bustled around about the camp duties they, forgot their scare of the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... his long robes of office, and surmounting that splendid intellectual head rested the mitered hat of an Archbishop. After the momentary silence the cheers seemed to storm the very door of the sky itself, but the old man moved no muscle, and no color tinged his wan face. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... man Than he'll take notice of. In every path He treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him pale and wan Oh mighty Love! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... friend of mine get sic a fright! For the curst hag, instead of doing me good— The very thought o't's like to freeze my blood! Rais'd up a ghaist, or deil, I kenna whilk, Like a dead corse in sheet as white as milk; Black hands it had, and face as wan as death. Upon me fast the witch and it fell baith, And gat me down, while I, like a great fool, Was labour'd as I wont to be at school. My heart out of its hool was like to loup; I pithless grew with fear, and had nae hope; Till, with an elritch laugh, they vanished quite. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... cries of the children who ought to go to the seaside, children who have never been to the seaside, never paddled, never built castles, never caught crabs, never seen sea-anemones or starfish, children whose faces are wan and whose mothers are too tired to be kind to them. It is often that, I am sure, too ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... wonner at ye," said Janet to her husband, the moment he came home, "to lat the young lad warstle himsel' deid that get wi' a scythe. His banes is but saft yet, There wasna a dry steek on him or he wan half the lenth o' the first bout. He's sair disjaskit, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Her white, wan face and pleading eyes were too much for the father to see. Though no formal offer of marriage had been made, though the word "love" had hardly been written in those glowing letters, he reasoned rightly that love alone could prompt a man to write day after day in all the ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... left the room. As he did so Colwyn pushed back his chair and walked across to the window, where he stood for a few moments looking out. A wan young moon gleamed through the black tapestry of the avenue of trees, pointing white fingers at the house and plunging the old garden into deep pools of shadow. The trees huddled in their rows, whispering menacingly, and stretching half-stripped ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... either himsell a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch maun be; I wadna have ridden that wan water For a' the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... naked hill, was Uncle Sam's military village,—a fort by courtesy,—where, when not sleeping, black soldiers and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little street was fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had the air of doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their occupants, and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats, poured in from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies, disappeared into the shops with a sort of bow-legged waddle, like sailors ashore. Off his horse, the cow-boy is frankly awkward. Purchases ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Mrs Honour that Sophia had not been in bed during the two last nights, and observing her to look very pale and wan with her fatigue, earnestly entreated her to refresh herself with some sleep. She was yet a stranger to her history, or her apprehensions; but, had she known both, she would have given the same advice; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... to the bay whereon was situated the chief settlement and fort of the Dutch in Formosa, that of Tai-wan, in the southwestern part of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... to her cushioned armchair and little work-table placed beneath the portrait of the lieutenant-colonel of artillery between two windows,—a point from which her eye could rake the rue du Bercail and see all comers. She was a good woman, dressed with bourgeois simplicity in keeping with her wan face furrowed by grief. The rigorous humbleness of poverty made itself felt in all the accessories of this household, the very air of which was charged with the stern and upright morals of the provinces. At this moment ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... O'Neil, "to call is wan thing, and the chune Mrs. Barry sings is another. Take shame, Carus Renault, ye blatherin', bould inthriguer! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the wan water, hoping that very swiftly it might bear her grief-worn soul down to the shades. But the river bore her up and carried her to its shallows in a fair meadow where Pan himself sat on the bank and merrily ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... many-colored woods, Shade deepening over shade, the country round Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun, Of every hue, from wan declining green to ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... right." She sat with downcast eyes a moment, musing deeply. Then she looked up with a smile that quite glorified her wan face. "I'd like to stay, you know," she said humbly. "I'm facing a crisis, just now, and on the whole I'd rather straighten up. If you feel like giving me a chance I—I'd like to see if I've any reserve force or whether the decency in me ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... Night her shadowy veil has spread, See want and infamy as forth they come, Lead their wan daughter from her branded home, To woo the stranger for unhallow'd bread. Poor outcast! o'er thy sickly-tinted cheek And half-clad form, what havock want hath made; And the sweet lustre of thine eye ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... of the village parson John Jacob grew in mind and body—his estate was to come later. When he was seventeen, his father came and made a formal demand for his services. The young man must take up his father's work of butchering. That night John Jacob walked out of Waldorf by the wan light of the moon, headed for Antwerp. He carried a big red handkerchief in which his worldly goods were knotted, and in his heart he had the blessings of the Lutheran clergyman, who walked with him for half a mile, and said a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... exclaimed Warwick, falling on his knee. The meek reproach; the touching words; the mien and visage altered, since last beheld, from manhood into age; the gray hairs and bended form of the king, went at once to that proud heart; and as the earl bent over the wan, thin hand resigned to his lips, a tear upon its surface out-sparkled all ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them occasion to return to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels, engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause. Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in Company K with effusive ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... or the rain. Let us enter. A most pitiful sight awaits us. The fever has been before us. For months it has raged, and two human souls have been taken from the family which dwells here. On a rude filthy bed lies the wasted frame of a once stalwart man. He is as feeble as the infant; a wan child is sitting near by. The mother, in tattered garments, totters about her work, so enfeebled by the disease that her strength is inadequate for her tasks. Three of the children are nothing but skeletons, and sit listlessly on the floor, taking but little notice of anything going ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... fetidness, of which no words can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affected them, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away and left him alone. He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm, expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand, a dull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil, beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and close estimation of men and things and events. Not a fold of his face quivered. His mouth and forehead were impassible; but his eyes moved and lowered themselves with a noble, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... of me cares whether he can or not," replied the sailor. "We were promised big wages and prize-money by the bushel if we would help capture the Yankee ships on the high seas. We've took two prizes besides this wan, and the Herndon but we put the torch to thim, and niver a cint of prize-money is there forninst the name of ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... for Annie of Rough Royal That ye make a' this din, She stood a' last night at this door, But I trow she wan ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... out a wan hand to his friend. "I can't begin to thank you for what you and the other boys did for me," he said, weakly. "If you hadn't discovered me in that lonely hut I wouldn't be ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... ankles. She stood still for a moment, looking down upon him. Then, blowing out the light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp on the piano near by. The daylight made things distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... arms, and would have carried ashore had he been allowed his own way. But this was a point beyond even his power to enforce. For one thing they were sure the child was dead, the little face looked so wan. Secondly, if they were caught by the English gunboat it would mean heavy fines, and the men had no notion of throwing away good money ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... perturbed. He was wondering whether he should plead guilty to a little knowledge, when a change of expression came over the wan face on the pillow. The doctor came and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... he's asleep, an' aftherward it works fur him as a night watchman. On other men's dures it knocks an' runs away; an' on the dures of other men it knocks, an' whin they come out it hits thim over the head with an ax. But eviry wan has an opporchunity. So yez had better kape your eye skinned an' nab it before it shlips by an' is ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southern suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town of villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse-chestnut, and guelder-rose. The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... aloud. O friends! I hear the tread of nimble feet Hasting this way, and now by glimpse discern Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade; And with them comes a third of regal port, But faded splendour wan; who by his gait And fierce demeanour seems the Prince of Hell, Not likely to part hence without contest; Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours. He scarce had ended, when those two approached, And brief related ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... me if I'd seen you; and I told him I hadn't. He was askin' everybody for you. Some on 'em said you wan't to home; and the old man said he hadn't seen ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... what wud you like?' she says, and Danny ups and says, 'Chockaluts and candy men and taffy and curren' buns and ginger bread,' and she had every wan ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... said he, suddenly. "Where have you been? Nest, your husband is dripping, drookit wet. That's what makes him look so blue and wan." ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at youre repaste, Annoyethe no man present nor absent, But speketh feyre, for and ye make waste 171 Off [large] langage, for soth ye most be schent; And wan ye speke, speketh wyth good entent Of maters appendyng to myrth and plesaunce, But nothyng that ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... faces illustrative of the same type of tubercular disease are very striking; the uppermost is photographically interesting as a case of predominance of one peculiarity, happily of no harm to the effect of the ideal wan face. It is that one of the patients had a sharply-checked black and white scarf, whose pattern has asserted itself unduly in the composite. In such cases I ought to throw the too clearly defined picture ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... event in His earthly life to shadow forth this great truth, and has bid us see a pledge and a symbol of it in that scene on the Lake of Galilee: the disciples toiling in the sudden storm, the poor little barque tossing on the waters tinged by the wan moon, the spray dashing over the wearied rowers. They seem alone, but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the trees, The wan stars burn and pale— Oh Rose, come forth!—upon the breeze I hear the nightingale Unfold the crimson waves that lie In darkness rosy dim, And swing thy fragrant censer high, Oh ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... true, we are shadows cold and wan; And the fair and the brave whom we loved on earth are gone; But still thus even in death, So sweet the living breath Of the fields and the flowers in our youth we wander'd o'er, That ere, condemned, we go To ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to Private McFadden: Be gob, ye're a bad 'un; Now turn out your toes; Yer belt is unhookit Yer cap is on crookit Ye may not be dhrunk, But be jabers, ye look it; Wan-two! Wan-two! Ye monkey faced devil, I'll jolly ye through! Wan-two! Time! Mark! Ye march like the aigle ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... old Ribalta, when the two young ladies had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty, more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. "How do you know it is here? Who has told you? ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... at the house of one of his brother ministers somewhere in the North of England. But Lady Ellinor was in London, and I was ushered into her presence. Nothing could be more cordial than her manner, though she was evidently much depressed in spirits, and looked wan and careworn. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man—wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud. It was ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a cause more deep, More solemn far, the rustic doth assign To the strange restlessness of those wan leaves. The Cross he deems—the blessed Cross, whereon The meek Redeemer bow'd His head to death— Was formed of Aspen wood; and since that hour Through all its race the pale tree hath sent down A thrilling consciousness, a secret awe Making them tremulous, when not a breeze Disturbs the ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... to tell me," she confided. "She told me that Poquelin, the father of Moliere, made it." She was wan with fatigue, poor child, even after she lay, warm and cozy, in the great bed that had been her mother's. And the last thing she saw as she closed her eyes in the wavering candle light was Margot's fat and comfortable figure, ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... face shrunken and pallid, on which no smile came; great eyes grown wan with gazing into darkness looking out beneath the shaven head, emptily, as the hollow eye-pits of a skull; a wizened halting form wasted by abstinence, sorrow, and prayer; a long wild beard of iron grey; thin blue-veined hands that ever trembled like a leaf; ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Bridget, in a loud whisper, "would ye be havin' th' milkman lave wan or two quarts ov ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... Lo! her wan arms folded meekly, And the glory of her hair Falling as a robe around her, Kneels the Magdalene ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... it was time to load his holes. I was startin' for mine one evenin', whistlin' along, when I smelled smoke. Stopped and sniffed, and about weakened. Knowed it was comin' from the powder room down there. It wan't more'n twenty feet from the shaft, and there was two or three tons of it in that hole. Ran back and gave the alarm bell to the engineer, then ducked my head and went toward the smoke to see if anything could be done before ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... matter for him; but he races through those delicately penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her, but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... (reveille) vekigxo. Walk marsxi, promeni. Walk (path) aleo. Walking stick bastono. Wall muro. Wallet sako, tornistro. Wallow ruligxi, ensxlimigxi. Walnut juglando. Walrus rosmaro. Waltz valso. Wan pala, palega. Wand vergo, vergego. Wander erari, vagi. Wander (be delirious) deliri. Wanderer nomadulo, vagisto. Wandering nomada, eraranta. Wane ekfinigxi. Wanness paleco. Want seneco, mizerego. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with dark circles under them, and the ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... this island," replied her companion with a wan smile—no animals bigger than coons, and they couldn't make so much a noise. Besides, I heard him grunt, or moan, as he fell. So it ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd To sudden veneration: women meek Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear. Endymion too, without a forest peer, 190 Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, Among his brothers of the mountain chase. In midst of all, the venerable priest Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, And, after lifting up his aged hands, Thus spake he: "Men of ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... crimson are cast over the grey-green world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields. Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are confused; wonderful days of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... more saw the Blessed Virgin; her countenance was wan and pale, her eyes red with weeping, but the simple dignity of her demeanour cannot be described. Notwithstanding her grief and anguish, notwithstanding the fatigue which she had endured (for she had been ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... was you. Marse Doctor, 'n I follered yer, I want to tell yer:—Mistress 'splained all 'bout dat 'fore she died. Dey wan't nothin' wrong. Her an' her ma was 'feared to let old Master know she hed run 'way an' married Marse Henry. He said he wan't gwine ter will her nary cent. So mistess and her sister, Miss Ellen, arter while, dey fotch her up to de springs. Den ole master he ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... VI., was not only an invalid but almost an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian fools in the great ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... take it to her once more. Once more! Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, where her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again. She will not ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... stain—as of a drop of blood By moonlight made more faint and wan; Ha! why these sinkings of despair? [79] He knows not how the blood comes there— And Peter is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... area open to international foreign settlement at Shanghai and the opening of the ports of Nanking, Tsing-tao (Kiao chao), and Ta-lien-wan to foreign trade and settlement will doubtless afford American enterprise additional facilities and new fields, of which it will not be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... see a coral dawn Gladden to a crocus glow! Day's a spectre dim and wan, Dancing on the furtive snow; Night's a cloud upon my brain: Oh, to see the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... as a witness, I recognised him at once, and, when I sent for him afterwards and inquired after my friends at Polreen, his first words were, 'There now—I wasn' so far wrong, after all! I knawed you must be mixed up with these things, wan way or 'nother.'" ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Wan da-ay, on the siction av Finnigin, On the road sup'rintinded by Flannigan, A rail give way on a bit av a curve, An' some kyars went off as they made the swerve. "There's nobody hurted," sez Finnigin, "But repoorts must be made to Flannigan." ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and a look of understanding. Then fetching a difficult breath he said, 'You are not afraid, Glory, are you?' and I answered him 'No,' though my heart was trembling. And then a feeble smile struggled through the wan features of his drawn face, and he told me his attack was only another summons. 'I'll soon die for good,' he said, 'and you must be strong and brave, my child, for death is the common lot, and then what is there to fear?' I didn't try to contradict him—what was the good of doing that? And ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... bright and black of yore Were now more black and bright, And beam'd strange lustre in her face So deadly wan and white. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... I first ended, then I first began; The more I trauell, further from my rest; Where most I lost, there most of all I wan; Pyned with hunger, rysing from a feast. Mee thinks I flee, yet want I legs to goe, Wise in conceite, in acte a very sot; Rauisht with ioy amidst a hell of woe, What most I seeme, that surest I am not. I build my hopes a world aboue the skye, Yet with a Mole I creepe ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... than she had expressed; but he was entirely content with what he had and his own confidence that he could cultivate it into what he pleased. There was no shaking loose from him in that way. As Eleanor sat on the hearth and looked at the ashes, in reality looking at Mr. Carlisle, her own face grew wan at what she saw there. She could give him no reason for changing their relations to each other, that would make him hold her a bit the less closely, no, nor the less fondly. What could Eleanor do? To go on ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... seventy, and yet, with one or two exceptions, they had sound limbs, clear eyes, and healthy complexions. As for the young girls, many of them were exceptionally pretty; and the children were sturdy youngsters, not the wan, thin-legged little creatures one sees in Paris. In fact, all of these people appeared to belong to a different race from that of the Parisians, to come from finer, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... benevolence, was a sore check upon his self applause, and he formed many prudent resolutions to be more upon his guard in future. Some days after, in passing through his grounds, he was accosted by a man who exhibited an appearance of extreme wretchedness. His face was wan, and his features sunken. His dimmed eye seemed hardly able to discern the object on which it gazed; and his tottering limbs with difficulty supported his feeble frame. His moving lips appeared to be framing a prayer for compassion, ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... last from Aranyani, the day she disappeared. And strange! short as had been the interval of time, he was altered, and it seemed as though years had rolled over him, writing on him in an instant the wrinkles of old age. For he looked like an incarnation of dejection, worn and wan, with eyes that were red and hollow, as if sleep had fled away from them, ousted by her jealous rivals, sorrow and her sister care. And as he saw the sun just on the very point of going down, he murmured to himself: He is but showing me the way, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder," she added, with rather a wan smile, "if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Virginia will hear it from himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with her natural ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... weary of waiting, not without some fear that- -as the Negroes would have put it—'If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, amid the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of wan sailmaker's needle, a ball o' twine, and a clasp-knife. Set me down with these before a roll o' canvass and I'll make ye ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... them as a business-man to business-men, and it went. They're square; they're solid; they'll treat us right. Never you fear. In a year from now you'll be wearing diamonds and saying: 'O'Grady, you're the wan that hung them on me.' Now will you give Ignace ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... a change had come. The moon had got round, and was fronting her from the west, and she saw that her face was altered, that she had grown pale, as if she too were wan with fear, and from her lofty place espied a coming terror. The light seemed to be dissolving out of her; she was dying—she was going out! And yet everything around looked strangely clear—clearer than ever she had seen anything before: how ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... of the gloom" (arras is good), the pale breezes are moaning, and Julio is wan as stars unseen for paleness. However, he lifts the tombstone "as it were lightsome as a summer gladness." "A summer gladness," remarks Mr. Aytoun, "may possibly weigh about half-an- ounce." Julio came on a skull, a haggard one, in the grave, and Mr. Aytoun kindly designs ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... territory within recent years have been forced from China by foreign powers: thus, Great Britain has Hongkong Island (with the peninsula of Kaulung) and Weihaiwei; Germany has Kiaochou on the bay of the same name; France has Kwang chau wan harbor. These concessions carry with them the control of the port and surrounding territory. The German concession includes the right to mine coal and iron, and to build railways within a territory of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... before he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its dirge ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... she came, moving swiftly. Her face was still pale and very wan, but the strained look had utterly passed away. Her eyes sought his with fearless confidence, and Nick's heart gave a jerk of sheer relief. He had expected tragedy, and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... The sun has just gone down, and the thrilling vespers of thrushes and blackbirds ring with a wild joy through the saddened air; the west is piled with fantastic clouds, and clothed in tints of crimson and amber, melting away into a wan green, and so eastward into the deepest blue, through which soon the stars ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... for to do it." As he spoke he unwrapped the grey shawl and extricated a pretty little girl of about five years of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock with its little linen apron all bespoke a mother's care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy arms and legs showed that she had suffered less than ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not the same Henrietta she went;—the glow, the hope, the flutter were all over; she looked pale and wan, but attempting, as she entered the room, to call up a smile, she failed, and burst ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... out of his saddle, "you'd as well give it up and take your medicine. I met a man coming from the Sugar Valley just now, and he 'lowed that out of a hundred and fifty votes down there this morning there wan't but three cast ag'in suffrage for women, and one of them was challenged. Susan Walton's got a man stationed at every precinct, with a list of the names of the men in that district that ain't registered nor paid ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... said she, "and will it never be? Why, then, let me belong for ever to the champion that strikes for me to-morrow in the lists. A sorry champion," said she a wan smile, "yet I will hold me bound to him according to my vow. But first I must win ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... tilted against the window-facing, and dark-bearded face thrown back. The quivering flame of the candle gleamed fitfully along the line of features—some youthful, almost childish; others bearing the impress of accumulated years; some crimsoned with fever, others wan and glistening with the dew of exhaustion; here a forehead bent and lowering, as in fancy the sleeper lived over the clash and shock of battle; and there a tremulous smile, lighting the stern manly mouth, as the dreamer heard again the welcome bay of watchdog on the doorstep at home, and saw ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... doubt awakened by her departure. To be sure, the heads of the offices were polite enough; but when the young housekeeper had stated her case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, with an innocent pride in its literary and ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... ricocheted on the cement floor passing between the legs of the tables, and the smartly dressed young men-about-town began to jump much as a woman jumps when frightened by a mouse under her skirt. Pale as ghosts, they conjured up wan smiles of obsequious approval. Demetrio barely parted his lips, but his followers doubled over ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... G'wan, be a sport. You promised to take me for a night ride, and you never have. I won't say a word to the Grea—lady, honest I won't. Be a sport, Miss Eveley, sure I ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... died and numbers sickened. Some expired in the arms of those who were themselves almost at the point of death. Mothers wrapped with their dying hands the remnant of their tattered clothing around the wan forms of their perishing infants. The most pitiful sight of all was to see strong men begging for the morsel of food that had been set apart for the sick ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... became peopled indeed. The extraordinarily mild day had drawn out hundreds—had given the moribund summer-excursion season a new lease of life. Every stoppage brought so many more young men in soiled khaki, with shapeless packs on their backs, and so many more wan maidens, no longer young, who were trying, in little bands, to capture from Nature the joys thus far denied by domestic life; and at one station a belated squad of the "Lovers of Landscape"—some forty or fifty in all—came flooding in with the day's ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... "I wan't never in 'em afore, and wouldn't be now, only my son Dan'el's wife's took oncommon bad, and he thinks I can ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... her and saw that she was wan and thin and weak, and he did not dare to preach to her the old family sermon as to his rank and station. "But, Anna, why do you tell me this ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Valley, they thought that they heard a groaning, as of dead men, a very great groaning. They thought, also, they did hear words of lamentation spoken, as of some in extreme torment. These things made the boys to quake, the women also looked pale and wan; but their guide bid ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have; it's no wonder, with the tramp ye took. Come, let me put on another frock. I'll take this wan an' clane it for ye, so the misthress will niver know a bit of harrum come ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... the prefect of T'ai-wan Fu said to me, in the course of an informal conversation after a friendly dinner, "Do you foreigners fear the inner ones?"—and on my asking what was meant, he told me that a great many Chinese stood in absolute awe ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... little child of the old days at Greenwater Broad had ripened, in the bracing Scotch air and the healthy mode of life, into a comely young woman. Her features were still, as in her early years, not regularly beautiful; but the change in her was not the less marked on that account. The wan face had filled out, and the pale complexion had found its color. As to her figure, its remarkable development was perceived even by the rough people about her. Promising nothing when she was a child, it had now sprung into womanly fullness, symmetry, and ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... maybe. But, Clem, you don't mean—" She stared into his face by the wan light of the Aurora reflected from the snow. Reading his resolve, she became practical at once. "Stay here and don't stir," she commanded, "while I creep back ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tore them into bits and scattered the bits from her window. Then she went to the bank and took up the note for the six hundred dollars she had originally borrowed. It left her nothing, but she was free. She had lived the summer and was where she had started. A little wan, feeling a little empty, she caught the train for Bloomfield. All during the trip she gazed from the window, dizzily conscious of the shifting landscape, dimly aware ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... would proceed no further than Highgate. The physician returned to town to report her state, and declared that she was assuredly very weak, her pulse dull and melancholy, and very irregular; her countenance very heavy, pale, and wan; and though free from fever, he declared her in no case fit for travel. The king observed, "It is enough to make any sound man sick to be carried in a bed in that manner she is; much more for her whose impatient and unquiet spirit heapeth upon herself far greater indisposition of body than otherwise ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... some of the most tumid compositions in the history of English verse. Collins' most current ode, though by no means his best one, "The Passions," abounds in those personifications which, as has been said, constituted, in eighteenth century poetry, a sort of feeble mythology: "wan Despair," "dejected Pity," "brown Exercise," and "Music sphere-descended maid." It was probably the allegorical figures in Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," "Sport that wrinkled care derides," "spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet," etc., that gave a new lease of life to this ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... image of a shooting star, 450 Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are, In her light boat; and many quips and cranks She played upon the water, till the car Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, 455 To journey from ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that sea and sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... level. I'll have no wan tellin' little Mike his father is a dirty thief....It's this way. The rolls were to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... I wandered, worlds away and far away, Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold, Many a wide circle and many a wan star away, Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... Ronald was standing beside the dead, In the scabbard he plunged his sword, And with visage as wan as the corpse, he said, "Lo! my ladye hath ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... During all this time the black lunar disc may be watched making its way steadily across the solar face. Notwithstanding the gradual obscuration of the sun, one does not notice much diminution of light until about three-quarters of his disc are covered. Then a wan, unearthly appearance begins to pervade all things, the temperature falls noticeably, and nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a crescent-shaped strip of exceeding fineness. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Sea, and at the time I speak of were on a foraging expedition round the Liau-tung peninsula. Those who have followed the events of the Japanese war will have noticed on the map, not far north of Ta-lien-wan in the Korean Bay, three groups of islands. So little was the geography of these parts then known, that they had no place on our charts. On this very occasion, one group was named after Captain Elliott, one was called the Bouchier Islands, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the afternoon,' he said; 'she is waiting. Perhaps you will go to her'—his lips quivered—'my nerve is rather gone.' Then with a very wan smile he added, 'I am giving ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... of Christ. "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" All one has ever felt is said for one in a phrase, all that one finds most isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling of wonder in it; "so long," and yet you think that of me! "so long," and yet such absolute inability to read my character! "so long," and yet still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... girl forced wan smiles; but neither spoke. Bridge drew a pouch of tobacco and some papers ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... She lifted a wan and startled face. Must the torturing similarity and still more torturing contrast of the two occasions be continued? But she saw her father regarding her sternly—saw that she was becoming the subject of curious glances and whispered surmises. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky. The hunters traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream flowed in wet season. Cottonwood trees were bursting into green; thickets of prickly thorn, dense and matted, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... gittn' a little too near de grabe to tell a lie, but de fac am, I bin livin' round in dese parts nigh onto a hundred years and knowed a heap of de big mens dat's dead and gone, and I neber yet knowed nor hear tell of no man bein' 'lected, what wan't ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Emperor, moreover, seemed not to pause to listen, drawn by some irresistible attraction to that window; at which, each time he approached it, he was greeted by that terrible salvo of artillery that rent and tore his being. His pallor was greater even than it had been before; his poor, pinched, wan face, on which were still visible traces of the rouge which had been applied that morning, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various |
