"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... my eye or a blot on the page, And I cannot tell of the joyful greeting; You may take it for granted and I will engage, There were kisses and tears at the strange, glad meeting; For aye since the birth of the swift-winged years, In the desert drear, in the field of clover, In the cot, and the palace, and all the world over,— Yea, away on the stars to the ultimate spheres, The language of love to the long sought lover,— Is tears and ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... multiplied the poor by a monopoly on education. Superstition, poverty and incompetence formed the portion of the many. "This world is but a desert drear," was the actual fact as long as priests and soldiers were supreme. The Reign of the Barons was merely a transfer of power with no revision of ideals. The choice between a miter and a helmet is nil, and when the owner converses through his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, whatever ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... sailor, day is at hand! See o'er the foaming billows fair Haven's land; Drear was the voyage, sailor, now almost o'er; Safe in the life-boat, sailor, pull for ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... a chime all cannot hear, And none can love him better than I; For he sings to me when the land is drear, And makes it cheerful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... year the seasons shifted,—wet and warm and drear and dry; Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... dead man, because, having no hatred left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heartache — ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name: Always ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... sleep! oh, perfect rest! Thus pillowed on your faithful breast, Nor life nor death is wholly drear, O tender heart, since you are here, So dear, so dear! Sweet love, my soul's sufficient crown! Now, darling, kiss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... with the wind in the windy wood; The dark rain drips from her hair and hood, And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued, "O my children, come home!" Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear, The owl and the fox crouch back with fear, As wild through the wood her voice they hear,— "O my children, come home, come home! ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... spite of all my prayers, Am doomed the hateful threshold of old age To cross, when these dull eyes will give No response to another's heart, The world to them a void will be, Each day become more full of misery, How then, will this, my wish appear In those dark hours, that dungeon drear? My blighted youth, my sore distress, Alas, will then ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... be sincere, But still, when all is said, We have to grant they're rather drear, — And maybe, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... farther still upon the utmost rim Of the drear waste, whereto the roadways led, She saw in piling outline, huge and dim, The walled and towered dwellings of the dead And the grim house of Hades. Then she broke Once more fierce-footed through the noisome press; But ere she reached ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear, Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night— It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear! On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go; In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear; But thy hands are loosed and ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... time was spent in playing with Rosemary. She became dearer to me with each succeeding day. I knew I should miss her tremendously. I should even miss Jinko, who didn't like me but who no longer growled at me. The castle would be a very gloomy, drear place after they were out of it. I found myself wondering how long I would be able to endure the loneliness. Secretly I cherished the idea of selling the place if I could find a lunatic in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... increase throve In the Dale of our love; There the ox and the steed Fed down the mead; The grapes hung high 'Twixt earth and sky, And the apples fell Round the orchard well. Yet drear was the land there, and all was for nought; None put forth a hand there for what the year wrought, And raised it o'erflowing with gifts of the earth. For man's grief was growing beside of the mirth Of the springs and the summers ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... one dream of that drear night to be, Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, The ship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a Spenserian; he owned to Dryden in later years that "Spenser was his original," and in some of his earliest lines at Horton he dwells lovingly on "the sage and solemn tones" of the "Faerie Queen," its "forests and enchantments drear, where more is meant than meets the ear." But of the weakness and affectation which characterized Spenser's successors he had not a trace. In the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," the first results of his retirement at Horton, we catch ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he is. Trembles with wrath my frame If I but faintly breathe his awful name." Lilith replied, "Meseemeth, master true Of every craft is He." Forth the two From that drear cavern passed. Ere the water's brim They gained, he plucked the wilding reeds, that slim Stood by a brook. "My pipe I make, one strain Harmonious to wake. Nor yet again Shalt thou such fresh notes hear. Music like mine Methinks thou hast not ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... there shot into this prison drear A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught My look upon four faces mirrored clear; Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought. Then suddenly they rose as if they thought I did it hungering; 'Less our misery,' They cried, 'Should'st thou on us feed, who are nought But creatures vested ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... standeth in ye house When that Noel draweth near; Evermore at ye door Standeth Ivy, shivering sore, In ye night wind bleak and drear. ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... inhabitants. Mr. Brooke, in his recent travels, says, "as each hour elapses, they are prepared with a different kind of exhortation or prayer; which, forming a sort of tune or chant, is sung by them during the drear hours of the night." Of one of these pious songs, he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains came rumbling in by the first of April, emptying thousands of men, women, ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... crags, dark pools and mountains drear, The wild-wood's silence, and the billow's roll, Great Nature rules, and claims with brow austere, The shudd'ring homage of the ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... poor creature which has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... her firm basis to her loftiest peak, And Troy's proud city, and the ships of Greece. Pluto, th' infernal monarch, heard alarm'd, And, springing from his throne, cried out in fear, Lest Neptune, breaking through the solid earth, To mortals and Immortals should lay bare His dark and drear abode, of Gods abhorr'd. Such was the shock when Gods in battle met; For there to royal Neptune stood oppos'd Phoebus Apollo with his arrows keen; The blue-ey'd Pallas to the God of War; To Juno, Dian, heav'nly Archeress, Sister ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The result was that he at length abandoned all hope of being exchanged, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... darkness held their cheerless sway, Save in the haunts of riotous excess; And half the world in dreamy slumbers lay, Lost in the maze of sweet forgetfulness. When lo! upon the startled ear, There broke a sound so dread and drear,— As, like a sudden peal of thunder, Burst the bands of sleep asunder, And filled a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Andes, the Rockies, and the Himalayas to the very line of eternal snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite variations ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... gossips say, "Alone from dusk till midnight stay Within the church-porch drear and dark, Upon the vigil of Saint Mark, And, lovely maiden! you shall see What youth your ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... still I see, This drear accursed masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the flame sinks down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,— "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... carriage gave the direct negative to her words at Calais station. At last, even the maker of commonplaces was silent; and as I reclined at greater length on the cushions of the stuffy compartment, I thought how strange a company we were then being carried over the dull, drear pasture-land of France, to the lights, the music, and the life of the great capital. Of the man Martin Hall—I remembered his true name in the moments of repose—I knew nothing beyond that which I have told you; but of my friends Roderick and Mary, accompanying ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... been married about a year and a quarter. Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring. That drear spectre of drought hung over ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the mast, the child and cat, Through the dire time of slaughter sat, By terror both spellbound; But when night came, a silence drear Fell on the coast; and far or near, No voice caught Edric's wakeful ear, Save water's lapping sound. He wandered from the stern to prow, Ate of the stores, and marvelled how He yet might reach the ground; Till ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thou art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, ooh! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! An' forward tho' I canna see, I ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... When Fortune left the royal Swede— Around a slaughtered army lay, No more to combat and to bleed. The power and glory of the war, Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had passed to the triumphant Czar, And Moscow's walls were safe again— Until a day more dark and drear,[249] And a more memorable year, 10 Should give to slaughter and to shame A mightier host and haughtier name; A greater wreck, a deeper fall, A shock to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... butterfly mounts up on jewelled wing, Risen to new life from out her prison drear: All Nature smileth;—every living thing Breaks forth in praises ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... all men the most miserable. So, too, was the later poet wrong when he listened to the waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from otherwhere, some ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... mountains, and now burst upon us in all its fury. How long the wind had been blowing we did not know; but we did know we were some miles out to sea in a cockle-shell of a boat, and rapidly drifting farther from the land. No lights could be seen in any quarter; but all around was dark and drear. We supposed that as a matter of course the wind blew from the land, and therefore got out our oars and pulled dead to windward, thus preventing further drift, and lessening our danger by laying the boat head to the sea, which was now ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... From her mirror to watch the flakes fall, Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns! While musing on sleigh ride and ball: There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth, Floating over each drear winter's day; But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth, Will melt like the snowflakes away. Turn, then thee to Heaven, fair maiden, for bliss; That world has a pure fount ne'er opened ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... taken far away, only to New England; but without Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him, working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on new graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a coureur des bois on the prairies, again that he was a voyageur in the Louisiana lowlands; but those of his people who ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains. And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... a pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... on the sea fields drear, And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap; But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear The half-hushed sobbing of the ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee, But, och! I backward cast my ee On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... other eyes The busy deck, the flattering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the slaughtered deer Hung on fork'd boughs—with thongs of leather. Bound were his stiff, slim feet together— His eyes like dead stars cold and drear; The wand'ring firelight drew near And laid its wide palm, red and anxious, On the sharp splendor of his branches; On the white foam grown hard and sere On flank and shoulder. Death—hard as breast of granite boulder, And under his lashes Peer'd thro' his eyes ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... snort all day," and where the pungent air poisons the blood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from a high roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends, all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor. Misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinions had overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails all the hope from her breast with which she had defied it. A wretched old man on the street inspires her to sing of what she ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... of this vision that thus confounded me? was it a latent error in my moral constitution, which this new conjuncture drew forth into influence? These were all the tokens of a mind lost to itself; bewildered; unhinged; plunged into a drear insanity. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... burning waste and lonely wild Received her as she went; Hopeless, she clasp'd her fainting child, With thirst and sorrow spent. And in the wilderness so drear, She raised her voice on high, And sent forth that heart-stricken prayer "Let ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street Or rises to shake the ivied walls and ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... picture; the plains dead and drear, barren of verdure—a dull, drab expanse of waste world with no life or movement in it, stretching below ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... answer, the baron had glided to the door, and, nodding pleasantly, vanished with that nod. Egerton remained, standing on his solitary hearth. A drear, single man's room it was, from wall to wall, despite its fretted ceilings and official pomp of Brahmah escritoires and red boxes. Drear and cheerless,—no trace of woman's habitation, no vestige of intruding, happy children. There stood the austere man alone. And then with a deep sigh he muttered, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the trail had left a fever in his blood. He was smitten with the disease of Ishmael. Then, before all, and above all, he counted the northland his home. So, when everything the world could yield him lay at his feet, the drear, silent north trail only knew him. His interests in the golden world of Leaping Horse were left behind him, while he satisfied his passion in the far hidden back countries where man is a mere incident in ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... and they know that I know Where they are, and what they do; they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me left in the drear Empty hall to lament in, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Sun rose broad above the wave; The breeze now sank, now whispered from his cave; 170 As on the AEolian harp, his fitful wings Now swelled, now fluttered o'er his Ocean strings.[fc] With slow, despairing oar, the abandoned skiff Ploughs its drear progress to the scarce seen cliff, Which lifts its peak a cloud above the main: That boat and ship ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please—with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments—so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a drear dark close to my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed! Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's. Oh, lark, ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... are all the madcaps gone? Why is the house so drear and lone? No merry whistle wakes the day, Nor evening rings with jocund play. No clanging bell, with hasty din, Precedes the shout, "Is Bertie in?" Or "Where is Fred?" "Can I see Jack?" "How soon will he be coming back? Or "Georgie ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... it must be owned, Upon the hills of Merion; Though chill and drear the prospect round, Delight and joy are not unknown; O who would e’er expect to hear ’Mid mountain bogs the ...
— Ermeline - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... art these lines now reading, Think not, though from the world receding I joy my lonely days to lead in This Desart drear, That with remorse a conscience ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... can forget, The spot where first success he met; But he, the shepherd who, of yore, Has charm'd so many a list'ing ear, Came back, and was beloved no more. He found all changed and cold and drear A skilful hand had touch'd the flute; His pipe and he were ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... sit beside the window I am growing old and drear; Does it matter what I hear, What I see, or what I fear? I can fold my hands and hush my heart That ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington, Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Gone, and in its place darkness and rising mist and deep and ominous shadows. While she lay and thought, the sun had sunk behind the hill and left the great gulf nearly dark, and, as is common in South Africa, the heavy storm-cloud had crept across the blue sky and sealed the light from above. A drear wind came moaning up the gorge from the plains beyond; the heavy rain-drops began to fall one by one; the lightning flickered fitfully in the belly of the advancing cloud. The storm that John had feared was ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... on three legs Upborne they stood. Three legs upholding firm A massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat, And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms; And such in ancient halls and mansions drear May still be seen, but perforated sore And drilled in holes the solid oak is found, By worms voracious ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... tinsel star, Boxed all the time as such things are, And only used just once a year, Oh, life is very dull and drear! ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... you with bursts of mirth your audience shake; And yet to this, as all experience shows, No small amount of skill and talent goes. Your style must he concise, that what you say May flow on clear and smooth, nor lose its way, Stumbling and halting through a chaos drear Of cumbrous words, that load the weary ear; And you must pass from grave to gay,—now, like The rhetorician, vehemently strike, Now, like the poet, deal a lighter hit With easy playfulness and polished wit,— Veil the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... harvesting. However, I generally managed to slosh myself with cold water from the well, and so went to my bed with a measure of self-respect, but even the "spare room" was hot and small, and the conditions of my mother's life saddened me. It was so hot and drear for her! ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... up her head From the darkness dread and drear, Her light fled, Stony, dread, And her ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Mona's sea-girt isle he dares with spear and flashing sword, Usurping regal rule and right by power of pirate horde; Yet vengeance drear, and dark desert of direst actions, crave A bloody death, a justice clear, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest his deed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... school of hard mishap, Driven from the ease of fortune's lap. What schemes will nature not embrace T' avoid less shame of drear distress? Gold can the charms of youth bestow, And mask deformity with shew: Gold can avert the sting of shame, In Winter's arms create a flame: Can couple youth with hoary age, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... shell-struck souvenir of hellish war, A monument of man's stupendous hate! Can this have been a Paradise before, Now up-blown, blasted, drear and desolate? Aye, once with smiling and contented face She reigned a ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... am but a traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at last, Heaven ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, as he had told her he often did, by a run in the Temple ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... accompanied by their flowers and blossoms. The beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... garret, cold and dark and drear, And one who toils and toils with tireless pen, Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary — then He seeks the stars, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... Is a Song of the Vine, To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns, When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... aimless marching, Knowing scarcely where or why, Crossed they uplands drear and dry, That an unprotected sky Had for ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... it mean to us that Spring is here? We asked ourselves within the great grey hall. We shall not feel the magic of her call; This day, like others, will be dull and drear. And then you sang . . . and brought so very near, The fragrant world beyond the prison wall, The tender fields, the trees and grass, and all The hopes and dreams that every man ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows and vines ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... frame of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again there came to him that odor of mustiness—of all smells the most eerie and drear—which he had noticed on his arrival. Somehow, as long as Nur-el-Din had been there, he had not remarked the appalling ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... like Sirens, they sing delightful songs,—and all about "the A 1 fast-sailing, commodious, first-class steam-packet Markerstown." Such is the soaring fiction: now let us look at the sore fact. The "A 1" is, I take it, simply the "Ai!" of the Greek chorus new-vamped for modern wear,—a drear wail well suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:—we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... wooded hills; and above that dark background a calm starry sky. Who shall say what dim poetic thoughts were in her mind that night, as she looked at these things? Life was so new to her, the future such an unknown country—a paradise perhaps, or a drear gloomy waste, across which she must travel with bare bleeding feet. How should she know? She only knew that she was going home to a father who had never loved her, who had deferred the day of her coming as long as it was possible for him ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... A cloudy stream is flowing, And a hard, steel blast is blowing; Bitterer now than I remember Ever to have felt or seen, In the depths of drear December, When the white doth hide the green. March, April, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... life packed with multifarious tasks. Then he laughed at himself, heartily yet a little self-consciously. A fool's errand might yet be a pleasant one, even though his immediate surroundings seemed to mock the sound of his mirth. Woolhanger Moor in November was a drear enough sight. There were many patches of black mud and stagnant water, carpets of treacherous-looking green moss, bare clumps of bushes bent all one way by the northwest wind, masses of rock, gaunter ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Trinity! be near Through the hours of darkness drear. When the help of man is far Ye more clearly present are. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Watch o'er our defenceless heads, Let your angels' guardian host Keep all evil from our beds, Till the flood of morning rays Wake as ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... "A drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... all through the months of blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untiring ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... bard of silver hair, He wanders in the valley drear, Whilst grief his mind consumes: His father's footsteps tries to trace In vain, for time does them efface; He ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... dull, lifeless cast; the veins are all enlarged from debility, and cover the larger arteries as with a mourner's pall, save where there are patches as of clouds on fire, where disease of the skin enlivens the drear landscape. There are pimples large and small, some with overflowing volcanoes; there are no lines of expression: these are changed to lines of morbid anatomy. We listen, and there are no echoes of departed joys; look as we will, and we see no evidence ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' the woods or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain's hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his airy nest. And thither offered he the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, Never sunder hearts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... realm. Only—and the word shadows so wide a space—can he do anything to make good the birthright he has unwittingly taken? She is rich, accomplished, and pretty, worth a dozen like Polly, it seems to him. Must her life be drear and wintry, except as she rambles into the pleasaunce of others? He could give up the seductive delights that have never been his, yet he has come to a time when home and love, wife and child, have a sacred meaning, and are the joys ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... transacting of business pertaining to its interests, had left not one dollar for the support of my family, or to give me another start in business. Nevertheless, I felt willing to submit the case to Him who had known the purity of my intentions, and who had hitherto "led me through scenes dark and drear," believing he would not forsake me now, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... deep recess At length they reach a court obscure and lone; It seemed a drear and desolate wilderness, The blackened walls with ivy all o'ergrown; The night-bird shrieked her note of wild distress, Disturb'd upon her solitary throne, As though indignant mortal step should dare, So led, at such ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... invariably did every time she gave the lover's gift to Killigrew; and always she paid for the joy of yielding with hours of reaction. She was wont to live over again in the drear spaces of time the history of her life since she had known him, and it was the history of her love for him and of very little else. Now as she lay, spent but wakeful, sick at heart and soul, she saw again the self that had stayed in this house when first she grew to know him. How little she ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... has taken possession of that eccentric man? The morning broke dank and drear, for the December air had chilled the moisture into a fog. The wide verandas that opened on the court-yard in rear were dripping with the rain, and the broad flag-stones covered with a greasy slime. The diminutive grass-plot was brown and soggy, but the withered blades rapidly disappeared under ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... pouring long and loud, The sea was drear and dim; A little fish was floating there: ...
— Greybeards at Play • G. K. Chesterton
... owl shrieked his twit-to-hoo to the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; and cold grey twilight covered the mountain-side. There still sat the lone old woman, crouching over the mocking fire. Dark and drear was the hovel— floor it had none, save the damp, cold earth—nor was there a chimney or other outlet for the smoke, except a hole which a branch of the ill-favoured pine-tree had made in the roof, in one of his most restless ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world. Will stood still an instant looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped. They sat in that way without looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall in stillness. Each had been full ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... identical with the word representing the bodily sign of tenderest passion, and grouped with a multitude of others,[44] in which the mere insertion of a consonant makes such wide difference of sentiment as between 'dear' and 'drear,' or 'pear' and 'spear.' The Greek root, on the other hand, has persisted in retaining some vestige of its excellent dissonance, even where it has parted with the last vestige of the idea it was meant to convey; and when Burns did his best,—and his best was above ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... thing to see!— In drizzle and in daylight drear, From out their dark abodes let free, Dim, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... their recognition. October faded softly by, with its keen fresh mornings, and cold memorial green-horizoned evenings, whose stars fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world, from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful shoreless sweep. November came, 'chill and drear,' with its heartless, hopeless nothingness; but as if to mock the poor competitors, rose, after three days of Scotch mist, in a lovely 'halcyon day' of 'St. Martin's summer,' through whose long shadows anxious young faces gathered in the quadrangle, or under the arcade, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Aigues Mortes: that I fell asleep at night—oh, but fell very far, so much farther than one usually falls even when one wakes with the sensation of dropping from a great height, that I went bumping down, down from century to century, until I touched earth in a strange, drear land, to find I had gone back in time ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... thy glorious sons, And thine earls and thy dukes of battle and all thy mighty ones, To come to the house of the Goth-kings as honoured guests and dear And abide the winter over; that the dusky days and drear May be glorious with thy presence, that all folk may praise my life, And the friends that my fame hath gotten; and that this my new-wed wife Thine eyes may make the merrier till she ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... involved in thought. She had written cheerfully enough to Miss Plympton, but that was from a kindly desire to reassure her. In reality, she was overwhelmed with loneliness and melancholy. The aspect of the grounds below and of the drawing-room had struck a chill to her heart. This great drear house oppressed her, and the melancholy with which she had left Plympton Terrace now became intensified. The gloom that had overwhelmed her father seemed to rest upon her father's house, and descended thence upon her own spirit, strong ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... I shall lie, no man can say; The flowers all are fallen away; The desert is so drear and grey, O Marta of Milrone! ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... they look around. To the south there was nothing but the sea they had traversed; to the north, nothing but one drear, inhospitable stretch. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... hides himself when winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... raised mind On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, And her rude visions give severe delight. O winged bark! how swift along the night Pass'd thy proud keel! nor shall I let go by Lightly of that drear hour the memory, When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood, Even till it seemed a pleasant thing to die,— To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave, Or take my portion with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... we will not mature. A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor We seem when we are richest,—most secure Against all poverty the lifelong years We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears That, in despite of reason, still endure! Alas! the sermon of the rose we will Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of grief ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... shall he abide Which lives of youthful Brahmans guide, Obedient to the strictest rule That forms the young ascetic's school: And all the wondering world shall hear Of his stern life and penance drear; His care to nurse the holy fire And do the bidding of his sire. Then, seated on the Angas'(81) throne, Shall Lomapad to fame be known. But folly wrought by that great king A plague upon the land shall bring; No rain for many a year shall fall And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... deep pools and idly wandering streams. As the water advanced the forest became submerged, and formed a desolate stretch known as the Drowned Lands. Its slimy, green surface was dotted with rotten stumps and fantastic tree-trunks, pitched together in wild confusion, and above it rose a drear, dead forest of tall pine stems, bleached and scarred, and stripped of every limb. Around this silent, ghostly place the swamp formed a ring through which it was dangerous to pass, for near the edge of the Drowned Lands it was honeycombed ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... word, I grudge you not the pleasure Of lying to yourself in moderate measure; But 'twill not hold out long, I know; Already thou art fast recoiling, And soon, at this rate, wilt be boiling With madness or despair and woe. Enough of this! Thy sweetheart sits there lonely, And all to her is close and drear. Her thoughts are on thy image only, She holds thee, past all utterance, dear. At first thy passion came bounding and rushing Like a brooklet o'erflowing with melted snow and rain; Into her heart thou hast poured ...
— Faust • Goethe
... deafening roar, A void, a wild and drear eclipse. A sadder sweetness than before Shook her pale, smiling lips; She waved adieu through vapours hoar, And vanished in the shadows frore Among the heedless ships ... In that dread lapse of all farewell The spirit, listening, plain could tell That devils laughed ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... of brushes, motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval asceticism into something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... pride, but he felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out—like the poverty and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more shadowy. And down in the smoking-room he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
