"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his years on an ebon stick. He alone ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... holding the Great Seal itself, so rich and so elaborate were its materials and embroidery; and in the other she at length took a glass which was suspended from her neck by a chain-cable of gold, and glanced with a flashing eye, as dark as her ebon curls and as brilliant as her well-rouged cheek, at the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to me when the morning sun blazes across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted firmament like a cup brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all the constellations that float in my ebon goblet. Do you know the charm of melancholy? Where will you find a sympathy like mine in your hours of sadness? Does the ocean share your grief? Does the river listen to your sighs? The salt wave, that ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the park with a princely air; I filled my crop with the richest fare; I cawed all day 'mid a lordly crew, And I made more noise in the world than you! The sun shone forth on my ebon wing; I looked ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... such height arose a pile Of gorgeous columns on th' uuburthen'd air, Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, And nursled the young mountain in its lair. Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall [16] Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall Of their own dissolution, while they die— Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down, Sat gently on these columns as a crown— A window of one circular diamond, there, Look'd out above into the purple ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... five in his thin-soled sandals, and he carried himself with the air for an emperor. His marble-white body was uncovered with the exception of a loin cloth of silver hue, and lithe muscles rippled beneath his smooth skin as he advanced to meet the prisoners. His head, surmounted by curly hair of ebon darkness, was large, and his forehead high. The features were classic and perfectly regular. The corners of his mouth drew upward ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... was approaching his sixtieth year, and though many threads of silver mingled with his ebon-black hair, he held himself as erect as a youth, while his thin, sharply-cut features expressed the unyielding determination, which explained his son's and grandson's prompt obedience ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mellow autumn glow'd Upon the ebon board; The blood that grape of Burgundy In other days had pour'd, Gleam'd from its crystal vase—but all Untasted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... intense As midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth! Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors—and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to congratulate the beautiful girl, whose face had been haunting him ever since that time when the sun lighted it up, as it lay amidst its glory of ebon hair upon his breast. He heard these last words, and stood apart, modestly awaiting some chance ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I'd fondly woo Those merry, dark-eyed girls, With faces of ebon hue, And teeth like eastern pearls! One vowed my love she would repay— Her heart my song had won— When winter snows had passed away, And ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... other side. Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did a credit to his side of the Church. But our friend the parson was discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie could hardly have been clean during the last forty-eight hours, and was tied in a knot, which had worked itself ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... are those orbs of light, In all their bright array, That gem the ebon brow of night, Or pour ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Finola, shaking down the mantle of her ebon locks, and setting the golden combs more firmly in them; "only, if I perish, I prithee let there be no cairns or Ogams. Let me fall, as a beauty should, face upward; and if it be but a swoon, and the invader be a handsome prince, see that he wakens ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... swore my selfe thy sacrifice By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes, Which now are alter'd white, And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the gellie's left. Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you, Then swearing to a saint ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... squad stood at attention, their leader surveyed the bloody section of shore. He checked each of the prone men and found only one still alive, a seven-foot, ebon-skinned warrior who got to his feet when the leader kicked him and stood erect but swaying drunkenly from the blow Mike had laid across ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. Night Thoughts, Night I. DR. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... still I cannot help supposing that that universal pall, as I called it, which is cast over all nations, has a very definite and a very tragic meaning. There is a universal fact of human experience which answers to the figure, and that is sin. That is the black thing whose ebon folds hamper us, and darken us, and shut out the visions of God and blessedness, and all the glorious blue above us. The heavy, dark mist settles down on the plains, though the sky above is undimmed by it, and the sun is blazing in the zenith. Not one beam can penetrate through the wet, chill ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black— An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest it. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... feet in height, and broad in proportion, came towards us, bowing and stooping in the most awkward manner, partly by way of salutation and partly to avoid striking his head against the low deck-beams. He was dark-complexioned, bushy whiskered, with keen restless black eyes, and a shock of ebon hair very imperfectly concealed by a black-and-red-striped fisherman's cap of knitted worsted, which he removed deferentially the moment his eye fell upon us. He wore large gold ear-rings in his ears, and was attired in a thick dreadnought ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... by this time had entirely worn off his face, and although his hair was still several shades darker than of old, it differed even more widely from the ebon hue that it had been when he was in prison. Thus, although he recognised three or four men upon the benches who had been fellow occupants of his cell, he had no fear whatever of their detecting in the commander of the galley ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... who have no possession, but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow, wrapping the whole man in its ebon folds. For this Christ is enough for all my nature and for the satisfaction of every desire. In Him my mind finds the truth; my will the law; my love the answering love; my hope its object; my fears their dissipation; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... throne of jasper sat A monstrous idol, black and fat; Thick rose-oil dropped upon its head: Drop by drop, heavy and sweet, Trickled down to its ebon feet Whereon the blood of goats was shed, And smeared around its perfumed knees In savage ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning. The hush of the immense armament— the glare of the torches, lighting the ebon faces and giant forms of their bearers—the majestic appearance of the king himself—the heroic aspect of Muza—the bare head and glittering banner of Almamen—all combined with the circumstances of the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] 60 To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black and purple scarfs ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... is perfectly simple, their exercise conducive to health, and the air they breathe salubrious. Strangers to the licentious appetites which frequently proceed from a depraved imagination, they cheerfully receive the bounteous gifts of nature, and when night sways her ebon sceptre o'er the scene, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... sky serene, but around the tent stood a troop of torch-bearers, and the red glare shone luridly upon the steel of the serried horsemen and the banners of the earl, in which the grim white bear was wrought upon an ebon ground, quartered with the dun bull, and crested in gold with the eagle of the Monthermers. Far as the king's eye could reach, he saw but the spears of Warwick; while a confused hum in his own encampment told that the troops Anthony Woodville had collected were not yet marshalled ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rapidly from Nairobi toward the farm. At Nairobi he had received news of the World War that had already started, and, anticipating an immediate invasion of British East Africa by the Germans, was hurrying homeward to fetch his wife to a place of greater security. With him were a score of his ebon warriors, but far too slow for the ape-man was the progress of these trained ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster—"Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... composer and his strange career. A disused monster music-hall, near the Moulin Rouge on Montmartre, was to be the scene of the concert and the place was at once christened "Theatre du Tarnhelm"—for a story had leaked out about the ebon darkness in which the Russian's music was played. This was surpassing the almost forgotten Richard Wagner. Concerts in the dark must be indeed spirituelle. The wits giggled over their jokes; and when the kiosks and bare walls were ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the plumed black top and along the swelling branches decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass. It was very witch-like, of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is bare and white, And the air is crisp and chill; While the ebon wings of night Are spread ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy. Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... worlds! Then beautiful the ball of this terrene Rolled in the beam of first-created day, And all its elements obeyed the voice Of Him, the great Creator; Air, and Fire, 10 And Earth, and Water, each its ministry Performed, whilst Chaos from his ebon throne Leaped up; and so magnificent, and decked, And mantled in its ambient atmosphere, The living world began its state! To thee, Spirit of Air, I lift the venturous song, Whose viewless presence fills the living scene, Whose element ten thousand thousand ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... they would some wild beast. They ran up stairs to give the alarm, but when they returned the bird had flown, and while a fruitless search was instituted throughout the basement, Mary was in her own room, hastily removing the ebon tinge from her face. Such were a few among the many wild pranks of the mischief spirits, invented to while away the time. Quite different from this was the employment of the "sisterhood." A number of the older pupils of the school had seated themselves night after ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... idiotic trimming; on her breast a large diamond cross. Her head was an Athenian sculpture—no chignon, but the tight coils of antiquity; at their side, one diamond star sparkled vivid flame, by its contrast with those polished ebon snakes. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... trial of skill, and that to lively conversation. At length, when the solitary sound of one o'clock had long since resounded on the ebon ear of night, and the next signal of the advance of time was close approaching, Mannering, whose impatience had long subsided into disappointment and despair, looked at his watch and said, 'We must now give them up,' when at that ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... these instructions Jerry himself was piling up on his lank arm a pyramid of wood, and together the two ascended the stairway and tiptoed through the kitchen. As they went the boy caught a glimpse of gleaming porcelain walls; ebon-hued stoves resplendent with nickel trimmings; a blue and white tiled floor; and smart little ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy. Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, In Heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth; Whom lovely Venus, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... groups upon the terrace, perfumed the summer air, rising out of magnificent vases sculptured in high relief; and amid the trees, confined by silver chains were rare birds of radiant plumage, rare birds with prismatic eyes and bold ebon beaks, breasts flooded with crimson, and long tails of violet and green. The declining sun shone brightly in the light blue sky, and threw its lustre upon the fanciful abode, above which, slight and serene, floated the airy crescent ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... pleasure and pastime, and movement and mirth to me—then I knew that I had sinned against her with a mighty sin—a sin of cruelty, of neglect, of selfish wickedness. She had been young still when I had left her—young and fair to look at, and without a silver line in her ebon hair, and with suitors about her for her beauty like bees about the blossoms of the ivy in the autumn-time. And now—now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... he answered, looking very knowing. We, of course, rose to greet the young lady, and to receive and open the basket she had brought. The ebon damsel then said something, and stood with her hands clasped before her. What it was about I, of course, could not exactly make out, and Aboh did not appear inclined to translate it. Her venerable grandsire then made a ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... purest pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon face toppled ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Ebon slaves and white, When the Queen was on her throne How you sang to-night! Ah, the throats of thunder! Ah, the dulcet lips! Ah, the gracious tyrannies Of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... gathering of the distant thunder-clouds, which cast a deeper, more sombre shade upon the pines that girded the northern shores of the lake as with an ebon frame. Insensibly her thoughts wandered far away from the lonely spot whereon she sat, to the stoup [FN: The Dutch word for verandah, which is still in common use among the Canadians.] in front of her father's house, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... divan, but the strange beauty of Madame had spoken straight to his Eastern heart, had awakened his soul to a new life. His glance travelled over the vision before him, from the little Persian slipper that peeped below the drapery of Kashmir silk to the small classic head with its crown of ebon locks; yet he dared not meet the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... but bid beware, then he had spoke, And, hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944 The Destinies will curse thee for this stroke; They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck'st a flower. Love's golden arrow at him shoull have fled, And not Death's ebon dart, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... silver dishes, blackened and battered. The exile, my darling pet, is like the railing, emaciated! He is pale and silent, and bears traces of suffering. At thirty-seven he might be fifty. The once beautiful ebon locks of youth are streaked with white like a lark's wing. His fine blue eyes are cavernous; he is a little deaf, which suggests the Knight ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... quickly they pass away, to be overcast by dark foreboding clouds of doubt and fear. Yet, after the storm of life is almost past a radiant bow of promise, tender as memory and bright as hope, lingers on its ebon folds and we seem to glimpse through the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... sign of Nellie, though he purposely made a noisy rattle with his ebon walking-stick. Then the maid burst out of the kitchen with a tray and the principal utensils for high tea thereon. She had a guilty air. The household was evidently late. Two steps at a time he rushed upstairs to the bathroom, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... an ebon crescent, flouting that ivory moon; Then raised the pibroch of his race, the Song without a Tune; Gleam'd his white teeth, his mammoth tail waved darkly to and fro, As with one complex yell he burst, all claws, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... emancipated slaves;—whereof I have heard very little, since (by the volunteered assistance of Mr. Taylor, the seal engraver) I gave it many years ago: the medal was as large as a crown piece. President Benson, also of Liberia, a magnificent ebon specimen of humanity, visited me with his staff, not long before his lamented death—it was said, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new flux'd rake show'd fairer skin; Nor Phyllis after lying in. With snuff was fill'd his ebon box, Of shin-bones rotted by the pox. Nine spirits of blaspheming fops, With aconite anoint his chops; And give him words of dreadful sounds, G—d d—n his blood! and b—d and w—ds!' Thus furnish'd out, he sent his train To take a house in Warwick-lane:[3] The faculty, his humble ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... breasts and robes unsewn The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies, Trailing behind him with a restless moan Like cattle ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the summit with wild vines, that hung in graceful festoons from the topmost branches to the water's edge. The dark shadows of the mountains, thrown upon the water, as they towered to the height of some thousand feet above us, gave to the surface of the river an ebon hue. The sunbeams, dancing through the thick, quivering foliage, fell in stars of gold, or long lines of dazzling brightness, upon the deep black waters, producing the most novel and beautiful effects. It was a scene over which the spirit of peace might brood in silent adoration; but ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Arthur Darrell, of Christchurch, Frank, the man that used to speak at the Union, and was always raving about ebon ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a difference. He straddled time. He was at one and the same instant all modern, all imminently primitive, capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of remaining modern for as long as he could with his will master the study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white of decoration ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... name is Love, Serenely o'er Life's shadowed scene. Press on! surmount the rocky steeps, Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch; He fails alone who feebly creeps; He wins who dares the hero's march. Be thou a hero! let thy might Tramp on eternal snows its way, And, through the ebon wails of night Hew down a passage unto day. Press on! if once and twice thy feet Slip back and stumble, harder try; From him who never dreads to meet Danger and death, they're sure to fly. To coward ranks the bullet speeds, While on their breasts, who never quail, Gleams, guardian of chivalric deeds, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... night! What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, And sable mist ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... throb when all existences Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde |
