"Funereal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fortune weary'd with her play, Her toy, this hero, casts away, And scarce the form of man is seen: Awe chills my breast, my eyes o'erflow, Around my brows no roses glow, The cypress mine, funereal green. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... hour they were at the Furnace village, its blast gone out, its lines of huts deserted, no human soul to be seen; and the mill-pond, lying like a parchment under the funereal cypress-trees, seemed stained with the blood of the bog-ores that oozed upward from the depths like the corpse of murdered Enterprise, suffocated in Meshach ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... is one of the usual funereal tablets which are found in the cemeteries at Memphis and Thebes. The upper part of the tablet is round, and has the two sacred eyes and symbolical signets, which, as well as the winged globe, almost invariably surmount ...
— Egyptian Literature
... Thame, and mustering his last strength to leap his tired steed across its boundary brook. A few days of laborious weakness, spent in letter-writing to urge upon Parliament something of that military energy which, if earlier adopted, might have saved his life,—and we see a last, funereal procession winding beneath the Chiltern hills, and singing the 90th Psalm as the mourners approach the tomb of the Hampdens, and the 43d as they return. And well may the "Weekly Intelligencer" say of him, (June 27, 1643,) that "the memory of this deceased ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... extreme pinnacle, high on the roof, they might indeed place against the russet brick or the blue sky, amid the hum of life and the movement of the air, the living man, like the Scaligers, the mailed knight on his charger, lance in rest: but in the church below, under the funereal pall, they could place only the body such as it may ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... mess began to collect round the fireplace with the funereal expressions customary whenever a mess-dinner ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... solemn landscape. Nor was the landscape always solemn. There were long openings, now and then, to right and left, of emerald-green savannah, with the dazzling blue of the Gulf far beyond, waving a thousand white-handed good-byes as the funereal swamps slowly shut out again the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist prairies! How weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and yellow sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river! The profound stillness ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... journeys to the houses of neighbours, reciting a litany of praise of this wondrous son-in-law; whether the loss of the companion of so many years wore out the feeble frame; it is fact that O'Naka followed her lord before the maple leaf turned red. Again the Tamiya was the scene of the funereal chanting of the priest. The corpse removed with the provision for the guests and watchers at the wake, the seventh night of the death observed, with this removal of the deceased spirit from the scenes of its former ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious woods, which formed the background of the picture, my thoughts recurred to my father's mysterious intimations and the image of the approaching visitor; and the thought of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... this evening. Clarissa went through the village without meeting any one she knew. The gate of the churchyard stood open, and Arden churchyard was a favourite spot with Clarissa. A solemn old place, shadowed by funereal yews and spreading cedars, which must have been trees of some importance before the Hanoverian succession. There was a narrow footpath between two rows of tall quaint old tombstones, with skulls and crossbones out ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... her faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character. With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... slumbrous rumble of Senator Loot. "Yes, I'm going to help Uncle Pat. And I'm going to learn how to be a newspaper woman, too. I think every girl should be capable of earning her own living. Not that I expect to be obliged to do so; but it is best to be prepared." Dorothy's face was funereal, as though disasters, clawed and fanged, were roaming the thickets of the future to spring upon her. "So I shall learn the newspaper trade; go in and be a writer as you are—only not so brilliant—and then, if it were necessary, I ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... unusually bright and lively the town had appeared to him by contrast when he returned. Even the thought of Hilda could not now make the recollection of his home a pleasant one, for Hilda herself was intimately connected, by her last words, with the whole impression of funereal gloominess from which the busy railway station furnished him with ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the chair itself back into the past, when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful than before, and I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as sociable as ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... book of horror, of fantasy. A collection of weird, terrifying, supernatural tales with grotesque illustrations in funereal black and white. And the very line I had turned to, the line which had probably struck terror to that unlucky devil's soul, explained M. S.'s "decayed human form, standing in the doorway with arms extended and a frightful face of passion!" The description—the same description—lay before me, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... you had seen, as I then saw, that vast room, papered and hung with brown, you would have felt yourself transported into a scene of a romance. It was icy, nay more, funereal,' and he lifted his hand with a theatrical gesture ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... glad indeed to spend the evening with her, either at her fireside or their own, whose cards and condolences she found on her little hall table when, escorted to the door by Mr. Willett, she went home at half-past eight, just to make some slight change in her toilet, which, as it stood, was too funereal for so ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... this gloomy chamber—too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size—its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... comfortless, a more dispiriting view could hardly have been presented; and its disconsolateness was much increased by the dim and fitful light that a young moon gave at intervals, upon gables, casements, and clumps of funereal yews. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... was one weakness of which his healthy mind remained incapable to the last. In modern stories prepared for more refined or fastidious audiences than those of Dickens, the funereal excitement is obtained, for the most part, not by the infliction of violent or disgusting death; but in the suspense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and recognized, mortal phenomena of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... head to foot in clouds of white muslin, and dying with frightful rapidity in an armchair. In the next and last scene, all that remained to represent the unhappy heroine was a coffin decently covered with a white sheet. With slow and funereal steps, the Curate, Miss Grace, "h'Adam," the Highwayman, and the "venomous and voluptuous liar," Chartress, approached to weep over it. The Curate had gone raving mad since we saw him last. His wig was set on wrong side foremost; the ends of his clerical cravat floated wildly, a yard long ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... man, in that he is brave and masculine; in that he is intelligent, he is naught. He is a machine-gun. He fires off rounds of stereotyped conversation at the rate of one a minute, which is funereal. I also have the misfortune, my little Asticot, to be under the ban of Major Walters' displeasure. Your British military man is prejudiced against anyone who is not cut ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... newspaper, and that telegram relative to the mandarin our train is "conveying" in the funereal acceptation of the word? Has Popof obtained from the mutes who are on guard the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... beside the window, and near the porcelain stove. She was dressed in a deep mourning wrapper of black bombazine, and an inside handkerchief and undersleeves of white linen. Her pallid face and plain hair, and the severe, funereal black and white of her surroundings, made a very ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... between her sister and his nephew. Rachel would be polite, but not wildly entertaining, to Asbury; but he could count on me to be decent to him, while I snatched crumbs of intellectual comfort from Percival on my other hand. But Sallie had placed the funereal Clinton Frost between that rattle-pated Frankie Taliaferro and her lively self, probably with the laudable intention of seeing whether his face would be permanently disfigured by a smile. Nor was ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... As you walk upon the graves, you see children scattering crumbs to feed the sparrows; you hear people singing or washing dishes, or the sound of tears and castigation; the linen on a clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture; or perhaps the cat slips over the lintel and descends on a memorial urn. And as there is nothing else astir, these incongruous sights and noises take hold on the attention and exaggerate the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a funereal grenadier at his gentleman's shaving elbow. "I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth," ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... funereal since the day I left. This is pure reaction. I never felt so happy in my life. Couldn't we have a walk or ride somewhere to-morrow early—out to the Presidio? I want to be in the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... exposed and overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend, Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for his friend's ultimate good. "Josh needs to have his comb cut," thought he. "It's sure to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... recognizes Christ as the invisible head. Not so fifteen hundred years ago. The idea of unity could only be realized by the exercise of sufficient power in one man to preserve the integrity of the orthodox faith, since ignorance and anarchy covered the earth with their funereal shades. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... pulling away with a will, they soon reached the mouth of the river Brass. The river is here pretty broad; its banks, as far as the eye can reach, covered with tall mangroves, their dark foliage imparting a sombre and almost funereal aspect to the scenery. After the boats had pulled about ten miles up the Brass, they reached a sort of natural canal which connects the Brass with the Nun. On passing through this, they entered the Nun, when they hove to for dinner,—a meal not at all unwelcome ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... seek the lonely tomb Where sleeps the sainted dead, When the pale night-fall throws its gloom Above her narrow bed! There, while the winds which sweep along, O'er the harp-strings are driven, And the funereal soul of song Upon the air is given, Oh! let my faint and parting breath Be mingled with that song of death, And flee with ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... had always hated, looking upon him as a usurper of his own rights upon the fortune of the Desvarennes. He began lamenting to his aunt, when she turned upon him with unusual harshness, and he felt bound as he said, laughing, to leave the "funereal mansion." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the other just enumerated people, improve their natural ferocity of aspect by artificial helps. Their shields are black; their bodies painted: [240] they choose the darkest nights for an attack; and strike terror by the funereal gloom of their sable bands—no enemy being able to sustain their singular, and, as it were, infernal appearance; since in every combat the eyes are the first part subdued. Beyond the Lygii are the Gothones, [241] who live under a monarchy, somewhat more ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Canyon, by this time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian-file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... ceremonial observed at the interment of Philip II. of Spain. Somerset House was selected for the first part of the exhibition. The spectators, having passed through three rooms hung with black cloth, were admitted[a] into the funereal chamber; where, surrounded with wax-lights, was seen an effigy of Cromwell clothed in royal robes, and lying ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... death'shead of a man, with a preternaturally long white face, and a figure shrouded in a dark cloak, looking as though he might be Death itself, waiting for the carousers to drop dead of apoplexy before carrying them off in his funereal equipage. In reply to Barrant's question he informed him that the vehicle was destined for Penzance, and immediately the detective entered the dark interior he drove off with disconcerting suddenness, as though he had been waiting for him only, and was determined ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... strewn with the scattering of their innumerable petals, sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay, which they call the Opal Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened, like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our soil, the true Armor, the sea, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... suffocation. Never in her life had she slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom which gives the challenge to danger and the courage ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dungeon was so very disagreeable, but because his uneasiness was so great. He sat all night on his stool, starting at the least noise; and when the first rays of the sun penetrated into his chamber, the dawn itself appeared to him to have taken funereal tints. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid nature ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... patience. To serve his own ends he would have sat there watching all night if necessary. He heard an occasional whimper, a howl from one of the dogs; he heard Enid's voice singing in the drawing-room. The rest of the house was quite funereal enough ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... though it is rather a paean sung on behalf of his friend Sulpicius, who in bad health had encountered the danger of the journey, and had died in the effort, than one of these Philippics which are supposed to have been written and spoken with the view of demolishing Antony. It is a specimen of those funereal orations delivered on behalf of a citizen who had died in the service of his country which used to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... all is sad and silent. The very walls and the furniture had a funereal air. In the large chamber lie the bodies of Jane and Esperance, the son of Monte-Cristo. How much beauty, youth and tenderness were to be swallowed up in Mother Earth! Jane, vailed in lace, had a tender smile upon her lips. Esperance, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... started to her feet, determined to execute her project; but she was too late for the appointed signal was heard through the chill gloom of the night. Unhappy woman! The light sound of George de Croisenois' palms striking one upon the other resounded in her ears like the dismal tolling of the funereal bell. She stooped to light a candle at the fire, but her hand trembled so that she could scarcely effect her object. She felt sure that George was still in the garden, though she had made no answer to his signal. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... of the successive intimations chance had sent me, and which in this great concert of misfortunes were like a prelude of mournful modulations to a funereal theme, the mighty cry of expiring love, I cried out: "Surely you believe that this pure lily cut from earth ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... partner," he repeated, with the same funereal intoning. "Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven! And I've held that ticket in my hands, right in these hands! Eight hundred dollars.—Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven wins eight hundred dollars"—his ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... Christian in it. Like the whole congregation, of course, he had to stand during the prayers—the first of which averaged half an hour in length. If he stood erect his head and shoulders vanished beneath funereal trappings, when he seemed decapitated, and if he stretched his neck the pulpit tottered. He looked like the pillar on which it rested, or he balanced it on his head like a baker's tray. Sometimes he leaned forward as reverently as he could, and then, with his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the belief was generally entertained that no defence was possible; and that at the last moment, the prisoner would confess her crime, and appeal to the mercy of the jury. As the deputy sheriff led his prisoner toward the rear entrance, where stood the dismal funereal black wagon in which she was brought from prison to court, Judge Dent ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... skilled to sooth, to triumph, to complain, Warbling at will through each harmonious maze, Was taught to modulate the artful strain, I fain would sing: but ah! I strive in vain. Sighs from a breaking heart my voice confound. With trembling step, to join yon weeping train, I haste, where gleams funereal glare around, And, mixed with shrieks of woe, the knells of ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... was not the amorous fury of the creature striking the tumbler with resounding wings, not the glowing eyes, the strong, clawed feet, the Death's Head staring from its funereal black thorax that held the girl's attention. It was something else; something entirely different riveted her eyes ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a quarter past five, when TALBOT interposed, and with most funereal manner moved to report progress. HENEAGE almost mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT as he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless. So, Clause I. agreed to, Bill talked out. MAKINS, growing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... that new art would be, it is hazardous to guess. One may, however, assert that journalism in its highest development will only thrive so long and so far as the march of events continues, in the eyes of the majority, to be a dull, monotonous and funereal procession. The insensible hack may trust himself to present attractively an occurrence or a man that all the world concedes to be inherently attractive; but it needs a heaven-born artist, trained in the subtleties of his craft and gifted with the inexhaustible appreciative wonder of a ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... sprawled in his desk chair, gazed with funereal gloom at the typewritten agreement which lay before him, unsigned. It was barely twenty minutes ago that Mr. Mix had risen to welcome the man who was to save his credit and his reputation; but during those twenty minutes Mr. Mix, who had felt that he was sitting on top ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... It was her sin, her remorse passing through the streets of Paris in all that solemn pomp, that funereal magnificence, that public mourning reflected even in the clouds; and the proud girl rebelled against the affront that circumstances put upon her, fled from it to the depths of the carriage, where she remained with closed eyes, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and it was beautiful to see how Mrs Greenow went to church in all the glory of widowhood. There had been a great unpacking after that banquet on the sweetbread, and all her funereal millinery had been displayed before Kate's wondering eyes. The charm of the woman was in this,—that she was not in the least ashamed of anything that she did. She turned over all her wardrobe of mourning, showing ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Funereal Darkness, drear and desolate, Muffles the world. The moaning of the wind Is piteous with sobs of saddest kind; And laughter is a phantom at the gate Of memory. The long-neglected grate Within sprouts into flame and lights the mind With ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... me fixedly for a moment. She seemed to be searching my thoughts. "You," she said very succinctly. "Why are you so quiet, so funereal?" I observed a faint tinge of red in her cheeks and an ominous steadiness in her gaze. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... things, in the furnishings of the most beautiful building set aside by the community for the glory of God. But it is not necessary for beautiful effects that there should be any coloured vestments. When the clergy are duly robed in the orthodox surplice and scarves, there is, perhaps, something funereal in the white linens and black Geneva silk, but yet the traditional white and black have their own value against a background of altar-cloth and reredos ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... She smoked, absorbed in a frowning abstraction. A floor lamp behind them was lighted, and there was an illumination at the mantel, but the depths of the library were wrapped in obscurity: its sombreness had increased, the air was heavy with the dust of leather, a vague funereal oppressiveness. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he watched them down the street, as they slowly paced their way with funereal, not sorrowful, solemnity—"well, I am very glad that ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... live-oak, its wood almost as heavy as lignum-vitae, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,—and the palmetto, shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and coat-of-arms to the State. Besides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... train descend; solemnly and in silence, as if the rites at which they were about to assist had been those of funereal, and not of nuptial, solemnization. Indeed, to look upon those wild and fierce faces by the ruddily-flashing torchlight, which lent to each a stern and savage expression; to see those scowling visages ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with which they viewed the gloomy, funereal, sinister pageant—the white-robed, black-mantled and hooded inquisitors, with their attendant familiars and barefoot friars—headed by a Dominican bearing the white Cross, which invaded the city of Seville one day towards the end of December and took its way to the Convent of St. Paul, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... in the beloved little yard. And then, too, what I was upon the point of writing would result in separating me farther from all that I loved, and for that reason I felt extraordinarily sad. It seemed to me that there was something a little funereal in the air of the garden, as if the walls, the plum trees, the vine-covered bower, even the very alfalfa fields beyond the garden, were vitally interested in this, the first grave act of my life which was about to take ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... whole conveyed a deep impression of melancholy. It irresistibly reminded me of the last ceremonial of dead sovereigns, the "Chapelle Ardente." Even the curtains which fell round the throne, fringed with jewels as they were, to me looked funereal. The immense golden candelabra were to me the lights round a bier. I almost imagined that I could see the sword and sceptre laid across the coffin, and all of the Lord of Empire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... "for defence against liquid fire,"—as I see by latest accounts they are now arranging the decks in English dockyards—they become costly biers enough for the grey convoy of chief mourner waves, wreathed with funereal foam, to bear back the dead upon; the massy shoulders of those corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work, and to bear the living, and food for the living, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Bud surveyed himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber's persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal. And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow. There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... members of my club whom my explosion of mirth had awakened. As I still chuckled and screamed, it appeared to me that the noise I made gradually grew fainter and more distant, seeming to resound in some vast empty space, even more funereal and melancholy than the dormitory of my club, the "Tepidarium." It has happened to most people to laugh themselves awake out of a dream, and every one who has done so must remember the ghastly, hollow, and maniacal sound of his own mirth. It rings horribly in a quiet room where ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... howling like so many devils, shrieking and showing their long white teeth, and demanding in unmistakable terms something or somebody to devour; their yells, their cries of rage, of victory, and of love, intermingled with the funereal song of the screech-owl, and the lugubrious melodies which the current from the blast without caused in the large open chimneys,—was the concert, which from December to April lulled the inmates of St. Hibaut to sleep; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... and a sickle of violets, an ivy pillow with a cross of flowers on one side, a bunch of pansies held by a knot of ribbon at one corner, a cross made of ivy alone, a "harvest-field" made of ears of wheat, are some of the many new funereal designs which break the monotony of the dreadful white crosses, crowns, and anchors, hearts and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... secret weakness by putting on a swagger in public, and rendered myself ridiculous in consequence. Draven's could hardly help being amused by a fellow who one day slunk in and out among them self-consciously pale, black under the eyes, with a hacking cough and a funereal countenance, and the next blustered about defiantly and glared at ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... entered—ponderous, solemn, dressed in a black silk that trails behind her in funereal folds. Her hands were clammy to the touch and her voice was a deep bass. She said very little, but sat down silently by the window, forming, as she always did, a dark and extremely solid background. Robin hated and feared her. There was something sinister in her silence—something ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... a Hindu temple on the shore, where the suttee had formerly been performed, and which was provided with a broad staircase leading down to the water. The place had a funereal aspect, to which the terrible tragedy ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... yachting, in the sense that I understood it. In college days he had nearly persuaded me into sharing a squalid week in some open boat he had picked up, and was going to sail among some dreary mud-flats somewhere on the east coast. There was nothing else, and the funereal function of dinner drifted on. But I found myself remembering at the entre that I had recently heard, at second or third hand, of something else about him—exactly what I could not recall. When I reached the savoury, I had ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... those waiting on the shore. Seen from this height, the lamps in the canoe glare like fiery eye-balls; and the passengers, sitting there so hushed and motionless, look like shadows. The scene is so strangely funereal and spectral, that it seems as if the Greeks must have witnessed it, before they imagined Charon conveying ghosts to the dim regions of Pluto. Your companions thus ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... inquisitive spirit, and had led to profound reflections on the existence of God, on his attributes and will, on the nature of the soul, on the faculties of the mind and on the practical duties of life. But this philosophy became pedantic and cold; covered, as with a funereal shade, the higher pursuits of life; and diverted attention from what was practical and useful. That earnest spirit, which raised up Luther and Bacon, demanded, of the great masters of thought, something which ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... sorts of wonderful spectacles, from a three-headed pig to a panorama of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. In front of a large tent, set off in one corner, a solemn, stout man, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, was marching to and fro, ringing a funereal bell, and calling out in melancholy tones that this was ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... widower. Carpani in his thirteenth letter draws a pleasant picture of Haydn's life with his mistress Boselli, and incidentally describes how various composers composed: Gluck with his piano in a summer meadow and the bottled sunshine of Champagne on each side; Sarti in a dark room at night with a funereal lamp pendant from the ceiling; Salieri in the streets eating sweets; Paer while joking with his friends, gossiping on a thousand things, scolding his servants, quarrelling with his wife and children and petting his dog; Cimarosa in the midst of noisy friends; ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... represented in his canonicals. Behind and above him is a colossal statue of Religion with a cross in one hand and rays in form of spikes issuing from her head. I do not like these spikes. On the dexter side of this monument, is a beautiful male youthful figure representing a funereal genius with an inverted torch. The signal delicacy, beauty and symmetry of this statue forms a striking contrast with the figure of an immense lion sleeping on the sinister side; and this lion is an irrefragable proof that Canova excels in the delineation ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... uttered these dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone—a solemn, droning, dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he could see that Madame Carre listened to it even with less pleasure. In the way the girl wailed forth ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Triumph of Death, which came out of the boxes. Kranitski was astonished at nothing, for he had read much, and knew many things also, but he could not be very enthusiastic in this case. When the installation was accomplished, with his active and skilful assistance, he thought: "The place is funereal, and there is little comfort here." He looked askance somewhat at the boxes with the peers of France and Louis XI. on them. The covers of these boxes, rough with carving, did not seem to him the most agreeable places to sit on. He said nothing, however, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... spared nothing to impress on their survivors that the magnificence of their lives should follow them even to the tomb. In the Chapelle de la Vierge of Rouen Cathedral are two of the most famous funereal monuments of the sixteenth century, and in one of these you will notice a very remarkable example of the way in which the sculptors of the rich understood their task. Their orders, no doubt, were to give of their best ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... brisk pace which soon relaxed into a funereal jog, and went on and on through narrow, squalid streets till we reached the Nile. Although I had given myself an extra hour for emergencies, I became impatient ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... had learnt, beneath his father's hand, The well-framed code that sway'd the sacred land; With rites mysterious served the Power divine, Prepared the altar and adorn'd the shrine, Responsive hail'd, with still returning praise, Each circling season that the God displays, Sooth'd with funereal hymns the parting dead, At nuptial feasts the joyful chorus led; While evening incense and the morning song Rose from his hand or trembled ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... The padre came to the ward to assist the sister with her dressings, and came to Mac to break gently the news that he would never see again. Mac had no illusions on this point, and laughed at the padre and his serious, funereal attitude till he resumed his normal cheery manner, when he and Mac soon discovered that they had many great friends in common in New Zealand, for the padre hailed from those parts too. The padre and sister became great friends of Mac, and in odd moments they ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... costume, sipping a little sherry, silent, genteel, and glum; and think the great and wealthy are not always to be envied, and that there may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, where you are served by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary dining-hall, where a funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy footmen minister to you your mutton-chops. They come and lay the cloth presently, wide as the main-sheet of some tall ammiral. A pile of newspapers and letters for the master ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled by; with two horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little rear columns. The torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk since morning, with red, brutish faces, with rusty opera hats on their heads, were sitting in a disorderly heap ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of the United States, as befitted a farmer knowing something of grasses on his own account, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks were looted, thousands of plateglasswindows were smashed while millions ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... paused a moment for parley. Miss Emma was convinced, that, if it were no worse than this, it would be delightful. Flor assured her that she did not know the way any longer, for their winding path between the tall cypresses veiled in their swinging tangles of funereal moss had confused her, and she could only guess at the direction of Longfer Hill. This, then, was an adventure. Miss Emma took the responsibility all upon herself, and plunged forward. Miss Emma must know best, of course, concerning everything. Nothing loth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... black oak panels, or dark hangings that fluttered mysteriously each time the wind blew, were funereal indeed; and so high and narrow were the windows, that little was to be discerned through them but cross-barred portions of the sky. One spot in particular appealed to my nerves—and that, a long, vaulted stone passage leading from a morning room to the foot of the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... pale at this icy assurance of manner. It seemed to him that the voice of the bishop's, but just now so playful and gay, had become funereal and sad; that the wax lights changed into the tapers of a mortuary chapel, the very glasses of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... night-wind, funereal plumes of the tree-tops swaying— Writhing and nodding anon at the beck of the unseen breeze! Yet its voice ever a murmur resumes, as of multitudes praying: Liturgies lost in a moan like the mourning of far-away seas. May then those spirits, set free, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... hollow, like moldering reptiles of the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springs the young growth that fattens on their decay—the forest devouring its own dead. Or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life of the open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains basking in the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the shadows of passing clouds that sail on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... kindness; the duty which excites me has no limit. Although my love pleads [lit. interests itself] for this conqueror, although a nation worships him, and a King praises him, although he be surrounded with the most valiant warriors, I shall endeavor to crush his laurels beneath my [funereal] cypress. ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... side. Above the lake the river became still narrower and more tortuous, dividing sometimes into numerous branches, most of which proved to be mere culs-de-sac. The long moss, reaching from the overhanging branches to the water, gave to the surroundings a most weird and funereal aspect. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... ferried over the Styx by the grim, unshaven old boatman Charon, who, however, only took those whose bodies had received funereal rites on earth, and who had brought with them his indispensable toll, which was a small coin or obolus, usually placed under the {133} tongue of a dead person for this purpose. If these conditions had not been fulfilled, the unhappy shades were left behind to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... their brothers and sisters that our innocent parents brought so proudly back from Italy! I have succeeded in locating two statues evidently imported at that time. They grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the country,—Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary, funereal memorials of the follies ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... woe distressed, The mournful Lakshman thus addressed: "Brother, I pray thee bring for me The pressed fruit of the Ingudi, And a bark mantle fresh and new, That I may pay this offering due. First of the three shall Sita go, Next thou, and I the last: for so Moves the funereal ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... allowed to interfere with him. It was on this understanding that Clare made his appearance at the episcopal palace, at the commencement of February, 1828. Mrs. Marsh rejoiced that her poet had come at last, and at once installed him in a funereal little chamber overlooking the gardens, which she had long selected as fittest for the habitation of genius. Before being led to this room, Clare was informed by the lady that he would find several reams of paper, with stores of pens and ink, for ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... for her ecclesiastical festival, and I went ashore at once to see her at her best. The landing-place is poor and mean, and the dusty and sandy walk is garnished with a single row of that funereal shrub, the milky euphorbia. The first sensation came from the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... stands the jackdaw, looking rather a funereal object in his black suit, on this gaudy-colored day; his gray head very much on one side, his round, sly eyes turned upward in dishonest meditation. A worse bird than Jacky does not hop. His life is one ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... their chieftain. It was the hour when graveyards are supposed to yawn, and the sheeted dead to walk abroad. The gallant Colonel, with a voice in perfect accord with the solemnity of the hour, and the funereal character of the scene, addressed ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... truth. I am not fair. I am no more fair than other people. I would have been harsh. My very admiration was making me more angry. It's ridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor clothes, but there was a funereal grace in his attitude so that he might have been reproduced in marble on a monument to some woman in one of those atrocious Campo Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocratic mourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I became ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... created the gloom and the horror for ourselves, like children who frighten themselves with ghastly stories, and we have only to study the facts of the case, and all these artificial clouds will roll away at once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—partly perhaps because they had a much ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... hangings, but covered with big naked frescoed men and women, or faded arras; few fire-places, but those few enormous, looking like a huge red cavern in the room. The Marefoschis had got together all their best furniture and plate, and the palace was filled with torches and wax lights; a funereal illumination in a funereal place, it must have seemed to the little Princess of Stolberg, fresh from the brilliant nattiness of the Parisian houses of ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and the solemn Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her last. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it. Rebecca sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest liveliness, and had peeped ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with anguish and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... mountains,—a species of gray rock approaching to a carbonate of lime; but the shafts of some of the pillars are formed of a black substance, supposed to have a volcanic origin, and most commonly preferred for the internal decorations of funereal vaults and sarcophagi.[142] ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... she had regarded in past days with respect and esteem. Mrs. French, despondent about everything, was quite despondent in this case. Martha almost despaired, and already was burdened with the cares of a whole wardrobe of solemn funereal clothing. She was seen peering in for half-an-hour at the windows and doorway of a large warehouse for the sale of mourning. Giles Hickbody would not speak above his breath, and took his beer standing; but Dorothy was hopeful, and really believed ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously constrained and solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates itself to a funereal dreariness of tone, though the subject it is exercised upon be but to give orders for the making of a pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys hang up their caps in the hall, or to call the girls to their sewing—"come in!" ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... look upon himself for a grave and thoughtful statesman, and be condemned by fate to a chronic state of fun and to hard labor at pun-making for life. Imagine Junius damned to lead Touchstone's life! He became sourness itself. His puns were lugubrious. His fun grew heavy, and his gayety was funereal. The pretensions of this checked gravity which settled upon his factitious hilarity were enough to melt the hearts even of his enemies, if such a fellow could pretend to have enemies. Once this galley-slave of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on the advice of the astrologers of the court. The telegraph wire runs near it, and so the old and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... nose that at once proclaimed him a Jew. His shoulders were bent, and, as he watched him replacing the chain, he saw that he wore a peculiar black gown like a priest's cassock reaching to the feet. It was altogether a lugubrious figure of a man, sinister and funereal, yet it seemed in perfect harmony with the general character of its surroundings. The hall was devoid of furniture of any kind, and against the dingy walls stood rows of old picture frames, empty and disordered, and odd-looking ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep solitude in which this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of Coniston there is a farmstead—a gray stone house, and a square of farm-buildings surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which stands a mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death, in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest summer day. On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a dark-brown pool, which is supplied with fresh water from the overflowings ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... but to-day he shouldered it with reluctance. He felt like a man with his destiny before him. The tree stood like a sentinel. He raised his axe, once, twice, a dozen times, but could not bring himself to make a cut in the bark. He walked backward a few steps and looked up. The funereal green seemed to grow darker and darker till it became black. It was the embodiment of sorrow. Was it not shaking giant arms at him? Did it not cry out in angry challenge? Luther did not try to laugh at his fears; he had never seen any humor in life. A gust of wind had ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... watch the hurried preparations for the departure. As she watched, life became intolerable to her. Pretending to her sister that she was preparing to perform a magic spell to release her from the bonds of love, she reared a mighty pyre in her court, wreathed it with funereal garlands, and placed thereon Aeneas's couch, garments, and sword. With her hair dishevelled, she then invoked Hecate, and sprinkling Avernian water and poisons on it, and casting thereon various love charms, she called the gods to witness that ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... flesh is weak, Brother Gideon." Her influenza here resolved itself into unmistakable tears, which she wiped away with the first article that was accessible in the work-bag before her. As it chanced to be a black silk neckerchief of the deceased Hiler, the result was funereal, suggestive, but practically ineffective. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no parallel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... assure any such that it is the mildest I can find which conveys an idea of the facts. Expect nothing ornate or romantic. The path along which you who walk with me will go is not a flowery one. Its shadows are those of the cypress and yew; its skies are curtained with funereal clouds; its beginning is a gloom and its end is a mad house. But go with me, for you can suffer no harm, and a knowledge of what you will see may lead you to warn others who are in danger of doing as I have done. Unless help comes to me from on high, I feel that I ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... and night, Mid those funereal shades that seem The uncanny scenery of a dream, Figures dance to a mind with sight, And music and laughter like floods of light Make ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... against more than five hundred strong warriors? Ere long the brave party was captured, and while Konmia dragged the terrified girl towards the funereal-pile, the Indians shrieked ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... the walls. The windows were narrow, and darkened by heavy transom bars and small diamond panes while the view without, looking upon Whalley Nab, was obstructed by the contiguity of a tall cypress, whose funereal branches added to the general gloom. The room was one of those formerly allotted to their guests by the hospitable abbots, and had undergone little change since their time, except in regard to furniture; and even that appeared old and faded ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it,' said he, smiling. 'Here we are at this funereal tree again. All roads lead to Rome, and ours appears to conduct us perpetually to this tree. It 's the only dead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Peonia, too, was indistinct. She was haunted by a vision of her sister, sitting on a horse-hair sofa before an air-tight iron stove in a small room with high, bare white walls, a chromolithograph on each, and at her side a marble-topped table surmounted by a glass vase containing funereal dried grasses; the only literature, Frank Leslie's periodical and the New York Ledger, with a strong smell of cooking everywhere prevalent. Here she saw Madeleine receiving visitors, the wives of neighbours and constituents, who told her the ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... burial of our last year's sins," said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the Italian School who had some share of light and honour. The funereal pomp of the Spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of Madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan |
