"Overcast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spoke in an undertone, the captain of the ship, who understood in an instant what it meant, cried out, "All hands aboard! for here comes a storm, and Heaven save us!" No sooner had he spoken these words than there came the testimony of a whistling of the wind; and behold the sky was overcast with clouds, and the sea was covered with white-crested waves. And whilst the waves on either side of the ship, curious to know what the others were about, leaped uninvited to the nuptials upon the deck, one man baled them ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... he was deceived in these guesses as well as in so many others. All the world seemed out of doors that morning, but nobody came. The ruddy sunshine shone full down the street, glorifying it with rays of warm gold, and tinting the mists and clouds which lurked in the corners. It had been heavy and overcast in the morning, but at noon the clouds had cleared away, and that big red globe of fire had risen majestically out of the mists, and everybody was out. But no one, except humble people in the ordinary way of business, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... weather, which the Paramatta had experienced so far, speedily left her. The sky grew overcast, and the wind freshened fast, and the next morning the ship was staggering, under close-reefed canvas, in the teeth of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... mutes at a wake, black-cloaked and hooded; seldom one showed a light; never one betrayed by any sound the life that lurked behind its jealous blinds. Now again the rain had ceased and, though the sky remained overcast, the atmosphere was clear and brisk with a touch of frost, in grateful contrast to the dull and muggy airs that had obtained ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... not uniformly overcast, but is covered with long horizontal folds of cloud, very dark below and a little lighter where they turn up one into the other. They are incessantly modified by the storm, and fragments are torn away from them which ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... cried, departed Burke, All chivalrous romantic work Is ended now and past! That iron age—which some have thought Of mettle rather overwrought— Is now all overcast." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, th' important day, big with the fate Of ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... foot of the cliffs, where the water curled in white lace about the barrier of boulders. There was no change in the dullness of the sky; no sun broke through the thick lid of clouds. And the green of the sea was ashened to gray which matched that overcast until one could strain one's eyes trying to find the horizon, unable to mark the dividing line here between ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and the dim light that stole from the heavens (in which the moon was partially overcast) through the casement on the staircase rested on a shapeless figure robed in black from head to foot,—a figure so obscure and undefinable in outline, so suited to the gloom in its hue, so stealthy and rapid in its movements, that had you started from sleep and seen it on your floor, you would ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... looking alternately at one another, and then at the packet which they guessed contained the long-expected and important papers. The red wax, with which the package was sealed, gleamed in the lamp-light, for one had been set aglow. It was dark early on this night, as clouds overcast ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... not long before we repented of our temerity: for in a short time the sky became overcast, the wind increased till it blew with violence, and meeting with the tide, caused the waves to rise prodigiously, which broke over our wretched canoe, and filled it with water. We lightened it as much as we could, by throwing overboard ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... nurse called Mabel in, and Christie walked sorrowfully away. The world seemed very full of trouble to him. Even the sky was overcast, and a cutting east wind chilled Christie through and through. The spring flowers were nipped by it, and the budding branches were sent backwards and forwards by each fresh gust of the wind, and Christie felt almost glad that it was so cheerless. He was very sad and unhappy, very restless ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... 1761 the political horizon was overcast. There were difficulties with Great Britain. James Otis had made a great speech, which Adams heard, on what were called "writs of assistance," giving power to the English officers of customs in the Colony to enter houses and stores ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... ends should be secured strongly and neatly together. If the selvage is bad, the best way is to hem it at once. Kitchen dusters, tea cloths, and knife cloths, may be made of any suitable material; but in all cases let the edges be turned down, and neatly sewed or overcast. ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... the fells, and the lake—somewhat vast and gloomy, and furnished in a stately old fashion—was said to be haunted, especially when the wind blew from the direction of Golden Friars, the point from which it blew on the night of her death in the lake; or when the sky was overcast, and thunder rolled among the lofty fells, and lightning gleamed on the wide ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... supper, and a rushlight; and she tied round his neck an amulet, given her by an African conjurer, as a charm against evil spirits. Dolph was escorted on his way by the doctor and Peter de Groodt, who had agreed to accompany him to the house, and to see him safe lodged. The night was overcast, and it was very dark when they arrived at the grounds which surrounded the mansion. The sexton led the way with a lantern. As they walked along the avenue of acacias, the fitful light, catching from bush to bush, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the sky was overcast. A squall struck the boat and tore away the sail. In the distance a huge billow—a great white wall of water—came sweeping toward their frail craft, threatening it with instant destruction. She clasped her child to her bosom, and a moment later found herself struggling ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... everything,—that the sky was oftener blue than black; and my floral experiences in the garden taught me that it was the sunshine, and not the cloud, that makes the flower. It became my study to look only on the bright side of things, convinced, that, if the present were a little overcast, there was a future for us that would be all delightful. I was full of hope; and the eye of hope can discover a star in the thickest darkness, a rainbow even in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... main-sail, the captain, who had come up from below with Mr Saunders when the starboard watch relieved us, having ordered it to be furled and another reef to be taken in the topsails, as it was then blowing great guns and the ship staggering along through a storm-tossed sea, with the sky overcast all round—a sign that we had not seen the worst ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Garde Nationale, who, when they are on duty at the ramparts, quietly leave their men there, and come home to dinner. No one appears to consider this anything extraordinary. Well may General Trochu look up to the sky when it is overcast, and wish that he were in Brittany shooting woodcocks. He has undertaken a task beyond his own strength, and beyond the strength of the greatest general that ever lived. How can the Parisians expect to force the Prussians to raise the siege? They decline to be soldiers, and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... this fatal Tuesday all the elements seemed to unite in adding horror to the scene of carnage. Shortly before this a great comet had made men fear and wonder; and now, on this morning the sky was overcast with such dense clouds that the land was in darkness; so black were the heavens that nothing like it had been known within the memory of man. A violent tempest, with a deluge of rain and terrific thunder and lightning, swept over the country. ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... Chamondrin was a witness to some of these facts. The letters of his son revealed others. He was extremely anxious in regard to the future, and more than once Dolores and his wife saw his brow overcast ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... partly aided by the tide, up the Para river. Towards evening we passed Vigia and Colares, two fishing villages, and saw many native canoes, which seemed like toys beneath the lofty walls of dark forest. The air was excessively close, the sky overcast, and sheet lightning played almost incessantly around the horizon— an appropriate greeting on the threshold of a country lying close under the equator! The evening was calm, this being the season when the winds are not strong, so we glided along in a noiseless manner, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... was gloomy and abstracted; arguments about Justification interested him little, and when the talk fell upon the price of wool, he remained standing, absolutely lost in gloomy dreams. It grew a little dark in the room, the sky being so overcast, and suddenly, all the voices having fallen, there was a gurgle of water by the threshold, and a little flood, coming in between sill and floor, reached as it were, a tiny finger of witness towards his great feet. He looked down at ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the gentle Bianca insensible to his evident partiality for her society; she detected herself repeatedly, without being willing to acknowledge it, wishing for evening—disappointed, if the sky was overcast, or the weather rainy—fluttering with hope, and joy, and indescribable emotion, at the sight of every distant cavalier, or at the sound of every horse's hoof upon the road towards the city. The warm blush, the speaking smile, the sparkling eyes, of both the lovely Bianca and the young soldier, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... coarsened face, was seen in an admirable foreshortening, while her eyes were shadowed by her drooping lids, which were faintly tinted to look like rose-leaves. With the memory his expression was again overcast. Then a pleased smile chased the heaviness from his eyes, for he remembered suddenly that he held a firm grip on the promising Chericoke Valley Central stock. He lighted his cigar, tossed the match into the empty fireplace, and pushing the papers from his knees, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... troops passed through Plassans again. The prefect and the colonel, whom Monsieur Garconnet had invited to dinner, once more entered the town alone. The soldiers went round the ramparts and encamped in the Faubourg, on the Nice road. Night was falling; the sky, overcast since the morning, had a strange yellow tint, and illumined the town with a murky light, similar to the copper-coloured glimmer of stormy weather. The reception of the troops by the inhabitants was timid; the bloodstained ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and silent time it was Within that house of woe, All eyes were dull and overcast, And every voice was low! And from each cheek at intervals The blood appear'd to start, As if recall'd in sudden haste ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to unhallow'd sight the Muse divine Might seem, when first she raised her eyes to mine. What mortal change does in thy face appear, Lost youth, she cried, since first I met thee here! With how undecent clouds are overcast Thy looks, when every cause of grief is past! Unworthy the glad tidings which I bring, Listen while the Muse thus teaches thee to sing: As parent earth, burst by imprison'd winds, Scatters strange agues o'er men's sickly minds, And shakes the atheist's knees; such ghastly fear ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Nature, contrary to her usual custom of indifference to human suffering, was mourning with him. The sky was overcast, and the sun had ceased to shine. There was a sort of sombreness in the afternoon, which fitted in with his mood. And then ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... entire day the sky was overcast, with a thermometer varying from fifty-seven degrees at 300 feet to forty-four degrees, Fahrenheit at 5,000 feet, at which altitude the wind had a velocity of 43 miles an hour, in clouds of a cirro-cumulus nature, a landing finally being made near Tannersville, New York, in the ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... used by beginners in many ways. Squares of duck, fringed out on the edges, and overcast or hem-stitched, can have simple borders or stripes of any desired width worked in this stitch (see Fig. 3). You can draw the lines yourself with a pencil and ruler; those lines which slant in one direction may be worked in one shade, those slanting in the opposite direction ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the Loves rejoice—and well did they Who wove these fables picture in their weaving That blessed truth, (which in a darker day ORIGEN lost his saintship for believing,[1])— That Love, eternal Love, whose fadeless ray Nor time nor death nor sin can overcast, Even to the depths of hell will find his way, And soothe and heal and triumph there at last! GUERCINO'S Agar—where the bondmaid hears From Abram's lips that he and she must part, And looks at him with eyes all full of tears That seem the very last drops from her heart. Exquisite picture!—let ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... for the rest of us, using the life overcast To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... was not cold, but snow fell part of the day, and it grew dark about half-past four in the afternoon. The gale of Monday had subsided, and the sky was overcast. The steamer "Sadie" of the Alaska Commercial Company surprised us by coming into Golovin, and again suddenly we fell to letter writing in order to send them out by her, remaining several hours as she ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... finished above an hour before the sky became overcast; and, all at once, a rushing, sweeping wind came over the country. Far-off in the distance where the hills could be seen, a thick, misty appearance almost hid them from sight. There was a low, muttering sound, then another, seemingly nearer; then came ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... desolate day, gray and overcast. The shore-line was blurred out before Felicia had so much as a fair look at it. The wind blew, raw and cold, but she shook her head when they suggested she let them take her into the cabin. She just lay with closed eyes and cuddled a little ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... contemporaries, and mingle in the contentious scenes of worldly affairs. Or, at least, it might have been expected that his traducers would only be found among the oppressors of the New World, or the slave-traders of the Old. This felicity has not been his lot; and the evening of his days has been overcast by an assault upon his character, proceeding from the quarter of all others the most unexpected ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fashion of poets, by the tale of disasters, would vow that he would begin to work in earnest, and then forget his resolution, and drown his fleeting cares in excess. One day Coralie saw the poetic brow overcast, and scolded Berenice, and told her lover that everything would ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and there, away to the south, was the dim light coming steadily up the stream. The moon had not yet risen; the sky was overcast with wildly flying clouds; the wind was rising, and would drive and grind the ice more fiercely. It was just the night for a tragedy, and he felt that if he saw that light disappear, as a sign that the boat had been crushed and its occupants swallowed up by the wintry tide, the saddest tragedy of ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... accompanied us for seven leagues, all through the woods. We had a delightful ride, the day was cool and cloudy, and we were besides, constantly shaded by the noble forest trees. But we had not reached Las Millas before the sky was overcast, the clouds became black and gloomy, and at length broke out in rain. We galloped fast, for the day, besides being rainy, was cold; and in the afternoon reached Las Millas. Here we breakfasted in the little portico, which we preferred to the interior of the cottage, chiefly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... an unlucky omen; wives will be jealous and distrustful of their husbands, and sweethearts will quarrel and nag each other into crimination and recrimination. Dulness will overcast business horizons. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... into low conversation with Jennie, holding out hopeful views of her future, and presently darkness set in. The sky was overcast with heavy clouds; there was no air moving; the heat and oppression threatened storm. By and by Duane could not see a rod in front of him, though his horse had no difficulty in keeping to the road. Duane was bothered by the blackness of the ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... reached the house by this time and were standing near the verandah steps. It was a chilly night, and the sky was overcast with not a star to be seen. A tremor shook Lois' form as she ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... but I thought I saw that I should get well through it—'Well, Sir Walter,' I said, 'I was dining yesterday, where your works became the subject of very copious conversation.' His countenance immediately became overcast—and his answer was, 'Well, I think, I must say your party might have been better employed.' 'I knew it would be your answer,'—the conversation continued,—'nor would I have mentioned it, but that Dr. Chalmers was ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... dismal one on that particular day. The sky was overcast and gray, with a distinct threat of rain. The sea was gray and cold and cheerless. The fields were bare and bleak and across them moved a damp, chill, penetrating breeze. From horizon to horizon not a breathing creature, except themselves, was visible. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... behind the clouds, the sky is overcast, and the broad Volga looks gloomy. Levitan ought not to live on the Volga. It lays a weight of gloom on the soul. Though it would not be bad to have an estate ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... not start till about nine o'clock. This was the coldest day we have yet experienced: the heavens were overcast with clouds. We came five hours; our course irregular, but always south-east; the track through wadys filled with the usual trees of the tholukh species. Yesterday were seen numbers of large butterflies, but to-day, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... were more like changes of weather, and interchange of day and night, than at any other place in the heavenly country. Sometimes the whole valley would be shrouded with mists, sometimes it would be grey and overcast, sometimes the light was clear and radiant, but through it all there beat a pulse of light and darkness; and I do not know which was the more desirable—the hours when we walked in the forests, with the wind moving softly in the leaves overhead ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eighty-three degrees, but the blood mounted ten degrees higher; though I think a good deal of the heat imparted itself through the eye from the lurid horizons paling upward into the dull, unbroken blue of the heavens, ordinarily overcast or heaped with masses of white cloud. A good deal came also from the thronged streets, in which the season had scarcely begun to waver, and the pulses of the plethoric town throbbed with a sense ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... fields and hedges, throughout the summer nights, we may see and study most interesting examples of creatures which produce their own light. Heedless of whether the moon shines brightly, or whether an overcast sky cloaks the blackest of nights, the fireflies blaze their sinuous path through life. These little yellow and black beetles, which illumine our way like a cloud of tiny meteors, have indeed a wonderful power, for the light which they produce within their own bodies is ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... slightly soiled negligee, answered his ring, then, recognizing him, blocked the door hastily, exposing a face overcast with ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the clouds that had so long overcast this little house had drifted away this calm Sabbath day, and the sun was shining ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... darker, at last veil the horizon in a blueish grey mist. Towards the zenith they tower up in bright broad-spreading masses, and assume the appearance of gigantic mountains in the air. All at once the sky is completely overcast, excepting that a few spots of deep blue still appear through the clouds. The sun is hid, but the heat of the atmosphere is more oppressive. The noontide is past; a cheerless melancholy gloom hangs heavily over nature. Fast sink the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... the early part of the evening when he had drawn attention to himself with his wonderful clothes. Now his comic actor's face, with its brownish-red cheeks, protuberant ears and horizontal slit of a mouth, was overcast with gravity. His bald forehead was seamed with the wrinkles of responsibility. He drew Annixter into one of the empty stalls and began an elaborate explanation, glib, voluble, interminable, going over again in detail what he had reported to the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... was about to reply that he did not believe that the peasants could continue to resist the Government indefinitely, the police-sergeant in charge of the picnic-party approached, his face overcast. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... became more and more overcast, but Andrew could think of no way in which he could take the little girl home without being late and losing ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... back before supper," she said, and hurried homewards over the moor, where the wind was rising and sighing in the broom bushes. The clouds were hurrying up from the north-west, and threatening to overcast the pale evening sky, quivering flocks of fieldfares whirred over her, and the gold and purple were fast losing their brilliant tints. As she neared the cottage in the darkening twilight, a patch of scarlet caught her eye, and a warm glow of comfort rushed ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... to sovereigns; three great dukedoms, an independent principality with its own mint and with its own tribunals, and an income greatly exceeding the whole revenue of the kingdom of Scotland. But this splendid prospect had been overcast. The match had been broken off. The aspiring suitor had been, during many years, shut up in an Alpine castle. At length Lewis relented. Lauzun was forbidden to appear in the royal presence, but was allowed to enjoy liberty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... companions, I believe, regretted I had not been omitted. I tried, therefore, to be inconspicuous, and went up to seclude myself at the back of the boat on the poop, there to understudy a dog which is sorry it did it. Not adverse fate itself could show a more misanthropic aspect than the empty overcast waste around us. It was useless to appeal to it. It did vouchsafe us one ship that morning, a German trawler with a fir tree lashed to her deck, ready for Christmas morning, I suppose, when perhaps they would ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... overcast, ceiling about two thousand feet, visibility about two miles. The wind was moderate and steady. Rick examined the water in front of the cottage and told his friends, "I can take off all right. But I don't want to ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... greensward ring of the Auld Kirkhill at sunset, and wakened at daybreak in the wild hills of Breadalbane. And see that, when you are looking for deer, the red stag does not gall you as he did Diccon Thorburn, who never overcast the wound that he took from a buck's horn. And see, when you go swaggering about with a long broadsword by your side, whilk it becomes no peaceful man to do, that you dinna meet with them that have broadsword and lance ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of fine weather. So is fog. Neither of these two formations occurs under an overcast sky, or when there is much wind. One sees the fog occasionally rolled away, as it were, by wind—but not formed ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... There's the stage horn. Let us hurry out and get an inside seat. The sky looks overcast, and I shouldn't like to have this coat rained upon. There's a fine piece of cloth, Dic. Feel it." Dic complied. "Soft as silk, isn't it?" continued Billy. "They don't make such cloth in these days of flimsy woolsey. Got it thirty years ago from the famous Schwitzer on Cork Street. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... assistance always sit stolidly silent until their separate summons comes to join the chief, eyeing each other suspiciously and surveying their surroundings with unconcealed and fitting awe. One is of bluff and hearty appearance, but his full face is overcast for the moment with an expression half sad, half whimsical; it is plain that a conjunction of untoward circumstances has raised doubts in his mind of the integrity of a business associate, and he has reluctantly determined to clear or confirm ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... literature." He talks of taking up journalism—but in his heart he feels unfit for any regular profession, by reason both of physical weakness and a certain lack of system in mental work. The future becomes blackly, blankly overcast; the res augusta domi descend like a curtain between the sublimity of Keats and the calm commonsense of Fanny. They turn homewards in silence, the poet ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... saw red with rage and anguish, he watched the hesitating approach of the woman. She stopped at the corner and looked up and down the Drive, peering intently into the dark shadows by the lake. The sky was overcast; no stars peeped through its blackness. With uncertain, halting steps she crossed the boulevard, still glancing about as if in search of someone. He moved forward unconsciously, almost blindly, and she caught a glimpse of his tall, dark figure. He was ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... to thee, A debt already paid in pain. Yet even that pain was some relief; It felt, but still forgot thy power:[bs] The active agony of grief Retards, but never counts the hour.[bt] In joy I've sighed to think thy flight Would soon subside from swift to slow; Thy cloud could overcast the light, But could not add a night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; One star alone shot forth a spark To prove thee—not Eternity. That beam hath sunk—and now thou art A blank—a thing to count and curse Through each dull tedious ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... dashing up like the explosion of shells, and the cliffs, and the rampart of hills grown with grass and cactus. A bold promontory terminated the coast view to the north, and behind it I could glimpse a more fertile and wooded country. The sky was partly overcast by the volcanic murk. It fled before the Trades, and the red sun alternately blazed and clouded ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unity of impression that would only be disturbed and dissipated if we stayed longer. Clear vision goes with the quick foot. Things fall for us into a sort of natural perspective when we see them for a moment in going by; we generalise boldly and simply, and are gone before the sun is overcast, before the rain falls, before the season can steal like a dial-hand from his figure, before the lights and shadows, shifting round towards nightfall, can show us the other side of things, and belie what they showed us in the morning. We expose ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worked like a pair of bellows. There he stood, glancing now back along the road, now up at the sky. His hat had gone flying at the first unexpected plunge; he ought to return and look for it. But he shrank from the additional fatigue, the delay in reaching home this would mean. The sky was still overcast: he decided to risk it. Knotting his handkerchief he spread it cap-wise over his head and got back into ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... extended at full length on a settee, which he insisted was a divan. There was a glass bottle holding half a gallon of red wine on a table near him, also a bottle of Marsala, and half a dozen glasses. There was a roaring wood-fire in his stove—for it was December, and the day was overcast and cool. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... youth, which courts melancholy as an indulgence, and loves to assume a sadness it has not had time to earn, may have had some share in, at least, fostering the gloom by which the mind of the young poet was overcast, I am not disposed to deny. The circumstance, indeed, of his having, at this time, among the ornaments of his study, a number of skulls highly polished, and placed on light stands round the room, would seem to indicate that he rather courted than shunned such gloomy associations.[113] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... salts exchanged glances the cloud seemed to grow, as if by magic, and by the time the awning was snugged home and lashed and everything had been hauled taut in preparation for the blow, the whole heavens were overcast with a sullen gray veil, and the sea began to rise with a low moaning sound that presaged what Ben Stubbs termed "a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... ours,—where the interest of the people is so much neglected—neglected! no, but never thought of at all! Good-bye, sir," he added, taking up his hat, whilst the features of this sterling and honest man were overcast with a solemn and pathetic spirit, "don't consider me any longer your tenant. For many a long year has our names been—but no matther—the time is come at last, and the M'Mahon's of Carriglass and Ahadarra will be known there no more. It wasn't our fault; we ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... ate a hastily prepared breakfast and were off to the boat. Neither Robinson nor Friday stopped for their noonday lunch. "A storm is brewing," said Robinson, "the air is calm, the sky is overcast with clouds, the heat is oppressive. We must hurry." With the utmost diligence they rowed back and forth all day. They made nine trips. They had now on shore a surprising quantity of all kinds of tools, goods and weapons. They had all kinds of ware to use in the kitchen, clothes, and food. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... The sky is overcast, Yet stars shall rise at last, Brighter for darkness past, And angels' silver voices stir ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the still sea-shore, A monitory sound that never failed,— The sunset cannon. While the orb went down 325 In the tranquillity of nature, came That voice, ill requiem! seldom heard by me Without a spirit overcast by dark Imaginations, sense of woes to come, Sorrow for human kind, and pain ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... The sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at that very moment,—it was eight o'clock in the evening—the clouds on the horizon parted, and allowed the grand and sinister glow of the setting sun to pass through, athwart ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... birds are passing by, flitting to the lowland. The sky is overcast; there is a lull in the wind. Hark, I hear the piping of the shepherd and the tinkling bell of the wether. Yonder is his flock; and there sits he on a rock blowing his doleful reed. I am almost slain ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... cheerful council. There was no exultation as after Wyoming and Cherry Valley and the Minisink and other places. Sir John bit his lip uneasily, and his brother-in-law, resting his hand on his knee, stared gloomily at the fire. The two Butlers were silent, and the dark face of Thayendanegea was overcast. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... terrible phenomenon of natural scenery that she had not noticed, in the thicket on her right, a low hut that, with its brown-green moldering colors, fell so naturally in with the hue of the surrounding scenery as easily to escape observation. She did not even observe that the sky was entirely overcast, and the thunder was muttering in the distance. She was aroused from her profound reverie by a voice ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... rose as usual, but, as the weather was overcast, it only peered now and then through the broken gray clouds. There were mutterings of thunder and a few drops of rain fell, big and heavy with black soot. Then the shower stopped and a stillness like that before a great storm settled over the land. The day, instead of growing ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... straits of Florida. I took the helm, the general the sheet, Colonel Wilson was stationed by the halyards, Russell and O'Toole were prepared to bail. Tom, thoroughly demoralized, was already sitting in the bottom of the boat, between the general's knees. The sky was soon completely overcast with dark lowering clouds; the darkness, which could almost be felt, was broken every few minutes by lurid streaks of lightning chasing one another through black abysses. Fitful gusts of wind were the ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... wood the path was very dark. The heavens were overcast with clouds, and a few drops began to fall. Then the rain fell faster and faster, and before she had gone a quarter of a mile down the beacon hill, the clouds had opened themselves, and the shower had become a storm of water. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... (saith he) that the Light which Mercury receives, is far enough from being able to burn Bodies, and yet that the same Light is great enough in Saturn to see cleer there, seeing that (to him) it appears greater in Saturn, than it doth upon our Earth, when it is overcast with Clouds: Which (he adds) would scarce be believed, if by means of this Glass it did not sensibly appear so; Whereof he promises to discourse more fully in his {70} Treatise of the usefulness of great Optick-Glasses, where he also intends to deliver ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... became frightened, and as the faint rays of light from a distant port-hole fell squarely upon his face, I observed a wild, peculiar stare in his eyes, and noticed that his whole countenance was overcast by a most villainous expression. At that moment, I remembered the doctor's warning words, that he might change personalities at any time that he was subjected to severe mental excitement, and I now recognized in the man standing ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... the sky became overcast; the water was of that dull leaden hue, striped with white foam, which gives so gloomy an aspect to the ocean; and heavy squalls compelled us to shorten sail as fast as all hands could get through the task. For the greater part of the day the squalls continued; but in the afternoon, though it was ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... so much interested in searching for minerals that we had quite forgotten our luncheon. The sky, I remember, was overcast and the sun obscured; it was also very smoky from forest fires, which in those days were nearly always burning somewhere to the north ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... more oppressive, and the burning winds of the desert were sometimes wafted over to us. The highest temperature at midday was 36 degrees, and in the shade from 24 to 25 degrees Reaumur. The sky was far less beautiful and clear than in Syria; it was here frequently overcast with white clouds. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... were the enclosed cloisters, as they entered by the west gate. It was later than the usual hour of closing, and it was, moreover, a gloomy evening, the sky overcast. They went through the cloisters to the south gate, Ketch grumbling all the way. He locked it, and then turned ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... while he was following the profession of itinerant painter through England, that he wrote to his father of "much dissatisfaction and much sorrow," of "that repeated disappointment and that long dejection which have served to overcast and to throw into deep obscurity some of the best ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... at the swift-running stream, and emptied them as often. By two o'clock F. was getting a little wobbly from the sun. We talked of stopping, when an unexpected thunder shower rolled out from behind the mountains, and speedily overcast the entire heavens. This shadow relieved the stress. F., much revived, insisted that we proceed. So we marched and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... before blue and cloudless, became overcast, a tremendous storm gathered from the west, broke in all its fury of rain, hail and thunder and lightning—even a partial eclipse of the sun occurred. There was a terrible downpour, and to the horror of the moment was ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.' BOSWELL. His preface to the third edition thus ends:—'When I first ventured to send this book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.' The dedication of the first edition and the preface of the third are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... they gained the edge of the woods and came out on the plains. The sky was still overcast, only a few ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... protest, and hearken all to it, Ye times and ages, future, present, past, Hear all ye blessed in the heavens that sit, The time for this achievement hasteneth fast: The longer rest worse will the season fit, Our sureties shall with doubt be overcast. If we forslow the siege I well foresee From Egypt ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... fire of the little cottage parlour, a black-edged letter lying idly between her fingers. Very pale, she had the appearance of one who had passed many sleepless nights. Outside, the November sky was overcast, the rain was coming down in torrents, and sad-looking people picked their way down the muddy lane under streaming ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... warm, and still. Only on one side of the sky the stars were shining, the other and greater part was overcast by one huge cloud stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in the absence of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its curved edges sharply denned against the deep starry sky. Only in front of him could the Cossack discern the Terek and ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Majesty dwelt on that hope, and overwhelmed with grief, his sorrowful heart beheld Sweden's last misfortune. The Crown Prince, Carl August, is no more, and a cloud has overcast the joyful and bright days of our native country. With a heart rent by sorrow and affliction, his Royal Majesty has assembled the Diet, on this occasion to repair the loss. His Royal Majesty sees on our side endless disputes and disturbances ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... sullen manner amused her; she attributed his morose ways to the effects of an over-lively night. Onward she went, down to the edge of the brook, then turned to the right up the course of the streamlet. That the skies threatened to become overcast and that rain might overtake her during the day mattered little. Whenever the Indian is bent upon the performance of some task, sunshine or rain, moonlight or snow, are matters of indifference. Shotaye strolled on regardless of things above or below. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... blindness.[76] Cicero likewise says very justly, that reason is as it were, the light and splendor of life.[77] Hence God is stiled the father of lights.[78] Thus the virtues of the mind decaying, may be compared to the luminaries of the world overcast. I am conscious that this exposition is contrary to that of a number of learned interpreters, who take this obscuration of the lights in the genuine sense of the words, and think that the failing of the sight is here to be understood. But I am surprized, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... been the usual myriads of the insects that cause this sound. While I was thinking in this way a swallow alighted on the turf, picked up a small white moth from among the short grass, and went off with it. In gloomy overcast weather the swallows at the sea-side frequently alight on the pebbles of the beach to pick up the insects which will not rise and fly. Some beaches and sandbanks are much frequented by insects, and black clouds of them sometimes come drifting along, striking ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... resting on them, Georgina looked into the fire through the slits of the damper and thought and thought. Then she looked out through the little square window-panes across the wind-swept dunes. It did not seem like summer with the sky all overcast with clouds. It was more like the end of a day in the early ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no trace?" he thought. But the same instant, going back to his mood, he felt with delight that something new and important had happened to him. Real life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... chairs and spittoons, a small gas-heater, and many tottering columns of dusty letter-files. The window-panes, encrusted with perennial deposits of Atmosphere, were less transparent than translucent, and so little the latter that electric bulbs burned all day long whenever the skies were overcast. Also, the windows were fixed and set against the outer air—impregnable to any form of assault less impulsive than a stone cast by an irresponsible hand. A door, set craftily in the most inconvenient spot imaginable, afforded both ventilation and access to an aisle which led tortuously between ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... young man were so excellent that he combated, by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times overcast his mind, and it was not till he attained the commencement of his twenty-first year that they assumed a character which made his father tremble for the consequences. It seemed as if the gloomiest ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the method of overcasting and explain its use. She should have the pupils trim the edges of their seams neatly and overcast them carefully. After the seams have been overcast, she should discuss the depth of the hem that the pupils expect to use and the method of turning and basting it. They should then measure, turn, pin, and baste the hems, using the gauge for determining the depth of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... all sides were anxious faces and furrowed brows. The country was out of health; money, the vital blood of business, circulated slowly from one part of the great body to the other—the rich fearing to lose, the poor becoming unable to win. The future was overcast all at once, like the summer sky ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... toboggans were hitched behind the Mackenzie River dogs, and while 'Merican Joe plodded ahead, Connie had all he could do at the tail rope. An hour later the wind suddenly changed and came roaring out of the north. The whole sky became overcast and stinging particles of flinty snow were driven against their faces. The storm increased in fury. The stinging particles changed to dry, powdery snow dust that whirled and eddied about them so thickly that Connie could not see the dogs ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... in the thick reeds and waited. The sky above was darkly overcast; an occasional burst of lightning revealed the dimensions of the pond, and they could see high ground on the eastern shore, covered by ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... happened to be late in arriving, and youthful March looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not on every day, did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the overcast heavens, or, glimmering in blue spaces between clouds, contemplate the earth with a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... was still threatening; the sky was dull and overcast, and now and then big drops of rain dashed against the window-panes; but this traveler with his heavy cloak lined with sheep-skin was not a man to worry about ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... cross-grained, silent, or irritable, raw-edged for the first time, for a better lot of fellows one could not ask to ship with. Nor throughout the day did weather conditions or tempers improve. All day long the sky was heavily overcast with dense, low-hanging, dark gray clouds, which, while wholly obscuring the sun, seemed to focus its rays upon us like a vast burning-glass; wherefore it was expedient for the two pajama-clad passengers ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... by North Atlantic Current; mild winters, cool summers; consistently humid; overcast about half ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... promise and bright sunshine, but became overcast and gloomy by the time the Royal progress from the Palace had commenced. The crowds gathered early, and soon every seat in the many stands were filled with expectant and interested people who numbered in the end fully half a million. Picked troops, chiefly Household Cavalry and Colonial ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... not remarkable in any way, while the barometer has been little affected by them; but it has been often observed by those employed on the water that when it ceased blowing half a gale the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather or rain. This may all seem common enough to most people; but to those accustomed to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail or foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... have no desire but that of cherishing me dearly, and embellishing my life by all kinds of delicious cares. Come, come, Croustillac," said the adventurer, with increased exaltation, "I say truly, your star is in the ascendent, and shall shine more than in the past it has been overcast! Yes, it is in ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... a moth ball was a lemon drop an' dealt with it a'cordin', an' she was too used up by the bein' up all night to even so much as overcast a plain seam; but the rest was there an' we all aired ourselves inside out, I can assure you, an' was more 'n glad as she was n't there, so we could do ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... presaging David Dubbs's misfortune, had grown overcast, and flung down spiteful little sallies of snow as he crossed the river on his way to Mr. Griffin's. The creaking of the bridge's huge timbers and the splitting ice below it made him shiver and pull his threadbare coat close about him and sacrifice his old hands to the wind ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... camp shortly after six A. M., and after a few brief instructions, we started out. The going not as heavy as the day previous; but the sky overcast, and a heavy drift on the surface made it decidedly unpleasant for the dogs. For the first six hours the going was over rough, jagged ice, covered with deep, soft snow; for the rest of the day it improved. We encountered comparatively level ice, with a few hummocks, and in places covered with ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... inconceivable abominations and horrors: it was the royal court. At the upper end of the king's accursed hall, amidst thousands of other dread sights, by the light my companion shed, I could see in the darkness two feet of prodigious size, and so enormous as to overcast the whole infernal firmament. I inquired of my Guide what such immensities might be. "Thou shalt have a fuller view of this monster when returning," said he, "but, come now, let us to see the court." As we were ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... reached the spot than suddenly the clouds gathered, the sky was overcast, a squall rose shrieking and whistling amidst the trees, and there was every appearance of a downpour. We were not prepared for it, but we rashly continued our way. At last, just before we reached a small road-side cabaret, down it came, as if the whole reservoir of cloudland ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... being arrived, and disliking the vehicle of a hackney coach, I walked forward to the inn at which the stranger had been left; musing much on the prospect before me, which was once more beginning to be heavily overcast. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
