"Sepulchral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... voice of the Postmaster. This meant that the boy must come to bed. It was the sepulchral tone that made them jump perhaps. Zizi got up without a murmur; he was glad to go, really. He slept in the room with his parents. His father, an overcoat thrown over his night things, led him away without another word. And the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... floor still darken? dost thou still, despairing, hearken To that deep sepulchral utterance like the oracles of yore? In the same place is he sitting? Does he give no sign of quitting? Is he conscious or unwitting when he answers "Nevermore?" Tell ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... by the opaque and almost sensible darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, perhaps, an emphatic crack from the old cabinet that was made by Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of the coals on the extinguished fire. It was a calm; or I know that I should have heard ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now in some degree persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remember I first begun this large digression when it became a question with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter, finding similar operations carried on in Florence. For a little while after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and the people, at public cost, built ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... fashion, and not like the more ancient tombs of the Jews, which we see cut in the rock for the reception of the dead. There are seven lamps constantly burning over it, the gifts of different sovereigns in a succession of ages. It occupies about one-half of the sepulchral chamber, and extends from one end of it to the other. A space about three feet wide in front of it is all that remains for the accommodation of visiters, so that not more than three or four can be conveniently admitted at ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... are signs of the gradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavors to disguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and mercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imagination which culminate in "Castle Dangerous" cast a Stygian hue over "St. Ronan's Well," "The Fair Maid of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... stood on Brocken's[315:2] sovran height, and saw Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills, A surging scene, and only limited By the blue distance. Heavily my way Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore, 5 Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard, The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound; And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly, Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct 10 From many a note ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... saw Talma perform, and years after, in her little rooms in Lady's Field at Norwich, Mrs. Opie, in her Quaker dress, used to give an imitation of the great actor and utter a deep 'Cain, Cain, where art thou?' To which Cain replies in sepulchral tones. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the morn restored the day, we paid Sepulchral honours to Elpenor's shade. Now by the axe the rushing forest bends, And the huge pile along the shore ascends. Around we stand, a melancholy train, And a loud groan re-echoes from the main. Fierce ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... parent's tie The prevalence obtains; impiously good, With blood her own, she soothes the brethren's shades. Now, when the fires destructive fiercely glar'd, She cry'd:—"Here, funeral pile, my bowels burn!—" And as the fatal wood her direful hand Held forth, the hapless mother, at the pyre Sepulchral, stood, exclaiming;—"Furies three! "Avenging sisters! hither turn your eyes; "Behold the furious sacred rites I pay: "For retribution I commit this crime. "By death their death must be aveng'd; his fault "By ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... this place. He put his letter down on the table, and, turning round in his arm-chair, with a savage air, his eye fixed on a distant corner of the room, he fell to thus soliloquizing in a sepulchral voice: ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... draw us round no Northern Poles With crowns of mimic roses. That mock our sad sepulchral souls And counterfeit ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... vaults situated beneath the floor of the Palace of Justice. Imagination can conceive of nothing more dismal than these somber caverns, with long and winding galleries opening into cells as dark as the tomb. You descend by a flight of massive stone steps into this sepulchral abode, and, passing through double doors, whose iron strength time has deformed but not weakened, you enter upon the vast labyrinthine prison, where the imagination wanders affrighted through intricate mazes of halls, and arches, and vaults, and dungeons, rendered only more appalling ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... gruff voice, which sounded through the hollow arches of the place with sepulchral tone—"who the devil are you—why don't you mind where you go—you must not come here with your eyes in your pocket;" and at the same time he heard a spade dug into the earth, which almost inspired him with the idea that ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... them the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,—ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a settin' there, a tall, sepulchral lookin' female, that I had noticed at the breakfast-table, come up to me; ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... weird light. When sugar burns in spirits, a sepulchral light appears on everything: living faces look like faces of the dead; all color disappears from them, the ruddiness of the countenance, the brilliance of the lips, the glitter of the eyes,—all turn green. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... The old men and the women in the streets moved as under a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But few people were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. The absence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral appearance to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, inside the little shops, and on by-streets, you saw waiting faces, everyone with the weight of national grief become personal. Was Paris alive? ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable,—slowly fading, it may be,—dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness—but there? Shall that divine something, which, once awakened to be its own holy self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we loathe them now—shall this divine thing have no recognition from us? ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... published some Notices of Sepulchral Monuments in English Churches, a work which is not intended for professed antiquaries, but for that large class of persons who, although they have some taste for the subject of which it treats, have neither ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... to the issue of the trial in all the neighbouring coffee-houses. Ennui, impatience, disgust sat on almost every countenance. The figures passing and repassing, rendered more ghastly by the pallid lights, and who in a slow, sepulchral voice pronounced only the word—Death; others calculating if they should have time to go to dinner before they gave their verdict; women pricking cards with pins in order to count the votes; some of the deputies fallen ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... and nomes possess securely the goods which they have in their names, and we will make unto thee the divine offerings which we are bound to make, and offer sacrifices in thy name for ever. Acclamations are made in thy name, libations are poured out to thy KA, and sepulchral meals [are brought unto thee] by the spirits who are in thy following, and water is sprinkled ... on each side of the souls of the dead in this land. Every plan for thee which hath been decreed by the commands of R[a] from the beginning hath been perfected. Now therefore, O son of Nut, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... crushed in the dark depth of the earth at the top of these remains? Ah, one catches sight of what there is under the battlefields! Everywhere in the spacious wall there are limbs, and black and muddy gestures. It is a sepulchral sculptor's great sketch-model, a bas-relief in clay that stands haughtily before our eyes. It is the portal of the earth's interior; yes, it ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... voice I raise,'" sang Charlie, "I speak only in the interests of common sense, and common necessity," he continued in a sepulchral voice, "and I rather think Pope had the same interests at heart when he represented justice weighing solid ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... along the pavement, mounting the opposite pillars and losing themselves in the darkness; those rays of cold and diffused light made the shadows seem even darker as they brought out of the darkness here a chapel, beyond, a sepulchral stone or the outline of some pilaster; and the great Christ, who crowned the railings of the high altar, glowed against its background of shadow with the brilliancy of its old gilding, like some miraculous apparition floating in space in a ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for he'd have every mother's son of us sent to jail or hanged, if he could," growled another voice on Snell's right, while from a mask on the left there came in sepulchral tones, the words, "It had better be hands off with you then, man," the speaker pointing significantly to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The forge ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... say, drawn from the hapless fingers Of some great lady, many centuries nameless,— Or is that too sepulchral?—dulled with dust; And necklaces that crumble if you touch them; And gold brocades that, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... thought. After that he was alone. And presently from far away he heard the booming of a bell, deep and slow, sepulchral, as it measured off his life. Another silence followed, and this time it was more profound; and with a breathless awe he knew that all the people who had ever lived on earth were before him in the void to which he himself was drifting: people of all nations, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... angular postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish frolics and friskings; sharp, shrill little whinnying squeals and squeaks, followed by lengthened, sepulchral "O-h's"—all formed together such an irresistibly ludicrous picture as made "Les Anglaises pour Rire" of Poitier and Brunet one of the most comical pieces of acting I have ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... power of reflecting and comparing, we look for something nobler. We English estimate Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, namely, the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled away from the face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his rest; for, had the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have offered for negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues through the feuds always gathering upon national jealousies amongst ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the house; there was no one in the kitchen, and the tick of the old clock sounded lonely and sepulchral. She went upstairs to Mara's room; the door was ajar. Mara was sitting at the open window that looked forth toward the ocean, busily engaged in writing. The glow of evening shone on the golden waves of her hair, and tinged ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... do you part," said the sepulchral tones of a voice behind the hedge; and with a laugh at the start he had given them Jerrem passed by the gate and went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... flames gained strength, she said, "Let this funeral pile consume my entrails." And as she was holding the fatal billet in her ruthless hand, she stood, in her wretchedness, before the sepulchral altars,[68] and said, "Ye Eumenides,[69] the three Goddesses of punishment, turn your faces towards these baleful rites; I am both avenging and am committing a crime. With death must death be expiated; crime must be added to crime, funeral to funeral; by accumulated calamities, let this unnatural ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the great, innocent, bold sunrise unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to do, and to which I cared not to find the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... both looked at her with strange, deep interest and curiosity, she related her sepulchral experiences of the night. When with pale cheeks and shuddering frame she described the six dark, shrouded forms that had come up out of the vault, bearing long shadowy coffins, which they carried in ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... occasion, used for the interment of particular persons. One or two shattered yew-trees still grew within the precincts of that which had once been holy ground. Warriors and barons had been buried there of old, but their names were forgotten, and their monuments demolished. The only sepulchral memorials which remained were the upright headstones which mark the graves of persons of inferior rank. The abode of the sexton was a solitary cottage adjacent to the ruined wall of the cemetery, but ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... it told the story of the overwhelming of one of the chiefs of the old primeval people of Holland, amid all his gala array, in a great storm. But it was another view which Sebastian preferred; that this object was sepulchral, namely, in its motive—the one surviving relic of a grand burial, in the ancient manner, of a king or hero, whose very tomb was wasted away.—Sunt metis metae! There came with it the odd fancy that he himself would like ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... incitement than brutal lust and wantonness of barbarity. They even violated the sepulchres of the dead, which have been held sacred among the most savage nations. At Camin and Breckholtz they forced open the graves and sepulchral vaults, and stripped the bodies of generals Schlaberndorf and Ruitz, which had been deposited there. But the collected force of their vengeance was discharged against Custrin, the capital of the New Marche of Brandenburgh, situated at the conflux ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You must be getting ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Marjorie rang the bell at Gladys Fulton's, the door opened very slowly, and they could hear a low, sepulchral groan. ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... Immortal! though no more; though fallen, great; Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth And long-accustom'd bondage uncreate? Not such thy Sons who whilom did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait: Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... sepulchral lamp Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen; Which not the darkness of despair can damp, Though vain its ray as ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... in a tone that made me jump, it was so extremely sepulchral—a tone that seemed as if it might have been acquired in a damp corner of some cave off the earth. "But ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... carried the paper in one hand, a pencil in the other, and when he could find the one he wanted in a crowd of his comrades, he took special pleasure in serving his notice, and would say in his solemn, sepulchral voice: ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the Paymaster presently in tones of sepulchral gloom, "the neophyte of AESCULAPIUS, to whose care the inscrutable wisdom of Providence has entrusted our lives, is being excruciatingly funny. Number One says it is belated remorse for the gallant servants of His Majesty whom he has consigned to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... ornamented with a great tortoise—the sacred animal of Chinese religion—with gold eyes and claws. All round the side of the room were set coloured lights, shaded and dim. Coming from the bright outer sunlight, the place in its shadowed state seemed half- sepulchral. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were furnished for his funeral banquet. Such men as Sir Roger Scatcherd are always well buried, and we have already seen that his glories were duly told to posterity in the graphic diction of his sepulchral monument. In a few days the doctor had returned to his quiet home, and Sir Louis found himself reigning at Boxall Hill in his father's stead—with, however, a much diminished sway, and, as he thought it, but a poor exchequer. We must soon return to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... such as Modjeska permitted herself in the freedom of private life. She would give him Armand's cues for particular speeches and his impassioned "Armo, I lof, I lof you!" never failed to convulse her, while his pulmonary cough was so deep and sepulchral that it rang through the hotel corridors, making other guests think that Modjeska herself was in the last stages of a disease she simulated unto death nightly. After Field had added colored inks to his stock in trade, these fits of coughing were succeeded by a handkerchief act, in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... on the center-table in the vanilla," he said; "and now she's gone and got me so het up with interest that I got to take a hand, too. Now, fer instance, the furniture—" The old man hitched himself nearer to the architect, saying in sepulchral tones of parental anxiety: "'Tain't fer me to interfere, but I seen the stuff. I been down to the junction and see what they got. Well, say, ain't it pitiful, all that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to undergo any more of this, I made up my mind to remain in ignorance of who Babette was, for I could pretty well guess what she would be like. I pictured her to myself as a flower that had sprung up in a corner of these dull courtyards, like a ray of sun shining through the sepulchral gloom ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... early dawn, the abbot and his secretary were together in the cloisters. It was a fitting place and opportunity either for intrigue or devotion, and many a masterstroke of church policy has issued from those dim and sepulchral arches in "the Glen of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... glad to have the gloomy fascination of these objects broken by the custodian, who approached to ask if we wished to see the prisons of Ecelino, and we willingly followed him into the rain out of our sepulchral shelter. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... He was one of those readers who, whether their subject be a murder case or a funny anecdote, adopt a measured and sepulchral delivery which gives a suggestion of tragedy and horror to whatever they read. At the church which he attended on Sundays, of which he was one of the most influential and respected members, children would turn pale and snuggle up to ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... where the Zabels lived, I was seized by such compunction for his desolate state that I faltered in my rapid flight and did not arrive at the place of my destination as quickly as I intended. When I did I found the house dark and the silence sepulchral. But I did not turn away. Remembering my mother's anxiety, an anxiety so extreme it disturbed her final moments, I approached the front door and was about to knock when I found it open. Greatly astonished, I at once passed in, and, seeing my way perfectly in the moonlight, entered the room ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... drive out of the gate and forsake the hotel "King of Portugal." The host waited awhile, and talked with the neighbors, who, roused by the continual blast of the post-horn, were curious to know how it happened that so many guests were departing by extra posts. Whereupon the host, in a hollow, sepulchral voice, his eyes glaring, and shrugging his shoulders, declared that there had been but one gentleman at the hotel, but nine times he had seen him drive away, and the devil must have a hand ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... which time periods of sepulchral silence would be followed by a repetition of the uncanny scraping of naked feet ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... infancy of earth and its tribes as by the "shining words" that flowed from his calm, starry knowledge! Plates and copies, all rested now in peace and dust, "housed with darkness and with death," on the sepulchral shelves of the lobby to which they were consigned,—rays intercepted, world incompleted. The Prometheus was bound, and the fire he had stolen from heaven lay imbedded in the flints of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which Uncle Jack and the Anti-Publisher ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well adapted to their purpose has been proved by the result. Thanks to the drains we have described, these sepulchral mounds have remained perfectly dry to the present day. Not only the coffins, with the objects in metal or terra-cotta they contained, but even the skeletons themselves have been preserved intact. A touch will reduce the latter to powder, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Sepulchral inscriptions of Tabnit and Eshmunazar, and the inscriptions of Antipatros (Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, vol. i, part i, p. 9 ff.; Lidzbarski, Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik, part ii, pl. iv, 1, 2; part i, p. 117; ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... forever, he would not care about his offspring." The "Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train of reflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixir vitae "in an antique sepulchral urn." The narrator there represents himself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial something within us that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... generations dead Has something more sepulchral and more dread Than lurid glare from seven-branched chandelier Or table lone with stately dais near— Two rows of arches o'er a colonnade With knights on horseback all in mail arrayed, Each one disposed with pillar at his back And to another vis-a-vis. Nor lack The fittings all ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... time—some years later—I was assisting at an exceedingly interesting love scene; but the only thing about it I can call to mind distinctly is that at the most critical moment somebody suddenly opened the door and said, "Emily, you're wanted," in a sepulchral tone that gave one the idea the police had come for her. All the tender words she said to me and all the beautiful things I said to her ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... one sepulchral groan, fell flat upon her bed, and lay there, dumb with the horrors of such ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... further end of the room something glowed uncannily. Then two figures stole into a patch of moonlight, one tall and tattered; the other enveloped in a long garment which resembled a girl's coat, and from out the darkness came a sepulchral whisper: ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... A sepulchral tremolo rumbled across the water, and the topmast of a craft was discerned gliding along over the stunted tops of the timber growing on the projecting point of land which for the moment shut the hull from ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... or to envy the touching and simple burial rite of soldiers? To me, nothing could be more beautiful than such a last resting-place. Why should we desire richer tombs, sepulchral stones, and sculptured monuments? We are all equal upon that field of death, the battlefield at the close of day. And there can be no fitter shroud for him who has fallen on that field than his soldier's cloak. A little earth that will be grass-grown and ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... negotiate there, We like sepulchral statues lay; All day the same our postures were, And we said nothing, all ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... After this clash of sound follows an air of a sombre style by Eli ("Hear my Prayer, O Lord"), the introduction and accompaniment of which are very striking. The "Man of God" once more appears, announcing the approaching death of Eli's sons to a weird, sepulchral accompaniment of the reeds and trombones, and leading up to a very effective duet between them ("Lord, cause Thy Face to shine upon Thy Servant"). Another chorale ensues ("O make a joyful Noise"), and after a brief recitative ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... death most severely. I saw them passing through the principal streets; they were generally in couples, and appeared to me to glide through the airs without moving their feet. The countenances of some were pale; others of a yellow tint; their beards were long, and their voices sounded strange and sepulchral. Their grave-clothes were such as it was customary to use at the period of their decease. When they reached the place where sentence of death was proclaimed on Jesus before the procession started for ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... them through the street door, and hovered about the staircase, charging the air with a moist sepulchral odour. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... lifted the bar, threw open the door and they went in. George Fennell was lying on the straw upon the floor. He had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking apprehensively to see what the opening of the door would reveal as the cause of this interruption to the usually sepulchral stillness of the jail. Reuben was standing in the middle of the floor, eagerly gazing in the same direction. Perez sprang to his brother's side, his face beautiful with the joy of the deliverer. If he had been a Frenchman, or an Italian, anything but ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... of year, ain't it?" And another remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... arrangements of the Columbarium, though, indeed, we understood them better by their own aspect than by his explanation. The whole soil around his dwelling is elevated much above the level of the road, and it is probable that, if he chose to excavate, he might bring to light many more sepulchral chambers, and find his profit in them too, by disposing of the urns and busts. What struck me as much as anything was the neatness of these subterranean apartments, which were quite as fit to sleep in as most of those occupied by living Romans; and, having ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... resound to its foundations with a note of anger positively sepulchral in its depth of tone. "Farce be hanged! She has bolted with my wife's brother, Captain Anthony." This outburst was followed by complete subsidence. He faltered miserably as he added from force of habit: "The son ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Mr. Westwood,—I have certainly and considerably increased the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am not dead, not even at heart, so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority, neither is the book ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... his pocket-knife under the window and raised it a little, and then placed his lips to the crack, and spoke in a sepulchral tone, half groan, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... This plate, which is of gold or silver-gilt, resembles in form the patera used in the ancient sacrifices, and generally represented together with the prefericulum on sepulchral ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... It was inhabited by a people, whom Ptolomy and Pliny call the Vedantij: but these were undoubtedly mixed with a Roman colony, as appears by the monuments which still remain; I mean the ruins of an amphitheatre, a temple of Apollo, baths, aqueducts, sepulchral, and other stones, with inscriptions, and a great number of medals which the peasants have found by accident, in digging and labouring the vineyards and cornfields, which now cover the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... had become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped about—after its habit—for something cheerful, something that would break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In a flash she remembered ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... days later I sent him the plan for the journey, also a second copy of the translation which I had made of the hieroglyphical inscription on the Osiris or sepulchral figure. He acknowledged the receipt of the same in two letters, one written in Mrs Montefiore's handwriting, the other in his own. Mr Montefiore subsequently told me that his wife now commenced to take a special interest in antiquities, enriching ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... club after I had left Claridge's, and stayed playing bridge till unusually late. It was early in the morning when I reached the Milan, and the hotel had that dimly lit, somewhat sepulchral appearance which seems to possess a large building at that hour in the morning. As I stood for a moment inside the main doors, four men stepped out of the lift on my right, carrying a long wooden chest. They slunk away into the shadows on ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... remember correctly. Here, listen to this. Now here's a little incident I found this evening that interests me immensely. It proves to my mind one of two points I hold in regard to Marshal Ney. Listen," and he read at length from his book, a dry, sepulchral monotone that grated on the ear until it ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... a spring of flame. Her black hair was scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She moved slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a finger at the region of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the representation. He did not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly charming and exquisitely horrid witch she was. Something in the way her underlids worked seemed to remind him of a forgotten picture; but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the blue light already, expecting to be called on to use it, and the next instant a lurid glare illumined the whole ship; the sails, the spars, and the countenances of the people, all assumed a sepulchral hue, which gave her the appearance of some phantom bark, such as has appeared to the excited imagination of many a seaman in his wandering through those distant and torrid climes, whose pestilential vapours, rising from the overteeming earth, fever his ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the room. The barking ceased, and I slept only to dream of snarling curs and 'dirty dogs' for ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... The radiance diminishes. The luminous disk of the Sun is gradually corroded. Another disk, as black as ink, creeps in front of it, and little by little invades it entirely. The atmosphere takes on a wan, sepulchral hue; astonished nature is hushed in profound silence; an immense veil of sadness spreads over the world. Night comes on suddenly, and the stars shine out in the Heavens. It seems as though by some mysterious cataclysm the Sun had disappeared ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... fifteenth century, if one made one's own the mood underlying the special straight lines and curves, the symmetry and hiatus of the colonnades, for instance, inside Florentine houses; of the little bits of carving on escutcheon and fireplace of Tuscan hillside farms; let alone of the plainest sepulchral slabs in Santa Croce, one would be in better case for really appreciating, say, Botticelli or Pier della Francesca than after ever so much comparison of their work with that of other painters. For, through familiarity with that humbler, more purely impersonal and traditional art, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... I'm most abominably late—had some difficulty in getting here—such a fog, don't you know! It's really uncommonly good of you to let me come and see your antiquities like this. If I am not mistaken, you have got together a collection of sepulchral objects worth coming any distance to study. [He glances round the room, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... sprained ankle, now contrived to reach his room. "His countenance," says this gentleman, "at once awakened in me the most dreadful suspicions. He was very calm; he talked to me in the kindest manner about my accident, but in a hollow, sepulchral tone. 'Take care of your foot,' said he; 'I know by experience how painful it must be.' I could not stay near his bed: a flood of tears rushed into my eyes, and I was obliged to withdraw." Neither ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... great number of the Nuraghe have been carefully ransacked, in very few instances only have human bones been discovered, but neither urns, arms, nor ornaments usually inhumed with the dead; nor are many of them so constructed as to permit the supposition that they were designed for sepulchral purposes. Occasionally, also, some of the miniature idols, such as are preserved in the museum at Cagliari, have been found buried in Nuraghe, or their precincts. But this is not general; and there are neither altars nor any other indications in the structure of the buildings to indicate their ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan "Fairy Queen Proserpina," ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... previous night and a part of the day. According to the Roman custom the body had been already removed, the regulations of the city requiring that this should be done within twenty-four hours. The great black pedestals on which the lights had been placed were still standing, and lent a ghastly and sepulchral appearance to the whole. Numbers of servants in mourning liveries stood around an immense copper brazier in a corner, talking together in low tones, their voices dying away altogether as the Princess Sant' Ilario entered the open door ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... historical problem to trace the families of emperors and kings, of heroes and conquerors, from the era of their decline and fall to their ultimate extinction. Some 'Old Mortality' might find as congenial employment in this field of sepulchral research as did the original in clearing up the decayed and moss-grown tombs of the Covenanters. The genealogist makes it his business rather to flatter the great by blazoning the antiquity of their pedigrees, than to teach the world a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... places among the wild and romantic mountains through which we were carried on this river, we noticed quarries of great extent, out of which huge stones had been cut for sepulchral monuments, for the arches of bridges, for architraves, for paving the streets, and for various other uses. To obtain these large masses, the saw is applied at the upper surface, and they work down vertically to the length required. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... same, Feb. 15.-Specimen of Mr. Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments." Antiquarian solemnities ridiculed. Count-bishop Hervey. Martin Sherlock ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... least. He lived almost continuously on that portion of the mental plane which had to do with the far-distant past, and only concerned himself with physical existence, when it consisted of mummies and mystic beetles, sepulchral ornaments, pictured documents, hawk-headed deities and suchlike things of almost inconceivable antiquity. He rarely walked abroad and was invariably late for meals, save when he missed any particular one altogether, which happened frequently. Absent-minded ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... [1223] 'Though a sepulchral inscription is professedly a panegyrick, and therefore not confined to historical impartiality, yet it ought always to be written with regard to truth. No man ought to be commended for virtues which he never possessed, but whoever is curious to know his faults must inquire after them ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... said the sepulchral voice of the figure crouched in the chimney-corner; 'he will not die thus; ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... stationary wash-stand, George looked gloomily over his shoulder, and in sepulchral accents ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... recent meeting of the Archaeological Institute, Mr. Nesbitt exhibited rubbings of some fine brasses at Bamberg, Naumberg, Meissen, and Erfurt. Mr. Nesbitt would confer a favour on the readers of "N. & Q." by stating the names and dates of those sepulchral memorials, and the churches from which he obtained the rubbings, and thus aid in carrying out MR. W. SPARROW SIMPSON'S excellent suggestion for obtaining a complete list of monumental ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but pyramidally extant'—'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful voices'—'predicament of chimaeras'—'the irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'—are examples of this consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of others, singly deserve ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... rest, and gives it the appearance of having a border of white ornamentation around it, just below the lid. It rests upon a gigantic bier about ten feet high, and a little longer than the coffin, and the effect is as though some kingly son of Anak were lying in state in this huge sepulchral vault. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... particular, articulated with astonishing success. It was interesting to watch their countenances, which were alive with eager attention, and to see the apparent efforts they made to utter the words. They spoke in a monotonous tone, slowly and deliberately, but their voices had a strange, sepulchral sound, which was at first unpleasant to the ear. I put one or two questions to a little boy, which he answered quite readily; as I was a foreigner, this was the best test that could be given of the success of the method. We conversed afterwards with the director, who received us kindly, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... cab under that sepulchral prison-like portico; we had the glass down, it was raining so hard, and even he, whose Westernisation was principally confined to New York, noticed the absurdly asphyxiating arrangement of the London cab, which hermetically seals its frame-bound occupants. The New Yorkers ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... yards upon yards of lace on something when Ernestine came in. "She's right in there," she said, referring to Georgia in a sepulchral tone which might fittingly have been employed for: "The remains have been laid out in the ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... interrupted by the opening of one of the Inferior Doors of the Palace, out of which comes Electra, and a train of Trojan Captive-maidens bearing urns of libations, all with dishevelled hair and the well-known gestures proper to Sepulchral rites. They descend (with the exception of Electra) the Orchestra-staircase, and perform a Choral Ode with funeral rhythm and gestures. Orestes and Pylades, recognizing them, stand ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... have thought, Ada,' Sheila began, then caught back the angry words, and turned and looked over her shoulder into the room. 'Do you think you will need anything more, Dr Ferguson?' she asked in a sepulchral voice. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... outward, which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the Roman Campagna. In this garb, they look like antique Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might have represented the last survivor of that vanished race, hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over his lost life of woods ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... present tinged with yellow from the grass, might be called glorious. The bright sun and delicious air are quite exhilarating. We passed a fine flowing rivulet, called Levize, going into the Lake, and many smaller runnels of delicious cold water. On resting by a dark sepulchral grove, a tree attracted the attention, as nowhere else seen: it is called Bokonto, and said to bear eatable fruit. Many fine flowers were just bursting into full blossom. After about four hours' march we put up at Chitimba, the village of Kangomba, and were introduced by Kawa, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... are turned outwards: this is contrary to the commonly received opinion that the turning inward symbolised the domestic rule over a monastic house. The head of one abbot rests on a square cushion. Four of these effigies are in the south choir aisle; one of them being beneath the Norman sepulchral arch raised to commemorate three abbots, John de Sais, who died in 1125, Martin of Bee, in 1155, and Andrew, in 1199. It seems unlikely that the one placed beneath the arch should represent one of those three, although usually assigned to the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... closed around with a dull sepulchral sound, and prison life began in earnest, with Brigadier General Schoeff master of ceremonies. The prison was in the shape of an oblong square, with the "shacks" or "divisions" on the long side and at the short sides or ends. At the other long side was built a plank fence twelve or fifteen feet ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... prepared for such a message. Too well I know my judges. After all Their cruel treatment I can well conceive They dare not now restore my liberty. I know their aim: they mean to keep me here In everlasting bondage, and to bury, In the sepulchral darkness of my prison, My vengeance with me, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... would have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stood gazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silence of the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that the grilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did not know; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... to say, here, that my horse could not stand these sepulchral noises, and that my nerves, being shattered by the fever, were inadequate to bear the shock. So the man Dimpdin smiled, like a window-mummy, and contented himself with looking like Apollyon. We reached a rill directly, and he produced a wicker ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... most dreary, the least visited. Walls of sharp rock rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes—one is called the Powder Lake—and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough [Symbol: T] and set in a heap of loose stones. It is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... had almost walked into it. Now she parted the bushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral echo. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think of looking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... months; and whoever was observed to pass it with looks of disapprobation, was marked as an object of suspicion. A popular Commission, instituted for receiving the revolutionary tax at this place, held their meetings in a room hung with stripes of red and black, lighted only with sepulchral lamps; and on the desk was placed a small Guillotine, surrounded by daggers and swords. In this vault, and amidst this gloomy apparatus, the inhabitants of Metz brought their patriotic gifts, (that is, the arbitrary and exorbitant ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles they glided beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,—a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no sounding line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Moriah, look ter me like you'd be 'feerd dem black shimmies 'd draw out some sort o' tetter on yo' skin," to which bit of friendly warning Moriah had responded, with a groan, and in a voice that was almost sepulchral in its awful solemnity, "When I ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... for the hour or two necessary to a visit to headquarters, I found myself compelled to do so. Packing up in a small basket I had for the purpose, the little articles I had been engaged during the last few days in making, I gave way to a final fit of coughing so hollow and sepulchral in its tone, that it awoke a curse from the next room deep as the growl of a wild beast, and still continuing, finally brought Luttra to the door with that look of compassion on her face that always called up a flush to my cheek whether I wished ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... tobacco, tin pannikins, and clay-pipes, sat twelve or thirteen ill-favoured fellows, any one of whom a prudent man would, I am very sure, have rather trusted with a shilling than a sovereign. The unfortunate doctor, pale and sepulchral as the death he evidently dreaded to be near at hand, was sitting propped up in a rude arm-chair; and Ransome, worse, I thought, than when I had seen him a few weeks previously, was reclining on a chest, in front of which stood his wife and daughter in a condition of feverish excitement. There ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various |
