"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merriment to hide. To hear our Gascon talk, no Sue Nor Poll in town but that he knew; With each he'd passed a blissful night More to their own than his delight. This one he loved for she was fair, That for her glossy ebon hair. One miss, to tame his cruel rigour, Had brought him gifts.—She owned his vigour In short it wanted but his gaze To set each trembling heart ablaze. His strength surpassed his luck,—the test— In one short night ten times he'd blessed A dame who gratefully expressed ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a very solemn sort of life. It has a very serious ending. A great universe whirls away with its ebon-faced mysteries piled from central caves to highest heavens—a universe, with all its mysteries, of hardest reality and baldest truth. A man, looking up to the cold, clear, unswerving stars, out yonder in the wintry night, or down at the grave that lies, somewhere, for the digging ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... from the lake it became wider and was intersected by a road. Here it was that the bridge spanned the hollow. And here it was, right in the hollow near the bridge, that Ebon Berry had his rural garage. Along this road the old bus lumbered daily, bringing new arrivals to camp ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakwa himself is there; And round the feast in the Sacred Ring, [48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... had a child, a little Fairy Prince, Let loose from Elfland for our heart's delight; Ah! was it yesterday or four years since He beamed upon our sight? Four years—and yet it seems but yesterday Since the blue wonder of his baby eyes. Beneath their ebon-fringed canopies, Subdued ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... blossoms of the grave That now o'er care-worn temples wave, Oh! what change hath pass'd since ye O'er youthful brows fell carelessly! In silken curls of ebon hue That with such wild luxuriance grew, The raven's dark and glossy wing A richer shadow scarce could fling. The brow that tells a tale of Care That Sorrow's pen hath written there, In characters too deeply traced Ever on earth to be effaced, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the club windows on the Ponte Vecchio; Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.'s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... upon his couch of ebon and carved ivory with the air of a man whose work has been well done. Midnight was long gone, the great house was quiet, and the desire of his heart stood forth in fulfilment. He had a son; his dying house ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the purest pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... was now steering for the Seychelles Islands, the nearest place at which negroes could be landed without the risk of again being enslaved. There were upwards of three hundred of these poor creatures on board, of all tints, from yellow and brown to ebon black. Some few, chiefly Gallas, were fine-looking people, with nothing of the negro in their features, and of a dark copper colour; but the greater number, according to European notions, were excessively ugly specimens of the human race. Many were in a ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... side, while she listened to the narration of the terrible overthrow of those gorgeous cities, and the rescue of her brother's household, and beheld in the distance the seething and silent grave of millions, sending up a swaying column of ebon cloud, like incense, to God's burning indignation ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... burning on a table. Around it squatted seven men who rose and bowed as the strategus entered. In the dim flicker he could just recognize the burly shipmaster Hasdrubal and gigantic Hib, the Libyan "governor," whose ebon face ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... all must die—they'll hang us high, unshaven, undefended! Ah, wolves are we that roam the sea, and rend with savage fury; as soft our mind, our hearts as kind will be judge and jury! To rob and slay we go our way, our vessel low and raking; and men who hail our ebon sail may well ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... rather choose this," said Egremont, and he pointed to the portrait of a saint by Allori: the face of a beautiful young girl, radiant and yet solemn, with rich tresses of golden brown hair, and large eyes dark as night, fringed with ebon lashes that hung upon ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of legend or history—these and a hundred other details are enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colourless in comparison. The Englishman had ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... obeying these instructions Jerry himself was piling up on his lank arm a pyramid of wood, and together the two ascended the stairway and tiptoed through the kitchen. As they went the boy caught a glimpse of gleaming porcelain walls; ebon-hued stoves resplendent with nickel trimmings; a blue and white tiled floor; and smart little window hangings ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... followed by another clang, louder and more brattling than the first. The solid walls of the dungeon were shaken, and the heavy columns rocked; while, to Alizon's affrighted gaze, it seemed as if the sable statue arose upon its ebon throne, and stretched out its arm menacingly towards her. The poor girl was saved from further terror ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the bridge arches crawled with processions of carts, coaches, drays, every sort of wheeled, rumbling thing, the noses of the horses behind touching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... around his neck, ran to dress, and reappeared an hour after, as fair as the joy which was expressed on her every feature. I could have wished she had used a little powder, but Esther was jealous of her ebon tresses, which displayed the whiteness of her skin to admiration. The chief aim of women in making their toilette is to please men, but how poor is the judgment of most men in such matters compared to the unerring instinct of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to a plantation twenty miles away, upon a pass from Mr. Ware, on the errand his conversation disclosed. He was a fine figure of a man despite his ebon hue, and the master, looking at him, very naturally noted his straight, strong back, square shoulders, full, round neck, and shapely, well-balanced head. His face was rather heavy—grave, it would have been called if he had been white—and his whole figure and appearance ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... from long use With tobacco's balmy juice From snowy white to ebon turned By the incense daily burned. Laid at night within thy case Of velvet soft—thy resting place— Whence with leering, stained ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... remember Arthur Darrell, of Christchurch, Frank, the man that used to speak at the Union, and was always raving about ebon locks and dark eyes?" ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... his left, advanced towards the foot of the tower. At the same time, the Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning. The hush of the immense armament—the glare of the torches, lighting the ebon faces and giant forms of their bearers—the majestic appearance of the king himself—the heroic aspect of Muza—the bare head and glittering banner of Almamen—all combined with the circumstances of the time to invest the spectacle with something ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deathful ebon dart, And cure the pangs of this convulsive heart. Snatch me, ye whirlwinds! far from human race, Toss'd through the void illimitable space Or if dismounted from the rapid cloud, Me with his whelming wave let Ocean shroud! So, Pandarus, thy hopes, three orphan fair; Were doom'd to wander through ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... this time had entirely worn off his face, and although his hair was still several shades darker than of old, it differed even more widely from the ebon hue that it had been when he was in prison. Thus, although he recognised three or four men upon the benches who had been fellow occupants of his cell, he had no fear whatever of their detecting in the commander of the galley their late ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... life away, 'Twere better far that you should wed And Antoine keeps his first love still, And Antoine is so well to do, You may be happy if you will His pleading eyes ask leave to woo" 'Twas a relief to steal away, And tell her ebon rosary, And to the Virgin Mother pray, Thinking that she in Heaven above, Remembered all of earthly love, And human sympathy, And having suffered human pain— Known what it was to grieve in vain— Might bend to listen to her prayer, And make ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy. Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... glorious are those orbs of light, In all their bright array, That gem the ebon brow of night, Or ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the seat of an episcopal primacy, and it was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... save the still white frost, all things seem to be obliterated. The stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebon ether in ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... him in his wanderings, Bob Whites, Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting Southern songs on the way to the ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A work to ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... choose a minister to-night; Let him who wills prefer his right, And unto the most worthy hand We will commit the ebon wand." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... us suffer so much from the cold as poor Gahra. His ebon skin has turned ashen gray, he shivers continually, can hardly speak, and sits ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... lips that ever smiled, His glittering teeth betwixt, And flowing robe embroidered o'er, With leaves and blossoms mixed. He wore a chaplet of the rose; His palfrey, white and sleek, Was marked with many an ebon spot, And many a purple streak; Of jasper was his saddle-bow, His housings sapphire stone, And brightly in his stirrup glanced The purple calcedon. Fast rode the gallant cavalier, As youthful horsemen ride; "Peyre Vidal! know that I am Love," The blooming stranger cried; "And ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... grew darker, and as gloom gathered above so it increased below, till all the sea spread out a smooth ebon mass. Darkness settled down, and the sun's face was thus obscured, and a preternatural gloom gathered upon the face of nature. Overhead vast black clouds went sweeping past, covering all things, faster and ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... When the great deity, for earth too ripe, Let his divinity o'er-flowing die In music, through the vales of Thessaly: Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground, And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these, Now coming from beneath the forest trees, A venerable priest full soberly, Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye 150 Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept, And after him his sacred vestments swept. From his right hand there swung a vase, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... round arms were twined round Miss Fortescue's neck, the Lady Ellen Fortescue, promised fair to inherit all her father's beauty and peculiar grace, and endeared her to her young mother's heart with an increased warmth of love, while the dark flashing eyes of Lord Manvers and his glossy, flowing, ebon curls rendered him, Edward declared, the perfect likeness of his mother, and therefore he was the father's pet. Round Mr. Hamilton were grouped, in attitudes which an artist might have been glad to catch for natural grace, about three or four younger ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... to sweeter night, And twinkling stars come out on high, Like sentinels in armor bright, To watch amid the ebon sky; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... where we could have a full view of the congregation. The chapel was crowded. Nearly twelve hundred persons were present. All sat promiscuously in respect of color. In one pew was a family of whites, next a family of colored persons, and behind that perhaps might be seen, side by side, the ebon hue of the negro, the mixed tint of the mulatto, and the unblended whiteness of the European. Thus they sat in crowded contact, seemingly unconscious that they were outraging good taste, violating natural laws, and "confounding distinctions of divine appointment!" In whatever direction ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was approaching his sixtieth year, and though many threads of silver mingled with his ebon-black hair, he held himself as erect as a youth, while his thin, sharply-cut features expressed the unyielding determination, which explained his son's and grandson's prompt ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sable Goddess! from her ebon throne In rayless majesty now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world... Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... fun. I guess you'd better come right up, Dr. Percival;" and the ebon head darted off, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... did sleep? O sleep too short that shadowed forth my dear! Heavens, hear my prayers, nor thus me waking keep! For this were heaven, if thus I sleeping were. For in that dark there shone a princely light; Two milk-white hills, both full of nectar sweet, Her ebon thighs, the wonder of my sight, Where all my senses with their objects meet,— I pass these sports, in secret that are best, Wherein my thoughts did seem alive to be; We both did strive, and weary both did rest; I kissed her still, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... my only reason for sending thee up to the monastery was to help thy learning; and I would fain begin, by hearing thee read aloud from the Scriptures. And with these words, and bidding him read on, He lays on ebon desk before his son The sacred text, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... dotted tribe with ebon heads That climb the slender fence along, As black as ink, as thick as weeds, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... one! That controls the sunray tanks, and should you pull it too far down, all Kadabra would be consumed by heat before I could replace it. Come away! Come away! You know not with what mighty powers you play. This is the lever that you seek. Note well the symbol inlaid in white upon its ebon surface." ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... anxious to obtain the desired object? | More t'other. | Infinitely, peculiarly, and most intensely | the entire extreme and the absolute reverse. | | Quite different. | Dissimilar as the far-extended poles, or the | deep-tinctured ebon skins of the dark | denizens of Sol's sultry plains and the fair | rivals of descending flakes of virgin snow, | melting with envy on the peerless breast of | fair Circassia's ten-fold white-washed | daughters. | Over the left. | Decidedly in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... beauty. Her face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would perhaps have ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... her ears torn with their load of gold, her throat and breast ablaze, she bringing into that English court the gaudy heat of the Orient, Baal and Astarte, orgies of Hindoo women in temples of Parvati, the pallid passion of Bacchantes. Though not tall, she was lofty, and her ebon eyes had that very royalty of the stare of the bent form in the dock, whose heart throbbed quick like paddle-wheels that thrash the sea, she his wild divinity, wild wife ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... quit the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple-branches, mute: With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,— "Pe-wee! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... a hero; let thy might Tramp on eternal snows its way, And through the ebon walls of night, Hew down a passage unto ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... moment, the four who were holding the rope felt it begin to writhe and twist in their grasp!—like a live thing. And its black length took on a scaly look, glittering in that pink glow as if it were covered with small ebon paillettes. It grew cold and clammy. At its thicker end Gwendolyn saw that the Piper was supporting a head—a head with small, fiery eyes and a tongue flame-like in its color and swift darting. Next, "Hiss-s-s-s-s!" And with one hideous contortion, the huge ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... footsteps—statue-like they stood, As worshipp'd forms, the Genii of the Wood! But see, the regal plumes, the couch of state! [o] Still, where it moves, the wise in council wait! See now borne forth the monstrous mask of gold, [Footnote 1] And ebon chair [also Footnote 1] of many a serpent-fold; These now exchang'd for gifts that thrice surpass The wondrous ring, and lamp, and horse of brass. [p] What long-drawn tube transports the gazer home, [Footnote 2] Kindling ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... hypocrisy, a stubborn and despotic will—all hidden under the specious gloss of a generous, warm, and impassioned nature. Physically her organization was as deceptive as it was morally. Her large black eyes—which, by turns languished and beamed with beauty beneath their ebon lashes—could feign to admiration all the kindling fires of voluptuousness. And yet, the burning impulses of love beat not in her frozen bosom; never could a surprise of either the heart or the senses disturb the stern and pitiless schemes of this ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... three years old, was Robert Ingersoll. There was a baby boy one year old, Ebon by name; then there were John, five years, and two ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... me was the large colony of yellow-headed blackbirds that had taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of the upper end of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the Icteridae family, a kind of Beau Brummel ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... door of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his years ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... mind Which, from the influence of matter, free As it is now and shall be till again Though art returned unto thy native orb, Is its own master, and its will is now Its only needed guide. Strange things are hidden by that ebon veil, To which a single wish ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name; and in truth Lola Montez justified ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... complexions which the artists, in their desire to flatter, ordinarily assign to women, as well as from the attractiveness of Sarah, even in advanced age. When a Theban king contracted marriage with an Ethiopian of ebon blackness, we are entitled to assume a political motive; and the most probable political motive under the circumstances of the time was the desire for military assistance. Though in the early wars between the Kashi and the Egyptians the prowess of the former is not represented as great, and ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... light all truth revealed,— The cherished forms, which sad distrust concealed, Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, The kindred angels of a faithful band; Ruby and ebon cross then cast aside, No lamp more needed, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... seen when on the breast of Thames A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames, In some calm evening of delightful May, With music give a farewell to the day, Or as they would (with an admired tone) Greet night's ascension to her ebon throne.' ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... when on the breast of Thames A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames, In some calm ev'ning of delightful May, With music give a farewell to the day, Or as they would, with an admired tone, Greet Night's ascension to her ebon throne, Rapt with their melody a thousand more Run to be ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... the frolicsome, good-natured, irresponsible Du Barry. A soulless ephemera she, with no ambitions or aspirations, save that, having quitted the grub stage, she desires to be as brilliant a butterfly as possible. Close in attendance on her moves an ebon shadow—Zamora, the ingrate foundling who, reared by the Duchesse, swore that he would make his benefactress ascend the scaffold, and kept his oath. For our last sight of the prodigal, warm-hearted Du Barry, plaything of the aged King, is on the guillotine, where in agonies of terror she fruitlessly ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... ached for the Australians And the Borriobooli-Ghalians, And the poor dear Amahagger, Yes, it did; And she loved the black Numidian, And the ebon Abyssinian, And the charcoal-coloured Guinean, Oh, she did! And she said she'd cross the seas With a ship of bread and cheese For those starving Chimpanzees, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Finola, shaking down the mantle of her ebon locks, and setting the golden combs more firmly in them; "only, if I perish, I prithee let there be no cairns or Ogams. Let me fall, as a beauty should, face upward; and if it be but a swoon, and the invader be a handsome prince, see that he wakens ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tracery: many a quaint monument of past times standing to tell its far-off tale in the place from which it has since perished—in the midst of the throng and murmur of those shadowy streets—all grim with jutting props of ebon woodwork, lightened only here and there by a sunbeam glancing down from the scaly backs, and points, and pyramids of the Norman roofs, or carried out of its narrow range by the gay progress of some snowy cap or scarlet camisole. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... with verdure smil'd; Flowers and soft herbage sprung. Medea sees, And with her weapon ope's the senior's throat; His aged blood exhausted sees, and pours Her juices copious: part his mouth receives; And part the wound. When AEson these had drank, Their hoary whiteness lost, his beard and hair, An ebon tinge receiv'd; his leanness fled; His pallid ghastly face no more was seen; His hollow veins with added blood were fill'd; And all his limbs in lusty plumpness swell'd. The wondering AEson, such himself beheld, As the last forty years he ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... hailed a growler, wondering whether they would be able to hear each other. As they got in Lady Enid, after giving the direction, said to the cabman, who was a short person, with curling ebon whiskers, a broken-up expression and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... princes caused to lose their life In seeking to obtain her as a wife. Her beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect form, and noble, easy grace, Her flowing ebon locks and radiant face. Her charms defy all portraiture: no hand Can reproduce her air of sweet command. Yet e'en such counterfeits, from foreign parts Attract fresh suitors,—win all hearts. But she, whose outward semblance thus appears To be Love's temple, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... mountain-top, there seemed to be more daylight left than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds shone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles on either side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now shallower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... summit. We started at midnight. Above us was an ebon vault, studded thick with large bright stars. Around us was the awful silence of the mountains. The night was luminous; for in that elevated region darkness is unknown, save when the storm-cloud shrouds it. Of our party, some betook them to the diligence, and were carried over asleep; others ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... periphery of the compact is gone. Your conduct, sir, leaves me free to act as I please towards the world's chief soul and radiancy. I shall do as I please, sir; I shall read Louisa and Ruth and Laodamia and the Female Vagrant, none daring to make me afraid. A single tress of ebon hair, a single beam of a dove-like eye, shall be enough to fortify my heart against all your legal lore, your scorn, your ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... robes unsewn The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies, Trailing behind him with a restless moan Like cattle herded for ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... dat, massa leetenant. Not pleasant place to take swim," answered the man, with a broad grin on his ebon features, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... throb when all existences Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... give the greatest attention to dressing their ebon-black hair. None are so poor or humble as to forget this inexpensive ornamentation. Nature has endowed them with a profusion of covering for the head, and they wear no other. It is not very fine, to be sure, but always black as ink, long and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the silken down On the cheeks of a dusky maiden, like the cane straight and brown, Seeing the spot of beauty in waterlilies' cups Is of the poets fabled to be all beauty's crown? Yea, and I see all lovers the swarthy-coloured mole, Under the ebon pupil, do honour and renown. Why, then, do censors blame me for loving one who's all A mole? May Allah rid me of every ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... vision pierced the mantling mists that circle round the tomb, Where bitter groans resound for aye amid the starless gloom; Who saw the cities of the blest, and with as fearless tread Paced through the ebon halls of hell, the mansions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... darkness spreads her jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... as customary, clothes like soldiers. One unfamiliar with their regalia might mistake, as I did, a pharmacist for an admiral. Mary, the cook's half-Tahitian daughter, was in elaborate European dress, with a gilded barret of baroque pearls in her copious, ebon tresses, and with red kid shoes buckled in silver and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swans. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily forget;—their curving torsos might have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls bordering the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... heaven-directed blight Involves each countenance with clouds of night! What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, And sable mist creeps upward from ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... on banks and bars, where their tough, interlacing roots soon form an almost impregnable barrier to the onslaught of the flood. Only a stone's throw away there stood a great old black willow, with a sturdy trunk of ebon hue, crowned with a mass of soft green leafage, lighter where the breeze lifted up the under side to the sunlight. Many times, doubtless, the winds had shorn and the sleet had rudely trimmed this old veteran, but there remained ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the temples of the therns and the garden of Issus, other thousands sailed into the north at the call of the great man they all had learned to respect, and, respecting, love. Pacing the flagship of this mighty fleet, second only to the navy of Helium, was the ebon Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born, his heart beating strong in anticipation of the coming moment when he should hurl his savage crews and the weight of his mighty ships upon the enemies of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Paridel![416] she marked thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The pains and penalties of idleness. She pitied! but her pity only shed Benigner influence on thy nodding head. But Annius,[417] crafty seer, with ebon wand, And well-dissembled emerald on his hand, False as his gems, and canker'd as his coins, Came, cramm'd with capon, from where Pollio dines. 350 Soft, as the wily fox is seen to creep, Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep, Walk round and round, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... of wool surmounting a wrinkled, ebon visage appeared at the door, and the old cook said, "Missy S'wanee, dere's nuffin' in de house for supper but a little cawn-meal. Oh, bress de Lawd! if dere ain't ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... about, I sat down to await M. Picot. There was stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the door curtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face I remembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Only three men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M. Picot and Le Borgne must ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the plumed black top and along the swelling branches decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass. It was very witch-like, of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy, Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There under Ebon shades and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy Locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 But com thou Goddes fair and free, In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces more To Ivy-crowned Bacchus ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... would some wild beast. They ran up stairs to give the alarm, but when they returned the bird had flown, and while a fruitless search was instituted throughout the basement, Mary was in her own room, hastily removing the ebon tinge from her face. Such were a few among the many wild pranks of the mischief spirits, invented to while away the time. Quite different from this was the employment of the "sisterhood." A number ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound. I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We were silent as figures in a mirror. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... cried out the mirage faded, the Arab vanished, the thud of the horse's hoofs died in her ears, and Tahar, the dragoman, glided round the tent, and stood before her. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight like ebon jewels. ...
— The Figure In The Mirage - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... I saw the golden glories die, I thought on life's uncertainty, And as night came on in her ebon gloom, Oh! I thought of the dark and the dreamless tomb, How soon man's fairest prospects flee, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... the nearer side of the counter. He swallows his drink greedily, singing to himself between the gulps.] "Oh, the gals! Oh, the gals! I am awfully fond of the gals! [Putting his empty glass upon the counter and making for the door on the left.] Be they ebon or blond, Of the gals I am fond; I am dreadfully fond of ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... of stars on a vast ebon canopy. One could see only shadows in denser shadows, and the serene sure movements of the men as they lifted the whale-boat from Bauda's shed and carried it lightly to the water were mysterious to me. Their eyes saw where mine were blind. Pere Victorien ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... maintain his post on the quarter-deck until regularly relieved. Yet drowsiness being incidental to all natures, even to Napoleon, beside his own sentry napping in the snowy bivouac; so, often, in snowy moonlight, or ebon eclipse, dozed Mark, our harpooneer. Lethe be his portion this blessed night, thought I, as during the morning which preceded our enterprise, I eyed the man who ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Jeff!" said Mandy, his hitherto ebon flame, "yer comes in like a turkey gobbler. Doesn't ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... of ill repute stared inquisitively for a moment, and then moved off slowly with the inimitable gait of these ebon specimens of mankind, increasing his pace almost to a run once out of the female's range ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... asleep again, The same delights in visions rise; There's nothing can appear more plain Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes. I wake again, and all alone Sits Darkness on his ebon throne. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... almost always wears when mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting, with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous people whose names one does not know. Members of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... when it seemed to Larry nearly three hours since he had begun this amazing flight, the crawling ebon needle reached the mark, "Pygmy ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... became one dream-realm of joy, the central form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster—"Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously that ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... look no more! thro timeless hours my eyes Without intent have watched the slowing flight Of ebon crows across quiescent skies Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird, Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd That flow far eastward to the coming night. And as I turn again to foiling thought My spirit leaves me—as faint zephyrs leave ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did a credit to his side of the Church. But our friend the parson was discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie could hardly have been clean ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Prince Ember led his beloved to the King. Never had the Shadow Witch looked more beautiful. Her ebon hair fell like a rich cloak over her grey robes; her cheek was mantled by a crimson flush; her dark eyes gleamed with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... of rosy night Drives off the ebon morn afar, While through the murmur of the light The huntsman winds ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black— An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... worlds! Then beautiful the ball of this terrene Rolled in the beam of first-created day, And all its elements obeyed the voice Of Him, the great Creator; Air, and Fire, 10 And Earth, and Water, each its ministry Performed, whilst Chaos from his ebon throne Leaped up; and so magnificent, and decked, And mantled in its ambient atmosphere, The living world began its state! To thee, Spirit of Air, I lift the venturous song, Whose viewless presence fills the living scene, Whose element ten thousand thousand wings Fan joyous; o'er ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... lampblack, ivory black, blueblack; writing ink, printing ink, printer's ink, Indian ink, India ink. V. be black &c. adj.; render -black &c. adj. blacken, infuscate[obs3], denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch[obs3]; smirch; darken &c. 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous[obs3], jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous[obs3], pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. black as jet &c. n., black as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with scowling mien The demon PAIN, convokes his court unseen; Whips, fetters, flames, pourtray'd on sculptur'd stone, In dread festoons, adorn his ebon throne; Each side a cohort of diseases stands, And shudd'ring Fever leads the ghastly bands; 110 O'er all Despair expands his raven wings, And guilt-stain'd ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... mistresses superintending the suppers and decorating the tables with their own hands, while ladies and gentlemen from the mansion came to look on, an attention which was considered a compliment by the ebon guests. And the Christmas season rarely passed without a colored wedding, the holidays being specially chosen ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that the country was sorely afflicted; that it suffered all sorts of troubles, trials, embarrassments and difficulties. First, he said, it was afflicted with cholera, next with trichinae, and then with Andy Johnson, all in the same year, and that was more than any country could stand. Ebon C. Ingersoll was a brother of the famous Robert G. Ingersoll, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... pastime, and movement and mirth to me—then I knew that I had sinned against her with a mighty sin—a sin of cruelty, of neglect, of selfish wickedness. She had been young still when I had left her—young and fair to look at, and without a silver line in her ebon hair, and with suitors about her for her beauty like bees about the blossoms of the ivy in the autumn-time. And now—now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the machine-gun, too, while for scouting and tracking work there were few who equalled him. The regiment was father and mother to the ebon warrior, while of all the officers ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... swore my selfe thy sacrifice By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes, Which now are alter'd white, And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the gellie's left. Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you, Then swearing to ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... without, it was light compared to the ebon blackness within. Bessy felt ice form in the marrow of her bones. The darkness was tangible; it seemed to envelop her in heavy folds. The sudden natural impulse to fly out of the thick creeping gloom, down the stairway to the light, strung her muscles for instant action, but checked ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... without a break. One half of the valley had vanished in the blackest shadow, and still the gilded edge swung steadily on, with the slow, resistless sweep of misty legions upon legions, armed in ebon mail; vast billows of night that drowned the scattered stars that met them, one by one. Then it struck the full moon and blotted it from sight. The world of the little valley dropped into night, and all was dark as Erebus. A breath of wind whispered through the forest, and ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... look down to the damned fiends, Fiends, look on me! and thou, dread god of hell, With ebon sceptre strike this hateful earth, And make it swallow both ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... crystal pedestals they seem to sigh, Bend the meek knee, and lift the imploring eye. —And now the Sorceress bares her shrivel'd hand, And circles thrice in air her ebon wand; Flush'd with new life descending statues talk, 280 The pliant marble softening as they walk; With deeper sobs reviving lovers breathe, Fair bosoms rise, and soft hearts pant beneath; With warmer lips relenting damsels speak, And kindling blushes tinge the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... trees, clothed from the base to the summit with wild vines, that hung in graceful festoons from the topmost branches to the water's edge. The dark shadows of the mountains, thrown upon the water, as they towered to the height of some thousand feet above us, gave to the surface of the river an ebon hue. The sunbeams, dancing through the thick, quivering foliage, fell in stars of gold, or long lines of dazzling brightness, upon the deep black waters, producing the most novel and beautiful effects. It was a scene over which the spirit of peace might brood in silent adoration; but how spoiled ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... pleasure, not altogether certain either as to his ultimate fate, for there were ugly stories as to those who had journeyed to Bekwando and never been seen or heard of since. Those were the sort of visitors with whom his ebon Majesty loved to dally until they became pale with fright or furious with anger and impatience; but men like this white captain, who had brought him no presents, who came in overwhelming force and demanded a passage through his country as a matter of right were his special detestation. On ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... awakened his soul to a new life. His glance travelled over the vision before him, from the little Persian slipper that peeped below the drapery of Kashmir silk to the small classic head with its crown of ebon locks; yet he dared not meet the glance of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer |
