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Funereal   Listen
adjective
Funereal  adj.  Suiting a funeral; pertaining to burial; solemn; as, at a funereal pace. Hence: Dark; dismal; mournful. "What seem to us but sad funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Funereal" Quotes from Famous Books



... funereal tapers throw A holy luster o'er his brow, And burnish with their rays of light The mass of curls that gather bright Above the haughty brow and eye Of a young ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... to his mother, whose loving glances followed him far along his road, and with hope and enthusiasm trudged over a hard road to Cleveland, that beautiful city, whither, nearly forty years afterward, he was to be carried in funereal state, amid the tears of countless thousands. In that city where his active life began, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... beneath his father's hand, The well-framed code that sway'd the sacred land; With rites mysterious served the Power divine, Prepared the altar and adorn'd the shrine, Responsive hail'd, with still returning praise, Each circling season that the God displays, Sooth'd with funereal hymns the parting dead, At nuptial feasts the joyful chorus led; While evening incense and the morning song Rose from his hand or trembled on ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... greatly; it was of his old grandmother, walking quickly along a road, with a heartrending look of alarm; from low-lying funereal clouds above her, fell the drizzling rain; she was on her way to Paimpol, summoned thither to be ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... erupted from the front of the Travelaire and it burst into flames. A second later, the figure of a man staggered out of the burning car, clothes and hair aflame. He took four plunging steps and then fell face down in the snow. The car burning and crackled and a thick funereal pyre of oily, black smoke billowed into the gray sky. It was snowing heavily now, and before the troopers could dismount and plow to the fallen man, a thin layer of snow covered ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... Wednesday, the belief was generally entertained that no defence was possible; and that at the last moment, the prisoner would confess her crime, and appeal to the mercy of the jury. As the deputy sheriff led his prisoner toward the rear entrance, where stood the dismal funereal black wagon in which she was brought from prison to court, Judge Dent ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... might justly claim to know your heart, why rob my poor boy's grave of the grace your love bestows, even the semblance that it was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute, we will say," the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rude hand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessary harshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresisting dead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Fling away even his memory, that casts so ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... of her auditors as she talked to them in turn. No one thought to ask if she cared to go up to her room, and during the entire fifteen minutes Billy sat on the floor with Spunk in her lap. She was still there when the funereal face of Pete appeared in the doorway. Pete's jaw dropped. It was plain that only the sternest self-control enabled him to announce dinner, with anything like dignity. But he managed to stammer out the words, and then turn ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... a considerable pause before the knock was answered. Then the door was opened by a pretty slim servant girl. There was nothing funereal in her appearance except her black dress, and that was set off by a coquettish white apron. She looked at the young man with questioning bright eyes, as though surprised at his ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... door, and he himself sat in stiff funereal state by the window; he held a folded white handkerchief in his folded hands, and was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... A funereal monument found in the neighbourhood of Nismes in 1824, offers a very interesting object, being in a good state of preservation. It is richly decorated, and by the inscription is proved to have been that of Marcus Attius, aged twenty-five years, erected to him by his mother ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... train descend; solemnly and in silence, as if the rites at which they were about to assist had been those of funereal, and not of nuptial, solemnization. Indeed, to look upon those wild and fierce faces by the ruddily-flashing torchlight, which lent to each a stern and savage expression; to see those scowling visages surrounding a bride from whose pallid cheeks every vestige of color, and almost of animation, had ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Tuesday, February 9.—House met to-day for what, the SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE tells me, must needs be last Session of present Parliament. Appropriately funereal air over scene and proceedings. Usually Members return to work in highest spirits. Remember, in years gone by, before the blight of neglect in high places fell upon him, how dear old PETER RYLANDS enjoyed himself ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... had begun to languish. In feminine society as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian—up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... as yet was unannounced, between her sister and his nephew. Rachel would be polite, but not wildly entertaining, to Asbury; but he could count on me to be decent to him, while I snatched crumbs of intellectual comfort from Percival on my other hand. But Sallie had placed the funereal Clinton Frost between that rattle-pated Frankie Taliaferro and her lively self, probably with the laudable intention of seeing whether his face would be permanently disfigured by a smile. Nor was the poor wretch out of Brian Beck's reach, but was made the objective ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... walnut-wood is it made, rich in design and elaborate in execution; one of those works of art which owe their existence to the Elizabethan era. It is hung with heavy silken and damask furnishing; nodding feathers are at its corners—covered with dust are they, and they lend a funereal aspect to the room. The floor ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... crowned with fadeless flowers, Of lasting fragrance and celestial hue; Or be thy couch amid funereal bowers, But let the ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... pillows, by the window of his chamber, and look out upon the newly-mantled trees, the green fields, and the bright river flashing in the sunshine. The heart of Irene took courage again. The cloud which had lain upon it all winter like a funereal pall dissolved, and went floating away and wasting ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... countrymen! Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... to the great similarity in design and conformation which existed between these ancient rites and the third or Master's degree of Masonry. Like it they were all funereal in their character: they began in sorrow and lamentation, they ended in joy; there was an aphanism, or burial; a pastos, or grave; an euresis, or discovery of what had been lost; and a legend, or mythical relation,—all ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... solemn air about Lord Cashel during the whole of the interview, which deepened into quite funereal gloom as he asked the last question; but he was so uniformly solemn, that this had not struck Lord Ballindine. Besides, an appearance of solemnity agreed so well with Lord Cashel's cast of features ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... forever wiping eyes which no longer wept, but which had once wept copiously. She was always ready with an everlasting: "Nothing's the matter, mademoiselle!" uttered in the tone that covers a secret. She adopted dumb, despairing, funereal attitudes, the airs by which a woman's body diffuses melancholy and makes her very shadow a bore. With her face, her glance, her mouth, the folds of her dress, her presence, the noise she made at work in the adjoining room, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... greatest importance to me, and I hope it will not be without importance to others. But it will be a great, stout volume. Ah, would it were spring, and that I might be once more a full-blooded, poetizing musician! I am not very well off; care, care, nothing but care, is the funereal chant which I have to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... the funereal passageway, Roland called three times. The wondering echo, which seemed to have forgotten the tones of the human voice, answered stammering. It was improbable that Sir John had come this way; it was necessary to go back. Roland retraced his steps, and found himself in the choir again. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... gifted brain To send on in the funeral train Her fair children enwrought from the tissue of thought— Though their wailing will all be in vain— Yet shrouded in robes of funereal woe Let them move on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... without cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was funereal and his expression disconsolate. Even during the short period that had elapsed since the scene in the basilica already described, the condition of the city had altered fearfully for the worse. The famine advanced ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... is possible, I admit, but not probable. For you, Edmund, as well as for me, it is new places, new images, for the snows of this forlorn, this desolate, cold Canada; the boulevards of Paris, for the hermit's cell in the black funereal forest.—There goes your friend Martin now, voila! ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... contemplation. Whenever he closed his eyes in short and interrupted slumbers, his mind was agitated by painful anxiety; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius of the empire should once more appear before him, covering with a funereal veil his head and his horn of abundance, and slowly retiring from the Imperial tent. The monarch started from his couch, and, stepping forth to refresh his wearied spirits with the coolness of the midnight air, he ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... came out from the funereal dusk of the cedars the field was almost blinding in the morning glare, the yellow-centred daisies rolling in the breeze like white-capped billows on a sunlit sea. From the avenue to his father's land the road was unbroken by a single shadow—only to the right, amid the young corn, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... shouted the picked fledgling at my side as we whizzed under dark cedar boughs that waved funereal plumes over our heads, and over stumps and stones with utter disregard of the heavy new tires. One of the lessons I learned early is that men are timid of a woman's driving them in any vehicle, and I was surprised that I at last rounded the bend and drew ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... for inspection; and through the centre, upon the rude and clumsy frame, was stretched a quilt of wonderful construction and a blinding confusion of colors. It was a "Remembrance Quilt," Betty explained, as soon as the company had arrived and filled the funereal rows of chairs, being pieced from bits given her by all ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... wishes there can be no doubt. I will respect them, and deny myself the honor of performing the funereal rites. Take them, Honorius. But I will, nevertheless, assist at your services. Will you permit the soldier, whom you only know as your enemy, to enter your retreat and ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... black oak panels, or dark hangings that fluttered mysteriously each time the wind blew, were funereal indeed; and so high and narrow were the windows, that little was to be discerned through them but cross-barred portions of the sky. One spot in particular appealed to my nerves—and that, a long, vaulted stone passage leading from a morning room to the foot of the back staircase. Here the voice ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... with considerable difficulty his torn, gray, funereal gloves and, from the depths of a greasy pocket-book, produced a card which had, evidently, passed through a good ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... Egyptian, and especially the Arabian, courts are admirably executed. I never saw or conceived anything so gorgeous as the Alhambra. There are Byzantine and mediaeval representations, too,— reproductions of ancient apartments, decorations, statues from tombs, monuments, religious and funereal,—that gave me new ideas of what antiquity has been. It takes down one's overweening opinion of the present time, to see how many kinds of beauty and magnificence have heretofore existed, and are now quite passed away and forgotten; and to find that we, who suppose ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... delicious treat—a conceited braggart publicly exposed and overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend, Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for his friend's ultimate ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the other world, and that the requiem would be his own; for he was exhausted with labor and sickness, and easily became the prey of superstitious fancies. When his wife returned, she found him with a fatal pallor on his face, silent and melancholy, laboring with intense absorption on the funereal mass. He would sit brooding over the score till he swooned away in his chair, and only come to consciousness to bend his waning energies again to their ghastly work. The mysterious visitor, whom Mozart believed to be the precursor of his death, we now know to have been Count Walseck, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... At the last note of the magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I cannot help it," she said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic expressions, coming up to her one by one, like at a funereal ceremony, to give a thrilling clasp to her hand. "Come, come, Anais, be courageous." And the drollest thing was to see the second husband, standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched and affected, shaking hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... Their not being met with in the Asiatic colonies of the Greeks may go merely to shew, that although the objects might be Grecian, the trade was Etruscan. It is well known, too, that at Athens the art of making pottery had arrived at great perfection. That the Tuscans used these as funereal vessels at a remote period, is fully established; but the custom of depositing them in sepulchres is not supposed to have originated with that people, but to have been brought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... was given to Mcenas, who built a costly house on it. The rich often erected expensive vaults and tombs during their own lives, and some of the streets for a long distance from the city gate were bordered with ornamental but funereal structures, which must have made the traveller feel that he was passing through unending burial- places. If a tomb was fitted up to contain many funeral ash-urns, it was known as a columbarium, or dove-cote (columba, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... help Uncle Pat. And I'm going to learn how to be a newspaper woman, too. I think every girl should be capable of earning her own living. Not that I expect to be obliged to do so; but it is best to be prepared." Dorothy's face was funereal, as though disasters, clawed and fanged, were roaming the thickets of the future to spring upon her. "So I shall learn the newspaper trade; go in and be a writer as you are—only not so brilliant—and then, if it were necessary, I could earn ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the urn. It was always with them. When they gardened together it was as if Mrs. Talcott set it down on the ground between them and as if she took it up again with a sigh of fatigue—it was heavy—when they turned to go. Karen felt herself tremble as she scrutinized the funereal shape. There was no refuge with Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott holding her urn was worse ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... realized, the actual world had seemed quite unreal. For a week, he had gone through the motions of life, but felt as though he were standing aside, a spectator mind watching its own body from a distance. The gathering of his friends and associates last night, the night before the duel—that silent, funereal group of people—it had seemed completely ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... the household force has been cut down, and I have given everybody leave to go out to-night, all but one maid, and she seems to have gone, too," said Mr. Crecelius, leading Mr. Middleton into a spacious salon and seating him near where great portieres of a funereal purple moved uneasily in the superheated atmosphere of the house. At that moment, a voice from the hallway, a voice he ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... towards the door, Miss Phipps spoke again, to request Pixie O'Shaughnessy to follow her to her private sanctum. Flora thrust her hand through Lottie's arm as they went upstairs and heaved a sigh of funereal proportions. ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... President of the United States, as befitted a farmer knowing something of grasses on his own account, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... were by no means reluctant to humor the lad, for we were not incurious respecting the picture, and we accompanied him forthwith. His room was quite large, well lighted and airy, with a sleeping-closet attached. Over the blank wall opposite the windows hung a black muslin curtain of most funereal aspect, which rolled up to the ceiling by means of a cord and pulley, and, being now down, effectually concealed from view what we had come to see. Clarian placed three or four candles, made us be seated, filling pipes for us, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... his comrade, and, with his head on his saddle, lay for a long time gazing tranquilly at the stars, which shone with an intensity of lustre peculiar to that region of the southern hemisphere, while the yelling cries of jackals and the funereal moaning of spotted hyenas, with an occasional distant roar from the king of beasts, formed ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... which Homer, as we saw, does not touch) is due to the unique genius of Greece. Demeter became the deity most familiar to the people, nearest to their hearts and endowed with most temples; every farm possessing her rural shrine. But the Chthonian, or funereal, aspect of Chibiabos, or of Persephone, is due to a mood very distinct from that which sacrifices pigs as embodiments of the Corn Spirit, if that be the real ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... robbed the club, and robbed every member of the club who had ventured to have personal dealings with him. Although a bad feeling in regard to him was no doubt engendered in the minds of those who had suffered deeply, it was not that alone which cast an almost funereal gloom over the club. The sorrow was in this,—that with Herr Vossner all their comforts had gone. Of course Herr Vossner had been a thief. That no doubt had been known to them from the beginning. A man does ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... make me feel quite overcome, my dear Ganimard. What a solemn face! One would think you were making a speech over a friend's grave. Come, drop these funereal airs!" ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... struggle against financial and social difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the Italian School who had some share of light and honour. The funereal pomp of the Spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of Madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; the hard and unattractive landscape; ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan

... peaceful happiness, and years of toil and adventure. The morning, or it might be better to say the night, was not very dark in itself; but the gloom of the woods being added to the obscurity of the hour, it lent an intensity of blackness to the trunks of the trees, that gave to each a funereal and solemn aspect. It was impossible to see for any distance, and the objects that were visible were only those that were nearest at hand. Notwithstanding, one might imagine the canopied space beneath the tops of the trees, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... It was a cheerful place at the time I am speaking of, for there was plenty of entertaining and truly genial hospitality. The general depression caused by famine, fever, and Fenians hardly affected the great town, and after those funereal shadows had once passed, Cork was as gay as any ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... or lauhala, is one of the most striking features of the islands. Its funereal foliage droops in Hilo, and it was it that I noticed all along the windward coast as having a most striking peculiarity of aerial roots which the branches send down to the ground, and which I now see have large cup-shaped spongioles. These air-roots seem like props, and appear to vary in length ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... abstract, one cannot help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... sailed across the Sound in the evening from Oban to Auchincraig, the sky was full of torn rain-clouds flying swiftly and catching the lurid hues from the sunset, whilst the distant mountains and cliffs of Mull were of that dark purple which seems melancholy and funereal in landscape, though it is one of the richest colors in the world. It was dangerous weather for sailing, being very squally, and in the year 1852 I knew nothing about the management of sailing-boats; but the men were not imprudent, and after coasting under the cliffs of Mull ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... it is answered, "there will always be this weakness in our human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing funereal honor to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory upon marble." Then, if you are to do this,—if you are to put off your kindness until death,—why not, in God's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... vastly indignant at Vandeloup neglecting his wife, for, of course, she never thought she was anything else to the young man, and did all in her power to cheer the girl up, which, however, was not much, as Mrs Pulchop herself was decidedly of a funereal disposition. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... that is to hear of the Rosicrucians actively satanizing. I confess that I had never considered them as anything more than harmless suckers and funereal fakes." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... Plato's doctrine that virtue consists in contemplation, and of Epicurus, that it consisted in pleasure. Man, in his eyes, was made for active duties. He also sought to oppose skepticism, which was casting the funereal veil of doubt and uncertainty over every thing pertaining to the soul, and God, and the future life. "The skeptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that perception is, after all, based upon appearance, and appearance is not a certainty; and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... the mess began to collect round the fireplace with the funereal expressions customary ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing, Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three remarks which I commend to ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... all their forms, the Mysteries were funereal; and celebrated the mystical death and restoration to life of some divine or heroic personage: and the details of the legend and the mode of the death varied in the different Countries where the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... garden, and ushering us to our chairs in the clean, well-worn kitchen, with as much solemnity as if there had been a death in the house. Here we sat, under the low ceiling of rough beams and waited in a funereal silence, broken only by the slow ticking of the tall clock in the corner. It was working as hard as it could, its brass pendulum swinging lazily toward three o'clock, the hour ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... night. Conversation commenced. The mournful past was forgotten in anticipation of the bright future. Some jocular remark of the young king's sister elicited a general burst of laughter, when, by common consent, they wiped away their tears, banished all funereal looks, and, a merry party, rode merrily along, over hill and dale, to a crown and a throne. Little did they dream that these sunny hours and this flowery path but conducted them to a dungeon ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... does not know its hazards faro is a funereal game. The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a button or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... It was her sin, her remorse passing through the streets of Paris in all that solemn pomp, that funereal magnificence, that public mourning reflected even in the clouds; and the proud girl rebelled against the affront that circumstances put upon her, fled from it to the depths of the carriage, where she remained with closed eyes, overwhelmed, while old Crenmitz, believing ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... une titre qu'ils prennent ('tis a title they take)." (Besenval, i. 199.) Louis, we say, was not so happy; but he did what he could. He would not suffer Death to be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funereal monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... occasion. Indeed—I felt it altogether beautiful; and, as the "dying day-hymn stole aloft," the dim sunbeams fell, through a vista of naked, motionless trees, upon the coffin, which was borne with a slower and more funereal pace than before, in a manner that threw a solemn and visionary light upon the whole procession, this, however, was raised to something dreadfully impressive, when the long train, thus proceeding with a motion so mournful, as seen, each, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... rapidly back in the direction from which it had come, until striking the road from the house to the mines, where the horse trotted briskly for some distance, but on nearing the mines, once more resumed his funereal pace. ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... Oracle, that foretold he would be put to death by his daughter's son, was fulfilled. The fame of his grandson, after his remarkable adventures, having reached the ears of Acrisius, he went to Larissa to see him, at the time Teutamis was celebrating funereal games in honour of his father. To this city Perseus had repaired with the view of distinguishing himself among the combatants. Here he accidentally killed, with a quoit, an old man, who was found to be his grandfather Acrisius, and thus verified the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... at the Furnace village, its blast gone out, its lines of huts deserted, no human soul to be seen; and the mill-pond, lying like a parchment under the funereal cypress-trees, seemed stained with the blood of the bog-ores that oozed upward from the depths like the corpse of murdered Enterprise, suffocated in Meshach ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... shadow of his hand hovered over the burning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion watched the straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the glow of the late afternoon, while he talked to an English painter, his friend, of the blind intolerance of race and ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... tombs. The most illustrious names of ancient Rome were interred beside it. At first the sepulchres of the heroes of the early ages were the only ones; but under the Caesars these were eclipsed by the funereal pomp of the freedmen, the parasites and sycophants of the emperors. At first the tombs were built of volcanic stone, the only building material found in the neighbourhood; but as Rome became mistress of the world, and gathered the marbles and precious ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... Mitford in a funereal tone, which, however, was meant to be confidential. "Bless your heart, I've seen that woman under all circumstances, but although she's timid by nature, an' not over strong in body, I've never seen her give in or fairly cast down. No doubt she was pretty low last night, poor thing, but that was ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... more general and sincere than is usual when the transient associations of a resort are broken. Dr. Sommers's visage could not lengthen literally, and yet it approached as nearly to a funereal aspect as was possible. He brightened up, however, when Madge slipped something into his hand "for ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... secret weakness by putting on a swagger in public, and rendered myself ridiculous in consequence. Draven's could hardly help being amused by a fellow who one day slunk in and out among them self-consciously pale, black under the eyes, with a hacking cough and a funereal countenance, and the next blustered about defiantly and glared at every ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... because of the "great happiness" that has come to their home. If it is a girl, and there are more girls than boys in the family, the old nurse goes about as if she had stolen it from somewhere, and when she is congratulated, if congratulated she happens to be, she says with a sigh and a funereal face, "Only a 'small happiness'—but ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... only needed to close my eyes in order to see her distinctly as though she were actually present; and I reiterated to myself the words she had uttered in my ear at the church porch: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?' I comprehended at last the full horror of my situation, and the funereal and awful restraints of the state into which I had just entered became clearly revealed to me. To be a priest!—that is, to be chaste, to never love, to observe no distinction of sex or age, to turn from the sight of all beauty, to put out one's own ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... shut, Flying from what it knows not,—seeking it knows not what. While in the parching desert, amid the stones and sand, Its stone-like eggs are lying, here and there, on every hand, It wanders on, unheeding; and, with funereal gloom, Trembles in every breeze each torn, dishevelled plume. And when, with startled terror, it sees its foes around, It strives to rise above them, but clingeth to the ground. Then on it madly rusheth, with idly fluttering wings; ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... conceived a passion, but who regards the hag with the utmost contempt, may be made obsequious to her desires. Canidia appears first, the locks of her dishevelled hair twined round with venomous and deadly serpents, ordering the wild fig-tree and the funereal cypress to be rooted up from the sepulchres on which they grew, and these, together with the egg of a toad smeared with blood, the plumage of the screech-owl, various herbs brought from Thessaly and Georgia, and bones torn from the jaws of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... Lou's nurse, who lived down on the creek bank and had long been bedridden. I remember that I said to Louisa that the walk would be long and lonely, and told her to call Paul to accompany her. She hesitated a moment, and then turned to the door, saying Huldah would probably be in one of her most funereal moods, and that she would not have Paul troubled on the eve of his wedding day. She started, running and looking back with a laugh, down the hill." Mrs. Beardsley faltered ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... parallel with the line of rapidly fading horizon, following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes. It was growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds had ceased; even the call of a belated plover had died away inland; the hush of death lay over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side. The tide had run out with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled in this dead slack-water of all nature, as if waiting outside the bar with the ocean, the stars, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... entered for a moment by Loony during their absence. The poor children seemed destined to a succession of sorrows. At the moment their mourning for their mother drew near its close, the tragical death of their grandfather had again dressed them in funereal weeds. They were seated together upon a couch, in front of their work-table. Grief often produces the effect of years. Hence, in a few months, Rose and Blanche had become quite young women. To ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... looked like shadows as they gathered in the darkness about their chieftain. It was the hour when graveyards are supposed to yawn, and the sheeted dead to walk abroad. The gallant Colonel, with a voice in perfect accord with the solemnity of the hour, and the funereal character of the scene, addressed us, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... dear brother! what can I But love thee still, and mourn for thee full long In a funereal song, In secret to assuage my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... play every part well. Jovial, funereal, violent, tender, impetuous, affectionate, he assumed at will a deep or a piping voice; he sighed, he roared, he laughed, he wept. He could transform himself, like the man in the fairy-tale, into a flame, a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... injury. But his fierceness was only in the eyes. He was a meek and solemn fellow really. Nature had dressed him in black, and he respected her taste by repeating it in his clothes. Even his expression was funereal, though his black ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... force." There was an amusing retort, the afternoon I returned to Bucarest, to one of the fire-eating retired generals, picturing the quaint old fellow as thinking that people were born only to die bravely, and knowing nothing of Rumania's rule as the "defender of Latinism" in the Balkans, "tooting the funereal flute and showing us the mountains— there is to be ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... what murderer does not experience it? If your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death? O wretch! those far off voices that you hear groaning in your heart, do you think they are sobs? They are, perhaps, only the cry of the sea-mew, that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck. Who has ever told the story of the childhood of those who have died stained with human blood? They, also, have been good in their day; they sometimes bury their faces in their hands and think of those ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... inmates, the more thankful they are for Lincoln's death, the more profusely the houses are decked with the emblems of woe. They all look to me like "not sorry for him, but dreadfully grieved to be forced to this demonstration." So all things have indeed assumed a funereal aspect. Men who have hated Lincoln with all their souls, under terror of confiscation and imprisonment which they understand is the alternative, tie black crape from every practicable knob and point to save their homes. Last evening the B——s were all in tears, preparing their mourning. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... this immense and dismal uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, and of an army ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... each with its roaring proprietor in front, held all sorts of wonderful spectacles, from a three-headed pig to a panorama of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. In front of a large tent, set off in one corner, a solemn, stout man, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, was marching to and fro, ringing a funereal bell, and calling out in melancholy tones that this was the last ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... joke; his leaving the India Office is one. Moreover, not free from certain jealousy in the matter. Fact is, been, so to speak, "on the joke" himself. Modest merit, like murder, will out. No use attempting to burke what is open secret. All those funereal jokes in young Cross's speech—his "course of obituary notices" as ASQUITH happily put it—were really GRAND CROSS's. CROSS pere composed them in the seclusion of Eccle Riggs, and made them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various

... trees are the live-oak, its wood almost as heavy as lignum-vitae, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,—and the palmetto, shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and coat-of-arms to the State. Besides these, are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... they all mean by looking at me with such a funereal air?" he asked Lisa one day. "Do you ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... a brisk pace which soon relaxed into a funereal jog, and went on and on through narrow, squalid streets till we reached the Nile. Although I had given myself an extra hour for emergencies, I ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... were not surprised when we learned of his death a few weeks after his inauguration. Then, alas! what a sad procession passed through those same streets, of late so full of life and joy; now heavily draped in mourning and echoing to funereal strains, as the worn-out old man is borne slowly through the beautiful city to rest in his quiet home at North Bend. How empty seem all earthly honors in view of such sharp contrasts. The lesson sank deep, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... never left her patient until he needed her no more, and then had turned to minister to those he left behind—the widow and the fatherless. Over on the shaded verandas other women met and murmured in the soft, sympathetic drawl appropriate to funereal occasion, and men nodded silently to each other. Death was something these latter saw so frequently it brought but little of terror. Other things were happening of far greater moment that they ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... self-satisfied or smug, And the distressed inhabitants of Nantlle Are wrapped in discontent as in a mantle. Good folk who Halted once at Apsley Guise Are now afflicted with a sad surprise, While Oddington, another famous Halt, Is silent as a sad funereal vault; And the dejected denizens of Cheadle Look one and all as if they'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various

... morrow morn, still closed The monument was found; But in its robes funereal drest, The corpse they had consigned to rest Lay on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... and I stepped into the boat—at that moment Nickola said in a low voice, "never mind, I may see you again before I die." The small boat was well armed and manned, and both set off together for the island, where they had agreed to leave us to perish! The scene to us was a funereal scene. There were no arms in the prisoners boat, and, of course, all attempts to relieve ourselves would have been throwing our lives away, as Bolidar was near us, well armed. We were rowed about two miles north-easterly from the pirates, to a small ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... This sable garb was no mere mourning for my father. His death had made as little change in her apparel as in her general life. It had been ever thus as far as my memory can travel; always had her raiment been the same, those trailing funereal draperies. Again I see them, and that pallid face with its sunken eyes, around which there were great brown patches that seemed to intensify the depth at which they were set and the sombre lustre of them ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... sand-cliffs that break the desert's sea Rose suddenly upon my sight at dawn, And terrible in an eternity Of death took silently the sunrise on. Purple funereal from rifted skies Swept down across their proud sterility, Only to die as here all glory dies, On barrenness I did not dream could be. O God, for a bird-song! or opening lips Of but one flower upon the ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... a quarter past five, when TALBOT interposed, and with most funereal manner moved to report progress. HENEAGE almost mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT as he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... into it in the shape of patches upon patches, rose-color, crimson, blue, violet, and green, and then (as their hopes faded, and their life kept growing shadier, and their attire took a sombre hue) sober gray and great fragments of funereal black, until the Doctor could revive the memory of most things that had befallen him by looking at his patchwork-gown, as it hung upon a chair. And now it was ragged again, and all the fingers that should have ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sooner. I never felt more active, more light-hearted and gay; everything seemed to smile before and around me. Turning a corner of the hedge, I met a peasant whom I recognised. All at once it seemed as if a veil spread over my sight, all my hopes and joy suddenly vanished, a funereal idea took possession of me, and I said, taking the hand of the man, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... misgive you when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber—too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size—its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay, which they call the Opal Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened, like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our soil, the true Armor, the sea, the land's end, the accursed region which Anatole France—an enchanter ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... ceased, but so benumbing had been its effect, that the torpor it created did not subside with the cause. There was a dead and funereal silence throughout the spacious hall, when suddenly, loudly, mightily, as the blast of the trumpet upon the hush of the grave, rose a single voice. All started—all turned—all looked to one direction; and they saw that the great voice pealed from the farthest end of the hall. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hearse, a stately affair, with a bas-relief of funereal figures upon its sides. We proceeded quite across the city to the Necropolis, where the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we found already another coffin, and another set of mourners, awaiting the clergyman. Anon he appeared,—a stern, broad-framed, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Funereal" :   funeral, joyless, sepulchral



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