"Lugubrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the garret, that had opened, she had inserted the neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to be that ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,—the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things—melancholy antitheses—sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the resplendent, the palpitating day. One of Gordon's nephews—a shock of tow hair rising rebellious against an application of soap, stubby, scarred hands, shoes obviously come by in their descent from more mature extremities—who had been audibly snuffling for the past ten minutes, burst into a lugubrious, frightened wail. Through the solemn, appointed periods of the minister cut the sibilant, maternal promise ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ardor always cools"; Qu'importe? Leave that lugubrious chant to fools! Must doubt destroy our present bliss? Shall we through fear love's rapture miss, Or lose the honey of its ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... nursery precincts, in spite of iron rules and severe penalties, she was wont to detach the bag from its hiding-place and, retiring to a corner, would count the gold and read over the future epitaph, murmuring in sepulchral tones, befitting such a lugubrious subject, that she should soon have need ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... Todtentanz, or Dance of Death, of the cemetery at Basle. I do not need to describe it in detail. The Middle Ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme. The most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel. From the Pope and the Emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... half-century; during which time a mort of books have been written about a mysterious figure turning up in some modern city, whom you could not fail to recognise by certain infallible signs. Generally speaking, the chief of these were: long hair, and a tendency to make lugubrious remarks beginning with Verily, verily I say unto you. In actual life, too, lots of men did grow their hair long and cultivate the verily-verily habit; hoping that, despite their innate modesty, their fellow-men might not ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... accommodation. The gentlemen were all well dressed and orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell upon an assembly of black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by tweeds, on dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly above their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back and gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was suspended before ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... supposed to have a soothing, tranquillizing quality, and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor, from her majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... as if to receive visitors, although it was only eleven o'clock. Mrs Forrester was there, crying quietly and sadly, and my arrival seemed only to call forth fresh tears. Before we had finished our greetings, performed with lugubrious mystery of demeanour, there was another rat-tat-tat, and Mrs Fitz- Adam appeared, crimson with walking and excitement. It seemed as if this was all the company expected; for now Miss Pole made several demonstrations ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... returned. Mex scarcely kept her eyes open where she crouched, Indian fashion, on a buffalo robe, behind the bar. Nine Eyes had bolted the outer door before retiring. Eleven o'clock; the white owls were at their boldest, hooting lugubrious serenades to the answering wolves. Pepillo was at the cabin door, trying the latch. Mex heard the sound, got up, and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... been turned out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this woeful performance?—a party of absurd dressed-up people, who have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious performance! And this is the best that Schubert can do! This is the real Schubert! Here have I been all my life pouring pints of subjective emotion into this dreary writer of songs, believing that I was stirred and moved, when ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... time we are keeping Mr. Clive purposely in the background. His face is so woebegone that we do not care to bring it forward in the family picture. His case is so common that surely its lugubrious symptoms need not be described at length. He works away fiercely at his pictures, and in spite of himself improves in his art. He sent a "Combat of Cavalry," and a picture of "Sir Brian the Templar ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the lugubrious comfort of his own post-mortem revenge he wished that he had left unsaid some of the things he had said. Quelled by the vision of his wife weeping over him and repenting her cruelties, they began to seem less cruel. She was absolved ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a vastly different place to the old jail from which it got its melancholy cognomen. To-day there is not the slightest justification for the lugubrious epithet applied to it, but in the old days, when man's inhumanity to man was less a form of speech than a cold, merciless fact, the term "Tombs" described an intolerable and disgraceful condition fairly ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... echoed Dumps, with a gleam of hope lighting up his lugubrious visage. 'Oh, well, it may be a girl, and then you won't want me; or if it is a boy, it may die before it ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... again and pushed his grandson away, evidently delighted with the lecture he had given him. Orsino was quick to profit by the permission and was soon in the Montevarchi ballroom, doing his best to forget the lugubrious feast in his own honour at which he ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... cell along with him, slept with him during the night, accompanied him to the gallows in the morning, and sat under him when they were adjusting the noose, looking up with feelings of unutterable dismay, as clearly indicated by the lugubrious and woebegone cast of his ragged countenance. But ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... being shocked at the recital, and literally extinguished, as she undoubtedly ought to have been, by the knowledge that her former little peccadillos had come to light, the bright-eyed hostess burst out laughing in the very faces of the lugubrious guests. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... power. Often have they been heard in the dusk of evening singing behind a remote hedge that melancholy ditty, "Let us BOTH be unhappy together," which rose upon the twilight breeze with a cautious quaver of sorrow truly heartrending and lugubrious. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... proper to write a line to the rectory, informing the family there that Lord Ongar was no more. This she did in a note to Mrs. Clavering; and when it was received, there came over the faces of them all that lugubrious look, which is, as a matter of course, assumed by decorous people when tidings come of the death of any one who has been known to them, even in the most distant way. With the exception of Harry, all the rectory Claverings had been introduced ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... live till then," Phebe laughed; but her mirth sounded rather lugubrious. Then she added half-involuntarily, "I wonder what you must think of me, Mr. Barrett. I'm not generally given to this ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... was with a sensation of surprise that Sidney first became aware of light-heartedness in the young girl who was a silent hearer of so many lugubrious discussions. Ridiculous as it may sound—as Sidney felt it to be—he almost resented this evidence of happiness; to him, only just recovering from a shock which would leave its mark upon his life to the end, his youth wronged by bitter necessities, forced into brooding over problems ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... told. After long remaining silent before his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a wood-cut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own composition: 'Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly cat,' and so on, ad infinitum, ever in the same lugubrious manner. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Dream', and it had been written by a certain James Hyslop, a schoolmaster on a man-of-war. I do not know how it came into my possession, but I remember it was adorned by an extremely dim and ill-executed wood-cut of a lake surrounded by mountains, with tombstones in the foreground. This lugubrious frontispiece positively fascinated me, and lent a further gloomy charm to the ballad itself. It was in this copy of mediocre verses that the sense of romance first appealed to me, the kind of nature-romance which is connected with hills, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... For special permission to reprint from the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley (copyright, 1913) the following Poems: "Little Orphant Annie," "The Lugubrious Whing-Whang," "The Man in the Moon," "The Old Man and Jim," "Prior to Miss Belle's Appearance," "Spirk Throll-Derisive," "When the Frost is ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... deliberate examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself, you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed grass at the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa Mondragone, Roderick delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious speculations as to the possible mischances of one's genius. "What if the watch should run down," he asked, "and you should lose the key? What if you should wake up some morning and find it stopped, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... stuff, then in more bands, the whole being finally covered with a shroud of coarse canvas and a red linen winding-sheet, sewn together at the back, and kept in place by transverse bands disposed at intervals from head to foot. The son of the deceased and a "man of the roll" were present at this lugubrious toilet, and recited at the application of each piece a prayer, in which its object was defined and its duration secured. Every Egyptian was supposed to be acquainted with the formulas, from having learned them during his lifetime, by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to you the last lugubrious sheet, I have not had time to write to you farther. When I say that I had not time, that, as usual, means that the three demons, indolence, business, and ennui, have so completely shared my hours among them, as not to leave me a five minutes' ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in the distance brought a sudden stop to his lugubrious reflections. Five, a dozen—a score of shots were heard. The blood turned cold in the veins of every one in the garden; faces blanched suddenly and all voices were hushed; a form of paralysis seized and held them for ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... only genius that can adapt itself to an environment so lugubrious. It is only genius that can unhorse suspicion itself, leaving even the would-be detractor to admit that Mr. Harpwood is a kind ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... slightly lugubrious; otherwise it is well adapted for the cure or alleviation of the diseases it professes to treat. The springs for drinking are arranged in the vestibule just within the entrance. In the right-hand corner is the Source de la Madeleine or Bertrand, temperature 113 Fahr. Besides containing ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like circumstances here. The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for such shows, are non-existent; ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... capture of a little province of nature. When Mercier (1740-1814) tried to write in the same vein, his "nature" was that of declamatory sentiment imposed upon trivial incidents. Beaumarchais, in his earlier pieces, was tearful and romantic; happily he repented him of his lugubrious sentiment, and restored to France its old gaiety in the Barbier de Seville and the inimitable Mariage de Figaro; but amid the mirth of Figaro can be heard the detonation ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... think she's very good, now do you, Miss Kingston?" asked Clara Ellis, a rather lugubrious individual, who had been put on the committee because she was a "prod" in "English lit.," and not because she had the ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... spread a large square of silk, and over this, again, a large shawl nearly covering the space he had cleared. He then took a position at one of the points of this rectangle, and began a monotonous chant, rocking his body to and fro in time with the somewhat lugubrious air. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... what Mr. Rogers will do, now that he's got his leisure, with a fortune and—me!' And at the same moment Rogers, in his deep arm-chair before the fire, was saying to himself, 'I'm glad Minks has come to me; he's just the man I want for my big Scheme!' And then—'Pity he's such a lugubrious looking fellow, and wears those dreadful fancy waistcoats. But he's very open to suggestion. We can change all that. I must look after Minks a bit. He's rather sacrificed his career for me, I fancy. He's got ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... The baying of dogs, probably imprisoned in their kennel, was the only sound which came to break the strange silence, and the distant thunder, with its dull rumbling, repeated by the echoes, responded plaintively, and gave a lugubrious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... only to cross to the mainland. The gift of such sight is sometimes hereditary in a family for generations, but this is not an invariable rule, for it often appears sporadically in one member of a family otherwise free from its lugubrious influence. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... It was a degrading attitude, and the presence of the girls made the punishment a disgrace to rankle and burn. Jacker, for pride and the credit of his boyhood made no sound under the first dozen cuts; but his younger brother Ted, from his place in the Lower Fifth, set up a lugubrious wail of sympathy almost immediately, and, as his feelings were more and more wrought upon by the painful sight, his wailing developed into shrill and tearful abuse ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be heavy. Ha, dilectissimi fratres! It is in regard of sins NOT found out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and lugubrious minor key), ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... appeared at the doorway, a pull of cotton waste in his hand, and turned a negroid face, made lugubrious by white lines which sweat had channelled downwards through its coal dust. It looked at me, this spectre with eyes brilliant yet full of unutterable reproach, saw that I was awake, and winked slowly. It was the second engineer. He said it was a clear ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... filled with an enormous crowd, gloomy and silent, clinging to the arches, the gates, and the beams, and full of a terror which communicated itself to the judges, for it arose from an interest in the accused. Numerous archers, armed with long pikes, formed an appropriate frame for this lugubrious picture. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... design, the greatness of Chicago. Then they drove to a vast new hotel in which Mr. Parker had taken a conservative interest, and they still talked of the marvellous growth of the city, its Ultimate Destiny,—terms which had a lugubrious sound in the New Englander's piping voice. As they turned northwards around the great oval of Washington Park, the sun was sinking into a golden haze of dust and smoke. The horses dropped to a peaceful walk, and ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... agreed Mary Louise, and turned to go. And as she did so she caught a most lugubrious expression on the face of Uncle Buzz, a gradual lengthening of all the muscles on one side of the face, resolving itself finally into a prodigious wink, deliberate and malign. Fortunately, it passed in the darkness the regard of the partner of his joys and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... effect upon the uprightness of the greater part of the company. Having the sanction of authority, several others, the minor spirits it is true, settled down under their chairs without a struggle. The survivors made some lugubrious efforts at a triumph over their less stubborn companions, but the laborious and husky laugh was but a poor apology for the proper performance of this feat. Munro, who to his other qualities added those of a sturdy bon-vivant, together with Forrester, and a few who still girt in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... lugubrious pass when an event occurred which materially affected the condition of the prisoners, and considerably altered ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... partners were selected within the house party. Lord Rufford stood up with Arabella and John Morton with Lady Penwether. Mr. Gotobed selected Miss Penge, and Hampton and Battersby the two Miss Godolphins. They all took their places with a lugubrious but business-like air, as aware that they were sacrificing themselves in the performance of a sad duty. But Morton was not allowed to dance in the same quadrille with the lady of his affections. Lady Penwether explained to him that she and her brother had better divide themselves,—for ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... course, you can have no doubt that it is of her we are speaking—she perpetrated her last lugubrious joke on the day that she was to have made her vows, for when asked what patron saint she would select by taking that saint's name in religion, she answered—St. Theresa, because St. Theresa would understand her case ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea. Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens" from the preacher, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... casting a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious unrest, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why, Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' hands. That's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... universal danger, ill at ease with herself and irritable with all around her. In her anxiety to hear about Adam—what message he had sent and whether she could not go to see him—she had barely patience to listen to Mrs. Tucker's roundabout details and lugubrious lamentations, and, choosing a very inopportune moment, she broke out with, "What message has Adam sent, Mrs. Tucker? He's sent a message to me, I'm sure: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... occasion, struck a good deal of enthusiasm out of their jingle,—enthusiasm to themselves, be it remarked, and not to us. I saw them grow sad in face, while the strain proceeded at a slow pace, and the voce di canto degenerated into a more lugubrious howl than ever. By these tokens, I judged them to be singing some tale of sorrow, and so it seemed they were. The gentleman who performed for us the part of Chorus, gave us to wit, that they were lamenting the fall of Algiers, and imprecating maledictions on the head of the French. This they evidently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... that my anxieties increased as the day wore on, and my melancholy countenance was doubtless a good match with the faces of my comrades. When one of the other prisoners twitted me on my lugubrious mien, I ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... dismally, and went on in a lugubrious tone, "Besides, didn't ye notice the windin' sheet in the candle las' night, an' didn't ye hear the howl o' thet dog along ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... a lugubrious effort to grin, "Thor's announcement shocked the squad so much that I was not forced to explain my ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... air, and accompanied the violin with such vocal powers as Nature had bestowed on him. Nor did the sentiment lose anything, in intensity at all events, by the vocalist. If David's strains were plaintive, Pepper's were lugubrious; and what may seem extraordinary, so long as David played softly the Cerberus of the stableyard whined musically, and tolerably in tune; but when he played loud or fast poor Pepper got excited, and in his wild endeavors to equal the violin ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... fast," said Wilkins, who had descended the tree and was sitting on the ground with a most lugubrious countenance; "we must gather up my nuggets before going. Besides, it strikes me there's something ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Brighton station, and had to hire a cab up. No one was at home except Freddy and his friend, who had to stop their tennis and to entertain her for a solid hour. Cecil and Lucy turned up at four o'clock, and these, with little Minnie Beebe, made a somewhat lugubrious sextette upon ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... a more charitable view, and came to the conclusion that the first night he had been drinking. But," she added, with a faint smile at Randolph's lugubrious face, "I apologize. And you have had your revenge; for if I cut you on account of your smart clothes, you have tried to do me a kindness on account ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... running like a mill-race, bending the willows, lapping hungrily at the crumbling shore. The bank was black with groups of people, tearful wives and whimpering children, lugubrious neighbors, pessimistic citizens. Bruce called the men together and assigned each boat its place in line. Beyond explicit orders that no boatman should attempt to pass another and the barges must be kept a safe distance apart, he gave few instructions, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... giving all his time to the pious discourses of his confessor and of some of the pious people of the house, and to holy reading; to everything, in fact, which best could prepare him for death. When we saw him, no disorder, nothing lugubrious, no trace of suffering, politeness, tranquillity, conversation but little animated, indifference to what was passing in the world, speaking of it little and with difficulty; little or no morality, still less talk of his state; and this uniformity, so courageous and so peaceful, was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Watson sent that dispatch to Marion which, from its lugubrious tenor, has acquired a degree of notoriety much greater than the name of the officer from whom it emanated. He complained to Marion of his modes of fighting, objected to the ambuscades of the partisan, and particularly ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... February 23, we marched up to relieve the Berks. Near Foucaucourt the cookers gave us tea. There also we changed into gumboots. Guides met us at Estrees cross-roads, a trysting place possible only when dusk had fallen, and the lugubrious procession started along a tramway track among whose iron sleepers the men floundered considerably, partly from their precaution of choosing gumboots several sizes too large. On this occasion the usual ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... in the course of which I had seen many new and interesting objects, besides gaining some insight into the mode of life among the sailors. Frequently, when it fell calm, our Arabs would recline on the ground in a circle, singing songs of an inconceivably inharmonious and lugubrious character, while they clapped their hands in cadence, and burst at intervals into a barking laugh. I could not find any thing very amusing in this entertainment; on the contrary, it had the effect of making me feel very melancholy, as displaying ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... think so? It is fine in outline certainly, but too monotonous to please me, and too lugubrious; and the funny part of it is, there is nothing in her. She looks like a sibyl, but she is the most profoundly stupid person you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... an order as wholly out of date as are the crossbones and ruffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four—and in this order, as I never shall forget—were 'The Last Day' of Dr Young, Blair's 'Grave', 'Death' by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and 'The Deity' of Samuel Boyse. These lugubrious effusions, all in blank verse or in the heroic couplet, represented, in its most redundant form, the artistic theology of the middle of the eighteenth century. They were steeped in such vengeful and hortatory ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... and tearing himself violently from the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late comte by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reply to this last speech, the Indian advanced a little farther along the bank, and then came to a pause. A large tree grew upon the edge of the stream, its branches extending outwards. Into this he climbed; and then stretching out his arms over the water, he commenced chaunting a lugubrious measure—a species of Indian invocation, of which Clara could hear the words, but without in the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... if we did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the forest. If we did not prevent him at times, holding firmly to his coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... towards the streets, along which divers tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to herself, "que ces Americains ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... obvious reason why he should not have done so. The members of the Convention had re-assembled after their dinner, towards seven o'clock. The hall which had resounded with the shrieks and yells of the furious gladiators of the factions all day, now lent a lugubrious echo to gloomy reports which one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune. Towards nine o'clock the members of the two dread Committees came in panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... overstrained nerves no longer holding my imagination in check, I could already see human forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity. As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might soon be a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... curious spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and shaven crown ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... favourable. No sound comes from the direction of the lonely dwelling, not even the bark of a watch dog. The only noises that interrupt the stillness of the night are the lugubrious cry of the coyote and the wailing note of the whip-poor-will; these, at intervals blending with the sweeter strain of the tzenzontle—the Mexican nightingale—intermittently silenced as the marching troop passes near the spot where it ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... secret reflexion that he liked her better lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the brief conference he had just had with the young lady's introducer he had had to meet the rather difficult ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a miserable sound grated on the ear of night. A lugubrious quail doled forth a grating, dismal note at long but measured intervals, offending the ear and depressing the heart. This was the only sound Nature afforded for hours. The neighboring bush, though crammed with the merriest souls that ever made ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... fewer this year than usual, to the great detriment of the innkeepers. Every now and then he would say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him, speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to dispel a black silence which on the present occasion would have been specially lugubrious. Upon the whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought respecting him. He was not wanted there, and he ought not to have come. She had given him an answer, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... take that as a joke, nohow, Mose," said a lugubrious looking individual, whose face looked as if it had been playing "I spy" with a tallow candle and got ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... eagerly expectant audience, brown and white, who applauded loudly when the Pahi Minstrels emerged from a little boarded room in one corner, and took up their positions on the platform at the end of the hall. Then, for two mortal hours, there was a dismal and lugubrious travesty of the performances of that world-famous troupe which never performs out ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... observed, "the new junior does strike one as being downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"—with a lugubrious sigh—"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... downcast even to sing one of his lugubrious hymns or to whistle. Instead he looked at the letter pinned on a beam beside him and dragged from the various piles one half-dozen crow vanes, one half-dozen gull vanes, one dozen medium-sized mills, one dozen small mills, three sailors, etc., etc., as set forth upon ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... she demanded, "why didn't you send your card up, or have the desk call me? I hope you're not in the habit of expecting young ladies to meet you on the corner. I waited and waited, and then was just about to——" She stopped at sight of his lugubrious face, relented, and laughed. "Never mind! Don't take it to heart, and—are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in them, whilst he, usually so nimble of tongue and ready of word, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... of the inventory afforded me a little relief; moreover, public opinion was so unanimously unfavorable to the colonel that little by little the place lost the lugubrious aspect that had at first struck me. At last I entered into possession of the legacy, which I converted into ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... menacing event was approaching in my life. It was a case of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious because I thought it so? Or had I a presentiment? I do not know. Perhaps, too, after what has happened, all previous events have taken on a lugubrious tint in ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... sat down to write his mother a pilot-boat letter, assuring her that he had thus far survived the perils of the deep and had already found a job as knight-errant to the homeliest and most lugubrious girl on the seven seas. At the warning call for the closing of the mails he hastened to the rendezvous on deck. She was there before him, still muffled up, still swollen of feature, and still, as he indignantly put it ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Bastille. All lamplit, allegorically decorated: a Tree of Liberty sixty feet high; and Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous, under which King Arthur and his round-table might have dined! In the depths of the background, is a single lugubrious lamp, rendering dim-visible one of your iron cages, half-buried, and some Prison stones,—Tyranny vanishing downwards, all gone but the skirt: the rest wholly lamp-festoons, trees real or of pasteboard; in the similitude of a fairy grove; with this ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Passing from the turbulent precincts of Portland and Causeway Streets, he had entered upon the solitudes of Green Street, along which he now dragged himself dreamily enough, ever extracting consolations from lugubrious cadences mournfully intoned. Very silent was the neighborhood. Very dismal the night. Very dreary and damp was Mr. Smithers; for a vile fog wrapped itself around him, filling his body with moist misery, and his mind with anticipated rheumatic horrors. Still ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... even the mournful chant of sheep on the distant slopes failed to subdue. The crowing of a belated and no doubt mortified rooster, the barking of faraway dogs, the sighing of journeying winds, the lugubrious whistle of Mr. Clarence Dillingford, —all of these added something to the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the house then was, not Kenrick, but Bliss. Poor Bliss quite belied his name, for his school work, in which he never could by any effort succeed, kept him in a state of lugubrious disappointment. Bliss lived a dim kind of life, seeing all sorts of young boys get above him and beat him in the race, and vaguely groping in thick mental darkness. Do what he could the stream of knowledge fled from his tantalised lip whenever he ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... came back in thought to modern times and went into the church, that church of five low naves and many restorations, that product of most diverse fancies. It is painted in lugubrious white, and its pillars have false bases in a palpable imitation of veined red marble. Its pure and early form, the Latin cross, is gone, its fine old stalls are hidden in a gallery, and at the altar Corinthian columns desecrate its ancient Romanesque. Yet in spite of the incongruities the atmosphere ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... too much, has been written concerning Roumanian funerals. That they are showy, almost to irreverence, and that the exposure of the face of the corpse in its glazed coffin is repulsive, there can be no doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' in black and feathers which are still to be seen in England; and there, as here, it is to be hoped that with improving national taste ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... a realm of wonder. It was our misfortune not to see the magician who compelled all the marvels on which we looked, but for that very reason, perhaps, we have the clearest sense of his greatness. Everywhere we beheld the evidences of his ingenious but lugubrious fancy, which everywhere tended to a monumental and mortuary effect. A sort of vestibule first received us, and beyond this dripped and glimmered the garden. The walls of the vestibule were covered with inscriptions ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the chances and changes of this chequered, and, in some respects, lugubrious life, Mr. PUNCHINELLO has the perennial consolation of one friendship, which promises to be immortal, and over which time and space hold no sway. Need we say that we are alluding to the tender emotions which crowd our bosom whenever we hear ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... nowhere visible, and as if he fully understood the question, the collie answered by a long, lugubrious whine. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... When the lugubrious feast is done I hasten from my chair To open all the windows wide, and let in lots of air; And then I sit around an hour and chew a wad of gum Until the fullness ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... is sadly out of scale. So, too, in the quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake is here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is in the design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and filth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspective reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. But if there was little human in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... is very sad and lugubrious, is it not? and I daresay you think me a croaker; but there is a melancholy satisfaction in trying to see things as they are, and I believe what I have told you is nearer the truth than what you get from the papers. I only hope I may turn ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... although fatal to Adams. The name of Hamilton Fish, as Secretary of State, suggested extreme conservatism and probable deference to Sumner. The name of George S. Boutwell, as Secretary of the Treasury, suggested only a somewhat lugubrious joke; Mr. Boutwell could be described only as the opposite of Mr. McCulloch, and meant inertia; or, in plain words, total extinction for any one resembling Henry Adams. On the other hand, the name of Jacob D. Cox, as Secretary of the Interior, suggested help and comfort; while that of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... degrees everything was devised that could strike the imagination, awaken curiosity, or excite terror. The awful oath that has been administered in some Continental lodges would send a thrill of horror through every right-minded person, whilst the lugubrious ceremonies the aspirant has to pass elicit a smile—such, for instance, of leading the young Mason with bandaged eyes around the inner temple, and in the higher grades presenting him with a dagger, which he is to plunge into a manikin stuffed with bladders full of blood, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... is good for nothing. Having failed in our scheme, we are desperate and like madmen. All is now weariness and death." Having expressed himself in such desponding accents, he continued, a few days afterwards, in the same lugubrious vein, "I am ready to hang myself," said he, "and I would have done it already, if it were not for keeping myself as executioner for those who have done us so much harm. Ah, Senor Antonio Perez!" he added, "what terrible pertinacity have those devils shown in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... we have to look for a chance of doing anything worth doing!' said a long, thin, especially lugubrious Shadow. 'I have only done one deed worth telling, ever since we met last. But I ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... together in the little room that served them for parlor, kitchen, and hall, the power of regret vanquished fatigue, and sadness drove away sleep, then Jack, who compared himself to Peter the Great, when a voluntary exile in the shipyards of Saardam, would endeavor to infuse a little mirth into the lugubrious party. If all his efforts to make them merry failed, all three would join together in a humble prayer to their Heavenly Father, who bestowed resignation upon ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Why, you're only a baby...." Mrs. Minto shook her head several times, with lugubrious effect. But her last words had been full of a smothered affection, more truly precious than a hundred of Gaga's kisses or a dozen of Toby's ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... newspapers he placed four empty beer bottles, a sardine can, odds and ends of biscuit and zwieback, a well-scraped wooden butter tray, and—what had troubled and haunted him most, from the moment of its purchase in a Sixth Avenue delicatessen store—the lugubrious and clean-picked carcass ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... symphonies of Reinhold Gliere or Spendiarov and you will have eloquent chapters of a modern living Bible. No music of another country is such a true mirror of a nation's racial character, life, passion, blood, struggle, despair and agony, as the Russian. One can almost see in its turbulent-lugubrious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich colors of the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that surrounds everything with a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... and lugubrious to the remainder of the party. The girls seemed to feel that there was something solemn about the coming competition between two such dear friends, which prevented and should prevent them all from being merry. Harry perfectly sympathized in the feeling; ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of wealth; and Sikou replies by a long crystal trumpet, by means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions, which seem the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... is an ambitious work, built on large lines, but hardly represents Mr. Foote at his best. It is for mixed voices, and is pitched in a most lugubrious key, being always either vociferous with panic or dismal with minor woe. A worse trouble yet is the attempt to make a short poem fit a long composition. The Procrustean operation ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival marked a crisis in British ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... ceremonies the chanting of the priests is usually accompanied by the lugubrious wailing music of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... coast so as to mask the fortifications at the top, drawing forth from the shadows the gray masses of the cruisers anchored in the harbor and the black bulk of the cannon that formed the shore batteries, filtering into the lugubrious embrasures pierced through the cliff, cavernous mouths revealing the mysterious defences that had been wrought with mole-like industry in ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... unconnected with robbery are committed in the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad. All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the Consolidated, whose crew was following the trench-diggers, accosted Farr, after several inspections of his lugubrious countenance. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... together. Sir Malcolm at his brightest and best had been capricious company. He was now moody beyond all Cicely's experience of him. His newborn solemnity was the most marked feature of his demeanour, but sometimes it dissolved into pathetic demands for sympathy, and then again froze into profound and lugubrious silence. He said that he was sleeping badly, and the pallor of his face and the darkness beneath his eyes seemed to confirm this. Several times he appeared to be on the point of some peculiarly solemn disclosure of his feelings or his symptoms, but ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... to keep up my courage; this lugubrious story would haunt me in spite of myself. Happily the weather soon cleared, and the rays of a bright sun dissipated the clouds which still veiled Mont Blanc, and, at the same time, those which overshadowed ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... up the black depths. You hear the wind whistling in the stable, the great door creak, the dog pull at his chain and howl, and, despite the noise of the forest trees which are groaning and bending close by, you can make out the lugubrious cawings of a flock of rooks struggling against the storm. The rain beats against the little panes; and, stretching your legs toward the fire, you think of those without. You think of the sailors, of the old doctor driving his little cabriolet, the hood of which sways to and fro ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gentry and farmers were rapidly proceeding to ruin in consequence of free-trade, and their vaticinations of frightful calamities to the nation were singular displays of extraordinary hypocrisy, or delusions. Amongst the most doleful prophets and lugubrious friends of agriculture was Benjamin Disraeli. He was also the most acrimonious of advocates, while defending claims ignored by the nation as unjust, denounced by political economists as injurious; and, obviously in the exclusive and selfish interests of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... than from the personal point of view, an individual, gifted with a large and charitable interest in the future of mankind, is secured and sustained by the feeling that he is a part of that procession headed to the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." The lugubrious picture of an utterly meaningless world, blind, purposeless, and heartless, which materialistic science reveals, is sufficient to wreck the equanimity of ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... aside by a woman's love. For out of the silence there burst a sound which to her quivering nerves was fraught with word of death; that sound which in countless human hearts presages a death before the dawn—the long, lugubrious howling of a dog. It seemed to her to burst out of the nothingness of the sky, to arise in the void of an unseen ghostly world where spirit voices foretold the onrush ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory |
