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Swarthy   Listen
adjective
Swarthy  adj.  (compar. swarthier; superl. swarthiest)  Being of a dark hue or dusky complexion; tawny; swart; as, swarthy faces. "A swarthy Ethiope." "Their swarthy hosts would darken all our plains."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Swarthy" Quotes from Famous Books



... entered the Prior's Close, as it was called, several swarthy figures made their appearance from the tents. Many a greeting was bestowed upon Luke, in the wild jargon of the tribe. At length an uncouth dwarfish figure, with a shock head of black hair, hopped towards them. He seemed to acknowledge Luke as ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of his splendid prime. When he spoke in the Senate chamber it was his custom to wear the Whig uniform, a blue coat with metal buttons and a buff waistcoat; but that day he was dressed in a claret colored coat and black trousers. His complexion was a swarthy brown. He used to say that while his handsome brother Ezekiel was very fair, he "had all the soot of the family in his face." Such a mountain of a brow I have never seen before or since. I followed behind him until he entered the carriage ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco pouch. Rough trousers, leggings, and cowhide shoes or gaily-worked moccasins completed the costume. The trading birch canoe measured forty feet in length, ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner

... question, for Halbert Glendinning, the elder of the two, had hair as dark as the raven's plumage, black eyes, large, bold, and sparkling, that glittered under eyebrows of the same complexion; a skin deep embrowned, though it could not be termed swarthy, and an air of activity, frankness, and determination, far beyond his age. On the other hand, Edward, the younger brother, was light-haired, blue-eyed, and of fairer complexion, in countenance rather ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... dream like any child; For, lo! a mighty swan, With radiant plumage undented, And folded airy van, With serpent neck all proudly bent, And stroke of swarthy oar, Dreams on to me, by sea-maids sent Over the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... indulgently, and Pietro's passengers, over the way, found the scene worthy of attention, as did others of the floating audience. The golden head, bent over the swarthy little cherub, was a sight that would have attracted Oliver Kenwick's notice, for example, even if he had had no personal interest in the chief actor. He was with some New York friends, in a gondola three or four boat-lengths away, and so absorbed was he in the little drama, that, when a remark ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... ox-carts had hushed the bird songs all up and down El Camino Real, and the popping of the drivers' lashes, which punctuated their objurgations to the shambling oxen, told eloquently of haste. Within canopies formed of gay, patchwork quilts and gayer serapes, heavy-jowled, swarthy senoras lurched resignedly with the jolting of the carts, and between whiles counseled restive senoritas upon the subject of deportment or gossiped idly of those whom they expected to meet at ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... swamp, making both ends impassable. Jackson had 3,500 expert marksmen at his command. They were a strange mixture of men, including long-limbed, hard-faced backwoodsmen, Portuguese and Norwegian seamen, dark-skinned Spaniards and swarthy Frenchmen, besides about 1,000 militiamen selected from the Creoles of Louisiana. They were a rough and violent lot. Theodore Roosevelt characterizes them as: "Soldiers who, under an ordinary commander, would have been fully as dangerous to themselves and their leaders as to their ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart

... where an hour before swarthy stolid hundreds had crowded awaiting baptism, was lonely as the grave. The peons were dispersing to their village down by the river junction, or to their huts near the hacienda store, and on the air floated the falsetto nasal of their holiday songs, breaking ludicrously above the mumbling bass ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... young, And sparkling gems about her hung. "O Rama, Rama!" cried the dame, And shrieked in terror Lakshman's name, As, struggling in the giant's hold, She dropped her gauds of gems and gold. Like sun-light on a mountain shone The silken garments she had on, And glistened o'er his swarthy form As lightning flashes through the storm. That giant Ravan, famed of old, Is brother of the Lord of Gold.(768) The southern ocean roars and swells Round Lanka, where the robber dwells In his fair city nobly planned And built by Visvakarma's(769) ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... and gave command To hasten forth before the Fian band— The King of Scouts was he! And like the deer He sped to find if foemen had come near— Fierce, swarthy hillmen, waiting at the fords For combat eager, or red Viking hordes From out the Northern isles ... In Alba wide No runner could keep pace by Caoilte's side, And ere the Fians, following in his path, Had wended from the deep and dusky strath, He swept o'er Clyne, and heard ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... attending them to the tents, with his young brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor, an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having been freshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of the Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was, immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, and behind streamed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... to earth warm, golden days from the fast fleeing Indian summer. The magic touch of sunshine and fresh air flooded Nat's cheek with healthy color and as if by miracle, strength returned to the delicate ankle; as for Peter he became swarthy as a young Arab. So delighted was Mrs. Jackson in watching the transformation in her two boys that she was quite unaware that a soft pinkiness was stealing into her own face. A vacation had seemed such an impossible thing that she had never dared picture how welcome ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... cottage, a swarthy figure skulked beneath one of the windows, listening to such fragments of the conversation within as came to his attentive ears. It was Spizo, the Spaniard. He crouched entirely concealed by a great lilac bush, which many times before had ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of Easter Day I heard Vespers at the Lateran: music quite lovely. At the close, a Bishop in red, and with red gloves—such as Pater talks of in Gaston de Latour—came out on the balcony and showed us the Relics. He was swarthy, and wore a yellow mitre. A sinister mediaeval man, but superbly Gothic, just like the bishops carved on stalls or on portals: and when one thinks that once people mocked at stained-glass attitudes! they are the only attitudes for the clothes. The sight of the Bishop, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... to the coast, there yet remains the lighterage to the ocean liner, which lies anchored some two miles from the shore, rising and falling to the great rollers from the broad Atlantic. A long boat is used, manned by some twenty swarthy natives, who glory—vocally—in their passage through the dangerous surf which roars along the sloping beach. The cacao is piled high on wood racks and covered with tarpaulins and seldom shares the fate of passengers and crew, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... swarthy little man, our landlord, and overnight we saw him preoccupied with other guests. But we have risen either late or early by Utopian standards, we know not which, and this morning he has us to himself. His bearing is kindly and inoffensive, but he cannot ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... her triumphantly to a table in the far corner of the practically empty restaurant, waved away the civilities of a swarthy and somewhat badly coordinated waiter, and pulled out her ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... hunters who accompanied us were swarthy men of mixed blood. They were barefooted and scantily clad, and each carried a long, clumsy spear and a keen machete, in the use of which he was an expert. Now and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and it was ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... Urrea's swarthy face flushed. He carried in his hand a small riding whip, which he switched occasionally across the tops of his tall, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and grass plots in front, and a very fair kitchen garden, showing signs of care and attention. The houses near are all one-storied, log-built, and plastered with mud inside and out. There are also several birch-bark wigwams, full of smoke and swarthy children; the owners squatting at their low doors, or, with their dirty blankets wrapped more tightly round them, leaning on the fence to stare at ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... had proposed, I followed him into the dining-room and took my place at a small table near the window. At that adjoining me, a tall, swarthy individual, with close-cropped hair, an Italian without doubt, was seated. He glanced at me as I took my place, and then continued his meal as if he were unaware of ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... mulberry coloured velvet and gold. He not only took off his hat in return to our salutations, but persisted in keeping it so, as if in the presence of the whole people of England. This fairly transported us. The royal features were strong, somewhat grim even, and he had a black brow and a swarthy complexion, reminding us of the southern part of his stock; but there was good temper in the smile of his wide though not unhandsome mouth; and his carriage was eminently that of the gentleman. Lady Castlemain at that time was little more than twenty. The Queen, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various

... one of the most remarkable women, whether for character or intellect, that I have ever come across. In appearance she had, what can be best described as, the gipsy look, though she did not believe herself to have gipsy blood. Her complexion was swarthy, her hair was black, and her eyes dark and full of an eager and scintillating brightness which made her face light up and change with every mood of her mind and radiate a vivid intelligence. If anyone who knew her was asked to state the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... was what you 'd call a good fellow—not that he was fair to look upon, for he was not; he was swarthy and heavy-featured and hulking; but he was a fair-speaking man, and he was always ready to help out the boys when they went broke or were elsewise in trouble. Yes, take him all in all, Jim Woppit was properly fairly popular, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... watched the wreathed pillars, Groves of stately palms arose, And a group of swarthy Indians Stealing on some ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... usually called "Old Orlick," though not above five and twenty, journeyman to Joe Gargery, blacksmith. Obstinate, morose, broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, swarthy, of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. Being jealous of Pip, he allured him to a hut in the marshes, bound him to a ladder, and was about to kill him, when, being alarmed by approaching steps, he fled. Subsequently, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion mahogany, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... towards us; when far distant my companions knew them to be Indians, by their long hair streaming behind their backs. The Indians generally have a fillet round their heads, but never any covering; and their black hair blowing across their swarthy faces, heightens to an uncommon degree the wildness of their appearance. They turned out to be a party of Bernantio's friendly tribe, going to a salina for salt. The Indians eat much salt, their children sucking it like sugar. This ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... cry of "Fire!" within, and "Fire!" without announces the terror, and the strangulation, and the doom of the Shechemites, and the complete overthrow of the temple of the god Berith. Then there went up a shout, long and loud, from the stout lungs and swarthy chests of Abimelech and his men, as they stood amid the ashes and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... indeed, on the part of this young man," replied the swarthy M. Riel. "He has excellent judgment, I perceive, or he would not so readily have calculated that no harm could come to any one who could swim well, by being ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... the hospital staff, who was interested in what Andre had told him of the case. The three stood together at the foot of the bed, stroking their beards and their hair meditatively, while they plied the patient with questions. After which they directed Alphonse, the swarthy, dark orderly, who looked like a brigand, and Henri, the priest-orderly, to help the patient ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... toward the hut from the side which had neither door nor window, so that those within had no warning of their coming. They were swarthy, ragged ruffians, fully armed, and with an equipment which suggested that they might be a part of a ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... glittering in the sun above the green shrubs that bordered the bamboo fence, and directly after that there was quite a blaze of yellow and scarlet colour as a party of Malays reached the gate and entered the grounds, a little group of swarthy-looking spearmen halting in the path, while two stately-looking men, with handkerchiefs tied turban fashion about their heads, came slowly up to the steps. The doctor descended to meet them, and then ushered them into the verandah where they ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth from the little Pocket saw of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been "done"; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and shut upon ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... pushed a low rocker closer to the fire and placed a foot-stool properly. Drawing up the wing-chair he sat down and looked around the room. As the light fell on him I noticed the olive, almost swarthy, coloring of his skin, his deep-sunk eyes with their changing expressions of gravity and humor, of tolerance and intolerance, and I knew he was the sort of man one could talk to on any subject and not be misunderstood. His hair was slightly gray, and frequently ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... often before this gladly indulged his Vizier, sent down his black slave to bring up the merchant, and in a moment they entered together. He was a short, fat man, of swarthy countenance and tattered dress. He carried a chest in which were all kinds of wares—pearls and rings, richly-wrought pistols, goblets, and combs. The Caliph and his Vizier examined them all, and the former at length purchased fine pistols for himself and Mansor, and a comb for the Vizier's ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... was as clearly Norman as the speaker was Saxon. He was perhaps a year the senior in point of age, and taller by half a head, but was of slighter build. The expression of his face differed as widely from that of the Saxon as did his swarthy complexion and dark hair, for while the latter face wore a frank and pleasant expression, that of the Norman ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... then spoke the brother, "Martha'll love us just as well As before she parted from us,— Trust me, mammy, I can tell." Then he passed a hand in silence O'er his damp and swarthy brow, Brushed a tear from off the eyelid,— "O that she were with ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... see," said the Doctor, rather gruffly, as he frowned at the swarthy little patient. "But I wish Dula could talk English or I could talk her tongue ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... the butler swung open the door and ushered in a small and decrepit man, who walked with a bent back and with the forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme short sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white muslin striped with red, in the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a point, his swarthy, sunburnt complexion, thin nose and his lean head there was something African, something Moorish in Captain Anthony. His neck was bare; he had taken off his coat and collar and had drawn on his sleeping jacket in the time that he had been absent from the saloon. I seem to see him now. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... word, produced a light. The officer's face was half turned as he did so, and I could not catch his features, but as he turned impatiently towards the sentinel the light fell full upon it, and with a bound of astonishment I recognised in the swarthy, soldierly officer before me, no other than my oldest and dearest ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... race spirits is readily observable in the people it governs. The lower in the scale of evolution the people, the more they show a certain racial likeness. That is due to the work of the race spirit. One national spirit is responsible for the swarthy complexion common to Italians, for instance, while another causes the Scandinavians to be blond. In the more advanced types of humanity there is a wider divergence from the common type, due to the individualized Ego, which thus expresses in form and feature its own ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... a swarthy Belgian there who said he had been engaged by the mayor to serve them. Merritt quickly made terms, for the guide, besides being able to converse in French and Flemish, could speak some English, and readily comprehended ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... One represented one of Raphael's Madonnas. Another was a fine photograph, representing a palace in Venice. Several others portrayed foreign scenes. Among them was a street scene in Rome. An entire family were sitting in different postures on the portico of a fine building, the man with his swarthy features half-concealed under a slouch hat, the woman holding a child in her lap, while another, a boy with large black eyes, leaned ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... ear until for days thereafter Hyman's head, viewed fore or aft, had rather a lop-sided appearance, what with one ear being so much thicker than its mate. The object of this mishandlement was as good as whipped before he started by reason of the longer reach and quicker fist play of his squat and swarthy opponent. Nevertheless, facing inevitable and painful defeat, he acquitted himself ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Did he wish to join the crew? Had they been ill-treating him on board the brig? Was he a criminal endeavouring to escape from the officers of the law? It was impossible to answer any of these questions, and so the swarthy rascals pulled so hard and so steadily upon the line that the knot in it, which Dickory had not tied properly, became a slipknot, and the poor fellow's breath was nearly squeezed out of him as he was hauled ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... badly prepared cheese named skurt. They are hospitable but suspicious, apt to plunder and to the last degree lazy. They have large heads, black hair, eyes narrow and flat, small foreheads, ears always sticking out and a swarthy skin. In general, they are strong and muscular, and able to endure all kinds of labour and privation. They profess Mahommedanism, but know little of its doctrines. Their intellectual ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Anna live on the floor above. Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. Life for her has no ritual. She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... greater than all her dominions in Asia." Sailing far to the west, he fell in with the South American continent and was carried to a new land. The men went on shore and brought word that "it was a fruitful country, full of trees and well inhabited. The people were swarthy and used bows and arrows." That night a storm arose and they ran along the coast to seek a port. Here Mass was said and parrots exchanged for paper and cloth. Then Cabral erected a cross (which was still shown when Lindley visited Brazil three hundred years later) and ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... rather low in stature, but plump and well shaped, with short necks, swarthy faces, black eyes and long black hair. They are a branch of the Esquimauan family, but differ greatly from the Eskimo of the mainland in language, habits, disposition and mental ability. They were good fighters until they were cowed by the treatment of the Russians, who practically reduced ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... assent, surveying the Negro from head to foot, noting the flush of excitement on his swarthy face. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... a regular tenant who bred goats, and fed them out of British biscuit-tins. Beyond them the stable was occupied by a party of swarthy ruffians who had arrived with a cargo of esparto grass. In the far corner, a family, crowded out, had been living for weeks under a structure of horrible rags. Smoke, issuing from a dozen seams, gave their home the look of ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... rival among the lawyers of Otsego county was his neighbor Samuel Starkweather, a man of great physical and mental power. He was in many ways to be contrasted with Jordan, more strongly built, swarthy, having dark eyes and hair, with a massive head set upon broad shoulders, and every feature of his face indicative of strong will and energetic action. Somewhat less of an orator than Jordan, Starkweather equalled him in ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... had decided it, and the people of these pious islands bowed their heads. There landed, indeed, in North Ronaldsay, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, a traveller whose life seems really to have been imperilled. A very little man of a swarthy complexion, he came ashore, exhausted and unshaved, from a long boat passage, and lay down to sleep in the home of the parish schoolmaster. But he had been seen landing. The inhabitants had identified him for a Pict, as, by some singular confusion of name, they called the dark and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the horse, startled by her movement, shied and reared within a few feet of the spot where she stood. The moon shone full on the glossy black animal, and upon his powerful rider, and Beryl recognized the massive head, swarthy face and keen eyes of the attorney, Lennox Dunbar. He leaned forward and said, as he patted the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... come up now, heard these words, and his swarthy cheek was a shade darker. Benoit, who had lingered till he should receive a second order from the master of the inn as to the strangers' horses, exchanged a quick glance with Victor, while he said in a respectful tone, "Two horses, sir, for ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... watching us. There seemed to be at least ten of them—men as tall as myself, though not so tall as Georg. Swarthy, gray-skinned fellows—one or two of them squat, ape-like with their heavy shoulders and dangling arms. Men of the Venus Cold Country. They were talking together in their queer, soft language. One of them I took to be the leader. Argo ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... was thrown aback, and she lay hove-to. "We are seen! We are seen!" we exclaimed, one after the other. Presently a boat was lowered; she came gliding over the water towards us. As she approached we saw that she had a crew of dark, swarthy men, evidently not English. They hailed us in a foreign language. Senhor Silva replied, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... said so. She has complained that you call her daughter simply Anna. In future you must give her a handle to her name." Daniel Thwaite was a dark brown man, with no tinge of ruddiness about him, a thin spare man, almost swarthy, whose hands were as brown as a nut, and whose cheeks and forehead were brown. But now he blushed up to his eyes. The hue of the blood as it rushed to his face forced itself through the darkness of his visage, and he blushed, as such men do blush,—with a look of indignation on his ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... "He wears green corduroy trousers, and a red belt, and a blue shirt. That is the pirate uniform. He has a swarthy skin, and a piercing eye, and hair as black as the Jolly Roger. Those are the marks by which you recognise a pirate, even when in mufti. I believe you said his name ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... and comely man, His wife a swarthy Ethiopian; Nor did his milk-white bosom change her sin. She came out thence as black as she went in. Now Moses was a type of Moses' law, His wife likewise of one that never saw Another way unto eternal life; There's mystery, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Conversation is quite impossible; they talk of nothing but Racing, Rowing, Rugby, and the Derby. They belong to a new race of people. The days of Pelleas are forever gone for the women. Souls are no longer in fashion. All the girls hoist a red, swarthy complexion, tanned by driving in the open air and playing games in the sun: they look at you with eyes like men's eyes: they laugh and their laughter is a little coarse. In tone they have become more brutal, more crude. Every now and then your cousin will quite calmly ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... devilish sun," he said, leading the way among the tangle of merchandise and bales, "it's enough to boil our brains." They passed through the crowd of swarthy, dripping Turks, Georgians, Persians, and Armenians who labored half naked in the heat, and moved toward the town. A Russian gunboat lay in the Bay, side by side with freight and passenger vessels. An oil-tank steamer took on cargo. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... into the singularly unprepossessing face of a swarthy foreigner, a powerfully-built, ungainly person of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... near enough to see him, a very handsome figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a quick, alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter, and accustomed to command; upon one cheek he had a mole, not unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his clothes, although of the one hue, were of a French and foppish design; his ruffles, which he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... arrival created some stir on shore. Several boats put off, their swarthy crews contending strenuously which should have the valuable privilege of landing the expected passengers. Stump bustled down from the bridge with the important air of a man who had achieved something, and thus ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... persevere, gradually, very gradually, a recollection of my accident and of the subsequent events returned to me. I remembered with the utmost distinctness striking my head against the wall, and of SEEING myself carried, head first, by two rustics—the one with a shock head of red hair, the other swarthy as a Dago—to the inn. I recollected seeing the almost humorous look of horror in the chambermaid's face, as she rushed to inform the landlord, and the consternation of one and all during the discussion ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every feature, in every ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... the bliss of heaven. Round his young throat She wound her swarthy tresses; then, with eyes Half mad to see their ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... sought to be made good by the citing of a case of a young, fair-skinned boy, who, taking up with an Indian tribe, and adopting in every particular their mode of life, developed by his seventieth year a complexion as swarthy, and of as distinctively Indian a hue, as that of any pure ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... beautiful or grand; they desired it only to recall the beloved ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness and incongruity of the average Catholic churches of their remembrance, and it did this and more: it added an effect of its own; it offered the spectacle of a swarthy old Indian kneeling before the high altar, telling his beads, and saying with many sighs and tears the prayers which it cost so much martyrdom and heroism to teach his race. "O, it is only a savage man," said the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... had been living for some months in a house standing at the end of a small garden at the corner of the Rue de la Faisanderie and the Rue Dufresnoy. He was a rather thick-set, broad-shouldered man, with black hair and a swarthy skin, always well and quietly dressed. He was married to an extremely pretty but delicate Englishwoman, who was much upset by the business of the tapestries. From the first she implored her husband to sell them for what they would fetch. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... Jones would be a tall, gaunt, swarthy, raw-boned, swearing man of the sea. He was a sleek, silent, modest little man, with delicate hands and features. He wished to be alone with the Doctor, and so I did not hear their talk. I know that he needed money ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers—pale, subdued, and beautiful—was something wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up,—were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.

... scattered claims round about, and women from the northern forts, whose eyes, strange to dainty things or long starved of them, fed greedily on the smooth skin of the ivory boots and the soft folds of the dress. Shortly after the chaplain's stay, a swarthy Polish woman, shod in buckskin, came on a pilgrimage to the farm-house, and the little girl's mother, eager to show her handiwork, lifted the dress tenderly, but with a flourish, from the pasteboard box where it lay upon wild-rose leaves and a fragrant red apple, and held it against the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... they watered the horses midway up the canon. As they rode on again, Waring noticed that Vaca did not thrust his foot clear home in the stirrup, but he attributed this to the other's condition. The Mexican was a sick man. His swarthy face had gone yellow, and he leaned forward, clutching the horn. The heat was stagnant, unwavering. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great grandsire, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... in his behalf, Ridge sprang to his feet in full view of half a dozen men, ragged and swarthy, who were running down the road with yells of delight. They halted at sight of the stranger, and some raised their weapons; but he, recognizing them as Cubans, called out: "I am Americano, and those Spaniards whom you have so bravely killed sought ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... his partner, an arrogant and ugly girl with coarse hands, oily hair, and swarthy face, nearly a head taller than himself. Suddenly turning toward the musicians, the boy protested. He did not want to dance the "llarga"; he wanted to dance the "curta." The "long" and the "short" were the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the morning thou didst try to cheer me With a fond gaiety. My heart was bursting, And yet I could not tell me, how my sleep Was throng'd with swarthy faces, and I saw 65 The merchant-ship in which my son was captured— Well, well, enough—captured in sight of land— We might almost have seen it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... everlasting; thou art a boy to all time, thou art beheld {as} the most beauteous {of all} in high heaven; thou hast the features of a virgin, when thou standest without thy horns. By thee the East was conquered, as far as where swarthy India is bounded by the remote Ganges. Thou {God}, worthy of our veneration, didst smite Pentheus, and the axe-bearing Lycurgus,[13] sacrilegious {mortals}; thou didst hurl the bodies of the Etrurians into the sea. Thou controllest the neck of the lynxes yoked to thy chariot, graced with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... scarf on her head, and wearing a little brocaded cap, and a mantle that covered her from her shoulders to her feet. The man was of a robust and well-proportioned frame, in age a little over forty, rather swarthy in complexion, with long moustaches and a full beard, and, in short, his appearance was such that if he had been well dressed he would have been taken for a person of quality and good birth. On entering he asked for a room, and when they told him there was none ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... to-day Matt, who was only twenty-five, looked more like a big brother than an uncle. His eyes, however, were as shrewd as those of a man of forty, and already a fine dusting of grey hairs swept away from each temple. His skin was swarthy from many winds and suns, his nose determined, and his mouth as kind and sweet as Jack's own mother's, but his hands and shoulders were what spoke of his pioneer life. There was something about those strong, clean ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... green. It was a diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly, wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... of a gayer fancy. Well— Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers, Lingering amid the bloomy waste he loves, Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone— Slender and small, his rounded cheek all brown And ruddy with the sunshine; let him come On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake, And part with little hands the spiky grass, And touching, with his cherry lips, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... boy, was the quick fiery Welsh child, who owned an especial allegiance to the Prince; the broad blue-eyed Fleming, whose parents rejoiced in the fame of the son of Philippa of Hainault; the pert, lively Gascon, and the swarthy Navarrese mountaineer—all brought together in close and ever-changing contrast of ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... occasion, however, the MacTavishes were happily not there; the only other guest (for of course the curate didn't count) being a friend of the curate's, who had come to spend a few days with him in the country. The friend was a harsh-featured, swarthy young man, belonging to what may be called the muscular variety of high Ritualism; much given to a sort of aggressive slang—he had been known to refer to the bishop of his diocese as "the sporting old jester that bosses our show"—and representing militant ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... against a person such as this, safe as an angler matched against a minnow; Demetrios of Anatolia, now at the last, accepted alms from what had been until to-day a pertinacious gnat. Demetrios was physically shaken by disgust at the situation, and in the sunset's glare his swarthy countenance showed like that ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... himself. Now, Mr. Cumming Walters has at least had the distinction of inventing a theory which makes the story at least an interesting story, even if it is not exactly the story that is promised on the cover of the book. The obvious enemy of Drood, on whom suspicion first falls, the swarthy and sulky Landless, has a sister even swarthier and, except for her queenly dignity, even sulkier than he. This barbaric princess is evidently meant to be (in a sombre way) in love with Crisparkle, the clergyman and muscular Christian who represents the breezy element in the emotions of ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... and the long imperial procession of the Great Moguls,—of Humayoon, and Akbar, and Shah Jehan, and Aurengzebe,—of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan,— of Moorish splendor and the Prophet's sway; and the swarthy Mussulman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... sight of whom gave her a pang. She saw lounging Indians and groups of lazy, bearded men, just like Kells's band, and gamblers in long, black coats, and frontiersmen in fringed buckskin, and Mexicans with swarthy faces under wide, peaked sombreros; and then in great majority, dominating that stream of life, the lean and stalwart miners, of all ages, in their check shirts and high boots, all packing guns, jostling along, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... in despair, and guarded by the second officer. Suddenly she heard her name softly murmured, and she looked up. The young bailiff stood before her. He was a sturdy looking young fellow, swarthy skinned, black haired, and ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... the golden-haired Jesus is the swarthy John the Baptist, his hands folded in the gesture of prayer, the cross which he carries as the herald of Jesus leaning against his breast, and a look of bright wonder ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... slight convulsive movement, which from time to time agitated her under jaw, her features appeared calm, but of livid paleness. At the further end of the dungeon, near the door, under the open wicket, a veteran with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with a rough and swarthy face, a bald head, and long gray mustachios, is seated on a chair. He ought never to lose ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... midnight, and in the morning a body of grenadiers took possession of the Dauphin's Gate. The rude soldiery poured in, swarthy with wind and sun, and begrimed with smoke and dust; the garrison, drawn up on the esplanade, flung down their muskets and marched from the ground with tears of rage; the cross of St. George floated over the shattered ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... daylight When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house; As then the dreams and terrors of the night Decamp, so from my mind were driven All its own thoughts and feelings. Close she leant Propped on a swarthy arm, while the other helped With eloquent gesture potent as wizard wand, Veil the world off as with an airy web, Or flowing tent a-gleam with pictured folds. These tauten and distend—one sea of wheat, Islanded with black cities, borders now ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... made acquainted with the reason why his young men had betrayed so strong a mark of indiscretion, the old man, who had taken a post at his elbow, saw, with alarm, the gleam of keen distrust that flashed in his swarthy visage. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Swarthy" :   dark-skinned, swarthiness, dusky, archaism, brunette, archaicism, brunet, swart



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