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Carven

adjective
1.
Made for or formed by carving ('carven' is archaic or literary).  Synonym: carved.  "An intricately carved door" , "Stood as if carven from stone"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Carven" Quotes from Famous Books



... the wide gateway and doorway by dozens. While they still leaned over the balustrade, Marguerite, one of their pupils, a blue-eyed blonde girl of lovely complexion, with red, voluptuous lips, and beautiful hair held by a carven shell comb, came and bent over the balustrade with them. Suddenly her comb slipped from its hold, flashed downward, and striking the marble pavement flew into pieces at the feet of the men who were about to ascend. Several of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... intervals along the frowning walls, to right and left, were spiral, slender pillars, gilded and gleaming. They supported an archwork of fancifully carven wood, which curved gently outward to the center of the ceiling, forming, by conjunction with a similar, opposite ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... her with the desert, with the burning heaps of carnation and orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilderness, the first brown villages glowing in the late radiance of the afternoon like carven things of bronze, the first oasis of palms, deep green as a wave of the sea and moving like a wave, the first wonder of Sahara warmth and Sahara distance. She passed through the golden door into the blue country, and saw this face, and, for a moment, moved by the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! —While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... gasping with fear, moved with her, his speed accelerating with each moment. David a few paces in advance followed them. The Indians watched in a tranced intentness of observation. At the top of the slope the three squaws sat as motionless as carven images. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... lonely one, Who feared not dying: Gone in another's stead Alone to the hungry dead: Light be the carven stone Above ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... within the palace of the King In Lacedaemon, was there revelry, Since Menelaus with the dawn did spring Forth from his carven couch, and, climbing high The tower of outlook, gazed along the dry White road that runs to Pylos through the plain, And mark'd thin clouds of dust against the sky, And gleaming bronze, and robes of ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... his brown eyes as he held the audience in his power while he told the simple story of his Western work; but she could hear the voice, and it went straight to her lonely, sorrowful heart. Straightway the church with its mass of packed humanity, its arched and carven ceiling, its magnificent stained-glass windows, its wonderful organ and costly fittings, faded from her sight, and overhead there arched a dome of dark blue pierced with stars, and mountains in the distance with a canyon opening, and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... serene—waiting! But as fragrant bark was tossed on the sacred fire below him,—and a flame awoke for a moment, the eyes reflected the light in a startling way—as though alive! Then the strangers saw that the eyes were of iridescent shell set in the carven stone,—and more strange than all was the fact that the god of the altar was a weeping god, and the tear under each eye was also of the strange shell mosaic. It was the Earth-Born God who had been driven out by the proud hearts of the Lost Others. ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... hollow threshold the eye of fancy may see the ghosts of monks and the shadows of abbots pass noiselessly to and fro? What is a paltry piazza to a beautiful ambulatory of the thirteenth century—a long stone gallery or cloister repeated in two stories, with the interstices of its carven lattice now glazed, but with its long, low, narrow, charming vista still perfect and picturesque—with its flags worn away by monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched doorways opening from its inner side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals? What are the longest French windows, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... reading aloud in a solemn voice. His wife sat straight in her chair, her large face tilted with a judicial and argumentative air, and Rebecca's red cheeks bloomed out more brilliantly in the heat of the fire. She sat next her mother, and her smooth dark head with its carven comb arose from her Sunday kerchief with a like carriage. She and her mother did not look alike, but their motions were curiously similar, and perhaps gave evidence to a subtler resemblance in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with carved beams; the balconies and huge over-hanging roof recall the Swiss chalet, but the side and back walls are of stone often heavily buttressed. The cattle occupy the ground-floor, and the first storey is reached often by an outside staircase. The carven tombstones with their ornaments resemble those of Celtic countries, and are found also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... so, but I have always imagined that even that carven image of an old aborigine must, have smiled a ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... more than a little shed. There was no ticket office, nothing but a couple of whittled and carven benches. It was built close to the railroad tracks, just across which was the dirty, muddy shore of San Francisco Bay. About a quarter of a mile back from the station was the edge of the town of Oakland. Between the station and the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... the topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain's guidance they selected many hideous presents and mementoes—florid little picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded pastry; other little frames, more severe, that stood on little easels, and were carven out of oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap mosaic brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from real; pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... is there of carven stone To watch with still approving eyes My thoughts like steady incense rise; I dream ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale

... softened by red silk shades. One's last view before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the hall-bench of carven stone and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... soldiers, many soldiers, but all wounded, with head and legs bandaged, ashy faces made still more tragic by their growing beards, feverish eyes looking fixedly ahead, mouths so sadly immobile that they seemed carven by agonizing groans. Doctors and nurses were occupying various carriages in this convoy escorted by several platoons of horsemen. And mingled with the slowly moving horses and automobiles were marching groups of foot-soldiers, with cloaks unbuttoned or hanging from their shoulders like ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... crafts in this young earth I am true master, unto her whose worth So much deserves, I bear this marble sphere, Whose hollowed husk, well polished, gleaming clear, Hides rarest fruit." Therewith the globe he showed, The half whereof smooth-sparkling was: Half glowed With carven work; embossed with pale leaves light, And delicately sculptured birds in flight, And clustered flowers frail. Lilith drew near With beaming eyes, and laid the graven sphere Against her smiling lips; o'ertraced the vine That circled it with fingers ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... The carven image was perhaps thirty feet in height, and represented a figure crouched upon its knees, its head bent very low and at the same time tilted at a grotesque angle so that the face smiled heavenward; the hands, palms upward, extended invitingly ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... thou done to me, beloved cheat: Thou madest with high hope my heart to beat And then didst hurry off and bear with thee All of the gladness thou once gavest me. 'Tis half my heart I lack through this thy taking And what is left is good for naught but aching. Stonecutters, set me up a carven stone And let this sad inscription run thereon: Ursula Kochanowski lieth here, Her father's sorrow and her father's dear; For heedless Death hath acted here crisscross: She should have mourned my ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... service." Familiarity with celestial personages was detestable to her, and she did her duty of saluting them in a courtly and reverent fashion. Westminster Abbey was her favourite church, with its dim light and shadowy distances; there in a carven stall, with choristers chanting in solemn rhythm, with the many-coloured glories of the painted windows repeating themselves on upspringing arch and clustering pillars, with the rich harmonies of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... cameo face, carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... and quaintly carven balconies were noisy with shrill voices. Every self-respecting house was plastered with fresh mud; every window and doorway garlanded with marigold and jasmine buds; every brain, absorbed in the paramount speculation, as to how the sacrificial ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... how Swinburne felt when confronted by the image of the carven Christ, and, perplexed by the contrast between its claims and its consequences, he said his strange farewell to it, hastily indeed, but not without regret, not even really without respect. I felt ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... a large room, whose huge mantel was carven with the red hand and supporting lions of the clan Reilly, and passed over to the bed beside the window. He had requested to see O'Neill alone, and the attendant withdrew silently. Brian approached the bed, and stood looking down at the man who ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... These chambers, moreover, were encrusted with every sort of filth. In front of the temples stood the altar whereon the fire burned eternally, and before it were a hog-backed block of black marble of the size of an inn drinking table, and a great carven stone shaped like a wheel, measuring some ten feet across with a copper ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... and moment. Indeed, this was hardly to be wondered at; for the priest, so far as I could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's—did not make matters more intelligible by spasmodically ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... She raised her hand, and her fingers looked carven white in the moonlight, though by daylight they were brown. "Monsieur, you watched the star. It went into the unknown,—a way so wide and terrible that we may not follow it even in thought. We live alone with majestic forces,—forests ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... been the shoes of one who lay here, a princess, dead thousands of years, and once very beautiful, as these carven symbols told. They were small and dainty and threaded with fine gold, and laced across with care about the feet of her who was once a woman and a princess and owner of much beauty, and who was in her life beloved, and in her death ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... spoke to the heart. Putting a shawl over her head, she rolled the flowers in her apron from the frost, and stepped out into the brilliant day. The little cross-track between her house and the other was snowed up; but she took the road and, hurrying between banks of carven whiteness, went up Solon's path to the side door. She walked in upon him where he was standing over the kitchen stove, warming his hands at the first blaze. Susan's cheeks were red with the challenge of the stinging air, but she had the look of one who, living by a larger law, has ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... from its presence with mournful step and sorrowful countenance; whereupon the brethren, seeing themselves thus denuded of wealth they had hoped to enjoy, gave utterance to a groan doubtless much greater in volume than that emitted by the carven statue, which wooden figure may be seen to-day in the museum of the modern Castle of Sayn by any one who cares to spend the fifty ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... divine The art that reared thy costly shrine! Thy carven columns must have grown By magic, like ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... different, in a mediaeval cathedral no two pillars were alike, and in the dress of a mediaeval crowd was captured the colours of the rainbow. With an odd result. Men laughed at the devil in the freedom of their souls. They tweaked his tail on carven misericords, and in the mystery play he was invariably cast ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... in vague hope some alien lance of light Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight— The salt and bitter blood of her despair— Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair And grip toward God with anguish infinite. And O the carven mouth, with all its great Intensity of longing frozen fast In such a smile as well may designate The slowly-murdered heart, that, to the last, Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate Throbs Love's ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... artist's pencil is a monument to those heroes greater than pinnacles of marble, of beaten brass and carven stone; a monument that has travelled over the world, has spoken to posterity more clearly, more convincingly, and more rememberingly than ever written or word-of-mouth speech could do. It is to the everlasting honour of the people of the Anzacs that they refrained from echoing the idle tales ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... himself together and walked away sharply. By the cathedral the carven Christ hung on in the wan yellow light, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... calls it "a vast edifice, very worthy of commemoration." Abd-el-Latif saw it in its decline, and notes the beauty of its remains: "the great monolithic shrine of breccia verde, nine cubits high, eight long, and seven broad, the doors which swung on hinges of stone, the well-carven statues, and the lions terrific in their aspect."[7] At the present day scarcely a trace remains. One broken colossus of the Great Ramesses, till very recently prostrate, and a few nondescript fragments, alone continue on the spot, to attest to moderns the position of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... straws. Beyond colour—and even in colour his limitations are marked—Mr. Brabazon cannot go. He entered St. Mark's, and of the delicacy of ornamentation, of the balance of the architecture, he saw nothing; neither the tracery of carven column nor the aerial perspective of the groined arches. It was his genius not to see these things—to leave out the drawing is better than to fumble with it, and all his life he has done this; and though we may say that a water-colour with the drawing left out is a very slight thing, we cannot ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... poop. I should say the Nonesuch carried a high, raised poop. About the top of it ran considerable bulwarks, which made the ship unweatherly: and these, as they approached the front on each side, ran down in a fine, old-fashioned, carven scroll to join the bulwarks of the waist. From this disposition, which seems designed rather for ornament than use, it followed there was a discontinuance of protection: and that, besides, at the very margin of the elevated part ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of this Bishop's borough which the King seized from the Church clings to chance houses in little carven masks and occasional ogives: there is everywhere a feast for whatever in the mind is curious, searching, and reverent, and over the town, as over all the failing ports of our silting eastern seaboard, hangs the air of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... magnetism of crowds what is possible only in the solitary exaltations of the soul. This is the high moral of Dante's poem. We have likened it to a Christian basilica; and as in that so there is here also, painted or carven, every image of beauty and holiness the artist's mind could conceive for the adornment of the holy place. We may linger to enjoy these if we will, but if we follow the central thought that runs like the nave from entrance ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief gesture, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... externals can be 'means of grace' is by their aiding us to understand better and to feel more the truth as it is in Jesus, and to cleave closer to Him who is the truth. Do they enlighten the understanding? Do they engrave deeper the loved face carven on the tablets of memory, which the attrition of worldly cares is ever obliterating, and the lichens of worldly thoughts ever filling up? Do they clear out the rubbish from the channels of the heart, that the cleansing stream may flow through them? Do they, through the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis XIII., with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs of chimeras ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... and faded lore Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood, Or gathered by the daughters when they walked Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous. Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead; Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road; And feebler than the doting knees of eld, His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane Across the war-walls of the Anakim, Made vain and shaken haste. Good need was his To hasten: ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... head. It used to be called the oak parlor, and many a time has its floor rung to the tread of the king's soldiers, who, disappointed in their search for hidden goods, consented to take a drink at their host's expense, little recking that, but a few feet away, behind the carven chimneypiece upon which they doubtless set down their glasses, there lay heaps and heaps of the richest goods, only awaiting their own departure to be scattered through the length ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... call it—still adhered to the stone. This hall, dignified, grand, but happy, was open on all sides to the sun and air. From it I could see tamarisk- and acacia-trees, and far-off shadowy mountains beyond the eastern verge of the Nile. And the trees were still as carven things in an atmosphere that was a miracle of clearness and of purity. Behind me, and near, the hard Libyan mountains gleamed in the sun. Somewhere a boy was singing; and suddenly his singing died away. And I thought of the "Lay of the Harper" which is inscribed ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... down fifteen or twenty feet above the ground, and upon the tops of them spherical habitations of woven twigs, mud covered, had been built. Each ball-like house was surmounted by some manner of carven image, which Ja told me indicated the identity of ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... after the gigantic carven cliffs is Wizard Island. This complete volcano in miniature, notwithstanding that it is forest-clothed and rises from water, carries the traveller's mind instantly to the thirteen similar cones which rise ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... many to museums in Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; and some few to the private houses of rich collectors. At last, in the shop of an old watchmaker and jeweller at Hoorn, I found what he considered his chiefest treasure; a great ruby, carven like a scarab, with seven stars, and engraven with hieroglyphics. The old man did not know hieroglyphic character, and in his old-world, sleepy life, the philological discoveries of recent years had not reached him. He did not know anything of Van Huyn, except that such a person had been, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... I munt me forth the minster to knowen And awayted a wone wonderly well y-built, With arches on every hall & belliche [beautifully] y-carven With crochets on corners, with knots of gold, Wide windows y-wrought, y-written full thick, Shyning with shapen shields to shewen about, With marks of merchants y-meddled between, Mo than twenty and two, twice y-numbered; There is none herald that hath half ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... little scarlet cloak from out the carven chest, and as Ezra came past the door, leading the little gray donkey, she flung it across her ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... stood for a moment, he quiet as a carven statue and I restless but obedient to his wishes. When he stirred I carefully lit the candles, but I did not look at him till he had donned his cloak and pulled his hat well over his eyes. Then I turned, ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... felt that the children had only just hurried away—to hide themselves, most like—in the many turns of the great adzed staircase that climbed statelily out of the hall, or to crouch at gaze behind the lions and roses of the carven gallery above. Then I heard her voice above me, singing as the blind sing ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... the same place like a carven woman. She waited for him with wide, harassed eyes. As he came ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... to the darkness, Sheard began to see more clearly the objects about him. A seated figure of the Pharaoh Seti I. surveyed him with a scorn but thinly veiled; beyond, two towering Assyrian bulls showed gigantic in the semi-light. He could discern, now, the whole length of the lofty hall—a carven avenue; and, as his gaze wandered along that dim vista, he detected a black shape emerging from the blacker shadows beyond ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... himself upon his arm and looked at the two red sentinels. Not a muscle of either had stirred. They were so much carven bronze. Their rifles lay across their knees and they stared fixedly at the forest. But he knew that their eyes and ears were of the keenest and that but little could escape their attention. Yet they had not discovered the presence. He rose finally to his feet. The Indians heard ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed at the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat in meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together. Presently, however, struck by the beauty of the spot and its quiet, only broken by the songs of many nesting birds, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... whatso He willed to me of hardship, misfortune andcalamity; for I scrambled upon a plank from one of the ships, and the wind and waters threw it at the feet of the Mountain. There I found a practicable path leading by steps carven out of the rock to the summit, and I called on the name of Allah Almighty"[FN259]—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... every one has his own apartments and his own privacy secure, this disposition to own has found its release in a new direction. Men study and save and strive that they may leave behind them a series of panels in some public arcade, a row of carven figures along a terrace, a grove, a pavilion. Or they give themselves to the penetration of some still opaque riddle in phenomena as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work that was once the whole substance of social existence—for ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... canes and sticks was mounted upon a stool draped with Oriental rugs, and so high and slender that one looked to see the occupant topple and fall from moment to moment. He was a brown-faced fellow of small stature and as lithe as an Indian, and he was juggling recklessly with a pair of grotesque carven sticks, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... lay bare in the sunlight, broken with grotesque shadows cast from sitting, crouching, half-recumbent but always rigid figures, which might have been effigies on their own monuments. One half-kneeling soldier, with head bowed between his stiffened hands, might have stood for a carven figure of Grief at the feet of his dead comrade. A captain, shot through the brain in the act of mounting a wall, lay sideways half across it, his lips parted with a word of command; his sword still pointing over the barrier the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... liquid metal down her back and over the hart's neck, as low as her silver hem. And the hart with its splendid antlers stood motionless and proud as though it knew it carried a young Queen. But indeed men wondered whether it were not a young goddess. And so for a very few moments this carven vision of gold and silver and ivory and molten bronze and copper and green jewels stood in their gaze. And then Harding bore the crown to her and knelt, and stood up again and crowned her before them all; and laying his hand upon the white hart's neck, moved away with it ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... headstones. They were like old friends; she had wandered among them so often. One held her gaze an instant, with its well-known marble hand, pointing the place in a marble book in which was carved one text. How often she had spelled the words, pointing out the deeply carven letters to ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... her heavy, compactly crouched figure, wound about with Eastern stuffs and glistening with gold, recall the images we are accustomed to associate with the worship of Vishnu. Her face, too, so far as it was visible in the subdued light, had the unresponsiveness of carven wood, and if not exactly hideous of feature, had in it a strange and haunting quality calculated to impress a sensitive mind with a sense of implacable fate. Cruel, hard, passionless, and yet threatening to a degree, must this countenance have seemed to those ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... say, are idols dumb, Which men have wrought from wood or clay, Carven with chisel, shaped with thumb, A morning's task, an evening's play. You bid me turn my face on high Where the blue heaven the sun enthrones, And serve a viewless deity, Nor make my bow ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... Austin, "it must seem a reproach never to have had a pope in the family, and you will with difficulty find a villa of any pretension, certainly not in Frascati, where memorial tassels and tiara carven in stone over porch and doorway do not attest ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... silence, the Skipper gazing darkly at his carven runes, Mr. Bill Hen still puffing ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... ascend them, and, reaching a broad terrace, find myself face to face with a wonderful gate, topped by a tilted, peaked, many- cornered Chinese roof. It is all strangely carven, this gate. Dragons are inter-twined in a frieze above its open doors; and the panels of the doors themselves are similarly sculptured; and there are gargoyles— grotesque lion heads—protruding from the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... were stamping, his escort, seven Arab horses with seven Arabs from the desert, or thereabout, in high-pummelled saddles, wearing white bournous, their brown, lean hands grasping long-barrelled guns with small carven stocks. The white Arab which Owen had purchased yesterday waited, the saddle empty; and, looking at him before mounting, Owen thought the horse the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more like an ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... so, Horn. Now take from me this carven ring of gold. On it is wrought: 'Be true to Rimenhild.' Wear it always on your finger, for my love's sake. The stone in it has such grace that never need you fear any wound nor shrink from any combat, if you do but wear this ring, and look steadfastly upon it, and think of me. And you, Athulf, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... tusker, my foe, wrought me trouble When targe upon targe I had carven: For the thin wand of slaughter was shattered And it sundered the ground of my handgrip. Loud bellowed the bear of the sea-king When he brake from his lair in the scabbard, At the hest of the singer, who seeketh The sweet hidden draught ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... stars are her sisters. Pharaohs of the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and terraces. They destroyed one of the hills of God, but they made Babbulkund. She is carven, not built; her palaces are one with her terraces, there is neither join nor cleft. Hers is the beauty of the youth of the world. She deemeth herself to be the middle of Earth, and hath four gates facing outward to the Nations. There sits outside her eastern gate a colossal ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... they went, and soon were lost to view Within the gateway of a rocky cliff; Sometimes came glimpses of them as they climbed The sloping passages within the cliff— A cloistered corridor of carven columns— And paused a moment at some rocky window To see the grandeur of the mountain heights. The soft notes of a trumpet called them up, And silver ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel

... moment Anna cowered, alarmed by what a quick glimpse of his face had shown her. She had never seen a human face so—not whitened by his fear, but greyed—greyed as if seared with fire and turned to carven ashes. She could tell, by that, that he would never, really, forgive her. Too firmly had his hopes been fixed upon the plans which he had built in many long hours of reflections going back along the years, no doubt, to that far time when she was lying, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... a rigid carven statue in the midst of a barren sandy waste in the vast cup of a towering volcano top—sand that was in reality coarse pumice and ash. This was a place of death, a place where raging fires had left nothing for plant or animal life. And, over all, the desert stars shone down ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background of rich purple velvet,—Manuel was standing immediately in front of it, and the tortured head of the carven Christ drooped over him as though in a sorrow-stricken benediction. A dull anger began to irritate Gherardi's usually well-tempered nerves, and he was searching in his mind for some scathing sentence wherewith to overwhelm and reprove the confident ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... down the ear-trumpet, and afterwards wipes it very carefully with his handkerchief. MANSON stands, as though carven in marble, waiting for ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... the chain, and a small golden cylinder was revealed, curiously carven. Its lightness ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... house. In it were two or three tables commandeered from upstairs or from some houses around. That one was a rough deal kitchen table, and that another was of polished wood, with beautiful inlaid work and artistic curved and carven legs, the spoils of some drawing-room apparently, was a matter without the faintest interest to the signalers who used them. To them a table was a table, no more and no less, a thing to hold a litter of papers, message forms, telephone gear, and a candle ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... the gates of the jewelled shrine flew open, and from the crystal of the many-rayed monstrance shone a marvellous and mystical light. He stood there in a king's raiment, and the Glory of God filled the place, and the saints in their carven niches seemed to move. In the fair raiment of a king he stood before them, and the organ pealed out its music, and the trumpeters blew upon their trumpets, and ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh, limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; upreared knees, arms hanging long and thin over the cot edges. For the most part they were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standing all about like tombstones, there was a strange effect of a graveyard ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... prudent man your face proclaims you to be, you would live long and make your peace with God. Hearken to me; I am a scholar, a Bachelor. To-day the holy relics will be borne through the streets and crossways of the city. You will find great solace in touching the carven shrines which enclose the cornelian cup wherefrom the child Jesus drank, one of the wine-jars of the Marriage at Cana, the cloth of the Last Supper, and the holy foreskin. If you take my advice, we will go wait for them, under cover, at a cookshop I wot of, before which they will ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... dazzled and stricken with a half-blind breathless wonder,—was ever a ship like this he thought?—a ship that sparkled all over as though it were carven out of one great burning jewel? ... Golden hangings, falling in rich, loose folds, draped it gorgeously from stem to stern,—gold cordage looped the sails,—on the deck a band of young gals clad in white, and crowned with flowers, knelt, playing softly on quaintly shaped ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... me stay. How beautiful are all things round about me, Multiplied by the mirrors on the walls! What treasures hast thou here! Yon oaken chest, Carven with figures and embossed with gold, Is wonderful to look upon! What choice And precious things dost thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... never excite high admiration, never touch any chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. Its bare, shadowless walls, unadorned by carven columns or memorial statues, will stand incapable of affording support for those associations which endear every human work of worth, covering it with praise and remembrance, as the ivy clings to the stone, adding beauty to beauty,—associations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... steps lay a most lovely garden. Great, tapering cypresses grew about it, with many orange-trees and flowering shrubs that filled the soft, southern air with odours. Also there were marble fountains into which water splashed from the mouths of carven lions, and here and there arbours with stone seats, whereon were laid soft cushions of many colours. It was a veritable place of Eastern delight and dreams, such as Peter had never known before he looked upon it on that languorous eve—he ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... Hall Gathered; where sat the king, with the high crown Upon his brow, beneath a drapery That fell around him like a cataract, With flecks of color crossed and cancellate; And over this, like trees about a stream, Rich carven-work, heavy with wreath and rose, Palm and palmirah, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... wondrous for this House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man, he is greatly ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... alive again, Lying so peacefully, placidly still, With that carven smile on his marble face. How can I pray that his heart should thrill To waking and waking's pain? Lying so peacefully, placidly still. With the old, sweet smile on his quiet face, Dead to the sting of ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... like some imperious King, Wroth, were his realm not duly awed; A God for ever hearkening Unto his self-commanded laud; A God for ever jealous grown Of carven wood ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... touched. The interior of the immense vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows—now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each other through the flowering grasses of the summer meadows, ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... all sumptuous things and delicate, Ethereal matters richly paradised In Art's proud certitudes. I love the great Greek vases, carven ivory, subtilised Arras of roses, Magians dyed on glass, Graven chalcedony and sardonyx, Nocturnes that through the nerves like fever pass, Arthurian kings, Love on the crucifix, All sweet mysterious verse, the Byzantine Gold chambers of Crivelli, marble that flowers In shy adoring angels, ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... Carven ivory have I none; No golden cornice in my dwelling shines; Pillars choice of Libyan stone Upbear no architrave from Attic mines; 'Twas not mine to enter in To Attalus' broad realms, an unknown heir, Nor for me fair clients spin Laconian purples for their ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... indeed. Though this were so, were given to the gallant Campeador Of the best of all the horses for his share fifty score. When the Cid had so many the rest content might bide. What store of rich pavilions and carven poles beside To the lord Cid and his vassals by the chance of war did fall, And the King's tent of Morocco was the richest of them all, All gold wrought are the tent-poles that pavilion that sustain. My lord Cid the great Campeador did at that time ordain That it stand pitched; to move ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: "On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below." The stone grows old: Eternity is not for stones. But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... flutes and hautboys! Wouldn't you like to have seen the heralds marching by, two by two, in cloth of gold, with an escort of the queen's guard following? All of England's best and bravest were there, and they sat in the carven stalls in St. George's Chapel, with their gorgeous banners drooping over them. I saw that chapel, Jonesy, when we were in England, and I saw where the knights kept the 'vigil of arms' in the holy places, the night before they took their vows." He picked up the book and read again: "'Fasting ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... gray walls, Soon the last stone will be gone, The olden church of the Recollects, We shall look no more upon; And though, perchance, some stately pile May rise its place to fill, With carven piers and lofty towers, Old Church, we shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... the water, nothing loth, for ever the wondrous stream seemed to draw the lad to it. And a fair day he had of it, wandering amidst the sheep and being friendly with them, whiles drawing out his knife to look thereon, as oft he did when he was alone; and forsooth it was a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in gold, and the sheath of silver. Whiles also he stood on the river's lip and looked across the water which was there in most places as big as the Thames is at Reading, but sometimes ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... years, and lo! the roots of grass Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass, The gilded ornaments, the carven stones Lay tumbled all together ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... pummel** of his head. *pitched **top That in the place he lay as he were dead. His breast to-bursten with his saddle-bow. As black he lay as any coal or crow, So was the blood y-run into his face. Anon he was y-borne out of the place With hearte sore, to Theseus' palace. Then was he carven* out of his harness. *cut And in a bed y-brought full fair and blive* *quickly For he was yet in mem'ry and alive, And always ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... minute, I did see it again; but whether it did be the shape of some utter monster of eternity—even as the Watchers about the Mighty Pyramid—or whether it did be no more than a carven mountain of rock, shaped unto the dire picturing of a Monster, I did have no knowing. But I made that I should get hence very quick, and I did turn me about in the bushes, and went upon my hands and knees; and so came at ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... become shrines of pious pilgrimage with the young architects of our day who hope to house our well-to-do people fitly in country or suburbs. The decoration is oftenest spent on a porch or portal, or a frieze of peculiar refinement; or perhaps it feels its way to the carven casements or to the delicate iron-work of the transoms; the rest is a simplicity and a faultless propriety of form in the stately mansions which stand under the arching elms, with their gardens sloping, or dropping by easy terraces behind them to the river, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Argive vigour the oak-heart, Longing the Golden Fleece of the Colchis-region to harry, 5 Dared in a poop swift-paced to span salt seas and their shallows, Sweeping the deep blue seas with sweeps a-carven of fir-wood. She, that governing Goddess of citadels crowning the cities, Builded herself their car fast-flitting with lightest of breezes, Weaving plants of the pine conjoined in curve of the kelson; 10 Foremost of all to imbue rude Amphitrite with ship-lore. Soon as her beak had ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... her sceptre, whereon all the company bowed thrice, then turned and breaking into some sweet, low chant that sounded like a lullaby, marched, rank after rank, across the width of the Sanctuary and through the carven doors which closed ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster about the god Siva. The really characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... great oaken chest stood at the head of the bed, perhaps six inches from the wall. Leaning against this chest at the edge of the bed inclined a small, round table, and the cover of the table had slipped from its sloping surface until it partly concealed the chest lid. I mounted on this carven box of old black oak and directed the rays of electric light into the chasm between it and the wall. Then I laughed aloud, and was somewhat startled to hear another laugh directly behind me. I jumped down on the floor again, and swung round my torch like a searchlight ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... room allotted to him Robin found new and gay clothes laid out upon a fair, white bed, with a little rush mat beside it. A high latticed window looked out upon the court, and there was a bench in the nook, curiously carven and filled with stuffs and naperies the like of which Robin had ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... Calvary down The carven pavement shows Their graves who won the martyr's crown And safe in God repose; The saints of many a warring creed Who now in heaven have learned That all paths to the Father lead Where Self the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... white and gleaming. There were windows in the walls, and they were closed with sheets of glass so smooth and clear that one seemed looking through a clear opening rather than through glass. The floor was of stone, smooth and seamless as though carven from one great rock, yet seeming not, in some way, to be stone at all. There was a great circle of smooth metal inset in it, and it was on it that ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton

... clearer physical vision, he regained a clearer mental vision likewise. Purpose asserted itself as against mere blind acquiescence. Iglesias looked up, demanding as of right some measure of consolation, some object promising help. So doing, his eyes sought a certain carven oak panel set in an ebony frame. From his earliest childhood he remembered it, for it had hung in his mother's bedchamber; and in those far-away years, while she still had sufficient force to disregard ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... tribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace. They brought their women and their children: they brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long pleasurable nights ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... crystal carven was the cup, With turquoise set along the brim, A lid of amber closed it up; 'Twas a great king that gave it him. The slave poured sherbet to the brink, Stirred in wild honey and pomegranate, With snow and rose-leaves cooled the drink, And bore it where ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... was less foul and noisome than in the narrow wynds. High above us the great towers of the abbey shone red and golden in the light of the sinking sun, while beneath all was brown, dusk, and dim with smoke. On these towers I could gladly have looked long, and not wearied. For they are all carven with the holy company of the martyrs and saints, like the Angels whom Jacob saw ascending by the ladder into heaven; even so that blessed company seemed to scale upwards from the filth of the street, and the darkness, and the din, right on towards the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... played In a bowl of carven jade, And pink and white in a crystal pond the waterlilies swayed. But never a flower that grew In the garden of Prince Choo-Choo Was half so fair as his daughter ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... Thumb; but the King and the Court were so sorry at the loss of their little favourite that they went into mourning for him. And they put a fine white marble monument over his grave whereon was carven the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... endured to the end his grievous plague he shall see once more his home, and at Apollo's fountain[19] joining in the feast give his soul to rejoice in her youth, and amid citizens who love his art, playing on his carven lute, shall enter upon peace, hurting and hurt of none. Then shall he tell how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow for Arkesilas, when of late he was the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... that was blazoned like a missal-book, Black with oaken gables, carven and inscrolled; Every street a colored page, every sign a hieroglyph, Dusky with enchantments, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... polished stairway and balconies are speckless, reflecting like mirror-surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid down. The carven pillars of the alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and flowers chiseled in some black rich wood, are wonders; and the kakemono or scroll-picture hanging there is an idyl, Hotei, God of Happiness, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... street with linden trees So thickly set, the belfry's face Was leaf-veiled, while above them pierced, Four slender spires flamboyant grace. Old porches carven when the trees, Were seedlings yellow in the sun Five hundred years ago that bright Upon the quaint ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... They reached the carven rood-screen, and at a sign kneeled down. In a clear voice the clergyman began the service; presently, at another sign, the pair rose, advanced to the altar-rails and again knelt down. The moonlight, flowing through the eastern window, fell full ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Through the tall portal to the open square, And turning, paused to look upon the pile. The northern front against the crystal sky Loomed dark and heavy, full of sombre shade, With each projecting buttress, carven cross, Gable and mullion, tipped with laughing light By the slant sunbeams of the risen morn. The noisy swallows wheeled above their nests, Builded in hidden nooks about the porch. No human life was stirring ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... fair, Nor incense-clouds, nor carven throne; But in the fragrant morning air A gentle lady sits alone; My mother—ah! whom should I see Within, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... temple In solitude decays, With carven walls still hallowed With prayers of bygone days, Here, where the coral outcrops Make "flowers of the sea," The olden Peace yet lingers, ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... of solemn ceremonies whereby good hunting is held to be secured. Something of the sort, then, we may suppose, took place ages ago in the cave of Niaux. So, indeed, it was a cathedral after a fashion; and, having in mind the carven pillars of stalactite, the curving alcoves and side-chapels, the shining white walls, and the dim ceiling that held in scorn our powerful lamps, I venture to question whether man has ever lifted up his ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... sat was of citron wood from Mauritania, more precious than gold. And it was covered with a plateau of massive silver weighing five hundred pounds—five hundred pounds, mind you, chased and carven. Dost thou marvel that I made friends with ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock



Words linked to "Carven" :   sliced, literature, etched, uncarved, sculpted, graven, incised, lapidarian, engraved, sculptured, inscribed



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