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Cavern   /kˈævərn/   Listen
Cavern

noun
1.
Any large dark enclosed space.
2.
A large cave or a large chamber in a cave.



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"Cavern" Quotes from Famous Books



... berry and kernel stood here and there in the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blame him. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention to the stupid mayordomo the relationship of money and food. He referred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, where three soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on the filthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and two pieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention other unpleasantnesses, including ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... little images in costumes of warriors, mandarins and princes, all crammed together in the most unmerciful manner. This temple goes by the name of the "The Five-hundred Images." Adjoining it is a quaint little monastery and a weird cavern (see chap, xx., "A ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... forests seemed as if they had been transfigured and in the evening hours they looked as if the sunset had burst and dropped upon the leaves. It seemed as if the sea of divine glory had dashed its surf to the top of the crags and it had come dripping down to the lowest leaf and deepest cavern." ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... vaulted ceiling, and a stone floor. Being situated high in the castle, the walls of which are immensely thick, and the windows very small and few, the silence that reigns here is like that of a subterranean cavern. You hear nothing in this solitude, except perhaps twice in a day, the twitter of a swallow in one of the small windows high in ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... deck. On the second night she shifted her ballast into the lee bow, and by that time we had been blown off somewhere on the Dogger Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with shovels and try to right her, and there we were in that vast hold, gloomy like a cavern, the tallow dips stuck and flickering on the beams, the gale howling above, the ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we all were, Jermyn, the captain, everyone, hardly able to keep our feet, engaged on that gravedigger's work, and trying to toss shovelfuls ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... and sang. And now the Arhats numbering five hundred, having forever lost their master's presence, reflecting there was now no ground of certainty, returned to Gridhrakuta mount; assembling in King Sakra's cavern, they collected there the Sutra Pitaka; all the assembly agreeing that the venerable Ananda should say, for the sake of the congregation, the sermons of Tathagata from first to last: "Great and small, whatever you have heard from the mouth of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... away from it you think you have got to the end of its traces, but you encounter them still in the shape of a rugged outhouse grand with an Early-English arch, or an ancient well hidden in a kind of sculptured cavern. It is noticeable that even if you are a traveller from a land where there are no Early-English—and indeed few Late-English—arches, and where the well-covers are, at their hoariest, of fresh-looking shingles, you grow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... hence probably the most imposing view of these heights will be seen. To the south, the mountain path of Niffdah presents its black, overhanging peaks, the deep chasm round which, the path winds, bearing a most cavern-like appearance; a little to the west, the camel path, called El Nishka, appears scarcely less difficult and precipitous; the more southern crags close in the landscape, while the foreground is occupied by the dingy and barren wadey of Agutifa, with the well immediately overhung ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... cavern of the high rock, and hastily dressed herself: the steps held on right to the boat. Peeping out, half-dead with terror, she saw there four men, two of whom had just leaped from their horses, and turning ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... trouble. Of these she gathered, in their season, when the sun beamed on the earth like a maiden that loves and is beloved, a great deal to serve her for food when the snows hid the earth from her sight, and the cold winds from the fields of eternal frost obliged her to remain in her rude cavern. Though alone, she was happy. In the summer it was her amusement to watch the juniper and the alders, as they put forth, first their leaves, and then their buds, and when the latter became blossoms, promising to supply the fruit she loved, her observation ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... food-vessel is derived directly from the round-bottomed vessel of Neolithic times. Some of these round-bottomed bowls have been found with Neolithic remains at Portstewart, County Down, and there is one in the National Collection described as found in a cavern associated with stone implements beside the moat of Dunagore, near the town of Antrim. The development from the Neolithic bowl can be clearly traced in the Irish series. The earliest are flat, almost saucer-shaped bowls, which are generally covered all over with ornament, ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... loveliest seclusions in the world. It terminates in a semicircle of rocks of stupendous height, that seem to have been hewn down perpendicularly. At the head and centre of the vast amphitheatre, and at the foot of one of its enormous rocks, there is a cavern of proportional size, hollowed out by the hand of nature. Its opening is an arch sixty feet high; but it is a double cavern, there being an interior one with an entrance thirty feet high. In the midst of these there ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... was the end. We swept into a huge cavern of ice—through it—beyond it, into the green valley and the world that we love. And there, where the torrent splits up into a score of insignificant streams, we grounded and crawled to dry land and sat down ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... had failed her, womanlike, before the little sacrifice when she had unshrinkingly accomplished the larger one. Now, however, with determined hand, she threw the letters into the reddest cavern of her wood-fire and with hard dry eyes watched them burn. When the last scrap had writhed and fluttered and flamed into grey ash, she turned to her altar, and, extending her arm, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... eight Spaniards; Ovando marches against him; sues for peace; visits the Spanish camp; another war ensues; cruelty to his tribe; takes shelter with his wife and children in a large cavern; his rencounter with Juan Lopez; is overpowered and chained; sent to St. Domingo ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... awful wonders hid In yonder dread Pyramid, The home of magic fears; Of chambers vast and lonely, Watched by the Genii only, Who tend their masters' long-forgotten biers, And treasures that have shone On cavern walls alone, For thousand, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... small dining-table looked on the greenness of a lawny, lilac-sheltered garden, so that such light as filtered through the green jalousies was green also. There was a great block of ice somewhere in the room, and so cool it was, so greenly dim there, that it seemed almost like a cavern of the sea. Mildred wore a white dress, and, as was the fashion of the moment, a large black hat shadowed with ostrich-feathers. Once more on seeing her he had a startled impression of looking upon an ethereal ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... to Prim and the wounded Englishman and to young Oldershaw and the towering Regina who continually threw back her head to emit howls of laughter at Barclay's drolleries while she displayed the large red cavern of her mouth and all her wonderful teeth. After every one of these exhausting paroxysms she said, with her characteristic exuberance of sociability, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... wanted to show ye, too, ye remember," he said. They walked together down the bluff, to where another little cavern, low and shallow, hid itself behind huckleberry-bushes. "I kep' the money here," Proudfoot said, kneeling in the cramped entrance and delving among the rocks. He drew out a roll of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... of that same wisdom he bragged of—no worse, I'll allow, than the wisdom of print; not all love-songs, laments, or such naughty ballads as you will hear to-day, but the poetry of the more cunning bards. Our cavern, in its inner recesses, filled with the low rich chiming of his voice; his face, and hands, and whole body took part in the music. In those hours his character borrowed just that touch of sincerity it was in want of at ordinary times, for he was one of those who need trial and trouble to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... bit of tarnished gold from the wall paper, and, as though purposely, made the worn spots in the carpet unusually distinct. Meaningless china ornaments crowded the mantel, but there was no saving grace of firelight in the small black cavern beneath. A little stove, in one corner of the room, smoked industriously and refused to give out ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... reality they overhung the rudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that might have been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of his solitary retreat. For there was a cavern here under the frowning brow of granite, different from the many caves of which the girl knew in the rugged mountains only in that it was so roomy and at the same time so ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... disappeared, producing an ever-changing effect of light and shadow. At one moment a moon-bathed prospect stretched before me as far as the eye could reach, in the next I might have been looking into a cavern as some angry cloud swept across the face of the moon to plunge ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... old warrior; Was five-score winters old; Whose beard from chin to girdle Like one long snow-wreath roll'd:— 'At Yule-time in our chamber We sit in warmth and light, While cavern-black around us Lies the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... to be, the two Englishmen hesitated and looked at one another. One might almost have supposed that the cellar was garrisoned by one of those hungry ogres of the fairy tale, whose cavern no one could enter with impunity. There was a moment's silence; but the Englishmen were ashamed to retreat, and one of them, descending the five or six steps leading to the cellar, gave the door a kick that made it rattle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace. A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the sea as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... still behold in memory the stately, fearful head, with its eyes of emerald fire and sweeping, sea-green mane, as it reared its neck for a moment as if to scale the ladder the sunbeams had thrown down when first emerging from its temple-cavern; and, later, the mottled, monstrous body, as coil after coil was gradually unwound, until it seemed at last to lie in all its loathsome length for roods along the silent, shell-paved streets—the scaly monarch, of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... to assuage, danger of which you long to warn, sadness which you would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive, though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, homes made happy, paths cleared, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like an inverted forest of children's toy-trees. I then came to a round hole, apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... love their own nests; the beasts haste to their own lodgings in the brake; the voluptuous fish, roaming the fields of ocean, returns to its own well-known cavern. How much more should Rome be loved ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... of the cavern below the dock descended the jailer of six feet two—the only big thing about the place. He was a resolute-looking man in full uniform, and I can almost feel the breathless silence that pervaded the court during ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... while Meir reached the square of the town. It seemed to him that he came back to the light of day from a dark cavern. The sunlight flooded everything around, dried the mud, and kindled golden sparks in the windows of the houses. In the yard of the pious. Reb Jankiel, some large, new structure was being erected. The red-haired owner inspected the workmen personally, evidently satisfied with the increase ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... believes in anarchy, the other doesn't—the one who does invites the one who does not to come with him and see what anarchy is. This he does, and, after a good supper of lobster mayonnaise, the two get down to a subterranean cavern where are assembled half the anarchists of the world, precisely six; they call themselves by the names of the week, with a leader, who is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... what makes most of the trouble for people who are after his pelt. Morgan Clark, the old bear hunter of Siskiyou, never hesitates about going into a den in the winter to drive out a bear, provided the cavern is wide enough to let the bear pass him. He takes a torch in his hand and stalks boldly in, because his experience has made the proceeding ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... of the speaker's hand on his arm and started involuntarily. How could this strange fellow know that Frank Langlois was dead—if he was dead? And was he? They were surrounded by inky blackness. It was the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern, a mine. This was a gold mine. Three minutes ago their electric torch had flickered out and they had been unable to make it ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... threatened his beloved town. So when they moved on, he followed them, slipping along behind rocks and bushes, until suddenly they disappeared as if the earth had swallowed them. Peter groped about hunting for them until at last he saw a faint light shining from out a dark cavern among the rocks. Then, though he knew how dangerous it was, he followed the light and found himself ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah, and passing by Beth-Jairim, Scilo, Mount Moriah, Beth-Nubi, Ramah, Joppa, Jabneh, Azotus, Ascalon, built by Esdras, Lud, Tiberias, where are some hot springs, Gish and Merom, which is still a spot visited by Jewish pilgrims, Kedesh and Laish, near the cavern, where the Jordan takes its rise, the traveller left the land of Israel, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... the undertaking, I had determined to employ the first fine morning in visiting the cavern beneath the fall. The guide recommended my companion and myself to set out as early as six o'clock, that we might have the advantage of the morning sun upon the waters. We came to the guide's house at the appointed hour, and disencumbered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... and nest boxes, of coarse wicker, boards nailed together, hollow bark from the hemlock logs, even worn-out tin pails, had all been transferred. The cellar had been well banked from the outside, and its darksome cavern held good store of apples, pork, and potatoes. There was dried beef in the stairway, squashes in the cupboard, flour in the pantry, and the great gentle black cow in the barn was a wonderful milker. In three ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... the only other backboned friend who shared the root-world with me, and then listened to a high, sweet tone, which came forth in swinging rhythm. It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the semi-darkness, and then I saw what the gecko saw—a big yellow-bodied fly humming in this cavern, and swinging in a small orbit as she sang. Now and then she dashed out past me and hovered in mid-air, when her note sank to a low, dull hum. Back again, and the sound rose and fell, and gained ten times in volume from the echo or reverberations. Each time she passed, the little lizard ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... on it? Truly these things were ordered by Him who kept this woman safe from the tempest, as well when she awoke as when she slept. But whence might this woman have meat and drink, and how could her sustenance last out to her for three years and more? Who, then, fed Saint Mary the Egyptian in the cavern or in the desert? Assuredly no one but Christ. It was a great miracle to feed five thousand folk with five loaves and two fishes; but God in their great need sent ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... like to see them dancing in the moonlight, and hear the clatter of their trinkets and shields? You would like to meet old King Alberich, and Mimi the smith? You would like to see that cavern yawn open... [points to right] and fire and steam break forth, and all the Nibelungs come running out? ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... into the cavern—or what Keefe had called the Hole—for less than a hundred yards before his strong flashlight sent its lancing beam into a stone wall. At his feet was a crevice which went straight down as though it had been measured by a giant square. He got to his knees and looked over. Playing ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... cavate dwellings, while a good example of the cavern type of ruins, is so closely associated, both in geographical position and in archeological remains, with other types in Verde valley, that we are justified in referring them to one and the same people. The number of these troglodytic dwelling places on the Verde is very large; indeed ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... the cavern witnessed not their bliss; In love, a point once gained, naught feels amiss, If trees could speak that grew within the dell, What joys they viewed—what stories they might tell! The park, the lawn, the pleasure grounds, and bow'rs, The belts of roses, and the beds of flow'rs, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... dieselectric truck. A man emerged from its cab, waving an unhurried arm, and the car swung around to the rear of the van. There was a tailgate lowered, forming a ramp; above it, the huge double doors opened on a cavern of blackness. The car slid up the ramp, and the man outside pushed it in after them and closed the doors. Presently the truck ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... he signalled to stop. Hans sat down at once. The lamps were hung upon a projection in the lava; we were in a sort of cavern where there was plenty of air. Certain puffs of air reached us. What atmospheric disturbance was the cause of them? I could not answer that question at the moment. Hunger and fatigue made me incapable of reasoning. A descent of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... they are just out. Well, buy one of them—they were invented here—and carry it to some dismal cavern, where the foot of man never treads: make Cheetham grind your blades in another county: and who will ever know? Go to him, and don't say a word, but just ask him for your month's salary. Then he will open the door of business himself—safe. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... tree till our luggage came up. The servants had mistaken the way, and one of the janissaries was obliged to go in search of them. We set forward again at eight, and rode till 1.30 P.M. We then rested near a rivulet, in the shade of a small cavern in the front of the mountain, commanding an extensive view of the rich plain, nearly the whole of which was in a state of cultivation. Almost all the crops were cut. On the mountain above us, Jacob and Laban ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... fill the air, and the sweetest sounds of music absorbed my sense of hearing; my limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that I seemed to rise from the earth, and gradually mounted into the bright luminous air, leaving behind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruins with which it was strewed. Language is inadequate to describe what I felt in rising continually upwards through this bright and luminous atmosphere. I had not, as is generally the case with persons in dreams ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... very hour Of guilty pride and power Full on the circumcised Thy vengeance fell. Then the fields were heaped with dead, Then the streams with gore were red, And every bird of prey, and every beast, From wood and cavern ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... decline. Solon made ten divisions of life, and Varro made five. Ovid ingeniously compares life to the four seasons. Epimenides of Crete is said to have lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, the last fifty-seven of which he slept in a cavern at night. Gorgias, a teacher, lived to one hundred and eight; Democritus, a naturalist, attained one hundred and nine; Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, lived to one hundred; and Diogenes, the frugal and slovenly, reached ninety ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... with oil and coal dust as to lose the slightest semblance to human beings, feverishly shovelled coal, throwing it rapidly and evenly over roaring furnaces kept at a fierce white heat. The vast boilers, shaken by the titanic forces generating in their cavern-like depths, sent streams of scalding, hissing steam through a thousand valves, cylinders and pistons, turning wheels and cranks as it distributed the tremendous power which was driving the steel monster through ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... pity at all was the only pity fit for that place.[27] There was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... played by the mirror in the devotions of the Japanese is carried back by them to a tale in their mythology which relates the disappearance into a cavern of the Sun-goddess Amaterasu, and the manner in which she was enticed forth by being led to believe that her reflection in a mirror that was shown to her was another ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... the question that so large a quantity of water had accumulated in any old workings, for the plan of the pit had been repeatedly inspected by them all. Some inclined to the belief that there must have been some immense natural cavern above the workings, and that when the fire in the pit burned away the pillars left to support the roof, this must have fallen in, and let the water in the cavern into the mine; others pointed out that there was no example whatever of a cavern of such ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... Ibid. In the Wigalois, a story is told of a cavern in Asia full of everlasting flames, where costly fellat was made by the Salamanders, which was ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship's bowels where, I lay; and the misery of my situation drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head foremost into the depths of the sea, I have not ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of ruins until we came to a range of hills, where we found a curious opening in them, which we soon ascertained to be artificial, with the rock hewn away so as to give free egress from within. Providing ourselves with torches, we penetrated this cavern, and discovered it to be an ancient mine, with the implements of the miners scattered around, as if the artisans had been suddenly interrupted in their labors. There were crowbars quite like our own, though not of iron, chisels, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... returned to her, or best of all, perhaps, found her for the first time in the spring at twenty-one or so, like a fair woman forlorn upon the mountains, the Ariadne of our race who placed in our hand the golden thread that led us out of the cavern of the savage to the sunlight and to her. But though, indeed, I think all this may be clearer to those who come to her in their first youth by the long white roads with a song on their lips and a dream in their hearts—for the song is drowned ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... the cavern floor was a crystal pool into which, from a ledge high up on the wall, fell a broad cascade almost like a flowing veil, and the strong light shed by the giant bird shone through this on to the rock behind it. And there the Prince saw the most ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac

... demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound, with the chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted down the corridor leading to the servants' quarters, as the more likely line of escape. As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern of the cloak room, and saw a short, black-coated figure, presumably an attendant, standing a little way back ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... was pouring in at the back windows of Mrs. Farmer's long, uneven parlour, making the dusky room look like a cavern with a fire at one end of it. The furniture was all in its cool, figured summer cretonnes. The glass flower vases that stood about on little tables caught the sunlight and twinkled like tiny lamps. Claude had been sitting there ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... cliff was seen, Where sea-birds hover'd craving; And, all around, the craggs were bound With weeds—for ever waving. And, here and there, a cavern wide Its shad'wy jaws display'd; And near the sands, at ebb of tide, A shiver'd mast was seen to ride, Where ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... emperor wishing to win these soldiers to renounce their faith by his entreaties and lenity, gave them a considerable respite till he returned from an expedition. During the emperor's absence, they escaped, and hid themselves in a cavern; which the emperor being informed of at his return, the mouth of the cave was closed up, and they all ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life —the future that never comes—the grave of many noble births —the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, BEHOLD! BEHOLD!! You may trust to what I say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence. Suffer me to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to fetch a candle, while Mr. Jardine with cautious hand explored the cavern-like recesses between the bath and its outer shell, recesses in which lurked serpent-like convolutions of hot-water pipes and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... the biggest of its kind, its children were grown up, it was hollow. The wintry blast that sent it down had broken it across and revealed a great hole where should have been its heart. A long wooden cavern in the middle of a sunny opening, it now lay, and presented an ideal home for a Lynx when she sought a sheltered nesting-place for ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... hill in the direction of the spot from whence the cry "The priest has come!" kept ringing through the air, they came upon a natural cavern, the mouth of which was covered by a huge boulder, nicely poised in such a position that all exit from it was rendered an impossibility. Peering through the crevices at the side, they could distinctly see the figure of a monkey ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... in his cavern Hid the naked troglodyte, And the homeless nomad wandered Laying waste the fertile plain. Menacing with spear and arrow In the woods the hunter strayed.... Woe to all poor wretches stranded On those cruel ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the French Dauphin still exists, or a kind of ghost of him; the three Tells, too, in the cavern of Uri. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... from his seat, and strode to and fro through the hut. His pulses beat to bursting; there was a tingling at his finger-tips; to his startled senses the hut seemed to expand, to become a cavern, interminable and unfathomable, wide as the vaulted earth, filled with awful, shadowy places and strange, lurid lights. The mender of nets became a ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... shearing feasts he was not above the pleasures of the country dance, the Ledder-te-spetch, as it was called, with its one, two, three—heel and toe—cut and shuffle. And his strong voice, that was answered oftenest by the echo of the mountain cavern, was sometimes heard to troll out a snatch of a song at the village inn. But Ralph, though having an inclination to convivial pleasures, was naturally of a serious, even of a solemn temperament. He was a rude son of a rude country,—rude of hand, often ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... into beasts, oxen, hogs, dogs, foxes, flies, frogs; all are hideous or dangerous. Cursing as he goes along, Gower drives before him, with hissing distichs, the strange herd of his monsters, who "dart sulphureous flames from the cavern of their mouth."[618] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... toward the arch and water-cavern of the point," whispered Ghita, whose hands were clasped on her breast as if to keep down her emotions. "That may yet ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... cavern. Rinaldo, indignant at his companions' cowardice, for they had no courage but in the open field, and dared not venture into Rome, looked at ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... two other smaller sepulchres, which were also new, and with depressed fronts. A pathway, beginning on the western side of this rock, ran all round it. The ground in front of the sepulchre was higher than that of the entrance, and a person wishing to enter the cavern had to descend several steps. The cave was sufficiently large for four men to be able to stand close up to the wall on either side without impeding the movements of the bearers of the body. Opposite the door was a cavity in the rock, in ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... however, remains intact in the walled cavern, and thus preserves for us the only Apis which has come down to our days. And one recalls the emotion of Mariette, when, on entering it, he saw on the sandy ground the imprint of the naked feet of the last Egyptian who left ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... at a moment least expected by the besiegers. Five hundred royalists were blown into the air. Ortiz, a Spanish captain of engineers, who had been inspecting the excavations, was thrown up bodily from the subterranean depth. He fell back again instantly into the same cavern, and was buried by the returning shower of earth which had spouted from the mine. Forty-five years afterwards, in digging for the foundations of a new wall, his skeleton was found. Clad in complete ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... bed to obey a call of nature, I crawled on all fours with extreme distress, in order not to foul the place I slept in. For one hour and a half each day I got a little glimmering of light, which penetrated that unhappy cavern through a very narrow aperture. Only for so short a space of time could I read; the rest of the day and night I abode in darkness, enduring my lot, nor ever without meditations upon God and on our human frailty. I thought it certain that a few more days would put an end of my unlucky life in ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... inclosures were fenced off for human tenantry, and the glow of embers gave a pleasant, homelike look to the place. Cavern after cavern extended back into the cliff, a network of them, but how far they went would be hard to tell. Perhaps the cave in all its subterranean ramifications has ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... indeed, is capable of discerning the connection between cause and effect. Notwithstanding the extraordinary intelligence which this quadruped exhibits upon some occasions, upon others he shows himself to be one of the most stupid brutes imaginable. For example, when he has taken possession of a cavern, and the courageous hunter enters with a torch and rifle, it is said he will, instead of forcibly ejecting the intruder, raise himself upon his haunches and cover his eyes with his paws, so as to exclude the light, apparently thinking that in this situation he can not be seen. The ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... have its heavenly patron, its departmental deity, and Hermes protects thieves and raiders, "minions of the moon," "clerks of St. Nicholas." His very birth is a stolen thing, the darkling fruit of a divine amour in a dusky cavern. Il chasse de ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... in coasting along this island, that to the N.E. there existed a creek, opposite to what appeared to be a large cavern. All around this cavern he remarked a number of large white spots, which looked like a flock of sheep. Had time allowed, he might have found anchorage opposite the creek. I fancied I saw a cascade issuing ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... mantle round his manly form, And sighed as on his cavern floor he lay; His bosom heaved with passion's varying storm, While he to melancholy thoughts gave way, And mused on deeds of many a by-gone day. Scenes of the past before his vision rose— The fearless clans o'er whom he once held sway, The bloody battle-field ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... the numerous islands with which this sea is strewn—to vessels a simple sandbank—to us an immense cavern. Chance led me to discover it, and chance served ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... standing close under it, their heads and necks were tolerably shaded. For ourselves, a recess of the rock afforded a delightful retreat, whilst the immediate vicinity of the sea enabled us every now and then to take a run, and plunge amidst its breakers, and again return to the shelter of the cavern. For two or three hours we remained in, under the protection of the rock, without clothes, and occasionally bathing to cool ourselves. The native boy and I derived great advantage from thus dipping in the sea, but it was a long time before I could induce the man to follow our example, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... wrong with the lock; at any rate it swung open. Pursuing my researches as to the depth of the marble I advanced boldly and, the place being dark, struck a match. Evidently the marble did continue, as I could see by the glittering roof of a cavern, for such it was. But the floor attracted my attention as well as the roof, for on it were numerous cases not unlike coffins, bearing the stamp of a well-known Birmingham firm, labelled "fencing iron" and addressed to Messrs. Marnham ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... the rude cabin was completed. It contained one long room; and at the back a small compartment partitioned off from the rest, and built against and around a shallow cavern in the huge rock. This compartment was for Joan. There were a rude board door with padlock and key, a bench upon which blankets had been flung, a small square hole cut in the wall to serve as a window. What with her own few belongings and the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... proceed to it down a lovely and romantic dell, rendered umbrageous by a forest of trees and grape vines; and passing by the ruins of saltpetre furnaces and large mounds of ashes, you turn abruptly to the right and behold the mouth of the great cavern and as suddenly feel the coldness of ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... of her. Cadmus was the name of her brother, and he and his mother went far and wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered. Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Macintosh, whom he had got nicely at the end of his fore- sight Kavanagh had hardly fired, however, and had not time to open the breach and put another cartridge into his rifle, before he heard a noise in the cavern-temple behind him, and, turning sharply, saw a figure with a sword in the right-hand and a shield on the left arm, literally bounding ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... If there had been a little noise to make the shadows less ghostly; if Suliman had not been full of half- digested superstition; or if he had not overheard enough to be aware that a prodigious, secret plot was in some way connected with that cavern, he could have kept his courage up by ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... light glares and beats, And the shadow flits and Meets And will not let me be; And I loathe the squares and streets, And the faces that one meets, Hearts with no love for me; Always I long to creep Into some still cavern deep, There to weep, and weep, and weep My whole soul ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the said Richard Gaylord came to his death in Luray Cavern on the 19th day of May, by cerebral hemorrhage, the result of a wound inflicted by some blunt weapon in the hands of a person or persons unknown. We recommend that Radnor Fanshaw Gaylord be held for trial before the ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... hiding-place, with twelve men. Having a presentiment of his approaching end, he pauses and recalls to mind his past life and exploits. He then takes leave of his followers, one by one, and advances alone to attack the dragon. Unable, from the heat, to enter the cavern, he shouts aloud, and the dragon comes forth. The dragon's scaly hide is proof against Bewulf's sword, and he is reduced to great straits. Then Wiglaf, one of his followers, advances to help him. Wiglaf's shield is consumed by the dragon's fiery breath, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... and passed over the face of the earth; then gathered itself together and condensed and quivered and became an Afrit, whose head was in the clouds and his feet in the dust. His head was like a dome, his hands like pitchforks, his legs like masts, his mouth like a cavern, his teeth like rocks, his nostrils like trumpets, his eyes like lamps, and he was stern and lowering of aspect. When the fisherman saw the Afrit, he trembled in every limb; his teeth chattered and his spittle dried up and he knew not what to do. When the Afrit saw him, he said, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... periodical really was, whether Gentleman's Magazine or Sylvanus Urban; and a reader who knew little about English would be led to think that "appeared by" was equivalent to "was commenced by," unless, indeed, he came to the conclusion that its apparition took place in the neighborhood of some cavern known by the name ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... was pathetically subdued, yet reached every part of the auditorium, kindling the ear with its singularly mellowing sweetness. To Courtlandt it resembled, as no other sound, the note of a muffled Burmese gong, struck in the dim incensed cavern of a temple. A Burmese gong: briefly and magically the stage, the audience, the amazing gleam and scintillation of the Opera, faded. He heard only the voice and saw only the purple shadows in the temple at Rangoon, the oriental sunset splashing the golden dome, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... Wives, that they could practise at their ease, without having to burrow in a corner, like rats. The stage was almost empty. After the live street, it was a pallid light, in which ghosts moved. The New Zealanders, it need not be said, no longer fancied themselves in the cavern of Bluebeard or Puss-in-Boots; they had seen too many stages during the past two years. The slant of the floor, the roughness or smoothness of the boards was what interested them, for fear of falls ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... "Dear heart!" said they, "how freely she will breathe In the open air of heaven!" She stood in the morn Like a belated autumn-flower in spring, Dazed by the rushing of the new-born life Up the earth's winding cavern-stairs to see Through window-buds the calling, waking sun. Or as in dreams we meet the ghost of one Beloved in youth, who walketh with few words, And they are of the past. Yet, joy to her! She too from earthy grave was climbing up Unto the spirit-windows high ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... emerge from the defile, than we became sensible of a dull, jarring sound; and Yoomy was almost tempted to turn and flee, when informed that the sea-cavern, whose mouth we had passed, was believed to penetrate deep into the opposite hills; and that the surface of the amphitheater was depressed beneath that of the lagoon. But all over the lowermost hillsides, and sloping into the glen, stood grand ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... gave the poor creature a draught of water with a few drops in it from a phial of cordial which he had brought with him. The hours passed, each seeming longer than a day; at last the convulsive twitching of the jaws ceased; the jaw had fallen, the dark cavern of the toothless mouth yawned in a set grimace, the vitreous eyes were turned up into the head: the old man was dead. But Don Silverio did not leave him; two sows and a hog were in a stye which was open to the house; he knew that they would come and gnaw ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... objections were got over, and though she did not give an immediate assent, she agreed to meet him later in the afternoon, when she walked with him to the southern point of the island called the Beal, or, by strangers, the Bill, pausing over the treacherous cavern known as Cave Hole, into which the sea roared and splashed now as it had done when they visited it together as children. To steady herself while looking in he offered her his arm, and she took it, for the first time as a woman, for the ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... Standing on the fallen tree trunk at its axis on the outcrop, he began to rock it gently. To Johnny's surprise it began to move. The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a mass of rock, and revealing a cavern behind large enough to admit a man. Johnny gasped. The desperado coolly deposited the heavy stone on the tree beyond its axis on the rock, so that it would keep the tree in position, leaped from the tree to the rock, and quickly descended, at which ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... should be, so the desert now raged against the oasis that ventured to exist in its bosom. Every palm tree was the victim of its wrath, every running rill, every habitation of man. Along the tunnels of mimosa it went like a foaming tide through a cavern, roaring towards the mountains. It returned and swept about the narrow streets, eddying at the corners, beating upon the palmwood doors, behind which the painted dancing-girls were cowering, cold under their ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... no demons or spectres in it. This is quite in accordance with the master's caprice, but it considerably diminishes the interest of a work in other ways unsatisfactory. There may once have been something impressive in the shooting in of the rays at the top of the cavern, as well as in the strange grass that grows in the bottom, whose infernal character is indicated by its all being knotted together; but so little of these parts can be seen, that it is not worth spending time on a work certainly unworthy of the master, and in great part probably ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... while we brushed From the cask's head the crust of four long years. Say, ye who dwell upon Parnassian peaks, Nymphs of Castalia, did old Chiron e'er Set before Heracles a cup so brave In Pholus' cavern—did as nectarous draughts Cause that Anapian shepherd, in whose hand Rocks were as pebbles, Polypheme the strong, Featly to foot it o'er the cottage lawns:— As, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us All by ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... put wood in the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room, she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... which appear from below to terminate in sharp pinnacles, and have been named "Tissington Spires," from the village close by. About 200 yards beyond the "Church," on the Derbyshire bank, is the entrance to Reynard's Cave, a huge cavern with an entrance 40 feet high by 20 wide, from which the view ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... they cry, "she is not dead, she breathes! And we have staunched the damned wound and deep, The cavern-carven wound. She doth but sleep And will awake. Bring wine, and new-wound wreaths Wherewith to crown awaking her dear head, And make her Queen again."—But ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... sweet voice which rose from the cavern and joined with the parson's in the old song that has led strong men through ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... rocks, and shows a dreadful cavern in the distance. It is in this desert that PSYCHE, in obedience to the oracle, is to be exposed. A band of afflicted people come to bewail her death. Some give utterance to their pity by touching complaints and mournful lays, while the rest express their grief by a dance ...
— Psyche • Moliere

... nothing was to be made of Peterkin in the water. But we could not rest satisfied till we had seen more of this cave; so, after further consultation, Jack and I determined to try if we could take down a torch with us, and set fire to it in the cavern. This we found to be an undertaking of no small difficulty; but we accomplished it at last by the following means:—First, we made a torch of a very inflammable nature out of the bark of a certain tree, which we cut into strips, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... surrender, slid its ponderous bulk nearer and opened its mouth, leaving half an acre of lower jaw resting flush with the Island Queen's deck. Without hesitation, Jennifer stepped over the rail and vanished into the yawning pinkish cavern beyond. ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee



Words linked to "Cavern" :   natural enclosure, cave, hollow, core out, enclosure, cavern out, hollow out



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