"Gloom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out her candle, drew back her curtains, and looked out into the gathering darkness. An air of gloom and loneliness reigned over everything. Far out she could see white caps on the waves, but not a boat, or vessel of any kind. The ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... were cheerful—everything came in the day's work for them—but among the seniors on either side gloom prevailed. Even Ranger, the lighthearted, was snappish, as his fag discovered; and Denton, the amiable, hoped he would not, for his temper's sake, meet too many Moderns between morning and evening. The captain, though he kept up his usual ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... sleep for any of them. Lights burned dimly in the few rough log homes. The company's store was aglow, and the factor's office, a haven for the men of the wilderness, shot one gleaming yellow eye out into the white gloom. The post was awake. It was waiting. It was listening. It ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a sudden thunderstorm boiled up out of the sea: the sky became a vast brazen bowl, and a strange, coppery twilight bleached the lilies in the white garden to a supernatural pallor. The room, with its embroidered Moorish hangings, darkened to a rich gloom; but Mohammed touched a button on the wall, and all the quaint old Arab lamps that stood in corners, or hung suspended from the cedar roof, flashed out cunningly concealed electric lights. At the same moment, there began a great howling outside the door. Mohammed sprang to open ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... were so poor that Robert was obliged to work hard even when very young, and at fifteen he was his father's chief helper. In later years he described his life at Mt. Oliphant as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave." But poets are given to exaggeration, and doubtless the attractive picture of home life which he afterwards painted in the Cotter's Saturday Night is true in the main of the life in ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... them forth, Calm, blooming offspring of rejoicing earth, Never to sadden, ever to make gay, And chase the clouds of gloom and care away. ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... Christian era all was mystery on those plains of water that stretched beyond the sunset. It was believed that as one sailed toward our continent the day faded, and that if the mariner kept on he would be lost in hopeless gloom. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... is surpassed by nothing in the Revenger's Tragedy. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that the whole play, which is very unskilfully constructed, is by Tourneur, or perhaps by the author[281] of the Second Maiden's Tragedy. All the figures are shrouded in a blank starless gloom; to read the play is to watch the riot of devils. Here is an extract from the scene where Orlando, returning from the wars, hears that Charlemagne, his uncle, has married Ganelon's niece, and that his own hopes of succession have been ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Through the gloom he divined a new swiftness in her step, a certain sinuosity of movement that suddenly melted into immobility. A red spot had appeared close by, burned now on blackness; it was followed by another's footstep. A man, cigar ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... we listened, taken out of ourselves by her beauty and the tragedy of her voice, a figure came from the gloom into the light of the doorway, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the face of the earth was not more profound than the gloom which fell upon the captain's soul. Everything was incomprehensible. The simplest mechanical rules seemed falsified; the planets had defied the laws of gravitation; the motions of the celestial spheres were erroneous as those of a watch with a defective ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... masses of scented fungus and curious symbols, vanished in the darkness behind. The way was lined by ushers and officers in caparisons that gleamed like steel, and beyond their line, so far as my eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Ballade, of Chopin, begins slowly, with much dignity. The opening melody is one of sadness, almost gloom. The a tempo on second page contains four parts going on at the same time. At the piu forte, care must be taken to have the outer side of the hand well raised, and moved from the wrist. The idea here is one of great agitation and unrest. The fifth page ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... on the Pieve, and here it was that Titian was born. On every side rise great masses of rugged mountains towering up to the sky, with jagged peaks and curious fantastic shapes. Clouds float around their summits, and the mist will often wrap them in gloom and give them a strange and awesome look. At the foot of the craggy pass the mountain-torrent of the Pieve roars and tumbles on its way. Far-reaching forests of trees, with weather-beaten gnarled old ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... been infinitely best. His own will felt itself strong and determined enough for any such task. But Sir Arthur, in his strange, broken state, could not be brought to make decisions, and would often, after days of gloom and depression, pass into a fool's mood, when he seemed for the moment to forget and ignore the whole tragedy. Since he and Douglas had agreed with the trustees to sell the pictures, that sheer bankruptcy might just be escaped, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lately been passing in Guy's mind. He had gone on floating on the sunny stream of life at Hollywell, too happy to observe its especial charm till the change in Amy's manner cast a sudden gloom over all. Not till then did he understand his own feelings, and recognize in her the being he had dreamt of. Amy was what made Hollywell precious to him. Sternly as he was wont to treat his impulses, he did not look on his affection as an earthborn fancy, liable ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along the road, and there being next to nothing in the way of village or farmstead between me and Cornhill, I did not expect to meet one in the next stages of my journey. But as I sat there on the bank, under a thick hedge, my bicycle lying at my side, I heard steps coming along the road in the gloom—swift, sure steps, as of a man who walks fast, and puts his feet firmly down as with determination to get somewhere as soon as he may. And hearing that—and to this day I have often wondered what made ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... took a walk in some of the most agreeable environs of the city. The sky was clear, the air cool; and the purling streams, and gentle zyphyrs rustling in the trees, lulled the mind into an agreeable gloom. Albert, enchanted with the natural beauties that surrounded him, could not help exclaiming, "What a lovely evening!" He pressed his father's hand, and, looking up to him, said, "You know not, papa, what thoughts rise in my heart!" ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... gravely doubtful whether the men would discover the message in the gloom of their prison. It might fall to the floor and be trampled unperceived. And yet Jack Cockrell could not make himself believe that deliverance would be thwarted. He said a prayer and waited with his ear against the wall of the forecastle. There he leaned ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To purge themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error, they disavowed their consequences, explained their principles, excused their indiscretions, and unanimously pronounced the sounds of concord and faith. Yet a latent and almost invisible spark still lurked ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... poetry, and a novel to read when I am in the humour to read nothing else. Then I translate some French into English one day, and re-translate it the next; so that I have seven or eight pursuits going on at the same time, and this produces the cheerfulness of diversity, and avoids that gloom which proceeds from hanging a long while over a single book. I do not recommend this as a receipt for becoming a learned man, but ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... rocks; a foxglove or two towering high above the golden-green breckans; the red star of a crane's-bill among the velvet moss. Even if she were overawed by the solitariness of the Atlantic and the gloom of the tall cliffs and their yawning caves, surely here would be a haven of peace and rest, with sunshine, and flowers, and the pleasant murmur of the stream. What did it say, then, as one sat and listened in ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... contemplatively raised to the narrow window, through which she could see a flush of sunset mingling itself with the outer air; and Peggy scooped once, twice, thrice, four times; then she stopped, and, raising her head, there came into the far-away gloom of her eyes a quick sparkle like a flash of black lightning. She made another and entirely supplementary scoop, and then she stopped, and let the tin utensil fall into the barrel with ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... with wreathless brow, Walls stained with colours, not of paint, but thee. Moss, lichens, ferns, and lonely elder tree; That upon ruins gladly climb to bloom, And add a beauty where't is vain to be, Like to the soft moonlight in a prison's gloom, Or lovely maid in ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure, The scentless and the scented rose, this red, And of an humbler growth, the other[063] tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew, Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf That the wind severs from the broken wave, The lilac, various in array, now white, Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if Studious of ornament yet unresolved ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... its oxen dead, its women and children perishing of thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward the gold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as the cause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom no choice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. In general the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merely as the day's work ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... servile adoration; they have counselled you: "Bow down, these gods will avenge you." They have said: "Prostrate yourselves, these gods are just." They have said: "Throw yourselves to earth, these gods are good." They have declared them all powerful; shut them in sanctuaries of awful gloom, whence you are shown them once a year, to keep alive your terror of the Gods; and last, they have made you believe no man may touch these images and live. I tell you they lied—I will show you they lied to you. Behold the most mighty Ammon—the father of ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... It wa'n't any joy ride we had, either. All the way up Mr. Robert sits there fillin' the limousine with gloom thick enough to slice. I tried chirkin' him up with a few frivolous side remarks; but they don't take, and I sighs relieved when we're landed at the apartment hotel ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... and aid to the carrying out of one's life-purposes. First, ease to the heart. The presence of a friend is a beam of genial sunshine which lights up the house by his very appearance. He warms the atmosphere and dispels the gloom. The presence of a true friend for a day, a night, a week, lifts one out of himself, links him with new purposes, and immerses him in new joys. Friends breathe free with one another. They inspire ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... house with closed shutters through which the truth could not enter. And now that she had learned to see in the darkness that surrounded her, and even to forget the darkness, perhaps she would have been afraid of a ray of light filtering through the gloom. With Christophe she recalled a number of rather silly trivialities in a smiling and disjointed conversation in which Christophe could not be at his ease. He was irritated by her chatter; he could not understand how a creature who ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... tortuous stairway at the back of the house, descending mysteriously into cavernous gloom. "Let's go down here," she continued. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... religion began to lose its purity, it degenerated very fast; and, instead of a reverential awe and pleasing sense of duty, there succeeded a fearful gloom and unnatural horror, which were continually augmented as superstition increased. Men repaired in the first ages either to the lonely summits of mountains, or else to caverns in the rocks, and hollows ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... twenty-three hours on the rocks, she was hove into deep water. Now, however, it was a case of all hands to the pumps, and for a time it seemed as if they were slowly gaining on the in-rushing water, but suddenly there was an increase reported in the well, casting a shadow of gloom over all, but not for an instant staying the steady beat of the pumps. Shortly it was discovered that a fresh hand had been sent to the well and had sounded from a different mark than his predecessor, accounting for the sixteen to eighteen inches difference in the depth of water reported. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... had become overcast with dense black clouds, and the gloom to the valley was quite impenetrable. From their concealment the two Filmores could hear Redburn, Alice and the "General" singing up at the cabin, and it told them to be on their guard, as Dick might now come along at ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... warm dusk, moonless, windless. The sounds of the village street came in—laughter, a touch at a piano, a chiming clock. Bights starred and quickened in the blurred houses. Footsteps echoed on the board walks. The gate opened. The gloom yielded ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... fortunate this mode of approach had been selected. That part of the hut which rested on the road was so exposed as to throw the outline of objects into strong relief, whereas in the direction of the thickly wooded orchard all was impenetrable gloom. Had the intruder stolen unannounced upon the alarmed but determined officers by the latter route, the dagger of the first would in all probability have been plunged to its hilt in his bosom. As it was, each had sufficient presence of mind to distinguish, as it now doubled the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... grosser darkness or a thicker mist of moral pestilence brood over the surface of Pagan society than at the period when the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. There have been many ages when the dense gloom of a heartless immorality seemed to settle down with unusual weight; there have been many places where, under the gaslight of an artificial system, vice has seemed to acquire an unusual audacity; but never probably ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the heat of rage and of terror, we had gone farther than we had at first designed, our gloom and our silence on the morrow attested. True we were quit of our incubus, but on such terms as not even the severity of the times could excuse. For the man had but chastised us to our improvement; and to destroy ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... groves of the valley—the scene of many a prolonged feast, of many a horrid rite. Beneath the dark shadows of the consecrated bread-fruit trees there reigned a solemn twilight—a cathedral-like gloom. The frightful genius of pagan worship seemed to brood in silence over the place, breathing its spell upon every object around. Here and there, in the depths of these awful shades, half screened from sight by masses of overhanging ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... did not hesitate. He might be broken, but he could not be bent. Rising with dignity he withdrew from the convention, followed by a hundred others who ceased to act further with it. Subsequent proceedings reflected the gloom of a body out of which the spirit had departed. Delegates kept dropping out until only one hundred and ninety-nine remained to cheer the nomination of Horatio Seymour. On a roll call for lieutenant-governor, Philip Dorsheimer ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... back of the curtain, dressing for the trip, and his little petulant thought grew into gloom at the prospect of her being away. He felt irritated at Philip for ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... wore an air of gloom far deeper than his sense of the fitness of things would in the ordinary course of events have demanded. It was the result of the nervously picturesque English which had flowed with such ease from the forceful pens of Mr. Douglas ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... from the enraged she-bear who had invaded their coulee. When he awoke suddenly from out of these dreams he was trembling and his muscles were tense. He growled in the darkness. His eyes were round balls of searching fire. He whined softly and yearningly in that pit of gloom under the windfall, and for a moment or two he listened, for he thought that Neewa ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... however, no runaway horse to-day; but suddenly a great silence came over the people, and a sullen gloom that made a great despondency in my mind without my knowing why. Public solemnity affects even the youngest of us. At all events, it ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... time when he wrote this letter, the clouds of difficulty between the United States and France were thickening; a storm of war was evidently brewing, and the mutterings of the thunder were becoming more and more audible. In that hour of gloom, when the billows were beating heavily upon the ship of state, and the hurricane began to howl, his countrymen, remembering the faith, and fortitude, and courage, and skill, of their venerated pilot for eight years of commotion, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... forest went up steeply. I had not pushed two hundred yards into its gloom and confusion when I discovered that I had lost my way. It was necessary to take the only guide I had and to go straight upwards wherever the line of greatest inclination seemed to lie, for that at least would take me to a summit and probably to a view of the valley; whereas if I tried to make ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... went aft with Lund through the hunters' quarters. They were seated under the swinging lamp which had been lit in the gloom of the gale, playing poker, as usual. But all laid down ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... arm, not unconscious of its round shapeliness, as he helped her down the rather steep bank through the dense gloom. Then the two men joined hands, and carrying her easily between them, waded the shallow stream. The horses, not yet sufficiently rested to be frisky, accepted their burdens meekly enough, and, with ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... unlucky day, everything seemed against them; and as Miss Anstice stalked off to sit upon the platform by "sister" for the opening exercises, the girls felt it was all up with them, and a general gloom fell ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... our young men, unmarried, but with a mother among us. Maywood, at first very low with scurvy on the brig, had drifted into other ailments, and was now an invalid and much wasted. I will not dwell upon the pathetic parting between him and his aged mother, nor upon the deeper gloom that fell upon the colony. What was becoming of these men? None might know whither they were taken and none could guess their after-fate. Behind our efforts to be cheerful and industrious there were heavy hearts, and possibly thoughts ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... this Pant with the easy, steady, forward march of one who is certain of every step. Twice they had turned to avoid mine-props. They had gone back into the mine perhaps a hundred feet. Now, with not a spark of light shining out of the gloom, they had paused and his companion had uttered ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was a furious temper, an atmosphere of gloom and depression which permeated the house and made us feel funereal, impertinence of a quality difficult to endure, and the callous, unfeeling, almost inhuman characteristics which often belong in a high degree ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... well done, how beautiful to rest. Aye, lift your little ones to see her face, So calmly smiling in its coffin-bed! There is no wrinkle there,—no rigid gloom To make them turn their tender glance away; And when they say their simple prayer at night With folded hands,—instruct their innocent lips Meekly to say: "Our Father! may we live, And die like her." Her more than fourscore years Chill'd not in her the genial flow of thought Or energy of ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... Honest Man? He was scarce in the Courts. He seems very nearly as scarce in the Caucuses. You've had leaders of late of all sizes and sorts, And the gloom of the outlook is utter as Orcus's. Imperial, Royalist, Red Flag or White, Not one of them leads La ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... 18—.—Two years in the wilderness, and nothing gained. Gloom gathers around me. No little spot of blue sky can I discover. The hurricane has destroyed everything. I am sick, weak. O the deathly chills, the burning fever! O the lonesomeness, the heart-loneliness, of this dreary place! The lake, the sickening, freshwater ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... to soothe the weary eyes, What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room; What ghostly shades in awe-creating guise Are bodied forth within the teeming gloom. What echoes great of sad and soul-sick cries, And pangs of vague inexplicable pain That pay the spirit's ceaseless enterprise, Come thronging through the chambers of the brain, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... discovers in the simplest fare a relish unknown since childhood. You will find the broken rest and the troubled dreams which for years have made the midnight watches terrible, exchanged for the long refreshful sleep that makes one mouthful of the night. You will find the gloom and depression and anxiety which were growing your habitual temper, succeeded by a lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit which you cannot account for, but which you thankfully enjoy. We doubt not that some of our readers, filled with terrible ideas as to the violent and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... out of the train into the still grayer gloom of Highgate, she wondered, for the first time, where he was taking her. Had he a family, or did he live alone in rooms? On the whole she was inclined to believe that he was the only son of an aged, and possibly invalid, mother. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... came about that Mrs. Pendomer mounted, in meditative mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sobbing softly ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... passes to another world, Single he eats the fruit of evil deeds, Single, the fruit of good; and when he leaves His body, like a log or heap of clay, Upon the ground, his kinsmen walk away: Virtue alone stays by him at the tomb, And bears him through the dreary, trackless gloom. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... was the child of that precious one who had roamed with him through the sunny paths of infancy and youth, but whose maturer years were overshadowed by adversity and gloom! God had sent a pitying heart to her in the hour of her saddest need, and had gently led her back to the home whence her mother had been cruelly banished; that mother He had received into more beauteous mansions, but the child was left, to fulfill a noble and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... music ceased suddenly. The flap of the tent lifted towards the roadway, and Mr. Ormond sent a hail across the twilight gloom. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... at pains to dispel the gloom which, as he well knew, falls on those who love when one of the critical hours of life approaches. When they left the table he went into the library with the doctors and John, where they smoked many ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Landgrave perceived that it was past two. He rose to retire for the night, and stood for a moment musing with one hand resting upon the table. A momentary feeling of awe came across him, as his eyes travelled through the gloom at the lower end of the room, on the sudden thought, that a being so mysterious, and capable of piercing through so many impediments to the interior of every mansion in Klosterheim, was doubtless likely enough to visit the castle; nay, it would be no ways improbable ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ran off in opposite directions, Cass past the splash of light thrown across the road by the windows of the Hanover Inn, and on toward the scattered lights of Nancepean, Mark into the gloom of the deep lane down to Church Cove. It was a warm and humid evening that brought out the smell of the ferns and earth in the high banks on either side, and presently at the bottom of the hill the smell of the seaweed heaped up ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... may be the gloom which spreads over the community, it has pleased the Almighty Disposer of Events to add another shade to it by blending in this melancholy catastrophe the deaths of an eminent citizen, Virgil Maxcy, esq., lately charge d'affaires to Belgium; a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... this point, however, my driver reassured me. 'Nay, oo'be to home, theer's a light i' yon winder,' he said, pointing with his whip where a faint streak of yellow shone like a beacon into the surrounding gloom. The moon was struggling through the clouds, and I could dimly discern the outline of the quaint gabled front of the house, with its mullioned windows, and masses of clinging ivy. Dismounting at the old stone porch, I seized the knocker and beat a mighty tattoo. There was no reply. Even ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... men who have operated suggestion on the public mind of our time. They get a response from a certain number who thus cluster into a self-selected union of sympathy and propagate the cult of a view of life. Gloom and savagery, passion and crime, luxury and lust, romance and adventure, adultery and divorce, self-indulgence and cynicism, the reality of foulness and decay, are so suggested as to become centers on which receptive minds will organize and congenial ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... summertime, and, for there was no moon, the prairie stretched away before them shadowy, silent, and mysterious. Now they passed a sheet of water, gleaming wanly among thin willows; then they plunged into the deep gloom of a poplar bluff; and later, lurching down a steep declivity, swept through a shallow creek. The air was filled with the smell of dew-damped soil and unknown aromatic scents, the loneliness was impressive, the half-obscurity emphasized the strangeness ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... from those old times; I know at first it was a smoother one Than this that hurries past me now, and climbs So high, its far cliffs even hide the sun And shroud in gloom my journey scarce begun. I could not do quite all the world required— I could not do quite all I should have done, And in my eagerness I have outrun My strength—and I ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... not be explained. Was the projectile under the influence of some strange force? Did some body maintain it in the ether? It was henceforth evident that it would not touch any point upon the moon. Where was it going? Was it going farther away from or nearer to the disc? Was it carried along in the gloom across infinitude? How were they to know, how calculate in the dark? All these questions made Barbicane anxious, but he ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... headland on an iron-bound shore, Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge's roar, So is he buffeted on every side By drear misfortune's whelming tide, By every wind of heaven o'erborne Some from the sunset, some from orient morn, Some from the noonday glow. Some from Rhipean gloom of everlasting snow. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... murmured to himself. At first he did not feel like answering, but presently did so. Then from out of the gloom stalked a tall young fellow, dressed in the uniform of a cadet but with a face that was strangely painted ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... zodiacal fires had kindled the rays of vivid rose, that sprang into the zenith and cooled their flush in the pale blue of the upper air. Under the elms, swift southern twilight was already filling the arches with purple gloom, and when the heavy iron gate closed with a sullen clang behind her, Beryl drew a long deep breath of relief. On the sultry atmosphere broke the gurgling andante music of the "branch," as it eddied ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... situation of the post is exceedingly dreary, standing on the right bank of Frazer's River, having in front a high hill that shades the sun until late in the morning, and in the midst of "woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom" is saddening enough. Yet it has its agremens, its good returns,—the ne plus ultra of an Indian trader's happiness,—its good Indians, and its good fare; the produce of the soil ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... hope," said Captain Marsham. "Nature counteracts a great deal of the gloom by the brilliancy of stars and moon, and the reflection from the dazzlingly white earth. Then, too, I suppose we shall have ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom where all objects about her were dim and spectral; she was used to the thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the sentry pacing his watch; she had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore, Which will not look beyond the tomb, Which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... ruled them a fifty of winters (He a man-ruler wise was, manor-ward old) till A certain one 'gan, on gloom-darkening nights, a ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... of sunshine!—genial day, What balm, what life is in thy ray! To feel there is such real bliss, That had the world no joy but this, To sit in sunshine calm and sweet,— It were a world too exquisite For man to leave it for the gloom, The deep, cold shadow, of the tomb. Lalla Rookh: The Fire Worshippers. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... through the rest of the forest in safety, and when they came out from its gloom saw before them a steep hill, covered from top to bottom ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... The gloom which darkened the Roman capital during this melancholy period, shed a baleful influence on the progress of science throughout the empire, and literature languished during the present reign, in the same proportion as it had flourished in the preceding. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... for once, at least, the sun of love shone with full radiance into your soul. Your experience proves how bright and long is the afterglow if it is only real. This light, I believe, can never be extinguished, no matter how dense is the gloom which shadows ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... jealousy. As they saw the three "apart by themselves," their lessening forms ascending Hermon, and at last hidden from their view by the evening shades, can it be that the dispute began which cast a gloom over their Lord when He descended from that mountain ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... I said seemed to be true, for the next moment the group turned, and began to retreat along the road, moving briskly out of our sight. We were left in the thick gloom of a moonless evening and the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... from the glare of the day—his face to the house, his knees retracted. The frail bones in the thin tropical raiment seemed scarce more considerable than a fowl's; and Davis, sitting on the rail with his arm about a stay, contemplated him with gloom, wondering what manner of counsel that insignificant figure should contain. For since Herrick had thrown him off and deserted to the enemy, Huish, alone of mankind, remained to him to be a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorts of things! Immediately before me I saw the excitement of little Fyne—mere food for wonder. Further off, in a sort of gloom and beyond the light of day and the movement of the street, I saw the figure of a man, stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slight girlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom of villainous slums, of misery, of wretchedness, of a starved and degraded existence. It ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... he touched this figure. His light picked up the man's face from the gloom. That face was looking at him with wide-open eyes. The eyes saw nothing; but a kind of overwhelming astonishment still seemed mirrored there, caught in the last moment of consciousness as ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the darkness many times in the furtherance of his task of gathering wood for the fires. At last, after he had covertly inspected all the bags, bundles and dispatch boxes, he disappeared in the surrounding gloom and did not reappear at all. Dick Lynch, a man of about his own size, shape and coloring,—one of the six who had taken cover on the hillside—the firelight in his stead, carrying a fragment of broken spar. The change was not noticed by the men ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... were out of the town and jogging quietly along the quiet lanes; the driver leaned forward to get a light from his passenger's pipe; his face for a moment showed ruddy in the glow of the one lamp, then it sunk into gloom again. Captain Polkington did not notice; he did not notice the voices in intermittent talk, or the fume of their tobacco that hung on the moist air and mingled with the scent of the drooping violets in his coat. He knew nothing and ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Christian case, which is more striking from its monastic peculiarity, as a reflex picture of the other. We rely on the moulding circumstances of Scholasticism, its awakened intellect, its famishing eagerness from defect of books, its gloom from the exile of all feminine graces, and its towering participation in an interest the grandest of the age, as a sort of camera obscura for bringing down on the table before us a portraiture essentially the same of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... know. How does it go? 'I loved to choose my path and see, but now lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.' That is what I repeat over and over to myself. 'Lead, kindly light, amidst th' encircling gloom.' The encircling gloom! Oh, dear!" She suddenly broke off, "I wish morning would come." It did finally, and with it, when the approaching sun began to pinken the eastern sky, sleep for ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... no coward, whatever else she may have been, but as night began to close down around her she could not shut out from her mind entirely contemplation of the terrors of the long hours ahead before the rising sun should dissipate the Stygian gloom—the horrid jungle night—that lures forth all the prowling, preying ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Eblis rules," he said. "I fain would show Thee what thou hast not seen in the warm glow Of thy glad home. This blighted shore of mine No verdure hath, nor bloom, nor fruits that shine 'Mong drooping boughs. Far inland gloom lone peaks O'er blackened meads; or from their bare cones leaps Gaunt, crackling flame; or crawl like ashen veins The smouldering fires across the stricken plains. Deep in these yawning caves black shadows lie That shall be lifted never more. Come, I Enter! Know thou what treasure by the ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... night not so long ago; it was in the hot weather, and I was out in camp with my friend the police-officer. It was past sunset, and the air beneath the trees was full of luminous gloom, though overhead a flush still lingered on the cheek of the night. We were sitting in the veranda of a Government rest-house, enjoying the first coolness of the coming night, and talking in disjointed sentences of many things; and there came up the steps of the house ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... as they returned to the castle. They had been a very silent party all day. The gloom and darkness, the way in which their voices echoed in the empty hall, had exercised a depressing effect on them; and Donna Maria, generally the most talkative of the party, had not quite recovered from the shock which the exit of the bats had given her. It was not until she had cooked ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and the cedar-tree under which Lady Delahaye had sat an hour or so ago and prophesied evil things. My lips parted into a smile as I thought of her words. Did she indeed think me a creature so weak as to pile gloom on the top of sorrow, to shut my eyes to all the joys of life, because supreme happiness was denied me, to play skittles with my self-respect, and—marry a kitchen-maid? I, who had turned over great pages ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... swiftly up to the place. The men in the skiff knew well now what vessel it was, and their only thought was of instant flight. The oar was abandoned, the skiff was turned round, and away it darted into the gloom which overhung the mid-stream. A moment later, a police launch, with its brightly-burning lamp, and two Sikh policemen aboard, shot up to the spot where Jack clung to the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... predicts series of disasters and periods of gloom for struggling Greece, yet, at the close of the poem, a brighter age than any she has known is represented as gleaming upon her "through ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of Despair is Diffidence, or a distrust of God's faithfulness, and a want of confidence in His mercy. When a Christian follows such counsels, gloom and horror of mind will be produced, and life become ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... brooding over the past, or a morbid anticipation of the future. The woods surrounding Abbot's Manor were by no means depressing,—they were not dark silent vistas of solemn pine, leading into deeper and deeper gloom, but cheery and picturesque clumps of elm and beech and oak, at constant intervals with hazel-copse, hawthorn and eglantine,—true English woods, suggestive of delicate romance and poesy, and made magical by the songs of birds, whose silver-throated ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... night, the dark figures moving in it, the churchyard, the debtor's grave, the sham creditor, who had been loud in his protests under the light of the inn of the village, now quaking and trembling as the Bishop's warning comes out of the gloom, then stammering, and breaking down, and finally, with ghostly visions of a dead hand clutching at him from the grave, starting up, shrieking, and flying away. It is a nightmare. Let us not remember it when ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... he has recorded how deeply he was impressed by the novelty of his surroundings. 'The wind had died away; what light remained was reflected in a ghostly glimmer from the white surface of the pack; now and again a white snow petrel flitted through the gloom, the grinding of the floes against the ship's side was mingled with the more subdued hush of their rise and fall on the long swell, and for the first time we felt something of the solemnity of these ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... all there, these illustrious outlaws,—Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre has the word. It is midnight and past, he is still speaking. Meantime Gamelin in the Council Hall, his bent brow pressed against a window, looks out with a haggard eye and sees the lamps flare and smoke in the gloom. Hanriot's cannon are parked before the Hotel de Ville. In the black Place de Greve surges an anxious crowd, in uncertainty and suspense. At half past twelve torches are seen turning the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, escorting a delegate of the Convention, clad in the insignia of office, who ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... tables and the men who sat behind them. Cora's natural buoyancy vanished. The men before him met his gaze with rigid, unbending solemnity. The rain beat mournfully against the windows, blurring the glass, casting the high apartment in a half gloom. Nobody moved or spoke. All looked at him. The echo of his footsteps died, and the room was cast in stillness except for the soft dashing of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the streets; they were flocking to their organizations, in order to receive orders and to learn the details of the victory. One would hardly have supposed from their appearance that the victory was theirs; they had become so accustomed to gloom that it was difficult ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a low voice, and the thrup, thrup of the footsteps began again, not a man being visible in the gloom. ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... answer. Gloom had settled on the face that Lewis had seen only alight. Lewis, too, was silent. His life with Ann and the Reverend Orme had taught him much. He recognized ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... like the sails of a windmill; the "hymns of lofty cheer" not only "shook the depths of the desert gloom," but the small children on their little benches, and the schoolhouse literally rang "to the anthems of the free!" When "the ocean eagle soared," Billy appeared to be going bodily up, and the "pines of the forest ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... relief, the gray gloom lightened, and dawn broke. Never had I been so glad to see the morning. While dressing I cast gratified glances at the ragged hole in the window. With the daylight my courage had returned, and I began to have a sort of pride in ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... "it may have been a chug-chug. Anyway, it threw a wide arc of light into the gloom and stopped at the door of No. 10. A few moments later the door of the boudoir was flung open and the Chancellor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... Occasionally bright and beautiful ideas flitted across his imagination; visions of bliss, experienced for a moment, and then lost for ever, as if to render more profound the darkness by which they are surrounded. They are given with exquisite beauty; but they shine amidst the gloom like sunbeams struggling through the clouds. He inherited from the dark ages the austerity of the cloister; but he inherited with it the deep feelings and sublime conceptions which its seclusion had generated. His mind was a world within itself. He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Late and at last appears the land hard by, Appears a city: faint and weary-limbed With that grim struggle, through the surf they strain To land, sore grieving for the good ship lost, And shipmates whom the terrible surge dragged down To nether gloom; so, Troyward as they fled From battle, all those Trojans wept for her, The Child of the resistless War-god, wept For friends ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to the corner of the window now and cautiously peered out. The sky was overcast; below, faint markings could just be discerned; beyond, Cimmerian gloom—Strathorn wood. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... wych-elm. A lilac-bush or two, a white rose-tree, and a few laburnums, all old and gnarled enough, were planted round the chapel yard; and the casement windows of the chapel were made of heavy-leaded, diamond-shaped panes, almost covered with ivy, producing a green gloom, not without its solemnity, within. This ivy was the home of an infinite number of little birds, which twittered and warbled, till it might have been thought that they were emulous of the power of praise possessed by the human creatures within, with such ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... spirit which animated His assuring words to His disciples, 'I have overcome the world,' changed as they passed through the moonlight down to the valley, and when they reached the garden deep gloom lay upon Him. His agitation is pathetically and most naturally indicated by the conflict of feeling as to companionship. He leaves the other disciples at the entrance, for He would fain be alone in His prayer. Then, a moment after, He bids the three, who had been on the Mount of Transfiguration ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... accomplished this in safety, and once more paused, his back pushed hard to the prison wall, while the warder passed, whose form he could now even make out, it was so immediately above him; then he crossed the yard with a swift but anxious step to its north corner, and peered about in the gloom for the promised rope; the spout was there, smooth and ineffectual enough as a means of exit, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... here, in their own haunt, and her hostess has led the way hither, somewhat flustered, gasping many apologies for the plainness of the apartment. A plain apartment it is: dark, bare-boarded, dingy-walled. And not merely a material gloom pervades it. There is a spiritual gloom, also—the subtly oppressive atmosphere of a room where life has ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... to some distance, when we heard the tramp of horses coming along a road which led from the Monteverdes' house, and Dona Dolores, with her father and four domestics, all armed, came up. She sat her steed, as far as I could judge in the fast gathering gloom, like a person who had thorough command over it. She rode up to me, as if desirous of speaking; and I took the opportunity to inquire for my friend Juan, observing that he had not returned to ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... stern-way upon her to carry her the prescribed distance from the beach without the aid of the oars. As we stood for a moment watching her, we were much disconcerted to observe how distinctly she could be seen upon the surface of the starlit water by eyes which had become accustomed to the surrounding gloom. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to settle over us at last, adding the final touches of uncertainty and horror to the gloom. We pushed on with necessary cruelty, forcing the tired horses to their utmost, searching every ravine and every slope for a feed; but only ferns and strange green poisonous plants could be seen. We were angling up the side of the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... however, is undeniable and the mind of man can never wholly escape it. Familiarity may temper, but inborn human superstition is indestructible. The brooding silence will shadow the lightest nature. The storms must ever inspire wonder. The gloom hushes the voice. And so the growing dread. Man may curse the hills in his brutal moments, the thoughtful may be driven to despair, the laughter-loving may seek solace in tears of depression. But the fascination clings. There is no escape. The cloy of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... associated him with the great mystery of the young nobleman; perhaps she had been simply attracted by the easy air with which he cocked his hat and swung his gloves;—or, perhaps it was simply chance. But so it was that in the gloom of the evening she met him just round the corner opposite to the "Duchess of Edinburgh," and the happy acquaintance was commenced. No doubt, as in all such cases, it was the gentleman who spoke first. Let us, at any rate, hope so for the sake of Paradise Row generally. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... flower of spring When the winter airs were cold, And the birds began to sing, And the gloom ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... mother in his swimming eyes, Of abbot's line—with dirk half drawn, fearing, Hoping, praying, as his gentler nature bade That life and light would not go out together. The hope seem'd vain. From out the gloom there came The grinding keel—the tread of hurrying feet— Clashing of words, of steel, and all was dark— And all was still. But hark! a sound—the faint Breathing of one who swims with pain, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... every thing. It was so at this time. It seemed but a moment after sunset, and yet every thing was growing indistinct. The clumps of trees grew black; the houses and walls of the city behind all faded into a mass of gloom. The stars shone faintly. There was ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... his teeth, a gentle hissing, until a shadow seemed to stir from the far corner of the cell where the torchlight did not fall. Forth into the light hobbled a great gray rat, gaunt, and scarred, and lame. At sight of Wardo it whisked back into the gloom; again Nicanor whistled; again it appeared, and again vanished. A third time, emboldened, it essayed, and came to Nicanor warily, dazed in the unwonted light. Nicanor threw a bit of cloth torn from his tunic over its head, fastening it so that the beast could neither bite nor see, tied its ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... seeing those wonderfully green hills which landlock the harbour. To me the verdant woods and hills were delightful after the brown plains and interminable prairies on which I had spent many months. As the lights of Queenstown began to speck the slowly gathering gloom, Miss Brande asked me to point out Rostellan Castle. It could not be seen from the vessel, but the familiar legend was easily recalled, and this led us to talk about Irish tradition with its weird romance and never failing pathos. This interested ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... share, this must have been my utmost hope, and the condition in which I must still have found myself need not to be expatiated on. In what light, then, shall I see, in what words shall I relate, the colonel's kindness? O my dear Amelia! he hath removed the whole gloom at once, hath driven all despair out of my mind, and hath filled it with the most sanguine, and, at the same time, the most reasonable hopes of making a comfortable provision for yourself and my dear children. In the first place, then, he will ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm of Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the prandial gloom Of union forced that fatal custom Decrees to wither "youth and bloom," (The phrase is from Sohrab and Rustum) I've suffered boredom to the full; Professors dull—of Hindostani! Dull wits, dull statesmen, dandies dull— He wasn't dull—was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... rose a gigantic tower, like the Tower of Babel, leading the eye up and up. His breast filled with a strange pleasure that was almost pain. The enchanted temple drew him across the square; he saw a poor bare-headed woman going in, and he followed her. Then a wonderful golden gloom fell upon him, and a sense of arches and pillars and soaring roofs and curved walls beautiful with many-colored pictures; and the pleasure, that was almost pain, swelled at his heart till it seemed as if it must burst his breast. Then he saw the poor bare-headed woman kneel ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... melancholy into her heart. So much, that not all the honours to which her father had been restored—not all the compliments paid to herself, nor the Court gaieties in which she was expected to take part—could win her from a gloom that seemed likely to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... there from the gloom of her thoughts, for the sky was leaden and overcast, looking as if it, too, were mourning for the troubles of the world, and the surf beat loud and threateningly on ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... she said. "And if the consciousness that you have what you say is of use to you, let it be to strengthen you. Clear-headed, strong as you are, dear, there must come hours of terrible gloom, even to you. Well, when such come on, think of our talk to-day and strive to throw them off because of it—because of the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of mahogany, and ceiled and floored with the same. The colour of the wood, together with the fact, that all the former occupants had fallen victims to the climate, gave the house an air of extraordinary gloom; still, this was in some measure dissipated by the multitude of flowers in the garden, of the kinds familiar to us in England, and which, from the equable temperature of the mountain climate, flourished in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... augured good weather for Monday morning. A light wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls and warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest perfume. It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world. How our hearts swelled with the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... the higher gods. Among the semi-civilized Americans the peril of the loss of fire gave rise to a serious religious ceremony. At certain set intervals all the fires within the limits of a tribe or nation were extinguished, and a period of gloom, despondency, and dread of the malignant powers succeeded. Then the "new fire" was kindled on the temple altar, and the flame was conveyed by swift messengers from hearth to hearth throughout the land. This done, the period of gloom was followed ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... demands can not yet be forgotten. The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States. If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war, with an enemy at your doors? ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... stood at the entrance of the long gallery, dimly peopled with the fantastic shadows of dawn. None but those who remember the fearful imaginings of their childhood, can comprehend the self-martyrdom, the heroic daring, which dwelt in that little trembling bosom, as Olive groped across the gloom. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a more lugubrious function. When I arrived I found Caerlaverock, the Prime Minister, and the three other members of the Cabinet standing round a small fire in attitudes of nervous dejection. I remember it was a raw wet evening, but the gloom out of doors was sunshine compared to the gloom within. Caerlaverock's viceregal air had sadly altered. The Prime Minister, once famous for his genial manners, was pallid and preoccupied. We exchanged remarks about the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... achievement, as we turn to the year ahead we hear once again the familiar voice of the perennial prophets of gloom telling us now that because of the need to fight inflation, because of the energy shortage, America may be headed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wavering white blur in the dark corridor. She came to talk with him where they would not be bothered with interruptions: but she came delightfully perfumed, in her night-shift, and in nothing else. Jurgen wondered at the way of these women even as his arms went about her in the gloom. He remembered always the feel of that warm and slender and yielding body, naked under the thin fabric of the shift, as his arms first went about her: of all their moments together that last breathless minute before either of them had spoken ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... different from those on the Basilicas within the walls of the city. The altar was without adornment, and, as well as the walls and ceilings, was shrouded in the deepest mourning. Three tapers only were upon it, and they struggled vainly with the surrounding gloom. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... that San Pedro and the other natives had deserted—fled in the night, for fear of the giants—there was a reactionary feeling of despondency and gloom among Tom and his three friends. But the boldness and energy of the young inventor, his vigorous words, his determination to proceed at any cost to the unknown land that lay before them—these served as a tonic, and after ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... to think of what this doubting disposition of Thomas cost him. First, it kept him from the meeting of the disciples that evening, when all the others came together. He shut himself up with his gloom and sadness. His grief was hopeless, and he would not seek comfort. The consequence was, that when Jesus entered the room, and showed himself to his friends, Thomas missed the revealing which gave them ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... passage, beautiful in itself, which has a pathetic significance henceforth. Gordon, our most revered hero, was wont to declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature was so dear to him, nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom:— ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... blazed, and then, oh blessed, blessed birch bark!—with any other tinder my numbed hands had surely failed—it blazed like a torch, and warmth at last was mine, and outward comfort for a house of gloom. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... description. I want to see a better thing made of Chicago. I really hate it here, all this striving for money—but of course no place can beat Chicago for that—but also the idlers here, the worship of Mammon, the dullness and the gloom of elegant people, the extravagant dressing, the liveried servants, all this imitation. And all this talk here of America being the only religious, free, and enlightened people in the world. Why, they are not free at all. The mind must be free before the man is free, and ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the gloom as it was dimly lighted by the lanterns, and all walked rapidly forward until they stood upon ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... Great splendor, but of a military kind. Poles and Cossacks compose the procession. Gloom and terror mingle with the demonstrations of joy. Distrust and misfortune ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... as they went down—down into the unknown blackness. They kept their bright lights playing here and there, but even these did not dispell the gloom. On every side was stone—stone walls—stone steps. It was like going down into ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... church-like windows of coloured-glass; but it was desolate, and in the shadow of a coming storm, looked strangely lowering. Within—opened a smaller room; there, however, the blind of the single casement was closed; through the deep gloom few details of furniture were apparent. These few I amused myself by puzzling to make out; and, in particular, I was attracted by the outline of a picture ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in darkness. The Green, as he passed along it on the free-wheel run, merged away through gloom into obscurity. Points of light from the houses showed here and there. The windows of his home had lamplight through their lattices. The drive was soft with leaves beneath ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of depression; Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings, noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Finally, he stepped quickly across the little room, and, standing quietly within the open doorway, looked long at the young girl upon the bed. She lay in sound, motionless sleep, one hand beneath her cheek, her heavy hair, scarcely revealing its auburn hue in the gloom of the interior, flowing in wild disorder across the crushed pillow. He stepped to the single window and drew down the green shade, gazed at her again, a new look of tenderness softening his stern face, then went softly out and closed ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... amid the trees, following a grassy ride; but as I advanced, this grew ever narrower and I walked in an ever-deepening gloom, wherefore I turned about, minded to go back, but found myself quite lost and shut in, what with the dense underbrush around me and the twisted, writhen branches above, whose myriad leaves obscured the moon's kindly beam. In this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... relieved, and yes, so ridiculously happy, that after the first moment of heartfelt joy there came a pang of compunction. It was wrong, it was unnatural, that the safety of one human being should so affect her. She was glad that this curious revulsion of feeling, this passing from gloom and despondency to unreasoning peace and joy, should have taken place when she was by herself. She would have been ashamed that ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Coltbrigg," one of the most disgraceful records of the abject collapse of regular troops before the terror of an almost unseen foe that are to found in history. Well might loyal Edinburgh despair if such were its best defenders. The town was all tumult, the Loyalists were in utter gloom, the secretly exulting Jacobites were urging the impossibility of resistance, and the necessity for yielding while yielding was still an ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... be great rocks, but on a close approach revealed themselves as blocks of masonry, the ruins of some city of antiquity. From time to time a jet of spray shot up above them, white as lilies in the gloom. The sea was rising. I discerned an ancient gateway opening on the beach, and set my horse towards it, while the rain came down in sheets. I saw no more until the ruins loomed up close before me, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... with a feeling which only ended with his life. His biographer has given us the means of tracing the varying moods which preceded his acceptance. They reveal more than the common alternations of light and gloom; at one moment he wishes that his flesh might melt and that he might become nothing; at another he is intoxicated with hope. The impetuosity of his character was then unchastened by the discipline to which it was subjected in ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... now evening, and the landscape lay steeped in yellow sunshine; when Mona Macdonald rode slowly homewards, silent and buried in gloom. Her way lay around the base of the mountain. But neither its adjacent and majestic sides on the one hand, nor the placid, mellow-tinted, and sky-bounded plain on the other were regarded by her. Her thoughts were still with the advocate in his office, or with her departed ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... everything was so substantial, well kept, and comfortable, that the two friends were greatly struck by it. It was now October, and great wood fires blazed in the hall below and in all the upstairs rooms, and these quite dispelled any air of gloom that might otherwise have been caused by the darkness of ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... gracious: she regretted his early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy |
