"Desolation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Robert Willoughby did not feel the desolation, which so suddenly alighted on a family that had often been quoted for its mutual affection and happiness, would be to do him great injustice. He even staggered under the blow; yet his heart craved further information. The Indian was gazing intently on the sight ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the commandant of the fortress had terrible tales to tell of Ulugh Ali's raid on the island, and the horrors that the Turks had perpetrated in the villages, which now presented a scene of ruin and desolation. Gil d'Andrada rejoined the fleet there. He had not seen the Turkish armament, but he had obtained news of it from coasters and fishermen. He estimated from these reports that it was inferior in numbers to the Christian ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... sorrow, in which I saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Olympian god has assign'd to me this tribulation— Loss of a son without peer? But yourselves shall partake my affliction; Easier far will it be for the pitiless sword of the Argives, Now he is dead, to make havoc of you. For myself, ere I witness Ilion storm'd in their wrath, and the fulness of her desolation, Oh, may the Destiny yield me to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and raining blow on blow. Martin's gang surged forward to interfere. Dazed by the rapid succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and earnest curses sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of his eyes, startled her, confused her. She could scarcely believe he was the same man. The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy. As if a current of thought had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time in his life Howland now plunged into the heart of the wilderness, and as mile after mile slipped behind them and he sped deeper into the peopleless desolation of ice and snow and forest his blood leaped in swift excitement, in the new joy of life which he was finding up here under the far northern skies. Seated on the front of the car, with the four men pumping behind him, ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... or three places like that on this division the past two weeks," said Phil to break the silence. He nodded towards the disused station building that was receding down the track, its boarded windows and broken platform eloquent of desolation. "I've wondered why a perfectly good station like that should be built in the first place if it was to be abandoned later on without ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of some one hundred and fifty new secretaries. The Gothas had played havoc with two blocks of buildings on a certain Paris street because of the fact that the bombs they dropped had severed the gas-mains. The result did have a look of desolation I'll have to admit. So far the new ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... three weeks, the wind blowing a heavy gale, accompanied with torrents of rain that very soon swelled the river Hawkesbury, and the creeks in George's river, beyond their banks; laying all the adjacent flat country, with the corn on it, under water. Much damage, of course, followed the desolation which this ill-timed flood spread over the cultivated grounds; and, although fewer than could have been expected, some lives ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... flowed down the midst, on the banks of which numerous scattered and picturesque cottages appeared. On either side the ground was covered with the green carpet of Nature in the spring of the year. Everywhere, except in this smiling valley, we saw nothing but the aridity of summer, and the desolation caused by a scorching tropical sun. But here — how very different! How sudden, how magical was the change! Every species of vegetable grew here in finest luxuriance. Melons of every variety, pine-apples, sweet potatoes, plantains, and bananas, with their broad and drooping ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... was not averted or cast down, but looking full upon her, in its pride of youth and beauty. Some simple sense of the slightness of the barrier that interposed itself between the happy home and honoured love of the fair girl, and what might be the desolation of that home, and shipwreck of its dearest treasure, smote so keenly on the tender heart of Clemency, and so filled it to overflowing with sorrow and compassion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... order to the keepers of the door, which caused them to speed from the scene as fast as their feet would carry them towards the village where they had been commanded to stay until sunrise, leaving the girl, a prey probably to that inexplicably sensuous feeling which the desolation, and beauty, and pity of this place arouses in some, alone with the man who loved her as men ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... break at the command of those who own them, and when she had moaned away the worst of her pain, she fell asleep. When she awoke it was already growing dark, and the knocking at her door, which roused her, was like a call from the peace of dreams to the desolation of reality. When she had turned on the light she received from the hands of the waiting servant that which had become a most rare visitant in the blankness of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... to buy dear and to sell cheap. They insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country. They covered with their protection a set of native dependants who ranged through the provinces, spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all the power of his master; and his master was armed with all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... drink all the liquors malted and take anything they can get for nothing. I mean the public rabble, the mob, not the individual. The only time you can trust the public is when their sympathies are aroused over some great public calamity that brings death and desolation. Then the public is of one mind, the public then shows to ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... with their backs to the wind, the moon rose. Far indeed from being visible, she yet shed a little glimmer of light over the plain, revealing a world as wild as ever the frozen north outspread—as wild as ever poet's despairing vision of desolation. I see it! I see it! but how shall I make my reader see it with me? It was ghastly. The only similitude of life was the perplexed and multitudinous motion of the drifting, falling flakes. No shape ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... tell you. In 1854 a Marabout of the Senegalese Fouta, Al-Hadji by name, declaring himself to be inspired like Mohammed, stirred up all the tribes to war against the infidels—that is to say, against the Europeans. He carried destruction and desolation over the regions between the Senegal River and its tributary, the Fateme. Three hordes of fanatics led on by him scoured the country, sparing neither a village nor a hut in their pillaging, massacring career. He advanced ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... abomination of desolation; and I rejoice to leave it again this evening. Even Pam has not a lev'ee above once or twice a week. Next winter, I suppose, it will be a fashion to remove into the city: for, since it is the mode to choose aldermen at this end of the town, the maccaronis will certainly adjourn to Bishopsgate-street, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a kind of evil vision of desolation, and Kitty was asleep long before he had stopped his futile whisperings into ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... departing wagon with his eye, marvelling greatly as to the nature of its concealed contents, until it had also gained the summit of the eminence, and in its turn disappeared behind the swell of the land. Then he turned to gaze at the desolation of the scene around him. The absence of human forms would have scarce created a sensation in the bosom of one so long accustomed to solitude, had not the site of the deserted camp furnished such strong memorials of its recent ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dream-land termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the darkened desert sweep? Or would it still remember, tho' it spanned A thousand heavens, while the planets fanned The vacant ether with their voices deep? Soul of my soul, no word shall be forgot, Nor yet alone, beloved, shall we see The desolation of extinguished suns, Nor fear the void wherethro' our planet runs, For still together shall we go and not Fare forth alone ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... glorifying his country in these terms:—"These wretches, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles I will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."] miles— northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... to feel for a travelling stranger. They spoke of sitting up with him at night, giving him his medicine, and weeping for him, when there remained no room for active solicitude. The idea of dying amidst strangers in a foreign land, with no familiar face at the bed-side, is a desolation whose thought cannot pass over the spirit without beclouding its sunniness. And yet we may rely upon it, that amongst those most affectionately tended and most generously wept, have been they who have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... such terrible devastation in the mountains and valleys that the Irish name and nation will long remain odious to the Vaudois. Six generations have since passed away, but neither time nor subsequent calamities have obliterated the impression made by the waste and desolation of this ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... their whole extent—not excluding the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants—is either deserted by civilized man and surrendored to hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which skirted and indented the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... left this province in the last century. On assuming it anew in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, the father provincial of the Recollects, Fray Blas de las Mercedes, attested that only ruins and desolation were found. Since that time they have labored without ceasing in the beautifying and adorning of the house of God, restoring the old ruins and building anew; until they have succeeded in making the churches worthy the majesty of the Catholic worship—already ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... with yielding oars, encurving 'midst whirling waters. If I turn from the beach there is no roof in this tenantless island, no way sheweth a passage, circled by waves of the sea; no way of flight, no hope; all denotes dumbness, desolation, and death. Natheless mine eyes shall not be dimmed in death, nor my senses secede from my spent frame, until I have besought from the gods a meet mulct for my betrayal, and implored the faith of the celestials with my latest breath. Wherefore ye requiters of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... sisters there seemed a world of desolation in these words. They were always mourning for having no brother. Here was one who appeared to be entirely alone. From not knowing exactly what to say, Margaret opened the book Miss Young had laid aside. It was German—Schiller's Thirty Years' War. Every one ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... number and variety of the tracks contrast strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life still shoot and I play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges, squirrels, and mice abound. The mice tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... did not notice the desolation of the place. It was quite evident that he was beyond the influence of earthly surroundings for the moment. Going at once to the couch, he brought forth a roll of paper hidden away beneath the pillow. Carrying this over to the table, he sat down upon one of the benches and spread the paper out before ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... arrayed in angry terrors. Heaven is indeed sending down ruin, Afflicting us with famine, So that the people are all wandering fugitives. In the settled regions, and on the borders, all is desolation. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... beard, is a yonger brothers reuennew) then your hose should be vngarter'd, your bonnet vnbanded, your sleeue vnbutton'd, your shoo vnti'de, and euerie thing about you, demonstrating a carelesse desolation: but you are no such man; you are rather point deuice in your accoustrements, as louing your selfe, then seeming ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The desolation of the whole scene, save for that running stream, produced the effect of a world burnt out. The hills of shale might have been vast heaps of ashes. It was a waste place of terrible unfruitfulness. And yet, not very far below the surface, the precious metal lay buried in the rock—the secret of the ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... too. We no longer seek to find Him in our hours of happiness—the only hours when, long ago, we sought to feel His presence. We know that we shall only find Him in our hours of loneliness, in our hours of desolation, in our hours of black despair. Now at last we realise that God is not some Deity apart, but some spirit within us, within every man and woman whose "vision" is turned towards the stars. He is the "Dream" which is clearer to us than reality, none the less clear because it ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the southward, Gordon reached the seat of his government, and the desolation of the Tropics closed over him, the agonising nature of his task stood fully revealed. For the next three years he struggled with enormous difficulties— with the confused and horrible country, the appalling climate, the maddening insects and the loathsome ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... for some time laboured upward and onward through the snow—which was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth elsewhere—and they were still labouring upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... for what appeared an interminable time, and wondered afterwards that she had borne the tension without a sign. The great stillness grew overwhelming now the team had stopped, and there was that in the utter cold and sense of desolation that weighed her courage down. She felt her insignificance in the face of that vast emptiness and destroying frost, and wondered at the rashness of herself and Hetty and Larry Grant who had ventured to believe they could make any change in ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... errors, is still a-gropin' after the light! Do you counsel me to set aside the sacred and time honored rules of our church, and allow the Sabbath to go by unregarded, have the sanctuary desecrated, the cause of religion languish—I cannot believe it. Think of the widespread desolation it would cause if, as the late lamented Mr. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... come thick and fast upon poor Scott, and the heaviest blow was yet to fall. In 1826 Lady Scott was taken from him, and about the same time a number of his old friends. He felt his desolation extremely, but kept up bravely for the most part, and worked prodigiously for many months. There is a grandeur about the way he bore his misfortunes which casts into shade all that was fine in his character during his prosperous years. Most men, even of brave and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... once more as it was in the days of the Apostles. The New World was first offered to the holders of the old traditions. They were the husbandmen first chosen for the new vineyard, and blood and desolation were the only fruits which they reared upon it. In their hands it was becoming a kingdom, not of God, but of the devil, and a sentence of blight went out against them and against their works. How fatally it has worked, let modern Spain and Spanish America ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... others brought their fetishes and amulets; forgotten idols reappeared, while the mystic symbols had been taken from the very ships as though Carthage wished to concentrate herself wholly upon a single thought of death and desolation. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... upon the city wall. And suddenly they heard the sound of a trumpet in heaven, and there came down angels bearing torches of fire in their hands, and alighted upon the four corners of the wall of the city. Then Jeremiah and Baruch perceived that the desolation of Jerusalem was indeed at hand; and Jeremiah cried out to the angels, "I beseech you, destroy not the city until I have spoken a word to the Most High." So the angels stayed their hand; and Jeremiah said, "Lord, now we know of a truth that the city will be delivered into the ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... and plaster stare the beholder in the face at every turn. During the greater part of the day the solitude of the neighbourhood remains unbroken save by the tread of some chance wayfarer like myself, and a general atmosphere of the abomination of desolation reigns supreme. Passing along the unfrequented pavement, one finds it difficult to realize the fact that this was once a not unfashionable quarter of the capital of ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... father and her loss of him. But whenever they occurred, Mrs. Colwood found her own mind invincibly recalled to that name on the box of papers, which still haunted her, still brought with it a vague sense of something painful and harrowing—a breath of desolation, in strange harmony, it often seemed, with certain looks and moods of Diana. But Mrs. Colwood searched her memory in vain. And, indeed, after a little while, some imperious instinct even forbade her the search—so rapid and strong was the growth of sympathy with the young life which ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... know. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said, 'Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel'—'Oh! that's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the better to check the sailing of partial divisions of the enemy, and thus prevent the immense number of pirates, inhabiting the interior of the island, from breaking the fortified line, and again covering these seas, and with redoubled fury carrying death and desolation along all ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the plain, than, with a loud whirring sound, the locusts rose in the air. Notwithstanding the number which had been destroyed, the mass appeared in no way diminished in size. Onwards they flew to their unknown destination; but what a scene of desolation met our eyes across the country on which they had rested! For miles, as Donald had feared, not a blade of grass was to be seen. As far as the eye could reach, where the evening before the ground had been green and smiling, it now looked brown and parched ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... bodes small good when heaviness falls so deep. Hush, pretty boy, thy hopes might have been better. Tis lost at Dice what ancient honour won: Hard when the father plays away the son! No thing but misery serves in this house. Ruin and desolation, oh! ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... indeed marked by all the features of absurdity in the delusion, ferocity in the popular excitement, and destruction along the path of its progress, which belonged to the witchcraft proceedings here, and shows that any people, given over to the power of contagious passion, may be swept by desolation, and plunged into ruin. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... adornat; the "rostral" palace; the mansion of the Pompeys; the Blenheims and the Strathfieldsays of the Scipios, the Marcelli, the Paulli, and the Csars; then perished the aged trophies from Carthage and from Gaul; and, in short, as the historian sums up the lamentable desolation, "quidquid visendum atque memorabile ex antiquitate duraverat." And this of itself might lead one to suspect the emperor's hand as the original agent; for by no one act was it possible so entirely and so ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... contravened. The rigor of espionage towards the imprisoned and their friends increased; the prosecution was insidiously prolonged; privation and solitude, vigilance and suspense were made instruments for subduing the resolution and invading the confidence of the captives; they pined in desolation, ignorant of their fate, uninformed of the welfare of those most dear to them, without resources of defence or consolation, except what the strength of individual character yields; physically weakened, morally isolated; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was thinking. Yet he, too, had had his chance far back in the dim and dusty years, his chance of love and money with it. He had let it slip away for poverty and learning, and only six men in Europe cared whether he lived or died. The sense of his own loneliness smote him with a sudden aching desolation. His gaze grew humid; the face of the young student was covered with a veil of mist and seemed to shine with the radiance of an unstained soul. If he had been as other men he might have had such a son. At this moment Gabriel Hamburg was speaking ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... himself attractive to womankind, he turns his attention to the girl whom he particularly desires to win. He begins by filling her soul with a sense of desolation and loneliness. In the beautiful language of the formula, her path becomes blue and she is veiled in loneliness. He then asserts, and reiterates, that he is of the one only clan which was allotted for her when the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... shopman with "savings," had delivered his soul to the local builders and built himself a house, and there it stood, ill-designed, mean-looking, isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced plot, athwart which his domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst a bleak desolation of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road, and a row of mean yellow brick houses—workmen's cottages, and the filthy black sheds that made the "allotments" of that time a universal eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas of—I quote ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... were like her in their circumstances, but she feared she was not like them in their strong endurance. She looked at the pines and hemlocks as she passed, as if they were curious preachers to her; and when she had a chance she prayed quietly that she might stand faithfully like them to cheer a desolation far worse and she feared far more abiding than snows could make or melt away. She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the country as if it had been the personification of March just come of ape and taking possession ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... quite analogous to certain phenomena of the order of grace. St. Ignatius almost invariably speaks, not, as we should, of thoughts that give rise to will-states of "consolation" or "desolation," but conversely, of these will-states giving rise to congruous thoughts. Indeed, nothing is more familiar to us than the way in which the mind is magnetized by even our physical states of elation or ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat, caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me. Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... were finally driven back, the Federals entered the town, and then the bummers came streaming through the country, leaving desolation behind them. Cattle, poultry, everything eatable was driven off or carried away in the great army wagons that came crashing along, regardless of all obstacles in their cruel course. Cut off from all news from the army, Sibyl and her mother dragged wearily through ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." As a contribution, then, to these purposes, this little book is now published. It is addressed neither to the learned nor to the devout, who are already in possession of a wide literature dealing from many points ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a faint "Thank you, I shall be grateful"; and she walked back to her lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation. She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful to her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have to rouse herself ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... enthusiasm if his situation had been less critical. Even as it was, an exclamation of surprise broke from him, for there, not five miles distant, was the coast of Greenland; desolate, indeed, and ice-bound—he had expected that—but inexpressibly grand even in its desolation. A mighty tongue of a great glacier protruded itself into the frozen sea. The tip of this tongue had been broken off, and the edge presented a gigantic wall of crystal several hundred feet high, on which the sun glittered in ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... ice, with three poplars mounting guard over it. Flights of rooks hung over the barren ground, and wheeled in the air with discordant clamor as we passed—the only living moving things in the utter desolation of the scene. As I looked there was an exclamation from one of the workmen, and the engine began to slacken. We ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... was, as I had thought, bare and deserted. There was a musty smell about it, as though it had not been opened for a long time, and dust and desolation lay heavy upon it. A dark stain on the floor near the window suggested to my fancy the idea of blood. Had some wayfarer less fortunate than I been inveigled to his death in this ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the lake, have, in course of time, given birth to ample promontories of sweeping outline, that contrast boldly with the longitudinal base of the steeps on the opposite shore; while their flat or gently-sloping surfaces never fail to introduce, into the midst of desolation and barrenness, the elements of fertility, even where the habitations of men ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... with the smell of the burning, and as they passed along they saw that every cabin had been consumed. It was a scene of utter desolation. The horses' feet splashed in pools of clotted blood, while ever and anon they came to the mutilated remains of some victim of the massacre. In one place lay the form of a brawny pioneer, his broken rifle still clutched by the muzzle, while the ground ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... approaching his friend, and preparing to support him at the moment the archbishop blessed the married couple. In fact, the Prince of Conde was attentively scrutinizing these two images of desolation, standing like caryatides on either side of the nave of the church. The count, after that, kept a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yards, sent up by Sir W. Pen, there is a good stop given to it, as well at Marke-lane end, as ours; it having only burned the dyall of Barking Church, and part of the porch, and was there quenched. I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afraid to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... on the conqueror's arch thy beam is lingering! It lingers on the shattered porticoes that once shrouded from thy o'erpowering glory the lords of earth; it lingers upon the ruined temples that even in their desolation are yet sacred! 'Tis gone, as if in sorrow! Yet the woody lake still blushes with thy warm kiss; and still thy rosy light tinges the pine ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... five acres, enclosed by three lanes. "Pope had twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonized this, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns, opening and opening beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with impenetrable woods." These, it appears, were hacked and hewed into mere desolation by the next proprietor. Pope was, indeed, an ardent lover of the rising art of landscape gardening; he was familiar with Bridgeman and Kent, the great authorities of the time, and his example and precepts ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... that mysterious and dazzling apparition; but when we moved on, it was soon snatched from our view; for as we descended the hill, and plunged into the deep and profound valley which lay at its feet, we lost sight of the holy city, and were surrounded only by the solitude and desolation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... said Mercedes, presenting the girl, "keeps me company in my desolation, and thus helps me to pass ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the politics of Europe and because we had had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow, when peace will have to ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... as if something had alarmed them. He wrung his hands in anguish, and was about to make another attempt to drag Patrick down from the already burning house, when suddenly a troop of horse was among the scene of desolation, and at their head King James himself. Malcolm flew to the King, cutting short his angry exclamation with the cry, 'Help! help! he will burn! Patrick! ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with the vigor of its resolutions. The necessary preparations were not made and the inhabitants of the frontiers remained without sufficient protection until the plans against them were matured and the storm which had been long gathering burst upon them with a fury which spread desolation ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... when the cry of battle and the sound of firing had ceased, the women and children ventured to creep forth from their forest shelter. The enemy had gone, but had left a scene of desolation behind. The village was a heap of smoking ruins, and the corn in the fields was laid waste. Bodies of dead warriors strewed the ground, many of them lying stretched before their own wigwams, which they had ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... hangs over the ship's side, and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a narrow state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation. This was the fez—the fez so defiant at the sailing, now reduced to the vulgar condition of a nightcap, and pulled down over the very ears of the head of a ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... much below the requirements of the situation. The panic came to an end in the fall of 1893, much as a great conflagration expires through having reached all the material on which it can feed, but leaving a scene of desolation behind it. Thirteen commercial houses out of every thousand doing business had failed. Within two years, nearly one fourth of the total railway capitalization of the country had gone into bankruptcy, involving an exposure of falsified accounts sufficient to shatter public ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... no class of men in Ireland who have a deeper interest in a prosperous and numerous community than the priests of the Catholic Church; and further, I believe that no men have suffered more—have suffered more, I mean, in mind and in feeling—from witnessing the miseries and the desolation which during the last century (to go no further back) have stricken and afflicted the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Steppe was crossed by Benedict Goes late in the autumn of 1603, and the narrative speaks of the great cold and desolation, and the difficulty of breathing. We have also an abstract of the journey of Abdul Mejid, a British Agent, who passed Pamir on his way to Kokan in 1861:—"Fourteen weary days were occupied in crossing the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and home in the Highlands did this disastrous, though glorious intelligence, bring desolation and mourning; and amongst those on whom it brought these dismal effects, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... the towers, and we found that he was a very respectable amateur in painting. Some of his oil paintings were very creditable. An infant girl, of great beauty, his daughter, answered to the name of Blanche Castle May, and was the first-born child under that roof since its desolation. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Boer would have succeeded in finding the way back, but I soon lost my way altogether. I lost the traces of the horse's hoofs, and the dongas looked to me so different that in one place where a donga branched off I did not know which to follow. An intense feeling of desolation took possession of me. Lost in a wilderness without food or water! I thought of the twelve or thirteen men who got lost in this wood on a hunting expedition, and of whom only one was saved. A great fear came upon me. Gradually I became calmer, and tried to form some plan of action. I resolved ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... universal acknowledgment. Moreover, that "No" was in order to this "Yes;" gave way before it, yielded to it; and life reigned in spite of death. Vaguely Diana's mind felt and carried on the analogy, and the reasoning from analogy, and drew a chill, far-off hope from it. For it was the time of storm and desolation with her now, and the summer sun had not come yet. She sat musing while ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... paint the desolation which reigned between the Strand and the City in that fatal summer, now drawing to its melancholy close. More than once in her brief pilgrimage Angela drew back, shuddering, from the embrasure of a door, or the inlet to some narrow alley, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... it clear that he had determined that no army worthy of the name should be left to the Confederacy when he finally closed in upon Lee, so that with his destruction or surrender there should be no excuse for prolonging the war. It was in furtherance of this plan that Sherman left ruin and desolation behind him as he blazed his way up from the South. The inhabitants of the region through which he was marching had, up to this time, been living in perfect security and Sherman intended to make war so hideous that they would have no desire to prolong the contest. He, ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... satisfy myself that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step forward. This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread beyond the point on which it had hitherto been so effectively concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract from the extreme desolation of the great room. The settle was a fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor. There was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... day Alexandria beheld a funeral ceremony as solemn, as magnificent, and as crowded as though a conquering hero were being entombed; it was that of the monk whom the bull had gored; the Bishop had proclaimed that by this attack on the abomination of desolation—the blood-sacrifice of idolatry—he had won an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man, called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we cannot arrive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ. And they arrive at the largest ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the other arts, the death of Leo X (1521) and the sack of Rome (1527) mark the epoch of decadence. Giovio, but just escaped from the desolation of the eternal city, described, not impartially, but on the whole correctly, the causes of this decline: 'The plays of Plautus and Terence, once a school of Latin style for the educated Romans, are banished to make ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... players and the other train passengers found a scene of desolation awaiting them as they alighted. But it was not as bad as might have been expected, and no one had been killed. In fact, no one was hurt, save the fireman and engineer of the passenger train, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... Fred pointed to the trampled garden, the litter in the park, and the desolation visible at the Hall, where window casements had been either smashed or taken off, and rough barricades erected; so that where all had once been so trim and orderly, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... scagliola floor was cold, the high battered casements shook in the storm, and the stately decay of the place was unrelieved by a particle of furniture. Pemberton's spirits were low, and it came over him that the fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to draw through the comfortless hall. Mr. Moreen and Ulick were in the Piazza, looking out for something, strolling drearily, in mackintoshes, under the arcades; but still, in spite of mackintoshes, ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... some that had come to her from her mother, some that he had given her. He knew them all so well, had handled them so often. A spasm crossed his face. It had been the home of the enchanted princess, shut off from all the world—until he had come. And his coming had brought desolation. Near him a valuable vase, that she had prized, lay smashed on the floor, overturned by the old armah in the first frenzy of her grief. It was symbolical and Craven turned from it with quivering lips ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Diabolonians remaining in the town of Mansoul, Diabolonians that are sturdy and implacable, and that do already while I am with you, and that will yet more when I am from you, study, plot, contrive, invent, and jointly attempt to bring you to desolation, and so to a state far worse than that of the Egyptian bondage; they are the avowed friends of Diabolus, therefore look about you. They used heretofore to lodge with their Prince in the Castle, when Incredulity was the Lord Mayor of this town; but since my coming hither, they lie ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was not until we sought out the house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... idea, and that the more closely from the bishop having found it correct—"with all that, you give me no explanation about what can have happened to these unfortunate boats. I am assailed by cries and complaints whichever way I go. The children cry at seeing the desolation of the women, as if I could restore the absent husbands and fathers. What do you suppose, my friend, and what ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... military and police establishments. Those who resided in or saw the district at that time, describe it as a magnificent garden; and some few signs of that flourishing state are still to be seen amidst its present general desolation. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... was nearly too dark to write. No doubt on the high ground the sky was aflame with brilliant colour, of which only a dim reflection tinged the dreary view of sward and leafless trees, to which, for some mysterious reason, a gig crawling down the carriage-drive gave the last touch of desolation. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... accident at Burnham Shaft. They were summer months, full of sunshine and green landscapes and singing birds and blossoming flowers and all things beautiful. But in the house from which the body of Robert Burnham had been carried to the grave there were still tears and desolation. Not, indeed, as an outward show; Margaret Burnham was very brave, and hid her grief under a calm exterior, but there were times, in the quiet of her own chamber, when loneliness and sorrow came down upon her as a burden too great for her woman's heart to bear. Still, she had her daughter ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... its exclusive protection is attributable, is not, I believe correctly known. But though this spot of sacred seclusion, has escaped the final stroke of extermination, it has sustained an ample share of the general desolation. During the time of terrour, it was converted into the crowded prison of the female nobility, who were here confined, and afterwards dragged from its cloisters, and butchered by the guillotine, or the daggers of assassins. I ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... house-cleaning in the dome of the heavens one memorable night that flashed like a jewel from the murky desolation of a rainy spring. The little winds came in troops, some from the sea, some with loads of balsam from the great forests of the Olympic Peninsula, and some, quite tired out, from the stretching sage plains to the east, and they swept the sky of clouds as a housekeeper ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... and sent me away from the arms which a little before had been my sole possession. I could not understand it, and my little heart was filled with dismay. I would creep away by myself, sit down, and in the most pitiful manner repeat to myself, "Poor Sammy! poor Sammy!" The sense of desolation was very great; and in the whole course of my life I do not remember to have known a more distressing grief. When I grew to be a man, and disappointments came upon me; when I laid my wife and children in their graves, and knew there was not one left of my line but myself—a ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... fishing places, with which this coast of America abounds. By degrees they went a-whaling to Newfoundland, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to the Straits of Belleisle, the coast of Labrador, Davis's Straits, even to Cape Desolation, in 70 degrees of latitude; where the Danes carry on some fisheries in spite of the perpetual severities of the inhospitable climate. In process of time they visited the western islands, the latitude of 34 degrees famous for that ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking, without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to another. The rude society which surrounded them was not much better. The struggle for existence was hard, and absorbed all their energies. They were fighting the forest, the wild beast, and the retreating savage. From the time when he could barely handle ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Nietzschean "blond beast." The poor fauns and dryads of the free ancient world hesitate trembling and frightened on the very threshold of their liberty when this great Zarathustra offers them a choice between frozen Alpine peaks of heroic desolation and bloodstained jungles frequented by ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... these sinkings and these last recoveries are the trial flights of the animating and eternal principle—call it soul or what you will—before it trusts itself afar. Still more terrible is it under circumstances of physical and mental desolation such as those present to Leonard Outram ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... punished for disobedience of orders, but for having, by my disobedience, pointed out to you your duty—a duty which you were forced to perform afterwards by necessity. Then be it so; let me perish on these black rocks, as I shall, and my bones be whitened by the chilly blasts which howl over their desolation. But mark me, cruel and vindictive man! I shall not be the only one whose bones will bleach there. I prophesy that many others will share my fate, and even you, admiral, may be of the number,—if I mistake not, we shall lie ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... applied had been dismissed, the rest of the population were sold into slavery, and then the city was utterly and entirely destroyed. The number thus sold was about thirty thousand, and six thousand had been killed in the assault and storming of the city. Thus Thebes was made a ruin and a desolation, and it remained so, a monument of Alexander's terrible energy and ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... claimed him as its own. He wondered that he had been impatient with the men it bred. The wonder now was that human virtue of any temper could long withstand the blasting touch of so great and awful a desolation. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... bushels on the ground, and with which we regaled ourselves. Enclosed maize fields overgrown with brambles, and cotton fields with the gins and apparatus for packing the produce in bales for the market, presented to the eye the very picture of desolation. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... have strength of mind to care for science, amidst the awful events daily occurring in your country. I daily look at the "Times" with almost as much interest as an American could do. When will peace come? it is dreadful to think of the desolation of large parts of your magnificent country; and all the speechless misery suffered by many. I hope and think it not unlikely that we English are wrong in concluding that it will take a long time for prosperity to return to you. It is an awful ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There rest, if any rest can harbor there, And, reassembling ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... inhabitants of the oasis were wont to confine prisoners. He came to a door. It opened readily to his touch, and he passed into what had once been a large dwelling-room. He stepped softly forward, noting the emptiness and desolation of the place. The peculiar odor of the air was more noticeable than before, but it was not till he had reached the middle of the darkened room, and stood gazing about him, that he perceived at the farther end, in the shadows, ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... cultivation or inhabitants; that the capital, which but a very short time ago was distinguished as one of the most populous and opulent commercial cities in Hindostan, at present exhibits nothing but scenes of the most wretched poverty, desolation, and misery; and the Nabob himself, though in possession of a tract of country which with only common care is notoriously capable of yielding an annual revenue of between thirty and forty lacs [three or four hundred thousand pounds], with no military establishment to maintain, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... water-grasses, the sombre and silent flow of the fulvous water sliding and curling down out of the jungle, and the implacable fervour of the pallid, searching sunlight heightening every touch of ugliness and desolation, and you will understand why the Hebrew poets sang no praise of the Jordan, and why Naaman the Syrian thought scorn of it when he remembered the lovely and fruitful rivers ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... stepped from the chill and dreariness of a windy day, when it seems as if the very life of all things growing were shrunk to absolute desolation, into the welcome warmth and light and fragrance, the beauty and joy of a glass house full of green and blossoming plants? No matter how small it was, even though you had to stoop to enter the door, and mind your elbows as you went along, what a good, glad comfortable feeling flooded ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... school of sad experience the mortal agony of Love without Skill,—the power of perception, without the power of utterance. We know how dumb are the sweet melodies of our souls,—how fleeting their opulent and dreamy pageantries. But we have not fully learned the utter emptiness and desolation of Skill without Love. We accept its sounding brass and tinkling cymbals for immortal harmonies. We look reverently upon its tortured marbles and its canvases stained with academic knowledge as revelations of higher intelligence; forgetting, that, if we go down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... stray dog or two sniffed suspiciously at the strangers. Round this spot near the river tambookie grass about six feet in height formed a screen. The officers made coffee, turned out their horses to graze, and lay for a short rest in the peaceful security of a complete, or seemingly complete, desolation. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke |
