Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Drear   Listen
noun
Drear  n.  Sadness; dismalness. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books



... bed of her child, In her cabin lone and drear. Listening to its ravings wild, Dropping on it many a tear, Sat the mother, broken-hearted; Every hope was in its shroud. From her husband she'd been parted, And to earth with grief she's bow'd. Now within her ear is ringing Drearily hope's funeral knell, And ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various

... to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... has a dull, lifeless cast; the veins are all enlarged from debility, and cover the larger arteries as with a mourner's pall, save where there are patches as of clouds on fire, where disease of the skin enlivens the drear landscape. There are pimples large and small, some with overflowing volcanoes; there are no lines of expression: these are changed to lines of morbid anatomy. We listen, and there are no echoes of departed ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... voice hath breathed upon mine ear Thy name since last we met; No sound disturbed the silence drear, Where sleep entombed from year to year, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... praise as 'a good third-rate man.' But if ye fail, if cannonading stones, Or toppling ice-crag, pulverize your bones; O happy stroke, that makes immortal heroes Of men who, otherwise, would be but zeroes! What tho' no Alpine horn make music drear O'er the lone snow which furnishes your bier; Nor Alpine maiden strew your grave with posies Of gentian, edelweiss, and Alpine roses? "The Alpine Muse her iciest tears shall shed, And 'build a stone-man' o'er your honour'd head, Chamois and bouquetins the spot shall haunt, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... the sky hung low overhead, and the wind sweeping chill and drear across the upland was full of a melancholy soughing. The world, it seemed to one of them, was uncreate, gone, and non-existent; only this remained—the shadowy downs stretching on every side to infinity, and three shadowy riders plodding across them; all shadowy, all unreal until a bell-wether ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... thou land to my infancy dear, Ere I know aught of toil or of woe, For the clime of the stranger, the solitude drear, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... victory!" Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... no lustre: a ring of watery and dark vapor girded the melancholy orb. Far at the entrance of the valley the wild fern showed red and faded, and the first march of the deadly winter was already heralded by that drear and silent desolation which cradles the winds and storms. But amidst this cheerless scene the distant note of the merry marriage-bell floated by, like the good spirit of the wilderness, and the student rather paused to hearken to the note than to survey the scene. "My marriage-bell!" ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... matter remains in tragic darkness.[4] In the succeeding reign of Henry IV. Richard Scroope, archbishop of York, being taken prisoner, was in Pontefract castle, condemned to death. Next in the calendar of atrocities committed within these drear walls, were the murders of Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers; Richard, Lord Grey; Sir Thomas Vaughan; and Sir Richard Hawse, in 1483; by Richard III., whom Shakspeare ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various

... In sage and solemn times have sung Of turneys and of trophies hung; Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... leaving, Up the stony vale I wind, Haply half in fancy grieving For the shades I leave behind, By the dusty wayside drear, Nightingales with joyous cheer Sing, my sadness to reprove, Gladlier ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... can quench Life's Light, my dear, Drear, dark, and melancholy; Seek Light and Life and jocund cheer, And mirth and pleasing folly. Be thine, light-hearted folly, folly, folly, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... understanding of this Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... feather'd hearse, Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse, 640 Which, to beholders from afar, Appear'd like a triumphal car, She rode, in a cast rainbow clad; There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid, Naked, as when (in those drear cells Where, self-bless'd, self-cursed, Madness dwells) Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape, Frenzy had perfected a rape, First brought her forth, before her time, Wild witness of her shame and crime, 650 Driving before an idol band Of drivelling Stuarts, hand in hand; Some who, to curse mankind, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... thee all I know. If thou persist In these thy wailings, they will send thee far From thine own land, and close thee from the day, Where in a rock-hewn chamber thou may'st chant Thine evil orisons in darkness drear. Think of it, while there 's leisure to reflect; Or if thou suffer, henceforth blame ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... twit-to-hoo to the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; and cold grey twilight covered the mountain-side. There still sat the lone old woman, crouching over the mocking fire. Dark and drear was the hovel— floor it had none, save the damp, cold earth—nor was there a chimney or other outlet for the smoke, except a hole which a branch of the ill-favoured pine-tree had made in the roof, in one ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston

... course through trackless air; Each worm that crawls beneath thee, Each creature, great and small, Is worthy of thy loving; For God hath made them all. Should earthly friends forsake thee, And earth to thee look drear; Should morning's dark forebodings But fill thy soul with fear, Look up! and cheer thy spirit- Up to thy God above; He'll be thy friend forever- Forever!-"God ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee; But och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... France—aptly termed 'the austere south.' 'It is austere, grim, sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast yard—shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like protruding ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... of our lyric Galaxy, I hear Of faded Genius with supreme disdain; As when we see the Miser bend insane O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin'd want;—and thus appear To me those moody Censors, who complain, As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign, That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere." Whence may the present stupid dream be traced That now she ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... o'er the night clouded sea, And the sailors were fearful as e're they could be, The vessel lay tossing, the north wind blew drear, Said the wave, "I will rock you to sleep, never fear," But a brave tar looked up, with a light in his eye, And a swift prayer was sent thro the threatening sky To his heart came the answer, in voice, sweet and clear, "Ye shall weather the tempest true heart, never fear." Splash away, dash away, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous

... lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My glory ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... we halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end—perhaps the end of all ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... memory, bring not back the past, To brim our cup of sorrow; The drear to-day creeps on to bring A drearier to-morrow. Can streaming eyes and aching hearts Glow at the battle's story, Or they who stake their all and lose Exult ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... hides himself when winter, dark and drear, approaches, I'm sure I cannot tell; but I've never seen him then perambulating the streets. He may possibly, at that season, join company with Jamrack—that curiosity of the animal world; or, he may hibernate ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... complete? We can see the desolate quiet of the vast arched halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... deep recess At length they reach a court obscure and lone; It seemed a drear and desolate wilderness, The blackened walls with ivy all o'ergrown; The night-bird shrieked her note of wild distress, Disturb'd upon her solitary throne, As though indignant mortal step should dare, So led, at such an hour, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... waste and lonely wild Received her as she went; Hopeless, she clasp'd her fainting child, With thirst and sorrow spent. And in the wilderness so drear, She raised her voice on high, And sent forth that heart-stricken prayer "Let me not see ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... compassion tender With this bell, instead of words, Wakens souls from life's illusions, Lightens this world's darkness drear. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... savage lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... the king of men with speed, And saddled straight his coal-black steed; Down the yawning steep he rode, That leads to Hela's drear abode." ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... from her trembling head she tore the snow-white hair, And scratched her cheeks: her eyes shed floods of tears. As when a torrent headlong rushes down the valleys drear, Its icy fetters gone when Sprint appears, And strikes the frozen shackles from rejuvenated earth So down her face the tears in torrents swept And wracking sobs convulsed her as ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... sky what glory streams! 'What majesty attends night's lovely queen! 'Fair laugh our vallies in the vernal beams; 'And mountains rise, and oceans roll between, 'And all conspire to beautify the scene. 'But, in the mental world, what chaos drear! 'What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien! 'O when shall that eternal morn appear, 'These dreadful forms to chace, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... of Chicago. Phi Beta Kappa keys have been won by R. C. Bruce at Harvard, Ellis Rivers at Yale, Clyde McDuffie and Rayford Logan at Williams, Charles Houston and John R. Pinkett at Amherst, Adelaide Cooke at Cornell, and Herman Drear at Bowdoin. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron

... the canoe which led the way, over which De Artigny held command, but it was hidden by a wall of mist too far away to be visible. Yet the very thought that the young Sieur was there, accompanying us into the drear wilderness, preserved me from utter despair. I would not be alone, or friendless. Even when he learned the truth, he would know it was not my fault, and though he might question, and even doubt, at first, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... of the fingers of some Titanic sculptor; and they hung low down, overwhelming, so that James could scarcely breathe. The sombre elms were too well-ordered, the meadows too carefully tended. All round, the hills were dark and drear; and that very fertility, that fat Kentish luxuriance, added to the oppression. It was a task impossible to escape from that iron circle. All power of flight abandoned him. Oh! ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... drear wastes of sea-born land, these wilds where none may dwell but He, What visionary Pasts revive, what process ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and thus Backwards and forwards swung his mind between, Till, mastered by the sorrow and the spell, Frantic flies Nala, leaving there alone That tender-sleeper, sighing as she slept. He flies—the soulless prey of Kali flies; Still, while he hurries through the forest drear, Thinking upon that sweet face he hath left. Far distant (King!) was Nala, when, refreshed, The slender-waisted wakened, shuddering At the wood's silence; but when, seeking him, She found no Nala, sudden anguish seized Her frightened ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... The beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... glad that your family is not among those who favor this establishment with its patronage. I am very happy in this, as it is good to think that your dear shoes are but a part of you, are incidental to your being, and not a consequence of drear ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... middle of the room, hesitating, the priest who had admitted me passed by and took up his station at the foot of the bed. He motioned me to stand a little nearer, and suddenly the drear silence of the room was broken by the low, monotonous chant of prayers. I bowed my head, and kneeling by the bedside I took up the responses, and once for a moment clasped the white, cold hand which lay upon the coverlet, and ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... rose-color. The thick fog seemed like a sea of magenta. The deck, the bulwarks, the masts, and even Donovan, standing beside me, looked as if baptized in blood. It was as light as, even lighter than, when we had gone below. The cliffs on the island, drear and black by daylight, showed like mountains of red beef through the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... for the deft action of brushes, motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval asceticism into something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... child, and tried to comfort her. It crossed Mrs. Trimble's mind that it was not the first time one had wept and the other had comforted. The sad scene must have been repeated many times in that long, drear winter. She would see them forever after in her mind as fixed as a picture, and her own ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... I shall lie, no man can say; The flowers all are fallen away; The desert is so drear and grey, O Marta ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... the old and famous city of Metz. But it looked drear and abandoned- as everywhere during my journey. Nothing was yet restored, for confidence was wanting in the state of things. Wellington and Blcher, the lords of the ascendant, seemed alone gifted with the Power of foreseeing, as they had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... Sweetheart mine, Lone and drear, bereft of thee, Sweetheart mine, I shall hear thy voice no more, Never see thee cross the moor, With thy pail at morn or eve Tripping gaily, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... was in the drear month of October, The leaves were all crisped and sere, Adown by the Tarn of Auber, In the misty ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... children: we will not mature. A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor We seem when we are richest,—most secure Against all poverty the lifelong years We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears That, in despite of reason, still endure! Alas! ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... gossips say, "Alone from dusk till midnight stay Within the church-porch drear and dark, Upon the vigil of Saint Mark, And, lovely maiden! you shall see What youth your husband is ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... than it is to any other young man who reads violence as heroism and eccentricity as genius. Of England he spoke with something like stupefaction—as a child cowering in a dark wood tells of the ogre who has slain his father and carried his mother away to a drear captivity in his castle built of bones—so he spoke of England. He saw an English-man stalking hideously forward with a princess tucked under each arm, while their brothers and their knights were netted in enchantment and ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... cold wind blows from the marshland near, And white things move, and the night grows drear, And they chatter and crouch and are ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... Wink, Wae's me, drear, dree, and dra, A waeful thocht, a fearsome flea, A wuther wind, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... to be here in the spring, When water still stays solid in the North, When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, And the "wild wistaria" puts forth; But most because the sea then changes tone; Talking a whit less drear, It gossips in a smoother monotone, Whispering moon-scandal in the old ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... man, we're wealthy now, it's sad beyond a doubt; We cannot dodge prosperity, success has found us out. Your eye is very dull and drear, my brow is creased with care, We realize how hard it is to be a millionaire. The burden's heavy on our backs—you're thinking of your rents, I'm worrying if I'll invest in five or six per cents. We've limousines, and marble halls, and flunkeys by the score, We play ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... through the palace on his way to his new quarters to obtain his arms and order his horse saddled, he came suddenly upon a girlish figure gazing sadly from a window upon the drear November world—her heart as ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... lucky!" and turns From her mirror to watch the flakes fall, Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns! While musing on sleigh ride and ball: There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth, Floating over each drear winter's day; But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth, Will melt like the snowflakes away. Turn, then thee to Heaven, fair maiden, for bliss; That world has a pure fount ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... Mohawk, the drone-like boats on the canal, the beautiful Cayuga, and the silvery water so famed in song; but, in contrast to all this, she was shut up in a dingy car, whose one dim lamp sent forth a sickly ray and sicklier smell, while without all was gloomy, dark, and drear. No wonder, then, that when toward morning Maude, who missed her soft, nice bed, began to cry for Janet and for home, the mother too burst forth in tears and choking sobs, which could ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... is laid on the pillow; His body stretched on the mat. A trumpet sounds through the fog, 5 Dimmed are the stars in the sky; When the night is clear, how they twinkle! Lani-kaula's torches look double, The torches that burn for Kane. Ghostly and drear the walls of Waipio 10 At the endless blasts of Kiha-pu. The king's awa fails to console him; 'Tis the all-night conching of Kiha-pu. Broken his sleep the whole winter; Downcast and sad, sad and downcast, 15 At loss to find a brave hunter Shall steal the damned conch from the cliff. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy De Vere, halt thou no tear?—weep now or never more! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!— An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her the doubly dead in ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... blackest clouds around me rolled Of scepticism drear and cold, When love, and hope, and joy and pride, Forsook a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... north wind and rude is the blast That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast, As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and drear, Sings a requiem sad ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... wailing wife; Oh, a weary way is the way of life! A heartless threat and a cruel blow And grief that the world can never know; A tongue obscene and a will perverse, A horrid oath and a muttered curse, A winter drear and a scanty meal, A heart so hard, oh, a heart of steel! A wizened look and an infant's cry, The cold, cold clutch of Poverty, A withered hand and a blanched cheek, Alone, and, ah, no friend to seek! A chilly hearth and a ragged dress, A ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... have fled before Mrs. Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. But there grew ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... midday things were no better. They had seen nothing more to disturb them, but the thoughts of both had turned upon the night, so long and drear, which was to come; ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... and weeks passed on in "Libby," leaving its drear monotony unbroken, except when the rumor of a prospect of being exchanged came to flush the faces of the captives with a hope destined not to be fulfilled while Willard Glazier was in Richmond. The result was that he at length abandoned all hope of being exchanged, and for a time tried ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... and crags, dark pools and mountains drear, The wild-wood's silence, and the billow's roll, Great Nature rules, and claims with brow austere, The shudd'ring homage ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... and peeped furtively down through the skylight. The empty cabin looked strangely quiet and drear, and the door of the stateroom stood ajar. There was nothing to satisfy their curiosity, but they came back looking as though they had seen ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... Folly sing a song to cheer All poor rogues that languish here, Doomed in dismal dungeon drear, Doomed in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... mourn'd the chief—and no relief his regal state could bring. O'er such a drear unpeopled waste, oh! who would be a king? And still, when desolate a land, and her sons all swept away, "The waste domain of Syloson," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... upon the utmost rim Of the drear waste, whereto the roadways led, She saw in piling outline, huge and dim, The walled and towered dwellings of the dead And the grim house of Hades. Then she broke Once more fierce-footed through the noisome press; But ere she reached the goal of her distress, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... we part;—for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't wait till morning. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... as I tread the drear wild, And feel that my mother now thinks of her child As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door Thro' the woodbine whose fragrance shall cheer me no more. Home, ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd

... grief that you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near? Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... as a drear-looking, lonesome place during the occupancy of the former incumbent. Instead, he found a reclaimed garden; hedges of laurel, trim and straight; old-fashioned flowers, snowballs, gillybells, great pink-and-white peonies; and over the front on trellises, by the gate ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... falls on Molly. She forgets all the cruel words that have been said, while a terrible compassion for the loneliness, the utter barrenness of his drear old age, grows ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... the Strophades the Trojan band Drove with dire boding of their future woe. Broad are their pennons, of the human form Their neck and count'nance, arm'd with talons keen The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... patriotism? What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be expected of men who ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... his musket for mother and brother, yeo ho! He warred with the Cannibals drear, in forests where panthers pad soft to and fro, And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear, Yeo ho! And the Pongo ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... wouldn't have stopped me," she answered, with a drear little smile. "I should have had to come on and see Guy in any case. I shall have to see him ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... finger,— That's the way the Earth goes round On its Axis, as we call it, Though no real stem is found. {117} And the two ends of the Axis Have been called the Poles, my dear; Yes, the North Pole and the South Pole, Where 'tis very cold and drear. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... group of graves were clustered here; The wind wailed o'er them wild and drear:— Could souls rise higher to the Light When soaring from ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... desolate appearance of the land near which we were now lying: rocks, of a primitive character, massed together in all the variety of an irregularity, that rather reminded the beholder of Nature's ruin than her grandeur, rose, drear and desolate, above the surrounding waters; no trees shaded their riven sides, but the water-loving mangrove clothed the base of this sterile island, and a coarse, wiry grass was thinly spread over ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... mild delegate of God, Whose words of balm, and guiding light. Would lead us, from earth's drear abode, To worlds with bliss for ever bright,— What have the spoils of mortal fight To do with themes 'tis thine to teach? Faith's saving grace—each sacred rite Thou know'st to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... their recognition. October faded softly by, with its keen fresh mornings, and cold memorial green-horizoned evenings, whose stars fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world, from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful shoreless sweep. November came, 'chill and drear,' with its heartless, hopeless nothingness; but as if to mock the poor competitors, rose, after three days of Scotch mist, in a lovely 'halcyon day' of 'St. Martin's summer,' through whose long shadows ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... bravely: Bertie at Mr. Gregory's office, Eddie at the timber-yard, Agnes working pretty crewel mats and toilet-covers, by way of change from painting; and Mrs. Clair, loving, guiding, counselling them all. The fund for the "rainy day" had increased remarkably, so that when November, "chill and drear," came round again, the boys were able to have new warm overcoats and thick gloves, and even Agnes was armed against the sudden changes of weather by a nice soft fur cape, and the whole winter months passed so pleasantly, that they were all astonished ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... thing they seem to mean: good friend, so dear To me in everything, come here to-night, Or else the hours will pass most dull and drear; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... that spoke more eloquently to the imagination than any crowded streets. And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud. Ayesha herself was awed in the presence of an antiquity compared to which even her length of days was but a little thing; we only whispered, and our whispers seemed to run from column to column, till they were lost in the quiet air. Bright fell the moonlight ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... wander round Amidst the grassy graves: 15 But all I hear Is the north-wind drear, And all I see ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... journalist replied with a drear autumnal cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am afraid to be in. I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and I don't dare to go where there is light enough ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... graves forsake upon this day, As we have seen doves mount with joyous grace, Escape an instant from their prison drear, Their coming brings us no repellent fear. Their mien is dreamy, passing sweet their face, Their fixed and hollow ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... small. Occasionally a farmer's cart passes along, or again a vehicle of more ornamental description, used by those who wish to travel either to Bodmin or to Launceston. There is no railway station within ten miles of that drear region, and it seemed a fitting meeting-place for the couple who came there that day. The woman was perhaps thirty-five years of age, and suggested the fact that in her girlhood she must have been strangely beautiful. Even yet there were times when one would have spoken of her ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... wild winds bear them all away; He hearkeneth unto none and none will hear; Wherefore each hour my torment waxeth aye; I cannot die, albeit life irks me drear. Ah, Lord, have pity on my heavy cheer; Do that I seek in vain And give him bounden in thy ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... tender for the battle here Have turned from life, its hopes, its fears, its charms; And children, shuddering at a world so drear, Have smiling ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... Porphyro!" said she, "but even now Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, Made tuneable with every sweetest vow; And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear: How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear! Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, Those looks immortal, those complainings dear! Oh leave me not in this eternal woe, For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... eyes wild flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he is. Trembles with wrath my frame If I but faintly breathe his awful name." Lilith replied, "Meseemeth, master true Of every craft is He." Forth the two From that drear cavern passed. Ere the water's brim They gained, he plucked the wilding reeds, that slim Stood by a brook. "My pipe I make, one strain Harmonious to wake. Nor yet again Shalt thou such fresh notes hear. Music like mine Methinks thou hast not known in any time." ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... a time the calm itself is sufficiently dreary, but now there was something which made all things still more drear. For the calm was attended by a thick fog; not a moist, drizzling fog like those of the North Atlantic, but a sultry, dense, dry fog; a fog which gave greater emphasis to the heat, and, instead of alleviating ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... and sad that lady grieved, In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear, And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... last; and drear despair Spoke in a shriek; but ere its echo wild Had ceased to thrill; restored to light and air— He climbs, he gains the rock, and ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... knew not it And hearts that wist not whence their comfort flowed, Whence fear was lightened of her fever-fit, Whence anguish of her life-compelling load. Yea, no man's head whereon the fire alit, Of all that passed along that sunset road Westward, no brow so drear, No eye so dull of cheer, No face so mean whereon that light abode, But as with alien pride Strange godhead glorified Each feature flushed from heaven with fire that showed The likeness of its own life wrought By strong ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the Dale of our love; There the ox and the steed Fed down the mead; The grapes hung high 'Twixt earth and sky, And the apples fell Round the orchard well. Yet drear was the land there, and all was for nought; None put forth a hand there for what the year wrought, And raised it o'erflowing with gifts of the earth. For man's grief was growing beside of the mirth Of the springs and the summers ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... great deal, and it was summer, the season of warm calms. So far he had not been able to work out any plan for a return to his own land. It might be that they were both doomed to exile. But it was not necessary to face that drear future yet, not until they had expended every possible effort. So now he said willingly enough, "We ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... pine, and the oak, Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind: Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens, Though bleak thy dun islands appear, Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans, That roam on these mountains so drear! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... Around a slaughtered army lay, No more to combat and to bleed. The power and glory of the war, Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had passed to the triumphant Czar, And Moscow's walls were safe again— Until a day more dark and drear,[249] And a more memorable year, 10 Should give to slaughter and to shame A mightier host and haughtier name; A greater wreck, a deeper fall, A shock to one—a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... poor Amy Robsart. Then the car splashed through the ford at the foot of the wood, and carried them along the Warwick Road, past Blacklow Hill, where Piers Gaveston was executed, and where, it is said, his restless spirit still rides at drear midnight, to Guy's Cliff, with its old Saxon mill and romantic view of the Avon. Then on to Warwick, to look at the treasures of a castle fortunately untouched by the ravages of war, and the beautiful Beauchamp ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Funereal Darkness, drear and desolate, Muffles the world. The moaning of the wind Is piteous with sobs of saddest kind; And laughter is a phantom at the gate Of memory. The long-neglected grate Within sprouts into flame and lights the mind With hopes and wishes long ago refined To ashes,—long departed ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... him a gay little mock curtsy "I had heard you were no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am being told—am I not?—that in case I don't take pity on you, the lone future of a celibate stretches drear before you." ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... vow that a wife needs a carriage, And opera-boxes and stalls, That money's the one thing in marriage, And cheques are as common as calls. They say women shy (like some horses) At vows made to love and obey; They tell you drear tales of divorces, And scandals, the talk ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... there was a more disquieting revelation. In the drear, frosty dusk, when he rounded Creep Head, opened the lights of Afternoon Arm, and caught the warm, yellow gleam of the lamp in the surgery window, his expectation ran all at once to his supper and his bed. He was hungry—that was true. Sleepy? No; he was not sleepy. Yet he wanted to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... from home, for sake of faith held dear, To distant shores the Pilgrim Fathers turned. Their grief-stung hearts for Freedom's blessing yearned, Where persecution's lash they need not fear. In stately ships they sailed the ocean drear, And more of trial and of hardship learned; But in their loyal bosoms still there burned Religious zeal that lent ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page

... words, Voiding his bile on us: 'Behold the mate Of Ajax, once the hero of our host, Fallen from her pride of place to menial toil.' So will they say. For me, where fate may drive I drift; but shame will be on thee and thine. Think of thy father, in his drear old age Bereft of thee; think of thy mother, too, With her grey head, who puts up many a prayer That she may welcome home her son alive. Have pity on thy child, who will be left In infancy, uncherished, and the ward Of unkind guardians; lay to heart the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... by his fearful but curious train. The rooms, as tradition had said, were many, and from room to room he hurried with rapid feet. He sought in vain. No gold appeared, no jewels glittered on his sight. The rooms were drear and empty, their hollow floors mocking his footsteps with long-silent echoes. One treasure only he found, the jewelled table of Solomon, a famous ancient work of art which had long remained hidden from human sight. Of this wonderful relic we shall say no more here, for it ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... Anything more grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals, as we passed across from bluff to bluff, it is impossible to conceive. Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's hell—so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ranks of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... life and their relations. There had been so little real affection between them. So little had passed which might have constituted a greater bond. It was his passionate outburst of revolt against life, whose drear talons seemed to have fastened themselves into his very soul, which had sent him out with murder in his brain to seek the man who had robbed him of the one thing which stood between him and despair; the pent-up fury of a lifetime which had tingled in his blood and had given him the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... snow. The girl would stand still and look up at the solemn pines and listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... hope and fear With trembling hands the lot I see thee draw, 50 Which shall, or sentence thee a victim drear, To that ghaunt Plague which savage knows no law: Or, deep thy dagger in the friendly heart, Whilst each strong passion agitates thy breast, Though oft with Horror back I see thee start, 55 Lo! Hunger drives ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... miscellaneous poems, all permeated by the sense of beauty, showing in every line the genius of Keats and his exquisite workmanship. The sonnets "On the Sea," "When I have Fears," "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" and "To Sleep"; the fragment beginning "In a drear-nighted December"; the marvelous odes "On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale" and "To Autumn," in which he combines the simplicity of the old classics with the romance and magic of medieval writers,—there are no works ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... sorrow-stricken, Winning from nature relief, courage and counsel in grief, Judging that He, whose handmaid I am, out of death to requicken Year after year His earth into more exquisite birth, Shadows thereby to your souls through what drear and perilous places Into what Paradise blest beacons His searching behest— Even the Heaven of Heavens where fond, long-hungered-for faces Into your own shall shine radiant with ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... lingers yet, and cannot come Out of the drear and desolate place, So full of ruin's solemn grace, And haunted with the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... Calais station. At last, even the maker of commonplaces was silent; and as I reclined at greater length on the cushions of the stuffy compartment, I thought how strange a company we were then being carried over the dull, drear pasture-land of France, to the lights, the music, and the life of the great capital. Of the man Martin Hall—I remembered his true name in the moments of repose—I knew nothing beyond that which I have ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... the sombre darkness of wooded hills; and above that dark background a calm starry sky. Who shall say what dim poetic thoughts were in her mind that night, as she looked at these things? Life was so new to her, the future such an unknown country—a paradise perhaps, or a drear gloomy waste, across which she must travel with bare bleeding feet. How should she know? She only knew that she was going home to a father who had never loved her, who had deferred the day of her coming as long as it was possible for him ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... hast lifted me From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown, And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully Shines out again, as all the angels see, Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own, Who camest to me when the world was gone, And I who looked for only God, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... bend me to my doom, And wait the hour which is approaching fast, When triple light shall stream upon mine eyes, And heaven itself be opened up at last To him who dared foretell its mysteries. I have had visions in this drear eclipse Of outward consciousness, and clomb the skies, Striving to utter with my earthly lips What the diviner soul had half divined, Even as the Saint in his Apocalypse Who saw the inmost glory, where enshrined Sat He who fashioned glory. This hath driven All outward strife and ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... A cloudy stream is flowing, And a hard, steel blast is blowing; Bitterer now than I remember Ever to have felt or seen, In the depths of drear December, When the white doth hide the green. March, April, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was, because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it, in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... deer Hung on fork'd boughs—with thongs of leather. Bound were his stiff, slim feet together— His eyes like dead stars cold and drear; The wand'ring firelight drew near And laid its wide palm, red and anxious, On the sharp splendor of his branches; On the white foam grown hard and sere On flank and shoulder. Death—hard as breast of granite boulder, And under his lashes ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... drear, his hope was cross'd, 'Twas late, 'twas farr, the path was lost That reach'd the neighbour-town; With weary steps he quits the shades, Resolved, the darkling dome he treads, And drops his ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... courage to go on, because it knows we can't. I mean, what is the use of it if we do go out? It is like salt water to the thirsty man. He feels the moisture he so needs, and then realizes the maddening parching which is a hundred times worse than his original state. Life's one long drear, and—and I sometimes wish it were all over and ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... for those stern and wintry days Of sorrow, pain, and fear, When Heaven's wise discipline doth make Our earthly journey drear. ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady



Words linked to "Drear" :   sorry, cheerless, blue, dreary, grim, uncheerful, depressing, dismal, dingy, drab, gloomy, dark



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com