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Forlorn   Listen
adjective
Forlorn  adj.  
1.
Deserted; abandoned; lost. "Of fortune and of hope at once forlorn." "Some say that ravens foster forlorn children."
2.
Destitute; helpless; in pitiful plight; wretched; miserable; almost hopeless; desperate. "For here forlorn and lost I tread." "The condition of the besieged in the mean time was forlorn in the extreme." "She cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living."
A forlorn hope (Mil.), a body of men (called in F. enfants perdus, in G. verlornen posten) selected, usually from volunteers, to attempt a breach, scale the wall of a fortress, or perform other extraordinarily perilous service; also, a desperate case or enterprise.
Synonyms: Destitute, lost; abandoned; forsaken; solitary; helpless; friendless; hopeless; abject; wretched; miserable; pitiable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Forlorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... a knight in Scotland born, Follow my love, come over the Strand; Was taken prisoner, and left forlorn Even by the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... argosy, And other ships that came from Egypt last, As much as would have bought his beasts and him, And yet have kept enough to live upon; So that not he, but I, may curse the day, Thy fatal birth-day, forlorn Barabas; And henceforth wish for an eternal night, That clouds of darkness may inclose my flesh, And hide these extreme sorrows from mine eyes; For only I have toil'd to inherit here The months of vanity, and loss of time, And painful nights, have ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe

... me," began she, while a sudden blush flitted over her countenance. "But this is my first ball, and I feel as if I had rushed into a whirlpool, from which I have, since the first rash plunge was made, been vainly trying to escape. I feel so dreadfully forlorn. I hardly know anybody here except my cousin, who invited me, and I hardly think ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... "Some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. But I always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature—I had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as I was when my husband's spirit flew away I have sat ever since—never attempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a young woman then, and I might have had another family by this time, and have been comforted ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... followed by one which, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... from bearing appellations totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes. This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit, content to cover its nakedness with borrowed ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... was his first contribution to the conversation, "d' you remember it was at a dock that you and I first met? It was night, blacker than Tophet, and raining, and you came ashore wet as a rag. You were the lonesomest, chilliest, most forlorn little tike I ever saw; but, by the eternal, you were trying ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... would be seven days yet before I could get news. I waited,—waited calmly and composedly. Mon Dieu! they talk of heroism in leading a forlorn hope,—Cesar Prevost was a hero for those eight days. I do not think about them ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... gold, Seem not those jetty promontories rather The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, Uncomforted of morn, Where old oblivions gather, The melancholy unconsoling fold Of all things that go utterly to death And mix no more, no more With life's perpetually awakening breath? Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, Over such sailless seas, To walk with hope's slain ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... cause of Tyler, who in a few days was joined, according to some histories, by upwards of fifty thousand men, and chosen their chief. With this force he marched to London, to demand an abolition of the tax and a redress of other grievances. The Court, finding itself in a forlorn condition, and, unable to make resistance, agreed, with Richard at its head, to hold a conference with Tyler in Smithfield, making many fair professions, courtier-like, of its dispositions to redress the oppressions. While Richard and Tyler were in conversation on these matters, each being on horseback, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... lustreless picture, especially if it be a landscape. There were two or three landscapes of Claude in this palace, which I doubt not would have been exquisite if they had been in the condition of those in the British National Gallery; but here they looked most forlorn, and even their sunshine was sunless. The merits of historical painting may be quite independent of the attributes that give pleasure, and a superficial ugliness may even heighten the effect; ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... told her a spider as big as a silver penny had spun a line from Saint Peter's key to Saint Katherine's nose; and as to the dust—why, you could make soup of it. I've dusted Saint Katherine many a time with my hands, for I had them, if I'd nought else: and trust me, the poor Saint looked so forlorn, I fairly wondered she did not speak. Had I been the image of a saint, somebody would have heard of it, I warrant you, when that spider began scuttering ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... satins that rustle and gems that gleam, Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away To the noisome River's bottom-clay! Then the costly bride and her maidens six Will shiver upon the bank of the Styx, Quite as helpless as they were born—— Naked souls, and very forlorn; The Princess, then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder, Whose robes are now the wide world's wonder, And even ourselves, and our dear little wives, Who calico wear each morn of their lives, And ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... I wonder what that means? Do you think it's a disguised love message to some forlorn damsel in the east, or does it conceal the heartrending cry of a lost soul to some fond but angry parent?" Then, as the man did not immediately answer, she went on with a pucker of thought upon her brow. "'Yellow'—that might mean gold. 'Booming'—ah, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... ill-starred midnight ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears be o'er! Doth ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... bamboos. As it could be replaced in an hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon, blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces, looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... drearily with Marston. Unhappy, forlorn, driven to the last extremity by obdurate creditors, he waits the tardy process of the law. He seldom appears in public; for those who professed to be his best friends have become his coldest acquaintances. But he has two friends left,—friends whose pure ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... all his goods to the poor, after his seven blooming sons, one after another, had died in the war, or of illness. He only kept a small house with a little garden, and said that as the Gods had taken his children to themselves in the other world he would take pity on the forlorn in this. 'Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked' says the law; and now that Seni has nothing more to give away, he goes through the city, as you know, hungry and thirsty himself, and scarcely clothed, and begging ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... possible," returned Miss Mehitable, and her voice and manner were full of such sympathetic interest that the forlorn one responded again; this time with a long look of gratitude that seemed to sink right down through Miss Upton's solicitous eyes into ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... figure was seated with his back supported against the little mast. They were evidently all insensible, for though the catamaran was by this time quite close to them there was no attempt made by any one of them to signal her; there was nothing indeed to indicate that life still lingered upon that forlorn little ocean waif. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... more life in one "self-approving hour,"-one act of benevolence,—one work of self-discipline,—than in threescore years and ten of mere sensual existence. Go out among the homes of the poor, lift up the disconsolate, administer comfort to the forlorn; in some way, as it may come across your path, or lie in the sphere of your duty, do a deed of kindness; and in that one act you shall live more than in a year of selfish indulgence and indolent ease,—yea, more than in a lifetime of such. The poet, with his ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... Milly, who was becoming very much interested in the story, while tears gathered in Dumps's blue eyes; and even Diddie was seen to wink a little at the forlorn condition of "de po' ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... of each journey from Charlestown he had been met here within a day or two by Otasite on the same mission. The long years as they passed had wrought only external changes since, as a slender wistful boy of eleven years, heart-sick, homeless, forlorn, friendless, save for his Indian captors, likely, indeed, to forget all language but theirs, he had first come with his question, always in English, always with a faltering eyelash and a deprecatory lowered voice, "Did you hear anything in ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... she lay, in the red eye of the setting moon, in that solitary ocean, shadowy, antique, forlorn, a thing the most abandoned, the most sinister I ever remember to ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... pitiless drawing-rooms of Merrion Square. Oh, Alice darling, you are the only friend I have in the world. If it were not for you, I believe I should drown myself in the Liffey. No girl was ever so miserable as I. I cannot tell you how I feel, and you cannot imagine how forlorn it all is; and I am so ill. I am always hungry, and always sick, and always longing. Oh, these longings; you may think they are nothing, but they are dreadful. You remember how active I used to be, how I used to run about the tennis-court; now I can scarcely ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... Sedd-el-Bahr, where we hove to about 6.45, the light was very baffling; land wrapped in haze, sun full in our eyes. Here we watched as best we could over the fight being put up by the Turks against our forlorn hope on the River Clyde. Very soon it became clear that we were being held. Through our glasses we could quite clearly watch the sea being whipped up all along the beach and about the River Clyde by a pelting storm of rifle bullets. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... and I went ashore to have a look after reindeer. The snow was lying thick, and if it had not been so wet we could have used our snow-shoes. As it was, we tramped about in the heavy slush without them, and without seeing so much as the track of a beast of any kind. A forlorn land, indeed! Most of the birds of passage had already taken their way south; we had met small flocks of them at sea. They were collecting for the great flight to the sunshine, and we, poor souls, could not help wishing that it ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... every other walk of life, was a mere matter of business. He had now two curates, of whom Ernest was the junior; the senior curate was named Pryer, and when this gentleman made advances, as he presently did, Ernest in his forlorn state ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... find ourselves alone there, especially after the stirring time we had recently, with the discovery of the treasure, and getting the ship afloat, and all; so, when we crawled out of the cave and went down to the beach, we five forlorn fellows felt more melancholy than can be readily imagined at seeing this bare and desolate, and hearing no sound but that of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... For this is the day that a deed was wrought, In which we have neither part nor share. For the children of clay was salvation bought, But not for the forms of sea or air! And ever the mortal is most forlorn. Who meeteth our race ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... all!— Empty, forlorn, the chambers of the Queen. But, on returning, in the turret room, I heard the noise of carriages and steeds, In rushing gallop, hurrying away. Am I alone? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... him, when those bold And pitiless women had slain all their males. There he with tokens and fair witching words Hypsipyle beguil'd, a virgin young, Who first had all the rest herself beguil'd. Impregnated he left her there forlorn. Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain. Here too Medea's inj'ries are avenged. All bear him company, who like deceit To his have practis'd. And thus much to know Of the first vale suffice thee, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... respect. As ready was the wand of Sid To bend where golden mines were hid. In Scottish hills found precious ore, Where none e'er looked for it before; And by a gentle bow divined, How well a Cully's purse was lined; To a forlorn and broken rake, Stood ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... through the livelong night incessant wakes; Now love, now rage, in midnight silence nurst, Back on her soal with doubted fury burst. From wave to wave of boiling passion borne, 665 "What now remains, she cries—despis'd, forlorn, Must Dido now, poor suppliant wretch, implore, And court the husband she disdain'd before; Or must I on their fleet submissive wait; And from those Dardan lords expect my fate? 670 Oh! yes!—by former ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... when a wave by the wild wind's blore Down from the clouds upon a ship doth light, And the whole hulk with scattering foam is white, And through the sails all tattered and forlorn Roars the fell blast: the seamen with affright Shake, and from death a hand-breadth they ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... of his followers as if they had taken out a patent for some knowing machine which was to give them a monopoly of its products. They claimed more for each other than was reasonable,—so much occasionally that their pretensions became ridiculous. One was tempted to ask: "What forlorn hope have you led? What immortal book have you written? What great discovery have you made? What heroic task of any kind have you performed?" There was too much talk about earnestness and too little ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the wood until they came to the place where the seven Princesses sat crying and wringing their hands. At the sight of them the young Princes were very much astonished, and still more so on learning their story; and they settled that each should take one of these poor forlorn ladies home with him, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... though we had entered a church. We were, perhaps unconsciously, abashed by the intensity of the absorption of these neat young women. After a while one of the guides, one of the inscrutable beings who had helped to invent and construct the astounding organism, began in a low voice on the forlorn hope of making me comprehend the mechanism of a telephone-call and its response. And I began on the forlorn hope of persuading him by intelligent acting that I did comprehend. We each made a little progress. I could not tell him that, though I ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... gone but a little way when some one rushed upon him, and little Ernst clasped him round the neck and fairly cried for joy. Sitting on the sidewalk near were the other little Bruders, looking as forlorn and dirty as three motherless children could. Dennis stopped and sat down beside them (for he was too tired to stand), while Ernst told his story—how their mother had left them, and how she had been found so ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... rolled as the helm went over, the swell washed her low bulwarks. She got smaller, until a rain squall blew across from the Cheshire side and she melted into the background of dark water and smoke. Barbara felt strangely forlorn, and it was some relief when Cartwright touched her arm and they set ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... too, as if there were more and more wretched-looking dogs following after that forlorn mule than behind the ponies of any chief's family in ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... days, no song of bird or wealth of plumage gladdens its forlorn branches; no lovely flowers or shade-loving moss and fern make patches of emerald and gold;" no weary pedestrian turns aside from the hot, dusty path where the heated air flows in tremendous rays unless to decipher some name on the bark where Nature ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Horse-Shoe, after he had mounted Captain Peter, "you must get up behind me. . . . ." . . . . By the time that his instructions were fully impressed upon the boy, our adventurous forlorn hope, as it may fitly be called, had arrived at the place which Horse-Shoe Robinson had designated for the commencement of active operations. They had a clear view of the old field, and it afforded them a strong assurance that the enemy was exactly where they wished him to be, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... of shame and remorse, and disappointed love. He had laid rude hands on the tender flower in its opening bloom, and prematurely sipped the sweetness from the blossom, and then unpitying he had cast it by, neglected and forlorn. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... what it is to have strove[1] With the tortures of verbal desire. I must use measured terms, where I love, And be moderate, when I admire. No slang must my diction adorn, I must never say "awfully swell." Alas! I feel flat and forlorn, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... God, I'd rather be A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... two or three days after the tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those, doubtless, that escaped the flood and those that were away when the disaster came, hanging in a small black mass to a branch high up near where their home used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If the queen was saved the remnant probably sought another tree; otherwise the bees ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... in an old house in the suburb, where many work-people, as poor but not as forlorn as he, also lodged. Among these neighbors there was a single woman, who lived by herself in a little garret, into which came both wind and rain. She was a young girl, pale, silent, and with nothing ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... thoroughly in his accident, being freed from school, and subjected only to caresses. After that he rebelled, having become tired of his bed. But by that time his mother had been most unnecessarily summoned. Unless she was wanted to examine the forlorn condition of his clothes, there was nothing that she could do. But she came, and, of course, showered blessings on Mr. Peacocke's head,—while Mrs. Wortle went through to the school and showered blessings on Mrs. Peacocke. What would they have ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... "Bonnie Prince," the hope of the fallen Stuarts, the idol of Scotland—leading a forlorn hope with laughter on his lips, now riding proudly at the head of his rabble army, now a fugitive Ishmael among the hills and caves of the Highlands, but ever the last to lose heart—has a magic still to quicken the pulses. That later years proved the idol's feet to be of clay, that he fell from ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... conference participated in by the two greatest figures then in the western world. The one representing the advancing tide of immigration that was to build the cities and plow the fields of a new empire; the other representing the forlorn hope of a fast decaying race that was soon to be removed from the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... for his fame, possessed a master in James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, well able to recount his history. Hogg bought Sirrah of a drover for a guinea, observing, notwithstanding his dejected and forlorn appearance, a sort of sullen intelligence in his countenance. Though he had never turned a sheep in his life, as soon as he discovered it was his duty to do so he began with eagerness and anxiety to learn his evolutions. ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... was reported to me; and the memory of inscriptions mentioned in the Jihan-numa was still importunate. Evidently all these were mere fancies; or, at best, gross distortions of facts. The Bedawin repeat them in the forlorn hope of "bakhshish," and never expect action to be taken: next morning they will probably declare the whole to be an invention. Yet it is never safe to neglect the cry of "wolf": our most remarkable discovery, the Temple at the Wady Hamz, was ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think he was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... time at the capital, where I often met him, and had the horror to see his dignity often laid in the dust, by excessive drunkenness, he paid me by invitation a final visit at Baltimore, on his way home. He took only time enough to dine. He looked dejected and forlorn. He and his interpreter had each a suit of common infantry uniform, and a sword as common, which he said had been presented to him at the war department. He was evidently ashamed of them. I confess I was too. But I forbear. He was then sober ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... learning was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise at finding a writer on political science of whom it could be said that, along with Montesquieu, he was "the most philosophical of those who had read so deeply, the most learned of those who had thought so much," in the van of the forlorn hope to maintain the reality of witchcraft. It should be said that he was equally confident of the unreality of the Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that it was contrary to the tenets of the theologians and philosophers and to common-sense, and therefore subversive of the foundations ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... was six or seven, at school, unhappy: he had just been humiliated and bullied by some older, stronger boys, and they were all jeering at him, and the master had punished him unjustly: he was crouching in a corner, utterly forlorn, while the others were playing: and he wept softly. There was a sad-faced little girl who was not playing with the others,—(he could see her now, though he had never thought of her since then; she was short, and had a big head, fair, almost white ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... we'll come," spoke up George promptly. "Now I want to know," he added, "what our reward is to be for our heroic rescue of two forlorn maidens who were sinking in the cold waters of ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... accomplished; at the general election, two months later, Grattan and his colleague, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, refused to stand again for Dublin; Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Conor, and others, followed his example. A few patriots, hoping against hope, were, however, returned, a sort of forlorn hope, to man the last redoubt of the Constitution. Of these was William Conyngham Plunkett, member for Charlemont, Grattan's old borough, a constitutionalist of the school of Edmund Burke, worthy to be named among the most illustrious of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... scene. On a mat, covered with irons, lies the forlorn Conrad. The flitting flame of a solitary lamp hardly reveals the heavy bars of the huge grate that forms the entrance to its cell. For some minutes nothing stirs. The mind of the spectator is allowed to become fully aware of the hopeless ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... rolling out upon the smooth surface of the granite, looked over and watched Cotter make his climb. He came up steadily, with no sense of nervousness, until he got to the narrow part of the ice, and here he stopped and looked up with a forlorn face to me; but as he climbed up over the ledge the broad smile came back to his face, and he asked me if it had occurred to me that we had, by and by, to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... with a heart forlorn The pulses of my being beat anew: And even as life returns upon the drowned, Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains— Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope; And hope that scarce ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... the tranquil, glassy bay, On headlands sheeted in dazzling spray, And the whitening ribs of a wreck forlorn That for ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... be expected to support it. No new thing; simply revival of older fashion. Our great grandfathers knew better than to swelter in London through July, pass the Twelfth of August at Westminster, and go off forlorn and jaded in the early days of September. Hunting men may have objections to raise; but then hunting men, though eminently respectable class, are not everybody, not even a majority; may even be spared to go hunting as usual. WALPOLE hunted like anything, yet in WALPOLE'S day Parliament ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... mine, in Portland place, has a wife who inflicts upon him, every season, two or three immense evening parties. At one of those parties, he was standing in a very forlorn condition, leaning against the chimney-piece, when a gentleman coming up to him, said, "Sir, as neither of us is acquainted with any of the people here, I think we had ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... around her became more familiar with Violante, she was remarked for a certain stateliness of manner and bearing, which, had it been less evidently natural and inborn, would have seemed misplaced in the daughter of a forlorn exile, and would have been rare at so early an age among children of the loftiest pretensions. It was with the air of a little princess that she presented her tiny hand to a friendly pressure, or submitted her calm clear cheek to a presuming kiss. Yet withal she was so graceful, and her very ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... anything by crying and wailing, by calling upon your fathers' tombs and their own desolate condition. Against this we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth, butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by desolate hearths, with far more reason implore your justice upon the prisoners. The pity which they appeal to is rather due to men who suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as they do are on the contrary subjects for triumph. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... Tse!" It was a sympathetic cluck. "Was she a wicked princess?" The query was gently put, but it deeply affected the man. He tried to smile, failed, then like a forlorn little boy he came and bowed his ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... a papyrus now at St Petersburg, describes a mysterious island whereon there dwelt a monster most lovable and most forlorn: a creature so tenderly drawn, indeed, that the reader will not fail to enthrone him in the little company of the nobility of the kingdom of the fairy tale. Translations of the story by two or three savants ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... to the continent; where, being still pursued, he was forced to seek refuge at the court of Admetus, king of the Molossians, though the latter was his personal enemy. Fortunately, Admetus happened to be from home. The forlorn condition of Themistocles excited the compassion of the wife of the Molossian king, who placed her child in his arms, and bade him seat himself on the hearth as a suppliant. As soon as the king arrived, Themistocles explained his peril, and ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... Livingstone did was thus done with open eyes and well-considered resolution. Adverting to the prevalence of fever in some parts of the country, while other parts were comparatively healthy, he says in his Journal: "I offer myself as a forlorn hope in order to ascertain whether there is a place fit to be a sanatorium for more unhealthy spots. May God accept my service, and use me for his glory. A great honor it is to he a fellow-worker with God." "It is a great venture," he writes to his sister (28th April, 1851). ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... "Suppose now, they conceived the idea that it would further their forlorn cause a heap if they only had such an airship, and could threaten to drop all sorts of bombs into the camps of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... long and laborious washing;—these were the more definable points of a very somber picture. In the way of movement, and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver protected by a water-proof cap over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... forlorn wretches in the waiting room! Some of them had been there for hours and when the proud and prosperous-looking Rodney sent in his name and we were taken in at once without waiting for our turn and they looked at me with their mournful made-up eyes I felt as if my wicked French heels were on their ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... dear forlorn lover!" he cried, grasping his visitor's hand, "I thought you were that rascally proctor, and was really preparing for a hand-to-hand conflict, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... Cochin to land the hostages. He determined, therefore, to commence his voyage, and stood out to sea; the enemy following him during the whole of that day, but returned towards Calicut when night drew on. Cabral now turned his attention to the forlorn nayres, who had been five days on board without eating, and by dint of much and kind entreaty, he at length prevailed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... afternoon palpitated and throbbed in The Hollow, but the hidden bird did not break it by another call. At last it became evident that Cynthia was beyond the reach of her slave's desires, and so poor Sandy gathered together his flagging strength and spirits and turned toward home with the forlorn hope that he might meet Cynthia on the way there. Now that the parting time had come he knew that the girl was his only real friend on earth in the sense that youth knows a friend. They were near each ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... He had studied the criminal laws, so that he might be sure in his reckonings; but he had always felt that he might be carried by circumstances into deeper waters than he intended to enter. As the soldier who leads a forlorn hope, or as the diver who goes down for pearls, or as the searcher for wealth on fever-breeding coasts, knows that as his gains may be great, so are his perils, Melmotte had been aware that in his life, as it opened itself out to him, he might come to terrible ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... know that long after the palms and minarets of Gafsa have faded into the blurred image of countless other palms and other minarets, I shall be able to call up the figure of this forlorn and ambiguous fellow-creature, standing on the asphalt of the river-crossing with his cheap burnous wrapped around him, sighing, shivering, and setting forth certain views concerning human life for which there is, after all, a good ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... was a forlorn feeling that Christmas was coming, and she had nowhere to go. Until now she had gone on in faith, feeling sure that before the time arrived, some one would remember her loneliness, and invite her if only for the day itself. Possibly Cecil ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the Dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man, in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! A scholar, a man of wit, of high sentiment, of refinement, and a good fortune withal—now by a sudden turn ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... said to the creature. 'Follow me in the name of the Father, Son, and Ghost'; which the forlorn dog did do willy-nilly; and he led it down the Burn, to Hound's Pool, and there bade it halt. Then the man of God took a nutshell—just a filbert with a hole in it bored by a squirrel—and he gave it boldly ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... the well-meaning Walnut, foreboding their fall, Crack'd a joke, for he cared not a fig for them all. The Poplar drew up with a feeling of scorn, And the Cypress looked sad, and the Yew was forlorn. The Plane smoothly spoke, and the Hazel the same, But the Scarlet Oak redden'd with anger and shame. At last they resolved, to blot out the disgrace, To stand fast by each other adorning the place; No longer their loss of applause to bemoan, But to come out next spring ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset

... more days at this dear old post, where we have been so happy, and I want those to pass as quickly as possible, and have some of the misery over. Our house is perfectly forlorn, with just a few absolute necessaries in it for our use while here. Everything has been sold or given away, and all that is left to us are our trunks and army chests. Some fine china and a few pieces of cut glass I kept, and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... table, looked weary and forlorn, and the good-natured heart of the cook was touched, especially when Susan requested her to refrain from the stiff name ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... had won the electoral vote of but a single State, Missouri, though three of the seven electoral votes of New Jersey fell to him as the result of fusion. Yet as the popular vote in the several States was ascertained, defeat wore the guise of a great personal triumph. Leader of a forlorn hope, he had yet received the suffrages of 1,376,957 citizens, only 489,495 less votes than Lincoln had polled. Of these 163,525 came from the South, while Lincoln received only 26,430, all from the border slave States. As compared with the vote of Breckinridge and Bell at the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... presence of domestic calamity human nature betrays its inherent weakness. At such times the artificial outer covering of civilization falls away, and the soul stands forth, stark, primitive, forlorn, and cries aloud. The strain of the tremendous tragedy which had entered his house, swift-footed and silent, was too much for Sir Philip. He sank on his knees by the side of his unconscious son, whimpering like a child—a weak and helpless old man. There was no trace ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... morning and at the moment when Mary Hennessey was pushing open the scullery door of the house in Welch's Court, and was about to come upon the body of the forlorn old man lying there in his night-dress, Richard sat eating his breakfast in a silent and preoccupied mood. He had retired very late the previous night, and his lack-lustre eyes showed the effect of insufficient sleep. His single fellow-boarder, Mr. Pinkham, had not returned from his customary early ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... would never have asked that question so directly; but he had lost reckoning of everything but these poor devils' dreadful need of doctoring, and he was like a man roused out of a dream. If a holy war had been proclaimed already, then he was engaged on a forlorn hope. But the man laughed ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... tooken him away, Stranger," parleyed Charlotte with extreme mildness for her and giving to the Stray the name that she had decided upon by translating the cognomen of his state into that of another almost equally forlorn. "My father told my Auntie Harriet that Aunt Charlotte would git Minister yet and I'll call the devil to stop her if she tries to get ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... sun was shining, for a change,—everything was looking cheerful. This village seemed to be swarming with girls; some of them were pretty, and all were friendly. The men who had looked so haggard and forlorn when dawn overtook them at the edge of the town, began squaring their shoulders and throwing out their chests. They were dirty and mud-plastered, but as Claude remarked to the Captain, they actually looked ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... which abolished imprisonment for debt; he was an early and active member of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, which once did much service; and for years, when interest in prison reform was at a low ebb in Massachusetts, the one forlorn relict of that once powerful organization, a Prisoner's Aid Society, used to hold its meetings in Dr. Howe's spacious chamber in Bromfield Street. He took an early interest in the care of the insane, with which his friends Horace Mann, Dr. Edward Jarvis, and Dorothea ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... length, fearful was the scene of destruction which met their gaze. Here and there fragments of wreck could be distinguished on the Goodwins, while many other ships which had escaped the hurricane presented a shattered and forlorn appearance. By seven o'clock providentially the wind began to fall, and in a short time it ceased almost as rapidly as it had commenced. Sad was the number of ships which had foundered. Among those in the Downs ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... chain and the other trinkets with which her wedding-dress was adorned, and caused her to be entirely stript of her clothing. She was then scourged with rods till her beautiful body was bathed in blood, and at last alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into the city. Here the forlorn creature wandered up and down through the blazing streets, among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last put out of her misery by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead—about whose borders nothing grows but weeds and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... mournful look, Dreary and gaunt, hanging his pallid face 'Twixt his dark flowing locks, he almost seem'd Too feeble, or to melancholy eyes One that has parted with his soul for pride, And in the sable secret lived forlorn.' ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... missed Steward, Cap, and Beaman more than ever, for we had been unable to get anyone to take their places. The fact was our prospective voyage through Marble and Grand canyons was considered almost a forlorn hope and nobody cared to take the risk. The plan had been to give me the steering of the Canonita, but now with three boats and only seven to man them it was plain that one must be abandoned. An examination of them all showed that the Nellie Powell was in the poorest ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the Sidney family, with whom it has remained ever since. Of the Sidneys, one only is known wherever the English language is spoken—the gallant young knight, Sir Philip, who, when still below the age of thirty, lost his life while fighting for a forlorn cause in the Netherlands. Of all the brilliant array of statesmen, soldiers and writers who graced the reign of Queen Elizabeth, none gave greater promise than did young Sidney. Nothing is more characteristic of him than the oft-told story of how, when suffering from his death-wound ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... It was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off, and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... of all were fixed upon the favoured few, who, with upraised hands, were repeating the Kalima[2] before they set forth upon their perilous ride, but Charteris managed to convey a brief warning to the Darwani chiefs and officers near him. The forlorn hope burst forth from the low jungle that had served as cover all day—starting on the left of the advanced party, so as not to mask its fire, and as their progress was marked with shouts by their fellows, his ear caught the sound he had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... of invading armies. The first distinct account which we have is from Arrian, who, with his usual brevity and severe veracity, narrates the march of Alexander through this region, which he calls the country of the Oreitae and Gadrosii.[2] He gives a very accurate account of this forlorn tract, its general aridity and the necessity of obtaining water by digging in the beds of torrents; describes the food of the inhabitants as dates and fish; and adverts to the occasional occurrence of fertile spots, the abundance of aromatic and thorny shrubs and fragrant plants, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... To strike at cause as well as consequence. Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own, Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, To flatter treason, and avoid offence To that Dark Power whose underlying crime Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence. But if thine be the fate of all who break The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... doorway saw him coming, Saw his shadow fall upon the broidered beading, And her nimble lingers paused, she upward glanced, Radiant smile came swiftly as she met his gaze, For he oft had spoke her kindly since her advent As a maid forlorn to dwell at once-loved Jamestown. Rolfe sat down beside her, questioning Pocahontas Of her kindred, of the tribes that lived about them, Of her playmates in the pretty upland village, Of the warriors who had fought ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman

... to hold you down. Then let us seek the cause, and view What others say and others do. Have we, like those in place, resigned Our independency of mind? Have we had scruples—and therefore Practising morals, are we poor? If such be our forlorn position, Would Fortune mend the lorn condition? On wealth if happiness were built, Villains would compass it by guilt. No: CRESCIT AMOR NUMMI—misers Are not so heartwhole as are sizars. Think, O John Gay!—and that's ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... "It is a forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the effort. Allons donc! to the storming of la ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... could express, in his degraded and forlorn condition, at this unlooked-for meeting with his black friend, Foster was about to claim acquaintance, when the negro advanced to the group among whom he stood, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... all the knights, in order to be ready at any moment, kept their horses in the hall in which they slept with their wives.' The viscount in the tower which defends the entrance to the valley, or the passage of the ford, the marquis thrown as a forlorn hope on the devastated frontier, sleeps on his arms, like the American lieutenant in a blockhouse in the far West, among the Sioux. His house is only a camp and a refuge; some straw and a pile of leaves are thrown on the pavement of the great hall; it is there that ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... the North, the South, the East, the West, The thrall, the master, all of us in one; There was no section that he held the best; His love shone as impartial as the sun; And so revenge appealed to him in vain; He smiled at it, as at a thing forlorn, And gently put it from him, rose and stood A moment's space in pain, Remembering the prairies and the corn And the glad voices of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... cannot overcome Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn, And calls down punishment that is ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... followed by twelve men and his trusty lieutenant, he would have carried her out and out, maugre the disparity of force, had he not fainted from loss of blood, when, falling on his back, he died where he fell, like a hero—"His face to the sky, and his feet to the foe" leaving eleven forlorn widows, being the fourteen wives, minus the three that ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... kill'd compassion, nor breathes in his bosom Shame, which is potent for good among mortals, as well as for evil. Dear was Patroclus to him, but the mourner that buries a brother, Yea, and the father forlorn, that has stood by the grave of his offspring, These, even these, having wept and lamented, are sooth'd into calmness, For in the spirit of man have the Destinies planted submission. But because Hector in battle arrested the life of his comrade, Therefore encircling the tomb, at the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... though incredibly and horribly shrunken. On his face was no expression of any kind whatever—fear, welcome, or recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... October 1825, and Mrs. Opie was left alone. She was very forlorn when her father died. She had no close ties to carry her on peacefully from middle age to the end of life. The great break had come; she was miserable, and, as mourners do, she falls upon herself and beats her breast. All through these ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... neighborhood. The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless and unprovided for. The young men had been kind to the woman during her illness, and at her death—melting with pity at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter—swore between themselves to love and watch over her as if she ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... were obliged to leave their houses for some special reason were to be seen in the streets; the market waggons which had come in from the country laden with vegetables and chickens and butter were drawn up under the shadow of the market house, that their forlorn horses or mules might escape the glaring hot sun. The liveliest business hour had passed, and about the waggons a group of market men and women and two or three loiterers were idling in the shade, waiting for chance-belated customers. There was a general drawing near when ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... thought of the caution which Lupton had given him. What good would the money have done him had he won it? What more could he have than he now enjoyed? But to lose such a sum of money! With all his advantages of wealth he felt himself to be as forlorn and wretched as though he had nothing left in ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... speaking with the men of the town, Grenfell came to an open space. As his quick eyes looked about he saw two little girls standing bound with cords. They were tethered like goats to a stake. Their little faces and round eyes looked all forlorn. Even the wonder of the strange bearded white man hardly kept back the tears that ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... suppose Mr. Montague was tremendously hungry, and gave his wife's hand a good pinch when he shook it, to make her hurry things up; but, however that may be, they were walked in to dinner in straight order. Mr. Morris sat by Miss Isabella, with his forlorn old sister on the other hand, and as the opposite side of the table looked rather bare, Minnie proposed that some of the children should ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow

... there was one more fair— A slight girl, lily-pale; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail— 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn, And nothing could avail. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race— When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky, Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his birth— That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monkton's line. Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left master; From mortal ken, from ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... humankind, you wander up and down the beach a creature that the land is evidently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling to take. But you are consoled by the fact that all the rest are as mean and forlorn-looking as yourself; and so you wade in, over foot-top, unto the knee, and waist deep. The water is icy-cold, so that your teeth chatter and your frame quakes, until you make a bold dive; and in a moment you and the sea are good friends, and you are not certain ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... that he took the shell up, its fuse burning as it was, and ran with it out of the tent, then hurled it to a distance. It exploded, and of course was his death, but the rest were saved, and I call that a deed of heroism far greater than mounting a breach or leading a forlorn hope." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... renew'd, old classic grace; Then, soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn, A-Kempis! her departing soul outworn, While by her bedside Hebrew rites ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... them, buy them: eve and morn Lovers' ills are all to sell. Then you can lie down forlorn; But ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... was born to her, and although this son had something of the radiance of the immortals about him, Thetis remained forlorn and estranged. Nothing that her husband did was pleasing to her. Prince Peleus was in fear that the wildness of the sea would break out in her, and that some great harm would be wrought ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... inherit the kingdom of God; although "flesh and blood" that is, these present bodies subject to decay cannot.23 It is surely hard to believe that the New Testament writers had such a distinction in their minds. It is but a forlorn resource conjured up to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... there lies Sigmund the Volsung, and far away, forlorn Are the blossomed boughs of the Branstock, and the house where he was born. To what end was wrought that roof-ridge, and the rings of the silver door, And the fair-carved golden high-seat, and the many-pictured floor Worn down by the feet of the Volsungs? or the hangings of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... and Dexter ceased undressing, and stood there in the cold night air, feeling as desolate, despairing, and forlorn ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... men were aweary after the ball. Miss Ann spent a sleepless night and could not drag herself from her bed in time for breakfast. When old Billy came to her room with a can of hot water for her morning ablutions, he found his mistress limp and forlorn. ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... homes and property at stake, those with an inborn sense of real patriotism which means loyalty to locality and to their neighbours, are more inclined to remain with their homes and their property. Besides, a refugee hardly appears at his best. He is in a strange country, forlorn, homesick, a hostage of fate and personal misfortune. The Belgian nation had taken the Allies' side and now individual Belgians expected help from ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... goad Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad, Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry, And working tongue, and danger in the eye; And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn: "O fools, think not to trick me!" then forlorn Would gaze about green earth or out to sea: "This is the end of man in his degree"— Thus would he moralise in those bare lands With hopeless brows and tossing up of hands— "To sow in sweat and see another reap!" Then, pitying himself, he'd fall to weep His desolation, scorned by Gods, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch, 'And pore upon the Brook that babbles by. 'Hard by yon Wood, now frowning as in Scorn, 'Mutt'ring his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove, 'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, 'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love. 'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill, 'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree; 'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill, 'Nor up the Lawn, ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... from us and moved down the sands again to the middle beach, gazing wistfully, longingly out at the snail. There was something peculiarly sad and forlorn about him as he stood there on the lonely, moonlit shore, the crown upon his head, his figure showing sharply black against the ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... his in this ultimate moment a hundredfold more than ever. The sounding tale of his people's wars—one against a host, a foray in the mist, a last stand among the mountain snows—sang in his heart like a tune. The fierce, northern exultation, which glories in hardships and the forlorn, came upon him with such keenness and delight that, as he looked into the night and the black unknown, he felt the joy of a greater kinship. He was kin to men lordlier than himself, the true-hearted who had ridden the King's path and trampled a little world under foot. To the old fighters in the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... Cook's first care was to provide a place for the sick on shore. Here the greater number recovered, though some were still ill when again taken on board. The country appeared to the voyagers to be of a most sterile and forlorn character, and from the accounts they received of the great distances from each other at which the settlers were situated, they conjectured that such must be the general nature of the country in the interior. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... and wind and darkness, for me such comfort as the inn afforded, but of the three it was I who was desolate and forlorn. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... of getting him to do any certain thing. He will dare willingly, but he will not permit himself to be driven. So this attempt of the boatmen to force Alf only aroused all the dogged stubbornness of his race. The same qualities were in him that are in men who lead forlorn hopes; and there, under the stars, on the lonely pier, encircled by the jostling and shouldering gang, he resolved that he would die rather than submit to the indignity of being robbed of a single stitch of clothing. Not value, but principle, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... the frights he had had, and, in place of finding his destination some handsome mansion where there would be a warm welcome, it seemed to him that he had come to a savage dungeon-like place, on the very extreme of the earth, where all looked desolate and forlorn among the ruins, and the sea was beating at the foot of the rocks on ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... nor fear, nor remorse, nor natural affection, who could patiently superintend all the details of a great military work, or manage a vast political intrigue by alternations of browbeating and bribery, or lead a forlorn hope, or murder a prisoner in cold blood, or leap into the blazing crater of what seemed a marine volcano, the Marquis of Richebourg had ever made himself most actively and unscrupulously useful to his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... descent we found ourselves separated from the nearest settlement by a very wide river, which it was necessary to ford. Neither of the Tejadas had ever been here before and its depths and dangers were unknown. Fortunately Pablo found a forlorn individual living in a tiny hut on the bank, who indicated which way lay safety. After an exciting two hours we finally got across to the desired shore. Animals and men were glad enough to leave the high, arid desert and enter the oasis of Caraveli ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... What bolting, tramping, and rushing would they not have made through the ranks of the astonished professors and students? The Anniversary set, for example, who sweep the pews of men, or, coming upon one forlorn, crush him as a boa does a sheep. Our silly little flock only laughed, colored, and retreated to the volantes, where they held a council of war, and decided to go visit some establishment where possibly better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... my heart, when Mr. Purvis and I got into the stage at Canton, to see my aunt and uncle standing by the front wheel looking up at me. How old and lonely and forlorn they looked! Aunt Deel had her purse in her hand. I remember how she took a dollar bill out of it—I suppose it was the only dollar she had—and looked at it a moment and then handed it up ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... under notice, from the hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... yards down the road, by what had been the walled entrance to the Hakes' garden, they sighted two forlorn small figures—the six and five year old Hake children, Sophie and Miriam, who recognised Ruth and, running, clung to ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... these by reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance in speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Scepticism. ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... and deed. If thee were me and had as much money as I have, and were just such a lonely, childless, forlorn old man, what would thee do, that would accomplish the most good? according to thy judgment, which I have ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... boys but Franz and Emil knew what had happened, and when they came down next morning, great was their wonderment and discomfort, for the house seemed forlorn without its master and mistress. Breakfast was a dismal meal with no cheery Mrs. Jo behind the teapots; and when school-time came, Father Bhaer's place was empty. They wandered about in a disconsolate kind of way for an hour, waiting for news and hoping it would be all right with Demi's father, for ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... are going out in the Casino. It is the hour when, in the old days, life would be becoming most feverish about the gaming tables. In little forlorn groups the repatries are being conducted to their temporary quarters in the town. To-morrow morning before it is light, another train-load will arrive, the band will again play the Marseillaise, the American Red Cross workers will again be in attendance, the gentleman in the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... looking-for of coming calamity. For, on the fine September morning when the sun poured out golden showers, and Leafland sat fair and smiling in robes of green, and so the whole universe was golden-green, there came a messenger flying from the North country,—a wandering Wood-thrush, deserted, draggled, and forlorn, faltering on weary wing through the lovely lanes of Leafland. The men begged him to tarry; the women promised him the daintiest tidbit in the sweetest bower on the sunniest bough; and the little Leaf-people clapped their tiny hands, and danced on the tips of their tiny ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various



Words linked to "Forlorn" :   hopeless



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