"Swarthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... porters, I threaded my way at a snail's pace through the dense crowd of waiting passengers, swarthy-faced sons of Italy, apparently bound for the steerage. The great gray bulk of the Re d'Italia loomed before me, floating proudly at her stern the green, white, and red flag blazoned with ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... second before she had been on the outer fringe of the crowd, she now appeared to be in the very center of it. Women were pushing up behind her, women who wore shawls as she did, only the shawls were mostly of gaudy colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children wriggled and wormed their way deeper into the press. It was a crowd composed almost entirely of the foreign element which inhabited that quarter—and ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... in the shape of a sturdy, muscular-looking man, whose swarthy face was sheltered by a wide-brimmed soft felt hat, very much turned up at the sides, and in whose broad band was stuck a tuft of the pale grey, starry-looking, downy plant known as the Edelweiss. His jacket was of dark, exceedingly threadbare velvet; breeches of the same; and he wore gaiters ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... short, swarthy, broad-bearded man, "I have the honor to make you acquaint' with my friend ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... this, safe as an angler matched against a minnow; Demetrios of Anatolia, now at the last, accepted alms from what had been until to-day a pertinacious gnat. Demetrios was physically shaken by disgust at the situation, and in the sunset's glare his swarthy countenance showed like that of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Orlick," though not above five and twenty, journeyman to Joe Gargery, blacksmith. Obstinate, morose, broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, swarthy, of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. Being jealous of Pip, he allured him to a hut in the marshes, bound him to a ladder, and was about to kill him, when, being alarmed by approaching steps, he fled. Subsequently, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... white-vested and out of breath, a bunch of mountain flowers in one hand, his felt hat in the other; and three men bobbed up behind, Indian file, over the crest of the trail, the Missionary, Williams, stepping lightly, MacDonald swarthy and close-lipped, taking the climb with the ease of a mountaineer, Bat Brydges, the Senator's newspaper man, hat on the back of his head, coat and vest and collar in hand, blowing with the zest ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... swarthy complexion, Alwin of England suddenly flushed. When a wish is rooted in one's very heart, it is difficult to get far enough away to see it in its ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... withal that thou fain would'st shine, As I con them, these bulgy old boots of mine. But I shrink from thee, Arab! Thou eat'st eel-pie, Thou evermore hast at least one black eye; There is brass on thy brow, and thy swarthy hues Are due not to nature but handling shoes; And the hit in thy mouth, I regret to see, Is a bit ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... brave act, indeed, on the part of this young man," replied the swarthy M. Riel. "He has excellent judgment, I perceive, or he would not so readily have calculated that no harm could come to any one who could swim well, by ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the hell do you want here?" asked the fellow under the lamp, his swarthy face drawn with fear and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... schooner had approached the wreck, as nearly as her own safety permitted, and dropped anchor for the first time since leaving Bangor, a dozen little wrecking craft, manned by crews of swarthy spongers and fishermen, had also reached the spot, and active preparations for lightening the stranded ship were being made. Her carefully battened hatches were uncovered, whips were rove to her lower yards, ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... then he has shown me unvarying kindness, for which I am indebted chiefly to my preservation of his life, but partly also to his high approval of the summary manner in which I upset, by a blow of my sabre and bound of my horse, one of his swarthy antagonists, reminding him, as he always mentions when telling the story, of a similar feat of his own when attacked on the Russian retreat by three gigantic Tartars from the Ukraine. Since we have been in garrison here, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... sharp, too, when preceded or followed by a consonant; as in Arthur, ethnic, swarthy, athwart: except in brethren, burthen, farther, farthing, murther, northern, worthy. But "th between two vowels, is generally flat in words purely English; as in gather, neither, whither: and sharp in words from the learned languages; as in atheist, ether, method"—See ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his eyes dilating. In the north-west, swarthy, curling wreaths of vapor that seemed as though they rose from a monstrous burning straw-stack writhed their way upward to a great height, the upper portion seeming to tremble threateningly, as though there were a shaking fist within the swirl, hidden by clouds. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... in assuming the extent of the boats' damages. One of the men, an Italian, climbed to the forecastle deck in order to see more clearly what sort of danger they were running into. He came back instantly, and his swarthy face was green with terror. Though he spoke English well enough, he began to jabber wildly in his mother tongue. None paid heed to him. It was common knowledge that the vessel must be lost, and that those who still lived when she struck would have the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... said, twining her white arms round his swarthy neck and looking up into his murderous eyes with something like genuine adoration. "We shall get the wife's dowry for ourselves, by degrees, every farthing of it, and it shall be the dower of Aristarchi's bride instead. I shall not be portionless. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... "romantic chap," as he was called, looked his character to the life. Slender, swarthy, melancholy-eyed, and darkly-bearded; with feminine features, mellow voice, and alternately languid or vivacious manners. A child of the South in nature as in aspect, ardent and proud; fitfully aspiring and despairing; without the native energy which moulds character and ennobles ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... of Ireland. This was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal, begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. All this happened on my journey from Westport to Newport, but now the truck promised Sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," I should at least disappear with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... our military movements bring the Roman knights to Palaestina, in their pride of birth they do not wed the black-eyed daughters of the Jews. On your earlier expedition to Egypt you met a princess of the land, but were not let to espouse that swarthy maiden of the Nile. The reward of love cannot be the experience of which the augur ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... indeed, seek me at all? Why not confide in those swarthy attendants, who doubtless ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... found not a soul to meet them. "Where the devil are they all?" Joe ran forward, and went below. In the dim light he could see little, but he heard a sound as of men moaning, and as his sight became accustomed to the dusk he saw several swarthy fellows kneeling. They were kissing their crucifixes and making a woeful noise. Joe yelled, "Where's your skipper?" but no one heeded him, and the moaning prayers went on. With a curse Joe rushed aft. On his way he saw the sounding rod, and he shouted, "See how much she's ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... at once have detected did not belong to the manly simplicity of the English wardrobe. Nor were his features in the slightest degree those of one of the islanders, the outline being beautifully classical, more especially about the mouth and chin, while the cheeks were colorless, and the skin swarthy. His eye, too, was black as jet, and his cheek was half covered in whiskers of a hue dark as the raven's wing. His face, as a whole, was singularly beautiful—for handsome is a word not strong enough to express all the character that was conveyed by a conformation that might be ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he, and the barge with oar and sail 265 Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull 270 Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... first on this rocky ledge I lay, There was scarce a ripple in yonder bay, The air was serenely still; Each column that sailed from my swarthy clay Hung loitering long ere it passed away, Though the skies wore a tinge of leaden grey, And the atmosphere was chill. But the red sun sank to his evening shroud, Where the western billows are roll'd, Behind ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... I was about to take my departure, a copy of the new order was delivered to the Staff Officer with whom I had been conferring about my visit to the Front. He read it through slowly, his swarthy face flushing red with ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... undisputed reputation for charging upon a well-loaded board with a will that left no tell-tale vestige." Very likely, in the throng, all were not of New York. There were doubtful strangers, too, looking with yearning eyes out over the dancing waters of the blue bay—swarthy, weather-beaten men with huge earrings. They called themselves "privateers-men." But there were those who smiled at the word, for romance had it that there were still buccaneers in the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... my name; I am a swarthy Lovel; The Gorgios say I be A witch of wondrous power; And faith they speak the truth, The silly, foolish fellows, For often I bewitch The ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... man of swarthy countenance, with signs of the bottle glowing through the dark skin; small fierce pig eyes, a rather flat pendulous nose, and a grim forbidding mouth, with a large wart a little above it. On the head hung one of those ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... had descended the hill, and were on the borders of the mining settlement. They had now attracted the attention of the miners, and when the prisoner was recognized there went up an angry shout, and a band of swarthy, bearded men advanced ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... certain indescribable thing called glamour; which was the whole stock-in-trade of the Brontes, which we feel in Dickens when Quilp clambers amid rotten wood by the desolate river; and even in Thackeray when Esmond with his melancholy eyes wanders like some swarthy crow about the dismal avenues of Castlewood. Of this quality (which some have called, but hastily, the essential of literature) George Eliot had not little but nothing. Her air is bright and intellectually even exciting; but it is like the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Waloo Gazette the next evening that would have interested Mary Rose very much if she had read it. It was one of the little incidents that have both a pathetic and a humorous appeal and it was very well written. It told of a little black-haired swarthy-skinned girl who had always longed for long yellow curls. When illness robbed her of the hated, black locks she had resolutely set to work to earn money to buy a wig that she might return to school. All summer she worked under the hot sun, picking berries for a neighboring ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... fainter and fainter. Are the tall maidens of Capri already looking out for the swarthy sailors, that these turn no longer to the shores they are leaving?... "O dolce Napoli! O suol beato!" ... Fainter and fainter grow the notes on the trembling string, so that you can scarcely tell them from the cool plashing ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Benigno, and Fernandez and Francisco, and Benito. Benito was a tall, swarthy man, with immense gray moustachios, and hair as harsh as tropical grass and gray as ashes. When he could spare his cigarette from his lips, he would tell you in a cavernous voice, and with a wrinkled smile that ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... swarthy, bearded like Forty-niners, with only a handful of flour and a lump of bacon left in our kit we came down to the Third Fork of the Stickeen River, without a flake of gold to show for our "panning" the sands along our way. My diaries state that for more than thirty ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every feature, in every ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... the forces at Boston. We get occasional glimpses of this vigorous figure during the war. At Dorchester, Washington consulted him about the state of feeling in New Hampshire. At Bennington, we catch sight of him among the first who scaled the breastworks, and again coming out of the battle, his swarthy skin so blackened with dust and gunpowder that he could scarcely be recognized. We hear of him once more at West Point, just after Arnold's treason, on guard before the general's tent, and Washington says to him, "Captain Webster, I believe I can ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... your Colonelship's pardon, 'cried the clerk nervously, edging away from the swarthy-faced soldier. 'I have heard speak of your Colonelship, and of your doings in the German wars. I have myself trailed a pike in my youth and have broken a head or two, aye, and a heart or two also, when I wore buff ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down the aisle with his barrack-bag slung at his shoulder like a monstrous blue sausage, he saw no vacant seats, but after a moment his eye fell on a single space at present occupied by the feet of a short swarthy Sicilian, who, with his hat drawn over his eyes, hunched defiantly in the corner. As Anthony stopped beside him he stared up with a scowl, evidently intended to be intimidating; he must have adopted it as a defense against this entire gigantic equation. At Anthony's sharp "That seat taken?" he ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and in their stead came visions of the pleasant places I used to know, the ruffling of the wind upon the Breydon Water and the dykes, the stir among the reeds and rushes, and the cattle browsing in the Norfolk fields. Instead of the swarthy Indian soldiers with their torches I saw the friendly, homely figures of the carters as they rode their horses to the pool at sundown after the day's work was over, and the familiar groups of villagers, and the face ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... thought, an attractive person; his countenance was swarthy, his eyes were black his hair was black, his heavy jaw was shadowed by an enormous black mustachio. A kerchief of brilliant red tied about his throat gave him the appearance of the matador in a Spanish bullfight ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... it go by. It was not a very large army, for most of the soldiers had died, or been killed, and it was being pursued by the wild people who lived south of us in those days, so that it was in a great hurry to put the desert between it and them. The general of the army was a swarthy man—I wish that I could remember his ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... into the room. Mavis saw a girl who would have had a fine figure if she had been two or three inches taller. She was swarthy, with red lips and fine eyes; she was dressed in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... shall choose, when I win the first prize," says a swarthy, savage, and bandy-legged archer, who bears the owl gules on a black shield, the cognizance of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gloom of Verona woods;[67] he sees the American pampas—"miles and miles of gold and green," "where the sunflowers blow in a solid glow," with a horse—"coal-black"—careering across it; and his swarthy Ethiop uses the yellow poison-wattles of a lizard to divine with.[68] If he imagines the "hairy-gold orbs" of the sorb-fruit, they must be ensconced in "black glossy myrtle-berries," foils in texture as in hue;[69] and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... It was through this valley that Garibaldi marched with his troops, thus avoiding the fire from the forts on the heights around. As I ascended the hill, I passed the remains of many ancient mementoes of the past. I was struck by the grace and beauty of the peasantry—the men, active, swarthy, and handsome, with finely cut features; the women tall, beautifully shaped, and with long dark hair and magnificent eyes. Their picturesque dress and the character of their occupations added to the effect of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... on the floor above. Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. Life for her has no ritual. She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... was tall, strong, and well made, of a swarthy complexion, with dark hair, from which he was called "The Black Douglas."—Sir Walter Scott, Tales of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... gracing the swarthy neck of some fair gypsy damsel," remarked the latter, rather flippantly. "Here we offer you a whole silver ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... shawl, and exhibited a little dark, black-eyed gypsy baby, whose swarthy face was all flushed and mottled with a dark-red rash. The child breathed with a rattling sound, and it looked up at the doctor with eyes which were heavy with want of sleep and crusted ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... intelligent!" When he had finished with the album, Von Koren took a pistol from the whatnot, and screwing up his left eye, took deliberate aim at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or stood still at the looking-glass and gazed a long time at his swarthy face, his big forehead, and his black hair, which curled like a negro's, and his shirt of dull-coloured cotton with big flowers on it like a Persian rug, and the broad leather belt he wore instead of a waistcoat. The contemplation of ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... room of their swarthy prisoner, Gratz provided the uncomfortable Robert with the relief he required by instructing him to hasten to his uncle and summon him to the scene, and to avoid giving him any of the details of what ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... above, possessing too important a connexion with the final catastrophe to be pretermitted at this place. Mr. Hammond, the Canadian engineer, fearing that the peculiarity of his appearance, as a man of fair and ruddy complexion, among a swarthy race, would subject him to great annoyance, and perhaps involve him in the horrible fate of a similar person, reported by the Indians, resolved to stain his skin of a darker hue, by means of some chemical preparation which he had precautionarily provided for this purpose, before he left the United ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... direction on hearing the shrill note of alarm first sounded by the squaw, and before White and the girl had joined him, twenty warriors had already gained the eastern acclivity of the Mount and were cautiously ascending, keeping their bodies under cover. The scouts soon caught glimpses of their swarthy faces as they glided from tree to tree and from rock to rock, until the hiding place of the luckless two was surrounded and all hope of escape was ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... platform in the center of the group. He looks around upon the swarthy faces, glowing with all the eagerness which the stolid Indian nature will permit them to display. It is not always the tallest nor the most comely men who are selected. The unerring judgment of the scout, trained in Indian warfare, tells him who may be relied upon and who are ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... bearing a veritable armful of flowers, leaves, red berried sprigs, a tangle of richest color. They had been in the woods and she had bedecked him with garlands and festoons of autumn leaves, till he looked a very Satyr; a character which his flushed, swarthy cheeks, and glittering animal ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Westland Scotch, who before Burns and after have given many such dark eyes and dark emotions to the world. But in him the unmistakable strain, Gaelic or whatever it is, was accentuated almost to oddity; and he looked like some swarthy elf. He was small, with a big head and a crescent of coal-black hair round the back of a vast dome of baldness. Immediately under his eyes his cheekbones had so high a colour that they might have been painted scarlet; three black tufts, two on the upper lip and one under the lower, seemed to touch ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... man, with a thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache. An opera-hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ay, paint our swarthy billions The richest of vermillions Ere two well-led cotillions ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... her neck. Slowly, oh so slowly, she drew back the hand, and with it the packet; so slowly, and yet so resolutely, being put to it, that when the dreaded flash surprised her, and she saw his harsh swarthy face, steeped in the mysterious aloofness of sleep, within a hand's breadth of hers, not a muscle of her arm moved, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... his bag, which the swarthy hands were grasping. "No, I'm not going to stop," he explained. "I'm ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... favor of the neighboring Asiatic power by demanding Assyrian princesses in marriage and affecting Assyrian names for their offspring. But recently an important change had occurred. A brave Ethiopian prince had descended the valley of the Nile at the head of a swarthy host, had defeated the Egyptian levies, had driven the reigning monarch into the marshes of the Delta, or put him to a cruel death, and had established his own dominion firmly, at any rate over the upper country. Shebek the First bore sway in Memphis in lieu of the blind Bocchoris; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... fears of the Southron will raise the spectre of a Douglas at any time, when he is within sight of their sepulchre. Methinks, in such a night as this, the fairest cavalier would wear the complexion of this swarthy race, nor can I hold it wonderful that the war-cry which was once in the throats of so many thousands in this country, should issue upon occasion from the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... man's teeth gleamed as he opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again in anger as he realized that the words which came to his lips were words in the white man's tongue. Quickly a man sprang to his feet, and stood with the red glow of the embers playing over his swarthy skin and the spots and streaks of the wet white clay. Another sprang up and leaped away into the darkness, but returned a moment later with a bundle of long, thin, pointed sticks, which he flung to the ground by the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... you must get acquainted with; this dark swarthy man with the black eyes, black curling hair, and cast-iron face, sour and austere. That is Ned Wade, Frank's younger brother, and one of the pleasantest and best-hearted men alive. He has more book than Frank, and quite as much talent, and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... not unpleasant in feature. But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle. Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling, scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt his knees tremble under him. What was the Pirate saying? That he was the subject of their conversation was plain from the glances thrown at him; that he was at a crisis in his fate he knew by instinct; but, ignorant of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... half French, half Scotch, swarthy and admirably made. He was proud of his strength, and showily fearless in danger. For there were dangerous hours to the river life: when, for instance, a mass of logs became jammed at a rapids, and must be loosened; or a crib struck into the wrong channel, or, failing to enter ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy one Laugh'd shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year, Would make the world ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... answered Margrave, "they are in reach of my summons; and when you and I have achieved the discovery—in the results of which we shall share—I will exact no more from your aid. I trust all that rests for my cure to my nurse and her swarthy attendants. You will aid me now, as a matter of course; the physician whose counsel you needed to guide your own skill enjoins you to obey my whim—if whim you still call it; you will obey it, for on that whim rests your own sole hope of happiness,—you, who can love—I love nothing ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Muhlenberg, the clergyman who had doffed his gown for the uniform of a brigadier, stalwart, swarthy, laughter in his piercing eyes as ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... weary Love, O, folded to her breast, Love in each moment years and years of rest, Be calm, as being not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a wish, profane ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... was at the top of a staircase, and immediately over the press-room—were five-and-twenty or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of the recorder's report—men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened old offender with swarthy face and grizzly beard of three days' growth, to a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary. There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of these prisoners. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... now only of a few weeks, more or less. There, at Breda, was his swarthy, witty, good-humoured, utterly profligate and worthless, young Majesty, with his refugee courtiers round him; at home, over all Britain and Ireland, they were ready for him, longing for him, huzzahing for him, Monk and the Council managing silently in ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... hotel, we disturb one another; a wall of prejudices and conventionalities separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be crushed by the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... about twenty-eight years of age, slight, muscular, wiry, had seized his wet hand and was wringing it. He had black eyes, keen and bright, swarthy complexion, black hair and mustache. A keen observer might have seen about him some signs of a jeunesse orageuse, but his manner was frank and pleasing. Sinclair looked him in the face, puzzled for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... The Nigger became more sullen; Perdosa more snake-like; Pulz more viciously evil; Thrackles more brutal; while Handy Solomon staggering from his seat to the open keg and back again, roaring fragments of a chanty, his red headgear contrasting with his smoky black hair and his swarthy hook-nosed countenance—he ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had often before this gladly indulged his Vizier, sent down his black slave to bring up the merchant, and in a moment they entered together. He was a short, fat man, of swarthy countenance and tattered dress. He carried a chest in which were all kinds of wares—pearls and rings, richly-wrought pistols, goblets, and combs. The Caliph and his Vizier examined them all, and the former at length purchased fine pistols for himself ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... certain degree its primitive color. But whoso wants to prove too much proves nothing, and in the black which the colonel used there was noticeably a raw tone, and an equality of shade too perfect for truth of nature. Hence his countenance, swarthy and strongly marked with the Italian origin indicated by his name, had an expression of singular rigidity, to which his features, now become angular, his piercing glance, and his nose like the beak of a bird of prey, did not afford the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... one of their company starting from the rest and making towards us with a running pace. I being the youngest was the last at the stile, and, though struck with an inexpressible panic, saw the grim elf just at my heels, having a full and clear, though terrific view of him, with his ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion. I screamed out exceedingly; my sister also and our companions set up a roar, and the former dragged me with violence over the stile on which, at the instant I was disengaged from it, this warlike Lilliputian leaned ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Buddha, over which the flickering lamps threw changing shadows, and then turned my eyes to the side of the throne. It was wonderful and difficult to believe but I really saw there the strong, muscular figure of a man with a swarthy face of stern and fixed expression about the mouth and jaws, thrown into high relief by the brightness of the eyes. Through his transparent body draped in white raiment I saw the Tibetan inscriptions on the back of the throne. I closed my eyes and opened them again. No one was there ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... no attempt (nor had he at any time done so) to combat my Religious Scruples, but counselled me to behave in all things outwardly as a Turk; and if anything was said of my being in countenance a Frank (though I was swarthy enough from my Long Journeyings), to account for it by saying that I was an Affghan born, out of India. He died very soon after I settled at Broussa, and the secret of my being a Christian died with him. It is true that, for mere Policy's sake, I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a satisfactory conclusion, the singer sat down amid great clapping of hands and clattering of glasses, and the President, with another flourish on the bugle, called upon one Monsieur Tourterelle. Monsieur Tourterelle was a tall, gaunt, swarthy personage, who appeared to have cultivated his beard at the expense of his head, since the former reached nearly to his waist, while the latter was as bare as a billiard-ball. Preparing himself for the effort with a wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... stand. Terrific volleys poured from the woods, thinning out the Union ranks at a fearful rate. Unable to sustain the deadly fire, they fell back—this time the rebels following with yells and shouts; but before the cornfield was crossed, our troops made another stand, and the swarthy foe was brought to bay; yet the thinned line seemed hardly able to sustain the fearful shock much longer. Hooker, fearing that his center was doomed to destruction, sent to his right for a brigade, although his right was hard pressed and in danger ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Mr. Du Brant was standing at the front door, a smile on his swarthy countenance. This smile said as plainly as words could have done so that it was very amusing to this foreign young man to see a person with rolled-up trousers and a straw hat mount upon a horse. Claude Locker, whose soul had been chafing all the afternoon under his banishment from the society ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... thy swarthy brow Spring no wild flowers nor verdure fair; Thou feel'st not summer's genial glow, More than the freezing wintry air. For once thou drank'st the hero's blood, And war's unhallow'd footsteps bore; Thy deeds unholy, nature view'd, Then fled, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... graspeth leagues of fen and forest land; In his right the mighty mountains, hoary with eternal snow, Where a thousand foaming fountains singing seek the plains below. Fields of corn and feet of cities lo the mighty river laves, Where the Saxon sings his ditties o'er the swarthy warriors' graves. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... afterwards as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans. Every individual, made prisoner before he received the rite of baptism, became a slave. At that period no attempt had yet been made to prove that the blacks were an intermediate race between man and animals. The swarthy Guanche and the African negro were simultaneously sold in the market of Seville, without a question whether slavery should be the doom only of men with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... from the metaries along the Ridge, and the chattering Spanish women of the Market, their shining hair unbonneted to the sun. Next below were their husbands and lovers in Sunday blouses, milkmen, butchers, bakers, black- bearded fishermen, Sicilian fruiterers, swarthy Portuguese sailors, in little woollen caps, and strangers of the graver sort; mariners of England, Germany, and Holland. The lowest seats were full of trappers, smugglers, Canadian voyageurs, drinking and singing; Americains, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... gold, containing a hundred times more gold than her simple tastes and restricted opportunities would permit her to employ. But was not her Robert the most generous of men? Other eyes than hers saw it—those of Basilio Velasco, one of the vaqueros; a small, swarthy man, with the blackest and sharpest of eyes, in which just then was a ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... entitled himself lord of the Kashshu and of Akkad, of Babylon the widespread, of Padan, of Alman, and of the swarthy Guti.* Ashnunak had been devastated; he repeopled it, and the four "houses of the world" rendered him obedience; on the other hand, Elam revolted from its allegiance, Assur resisted him, and if he still exercised some semblance of authority over Northern Syria, it ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... records that both matrons and unmarried girls among the Britons in the first century of the Christian era were in the habit of staining themselves all over with the juice of the woad; and he adds that, thus rivalling the swarthy hue of the AEthiopians, they go on these occasions in a state of nature. We are sometimes taught that when the English invaded Britain, the natives whom they found here were all driven out or massacred. There are, however, many reasons for doubting that this ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... "A tall, rawboned, swarthy lad, they say he has shot up into. Here is his picture by a good hand, some time since." He turned round one of the portraits which stood with its face against the wall; but it proved not to be that of Charles the Second, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sea-sound I wot of; a sailor sang while he hung in the ratlines and tossed down the salt-stained shrouds. The afternoon waned: the man at the wheel struck two bells—it was the delectable dog-watch. Down went the swarthy sun into his tent of clouds; the waves were of amber; the fervid sky was flushed; it looked as though something splendid were about to happen up there, and that it could hardly keep the secret much longer. Then came the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a black-haired, black-eyed young fellow of, perhaps, thirty. While his skin was swarthy, even in this poor light it could be seen that he was of the real Castilian type and of a much better class than the others. He was slender and straight, his mouth small and decorated by a carefully pencilled little mustache, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... to the vessel's side, never took his eyes off the strange visitor. He copied on his own rough and swarthy features the imperturbability of the other's face, applying to this task the whole strength of a will and intelligence but little corrupted in the course of a life of mechanical and passive obedience. So emulous was he of a calm and tranquil courage ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... deck who have never made their appearance before. Pale, jaundiced, and crumpled, they have all the sea-sick look and haggard cheek of the real martyr—all except one, a stout, swarthy, brown-visaged man, of about forty, with a frame of iron, and a voice like the fourth string of a violincello. You wonder why he should have taken to his bed: learn, then, that he is his Majesty's courier from the foreign ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... you?" demanded she, struggling to disengage herself, and unable to see the swarthy features of her captor, who stood behind her. No answer being made, she cast her eyes downwards, and beheld the colour of the arms that encircled her. "Father! Mr. Glenn! Mr. Boone!" she exclaimed, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... peaks, the valleys shadowful, Swarthy the rocks, the narrows wonderful. Franks passed that day all very sorrowful, Fifteen leagues round the rumour of them grew. When they were come, and Terra Major knew, Saw Gascony their land and their seigneur's, Remembering ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... and a scarifier. Nothing was considered more witty by those in the secret than to place this apparently harmless instrument on the back of some unsuspecting native, and touch the spring. In an instant twelve lancets would plunge into the swarthy flesh. Then would follow a long-drawn cry, scarcely audible amidst peals of laughter ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... their talk came to an end, for the chariot was stayed at the steps of the great hall where Abi waited to receive his royal guests. He stood at the head of the steps, a huge, coarse, vigorous man of about sixty years of age, on whose fat, swarthy face there was still, oddly enough, some resemblance ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... in smooth heavings as the clumsy boat advanced upon it. The white houses on the hills gleamed out from their palms. As the boat came closer to the wharf, the travelers could see the crowds of foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap, ungraceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, speculative, unwelcoming eyes. The noise of the city streets, strange to their ears after the days of sea silence, rose clattering, like a part of the brilliance, the sparkle. The sun broke through the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... conducted to the Vice-President's chair, while that debonair man of the world took a seat on his right with easy grace. On Mr. Jefferson's left sat Chief Justice John Marshall, a "tall, lax, lounging Virginian," with black eyes peering out from his swarthy countenance. There is a dramatic quality in this scene of the President-to-be seated between two men who are to cause him more vexation of spirit than any others in public life. Burr, brilliant, gifted, ambitious, and profligate; Marshall, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... in a contemptuous way and walked in. She was a very remarkable looking person. Tall and upright, at least six feet high, with swarthy complexion, black eyes, and coal-black hair, looped up loosely in a knot behind. She must have been very beautiful as a young girl, but was now too fierce and hawkish looking, though you would still call her handsome. She was a full-blooded gipsy, of one of the best ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Here in this swarthy, secret tent, Where black boughs flap the ground, You shall draw the thorn from my discontent, Surgeon ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their portentous clusters—swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... aft, had rather a lop-sided appearance, what with one ear being so much thicker than its mate. The object of this mishandlement was as good as whipped before he started by reason of the longer reach and quicker fist play of his squat and swarthy opponent. Nevertheless, facing inevitable and painful defeat, he acquitted himself with ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... we ventured into the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height. He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous, baggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish slippers. It was the Shereef. I had agreed to open the interview, but when it came to the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... being short, with broad flat faces, high cheek-bones, swarthy complexions, and no pretensions to good looks. Burney says that it was only after much cleaning that their skins were found to be "like our people in England." Cook says they were docile, courteous, and good-natured, but ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... with Rob—for it was he—stood a muscular fellow of swarthy visage and with one eye hid by a green bandage. Him also the crowd jeered, but he passed them by with indifference while he tried his bow ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... A young, swarthy-faced man, who steered, jumped out of the boat and at once addressed him. He listened with interest to Adair's story that they had escaped from a ship that had gone ashore on the coast some weeks before, and then ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... this forest a man was seen to emerge, and take his way across the meadow in the direction of the river. His swarthy complexion, and bushy black hair hanging neglected over his shoulders—his dress consisting of a single blanket-like robe, held by a leathern belt around the waist— his bare legs and sandalled feet—all bore evidence that he was one of the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... to the coast, there yet remains the lighterage to the ocean liner, which lies anchored some two miles from the shore, rising and falling to the great rollers from the broad Atlantic. A long boat is used, manned by some twenty swarthy natives, who glory—vocally—in their passage through the dangerous surf which roars along the sloping beach. The cacao is piled high on wood racks and covered with tarpaulins and seldom shares the fate of passengers and crew, who are often drenched in the surf before they swing by a crane ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... lover's appearance. A wise, self-contained young person, capable of extricating herself from even more perilous situations. Archie liked Ruth. The Governor had said that she was a bishop's daughter but for all that she might have been the child of a race of swarthy kings. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... not need to open his eyes, for he could see mentally vividly enough the swarthy, brown, deeply-lined face, with the keen dark eyes, and the crafty look about the mouth, drawn into an unpleasant smile, while the big earrings seemed to glisten in ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... idle, those of ours had laid Snares in the inner moat, a well-charged mine: Where broom and thick fascines, all over paid With swarthy pitch, in plenty intertwine. Though they from bank to bank that hollow line, Filling the bottom well-nigh to the brink; And ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... mantle of darkness. He thrust forward his head, and a bar of light smote him across his open lips. It showed his gleaming teeth white and shut, his black moustache, his swarthy lips parted in a sardonic smile; that was all. A horrible grin on a background ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... same band I had seen at first. These were a slimmer race, and whereas the first band had been exceedingly swarthy, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... a man of good size and swarthy of feature, hurled himself upon the body of the trapped young Army officer. A low whistle followed, and Hal ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor, an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having been freshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of the Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was, immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, and behind streamed the curious, the envious, the greedy and the desultory Arabs, who follow in the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... handsome man of five or six and twenty, of middle height, swarthy complexion, and compact figure. His beard was very black, and he wore it in a pointed shape. His eyes were small and deep-set, but full of intelligence. He had all the manner and appearance of a man of gentle birth, but there was something more; an indescribable, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... different in the dark," said a third voice, that of the man who called himself a magician. It was a very musical voice, and rather in contrast with his sinister and swarthy visage, which was now invisible. "Perhaps you don't know how terrible a truth that is. All you see are pictures made by the sun, faces and furniture and flowers and trees. The things themselves may be quite strange to you. Something else may be standing ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... low-browed, swarthy Greek. I have a penchant for high, broad, expansive foreheads, which are antagonistic to all the ancient models of beauty. Low foreheads characterize the antique; but who can fancy ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... my curtains for a dream.— What comes? A mighty swan, With plumage like a sunny gleam, And folded airy van! She comes, from sea-plains dreaming, sent By sea-maids to my shore, With stately head proud-humbly bent, And slackening swarthy oar. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... kindly and of course relieved them of all their spare change. The people of the town are mostly old Flemish. The Flemings have the proverbial long noses, sharp features and have fair complexions. Occasionally a stocky, swarthy individual shows Wallon extraction. Some of the peasants speak nothing but Flemish, which is one of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... threw forward his rifle, for at that moment he observed a swarthy, black-bearded Arab, of large proportions and muscular frame, creeping forward a short distance below him. Evidently he had not heard or seen the approach of the two soldiers, for he was gazing in a different direction ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne |
