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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drear" Quotes from Famous Books



... soon hid us from the river, and we found ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows where the sweet eager waters ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... moon presents to the telescopic observer just that drear, cold, and chalk-like aspect, which our snow-clad mountains exhibit when the angle of reflection is similar to that in which we behold the lunar surface. In consequence, its mild light is due to the myriads ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

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

... suddenly, and filled me with a sense of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar mental experience, when the drear fact of death ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... in Newgate passed like the first. Prison life affords few variations; the days roll by with drear monotony like wave after wave over a spent swimmer's head. We enjoyed Judge North's "opportunity" to prepare our fresh defence in the way I have already described. We were locked up in our brick vaults twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four; we walked for an hour after ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... many books,' 'twas said, 'There is no end;' and who thereon The ever-running ink doth shed But proves the words of Solomon: Wherefore we now, for Colophon, From London's City drear and dark, In the year Eighteen-eighty-one, Reprint them at ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

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

... no one dream of that drear night to be, Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, The ship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... Dr. Lloyd had died. Impossible to mistake. The furniture indeed was changed, there was no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square beams intersecting the low ceiling,—all were impressed vividly on my memory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on the spot where I had stood by the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

... Fians made, For safe retreat, a high and strong stockade Around their dwellings. And when winter fell And o'er Strathpeffer laid its barren spell— When days were bleak with storm, and nights were drear And dark and lonesome, well they loved to hear The songs of Ossian, peerless and sublime— Their blind, grey bard, grown old before his time, Lamenting for his son—the young, the brave Oscar, who fell beside the western wave In Gavra's bloody ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... secretary of the dead man, because, having no hatred left on which to center his life, he had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred, rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... at her; her mind ever strove to recover itself, and was ever borne away in the rush of invading fancies; but through it all was the nameless unrest, not an aching, nor a burning, nor a stinging, but a bodily grief, dark, drear, and nameless. How could they have borne such before He ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... At thy altar A thousand hearts lie prone, In this drear life of shadows They yearn for thee alone. All hoping to recover From life's distress and smart, If thou, oh holy Mother, Wilt take them to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... mournful silence like a knell. Then mark yon lonely pilgrim bend and weep Above the mound where genius lies in sleep. And is this all? Alas! we turn in vain, And, turning, meet the self-same waste again— The same drear wilderness of stern decay; Its former pride, the phantom of a day; A song of summer-birds within a bower; A dream of beauty traced upon a flower; A lute whose master-chord has ceased to sound; A morning-star struck ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... been married about a year and a quarter. Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring. That drear spectre of drought hung over ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... searched for him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, Never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... peasant As he skirts some churchyard drear; And the goblins whisper pleasant Tales in Miss Rossetti's ear; Importuning her in strangest, Sweetest tones to buy their fruits:- O be careful that thou changest, On ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... God, my pleasure?" exclaimed Rosamund in the same drear voice, still staring at her father, who lay before her on ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... great oak and mar the glorious form, even in the perishing of the fruit thereof it yet giveth token of that it was; whether at the last it come even to the winter fire, or whether with upright pillars in a master's house it stand, to serve drear service within alien walls, and the place thereof knoweth it ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, as ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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

... hath not that serene decline Which makes the southern autumn's day appear As if 't would to a second spring resign The season, rather than to winter drear, Of in-door comforts still she hath a mine,— The sea-coal fires the 'earliest of the year;' Without doors, too, she may compete in mellow, As what is lost in green ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... madness wild Dwells in that drear and Atheist doom! But death of horror is despoiled, When Heaven shines forth ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... picture. He could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering away to black ashes; the untasted meal stood on the table. Seated by the window, in a drooping, spiritless way, as if never caring to stir again, sat bright Mollie, the ghost of her former self. Wan as a spirit, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... moved. And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast, And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout Of all-unarmed Achilles, aegis-crowned And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores And seas and forests drear, island and dale And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... clouds are yonder massed, And rain has drenched fields drear and dun, But o'er the farthest hills at last I see ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... had vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared, just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... lady, come and share All my care; Oh how gladly I will hurry To confide my every worry (And they're very dark and drear) ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller

... like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Mavis had already suffered so much that she was now able to distinguish the pains peculiar to the different varieties of sorrow. This particular grief took the shape of a piteous, persistent heart hunger which nothing could stay. Joined to this was a ceaseless longing for the lost one, which cast drear shadows upon the bright hues of life. The way in which she was compelled to isolate her pain from all human sympathy did not diminish ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... here, Death and the grave and winter drear, And I must ponder here aloof While the rain ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... void of wrath or glee, Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to bank The weary Mediterranean, drear to see. ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... life before. Her life seemed done, finished, as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of the city crowd struck on her view as aimless and fruitless, and so very drear to look at? What was it all for?—seeing life was such a thing as she had found it. The wrench of coming away from Pleasant Valley had left her with a reaction of dull, stunned, and strained nerves; she was ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

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

... now is Winter. Winter, after all, Is not so drear as was my boding dream While Autumn gleamed its latest watery gleam On sapless leafage too inert to fall. Still leaves and berries clothe my garden wall Where ivy thrives on scantiest sunny beam; Still here a bud and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... drear was the night. Urged by the furious blast of the lingering winter-rains, masses of bistre-coloured cloud, like the forms of unwieldy beasts, rolled heavily over the firmament plain. Whenever the crescent ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... can forget The spot where first success he met; But he, the shepherd who, of yore, Had charm'd so many a list'ning ear, Came back, and was beloved no more;— He found all changed and cold and drear! A skilful hand had touch'd the flute;— His pipe ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... free? The sage, who keeps in check His baser self, who lives at his own beck, Whom neither poverty nor dungeon drear Nor death itself can ever put in fear, Who can reject life's goods, resist desire, Strong, firmly braced, and in himself entire, A hard smooth ball that gives you ne'er a grip, 'Gainst whom when ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... shall bring back its fragrance, or restore The tints of loveliness, that shine no more? How then for thee, who pinest in life's gloom, Abandoned child! can hope or virtue bloom! For thee, exposed amid the desert drear, Which no glad gales or vernal sunbeams cheer! Though some there are, who lift their head sublime, Nor heed the transient storms of fate or time; Too oft, alas! beneath unfriendly skies, The tender blossom shrinks its leaves, and dies! 70 Go, struggle with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

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

... around the pane, And fall, thou drear December rain! Fill with your gusts the sullen day, Tear the last clinging leaves away! Reckless as yonder naked tree, No blast of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... tops whiten on the sea fields drear, And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap; But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear The half-hushed sobbing of the hearts ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... every oath that powers immortal ties, The foodful earth and all-infolding skies; By thy black waves, tremendous Styx! that flow Through the drear realms of gliding ghosts below; By the dread honours of thy sacred head, And that unbroken vow, our virgin bed! Not by my arts the ruler of the main Steeps Troy in blood, and ranges round the plain: By his own ardour, his own pity sway'd, To help his Greeks, he fought and disobey'd: Else had ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... hath a chime all cannot hear, And none can love him better than I; For he sings to me when the land is drear, And makes it cheerful even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

... down upon the lovely lake. It was a complete surprise to us, as points of scenery were not much known or talked about then in Arizona. Ponds and lakes were unheard of. They did not seem to exist in that drear land of arid wastes. We never heard of water except that of the Colorado or the Gila or the tanks and basins, and irrigation ditches of the settlers. But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies above us. We feasted our eyes and our ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

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

... them are blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear; An' forward, tho' I canna ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... from the ground, and scattered them in a hail about us. I despair of giving any idea of that glacial blast: it was as if one stood, deprived of clothing, of skin and flesh—a jabbering anatomy—upon some drear Caucasian pinnacle. And I thought upon the gentle rains of London, from which I had fled to these sunny regions, I remembered the fogs, moist and warm and caressing: greatly is the English winter maligned! Seeing that this part of Tunisia is covered ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

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

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

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

... most requisite, she fell a prey to mental alienation. She died, and was entombed in a neighboring cemetery, but her poor boyish admirer could not endure to think of her lying lonely and forsaken in her vaulted home, so he would leave the house at night and visit her tomb. When the nights were drear, "when the autumnal rains fell, and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he lingered longest, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

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

... once to the habitation of the witch. Here he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but supported by a long staff, the drear and sharp ascent. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... this bard of silver hair, He wanders in the valley drear, Whilst grief his mind consumes: His father's footsteps tries to trace In vain, for time does them efface; ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... sailor, day is at hand! See o'er the foaming billows fair Haven's land; Drear was the voyage, sailor, now almost o'er; Safe in the life-boat, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... droops his palsied hand, And the fitful strain alone Murmurs the notes of his native land— Does echo repeat that moan From the dungeon wall so grim and so drear?— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various

... in my eye or a blot on the page, And I cannot tell of the joyful greeting; You may take it for granted and I will engage, There were kisses and tears at the strange, glad meeting; For aye since the birth of the swift-winged years, In the desert drear, in the field of clover, In the cot, and the palace, and all the world over,— Yea, away on the stars to the ultimate spheres, The language of love to the long sought lover,— Is tears and kisses and kisses ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

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

... Dissolution the Abbey which had "existed for more than eight centuries under different forms, in poverty and in wealth, in meanness and in magnificence, in misfortune and success, finally succumbed to the royal will. The day came, and that a drear winter day, when its last mass was sung, its last censer waved, its last congregation bent in rapt and lowly adoration before the altar there; and, doubtless, as the last tones of that day's evensong ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

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

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

... capital was by the Zuyder Zee and the Y. Edam is at the mouth of the Y, its name really being Ydam. The size of its Groote Kerk indicates something of this past importance, for it is immense: a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, cold and drear enough, but a little humanised by some coloured glass from Gouda, often in very bad condition. In the days when this church was built Edam had twenty-five thousand inhabitants: now there are only ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... boding of their future woe. Broad are their pennons, of the human form Their neck and count'nance, arm'd with talons keen The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. The kind instructor in these words began: "Ere farther thou proceed, know thou art now I' th' second round, and shalt be, till thou come Upon the horrid sand: look therefore well Around thee, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... he had spoken thus, before he stirred, 25 I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs Of desolation I had seen and heard In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines: Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed, Can Life still live? By ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... to him bow'd courteous the blameless Ruedeger. Then all around were weeping for grief and doleful drear, Since none th' approaching mischief had hope to turn aside. The father of all virtue in ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... cheerfully enough to Miss Plympton, but that was from a kindly desire to reassure her. In reality, she was overwhelmed with loneliness and melancholy. The aspect of the grounds below and of the drawing-room had struck a chill to her heart. This great drear house oppressed her, and the melancholy with which she had left Plympton Terrace now became intensified. The gloom that had overwhelmed her father seemed to rest upon her father's house, and descended thence upon her own spirit, strong ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... the madcaps gone? Why is the house so drear and lone? No merry whistle wakes the day, Nor evening rings with jocund play. No clanging bell, with hasty din, Precedes the shout, "Is Bertie in?" Or "Where is Fred?" "Can I see Jack?" "How soon will he be coming back? ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... dark, sad glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... a starry height Majestically calm? No monster, drear And shapeless, glares me faint at night; I am not in the sunshine checked for fear That monstrous shapeless thing is ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... the winter storms were howling o'er the ocean, Leafless trees and sombre landscape cold and drear, Bitter winds, and driving rains, or white commotion Of the whirling snow that drifted far and near; Then my heart, which had been strong, was bowed and broken, I was crushed with sudden sense of loss ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

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

... lectures swelled not his code of enjoyments. One banquet, climax of his convivial delight, was the yearly thanksgiving, Substituted by puritan settlers for the Christmas of the Mother-Clime, Keeping in memory the feast of ingathering, of the Ancient Covenant People; Drear November was its appointed season, when earth's bounty being garnered, Man might rest from his labors, and praise the Lord of the Harvest. Such was its original design, but the tendencies of Saxonism, Turn'd it more to eating and drinking, than devotional ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and home ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... rainbow bridge he passed, out of the light, and down, down, down into the dark, hopeless realm of Hela. As he rode by the gate he saw that preparations for a feast were being made within. A gloomy feast it would have to be in those drear regions, but evidently it was being spread for some honored guest, for rich tapestries and rings of gold covered the couches, and vessels of gold graced the tables. Past the gate rode Odin, to a grave without the wall, where for ages long the greatest of all prophetesses had lain buried. Here, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... wont to bloom On January's front severe, And o'er the wintry desert drear To waft thy waste perfume! Come, thou shalt form my nosegay now, And I will bind thee round my brow; And, as I twine the mournful wreath, I'll weave a melancholy song, And sweet the strain shall be, and long— The melody ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows and vines shroud ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... through the dusk of years And force the silent future to reveal Her store of garnered joys; we may not kneel For ever, and entreat our bliss with tears. Somewhere on this drear earth the sunshine lies, Somewhere the air breathes ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley

... mean to us that Spring is here? We asked ourselves within the great grey hall. We shall not feel the magic of her call; This day, like others, will be dull and drear. And then you sang . . . and brought so very near, The fragrant world beyond the prison wall, The tender fields, the trees and grass, and all The hopes and dreams that every ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin

... of the dying year, And December's winds blew cold and drear, Driving the snow and sharp blinding sleet In gusty whirls through square and street, Shrieking more wildly and fiercely still In the dreary grave-yard that ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... western portion of the Undercliff, where every glimpse is a joy; then emerges into a wilder, solitary region, with a bold coast-line sharply indented with chines whose scenery varies from beautiful to savage and drear; finds always the little hamlets—this with its church, that with its inn, become a classic resort, another with its story of an old hermitage or tradition of gold-laden galleon foundered on its cruel rocks, the gold coins still now and then to be found in certain sands. Here a landslip ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

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

... the edification of the masses, give, according to the Socialists, little consolation to the unemployed and ill-employed workers. "Figures, be they never so dazzling, and numbers, be they never so round, will not feed the hungry, house the homeless, or bring light and warmth into the drear, precarious lives of the mass of our people. The increase of trade means only an increase of production, and not necessarily of persons employed or wages gained. With the rapid concentration of industries and the perfection of labour-saving ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... this vision that thus confounded me? was it a latent error in my moral constitution, which this new conjuncture drew forth into influence? These were all the tokens of a mind lost to itself; bewildered; unhinged; plunged into a drear insanity. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... early to discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the "Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the arrival of the teamster ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... one will wake at midnight drear From out a dream of death, And find no dear head pillowed near, No sound of peaceful breath! May no weak wailing words arise, No bitter thoughts awake To see the tears in Memory's eyes: For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

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

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

... Drear and desolate is it in winter, when the straits are filled with ice, which, in the shape of floe, and berg, and pinnacle, pass in ghostly procession to and fro, as the wind wafts them, or they feel the diurnal impetus of the tides they cover, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... Four days and nights the dismal song was heard, beyond the blue wood smoke of Indian fires. Weeks of mourning passed, and all but one were comforted, but she sat all alone, and every morning she squatted on the sea grass at the shore, chanting that drear and mournful song. ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains came rumbling in by ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

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

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

... then! Clouds are rolled Where thou, O seer! art set; Thy realm of thought is drear and cold— The world ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... most pleasant hours of my life!" declared Dorothy. "It has been like heaven here; I am sorry to go. And oh! how dark and drear to-morrow will be in the bindery, after ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

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

... his conduct of that will case. Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out—like the poverty and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... makest guilt to disappear, My help, my hope, my rock, I will not fear; Though Thou the body hold in dungeon drear, The soul has found the palace ...
— Hebrew Literature

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

... great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... drear and lonely, love, And pleasant fancies flee, Then will the Muses only, love, Bestow a thought on me! Mine is a harp which Pleasure, love, To waken strives in vain; To Joy's entrancing measure, love, It ne'er can thrill again!— Why mock ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... while the sap of youth is green, And, yet unripened, leaps within, The young are weakly as the old, And each alike unmeet to hold The vantage post of war! And ah! when flower and fruit are o'er, And on life's tree the leaves are sere, Age wendeth propped its journey drear, As forceless as a child, as light And fleeting as a dream of night Lost ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... to send me back," the doctor said gruffly. "I started out all right, but it was a drear walk across ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

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

... And Nature mourned through one wide hemisphere Silence and darkness held their cheerless sway, Save in the haunts of riotous excess; And half the world in dreamy slumbers lay, Lost in the maze of sweet forgetfulness. When lo! upon the startled ear, There broke a sound so dread and drear,— As, like a sudden peal of thunder, Burst the bands of sleep asunder, And filled a thousand throbbing hearts ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... may be sincere, But still, when all is said, We have to grant they're rather drear, — And maybe, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... somewhere far away; In sleep the matrimonial dove Was crooning; no wind waked the wood, Nor moved the midnight river-damps, Nor thrill'd the poplar; quiet stood The chestnut with its thousand lamps; The moon shone yet, but weak and drear, And seem'd to watch, with bated breath, The landscape, all made sharp and clear By stillness, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... storm comes chill from off the hill; An eerie wind doth holloa; And near and near by surges drear The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... suffering as she invariably did every time she gave the lover's gift to Killigrew; and always she paid for the joy of yielding with hours of reaction. She was wont to live over again in the drear spaces of time the history of her life since she had known him, and it was the history of her love for him and of very little else. Now as she lay, spent but wakeful, sick at heart and soul, she saw again the self that had stayed ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... not seem to heed. Her eyes were fixed upon the ruined walls before her, rising drear and blank against ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... forgotten; there are memories clinging Round every breast that beats to hope and fear In this drear world, until the death's knell, ringing, Chimes with heart-moanings o'er the solemn bier; Then come love's pilgrims to the sad shrine, bringing The choicest offering of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... and brides of summer sun, Chill pipes the stormy wind, the skies are drear; Dull and despoiled the gardens every one: What do ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... little things, They make life drear and lonely, Or strew its way with flowers gay,— We ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... covered it with luxuriant green tracery all through the months of blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untiring ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... are innocent of all intent of evil—of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... independent taxi-drivers had long since deserted their posts. The parking space on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station—a space usually crowded with commercial cars—was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

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

... snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite variations ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

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

... dust from pith or heart, Then spoke I, calmly as one can Who with his purpose curbs his fear, And thus to both my question ran:— "What two are ye who cross me here, Upon these desolated lands, Whose open fields lie waste and drear Beneath the tramplings of the bands Which two great armies send abroad, With swords and torches in their hands?" To which the bright one, as a god Who slowly speaks the words of fate, Towards his dark comrade gave a nod, And answered:—"I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... am but a traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at last, ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... a supper of piping hot stuff, too," declared Greg. "It's warm here in the tent, but the surrounding world is chill and drear. Nothing but hot food ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... mead from out the shell Sit ye, my Courtmen bold, Whilst I go to the mountain drear, Speech ...
— Young Swaigder, or The Force of Runes - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... salt sea, and where we kissed and clung there lips unborn shall kiss and cling! How beautiful was their promise, doomed, like an unfruitful blossom, to wither, fall, and rot! and their fulfilment, ah, how drear! For all things end in darkness and in ashes, and those who sow in folly shall reap in sorrow. Ah! those nights upon ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... travelers took delight to roam In distant countries, far away from home; And frequently has dropped a silent tear O'er PARK'S great trials in the desert drear. Oh! who can read of all his heart-felt woes— His frequent sufferings, and his dying throes— And fail to drop a sympathetic tear For his sad ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... of the case confronted Wade and gripped his soul. He seemed to feel himself changing inwardly, as if a gray, gloomy, sodden hand, as intangible as a ghostly dream, had taken him bodily from himself and was now leading him into shadows, into drear, lonely, dark solitude, where all was cold and bleak; and on and on over naked shingles that marked the world of tragedy. Here he must tell his tale, and as he plodded on his relentless leader forced him to ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... an hour and in such lonesomeness, Lad would gladly have tossed aside all prejudices of caste,—and all his natural dislikes, and would have frolicked in mad joy with the veriest stranger. Anything was better than this drear solitude throughout the million hours before the first of the maids should be stirring or the first of the farmhands report for work. Yes, night was a disgusting time; and it had not one single redeeming ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... of the Caucasus mountains a wild storm was gathering. Drear shadows drooped and thickened above the Pass of Dariel,—that terrific gorge which like a mere thread seems to hang between the toppling frost-bound heights above and the black abysmal depths below,—clouds, fringed ominously with lurid green ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

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

... a pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or sigh, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

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

... perched on the young green spray, Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; 5 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... him it was a drab, unlovely pall. He saw no beauty in the snow-clad foliage, no splendour in the bejewelled tree-tops, no purity in the veil of white that lay upon the face of the earth. He saw only himself, and he was a drear, bleak thing ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from otherwhere, some region outside ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

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

... by the curate enlightened the child concerning sin and the Vicarious Sacrifice. This was when the leaves were falling from the trees in the park—a drear, dark night: the wind sweeping the streets in violent gusts, the rain lashing the windowpanes. Night had come unnoticed—swiftly, intensely: in the curate's study a change from gray twilight to firelit shadows. The boy was squatted on the hearth-rug, disquieted by the malicious beating at the ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... drear, November's leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble thrilled the streamlet through: ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... depths of the forest that to these two babes was as desolate, dark, and drear as any of which they had heard in fairy tale or nursery rhyme, they raised their clear, tremulous voices in pathetic appeal to that unseen Presence whom from their cradles they had been taught to look upon as ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... transports from Wellington. But contrary orders came, and so, entering Wellington Harbour, they dropped anchor towards evening. A gale came down in gusts from the hills around, bringing furious squalls of rain; and Mac, in heavy oilskins, again paced the boat-deck. Dawn broke grey and drear, and the troops were in the depths of depression. It was not the ill weather which distressed them, but at the eleventh hour, in the middle of the night, a picket boat had brought unwelcome despatches and now all hope ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... sides. For hundreds of square miles the country was under water, and Vincennes was in the centre of a great shallow lake. It was freezing water, too, for this was no longer the warm spring time, as it had been in the march to Kaskaskia, but dull and drear February. Yet the brave colonel knew that he must act quickly if he was to act at all. Hamilton had only eighty men; he could raise twice that many. He had no money to pay them, but a merchant in St. Louis offered to lend him all he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... is my friend," I said,— "Be patient!" Overhead The skies were drear and dim; And lo! the thought of him Smited on my heart—and then The sun ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... relief; It felt, but still forgot thy power:[bs] The active agony of grief Retards, but never counts the hour.[bt] In joy I've sighed to think thy flight Would soon subside from swift to slow; Thy cloud could overcast the light, But could not add a night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; One star alone shot forth a spark To prove thee—not Eternity. That beam hath sunk—and now thou art A blank—a thing to count and curse Through each dull tedious trifling part, Which all regret, yet all rehearse. One scene even thou ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... Trinity! be near Through the hours of darkness drear. When the help of man is far Ye more clearly present are. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Watch o'er our defenceless heads, Let your angels' guardian host Keep all evil from our beds, Till the flood of morning rays Wake as to ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... "A drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

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

... forest patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

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

... in connection with his natural gifts, a good schooling; and, for his special mission, he doubtless "left school" just at the proper moment. Had he remained longer in slavery—had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of manhood and its passions, until the drear agony of slave-wife and slave-children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences—then, not only would his own history have had another termination, but the drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied; for I cannot resist ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... a drear, gray, miserable day, with sleet pattering against the carriage windows. Robert Molyneux sat with his head bent almost to his knees, and his hands clenched. What face was it rose against his mind, continually blotting out the fair and sweet face of his love? It was the dark, handsome ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... hast thou clung to me and smiled, And wouldest, whispering in my ear, Give vent to all thy miseries drear, A little half-spoiled ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... wife, and children yawned, With a long, slow, and drear ennui, All human patience far beyond; 715 Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned, Anywhere ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the bliss of old predicted, Heaven and earth to-day rejoice; Men and angels, one in spirit, Shout aloud in gleeful voice; For, to those in darkness drear, God ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie

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

... All the lonesome while. Oh the mile after mile, And never a stile! And never a tree or a stone! She has not a tear: Afar and anear It is all so drear, But she does not care, Her heart is as dry as ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... but if one happened to be amiably disposed, one murmured vaguely, and affected conviction; and if one were not, one openly jeered and scoffed! Lavender was sentimental and wrote poetry in which "pale roses died, in the garden wide, and the wind blew drear, o'er the stricken mere." She had advanced to the dignity of long skirts, and dressed her hair—badly!—in the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... first stray swallow of the spring, "Where hast thou been through all the winter drear? Beneath what distant skies did'st fold thy wing, Since thou wast with us here, When Autumn's withered leaves foretold the ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster



Words linked to "Drear" :   uncheerful, blue, disconsolate, dreary, depressing, gloomy, sorry, grim, dark



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