"Ebon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with wild vines, that hung in graceful festoons from the topmost branches to the water's edge. The dark shadows of the mountains, thrown upon the water, as they towered to the height of some thousand feet above us, gave to the surface of the river an ebon hue. The sunbeams, dancing through the thick, quivering foliage, fell in stars of gold, or long lines of dazzling brightness, upon the deep black waters, producing the most novel and beautiful effects. It was a scene over which the spirit of peace might brood in silent adoration; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... moonlight. For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed of ebon and ivory." ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... arches crawled with processions of carts, coaches, drays, every sort of wheeled, rumbling thing, the noses of the horses behind touching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... attention to dressing their ebon-black hair. None are so poor or humble as to forget this inexpensive ornamentation. Nature has endowed them with a profusion of covering for the head, and they wear no other. It is not very fine, to be sure, but always black as ink, long and heavy, and when arranged in their ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... metaphor, still I cannot help supposing that that universal pall, as I called it, which is cast over all nations, has a very definite and a very tragic meaning. There is a universal fact of human experience which answers to the figure, and that is sin. That is the black thing whose ebon folds hamper us, and darken us, and shut out the visions of God and blessedness, and all the glorious blue above us. The heavy, dark mist settles down on the plains, though the sky above is undimmed by it, and the sun is blazing in the zenith. Not one beam can penetrate through the wet, chill obstruction, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... yonder branch at dawn Is trilling forth a joyful note, Or hopping o'er the frozen lawn, In yellow boots and ebon coat. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... air they breathe salubrious. Strangers to the licentious appetites which frequently proceed from a depraved imagination, they cheerfully receive the bounteous gifts of nature, and when night sways her ebon sceptre o'er ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... was reflected from the glossy ebon of her hide, spotted with stains of a duller black. For an instant she remained motionless, crouching upon her thick-set limbs, with her head close to the floor, as if calculating the distance of the leap by ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in his ears. Without daring to communicate such an intention to his noukers, and still less relying on their bravery, he resolved upon travelling to Derbend alone. A darksome and gloomy night had already expanded it ebon wings over the mountains of Caucasus which skirt the sea, when Ammalat passed the ravine which lay behind the fortress of Narin-Kali, which served as a citadel to Derbend. He mounted to the ruined turret, which once formed the limit to the Caucasian war that had extended through the mountains, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... real fun. I guess you'd better come right up, Dr. Percival;" and the ebon head darted off, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... star In his steep course—so long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc? The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... —Mr. Ebon C. Ingersoll of Illinois made a strong and eloquent appeal for the passage of the amendment and the liberation of the slave. With the accomplishment of that grand end, said he, "our voices will ascend to Heaven over a country re-united, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... later they had ridden down the slope of the hollow. A puff of wind that came with the sun drove away the mist. Dick uttered a choking cry and leapt from his saddle. For there, calm, terrible, mighty, clothed in his red and yellow cap and robe of ebon furs, stood he who was named Murgh the Fire, Murgh the Sword, Murgh the Helper, Murgh, Gateway of ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... its ebon case His violin the Minstrel drew, And having tuned its strings anew, Now held it close in his embrace, And poising in his outstretched hand The bow, like a magician's wand, He paused, and said, with beaming face: "Last night my story was too long; To-day ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to inherit all her father's beauty and peculiar grace, and endeared her to her young mother's heart with an increased warmth of love, while the dark flashing eyes of Lord Manvers and his glossy, flowing, ebon curls rendered him, Edward declared, the perfect likeness of his mother, and therefore he was the father's pet. Round Mr. Hamilton were grouped, in attitudes which an artist might have been glad to catch for natural grace, about three or four younger grandchildren, the eldest not exceeding four ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... height, and broad in proportion, came towards us, bowing and stooping in the most awkward manner, partly by way of salutation and partly to avoid striking his head against the low deck-beams. He was dark-complexioned, bushy whiskered, with keen restless black eyes, and a shock of ebon hair very imperfectly concealed by a black-and-red-striped fisherman's cap of knitted worsted, which he removed deferentially the moment his eye fell upon us. He wore large gold ear-rings in his ears, and was attired in a thick dreadnought jacket over a black-and-red- ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... of misty green fire darted from the blackness and thrust its point into the heart of the zenith; following it, leaped into the sky a host of the sparkling spears of light, and now the blackness was like an ebon hand, brandishing a ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... be more daylight left than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds shone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles on either side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now shallower, now deeper, succeeding ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... choose a minister to-night; Let him who wills prefer his right, And unto the most worthy hand We will commit the ebon wand." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe in futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of legend or history—these and a hundred other details are enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colourless ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... lover to his promised spouse. This old Caprese custom has disappeared, but the girls still pride themselves on the number and value of their ornaments—the "spadella," or stiletto which binds the elaborately braided mass of their ebon hair; the circular gold earrings with inner circles of pearls; the gold chain or lacetta, worn fold upon fold round the neck; the bunch of gold talismans suspended on the breast; the profusion of heavy silver rings which load every finger. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... slowly, slowly toward the zenith, spreading east and west without a break. One half of the valley had vanished in the blackest shadow, and still the gilded edge swung steadily on, with the slow, resistless sweep of misty legions upon legions, armed in ebon mail; vast billows of night that drowned the scattered stars that met them, one by one. Then it struck the full moon and blotted it from sight. The world of the little valley dropped into night, and all was dark as Erebus. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... that she almost always wears when mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting, with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous people whose names one does not know. Members of the Institute of the great ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... a coronet of bluebells on his golden bead, young miss a wreath of cowslips on her ebon locks. The pair were flowers, cherubs, children—everything that stands for young, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... had risen, and we stood facing each other. I felt that I was right here playing for that greatest of all stakes, my self-respect, the loss of which to any man, I had long before discovered, means ebon failure. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... wild throb when all existences Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... men; but he thought me still more luxurious this morning, when my knives and forks, and plates, and cups, saucers, silver spoons, and silver teapot were brought forth shining and bright, spread on a rich Persian carpet, and observed that I was well attended to by my yellow and ebon Mercuries. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Dancing girl; Drooping lash and ebon curl. Silver tassel; Scented room; Almond "glad"-eye-look. Queersome figures prowling round, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... wicked seven winds howl wildly round, And crashing cedars falling shake the ground. Now Tsil-lattu her black wings spreads o'er all, Dark shrouding all the forest with her pall, And from his steed for safety each dismounts, And o'er their heads now break the ebon founts. But hark! what is that dreadful roaring noise? The dragons come! Their flaming crests they poise Above, and nearer blaze their eyes of fire, And see! upon ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... play to be observed. The coon-hunter is a pure-blooded African, with features immobile as those of the Sphinx. And from his colour nought can be deduced. As already said, it is the depth of its ebon blackness, producing a purplish iridescence over the epidermis, that has gained for him the sobriquet ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the air! Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice Morn on the Indian steep, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish—he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man—viz., admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... waters close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he knew—oblivion, deep, ebon and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... exquisitely moulded, and the beautiful head was poised on the shoulders with that indescribable proud grace one sometimes sees in perfect marble sculpture. But the delicate woeful Oenone face, as white and gleaming under its shining coil of ebon hair, as a statue carved from the heart of Lygdos; how shall mere words ever portray its peculiar loveliness, its faultless purity? Unconsciously she had paused in the exact position selected for that beautiful ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... silence, and then one, a great black mailed knight upon a black charger, cried out something to the other which the boy could not catch. The other knight made no response other than to rest his lance upon his thigh and with lowered point, ride toward his ebon adversary. For a dozen paces their great steeds trotted slowly toward one another, but presently the knights urged them into full gallop, and when the two iron men on their iron trapped chargers came together in the center of the glade, it was ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ruddy lips that ever smiled, His glittering teeth betwixt, And flowing robe embroidered o'er, With leaves and blossoms mixed. He wore a chaplet of the rose; His palfrey, white and sleek, Was marked with many an ebon spot, And many a purple streak; Of jasper was his saddle-bow, His housings sapphire stone, And brightly in his stirrup glanced The purple calcedon. Fast rode the gallant cavalier, As youthful horsemen ride; "Peyre Vidal! know that I am Love," The blooming stranger cried; "And this ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the gathering of the distant thunder-clouds, which cast a deeper, more sombre shade upon the pines that girded the northern shores of the lake as with an ebon frame. Insensibly her thoughts wandered far away from the lonely spot whereon she sat, to the stoup [FN: The Dutch word for verandah, which is still in common use among the Canadians.] in front of her father's house, and in memory's eye ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... elephants 'neath a dome to stoop, Shapeless, giant forms to view arise, Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties! Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries: O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon-trees; Temples, where seated on their rich tiled thrones, Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones; Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare, Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees Great gods of bronze, their hands upon their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... intense As midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth! Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors—and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... his sixtieth year, and though many threads of silver mingled with his ebon-black hair, he held himself as erect as a youth, while his thin, sharply-cut features expressed the unyielding determination, which explained his son's and grandson's prompt obedience to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black dress of crepe de—crepe de—oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... sails high in his azure realms; Beneath the arch of the breezy elms The feast is spread by the murmuring river. With his battle spear and his bow and quiver, And eagle plumes in his ebon hair, The chief Wakawa himself is there; And round the feast in the Sacred Ring, [48] Sit his weaponed warriors witnessing. Not a morsel of food have the Virgins tasted For three long days ere the holy feast; They sat in their ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... a throne of jasper sat A monstrous idol, black and fat; Thick rose-oil dropped upon its head: Drop by drop, heavy and sweet, Trickled down to its ebon feet Whereon the blood of goats was shed, And smeared around its perfumed knees In savage ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... cross of curiously carved old ivory, yellow with time, and sloped above a dark-red prie-dieu, furnished duly, with rich missal and ebon rosary—hung the picture whose dim outline had drawn my eyes before—the picture which moved, fell away with the wall and let in phantoms. Imperfectly seen, I had taken it for a Madonna; revealed by clearer light, it proved to be a woman's portrait in a nun's dress. The face, though not beautiful, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... be consumed by heat before I could replace it. Come away! Come away! You know not with what mighty powers you play. This is the lever that you seek. Note well the symbol inlaid in white upon its ebon surface." ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than soft. The line between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation of color. Blocks and walls of silver are bordered by, and spring out of, chasms of blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Coliseum in mystery. It opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... feel so shivery-and-livery. Ugh!—so chilly. Here! Send for Dr. ROBSON ROOSTEM PASHA!" cried the Baron, clapping his hands, and a thousand ebon slaves bounded off to execute his commands. Had they not done so, they themselves might have suffered the fate intended for the commands, and have themselves been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... made his first appearance in Fore Street—he being so tall and the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon face toppled ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her ebon throne In rayless majesty now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world... Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause, prophetic ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese |
