But I, careless of the occult signs by which the gods forewarn mortals, picked it up, replaced it on my head, and, as if nothing portentous had happened, I passed out from my abode.

To him the place had grown portentous.

It is a net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia.

"Brother," quoth he, selecting an arrow with portentous care, "'tis an ill thing to be cursed with eyes such as mine, I tell thee!" "Aye, and wherefore, Giles?" said Beltane, yet intent on his own thoughts.

Thus omen (a prophetic utterance or sign) and portent (a stretching forward, a foreseeing, a foretelling) might originally be either benign or baleful; but nowadays, especially in the adjectival forms ominous and portentous, they wear a menacing hue.

But here everything like success for two years disappeared, and a gloomy cloud hung over the land, portentous of disasters and dismay.

Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the Dauphin once more upon his feet.

Mayhall stared, and Bill's left eye closed and opened with lightning quickness in a most portentous wink.

"My men are comin' in fast, and you can hardly realize erer what it means to an old soldier erer not to haveer" And Mayhall's answering wink was portentous.

A strange portentous meteor in art.

" "Say, can you laugh indignant at the schemes Of magic terrors, visionary dreams, Portentous wonders, witching imps of Hell, The nightly goblin, and enchanting spell?" They laugh at all such stories; but on the contrary are most lawyers, divines, physicians, philosophers, Austin, Hemingius, Danaeus, Chytraeus, Zanchius, Aretius, &c. Delrio, Springer, Niderius, lib.

At this moment a stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip, and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread itself over his speaking countenance.

They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity.

To the first-born, Piero, came the great inheritance of his father's place and power, and no man ever entered into a greater possession,a possession, so firm, so unquestioned and so portentous, that nothing seemed likely to disturb its equilibrium or to sully its triumph.

Then suddenly a portentous crash was heard, as if the mountains were tumbling in ruins.

There were many thunderstorms to start with and portentous winds, but no one could have expected that so many evils would result from them.

We have no reason to regret that these measures have been thus far adopted and pursued, and in proportion as we enlarge our view of the portentous and incalculable situation of Europe we shall discover new and cogent motives for the full development of our energies and resources.

If clouds have lowered above the other hemisphere, they have not cast their portentous shadows upon our happy shores.

A PORTENTOUS SUMMER.

The great leader who had threatened the capital, and scored these portentous victories, had at last to pay for them all in defeat and humiliation on his own soil.

"There are great preparations making for Mr. Tom," said she with a portentous face.

The incident embodies the superstition of sitting in the Druid's Chair, similar in its portentous moment to sitting in St. Michael's Chair, in Cornwall.

The mate, in a rage, at length mounted himself; when resolutely, as in the former case, searching for the bugbear, he soon ascertained the innocent cause of so much terror to be a large horned owl, so lodged as to be out of sight to those who ascended on the other side of the vessel, but which when any one approached the cross-trees, popped up his portentous visage to see what was coming.

but more fateful than the restless deep, Whose crested hosts rise high but fall again, I hear, in solemn and portentous sweep, The slow, deliberate marshalling of men.

And the tremendous skull of the great hog of Oakham hung, a portentous ivory overmantel, with a Chinese jar in either eye socket, snout down above the fire....