Advancing to the cavern, he looked down And saw a gloomy place, dismal as hell; But not one cursed, impious sorcerer Was visible in that infernal depth.

Somebody nursed the figure, toohe is sure of thatbringing it water, medicines, food, and leeches for its aching temples; smoothing its pillow and arranging its bed-clothes, in those endless nights, so much longer, yet scarce more dismal than the days,somebody, whose voice he never heard, whose face he never saw, yet in whose slow, cautious tread there seemed a familiar sound.

This poem is surely the work of a fancy that must have often gone into the desert of the soul to meditate, and that must have made itself acquainted with all that is dismal in imagery and feeling.

While Schumann had no such problem to meet, he lacked Clara's elastic and buoyant nature, and it must never be forgotten that when he was sad, he was dismal to the point of absolute madness.

Poor old Gough looked awfully dismal at being left behind, but it was the fortune of war.

Thus far to-day a mere handful of people other than dealers had drifted in to wait for the sale to beginsomething for which the weather was largely to blame, for the day was dismal with a clammy drizzle settling from a low and leaden skyand with a solitary exception these few were commonplace folk.

It would require the most dismal of dismal days, with sluicing rain and clouds low down on every beautiful crag and snow-tipped summit, to make anybody born with a soul above his dinner, complain of the grandeur of the gorge, or impugn the unceasing variety of dashing waterfalls, foaming river, freshly-opened leaves, white heather, and bright, flower-decked fields.

"Very dismal about the peerage," writes Lady John in her diary, "and seeing only the sad side of it....

The storm still raged, but no one came near the house, and all was dark and dismal without.

Madame Delphine wandered drearily from door to window, from window to door, and presently into the newly-furnished front room which now seemed dismal beyond degree.

She was very glad to get away from that dreary house, made a hundredfold more dismal by the sense of what lay in the closed chamber, where the candles were still burning in the yellow fog of the November morning, and to which Marian had gone with hushed footsteps to kneel for the last time beside the old man who was so near her by the ties of relationship, and whom she had known for so brief a space.

It was dismal for her who had just dreamed herself surrounded by all her people to be sitting alone in the late evening.

830 I wish to have thee here again, When windows flap and chimney roars, And all is dismal out of doors; And, sitting by my fire, I see Eight sorry carts, no less a train!

That she remained dismal under circumstances that seemed to me not to warrant it was a detail of minor consequence.

He woke in a kind of horror and lay awake and very dismal until dawn, thinking of their separation and of her solitary walk through the muddy streets, thinking of his position, the leeway he had lost and the chances there were against him in the battle of the world.