Stanza

“ I see a sitting-room with a fireplace in the corner, or rather many sitting-rooms with many fireplaces, and many old men seated, chin in hand, in arm-chairs near the hearth. Near by stands a table with a lamp on it, surrounded by a circle of children, or of nephews and nieces, who nudge each other and point to their father or uncle, whispering, "Hush—he's asleep;"—and laughing at the grotesque expression that sleep has given to our wrinkled faces. ”

“ The room is as you left it; your last touch—
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly—hallows now each simple thing;
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light. ”

“ It was a pleasant room, with the simplest of furniture. The night-breeze ruffled the curtains at the windows, and filled the room with the cool odour of the woods—how different it was from the odour of dirty asphalt! ”

“ The things in it—the rooms, the passages, the stairs, the high, cold schoolroom with its shining maps and large frigid table, the tapestry room, long and dark and mysterious with strange beasts and horsemen waving in the dusk, the white drawing-room so delicate and fragile that the furniture seemed to be all holding its breath as though a little motion in the air would dissipate it, the vast dining-room with the great hanging candelabra, and the family portraits and the stone fireplace—all these things existed only that that terrible half-hour might fling its shadow about the day. ”

“ Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,
And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen. ”

“ We sat for hours in that room together,—that fair but dreadful room, its brilliant furniture unworn, its frescos delicate as any dream, its busts, its pictures, crowding calm lights and glorious colors, all fresh as the face of Nature, with home upon its every look; save only where the organ towered, and muffling in dark velvet its keys and pipes, reminded us that music had left home for heaven, and we might no more find it there! ”

“ The assembly rooms, brilliant with light, with garlands, with mirrors and beautiful statues, were thrown open to the outside, where the hanging terraces, redolent with the perfume of the night flowers, reposed so calmly in the moonlight. If only from the contrast, the scene would have told upon the heart and upon the senses. The garish rooms, speaking of the world and its votaries, hot, noisy, turbulent in their gaiety; the calm cool night, lying clear and still under the starred canopy of the blue heavens! Fairy forms were flitting in the rooms, strains of the sweetest music charmed the ear ”

“ All the little familiar objects, the intimate associations of the furniture of a room that has been for years your boudoir as well as your sleeping room, all the decorations that you fondly dreamed gave to your room a cachet—the mark of a distinctive personality,—these are of no more comfort to you than would be strange bare stone walls and a close unfamiliar iron grating. ”

“ The drawing rooms—hung in gray and black with immense bronze lamps that sent out about a needleful of light, and a few gleaming legs of chairs and tables showing in the distance—gave an impression of bareness, as of not yet being ready for occupancy. ”

“ The low-pitched, old-fashioned rooms, with the mullioned windows, the deep embrasures, the great open, stone-slabbed hearths, with their andirons and dog-grates, the walls panelled with carved linen-fold oak, darkened by age alone and polished to a dull, glossy glow by hands that would work no more. ”

“ Standing in the small, brown, lowceilinged sitting-room, a horror of a room, with two frightful paintings of her mother's father and mother, rocking-chairs, a couch with a knitted afghan, a table with a lamp, an album of World's Fair views, and a pressed-glass holder harbouring souvenir spoons, she had a new realization of the hopelessness of her plight. ”

“ When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him. ”

“ A room with gilded cornices and hand-painted roof, carpets soft as cushions, furniture as chaste and refined as modern art could produce, servants in livery to wait on them, and a supper-table laid out with viands the most tempting, and wines from every part of the world. ”

“ In a sitting-room, on the other hand, the sworn abode of the sweet and delicate talk and music of women, just as the dining-room was that of the serene discussions of men, there should be something of the lush luxuriance in shape and colour of the midsummer woods, knights and ladies and all the figures of romance and fairy-tale passing together. ”

“ The ancient appearance of the room—the old panelling of the wall—the chimney blackened with smoke and age—would have carried us back a hundred years at least, and we should have gone dreaming on, until the pewter-pot on the table, or the little beer-chiller on the fire, had started into life, and addressed to us a long story of days gone by. ”

“ The Enormous Room is filled with a new and beautiful darkness, the darkness of the snow outside, falling and falling and falling with the silent and actual gesture which has touched the soundless country of my mind as a child touches a toy it loves.... ”

“ The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the commodious, "handsome" room, far back in the fine old house, soundless from position, somewhat sallow with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at midsummer—the very place put on for her a look of custom and use, squared itself solidly round her as with promises and certainties. ”

“ Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet ”

“ Her little bed-sitting-room was like a lair, and she went out from it into this vast, dun world, with its smoke-gray houses, its glaring streets of shops, its dark streets of homes, its orange-lit windows, under skies of dull copper or muddy gray or black, much as an animal goes out to seek food. ”

“ One painting in a room fixes attention; two divide it; more than two disperse it. Than a wall plastered with bad canvases I know of nothing more distracting and confusing except a wall plastered with good ones. It is like a swarm of pretty girls, or a table d’hôte dinner in a country hotel, where all you are to eat is brought in at once and arranged round your plate. It kills the appetite. ”

“ So saying I led the way to the principal apartment in the house, which served as parlor, drawing room, and dining room—where the landlady soon made her appearance. She was a small, thin-faced woman, her form wiry and attenuated; her motions rapid and nervous; countenance much wrinkled, and of most forbidding expression, and a voice from which no art could have extracted a sound bearing the remotest relationship to harmony. ”

“ The room is filled with glorious music. Space seems to open out higher above us, to spread wider around us, and closely embraced, mouth to mouth, we float together away from all earthly trouble and sorrow. ”

“ Several low tables on which are the curious implements of magic. The room is filled with the dim light from many-colored and shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling. Heavy tapestries conceal the doors. The whole scene conveys the impression that it is seen through a thin mist, like a scene in a dream. ”

“ There is heaps of room, and I am sure I could make it ever so nice. The bed could stand there, and the chest of drawers facing the window, and—oh, I could have a real writing table by the window. I could do real work if I had this all nice and quiet to myself, with my things about—and this view to look out at! ”

“ No dingy, fusty, up-three-pair-of-stairs bed-room, which the unhappy bachelor enters with a shudder, and vacates with the satisfaction of an escaped convict. Here, all is bright and cheerful. There is no luxurious furniture, it is true ”

“ Across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of it—fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in—the old gentleman is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady’s presence. ”

“ We sit in a room above stairs; and we have one lodging-room, with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a small, low, unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old woman of sixty years of age, whom we took partly out of charity. ”

“ I have often heard voices in the drawing-room, which decidedly sounded as if an old gentleman and a girl were talking. Noises like furniture being moved were frequently heard at night, and strangers staying with us have often asked why the servants turned out the rooms underneath them at such an unusual hour. ”

“ Even this old room, with its bare walls, little table and chairs, which I have thought and studied in so long, that it seems difficult to think and study anywhere else, will crowd out of memory images of many a loftier scene. ”

“ The ladies' rooms will be fixed off with everything, wardrobes, bureaus, dressing-tables, sofas, lounges, looking-glasses of all shapes and sizes, curtains, and piles of mattresses, perfumes enough to strangle you, and all sorts of notions that have no use but just to be taken care of and make work for us—something of a contrast to our sky-rooms! ”

“ It was just like a little house of two rooms, one room being shut off from the other by heavy curtains.
The first room they went into was where they would eat and cook, and, when the table was cleared off, they could sit around it and read, or play games. ”

“ After visiting the ground floor and the garden, we went up stairs. The room which we first entered seemed to have been a dining-room, and had not been entered for many years, if one could judge from the musty smell which pervaded the apartment. ”

“ And a very dainty little room it was, with pale blue-tinted walls and light woodwork, soft mull curtains looped back with pale blue ribbons, the brass bed, satin-wood dresser, writing desk, and chairs, and the little bookcase from her playroom. ”

“ During an idle lounge in the mellowing, fading light, the beautiful quality of the place steals irresistibly over your spirit, the air seems charged with serene antiquity and accumulated peace, and the rustle of the leaves strikes you as the continuous sound made in their passage by the hours and years which have given all this it's quiet chance to grow. ”

“ And all that he now revealed to her—the fine corridors, the great dining-room, the ball-room, the old carving, the old painted ceilings, the old tapestries, the old furniture—gave her a pleasure that deepened to pain. ”

“ I always look at a room as a painting. It never occurs to me whether the articles in it are cheap or dear, so that only the general effect is warm, and social, and agreeable. And that is just what you have made these rooms. ”

“ The room in which the poet was born remains very nearly in its original state, and, save a table, an ancient chair or two, and a bust of Shakespeare, is without furniture; but another upper room is devoted to the exhibition of a variety of interesting relics and mementos. ”

“ In centre of the room is a pillar, having looking-glass all round without a visible line to mar the effect, which is exquisite, especially where it reflects that marvellous scenery so wondrously enchanting. ”

“ I wrote so fully in my former book on the arrangement of sitting-rooms that I am only going to touch lightly on the orthodox papering and painting of dining-, drawing-, and morning-rooms, reserving all my new ideas for the billiard-room and library, neither of which rooms were considered likely to be required for the modest young couple starting in life, for whom I more particularly designed that special volume. ”

“ The rhythmical structure of The Raven was sure to make an impression. Rhyme, alliteration, the burden, the stanzaic form, were devised with singular adroitness. Doubtless the poet was struck with the aptness of Miss Barrett's musical trochaics, in "eights," and especially by the arrangement adopted near the close of "Lady Geraldine":
"'Eyes,' he said, 'now throbbing through me! ”

“ The room I inhabit belongs to her, not to him. It is the invalid's room—that is, if any one is ill in the house, he is put there; it has nothing to recommend it except the view,—only four bare walls, no chest of drawers—in fact, nothing. ”

“ These towering halls, these broad-curved stairways, these lofty chambers, even the great kitchens and their clustering offices, are to this timid group as wide and desolate as deserts or the sea.
They seek a room, a room that shall be small enough and low enough and dark enough; they reach at last one friendly sheltering little room—crowd into it with tumultuous affection, and find a home! ”

“ The modern habit of regarding the walls of a room chiefly as a background to pictures, furniture, or people, and perhaps the smallness of the average room, has brought rather small, thickly dispersed, leafy patterns into vogue, retiring in colour for the most part. ”

“ The empty rooms are musty and gloomy from long neglect, but the beautifully-carved and colored ceilings, and the screens and recess walls, decorated by famous artists with paintings on a ground of thinnest gold-leaf, remain the sole relics of his splendor. ”

“ Your hero of a fashionable novel never ascends to the first floor. Bed-room, dressing-room, breakfast-room, library, and boudoir, all are upon a level. As for his dressing, you must only describe it as perfect when finished; but not enter into a regular detail, except that, in conversation with his valet, he occasionally asks for something unheard-of, or fastidious to a degree. ”