1 I drew near; and essaying to tear up the green wood from the soil, that I might cover the altar with leafy boughs, I see a portent ominous and wonderful to tell.
2 Than these no deadlier portent nor any fiercer plague of divine wrath hath issued from the Stygian waters; winged things with maidens' countenance, bellies dropping filth, and clawed hands and faces ever wan with hunger.
3 Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.
4 But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.
5 But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst.
6 But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end, instead of one side.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContext Highlight In CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View. 7 The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency.
8 But scarce was this done ere the portentous strength of the Black Knight forced his way inward in despite of De Bracy and his followers.
9 Thus the dangers which Bois-Guilbert surmounted, in themselves sufficiently great, became portentous in their narrative.
10 Mr. Bumble, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head with portentous solemnity.
11 As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below.
12 Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.
13 Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan.
14 The effect was also further heightened by the manner in which, at such moments, he assumed the most portentous frown.
15 The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man.
Les Misérables 2 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 1: CHAPTER XV—CAMBRONNE