Literary notes about Ghast (AI summary)
The term ghast is often employed to evoke an otherworldly, unsettling quality in descriptive language. It appears in portrayals where a character’s look is charged with grim determination—as when a warrior’s glare is described as ghast, suggesting an intensity that borders on the supernatural ([1]). At other times, ghast modifies the aura of a scene, lending a spectral, eerie tone to wailing figures or sinister landscapes that seem to embody neglect and decay ([2], [3]). The word also colors the emotional state of characters, from expressions of profound anxiety or blank, disturbed faces ([4], [5]), to the fixed, painful intensity observed in a bewildering gaze ([6]). Whether illustrating a mood of dread and alienation or heightening the stark melancholy of loss and torment in nature and humanity ([7], [8], [9]), ghast uniquely bridges the physical and psychological to intensify literary imagery.
- For ne’er, from vizor raised, did stare A human warrior, with a glare So grimly and so ghast.
— from Marmion: A Tale Of Flodden Field by Walter Scott - We look on the past And stare aghast At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, _5 Of hopes which thou and I beguiled To death on life's dark river.
— from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 by Percy Bysshe Shelley - And, towering to seaward in legions, They paused at a spot Overbending the Race— That engulphing, ghast, sinister place—
— from Poems of the Past and the Present by Thomas Hardy - Much has he Suffered from ghoulish ghast anxiety!
— from The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon by Thomas Hardy - “Better not keep anything from me, my dear friends,” blandly continued the Southerner, smiling stilly down upon their blank and ghast faces.
— from Harrington: A Story of True Love by William Douglas O'Connor - The wild and fitful little shape bewilderingly wriggled and flickered in the light, and his ghast and fixed eye was painful to endure.
— from The Haunts of Old Cockaigne by Alexander M. (Alexander Mattock) Thompson - I see Beyond the city, crosses three And mortals three that hang thereon 'Ghast and silent to the sun.
— from The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - How doth the wide and melancholy earth Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast, And stare with blank significance of loss Right in our faces!
— from The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Let not our heart be troubled at the clang Of hammer and nails, nor dread the spear's keen fang, Nor the ghast sickening that comes of pain,
— from A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald
