Crossword-Solution: DISMAL 6 letters, 233 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

All night long he sailed upon it, Sailed upon that sluggish water, Covered with its mould of ages, Black with rotting water-rushes, Rank with flags and leaves of lilies, Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, Lighted by the shimmering moonlight, And by will-o’-the-wisps illumined, Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled, In their weary night-encampments.

Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands, On bold adventure to discover wide That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps Might yeild them easier habitation, bend Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams; Abhorred _Styx_ the flood of deadly hate, Sad _Acheron_ of sorrow, black and deep; _Cocytus_, nam’d of lamentation loud Heard on the ruful stream; fierce _Phlegeton_ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

There was not a sound of life save that acme and sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a funeral bell.

This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender.

The woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage instead of green.