corpse-pale

Updated: May 8, 2025

It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain, waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as the door of the chamber opened, and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph, as she bent over the pale corpse-pale as itself and pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead?

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales")

Then with an assured carriage and haughty stride came forth the marshal, his grey hair and blue-black beard in strong contrast with his haggard corpse-pale face, from which the momentary glow of youth half-restored had already faded, as fades a footprint upon wet sand.

S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett - The Black Douglas