Deprived by an
ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793.
Poet and sportsman, mystic and man of this world, a great polo player, and the passionate lover of one beautiful woman whose
ill-starred fate inspired Po Chu-i, the tenderest of all their singers,** Ming Huang is more to literature than to history.
Would that he had died in my arms, for so both his
ill-starred mother who bore him, and myself, should have had the comfort of weeping and mourning over him."
'Tis the misfortune of thine
ill-starred sons I come to tell thee.
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated "Iron Mask"--that
ill-starred brother of a hardhearted king of France--was confined for a season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from the curious in the dungeons of Ste.
Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this
ill-starred place.
Seven captains at our seven gates Thundered; for each a champion waits, Each left behind his armor bright, Trophy for Zeus who turns the fight; Save two alone, that
ill-starred pair One mother to one father bare, Who lance in rest, one 'gainst the other Drave, and both perished, brother slain by brother.
Discipline, what there was of it originally, had been the very first thing to perish aboard our
ill-starred ship; the officers, I am afraid, were not much better than poor Ready made them out
They had proceeded scarce a hundred yards when they came suddenly upon a broad stream, which the Negro instantly recognized as that down which he and his warriors had paddled to the sea upon their
ill-starred expedition.
Upon the Sandwich Islands it has been employed with no small success in the treatment of scrofulous affections, and in combating the ravages of a disease for whose frightful inroads the
ill-starred inhabitants of that group are indebted to their foreign benefactors.
Almost every day of that
ill-starred vacation it stormed fiercely; and even on fine days it drifted unceasingly.
At last the impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew the passion of love misplaced,
ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman who was young enough to be his child.
ill-starred - marked by or promising bad fortune; "their business venture was doomed from the start"; "an ill-fated business venture"; "an ill-starred romance"; "the unlucky prisoner was again put in irons"- W.H.Prescott