grim reality

There is a need in the popular imagination for wresting at least a measure of illusion from the grim reality of the past.

But it is a wide dreary waste that lies between such an idea and the grim reality,—and poor Harriet had traversed it.

It is a wild and romantic fable in the mouth of the Princess Scheherazade; but it is grim reality in the world to-day.

Now, however, it was grim reality that stared me in the face.

Shells bursting and machine guns rattling bring home the grim reality of the affair.

But when he woke, it was to find the grim reality sitting by his pillow, and he couldn't dry‑cup it away.