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More "Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books



... there was no reply. Everything was still but the bird, and the sparks that crackled now and then from the fire. The heavy gray shadows grew purple and grew black. The little foot-paths in the woods were blotted out of sight, and the far sky above the tree-tops grew dusky ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... for others! In vain, you will have harassed your mind with cankering thoughts for half a lifetime; for it will be just as if you had gone through the confused mazes of a dream on the third watch! Sudden a crash (will be heard) like the fall of a spacious palace, and a dusky gloominess (will supervene) such as is caused by a lamp about to spend itself! Alas! a spell of happiness will be suddenly (dispelled by) adversity! Woe is man in the world! for his ultimate doom is difficult ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... I stumbled as best I could into the Rue de Rivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... unfortunately happened that the portion of sky in that quarter was bare of stars over a space very considerably larger than would have been covered by the ship's canvas, and consequently I was without the assurance that would have been afforded me had the faint, dusky appearance that I took to be her sails alternately eclipsed and exposed a star. But I afterwards had reason to believe that I had really seen her, for when we had arrived within about a mile of the spot where I supposed her to be, a faint, wailing cry, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... fostered in Biblical times, expanded in China and Egypt, living on the painted jar, and breathing in the oaten reed, deified in Greece, and analyzed to-day, are natural cousins at the least, and they have come from the spacious home of their progenitor, upon our dusky and silent sphere, like Peace and Goodwill, with hands bound in an oath and contract never to part. We will spare a dissertation on chaos; we will not speak of matter and inertia; but as our greatest and purest fountain of ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... on whirring pinions, Scattering all of Hiisi's terrors, Brought the hissing of the serpents, And of snakes the dusky venom, 240 And of ants he brought the acid, And of toads the hidden poison, That the steel might thus be poisoned, In the tempering of ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... are clad in moccasins and beads. Her dress? Oh, next to nothing. Though undressed, Her slender arms are circled round with vine And dusky locks cling close ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts

... immediately surrounded, at a very respectable distance, by a cordon of Samoans. These were splendid-looking fellows. Their dusky bodies were strong and stalwart, and their faces were intelligent-looking. It was plain to be seen that they had not the slightest hostile intentions toward the aviators. On the contrary their features expressed clear friendliness, although ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... of such youth and loveliness, the dusky figure of Phoebus appears to great disadvantage. It is not happily conceived. Yet his air is noble and godlike, and his free commanding action, and conscious ease, as he carelessly guides, with one hand, the fiery steeds that are harnessed to his ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... over his shoulder, and, brave man as he was, it almost made him shudder. The whole party of Indians was on his track. He could see their dusky faces, distorted by wrath, and the longing for a savage revenge. He knew that Tom and he had little to hope for if they were caught. Fortunately their horses were strong and fleet, and not likely ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger

... render back their long committed dust. Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call, Self-mov'd, advance; the neck perhaps to meet The distant head; the distant legs the feet. Dreadful to view, see thro' the dusky sky Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, To distant regions journeying, there to claim Deserted members, and complete the frame. When the world bow'd to Rome's almighty sword, Rome bow'd to Pompey, and confess'd her lord. Yet one day lost, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... ignorance are generally willing to trust to the pundits of the place,—look doubtful, uneasy, and bewildered. But they all do get properly placed and unplaced, so that the spectator at last acknowledges that over all this apparent chaos there is presiding a great genius of order. From dusky morn to dark night, and indeed almost throughout the night, the air is loaded with a succession of shrieks. The theory goes that each separate shriek,—if there can be any separation where the sound is so nearly continuous,—is a separate notice to separate ears of the coming or going ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... Sincerity, clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, real and easy. In the light of great literary achievement, straight and wonderful, like the roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism torments the mind like a riddle. Yet there are the dusky barbarians!—fleeing from the harmonious tread of the ordered legions, running to hide themselves in the morass of vulgar sentiment, to ambush their nakedness in the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... Pers., is another edible species. It grows on the ground in woods. It is of a dusky or dark smoky color, and is deeply funnel-shaped, resembling a "horn of plenty," though usually straight. The fruiting surface ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... knew that; but she did not know that a quarter-strain of tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale. It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn, who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of the ultra-exclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had disapproved of his teaching her to ride a surf-board, nor of his leading ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of Sophia. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... and shows me a little brigantine, he'd chartered, and with three dusky lads for a crew and some grub and two big chests on her quarter-deck we sail out. And the first thing I says when we were clear o' the harbor was: "What's them chests for?" And he opens up one of 'em and says: "Behold, senor, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... it was, that cluster of white marble relics of the past on the bosom of dusky Pisa. It reminded me," said momma, poetically, "of an ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of the crookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow winding steps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones that echo the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like sea caves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. In Rome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There were more of them thirty years ago. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... A dusky form, prone upon the ground, began to squirm under Wampus, who was then discovered to be sitting upon a big Indian and holding him prisoner. The chauffeur, partly an Indian himself, knew well how to manage his captive and quieted the fellow by squeezing his throat with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... its crown, or its rind be peeled off, or if it be split, or bored, or if ever so little be wanting, it is disallowed. If a stain be spread over the smaller part of it, if it have lost its stalk, or if it be bored so that no part however small be wanting, it is allowed. A dusky citron is disallowed. A leek green one R. Meier "allows," but ...
— Hebrew Literature

... been a great success, and the Colonel knew he ought to be the happiest man in town, whereas he was the most miserable. He could not hear Mandy Ann's curses as she knelt on her mistress's grave, nor see her dusky arms swaying in the darkness to emphasize her maledictions. He didn't know there was a grave, but something weighed him down with unspeakable remorse. Every incident of his first visit South came back to him with startling ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... The dusky face grew very sad for a moment, tears springing to the dark eyes; but the voice was almost cheerful as she answered, "Yes, you's right, honey darlin' you's all right to go and see 'bout dem poor souls and let 'em see dere ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... trigger when "my purpose," he says "was checked by MacLeay, who called to me that another party of blacks had made their appearance on the left bank of the river. Turning round, I observed four men at the top of their speed." These were the dusky delegates, and the description given by Sturt of the conduct of the man who saved the situation is ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... that it was not out of their thoughts; and however dear what we are going to leave may be, all that is not particularly dear must cease to interest us much. If those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts, must not their hue grow more dusky when public misfortunes and disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before. But does not that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on those who do think? Have any of our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... lake, known to the English as George and to the French as Saint Sacrement. Now, though, they traveled by night and slept and rested by day. But Lake George in the moonlight was grand and beautiful beyond compare. Its waters were dusky silver as the beams poured in floods upon it, and the lofty shores, in their covering of dark green, seemed to hold up ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... which the waves dashed and roared. On their left and far above them towered a great and isolated rock, its precipitous sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red and yellow quartz; and on the summit of this bold headland, amid the dark green of the sea-grass, they could see the dusky ruins—the crumbling walls and doorways and battlements—of the castle that is named in all the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The bridge across to the mainland has, in the course of centuries, fallen away, but there, on the other side of the wide chasm, were the ruins of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... dark through a distance of about twenty yards, occupying an intermediate portion of the tunnel. When the sun is near the meridian, and his rays fall upon both entrances, the light reflected from both extremities of the tunnel contributes to mollify the darkness of this interior portion into a dusky twilight. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... a whole day, he went dashing madly through the forest, a piece of hide around the colt's neck his only accoutrements. Then he was in his element and free, with the fresh mountain air fanning his dusky brow, infusing into his stalwart frame ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... attention to this region, and observed several changes in the Lacus Moeris, to the east of Syrtis Major. The lake disappeared altogether for some considerable time, then reappeared. Last September he saw it again, and it was evident some further changes had occurred; and he also saw some dusky shadings on the adjacent desert of Lybia. There seems little doubt but that he actually saw, though imperfectly, the new canals which Professor Lowell's much clearer atmosphere and larger instrument enabled him ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... soft hands, fair, Brush his cheeks like a feather, And bright brown tresses and dusky hair Meet ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... overwhelming odds. In spite of the danger of our position, I could not help being struck with the magnificence of the spectacle presented by the great fleet of boats now fast advancing towards us. The warriors had all assumed their fighting decorations, with white stripes painted round their dusky bodies to strike terror into the beholder. Their head-dress consisted of many-coloured feathers projecting from the hair, which they had matted and caused to stand bolt upright from the head. Each boat ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... at once, and to fear nothing, but be bold and true. And Perseus knew that she was none other than Athena, the queen of the air, and that her companion was Mercury, the lord of the summer clouds. But before he could thank them for their kindness, they had vanished in the dusky twilight. ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... is turned towards us, and lo! it is the face of Atene, and amid her dusky hair the aura is reflected in jewelled gold, the symbol of her royal rank. She looks at the shaven priest; she laughs as though in triumph; she points to the westering sun and to the river, and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... fire—without evil intent, I do truly believe. Surely it was by chance that he found its waxen face softening under the stove's glow—and has Heaven affixed nails to any boy of seven that, in a dusky room at a quiet moment, would have behaved with more restraint? I trow not. One surprised dig and all was lost. Of that fair surface of rounded cheek, fattened chin, and noble brow not a square inch was left ungouged. It was indeed a face ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... was seen, would have attracted notice—slim and erect and trim in figure, and a decided brunette, a real "nut-brown maid", with a pale olive complexion, the brightest of soft, dark, southern eyes, and a quantity of fluffy, silky, dusky curls, tied—American fashion—with two big bows of very wide scarlet ribbon, one on the top of her head and one at the nape of her neck. She smiled as the others entered, showing an even little set of white ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... an occasional partaker, and whereof I may well say, that the deep afflictive tale which awakeneth our sorrows, is so relieved with brilliant similitudes, dulcet descriptions, pleasant poems, and engaging interludes, that they seem as the stars of the firmament, beautifying the dusky robe of night. And though I wot well how much the lovely and quaint language will suffer by my widowed voice, widowed in that it is no longer matched by my beloved viol-de-gamba, I will essay to give you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... to the barn. There was still only dusky half-light. He pulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gap to see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was no sign that any living ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the dismal obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon darted huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped monsters, and visions of faces horribly grotesque, into which the smoke seemed to wreathe itself, and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... more," thought Mrs. Morrison, watching their dusky golden curve, "and the girl would have had scarlet hair and white-eyebrows and masses of freckles and been frightful." And she sighed an impatient sigh, which, if translated into verse, would ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... Exploring far and wide the watery waste, For sight of ship from England. Every speck Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale With conflict of contending hopes and fears. But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared To dream all night of what the day denied. Alas, expect it not. We found no bait To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, Disinterested good, is not our trade. We travel far, 'tis true, but not for naught; ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... said Jeanie, gazing on the dusky ocean of Highland hills, which now, piled above each other, and intersected by many a lake, stretched away on the opposite side of the river to the northward. "Is yon high ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... with human fears. Then watch the new-born glories in thine eye, Glancing like lightning from its chariot cloud, And list these words, which know not how to die,— Joy's inspiration gushing forth aloud: Then back again unto the world and sigh, And wrap my heart up in a dusky shroud. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... convention is made betwixt man and woman, it sanctifies their most private walks: so, notwithstanding it was dusky, yet as both our roads lay the same way, we made no scruple of walking along the Quai ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... summoned one tall form after another out of the dusky surroundings, and around the blazing logs robes were spread here and there, on which the men reclined. By and by the women came and dropped down near the fire, and added the treble of their voices to the deep tones of the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... the church door and peeped in. The dusky glow from the western sky, entering through a narrow window, illuminated the shafts and arches, the old oak carvings, and the discoloured monuments, with the melancholy glare ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... in opening wide The door that had been fast; And I could see Those crickets three Like dusky ghosts flit past. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... longing for moisture, and a face worthy of a murderer, holding a bloody cup in its clawed hands, out of which it seemed eager to drink. The shape was strange enough and the coloring splendid,—a kind of glistening green and dusky gold,—beautifully varnished. It was in fact the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... the couch of his beloved maiden, one dreaming over dreams of war and slaughter, another of love and wedded joys, one in fancy grasping the spear and the war-club, another and a younger the bosom of a dusky maiden of his tribe. Over their heads the tall forest tree waved in the night wind, giving the melancholy music of sighing branches; beside them ran the clear waters of the river, slightly murmuring as they rolled away to the land, which our nation gave to their good brother Miquon[C]. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... read those tales from the old school reading book, or heard them recited as we sat at grandfather's knee, what pictures impressed themselves on our eager minds! The log meeting-house, and before it the stacked muskets and pacing sentinel; the dusky savage faces hiding behind every tree; the midnight assault: the lurid fire, and the brandished tomahawk—these are pictures that have sometimes come with startling vividness to our youthful imaginations. And then our fancies have seen the so-called witches of Salem, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut of a turbaned Negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 REWARD." Tom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... time to think. As he glanced round the room at the flushed faces of the boys, some of whom he could not recognise in the dusky atmosphere, a qualm of disgust and shame passed over him. Several of them were smoking, and, with Ball and Brigson heading the line on each side of the table, he could not help observing what a bad set they looked. The remembrance ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... horizontal ridge by confining it between two boards, one running back from the forehead at an angle of about forty degrees, and the other up perpendicularly from the back of the neck. When a head had been shaped artistically the dusky maiden owner was marked as a belle, and one could become reconciled to it after a time, but when carelessness and neglect had governed in the adjustment of the boards, there probably was nothing in the form of a human being on the face of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... European to catch a glimpse of Georgian Bay, and a missionary was probably the first of the French race to launch his canoe on the lordly Mississippi. As a father the priest watched over his wilderness flock; while the French traders fraternized with the red men, and often mated with dusky beauties. Many French traders, according to Sir William Johnson—a good authority, of whom we shall learn more later-were 'gentlemen in manners, character, and dress,' and they treated the natives kindly. At the great centres of trade—Montreal, ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean—they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses—even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... all good judgments that lay torpid have been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and sustained ascendancy of genius. We now put up a screen for the weak-sighted, now withdraw it from stronger eyes; thus we plague and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... first dusky chalets of the hamlet of Bel-Oiseau straggled towards me, and it was music in my ears to hear the cattle blow and rattle in their stalls under the sleeping lofts as I passed outside in the moonlight. Five minutes more, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... he was quite a fine fellow For the country he lived in—but, ah! His skin was a dull, dusky yellow, And his hair was as long as 'twould grow. ('Tis the fashion in ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... into the past, and the days and nights spread into minutes. The sun had ceased to have the appearance of a tail; and now rose and set—a tremendous globe of a glowing copper-bronze hue; in parts ringed with blood-red bands; in others, with the dusky ones, that I have already mentioned. These circles—both red and black—were of varying thicknesses. For a time, I was at a loss to account for their presence. Then it occurred to me, that it was scarcely likely that the sun would cool evenly all over; and that these markings were due, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... colored glass—and bearing transparencies inscribed with trenchant sentiments. The houses of their adherents along the route were illuminated from attic to cellar with rows of candles, and the atmosphere wore a dusky glow of red and green fire. To Selma all this was entrancing. She revelled in it as an introduction to the more conspicuous life which she was about to lead. She showed herself a zealous and enthusiastic partisan, shrouding the house in the darkness of Erebus on the occasion when the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... phantom, rising as they advanced nearer, suddenly caught a trumpet, and blowing through it a blast of superhuman strength, plunged into the Rubicon, passed to the other bank, and disappeared in the dusky twilight of the dawn. Upon which Csar exclaimed:—"It is finished—the die is cast—let us follow whither the guiding portents from Heaven, and the malice of our enemy, alike summon us to go." So saying, he crossed the river with impetuosity; and, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... in the woods, and vie with each other in telling extravagant stories, until the whip-poor-will began his nightly moaning, and the fireflies sparkled in the gloom. Then came the perilous journey homeward. What delight we would take in getting up wanton panics in some dusky part of the wood; scampering like frightened deer; pausing to take breath; renewing the panic, and scampering off ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... framed in soft, silky masses of dusky auburn hair which hung over the broad, white forehead, but at the back was scarcely longer than a boy's. The features, though not regular, were delicate and piquant; the usual faint rose-flush on the cheeks deepened now to carnation, perhaps because of the slight contretemps, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... to adoration by his dusky-hued friends, and in the dark days of the beginning of the war, which every Wilmingtonian will remember with a shudder, in those days of doubt, confusion, and suspicion, without his knowledge or consent, Thomas Garrett's house ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... War's dreadful lord proclaim. Bursts out by frequent fits the expansive flame. Whirl'd in tempestuous eddies flies The surging smoke o'er all the darken'd skies. The cheerful face of heaven no more is seen, Fades the morn's vivid blush to deadly pale: The bat flits transient o'er the dusky green, Night's shrieking birds ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Sierra Leone, where the negro claims to be civilised, a dusky belle, after dropping her napkin at a Government House dinner, has been heard to say to her neighbour, 'Please, Mr. Officer-man, pick up my towel.' The other day a dark dame who missed her parasol thus addressed H.E.: ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... something moving in a corner of the chamber. This began to alarm him, for it was not natural that the senses, one after the other, should conspire to deceive him. Raising his eyes, and shading them with his hand from the glare of the lamp beside him, he observed a dusky object advancing towards him with short hops like those of a raven. As the apparition approached him, its aspect became more terrifying; for it took the unmistakable form of a human head separated from the trunk and dripping with blood; and when at length, with a spring, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there is magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To he a moment's ornament; Her eyes, as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. * * * * * And now I see, with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler between life and death; The ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... moment. He wanted a fuller sense of that ebony-bottomed abyss, with its pale encircling walls reaching up to the dusky blue sky and the brilliant stars. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... gathered in a Caspian shell to make the charm withal, when she had first bathed in seven ever-flowing streams, and had called seven times on Brimo, nurse of youth, night-wandering Brimo, of the underworld, queen among the dead,—in the gloom of night, clad in dusky garments. And beneath, the dark earth shook and bellowed when the Titanian root was cut; and the son of Iapetus himself groaned, his soul distraught with pain. And she brought the charm forth and placed it in the fragrant band which engirdled ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... door. The walk was brown and slippery with pine needles. Tall old pine trees stood in groups about the yard. There were also elm and horse-chestnut trees. The horse-chestnuts were in blossom, holding up their white bouquets, which showed dimly. It was now quite dusky. ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... puts the thing on with three Hamlets, two ghosts, and a pair of blood-hounds. It's called the Uncle-Tom-Hamlet Combination, and instead of my falling in love with one crazy Ophelia, I am made to woo three dusky maniacs named Topsy on a canvas ice-floe, while the blood-hounds bark behind the scenes. What sort of treatment is that for a ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more heavenly delight than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your friend, and there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from the dark wall—open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and let in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... crack sprinter of his town—somewhere in the South—was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress. One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks in ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... Origanus, Galileo, and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]"both land and sea as the moon doth:" for so they find by their glasses that Maculae in facie Lunae, "the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea," which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the Church of Rome ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... and over; Swinburne's "Triumph of Time," and four lines of it rang in his memory afterward on warm nights when he saw the fireflies among dusky tree trunks and heard the low drone of many frogs. Then Eleanor seemed to come out of the night and stand by him, and he heard her throaty voice, with its tone of a fleecy-headed ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... ceased speaking, when a human figure of a dusky hue appeared before him, and said, "My sovereign, here is a confection left me by my ancestors, with an assurance, that whoever might eat of it would have offspring." The sultan eagerly took the confection, and by the blessing of Allah, one of the ladies of his haram conceived that very night. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... of you who have been on its rivers know there is but one Florida, with its bearded oaks and fronded palms; its dusky woods, carpeted with glassy waters; its cypress bays, where lonely cranes pose, silently thoughtful (of stray polliwogs); and its birds of wondrous plumage that rise with startled splash when the noiseless canoe glides down upon ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... was asleep, and his little granddaughter sat quietly down on a chair by the bedside to watch by him, in that gentle sorrowful patience which women often know but which hardly belongs to childhood. Her eye and thoughts, as she sat there in the dusky twilight, fell upon the hand of her grandfather which still fondly held one of her own; and fancy travelled fast and far, from what it was to what it had been. Rough, discoloured, stiff, as it lay there now, she thought ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing of black and silver: in the words of the correct journal. With her tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... protectors that would be peer to the fiercest denizens of the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in their mad career, and, after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring hill; then, taking off my skates, I wended my way to the house, with feelings which may be better imagined than described. But, even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moonshine, without thinking of the sniffling breath, and those fearful things ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... From glossy evergreens; the mistletoe Pearl-studded, and the holly's lustrous bough Gleaming with coral fruitage; but we muse Of laurel blent with cypress. Gaze we down Yon crowded aisle? the mourner's dusky weeds Sadden the eye; and they who wear them not Have mourning in their hearts, or lavish tears Of sympathy on griefs too deeply lodged For man's weak ministry. A happy Christmas! Ah me! how many hearths are desolate! How many a vacant seat awaits in vain ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... soon began, but I knew the MOON'S path now, and followed the dusky, coppery spot without difficulty. At 1.33 it emerged, and in a very few moments I saw the solid column pass from Circle No. 3 again, deploy on the edge again, and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... pillow beside her sleeping sister, it was long before her eyes closed and she sunk into utter forgetfulness. Her mind seemed crowded with vague images and disconnected thoughts. Recollections of the hours spent in Sheen Valley, the weird effect of the dusky figures passing and repassing in the dim, uncertain light, the faint streaks of light across the snow, the dull winter sky, the eager welcome of the lonely girl, the long friendly talk ripening into budding intimacy, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms, Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... to show himself in the neighbourhood of Hale Castle while Geraldine Challoner was there. He had an opportunity of talking confidentially to Clarissa once after dinner, when Mr. Granger, who had not fairly finished his nap in the railway-carriage, had retired to a dusky corner of the drawing-room and sunk anew into slumber, and when Miss Granger seemed closely occupied in the manufacture of an embroidered pincushion for a fancy fair. Absorbing as the manipulation of chenille and beads might ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... suggested that a glass of hot brandy and water would do him no possible harm after his drive, and stepped to the corner cupboard without waiting for an answer. It was a piece of furniture of some value, lacquered over with Chinese figures in dusky gold. But the doctor's gaze travelled rather to the gun-racks. He counted a dozen firearms, antique but serviceable, and suggested that, with powder and shot, Landeweddy was capable of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so boldly down into the sea. At length we saw them,—faint, dusky shadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most poetical light. We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for our journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such a distance. I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and asked if we should ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the Zulus on the hill appeared, a dusky host, They found our gallant English boys' 'pale faces' at their post; But paler faces were behind, within the barricade— The faces of the sick who rose ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... certainty it was not made by one of those black-coated birds calling to its mate or the flock from which it had strayed. Neither Boone nor Kenton distinguished any difference between the tone and what they had heard times without number, and yet neither held a doubt that it was emitted by a dusky spy stealing through the woods, and that it bore a momentous message to others of his kith ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... bird of song, there's one in this caique The Rose would also seek, So he might learn like you to love and speak." Then answered me the bird of dusky beak, "The Rose, the Rose of Love ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... has imprudently married a tempestuous tyrant, Montoni, who, to further his own ends, hurries his wife and niece from the gaiety of Venice to the gloom of Udolpho. After a journey fraught with terror, amid rugged, lowering mountains and through dusky woods, we reach the castle of Udolpho at nightfall. The sombre exterior and the shadow haunted hall are so ominous that we are prepared for the worst when we enter its portals. The anticipation is half pleasurable, half fearful, as we shudder at the thought of what may befall us within its ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... the trusty almanac Of the punctual coming-back, On their due days, of the birds. I marked them yestermorn, A flock of finches darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march,— Belike the one they used in parting Last year from yon oak or larch; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... how fortunate I am to experience these emotions in Hyde Park, whereas my fellows have to go to Switzerland and to climb up Mont Blanc, to feel half what I am feeling now, as I stand looking across the level park watching the sunset, a dusky one. The last red bar of light fades, and nothing remains but the grey park with the blue of the suburb behind it, flowing away full of mist and people, dim and mournful to the pallid lights of Kensington; and its crowds are like strips of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... for selfish gain Beneath the garb of sacrificial faith— Sin so distasteful to the Lord that Saul Sat in the dark displeasure of his God. (d) And out from this displeasure, like the dawn From dusky night, the youthful David sprang— The Lord's anointed, yea, the Lord's beloved: Sweet Bard of Bethlehem! whose harp divine, Tuned to the throbbings of a guileless heart, Soothed the dark spirit of the sinful King, And woke his life to light and hope again, (e) ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her keen black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let us go," she said; ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... was hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar, and the fatal words ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... you are!' he cried, when the dusky yellow form at last turned the corner. 'I had nearly given you up! Indeed, I almost wish you had not come, for I hardly know ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... an exclamation as he turned his face towards her. Round his eyes were traced two yellow circles, and his mouth was enclosed by a parenthesis of vermilion; an arabesque pattern adorned each dusky cheek. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds. For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less. It is a big price to pay,—two larks for a bunting,—two sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... bright and strong by the constant bath and the temperate breeze. They were not cumbered with clothing; they wore no long, sweating gowns, but their smooth, shining skins reflected back their sun, which gave them such a rich and dusky charm. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray and the dusk thickened from twilight to dark while he stood there waiting, leaning heavily upon the pike-pole, shifting more and more uneasily from one tired foot to the other. He had turned at last to go and set a light ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... good deal that Alec Flandrau, Billy Mackenzie, and Luck Cullison were known to be backing him, but it was worth much more that his wife of a week sat beside him in the courtroom. Every time they looked at the prisoner the jurymen saw too her dusky gallant little head and slender figure. They remembered the terrible experience through which she had so recently passed. She had come through it to happiness. Every look and motion of the girl wife radiated love for the young scamp who had won her. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... conventional number of hours in my cot, in the operation of what is facetiously called sleeping, I mounted on deck at about 5 A.M.... I wish I could send you a sketch of that gloomy hill at the foot of which Victoria lies, as it loomed sullenly in the dusky morning, its crest wreathed with clouds, and its cheeks wrinkled by white lines that marked the track of the descending torrents. It was still blowing and raining as hard as ever, but I took my two ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... Scornfully calm and cold as before, "Friedrich, you Count of Telramund, for what reason," she asks, "do you distrust me?" Hotly he pours forth his reasons. "Do you ask? Was it not your testimony, your report, which induced me to accuse that innocent girl? You, living in the dusky woods, did you not mendaciously aver to me that from your wild castle you had seen the dark deed committed? With your own eyes seen how Elsa drowned her brother in the tarn? And did you not ensnare my ambitious heart with the prophecy that the ancient ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... insects, however high the instinct of the one, and however low the instincts of the other. With respect to the differences of race, a conjecture has occurred to me that much may be due to the correlation of complexion (and consequently hair) with constitution. Assume that a dusky individual best escaped miasma, and you will readily see what I mean. I persuaded the Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army to send printed forms to the surgeons of all regiments in tropical countries to ascertain this point, but I daresay I shall never get any ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... poor man's heart; 240 Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, No more the wood-man's ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brown shall clear, 245 Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be press'd, Shall kiss the cup to pass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... All three had been born in a single night: the eldest at evening, the middle one at midnight, and the youngest just as the sky was lightening with the dawn. For this reason they were called Evening, Midnight, and Sunrise. Evening was dusky, with brown eyes and hair; Midnight was dark, with eyes and hair as black as charcoal; while Sunrise had hair golden as the sun, and eyes blue as morning sky. And all three were as strong as any of the strong men and mighty bogatirs ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome

... innocent and lovely race, adorned only with shells and the flowers of hibiscus; and, intermingled with that race, in accordance with indigenous marriage ceremonies, the crew of the Santa Margherita now rear a dusky brood. In her last extant letter, addressed to the leader of the corps de ballet at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Madame Milli Orth herself hinted at a No-Man's Land, which they were seeking as the home of their future happiness. They have found it now, having trodden ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... in the midst of an eager explanation to us when there was a rustling in the bushes below, and a dusky figure came up, caught sight of us behind the barricade, and stopped short. But our prisoner uttered a call, and the dark, pleasant-faced figure came on fearlessly, found the opening we had left, and the next moment was down upon her knees wailing softly and passing her hands ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... whatever point you will and she will satisfy. For the rustic the fields of corn, the craggy mountain, the blossomy lane, or the rush of water through the greenwood. But for your good Cockney the shoals of gloom, the dusky tracery of chimney-stack and gaswork, the torn waste of tiles, and the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurking court and alley. Was there ever a lovelier piece of colour than Cannon Street Station at night? Entering ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... round the bingo,—of a gun, You musty, dusky, husky son! John Bull, who loves a harmless joke, Is apt at me to grin; But why be cross with laughing folk, Unless they laugh and win? John Bull has money in his box; And though his wit's divine, Yet let me laugh at Johnny's locks, And John may ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... awoke, late in the day, he found Mafuta sitting at his feet with a broad grin on his dusky countenance. ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... prevail, and that Britain, "the fond ally," will display her blundering heroism in vain. Being against the government, he is against the war. History has falsified his politics, but his descriptions of places and scenes, of "Morena's dusky height," of Cadiz and the bull-fight, retain their freshness and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... gleaming above the dusky pine trees. The soft December air, mild as spring on that sheltered coast, scarcely stirred the drooping boughs that overshadowed the terrace. Colonel Estcourt lit his cigar, and began to pace with slow and thoughtful steps beneath the many lighted ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... sheep. At length, descending by a very steep road, I reached a beautiful little stream, over which a rustic bridge was thrown. As I looked down upon the rippling stream beneath, on the surface of which the dusky evening flies were dipping, I made a resolve, if I prospered in his lordship's good graces, to devote a day to the "angle" there, before I left the country. It was now growing late, and remember Lord Kilkee's ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... clubbing those who resisted, he kept pace with the foremost. In his left hand, however, he carried his trusty revolver, for he did not propose to be assassinated by skulkers in the dark passage-ways. Seeing a man levelling a gun from a dusky corner, he fired instantly, and man and gun dropped. As the guardians of the law approached the scuttle, having fought their way thither, the ruffians stood ready to hurl down bricks, torn from the chimneys; but two or three well-aimed shots cleared the way, and the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... missionaries translated my simple address to the dusky congregation, who listened with wondering awe to the ever-new story of Jesus. As the Lengua language contains no word for God, the Indians have adopted our English word, and both that name and Jesus came out in striking distinctness ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... swept around the projecting corner and lost to view. It looked, at the very least, treasons, conspiracies, and mutinous outbursts—that shadowy multitude surging up that narrow and steep and desperately crooked dusky footway. I felt that just around the lighted turn, where the impetuous forms appeared clearly in the moment of their disappearance, surely must be the royal palace they were bent upon sacking; and it was with a sigh ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... has heard the words that entered his ears, whether the facts were facts and the idea is indeed an idea, then he resumes his wonted bearing, thinks of his worldly interests, obeys some envoy of death and of oblivion whose dusky mantle covers like a pall an ancient Humanity of which the moderns retain no memory. Man never pauses; he goes his round, he vegetates until the appointed day when his Axe falls. If this wave force, this pressure of bitter waters prevents all progress, no doubt it ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... grand dashes made by cords of folks, from snob to nob, patrician to plebeian, in their gyrations to form a circle, in which they might be the centre pin! This desire, or feeling, is a part and parcel of human nature; you will observe it every where—among the dusky and man-eating citizens of the Fejee Islands—the dog-eating population of China—the beef-eaters of England, and their descendants, ye Yankoos of the new world; all, all have a ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... a dusky-haired senorita, Her dark, misty eyes near your own, And her scarlet-red mouth, Like a rose of the south, The reddest that ever was grown, So close that you catch Her quick-panting breath As across your own face it is blown, With a sigh, and ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... with "God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... crimson head, neck, and breast, and a yellowish olive-coloured belly, from which last circumstance it might, perhaps, not improperly be called the yellow-bellied wood-pecker. The other is a larger, and much more elegant bird, of a dusky brown colour, on the upper part, richly waved with black, except about the head, the belly of a reddish cast, with round black spots, a black spot on the breast, and the under-side of the wings and tail of a plain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... customary fee, he walked about half- way across it, and stood for a while listening to the incessant swift rush of the river beneath him. Lights twinkled from the boats moored on either side,—the moon poured down a wide shower of white beams on the rapid flood,—the city, dusky and dream- like, crowned with the majestic towers of the Dom, looked picturesquely calm and grand—it was a night of perfect beauty and wondrous peace. And he was to die!—to die and leave all this, the present fairness of the world,—he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... shore brilliant boats glided to the rendezvous; some hung with luminous globes of blue and silver, some with lanterns fiery-red, flower-shaped, golden, green, or variegated, as if a rainbow were festooned about the viewless masts. Up and down they flashed, stealing out from dusky nooks and floating in their own radiance, as they went to join the procession that wound about the island like a splendid sea-serpent uncoiling itself ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... composed enough to observe delicately the face of his new acquaintance. He had but little time, for of course he could not stand for long babbling stupidities with a country girl. The face was strong and dark, with composed, full lips, and a dusky glow in the cheeks. The eyes which had at first put him to such confusion looked liquid and strangely attractive when the light of laughter was in them. Mr. Ellington had fallen in with a beautiful girl. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... of medium height, often of superb physical development; of a dusky bronze colour, piercing eyes, low forehead, lank hair, which is dressed as a chignon and hangs down the back of the neck. The body is agile, the whole movement is rapid, and they have a wonderful power of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... am now in Florida in my little hut in the orange orchard, with the broad expanse of the blue St. John's in front, and the waving of the live-oaks, with their long, gray mosses, overhead, and the bright gold of oranges looking through dusky leaves around. It is like Sorrento,—so like that I can quite dream of being there. And when I get here I enter another life. The world recedes; I am out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise die away ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman primeval before the conventions of civilization ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... is become a lavender; the outlines of earth and sky are become more distinct; the mountain peaks, the dusky veil being rent, are separating themselves from the heaven's embrace; the trees in the distance no longer seem like rain-clouds; and the silhouettes of the monasteries are casting off the cloak of night. The lavender is melting now into heliotrope, and the heliotrope ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... they were seated, and clinging with their little dusky arms round his legs, "are the very rummest little kids I ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... "Dusky-radiant, far, and somber, In the coolness of thy state, From my eyelids chasing slumber, Thou dost smile upon ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... came into touch with other vessels engaged in loading hides and tallow, and as this was the work in which we were soon to be engaged, we looked on with some curiosity, especially at the labours of the crew of the Ayacucho, who were dusky Sandwich Islanders. And besides practice in landing on this difficult coast, we experienced the difficulties involved in having suddenly to slip our cables and then, when the weather allowed of it, coming to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... new thirst for adventure and gain. They had been told of fertile plains, of splendid tropical forests, of the beauty of the Indian maidens, of romantic incidents and hair-breadth escapes, of the wonderful influence exercised by a white man on tribes of dusky warriors, and who knew what fairy marvels or unimagined wealth might be found in the deep interior of this land of hope and mystery. Thus when Hernando de Soto, who had been with Pizarro in Peru and seen its gold-plated temples, called for volunteers to explore and conquer the unknown ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... I was aroused by the crew getting up the anchor: in a few minutes, the head of the 'fire-boat,' as my dusky neighbours termed it, was turned down the coast, and on we went, steaming, smoking, and splashing, after the most orthodox fashion of fire-boats in general. I had now time and opportunity to look around me. Every available spot of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... gloom under the crowns of the foliaged trees and palms. It is the home of shadows. Only lianas, these parasites of the vegetable kingdom, raise their stems above the dusky vault to open their calyces in the sun. Round them flutter innumerable butterflies in gaudy colours. On the border between sunlight and shade scream droll parrots, and busy pigeons steer their way among the trees on rustling wings. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... the foremost boat, as Law could now clearly see, sat a slender young man, clad in the uniform, now soiled and faded, of a captain in the British army. His boat was propelled by four dusky paddlers, Indians of the East. Stalwart, powerful, silent, they sent the craft on down stream, their keen eyes glancing swiftly from one point to the other of the ever-changing panorama, yet finding nothing that would seem to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... the Rajah she was frankly disappointed. He had been educated in England, and had acquired a patronizing condescension of demeanour which she found singularly unattractive. He never treated her with familiarity, but she did not like the look of his dusky eyes. They always smiled, but to her there was something unpleasant behind the smile. In her private soul she deemed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... Wiggins? Even in the sadness of hope deferred, those ladies who had entertained him once, and speculated on his possible return, declared Mr. Jordan a 'thorough gentleman'. Lodgers, as a class, do not recommend themselves in Islington; Mr. Jordan shone against the dusky background with almost dazzling splendour. To speak of lodgers as of cattle, he was a prize creature. A certain degree of comfort he firmly exacted; he might be a trifle fastidious about cooking; he ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... now and then to breathe deeply, and to try and still the excessive beating of my heart. The drums continued to sound, the notes becoming harsher and more distinct as I approached. At the top of the steps I found myself before a little stone doorway, through which a very faint dusky glimmer emerged. I passed in, treading on tiptoe, and came along a narrow stone passage, down which the sound of the drumming made a dismal echo. At the further end of the passage the way was closed by a thick curtain made of a substance that felt like stiff leather, and was, I believe, the hide ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... little cup-bearers, black, brown, and yellow, who always flew like shuttles back and forth between the big house and the distant kitchen while Miss Penelope was making the breakfast coffee. It required much flying of small dusky legs, to and fro, before the cold water was cold enough, the hot water hot enough, and the fresh egg fresh enough, to satisfy Miss Penelope that the coffee would be all ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... will understand, was not the deep night of the other side of the planet; it was rather a dusky twilight, and as our eyes became accustomed to it, we could begin to discern something of the character of our surroundings. We flew within a hundred yards of the ground, which appeared to be perfectly ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... brunettes; the Syrian spears, so limber and so straight, Tell of the slender dusky maids, so lithe and proud of gait. Languid of eyelids, with a down like silk upon her cheek, Within her wasting lover's heart she queens ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... died away into a hopeless wail. Frank knelt by her side, his faithful heart breaking with pity, great tears rolling untouched down his dusky cheeks. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... lovely lady; Oh, the sweet and winsome lady; With a smile of gentle goodness Like the lovely Laughing Water. Oh, the day the lovely lady Went to ride upon a tiger. Came the tiger, back returning, Homeward through the dusky twilight; Ever slower, slower, slower, Walked the tiger o'er the landscape; Ever wider, wider, wider, Spread the smile o'er ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... one may see another vision of the mystery of the day, for the sea-waves are full of living autumn colours, of luminous withered leaves and faded rose petals; they are still living velvet, the night garment of a queen. Black ducks are swimming mysteriously on the glowing dusky water. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... solemn years, Standing like souls of martyred saints, and tears Ran down their pallid cheeks like summer rain; They clasped and wrung their white hands evermore, Wailing, demanding vengeance on the world: And Judgment, with his garments sprinkled o'er With guilty blood, and dusky wings unfurled, And sword unsheathed, expectant of His nod, Stood waiting by the burning throne, and God Rose up in heaven in ire—but Mercy fair, A piteous damsel clad in spotless white, In supplication sweet and earnest ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... pages of the book to the scholar. In the preceding chapter, we have endeavored to give some idea of the skill he displayed when these qualities were called into requisition. O'Hara, understanding perfectly the superior ability of his dusky friend, relied upon him to solve all difficulties that might arise, scarcely making any effort himself to do so. This will account for his apparent ignorance of the secrets of the forest, which, perhaps has been noticed by ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... to him of himself; of himself as divided from her in all things, except in cousinhood. And, at her instigation, he again put himself to work in the dusky purlieus of Chancery Lane. Mr. Die had now retired, and drank his port and counted his per cents. in the blessed quiet of his evening days; but a Gamaliel was not wanting, and George sat himself down once more in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... in the loose vestments of a Turk, and indeed is suspected to be a genuine native of the Ottoman Empire who has been sent to England on a diplomatic mission. Being emboldened by the wine he has drunk, the Oriental determines to penetrate the mystery of the dusky stranger. He approaches the seeming Indian, and after various ineffectual attempts to arrest his attention, lays violent hold of the latter's nose. Scarcely has he touched that organ when a blood-curdling yell, such as has never before been heard within the three kingdoms, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... carpenters and bricklayers and bade them instruct their dusky labourers in the building of gigantic mess-huts, in size and shape not unlike a hangar, capable of providing meal accommodation for hundreds of men at a time; ration and store-huts for the numerous camps; brick enclosures for the kitchens; ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... likewise its moral quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives: Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... directress sat down, and signed to me to sit by her, but I only rested my knee on the seat, and stood leaning my head and arm against the embowering branch of a huge laburnum, whose golden flowers, blent with the dusky green leaves of a lilac-bush, formed a mixed arch of shade and sunshine over the retreat. Mdlle. Reuter sat silent a moment; some novel movements were evidently working in her mind, and they showed their nature on her astute brow; she was meditating some CHEF D'OEUVRE of policy. Convinced ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... At night, when at our wheels we sat, Abroad our mothers ne'er would let us stir. Then with her lover she must chat, Or on the bench or in the dusky walk, Thinking the hours too brief for their Sweet talk; Her proud head she will have to bow, And in white sheet do ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... Up to the groves of the high embosomed temple. There in a thicket of consecrated roses, Oft did a Priestess, as lovely as a vision, Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea, Pray him to hover around the light canoe boat, And with invisible pilotage to guide it Over the dusky waves, till the nightly sailor Shiv'ring with ecstacy sank upon her bosom. Now, by the immortals! he was a beauteous stripling, Worthy to dream the sweet dream of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... Hopkins sat on deck in the gloaming, gazing idly at the dusky shapes of the barges as they dropped silently down on the tide, or violently discussing the identity of various steamers as they came swiftly past Even with these amusements the time hung heavily, and they thought longingly of certain cosy ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... had struck one, just one clear chiming blow. And suddenly Craven had started up. His blue eyes were shining and a dusky red had come into his cheeks. And he had apologized, had said something about being "carried away" beyond all recollection of the hour. She had stayed where she was and had bidden him good night quietly from the sofa, shutting up her fan and laying it on a table. And she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... was called the "South Carolina Soldiers' Home," and most of the other States inside the lines had similar institutions. In every home throughout the whole South could be heard the old "hand spinning wheel" humming away until far in the night, as the dusky damsel danced backwards and forwards, keeping step to the music of her own voice and the hum of the wheel. The old women sat in the corners and carded away with the hand-card, making great heaps of rolls, to be laid carefully and evenly upon the floor or the wheel. Great ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... one morning, very early, and drove us in his little wooden gig to an Arab encampment miles away in the Desert. It was dawn when we started, and large, pale stars were shining in a violet sky; then, like a gorgeous butterfly emerging from a dusky chrysalis, came the Eastern day, and we felt as if living in a world warmed by a hundred suns. The warm, intoxicating light took possession of our senses, and so sweet, so rarefied, so indescribably delicious was the air, that it seemed to give wings to our dull bodies. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... the great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of the crookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow winding steps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones that echo the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like sea caves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. In Rome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... freak that must end—and then perhaps his Grace, who was a charming young man, would return to his senses. There also was her sister, a long, fair girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly. There was a little French actress, like a highly finished miniature; and a Spanish danseuse, tall, dusky, and lithe, glancing like a lynx, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with "God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... bleeding from head and breast, Yet seem'd it like a line of poppies red In the golden twilight, as he took his rest, In the dusky ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... year, And dressed us in a natty sailor's suit; They taught us how to heave the lead and steer, And how to handle guns and how to shoot. We fancied we'd be leaving right away To capture prizes on the Spanish Main, And be raising merry hades With the dusky Spanish laddies, And within a month ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... Friedrich Wilhelm's originalities is his farewell Order and Instruction, to his three chief Ministers, on this occasion. Ilgen, Dohna, Prinzen, tacit dusky figures, whom we meet in Prussian Books, and never gain the least idea of, except as of grim, rather cunning, most reserved antiquarlan gentlemen,—a kind of human iron-safes, solemnly filled (under triple and quadruple patent-locks) with what, alas, has now all grown waste-paper, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... Prince! But we must shake hands. Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks Of two close planets, catching in the air: You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, With nothing reigning on my desolate ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... languorous with dreams Of her beloved Darkness, rose in fear, Feeling the presence of another near. Outside her curtained casement shone the gleams Of burning orbs; and modestly she hid Her brow and bosom with her dusky hair. When lo! the bold intruder lurking there Leaped through the fragile lattice, all unbid, And half unveiled her. Then the swooning Night Fell pale and dead, while yet her soul was white Before that lawless ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Time! that know'st not rest, But, sweeping from the cradle to the tomb, Bear'st ever downward on thy dusky breast Successive generations to their doom; While thy capacious stream has equal room For the gay bark where Pleasure's steamers sport, And for the prison-ship of guilt and gloom, The fisher-skiff, and barge that bears a court, Still ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... wainscoting, as if listening to a sermon, while down the middle of the stately hall stretched a table lighted by whale-oil lamps and many little candles, and filled with the remnants of a feast. The stairway in the corner Van Dorn could not see, and there the dusky audience was all facing, as if towards the preacher. There seemed a something out of the common in the kind of attention the inmates were paying, but Van Dorn's eyes were absorbed in the sight of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Normandy and Brittany, and the habitants sang them in low voices or rather hummed them in the subdued manner that seemed fitting to the night, since the black shadows were creeping up closer, leaving only the fire, as a core of light with the dusky figures around it. During all the talk the Indians had been silent. They had eaten their food and remained now, sitting in Turkish fashion, the flickering flames that played across their faces giving to them a look sinister and menacing to the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... stooping. His mouth was large, and he carried an unpolished sapling as his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud for cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. His castle stood in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade, backed by heavy boughs, was visible from the distant high road as a white spot on the surface of darkness. Though called a castle, the building was little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... the garden—I must work the garden," I said to myself, five minutes later, as I waited, upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the closed shutters. The place was impressive but it looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by some neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house, ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... attracted by a brilliant light beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the last degree, of his adventures in escaping from his master to the Union vessels; and even I, who have heard the stories of Harriet Tubman, and such wonderful slave-comedians, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the drowsy village and meadows, looking at the queer old gardens, dusky with long-forgotten plants, or sometimes at their gallery of paintings, chief among which was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... and with violence threw the glasses on to the table. Her beautiful eyes flashed at me; the lashes are that peculiar curly kind, not black, but soft and dusky, a little lighter near the skin. It is the first time I have ever seen such eyelashes on a woman's lids. One sees them quite often on little boys, especially little vagabonds in the street. The eyes themselves are intensely ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... westward. By this time the people on shore had caught sight of the cutter. They saw her come stealing out of the thin dark like a thought half thought, and go gliding along the shore like a sea ghost over the dusky water, faint, uncertain, noiseless, glimmering. It could be no other than the Fisky! Both their lady and their friend Malcolm must be on board, they were certain, for how could the one of them come without the other? and doubtless the marchioness, whom ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves. I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great dusky, empty London—the best of all conditions for thought. By the time I reached my door my little article was practically composed— ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. I believe it attracted ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James

... and bless the useful light. So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays; The long reflections of the distant fires Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires. A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field. Pull fifty guards each flaming pile attend, Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send; Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, And ardent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... tinkling glasses and women's laughter. The great glass-house cabaret below is refulgent with electric light, and you see the figures swirl in a "Grande Danse Moscouvite." You climb the mounting street to where dusky but handsome Punjabi soldiers stand in front of the British Embassy, looking with sinless gaze on sin passing by, and then to the hotel. You sleep in the office of the hotel, between two safes, because there is no room to be had anywhere. Your curtainless ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... overlooked. He enlarged the gap with his fingers, and finally made an opening wide enough to admit his person. He crept boldly through, and looked around in the clear starlight. The sentinels were all slumbering at their posts. He advanced stealthily in the dusky streets. Not a watchman was going his rounds. Soldiers, burghers, children, women, exhausted by incessant fatigue, were all asleep. Not a footfall was heard; not a whisper broke the silence; it seemed a city of the dead. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sister, it was long before her eyes closed and she sunk into utter forgetfulness. Her mind seemed crowded with vague images and disconnected thoughts. Recollections of the hours spent in Sheen Valley, the weird effect of the dusky figures passing and repassing in the dim, uncertain light, the faint streaks of light across the snow, the dull winter sky, the eager welcome of the lonely girl, the long friendly talk ripening into budding intimacy, all passed ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... were lighted, and the crimson glow was reflected upon it, strange tales of love and war were mingled with the thread. "The nightingale sang into it, the roses from Persian gardens breathed upon it, the moonlight put witchery into it; the tinkle of the gold and silver on the women's dusky ankles, the scent of sandal wood and attar of rose—it all went ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed

... clever knave. He was in the retinue consisting, besides himself, of a woman, two babies, a hand-organ and a tin-cup, appertaining to a dusky Neapolitan who infested the tenement district in which Tony's boyhood was spent. That monkey had on several occasions seduced a penny from Tony's unwilling hand. Thereby he had earned Tony's respect and had caused Tony's ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... him on Tom Tiddler's ground, and his glance at last encountered a dusky Tinker lying among the weeds and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough walking-staff lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested on a small wallet. He met Mr. Traveller's ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... gleaming windows. Up the long convex surface of the Row a faint white mist was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering noiselessly out of it towards them. The evening had almost begun; the sky had changed to a delicate green tint, merged towards the west in a dusky crocus, against which the Memorial spire stood out sharp and black; from South Kensington came the sound of a church bell calling for some ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... lapping, firmly secured them. The beams supported the rafters, inclining from the rear; while over the aromatic grasses covering the roof, waved the tufted tops of the Palms, green capitals to their dusky shafts. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of th' everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their task with busier feet Because their secret ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... introduction and no experience and was prudent enough to foresee the rebuff that would surely follow a climb up the dusky but alluring editorial stairs and an application for employment in so exalted a profession by a boy of seventeen. I decided that I could use more persuasion and gain a point in hiding my youth, which was a menace ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... near the "Council House" of the Oneidas—in the heart of the forest. There, surrounded by the dusky sons of the wilderness, the devoted couple, alone and unaided, commenced their joint missionary labors. The gentle manners and the indomitable courage and energy of Mr. Kirkland, were nobly supplemented by the admirable qualities of his wife. With the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... which he had seen danced in the courtly Madisonian era; or joining in the jests of the gay circle, magnificent teeth gleaming, his great, living coals of eyes—"sleeping furnaces," Carlyle called them—soft as a woman's; or his rare, tender smile lighting up the dusky grandeur of his face. Mr. Webster was not, at that period of his life, an intemperate drinker, although, like many other gentlemen of that day, he often imbibed too freely ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... Wandering through many lands, I had come to know the charm of quiet cloisters; the delight of a strange, rare volume; the interest of a quaint bit of pottery; the unutterable loveliness of some perfect painter's vision, making a glory in some dusky, world-forgotten church: and so my life was full of gladness here in Rome, where the ass's hoof ringing on a stone may show you that Vitruvius was right, where you had doubted him; or the sun shining down upon a cabbage garden, or a coppersmith's shreds of metal, may gleam on a signet ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... in arm, The groups of trees, with seats beneath the shade For prattling babes and whisp'ring lovers made, The never-failing brawl, the busy mill, Where tiny urchins vied in fistic skill. (Two phrases only have that dusky race Caught from the learned influence of the place; Phrases in their simplicity sublime, "Scramble a copper!" "Please, sir, what's the time?") These round thy walks their cheerful influence shed; These were thy charms—but all these charms are fled, Amidst thy bowers ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... fact, bestowed upon her as a gift. Mrs. Cupp bought it for a shilling at a small shop in the village. Ameerah, in whose dusky being was incorporated the occult faith of lost centuries, and whose gods had been gods through mystic ages, received the fat, little brown book with down-dropped lids and grateful obeisance. These were ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... surrounded by pictures of himself, his wife, his infant son on a donkey, and the late Earl of Gravesend in his robes as a peer. Foker and Pen passed by this chamber, now closed with death-like shutters, and entered into the young man's own quarters. Dusky streams of sunbeams were playing into that room, and lighting up poor Harry's gallery of dancing girls and opera ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not see the trees, we see the whole wood. But that is not how God loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed them all together; or made what people call a generalisation of them. But that is not the way in which God loves. He loves all because He loves each. And when we say, 'God so loved the world,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... upright he rears from off the pool His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames Drivn backward slope their pointing Spires, and roared In Billows, leave i'th midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusky purlieus of the law. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... and thy fading leaf, I love thee, drear and gloomy as thou art; Not joyful Spring, like thee can soften grief, Nor gaudy Summer soothe the aching heart; But in thy cheerless, solitary bower, Beneath the varied shade, I love to lie, When dusky Evening's melancholy hour With boding clouds obscures the low'ring sky, And tuneless birds and fading flowers appear In grief to hang their heads, and mourn ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... further prosecute the fruitless search, we were on the point of starting to rejoin our camp, when there was a cry from our troopers of 'Mem sahib hai!' (Here is the lady), and presently an excessively dusky girl about sixteen years of age appeared, clad in Native dress. We had some difficulty in getting the young woman to tell us what had happened; but on assuring her that no harm should be done to those with whom she was living, she told us that ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... of January and the beginning of February were distinguished, the first day by a very remarkable Aurora Borealis appearing at night to the north-east, of a deep and dusky red colour, like the reflection of some great fire, for which it was by many people mistaken; and the coruscations, unlike those that are generally observed, did not meet in the zenith, but in a point some degrees to the southward. February was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... like a Spanish dancing girl, in short kilts, red sash, and jaunty little cap placed sidewise on her head. She wore a wig of black hair, and her face was stained to a dusky, gipsy hue. Over her thumb hung castanets and in her hand was a tambourine. Roguishly she began to sway into a slow, rhythmic dance, beating time with her instruments as she moved. Gradually the speed quickened to a faster time. She swung gracefully to and fro with all the lithe agility of the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... passionate sweetness from orange-groves and rose gardens, mixed with the miasmatic sighs of rank forests, and mile on mile of tangled cane-brake, where jewel-tinted snakes glitter and emit their own sickly-sweet odor, and the deep blue bells of luxuriant vines wave from their dusky censers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... but Arthur, stooping forward, carefully examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his nostrils, yet he lingers there ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... his eyes away from the white throat and shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf, wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such dainty articles of dress to such a land. Then, his eyes finding the prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side of the road where the ground ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... wishing the operation could be prolonged indefinitely. Somehow this intimate, personal contact seemed to create a friendliness for each other they had never known before. Presently Mary was chatting away almost as cordially as if it were Elise's dusky curls she had in her ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... her dusky tresses, Like a star, shines out her face, And the form his strong arm presses Is sylph like in its grace. As a leaf on the bounding river Is lost in the seething sea, I know that forever and ever My dream ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... boat, the miller's daughter had been rowing with bared arms; beautiful dusky arms, at once delicate and strong. Thus far, she had forgotten to cover them up. The moment mentioned my name, she started back as if I had frightened her—pulled her sleeves down in a hurry—and hid the objects of my admiration as an act of homage ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... emerge from the dismal winter of 1862-63 into the sun-gleam of the Fourth of July of the latter year. But it is necessary to return for a while into that dusky gloom, for the career of a "war president" is by no means wholly a series of campaigns. Domestic politics, foreign relations, finance, make their ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower: in the other no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... black-haired gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that dusky old den like fireworks, asks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... fields out were just going round. The faces of the crew, pallid with exhaustion, seemed of an ivory whiteness in the dusky gloom of the boat, which never resembled a gigantic and fantastically ornamental coffin so closely as ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... because of the flood, nor alight on a leaf of a tree because of the waves; for the steep mountain-sides were 1460 hidden by the waters. The wild bird set out in the evening to seek the Ark over the dusky flood, and sank weary and famished in the hands of the pious hero. Then after a week the wild-dove was again sent out 1465 from the Ark: she flew far, until greatly rejoicing she found a fair place for rest and settled ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... that now, as they manned the barricade, they were half-stupid, more than half-deafened, and hardly knew what had happened. Henri and Jules, leaning against the bags and peering out into the darkness, could see the flash of men's rifles as they fired from below, and caught a glimpse of dusky figures. Then they felt the wall wobble, while something struck Henri a blow on the arm, and, stretching out his hand, he gripped first a pole and then an iron hook at the end of it. But it was only one of half a dozen such implements, which German cunning had suggested. They were at work then ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each, hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep. It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure, as I can now in any manner experience to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... flowers of gold and royal blue, the Flower de Luce (Flower of Louis) of regal France, and sombre flowers draped in deep green and black and dusky purple, "The widow" (Iris tuberosa) and the Chalcedonian Iris (Iris Susiana), taking its name from the Persian Susa. Iris Florentina by its powdered root yields the delicate violet perfume orris, a ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... a very dark place, with something long and white, that glimmered faintly, lying in the midst; and he bent down to look at it, but could not discern what it was. Then he saw in the darkness which surrounded the glimmering thing some small threads of dusky white, and some small round things; and he looked at them long; and presently discerned that the round things were pebbles, and that the white threads were like the roots of trees; and then he perceived that he was looking into the earth; and then with a sickly chill of fear he saw that the long ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... lay enfolded; but the face of the down itself was still in darkness. Farther to the south, in a stretch of clear night sky hardly touched by the mounting dawn, Venus shone enthroned, so large and brilliant, so near to earth and the spectator, that she held, she pervaded the whole dusky scene, the shadowed fields and wintry woods, as though she were ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... air is still, the night is dark, No ripple breaks the dusky tide; From isle to isle the fisher's bark Like fairy meteor seems to glide; Now lost in shade—now flashing bright On sleeping wave and forest tree; We hail with joy the ruddy light, Which far into the darksome night Shines red ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... some other young white folks with whom I had stricken up acquaintance,—clerks, storekeepers, and the like,—would we seek out the dusky beauties of the town in their own quarters, and shake a leg at their Dignity Routs, Blackamoor Drums, and Pumpkin-Faced Assemblies, or by what other name the poor Black wretches might choose to call their uproarious merrymakings. There, in some shed, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... with it at its most prominent part, was stretched a broad straight band of prismatic colours, similar to the rainbow in all but curvature. Across the space, within the circle of light, there was a broad stream of dusky cloud, formed of three distinct streaks, and reaching from one of the most distant mock suns to another opposite to it, in the shape of a low arch; but in a little while one extremity of this bar moved away from its original position, while the other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... the clime, Where grew my youthful years; Where Loch na Garr in snows sublime His giant summit rears. Why did my childhood wander forth From you, ye regions of the North, With sons of pride to roam? Why did I quit my Highland cave, Marr's dusky heath, and Dee's clear wave, To seek ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... plainly one of those timid souls whose tenacity of purpose will carry them through agonies of embarrassment to a desired end. The end in this case was evidently Esther. His black eyes shone with frank admiration, even while he blushed a dusky red to the roots of ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... Land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... all dusky and shadowed; the window-frames were traced on the blinds by the gas freshly lighted outside, and moving in the breeze with a monotonous dreariness. Carey stood a moment, and then her eyes getting accustomed to the darkness, she discerned a little heap lying curled up before the ottoman, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but if he steals a horse and is caught, his case is hopeless. It may be said that the value of the animal to the hunter or trapper is beyond all calculation, and, inasmuch as the red man is equally appreciative, Carson always warned his friends to be on the watch against the dusky thieves. Sentinels were on guard while others slept, but the very calamity against which they thus sought to ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... was a larger species of tern, or sea-swallow; the "parson," so called for his sombre appearance and sedate manner, was a kind of sable gull about the size of an English crow. His colour, however, was not black, but a dusky brownish black, as if the reverend gentleman's coat had got rusty from wear. These birds had a very odd, "undertakerish" air about them, which amused Maurice and Florry very much, and some having venerable white heads, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... How that dusky face lighted up. That woman trembled all over under the sound of that man's tread. He was coming to her, there in the room, in which they had once been so happy; coming to her, perhaps in anger. That was nothing. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... evidence pointing to still surviving races. At a period of only a few thousand years ago, we begin to catch glimpses of a northern race whom the old Greeks and Romans called Hyperboreans or Far-Northerners; a race wild and little skilled in the arts of life; a race of small stature, slight, dusky, with piercing eyes, low brows, and of forbidding face. This race was scattered over lands far north of the Mediterranean, dwelling in caves and dens of the earth, and lingering on unchanged from the days of mammoth and cave-bear. We have slight but definite knowledge of this very ancient ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... philosophic tenet, throughout the earlier history of humanity from the Baltic to the Indian Sea, from the furthest Orient to the Western Isles. Besides this radiant past even the vision of the abode which awaits the soul at death seems dusky and repellent, a land of twilight, as in the Etruscan legend, or that dominion over the shades which Achilles ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... hand,—her little effervescence of infantile fun having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what a dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks,—he went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its threshold, so that one who was issuing forth or entering must needs step upon it or over ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gloom they saw what seemed a grove of dusky trees, in shape like the poplar and willow, fringing the shore. "It is the sign which Circe gave me," whispered Odysseus to his awestruck comrades; "we are at the very gates of Hades." Landing in silence, they carried the victims for sacrifice to the verge of the grove, and Odysseus with his ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... to hide the hurt which even yet pierced her at her brother's rough joking. In the winter when they all sat before the big hearth, roasted apples, drank mulled cider, and teased the girls about their beaux and the boys about their sweethearts, she shrank into a dusky corner with her knitting, happy if the evening passed without her brother saying, with a crude sarcasm, "Ask your Aunt Mehetabel about the beaux that used to come a-sparkin' her!" or, "Mehetabel, how was't when you was in love with Abel Cummings." ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... for this soul, who, in fathoms of azure, Lies where the wild tarpon breaks through the foam, Where the sea otter mews to its brood in the ripples, As the pelican wings near the palm-forest gloom. Ghosts of the buccaneers flit through the branches, Dusky and dim in the shadows of eve, While shrill screams the parrot,—the lord of Potanches, 'Drake, Captain Drake, you've ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... wait your time, Beast, Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast— Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass— Follow after with the others, Where some dusky heathen smothers Us with marigolds ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... the palms, the legs are extended, the arms stiffly bent, and the head thrown back, or twisted to one side. The muscles of the chest and heart are impeded in their action, breathing ceases, the heart is slowed, and the face becomes pale, and then a livid, dusky blue. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... an ugly face, with dusky skin, narrow slits of eyes, and straight black hair which seemed to wind and coil about the repulsive countenance as a collection ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... a quiet delirium, and, at intervals, from behind his lips, dry and brown and fissured, there came the sounds of low and indistinct muttering. Barring a certain prominence of the cheek-bones, his face was not very wasted, but its skin was a strange, dusky pallor. The cold pack was about his head like a sort ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... herds of seal floundering in the sea, that land must lie in this direction. A bright lookout was kept for the first two weeks of July. Two hundred and forty miles were traversed; and on a calm, {46} clear night between the 13th and 15th of July, there loomed above the horizon the dusky heights of a wooded mountainous land in latitude 55 degrees 21 minutes. Chirikoff was in the Alexander Archipelago. Daybreak came with the St. Paul only four miles off the conspicuous heights of Cape Addington. Chirikoff had discovered land some thirty-six hours before Bering. The new ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... the lion-bodies with men's heads that guarded the way, nor at the images of beasts on the wall that shut it in; nor did she heed the dusky-hued temple-slaves of Osiris-Apis who were sweeping the sand from the paved way with large brooms, for she thought of nothing but Irene and the difficult task that lay before her, and she walked swiftly onwards with her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... realize his longing. The enchanting image of the woodland queen, as he had beheld her in the dusky light of the charcoal-man's hut, was ever before him. He put his hands over his eyes. She was there still, with her deep, dark eyes and her enticing cherry lips. Even the odor of the honeysuckle arising from the garden assisted the reality of the vision, by recalling the sprig of the same flower ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... wagged his tail-stump with sleepy content. As I bent lower and stared closer into those humid eyes of his, it seemed as though I were staring down into a bottomless well, through a peep-hole into Infinity, so deep and wonderful was that eye, that dusky pool of love and trust. It was like seeing into the velvet-soft recesses of a soul. And I could stare into them without fear, just as Bobs could stare back without shame. That's where dogs are slightly different ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... thy father hath sent me an officer from the Kazi or the Chief of Police." Quoth she, "Go down and see what it is." So he went down; and, opening the door, found his father-in-law, the Provost of the merchants with an Abyssinian slave, dusky complexioned and pleasant of favour, riding on a mule. When the slave saw him he dismounted and kissed his hands, and Ala al-Din said, "What dost thou want?" He replied, "I am the slave of my lord Ala al-Din Abu ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton









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