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Darken   Listen
verb
Darken  v. t.  (past & past part. darkened; pres. part. darkening)  
1.
To make dark or black; to deprive of light; to obscure; as, a darkened room. "They (locusts) covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened." "So spake the Sovran Voice; and clouds began To darken all the hill."
2.
To render dim; to deprive of vision. "Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see."
3.
To cloud, obscure, or perplex; to render less clear or intelligible. "Such was his wisdom that his confidence did seldom darkenhis foresight." "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"
4.
To cast a gloom upon. "With these forced thoughts, I prithee, darken not The mirth of the feast."
5.
To make foul; to sully; to tarnish. "I must not think there are Evils enough to darken all his goodness."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Darken" Quotes from Famous Books



... to get the generators with our little toy here first. That'll darken the ship, and put the blowers out of commission in case they think of using gas. Also, it will cut out their computers and missile-launching rigs, which might give us a chance to get a scout-ship away in one piece if we could get ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... Her own specialty, the thing which she has always cultivated, is to get that sort of power over man, by which she can carry her own points and purposes, and make him flexible to her will; nor does a suspicion of the utter worthlessness and selfishness of such a life ever darken the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... if trials Did oftentimes darken thy way — They marked, like the shadows on dials, Thy soul's brightest hour every day. The sun in the height of his splendor, By the mystical law of his light, O'er his glories flings vestments of shadows, And, sinking, leaves stars to ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... only it was discovered that one of these was also punctured and had evidently been taken out of use the day on which they secured the car. There was nothing to do but to push the machine into a field, darken the windows and allow the chauffeur to make his repairs on the least damaged of the tubes. They shut him into the interior of the car with the Red officer who volunteered his help, furnished him with a lamp, and walked down the road in the faint hope of discovering some cottage ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... Rise up in the might of your love and your womanhood and end this wholesale murder. Remember the great war in Europe! What did it accomplish? Nothing except to fill millions of graves with brave sons and beloved husbands. Nothing except to darken millions of homes with sorrow. Nothing except to spread ruin and desolation everywhere. Are you going to allow this ghastly business to be ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... a sameness to Dick—a wilderness of rocks and jagged growths hemmed in by lowering ranges, always looking close, yet never growing any nearer. The moon slanted back toward the west, losing its white radiance, and the gloom of the earlier evening began to creep into the washes and to darken under the mesas. By and by Ladd entered an arroyo, and here the travelers turned and twisted with the meanderings of a dry stream bed. At the head of a canyon they had to take once more to the rougher ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... he sat up, and was read to, and finally wept because the nurses told him that some day he would want to get up and walk about again. His wife came every day, and he clung to her like a child. Sometimes, watching her, a troubled thought would darken his eyes; but on a day when they first spoke of the terrible past, she smiled at him the motherly smile that he was beginning so to love, and told him that all business affairs could wait. And ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... father's anger; but I do not wish the world to know that my daughter has been wasting her affections upon a worthless nigger; that is all that protects you! Now, hear me," he added, fiercely,—"if ever you presume to darken my door again, or attempt to approach my daughter, I will shoot you, as sure as you sit ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... going under cover of the night, uncle, and surely it would not be such a difficult matter to darken my face and hands? With dirt, if nothing better can be found. And if I wore the clothes you brought from the cavern, ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of speech,—"I have deferr—I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash my duty ter dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal happ'ness, to bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by unpleasht revelashun. Musht be done—by G-d, m'm, musht do it ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... with arms and a high flat leathern back, which one often sees in Rome even now, chiefly in outer reception-halls and ranged in stiff order against the walls. The shutters were drawn near together to keep out the heat and to darken the room a little. She had a lute on her knees, but her hands held a large sheet of music, from which she had been reading over the words of the song before trying it. She did not look up as the door opened and was shut, for she supposed it must be Cucurullo ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... are to deal farther on. The seamstress in a London garret or the shop-worker in the narrow rooms of the East End lives in a gloom for which there is neither outward nor inward alleviation. Soot is king of the great city, and his prime ministers, Smoke and Fog, work together to darken every haunt of man, and to shut out every glimpse of sun or moon. The flying flakes are in the air. Every breath draws them in; every moment leaves its deposit on wall and floor and person. The neatest ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... and decked the banks with violets as fearless and as fragile as New England girls; so that about the end of June, when the heavens relented and the sun blazed out at last, there was little for him to do but to redden and darken the daring fruits that had attained almost their full ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... and maturely established been called in Question till in the last Century Paracelsus and some few other sooty Empiricks, rather then (as they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand, and to tell the credulous World, that they could see but three Ingredients in mixt ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... religious values. If, as Lessing said, it is the end of education to make men to see things that are large as large and things that are small as small, it is even more truly the end of Christian preaching. What we are most in need of today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without it we darken counsel as we talk in confusion. So, while we may not attempt here a detailed and reasoned statement of religious belief, we may try to say what is the fundamental attitude, both toward nature and toward man, that lies underneath the religious experience. We have seen that we are ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... personal appeal with which the Duke of Connaught accompanied the delivery of the Royal message went far to dispel "the shadow of Amritsar," which had, in his own apt phrase, "lengthened over the face of India" and threatened even to darken their own path. For on no subject had Indian feeling been more unanimous during the elections all over the country than in regard to the Punjab tragedy. None had been more persistently exploited by the "Non-co-operationists" to point their jibes at the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... of here!" shouted Cephas, in a hoarse voice—"get out of here! Get out of this house, an' don't you ever darse darken these doors again while the Lord Almighty reigns!" The old man was almost inarticulate; he waved his arms, wagged his head, and stamped; he looked like a white ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... You'll find some books of Mr. Wendover's on the cheffonier. But perhaps you'll be glad to take a little nap. Shall I draw down the blind and darken ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... unscrupulous of the fanatics, and rumour had quickly clothed him with all sorts of unholy attributes. That he was not dead, but plotting further mischief, was known only to one man, and the knowledge helped to darken that man's life. The farmer at Arlingham had never been suspected of complicity in the plot; all, save Basil, who could have blabbed his secret were amongst the slain on the night of the fight with the Luath. He himself lost heart at the critical moment ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... put it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his door again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutch baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every day, and Ma and Pa have got ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... instance, a recent vogue for the extensive misuse, usually tautological misuse, of the word "complexus"—an excellent word if used rarely and for definite purposes. Mr. Haseman drags it in continually when its use is either pointless and redundant or else serves purely to darken wisdom. He speaks of the "Antillean complex" when he means the Antilles, of the "organic complex" instead of the characteristic or bodily characteristics of an animal or species, and of the "environmental complex" when he means nothing whatever but the environment. In short, Mr. Haseman ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... pang with which I watched them darken and shrivel that brought back the memory of another sharp stab. It was that day ten years ago, when I walked for the first time after my accident. Supported by a stick on one side, and by Atherley on ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... admirably for heads, while some other skins, bent over oblong hoops, formed shields. Indeed, Mangaleesu had already put together a sufficient supply of shields and bundles of seeming assegais, to arm the whole of the dummies. They had not forgotten to obtain some pigment, with which to darken the faces of ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... much, and with as vigilant an eye as myself, know also, by thousands of cases, how infinite is the disturbance caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word as despicable as the word even. A mote, that is itself invisible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye—the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself—and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... Thus did the maiden clearly prove that she possessed some of the qualities most necessary for a wife—that ready self-forgetfulness, that kindness, cheerfulness, and desire to promote the happiness of others, that sunshine of the heart which sheds its brightening beams over all the clouds that darken domestic life. Through all the ages of the world, in all the circumstances in which mankind are placed, the wife has ever need of them, and wisely may the suitor look for them. But the servant of the patriarch, "still wondering, held his peace." Not until assured that she was of the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... vivid ribbon; flaunting sashes bound their slender waists, knotted over the hip. The girls and young married women wore black or white mantillas, the silken lace of Spain, regardless of the sun which might darken their Castilian fairness. Their gowns were of flowered silk or red or yellow satin, the waist long and pointed, the skirt full; jeweled buckles of tiny slippers flashed beneath the hem. The old people were in rich dress of sober color. A few Americans were ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... sav'd." We, while he spake, ceas'd not our onward road, Still passing through the wood; for so I name Those spirits thick beset. We were not far On this side from the summit, when I kenn'd A flame, that o'er the darken'd hemisphere Prevailing shin'd. Yet we a little space Were distant, not so far but I in part Discover'd, that a tribe in honour high That place possess'd. "O thou, who every art And science valu'st! who are these, that boast Such honour, separate from all the rest?" He answer'd: "The ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... it, young Bertie, or never darken my doors again. And you know what that means. No more of Anatole's dinners ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... I had scarcely done so when my spirits fell. I walked hastily away with a coarse threatening sound in my ears like that of the clarionets whose sustained low notes darken the woodland in "Der Frieschutz." I found myself presently at the graveyard. It was a barren place, enclosed by a mud wall with a gate to admit funerals, and numerous gaps to admit peasantry, who made short cuts across it as they went to and fro between ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw

... was about Fielding! How jealousy, spite, and the confusion of mind that befogs a prig when he is not taken seriously, do darken the eyes of the author of "those deplorably tedious lamentations, 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison,'" as Horace ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... I warned you what would happen if you persisted, and I repeat it now. Since you have deliberately chosen, in spite of all that I have said, to go your own way, and to become a Papist, I will have no more to do with you. From this moment you cease to be my son. You shall not, while I live, darken my doors again, or sleep under my roof. I say nothing of what you have had from me in the past—your education and all the rest. And, since I do not wish to be unduly hard upon you, you can keep the remainder of your allowance up to July and the furniture ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... include the authors who have written of the antiquities of the Goths, Vandals, Wisigoths, and Lombards. Two reasons induced me to make the Preface so long: the first, that I was obliged to answer Cluverius, who, either from envy, or hired by the Danes, first sought to darken our glory; but I have confuted him by such clear evidence, that I think no person of sense will now attempt to repeat the same falsities. The other was, that, the testimonies in favour of a nation being liable to suspicion when built only ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... father. We wouldn't 'a' knowed it, then, if it hadn't been that Tom Linney come over one day an' said he guessed the ol' squire wanted to see me—no, sir, we wouldn't—fer the squire ain't sociable an' the neighbors never darken his door. She must 'a' come in the night, jest as she went—nobody see her go an' nobody see her come, an' that's a fact. Wal, one day las' fall after the leaves was off an' they could see a corner o' my house through the bushes, Tom was walkin' the ol' man 'round the room. All to once he stopped ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded merely by example and custom; and thus I gradually extricated myself from many errors powerful enough to darken our natural intelligence, and incapacitate us in great measure from listening to reason. But after I had been occupied several years in thus studying the book of the world, and in essaying to gather ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... Macaulay's prose, strikingly shew how the same subject can be degraded or elevated by the mode of treatment; and how easily the historian or biographer, who expands his authorities by picturesque details, may brighten or darken characters ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... Criticism and Essay on Man were remarkably utilised by Voltaire; Edward Young, whose Night Thoughts enjoyed the same prodigious success in France as in England, and who contributed in no small measure to darken and render gloomy both literatures; MacPherson, who invented Ossian, that is, pretended poems of the Middle Ages, a magnificent genius, be it said, who exercised considerable influence over the romanticism of both lands; Chatterton, who trod the same road, but with less success, yet was ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... answered Spike, after a moment of profound reflection, "and every foot that they come nearer, the less will be our chance. But here is Hempstead Harbour a few leagues ahead; if we can reach that before the blackguards close, we may do well enough. It is a deep bay, and has high land to darken the view. I don't think the brig could be seen at midnight by anything outside; if she was once fairly up that water ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... mantle-brooches constellated with rubies and carbuncles; toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves' teeth to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent. Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep crimson of the blood of the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... upon her white bosom. Her arms were bare, and her dress cut as low as fashion would sanction. In momentary triumph she saw his eye kindle into almost wondering admiration; and yet it was but momentary, for almost instantly his face began to darken ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... come. Where the wind hunts, there shall I find you. In cool gray cloud Where the sun slips through I shall see you, Or where the trees Are silenced, and darken in their branches. Your coming would Loosen, when my thought ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... Interposition of Vapours, Clouds, liquid Air, Exhalations, &c. or from within, as wandring Errors, wild Notions, cloudy Understandings, and empty Fancies, with a Thousand other interposing Obstacles to the Sight, which darken it, and prevent its Operation; and particularly obstruct the perceptive Faculties, weaken the Head, and bring Mankind in General to stand in need of the Spectacles of Education as soon as ever they are born: Nay, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... any. No one knew it. Only, indeed, Patrasche, who, being with him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the stones any and every thing that grew or breathed, heard him on his little bed of hay murmur all manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the spirit of the great master; watched his gaze darken and his face radiate at the evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn; and felt many and many a time the tears of a strange, nameless pain and joy, mingled together, fall hotly from the bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... first spreads her sable wings, All earthly things to darken, The woodland choir grows mute and still, To thy sweet trill to hearken; Though 'gainst thy breast there lies a thorn, And thou woeworn art bleeding, Yet, till the bright day dawns ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... across these open spaces in a broad way—not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy. Masts to the right, masts to ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... into bad company. He came home late one night. His father scolded: 'tis a porter's infirmity to fret at late-comers. Another night he came home later. The scolding became a philippic. Again he did not come home at all. His father ordered him never more to darken his doors. Murger took him at his word, and went to share a friend's bed in another garret. The friend was little better off in worldly goods; he lived in a chamber for which he paid twenty dollars a year, and which was furnished "with one of those lots of furniture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... to "darken counsel with words" as to methods, when it is evident that the purpose is, not to form any union which would be other than humiliating to a colored man, and contrary to the heretofore held principles of ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various

... Hymn abideth Round they pillow in the night, And gentle feet creep to thy bed, And o'er thy quiet face is shed The taper's darken'd light. But that sweet Hymn shall pass away, By thee no more those feet shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... the valley, And they hem the forest round! The burthened boughs with pale scouts quiver, The echoing hills tumultuous ring, While, across the eddying river, Their barks, like foaming war-steeds, spring, The bloodhounds darken land and water, They come—like buffaloes for slaughter.—G. ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... darken your doors and your windows, And if you are deaf, dumb, or blind, You may know I am always quite ready, Your duds or ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which could withdraw itself from the presence of destruction, and create in its imagination a world of which the peace should be unbroken, in which the sky should not darken nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, however, who contemplates with an equal mind the alternations of terror and of beauty; who, not rejoicing less beneath ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... ready to take offence, always ready to think that people mean to insult us or injure us, and makes us moody, dark, peevish, always thinking about ourselves, and our plans, or our own pleasures, shut up as it were within ourselves—all these sins, in proportion as anyone gives way to them, darken the eyes of a man's soul. They really and actually make him more stupid, less able to understand his neighbours' hearts and minds, less able to take a reasonable view of any matter or question whatsoever. You may not believe me. But so it is. I know it by experience ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... to boating in our island waters was the presence of hungry hordes of sharks. You might forget them for a moment and sit happily trailing your fingers overboard, and then a huge moving shadow would darken the water, and you saw the ripple cut by a darting fin and the flash of a livid belly as the monster rolled over, ready for his mouthful. I could not but admire the thoughtfulness of Mr. Tubbs, who since his submergence ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... whole development of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome. This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... Hampstead the result would be, and was, terribly pernicious. He was sacrificing himself, not only as Mrs. Roden thought for the present moment, but for many years perhaps,—perhaps for his future life,—to a hopeless passion. A cloud was falling upon him which might too probably darken his whole career. From the day on which she had unfortunately taken Marion to Hendon Hall, she had never ceased to regret the acquaintance which she had caused. To her thinking the whole affair had been unfortunate. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... had heard of Love lighting to darken the heart, Fickle, fleeting as wind and the dews of the morn; Such were not my fears, though I sigh'd all night long, And wept 'neath the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... carefully sown these lies in her heart, and seen her proud face darken and quiver with pain beneath your words"—oh, how his own evil face glows with unholy satisfaction as he sees the picture he has just drawn stand out clear before his eyes!—"you will affect to be ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... the Captain, throwing down his pipe with a sound that made his daughter start. "He shall never darken my doors again, and so you may tell ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... brother, dropped a word in his ear, and quietly left the room. The relief I felt was instantaneous. It was like having one coil of an oppressive nightmare released from my breast. Dwight, on the contrary, who had sat like a statue ever since the room began to darken, showed no evidence of being influenced by this change, and, convinced that any movement towards a more cheerful order of things must come from me, I rose, and, without consulting his wishes, dropped the curtains and lighted the lamp. The instant I had done so I saw why he was so ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... whom he was at the time having a seance, vehemently asserted that no member of the 'Seybert Commission' should ever have a seance with her, that the whole Commission, one and all, were 'old scoundrels and should never darken her doors,' etc., etc., and confessed that the foundation of her belief was the warning (sent to her by an eminent Medium whose seances the Commission had attended) that she should have nothing to do with 'the Seybert men, that they would do her no good.' ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... hurried flight The noisy throng; when suddenly down to the waves he ran, And caught in greedy hooked claws a goodly-bodied swan: 250 Uprose the hearts of Italy, for all the fowl cry out, And, wonderful for eyes to see, from fleeing turn about, Darken the air with cloud of wings, and fall upon the foe; Till he, oppressed by might of them and by his prey held low, Gives way, and casts the quarry down from out his hooked claws Into the river, and aback to inner ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... then, thy will That I go forth alone?—'Tis well, so be it! I say but this, O king: Before the gray Of evening darken, give me back my babes! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... about it, just quietly. How did you happen to go out there? Was it because you heard that Captain Herrick was wounded? That's the way the papers cabled the story. Was that true?" Then, seeing her face darken, he added: "Perhaps I ought ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... Mr. Baring-Gould, found among the Minussinian Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons, like the Greek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in battle. There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight; but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black storm-fiend, who rages for blood, like ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... off in excellent order right away out into the plain, the orange rays of the setting sun seeming to turn the half-nude figures into living bronze. Then the desert began to grow dim, the sky to darken, a few stars to peep out in the pale grey arch, and after a party had been deputed to keep watch, this intermission in the attack was seized upon as the time for making a hearty meal, the ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... melancholy fate. I never remember a countenance more expressive of intellectual refinement; but there was a look of strange and feverish restlessness in his large grey eye, almost ominous of his future career. He was still young, though he had already gone through vicissitudes enough to darken the longest life. He had been, a few years before, called to the bar, the favourite profession of the Irish gentry, where he had exhibited talents of a remarkable order; but an impatience of the slow success of this profession drove him to the hazards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... hills and leafless forests slowly yield To the thick-driving snow. A little while And night shall darken down. In shouting file The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled, Past the thin fading stubbles, half-concealed, Now golden-gray, sowed softly through with snow, Where the last ploughman follows still his row, Turning black furrows through the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... to the New York papers in behalf of Harriet was successful. For a week he bought every morning and evening edition and read them eagerly. Not a line appeared to darken the life of his ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... systems, that couldn't handle one tenth of one per cent of the barest minimum load, it's been the only source of electric current here since 1962, when the last coal-burning power plant was dismantled. Knock this plant out and you darken every house and office and factory and street in the area. You immobilize the elevators—think what that would mean in lower and midtown Manhattan alone. And the subways. And the new endless-belt conveyors that ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper

... over; laisser faire declines in favour; our legislation grows authoritative, grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts a spawn of inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of England. It may be right or wrong, we are not trying that; but one thing it is beyond doubt: it is Socialism in action, and the strange thing is that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said, "on the great river, bad Indians who will cut off your heads without any cause. There are fierce warriors who will try to seize you and make you slaves. There are enormous birds there, whose wings darken the air, and who can swallow you all, with your canoes, at a mouthful. And worst of all, there is a malignant demon there who, if you escape all other dangers, will cause the waters to boil and whirl around ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... inspire. them. But the boyish frolics, the exulting high spirits, the unreflecting mirth of a sailor, when enjoying himself on shore, temper the more formidable points of his character. There was nothing like these in this man's face; on the contrary, a surly and even savage scowl appeared to darken features which would have been harsh and unpleasant under any expression or modification. "Where are you, Mother Deyvilson?" he said, with somewhat of a foreign accent, though speaking perfectly good English. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... friend, very well! With all my soul! Since it is come to that, we will show you some pretty sport before we have done! But get out of my sight, you rascal! I have not another word to say to you! Never darken ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake he ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... wherein we should have to give an account of all those talents, faculties, and opportunities, with which we had been intrusted. Let it not then appear, that our superior power had been employed to oppress our fellow-creatures, and our superior light to darken the creation of God. He could not but look forward with delight to the happy prospects which opened themselves to his view in Africa from the abolition of the Slave-trade; when a commerce, justly deserving that name, should be established with her; not ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... the sky began to darken. A muttering of distant winds and waters came traveling. The children stopped their play, the beasts raised their heads; men and women halted and cried to each other: "The River—the River is rising! If it floods, we are lost! Our beasts will drown; we, even we, shall drown! The ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... mediaeval theologian, man was by nature vile. We have seen that, according to the Christian Epic, he was assoiled from birth with the primeval sin of his first parents, and began to darken his score with fresh offenses of his own as soon as he became intelligent enough to do so. An elaborate mechanism was supplied by the Church for washing away the original pollution and securing forgiveness for later sins. Indeed, this was ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... thy corn and bed prepare, Thy silky mane, I braided once, must be another's care! The morning sun shall dawn again, but never more with thee Shall I gallop through the desert paths, where we were wont to be; Evening shall darken on the earth, and o'er the sandy plain Some other steed, with slower step, shall bear ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Ellsworth screamed him down. "The girl doesn't darken my doors another hour. I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know. But with or without you, Annesley Grayle ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you are made unhappy—if noters and protesters are the sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life—then note you what I vehemently protest: viz., that, no matter though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every county should be running after you with his posse, touch a hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. It ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... questions now is: What part of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and nourish us again? What part of it, not being ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... penance than an embrace, ma fille cherie," said the abbe, who had returned to the veranda just in time to overhear Angela's confession. "I rejoice in your happiness, mignonne. To-day you make two men happy—your lover and myself. You have lightened my mind of the cares which threatened to darken my closing days. The thought of leaving you without a protector and Quipai without a chief was a sore trouble. Your husband will be both. Like Moses, I have seen the Promised Land, and I ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... why the Spice should not be boiled with the Pickle, is, because the Mushrooms would change black by means of the boil'd Spices; and if this plain Pickle was to be pour'd upon the Mushrooms hot, it would immediately draw a Colour from the Spices, which would darken the Colour of the Mushrooms: therefore to fill up the glasses in the manner here related, is the best way to have your Mushrooms ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... Maurice holds, is a subject of misconception, and the notions of it, as they now obtain in Christendom, darken and bewilder the mind. What Christ has really done for us through suffering was his matchless sympathy; he became our brother, and was not our mediatorial substitute but a natural representative. On this ground, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... London, and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of these hung in his bedroom, and confided to the men of his set how awfully, how wildly, how madly, how passionately, he had loved that woman. He showed them in confidence the verses that he had written to her, and his brow would darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with emotion as he recalled that fatal period of his life, and described the woes and agonies which he had suffered. The verses were copied out, handed about, sneered at, admired, passed from coterie to coterie. There are few things ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the inner room she heard the footsteps of the children and their little shrill voices; each sound accentuated the stabbing pulse of pain. It was impossible to darken the room, and the insufferable sunlight poured in unchecked through the thin yellow blinds and plagued her brain, till the nerves of vision throbbed, beat for beat, with the nerves of torment. At noon she had only one sensation of brilliant ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[207] for yellow and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to black; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way down; passing ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Universalist believes sin to be the cause of many mental woes that darken the world, and the principal cause of the greater proportion of sufferings that fall to the lot of man. He believes that a virtuous course of conduct, guided by the burning lamp of revelation, leads to those joys that time cannot sully, nor the hand of death extinguish. A conviction of this ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... even when one is saying "Spring," full-blown summer is hot afoot. In high noon, in the open places, pools of water form in the ice. With glee is hailed the honk of the first wild goose, the coats of ptarmigan and rabbit thin and darken. There is water on the trail of the kit-fox. The subsidiary streams that feed the Mackenzie fill their banks and flush the rotting ice. With a crash, the drift-logs, with pan-ice and floating islands and all the gathered debris, roll headlong to the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... relic of some saint from a pocket-book which he carried in his breast, and was, in Russian fashion as I think, confessing his sins over it; while his sister sat silent and motionless by the fire, with livid face and clasped hands. It was burning low, but I saw the woodman's face darken. He stepped to the corner and took down his gun, as I believed, to take the last shot at the wolves; but Count Theodore was in his way. He levelled it for an instant at the prostrate man, and before I could speak or interpose, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... ruins Ferrara is lovely. It wears in the tomb the sunset hues of beauty. Its streets run out in straight lines, and are of noble breadth and length. Unencumbered with the heavy arcades that darken Padua, the marble fronts of its palaces rise to a goodly height, covered with rich but exceedingly sweet and chaste designs. On the stone of their pilasters and door-posts the ilex puts forth its leaf, and the vine its grapes; and the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... of the controlling cord. Thus armed, and praying inwardly for strength and courage, and wherewith to carry out my scheme successfully, I took my stand in one of the two niches (just large enough for the purpose) in the door-frame, preferring, of course, that next to the lock, prepared to darken the vestibule at the first approach of the expected guest (I was afraid to do it before, lest attention might be called to it from within the house), and make my escape by rushing past him ere he could recover himself as ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... oppressive day With all its toil fast wearing to an end. The sun, far in the west, with side-long beam Plays on the yellow head of the round hay-cock, And fields are checker'd with fantastic shapes Or tree, or shrub, or gate, or rugged stone, All lengthen'd out, in antic disproportion, Upon the darken'd grass.—— They finish out their long and toilsome talk. Then, gathering up their rakes and scatter'd coats, With the less cumb'rous fragments of their feast, Return right gladly ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... vindicates its own essential and divine strength, and says, unconsciously, to the most uncontrolled anguish, "There is in me a life no mortal accident can invade; the breath of God is not altogether extinct in any blast of man's devising; shake, torture, assault the outer tenement,—darken its avenues with fire to stifle, and drench its approaches with seas to drown,—there is that within that God alone can vanquish,—yours is but a finite terror"? Half-crazed as I was, the fern-bed attracted me, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... rest—here is the secret. You must visit it at night. Instead of "glorious beams," you will talk of "pale melancholy light;" instead of "the stained windows throwing their various hues upon the gothic pile," you must "darken the massive pile, and light up the windows with the silver rays of the moon." The glorious orb of day must give place to thousands of wax tapers—the splendid fret—work of the roof you must regret was not to be clearly distinguished—but you must be in ecstasies with the broad ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... time; he is not formed for length of happy years, But wherefore darken thus my days with wild distracting fears? If we must part, oh! let me live in rapture while I may; Though hope must darken, while it lasts, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... other denominations must rest on the spirit of Christ calling us together. It cannot come from any other source. Popularity, self-aggrandizement, aught that can darken in any degree our spirituality, must be set aside. Only what feeds and fills the sentiment with unworldliness, can give peace and good will ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... out, at the instance of the practical nurse, a sort of semi-private institution on Columbus Avenue, but a trip through the wards and nurseries sickened her. There was a score of little blue gingham dresses, dingy fabrics that seemed to darken childhood, flapping on a rear clothes line, and one two-year-old child lay asleep on a step, his little white frock, with black anchors printed into it, furiously smeared, and one hand ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... of palm. At first the light was dim because of the closed shutters; but the herbs caught strongly afire, and the flames beat upon Keola, and the room glowed with the burning: and next the smoke rose and made his head swim and his eyes darken, and the sound of Kalamake muttering ran in his ears. And suddenly, to the mat on which they were standing came a snatch or twitch, that seemed to be more swift than lightning. In the same wink the room was gone and the house, the breath all beaten from Keola's body. Volumes of light rolled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with hot water wash out all the bowls, pitchers, &c., using separate cloths for these purposes, and never toilet towels. Dust the room, arrange every thing in place, and, if in summer, close the blinds, and darken till evening, that it may be as cool ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... grouty; if it does not run through easily, knock your wooden-spoon against the side of your sieve; put it in a clean stew-pan with the head, and season it by adding to each gallon of soup half a pint of wine; this should be Madeira, or, if you wish to darken the colour of your soup, claret, and two table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice, see No. 407*; let it simmer gently till the meat is tender; this may take from half an hour to an hour: take care it is not over-done; stir it frequently ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... he found it impaired his health. Of course the Dean's health must be kept up whether the warships are built or not. England may be suffering from loss of men, money and efficiency, but why worry? The Dean's health is excellent! When we pray for the erring, the careless and indifferent who never darken a church door, let us not forget the selfish people who do darken the church doors, and darken ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... moment the room appeared to darken, as it used to do when he was about to perform some singular experiment, and in the darkness the peacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense colour. I cast off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused by memory, ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats

... you even more. I could not give up hope. Not even when you wrote home, the year before last, that you had decided to live abroad. I got that news on the shortest day of the year. I watched the twilight darken into night until the very blackness swam before my eyes in blood-red spots. It was then I made up ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban

... weary days When the eggs are under your breast, And shadow may darken the dancing rays When the wee ones leave the nest; But they'll find their wings in a glad amaze. And God will see to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... are ashamed of it," said the general, who seemed to be fairly beside himself with rage. "Didn't I tell you never to darken my door again? Where are you traveling to, and what do you ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... very well that you must be more unhappy than I, for that awful deed will, like a thick cloud, forever darken your days. From my heart I forgive you. But answer me yet one question: how came you under this form, in the wilderness? What did you set about, after ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... of her sensitiveness. She would sit alone in her room surrounded by a whimpering little silence. A melancholy would darken her heart. It wasn't because she was afraid of people. It was something else. She would try to think of it and would find herself whispering suddenly, "Oh, I must go away. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... black and heavy print. When Rubens thought it necessary, in the print, to make a mass of light of the drapery of the Virgin and St. John, it was likewise necessary that it should be of a beautiful shape, and be kept compact; it therefore became necessary to darken the whole figure of the Magdalen, which in the picture is at least as light as the body of Christ; her head, linen, arms, hair, and the feet of Christ, make a mass as light as the body of Christ. It appears, therefore, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... youth, lovely as an angel and to all who knew her precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well nigh broken and his life was well nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, together with the toil ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... future," he said. "What must come will come, for the gods themselves have no power against Fate. When evil is approaching it casts its black shadow before it; you fix your gaze on it and let it darken the light of day. I saunter dreamily on my way and never see misfortune till it runs up against me and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... She took the dreary veil, A hopeless girl! and the bright flush grew pale Upon her cheek: she felt, as summer feels The winds of autumn and the winter chills, That darken his fair suns.—It was away, Feeding on dreams, the heart ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... perverse words, Ye darken beauty with your plots of pain! What languors beat through me like muted chords? I know indeed that suffering shall profane These lovers, sweet as viols or violet-spices. Strangely must end their dreamy chess-playing, Strange wounds amaze their broidered Paradises, ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!— The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... the drowsing south and in dreams I northward fly, And walk the stretching moors that fringe the ever-calling sea; And am gladdened as the gales that are so bitter-sweet go by, While grey clouds sweetly darken ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman

... grace of the picture the colors may fade by time, may give by weather, may be spited by chance; yet the other, nor time with her swift wings shall overtake, nor the misty clouds with their lowering may darken, nor chance with her slippery foot ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... interesting when she read. For then she forgot about them and let them have their own way—now to light with a smile, now to darken with disapproval, and sometimes to grow very tender, as the story she happened to ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... risen my loved one and cast from thy name All the shadows that darken thy life with their shame; Thou hast raised thyself up, against wind, against tide, Thou art high, thou art honoured, my joy and my pride; Now the song of the drunkard is chased from thy place, And my pride is relieved from this touch of disgrace. Thou wilt help to make Erin "great, glorious ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... "the rude tribes of the North, the fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of the forests that darken the mountain tops with verdure! these be thy charge, and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O Star of the sullen beams, that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren; for the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch; nor doth ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... went back: "Wouldn't it be better to darken things up a bit?" he suggested. "If there are bandits round it isn't necessary to send out a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... been seriously considered, we should have no Republic of Plato, no Utopia of More; the world would be a very different place from what it is; for these cloudy cities, the laws of whose architecture seem contrary to all the teachings of physics, yet gild with their glory and darken with their shadows the solid temples and ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... he, pointing to the door with uplifted fingers that shake perceptibly. "Leave me, and never darken my doors again. Go, earn your bread. Starve for those beggarly brats. Work until your young blood turns to gall and all the youth and freshness of your life has ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... parties but seen fit to act in this manner, the duties of a biographer would have been sensibly lightened. A fair and dispassionate account of the circumstances that led to the unpopularity which clouded, though it could hardly be said to darken, Cooper's later life, demands a full and careful examination of many facts which, in some instances, seem to have no relation to the subject. Especially is a knowledge of the European estimate of America during the period that the novelist resided abroad a matter of first importance. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... liveliest, which resemble him the most. These tokens of pre-eminence on man Largely bestow'd, if any of them fail, He needs must forfeit his nobility, No longer stainless. Sin alone is that, Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike To the chief good; for that its light in him Is darken'd. And to dignity thus lost Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void, He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain. Your nature, which entirely in its seed Trangress'd, from these distinctions fell, no less Than from its state in Paradise; nor means Found ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... voice spoke again in Annie's sleeping ear, saying, "The dark, unlovely passions you have looked upon are in your heart; watch well while they are few and weak, lest they should darken your whole life, and shut out love and happiness for ever. Remember well the lesson of the dream, dear child, and let the shining spirits make your heart ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... express himself; 'At New-England now the Sun of Comfort begins to appear, and the glorious Day-Star to show it self;—Sed Venient Annis Saeculae Seris, there will come Times in after Ages, when the Clouds will over-shadow and darken the Sky there. Many now promise to themselves nothing but successive Happiness there, which for a time through God's Mercy they may enjoy; and I pray God, they may a long time; but in this World there is no Happiness perpetual.' ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... have the regent assailed with numerous petitions and memorials complaining of the delays of justice, and exaggerating the danger which was to be apprehended from the daily growth of heresy. Nothing was omitted to darken the picture of the disorganized state of society, of the abuse of justice, and of the deficiency in the finances, which was made so alarming that she awoke with terror from the delusion of prosperity in which she had hitherto cradled herself. She called ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and fause; but it'll darken wi' the years, never fear. What ails ye at rid, Leddy—the prettiest man in these ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... merciful saying. Cold and dread and pitiless, the wave claims its due—it stretches its arms to the fullest length, and does not pause or hearken to the desire of any human heart. Hopeless to appeal to is the unseen force that sends the white surge underneath to darken the pebbles to a certain line. The wetted pebbles are darker than the dry; even in the dusk they are easily distinguished. Something merciless is there not in this conjunction of restriction and impetus? Something outside ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... pilot and observer darken the first ten minutes at the dinner-table. However, since cheerfulness is beyond godliness, we will take this to be an anxious occasion with a happy ending. Comes a welcome message from the orderly officer, saying that the pilot has phoned. His reason for ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... England, the days darken; We would not have thee slacken watch or ward, Nor doff thine armour till the whole world hearken, Nor till Time bid thee ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... he declined to pledge himself to its authenticity. The latest historian of Dulwich College[40] has admitted it to his text with too mildly worded a caveat. Often, too, has "G. Peel" emerged more recently from a long-forgotten book or periodical to darken the page of a modern popular magazine. I have met him unabashed during the present century in two literary periodicals of repute—in the Academy (of London), in the issue of 18th January 1902, and in the Poet Lore ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... the hopeless task that in one form or another we all undertake, and with which many darken their whole lives because they will not learn that it is an impossible one. Yesterday's roses died with the day, yesterday's manna was only for yesterday's need, but there are new flowers and new food for to-day from the same ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... sentiment of compassion was scarcely known to the early eighteenth century in France; it was certainly never extended to those unfortunate women who, as Vauvenargues puts it, "watch for young men as evening begins to darken." He was himself accosted on one occasion by a girl, whom he allowed to walk by his side while he gently questioned her. She easily told him of the wretched poverty which had driven her to vice, and Vauvenargues, after trying to revive in her some sentiment of modesty, left her ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... succession of plains. Some groups of trees, some green hedges and the roofs of various farms broke the monotony of the countryside. The fields were covered with stubble from the recent harvest. The haycocks dotted the ground with their yellowish cones, now beginning to darken and take on a tone of oxidized gold. In the valleys the birds were flitting about, shaking off the dew ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... snapped the Justice. "They are very conspicuous. And I would warn you, sir, that if you palter with the truth in such little matters you may darken your more important statements with suspicion. Why ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... law. I'm afraid he's hardly the man to make you happy, little lady; kind-hearted, well-meaning, but too much in earnest, too much absorbed in his ideas of right for a world where right's impossible, and every man for himself is the wretched sordid rule of existence. He will overshadow and darken your bright little life, I fear me; not intentionally—he couldn't do that—but by his Quixotic fads and fancies; good fads, honest fads, but fads wholly impracticable in this jarring universe of clashing ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... it before them. He had been too slow about it; he could not darken their lives with the visible horror of it. And it seemed to him that he had not sufficiently thought of its effect upon them. The whole thing had been clumsily planned. Just at first, when he was found hanging dead with the saw ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... water, a bottom of mud and sand. Its shores are covered with wood fit for fuel; and in it are several streams of fresh water. On the islands were sea-lions, &c. and such an innumerable quantity of gulls as to darken the air when disturbed, and almost to suffocate our people with their dung. This they seemed to void in a way of defence, and it stunk worse than assafoetida, or what is commonly called devil's dung. Our people saw several geese, ducks, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr



Words linked to "Darken" :   murk, maculate, stain, shade off, modify, defile, darkening, black out, cloud, blacken out, cloud up, lighten, embrown, dun, tarnish



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