"Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... 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 windows of the great building. ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... 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 |
