"Starless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could be the melting of the ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, the quickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for a reason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burning forehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolate soul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him. Far better that she ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sweet indeed; but, ah! how bitter was the awakening. Her castles in the air had all melted into clouds, and here in the very flower of her youth she felt that her life was ruined, and she was as one wandering in a sterile waste, with a black and starless sky overhead. She clasped her hands with a sensation of pain, and a rose at her breast fell down withered and dead. She took it up with listless fingers, and with the quiver of her hand the leaves fell off and were scattered over her white dress in a pink shower. It was an allegory ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... he slid his hand into the crook of her arm and they began to retrace their steps. She could feel his heart beating and the warm, sinewy grasp of his fingers clasped about hers. The plain was a silver floor for their feet, in the starless sky the great orb soared. The girl's embarrassment left her and she felt herself peacefully settling into a contented acquiescence. She looked up at him, a tall shape, black between her and the moon. Her glance called his and he gazed down into ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to be at work. A bucket of water for present necessities was withdrawn from the water-butt, which was then emptied and rolled before the kitchen fire to dry; and the two brothers set forth on their adventure under a starless heaven. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cherish; but I can not believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. And I would rather that every God would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, that that just one soul should suffer eternal agony. I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will forgive the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. That every man should ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... bright-blazing fire the darkness was profound. As the wind in great blasts swept over the tops of the trees, its voice was raised to piercing shrieks that gradually died away into low moans. We thought of the vast wilderness lying all about us under the pall of a moonless and starless night. Where had all the people in the world gone ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Dante begs Virgil to interpret, and learns they are about to descend into Hades. Having visited this place before, Virgil boldly leads Dante through this portal into an ante-hell region, where sighs, lamentations, and groans pulse through the starless air. Shuddering with horror, Dante inquires what it all means, only to be told that the souls "who lived without praise or blame," as well as the angels who remained neutral during the war in heaven, are confined in this place, since Paradise, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of season, but no less violent because of that. It rained three days and nights on end—three windless days and starless nights, during which we had to linger alongshore close to the papyrus. In order to keep mosquitoes out we had to light a smudge in the sand-box below. The smudge added to the heat, and the heat drove men to the open air to gasp a few minutes in the rain for breath and go down ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... comfort, none; All the dewy tender breath Idly falls when life is done On the starless brow ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... largo, sad, persistent, dreamily hopeless; the other impetuous, resolute, glad. The dreamier mood is elaborated in the Serenade at the Villa and One Way of Love. A few superbly imaginative phrases bring the Italian summer night about us, sultry, storm-shot, starless, still,— ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... followed it, then slipped and rolled back as the fatal paralysis deadened all power of movement in his limbs. He lay where he fell, moaning out his grief with his wide-staring eyes turned straight up into the cold gray of the starless sky. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Night, black and starless, was upon us before we had penetrated half a mile into the woods. My youthful companion began to sing martial airs, and stimulated his courage by beating time with his feet on the bottom of the cart. A chill Autumn rain commenced to fall, tinkling against the rare leaves that now remained ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... to life from out the tomb; Death's bands thus swiftly rent, Life's tidal force Undammed, had rushed with too impetuous vent, Did not a tortuous cave arrest its course, Ere he at length emerged beneath night's starless gloom. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... of their very beauty driven to dare The uncompassed sea, founder in starless night. [Footnote: At the Sign of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... representative of myriads; the faint light waxes fainter,—it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... thy flight! For shadows gather round, and should we part, A dreary starless night May fill my heart,— Then pause and ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... moment, notwithstanding the heavy darkness of the starless night, Arthur saw her. She was seated on the stone bench as when last he had spoken with her. In her anguish she sought not to hide her face. She looked at the ground, and the tears fell down her cheeks. Her bosom heaved with the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... just under the ball), the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... adversary to strike; but the presence of two more Englishmen, rapidly coming up astern, forced the Americans to abandon their prey and continue their flight. It was then late in the evening, and the night was dark and starless. Every light was extinguished on the American frigate, in the hope that by so doing she might slip away under cover of the night. But the British lookouts were sharp-eyed; and by eleven o'clock two frigates had closed in on the crippled ship, and a third was rapidly coming up astern. All ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... from the kitchen door into the deep murk of a starless night. The moaning of a rising sea upon the outer reefs was the requiem of Sheila's hopes. One thing, she saw clearly, she must do. If she remained and fought for her place with the Balls, she must stand alone. Whether or not she held her place, she ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and the spectator. They would imitate with the most ludicrous exactness the motions and the voice of their sly patron the fox. Then a startling yell would be given. Many other warriors would leap into the ring, and with faces upturned toward the starless sky, they would all stamp, and whoop, and brandish their weapons like so many ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... scolding me. He carried me back to my dungeon, laid me tenderly on the bed, gave me some medicine, and asked me if there was any thing more he could do. Then he went away, and I was left with my own thoughts—starless as the midnight ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... written thus in vain— Thy triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain: If thou hadst died, as honor dies, Some new Napoleon might arise, To shame the world again; But who would soar the solar height, To set in such a starless night? ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... husband without a wife, a father without a child, a man without a friend. I thank you for the drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... our while to wait two, or it may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the starless night, to brood over the street; and summon forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for nothing ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fell like a black veil, starless and still. Up in Isabel's room the watchers came and went, dividing the hours. Only the nurse and old Biddy remained always at their posts, the one seated near one of the wide-flung windows, the other ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the starless night before dissolution—must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold, fresh well-water. Entering by the carre, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... nature as a resting wheel. The Kine are couch'd upon the dewy grass; The Horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is up, and cropping yet his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky. Now, in this blank of things, a harmony Home-felt, and home-created seems to heal That grief for which the senses still supply Fresh food; for only then, when memory Is hush'd, am I at rest. My Friends, restrain Those busy cares that would allay my pain: Oh! leave me to ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed—a star in an else starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that the flavour is more delicate in the smaller dose. He will not believe that to walk this unconscionable distance is merely to stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled to him the fact that the night was moonless—he wondered if the Colonel had thought of this—and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods—knows 'em from the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and beyond." So ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... open. He did not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night. It was a moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through the farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies were gathered, the "early ripe," as they are called in the cider country. As Cesaire passed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... but not my friends! Strange allies to his cause! Well, dusk was long My portion; now all gathering storms of hate Are less than naught to me. Six months ago, When here I stood that memorable night, My gloom was starless; now one fiery star Pierces it. And this broken frame of mine Cannot annul that much of victory— The solace born of passion to destroy That shall survive me if indeed I die. Alone my life was lived; if now I go, It is alone into a quiet grave Above whose mound the fairer ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... to smile back at her. Then he went out of the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace. A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's secrecy. The moon this night, afloat in a luminous gray void, somehow reminded Florian of a glistening ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... had waned and the night was starless when the chimes of San Nicolo told three of the morning in low melodious tones like a voice from dreamland, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... no moon that night, and the copse in which our pavilion stands was like a blot against the starless heavens. As I drew near it, my dog, the invariable companion of my walks, lifted a short, sharp bark from the stables. But I knew whose hand had fastened him, and I went on without giving him a thought. At the door of the pavilion I stopped. All was dark within as without, and the silence ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... fear, uprose; yet ere for flight in a mood Served his torn wings, a form before him stood In gloomy majesty. Like starless night, A sable mantle fell in cloudy fold From its stupendous breast; and as it trod The pale and lurid light at distance rolled Before its princely feet, receding on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... Dona Brigida, without a word, drove Pilar into the cave, and she and the vaquero, exerting their great strength to the full, pushed the stone into the entrance. There was a narrow rift at the top. The cave was as black as a starless midnight. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... saving of our moral health that we should turn away from the dreary flippancy of an effete society to such scenes as those. If we regarded only the pampered classes, then we might well think that true human fellowship had perished, and a starless darkness—worse almost than Atheism—would fall on the soul. But we are not all corrupt, and the strong brave heart of our people still beats true. Young men cherish manly affection for friends, and are not ashamed to show it; sweet girls form friendships that hold until the maidens ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... which the victim is carried away in a sack; the romantic abduction in a boat—but a lake is necessary!—the Venetian abduction, in a gondola—ah, you have no lagoon! Moonlight abduction, or the abduction on a dark and starless night—those moonlight abductions are quite the style, though they are a little dear!—Besides these, there is the abduction by torch-light, with cries and screams, and clash and shock of arms; the brutal abduction, the polite abduction; the classical one with masks; the gallant abduction ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... age to age, waves rolling forever, and winds moaning forever, and faithful hearts trusting and sickening forever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds forever; and still at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand the keys ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... beyond the still grey shoji For the breadth of innumerable countries, Is the sea with ships asleep In the blue-black starless night. ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... on, and Wilhelmine woke with a start as a more than usually violent jolt flung her against the door. She peered out into the darkness but could see nothing, for the night was absolutely starless. The road was so steep that at moments the heavy carriage threatened to run backwards down the hill, in spite of the straining of the wretched horses that struggled onwards, slipping and floundering on the dripping road. At ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the stimulus of the sun's rays was withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary deep blue, the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never seen before or since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the train that was rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and was ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... to the extent of a delicious familiarity, that she was disposed to seek change of posture or of place. Then, at last, softly, languidly, for indeed she was somewhat spent by the manifold emotions of the day, she rose and followed Richard into the starless, low-lying night. Her first words were very simple, yet to herself charged with far-reaching meaning—as a little key may give access to a treasure-chest containing ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... you will hear the blast of trumpets, the breaking of vials, the sounds of woe, the tramp of marching feet, the clash of battle, fire falling out of the heavens, trees and grass in flame, the waves of the sea turned to blood, fountains and streams become as wormwood and gall, the sun as black as a starless midnight, the moon hanging in the lowering heavens like a clot of blood, earthquakes, the scarlet tongues of outpouring volcanoes, thunderings and lightnings, all manner of wickedness and pervading sin, a world quivering as a ship in the storm, the bending heavens as though unbolted and insecure, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... in fact, only a simple continuation over it of the general ground of the Galaxy. The conclusion can hardly be avoided that, in looking at it, we see through and beyond the Milky Way, far out into space, through a starless region, disconnecting it altogether from our system. It is not easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle which this nebula offers as it enters the field of view of a telescope, fixed in right ascension, by the diurnal motion, ushered in as it ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... to the third opinion given, the waters above the firmament have been raised in the form of vapors, and serve to give rain to the earth. But according to the second opinion, they are above the heaven that is wholly transparent and starless. This, according to some, is the primary mobile, the cause of the daily revolution of the entire heaven, whereby the continuance of generation is secured. In the same way the starry heaven, by the zodiacal movement, is the cause whereby different bodies are generated or corrupted, through ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... pine woods that separated Aldercliffe from Pine Lea darkness had fallen, and he was compelled to move cautiously along the narrow, curving trail. How black the night was! A storm must be brewing, thought he, as he glanced up into the starless heavens. Stumbling over the rough and slippery ground on he went. Then suddenly he rounded a turn in the path ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... defects of her own nature, which prompted her. The prospect of the coming months filled her with dismay. When this last brief spell of pleasure was over, there was nothing left, to which she could look forward. The approaching winter stretched before her like a starless night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. What was she to do?—what was to become of her, when the short dark days came down again, and shut her in? The thought of it almost drove her mad. Desperate with fear, she shut her eyes and went blindly forward, determined to extract every ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... February, and in the terrible winter of 1719. The trees were powdered with hoar frost, and it was at this time impossible to glide quietly along in the little boat, for the lake was covered with ice. And yet, in this biting cold, in this dark, starless night, a cavalier ventured alone into the open country, and along a cross-road which led to Clisson. He threw the reins on the neck of his horse, which proceeded at ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... two months later—by which time the party was drawing near to Santa Rosa, and the great railway survey was approaching completion— that in the dead of a dark and starless night three Indians stealthily approached the surveyors' camp and, having first reconnoitred the ground as carefully as the pitch darkness would permit, made their way, noiseless as shadows, to the tent occupied by ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone, Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me Walking the cold and starless road of Death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. [19] I will rise and go Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth Talk with the wild Cassandra, [20] for she says A fire ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... arguings which, from the haunts of sacred literature, are inflictcd on our churches, lead us! According to them, Jesus Christ, instead of shining as the light of the world, extinguished the torches which his own prophets had kindled, and plunged mankind into the palpable darkness of a starless midnight! O Savior, in pity to thy suffering people, let thy temple be no longer used ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... deny their slight support. Cold dews my pallid face o'erspread, With deadly languor droops my head. My ears with tingling echoes ring, And life itself is on the wing; My eyes refuse the cheering light, Their orbs are veil'd in starless night: Such pangs my nature sinks beneath, And feels a ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... progress through the smooth sea, the natives in the boats singing a melodious chorus as, all in perfect unison, they plunged their broad-bladed paddles in the water, and the tow line surged and shook off thousands of phosphorescent drops at every united stroke. The night was dark, but not quite starless, and presently Frewen, who was talking to Foster, remarked that some heavy rain would fall in ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Southron, "even as the starless night—but yet—if this contrivance of thine should endanger thy safety, fair and no less kind than fair damsel, it were utterly unworthy of me to accept it at ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the music of the Union possessed a more lofty conception of the sacredness of the war for the Union than the Negro. The intensity of his desires, the sincerity of his prayers, and the sublimity of his faith during the long and starless night of his bondage made the Negro a poet, after a fashion. To him there was poetry in our flag—the red, white, and blue. Our national odes and airs found a response in his soul, and inspired him to the performance of heroic deeds. He was always seeing something "sublime," "glorious," ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... yet Emeline turned restlessly on her straw bed, and counted the dim rafters while Roxy slept. Finally she could not lie still, and slipped cautiously out of bed, feeling dire need to be abroad, running or riding with all her might. She leaned out of a gable window, courting the moist chill of the starless night. While the hidden landscape seemed strangely dear to her, she was full of unspeakable homesickness and longing for she knew not what—a life she had not known and could not imagine, some perfect friend who called her silently through space ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... some minutes to find the door, and bruising her hands against the wall and oaken chair, she at last found it and thrust it open, the night without was moonless and starless and stormy, and in its unillumined blackness she saw no trace of the little girl. She went out on to the doorstep and listened, but there was no sound. The wind was high; the perfume of the stocks and wallflowers was strong; far away the sound of the river rushing ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... everybody just as he could have foretold. The fire-lit room was filled with the busy weaving of the web that ruddy gleams and russet shadows never got finished, swiftly as they glanced, and overhead the black spaces between the rafters gloomed down like inlets of a starless sky. There sat his great-grandmother smoking her dudeen in her nook by the hearth, and her big cloak—a very little of wizened old woman to a great many heavy, dark-blue folds. There, too, knitted her grey-haired daughter Bridget, who said, as she did every ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... calmer. Whether she mistook it for her destiny or not, she seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the "streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying passion for knowledge and the spectacle ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... evident than that Nobility exists wherever there is Virtue, and each thing, commonly speaking, that we see perfect according to its nature is worthy to be called Noble. It says then: "So likewise that is Heaven Wherein a star is hung, But Heaven may be starless." So there is Nobility wherever there is Virtue, and not Virtue wherever there is Nobility. And with a beautiful and suitable example; for truly it is a Heaven in which many and various stars shine. In this Nobility there ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... ocean one cold starless night, A small bark was sailing in pitiful plight: The boom of the billows, as on rushed the storm, O'ercame the stout hearts of the ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... of Faith My troubled soul hath found repose, Free from the sad and starless gloom That ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... hotfoot through the rain along the smoking trail; twilight by day, depthless darkness by night, where we lay panting in starless obscurity, listening to the giant winds of the wilderness—vast, resistless, illimitable winds flowing steadily through the unseen and naked crests of forests, colder and ever colder they blew, heralding the trampling blasts of winter, charging us ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... cottage. The flame was prodigious: it soared into the sky like the eruption of a volcano, and the wooden cottage, with its flat logs and blazing roof, looked like a sacrificial pyre consuming the body of some warrior or Viking. In the light of the flames the soft sky, which was starless and flooded with stillness by the large full moon, had turned from blue to green. A dense crowd had gathered round the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... the most part empty, and so down a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far beneath the tremulous rustic bridge, he heard the mysterious crash and fall of an unseen torrent. Before him towered the shadowy hills up into the starless night; he thrilled with a sense of the loneliness and remoteness, and he had a formless wish that some one qualified by the proper associations and traditions were there to share the satisfaction he felt in the whole ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... likewise that is Heaven Wherein a star is hung, But Heaven may be starless; so In ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... the windows, and there still hung a pale glimmer outside owing to the refraction of light from the white stones of the terrace. Beyond on the left there sloped away a high black wall of impenetrable darkness where the yew hedge stood; over that was the starless sky. Sir Nicholas' study was bright with candlelight, and the lace and jewels of Lady Maxwell (for her sister wore none) added a vague pleasant sense of beauty to Mr. Stewart's mind; for he was one who often fared ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... really romancing, we should here dilate of the lovely ride in the lovely moonlight on the lovely road to Baalbek. But truth to tell, the road is damnable, the welkin starless, the night pitch-black, and our poor Dreamer is suffering from ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... felt and did These lines must needs disclose. As he stood there, Breathing soft odors from the mellow air, All hopes, all aims of noble knighthood seemed Like the dim yesterdays of one who dreamed, In starless caves of memory sunken deep, And, like lost music, folded ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... his college days, came under the influence of those who worshipped the reason and this worship led him out into a starless night. Have we not a right to demand something more than guesses, surmises, and hypotheses before we exchange the "hallowed glory" of the Christian creed for "the lonely mystery of existence" as Romanes found it? Shall we at the ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... opening, she was alarmed and dismayed to find that it had disappeared. Her heart now for the first time sank within her. She listened, but no sound, save the ominous moan in the air, came to her ear. The solemn, still, black night was all about her. She looked up, and a cold, starless, dim blank was all over her; and all around, standing thick, were cold, dark, silent trees. She stood and tried to think back: where was she, and how came she there? She knew she had once turned back, from something to somewhere—to the old road, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... is not merely to pass over a few degrees of latitude,—it is to take a step from the nineteenth century back into the dark ages. In the clime of sunshine and endless summer, we are in the land of starless political darkness. Lying under the lee of a land where every man is a sovereign is a realm where the lives, liberties, and fortunes of all are held at the will of a single individual, who acknowledges fealty only to a nominal ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of Italy had passed, and it was now completely night, dark and starless, which made more startling the sudden appearance of several blazing torches, borne by masked and hooded figures attired in black, who struck loud and repeated blows on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... difficult of explanation by means of the grindstone theory. This is the existence of vacant spaces—holes, so to speak, in the groundwork of the Milky Way. For instance, there is a cleft running for a good distance along its length, and there is also a starless gap in its southern portion. It seems rather improbable that such a great number of stars could have arranged themselves so conveniently, as to give us a clear view right out into empty space through such a system in its greatest thickness; as if, in fact, holes had been bored, and clefts made, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... with the hypothesis that nebulae are remote galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal system. If there were but two nebulae, and both were so placed, the coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on finding that there are thousands of nebulae so placed? Shall we believe that in thousands of cases ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... atones? For here the air is horrid with men's groans, The priests who call upon Thy name are slain, Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain From those whose children lie upon the stones? Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom Curtains the land, and through the starless night Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might Lest Mahomet be ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door—where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to the top ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... THE storm is at it's height—how the wind howls, Like an unearthly voice, through these lone chambers! And the rain patters on the flapping casement Which quivers in it's frame—the night is starless— Yet cheerly Werner! still our hearts are warm: The tempest is without, or should be so— For we are sheltered here where Fortune's clouds May roll all harmless o'er us as the wrath Of these wild elements that menace now, Yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary, and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape were ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:— 50 Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clod, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... all her towers and domes The city sleeps on yonder shore,— How many thousand happy homes Yon starless sky is bending o'er. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... therefore dare say, little about that future, I do beseech you to take this to heart, that he who there can stand before God, and say, 'Behold! I and the children whom God hath given me' will wear a crown brighter than the starless ones of those who saved themselves, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Starless night; violet night in which the white sandals of a beloved pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts two long and ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... sentinels, had scrutinized so long through the night every wavering shade of cloud and moving form of buffalo in the dim distance, that their sleepless eyes, strained and aching, failed to distinguish this moving mass that was so like the brown plains and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them. The night, too, was bitter; northern cold cut hardly chillier than this that parted the blaze of one hot day from the blaze of another. The sea-winds were blowing cruelly keen, and men who at noon gladly stripped to their ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... swayed dejectedly to and fro on the branches all day had flown off into the darkness. Presently, the light in the window went out, and as the hours wore on, a fine drizzling rain began to fall, as soft as tears, from the starless sky over the mulberry tree. A sense of isolation greater than any she had ever known attacked her like a physical chill, and rising, she went over to the fire and stirred the pile of coal into a flame. She was ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the window of his sitting-room and looked downward. Somehow or other, the depression against which he had struggled all the evening seemed only intensified by what he saw below. An early autumn had stripped bare the leaves from the scanty trees; the sky was gray and starless. Even the lights along the river front seemed to burn with a dull and uninspiring fire. He looked around him and his depression became an almost overmastering sensation. He hated the sight of his empty room, the phantom thoughts that would light upon his shoulder, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brooded over the city. The night was starless, the sea black as ink. Stephanie stood alone in the darkness of her balcony, and listened to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... fairest of loves! Life's most fanciful of gifts, Joy and treasure, love and wonder, Waking's elusive reality, Dream's ever-yielding divinity. Even thou must pass Beyond time's starless bar: Thy eyes, their lambent flames Shall no more illumine my night; Nor thy brow, home of many moods, Tranquil yet tormented as a sea, Shall ever wear the coronal of my kiss. Ah, kisses! blisses of fire, Passion's long lingering ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... till then was a sound heard among the silent and impassive throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water, the death-wail burst from the Indians with one impulse and one voice,—a people's cry for its lost chief, a great tribe's lament for the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the night before the wedding hung its cold, starless gloom over the Queen City-hung as the sable pall above ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the starless, midnight hour When Winter rules with boundless power, As the storms the forests tear, And thunders rend the howling air, Listening to the doubling roar, Surging on the rocky shore, All I can—I weep and pray For his weal that's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Berlin, for he was his only son. No help came. First his body gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering. Then his mind gave way and he became a raving maniac. Then his soul went out blaspheming God into a starless eternity. He died at thirty years of age. Behold the work of ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the sky. It was not the sky of the City, distant, and marbled with streaks of smoke. It was close and clear; starless, too; and no moon hung upon it. Yet though it was night there was light ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... was soon followed by the other lantern-bearers, who dispersed homeward, along the four roads diverging from the school-house, and, the night being starless, the children of the darkness followed meekly ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the revelation came to her—there was no denial, since they loved. Sense, indeed, was wholly put aside, but love has nothing to do with sense, being wholly of the soul. Shaken with wonder, she trembled as she sat in her chair, staring out into the starless night. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... fifteen summers was mature and strong. She pitched the tipi,[2] dug the tipsin[3] roots, Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits. Fearless and self-reliant, she could go Across the prairie on a starless night; She speared the fish while in his wildest flight, And almost like a warrior drew the bow. Yet she was not all hardness: the keen glance, Lighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance Betrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose O'er the weird circle of the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... the space Through which they penetrate to flutter like The heart of a trapped hare,—are revelling round us. Unlike the gloomy realm we just have quitted, Silent and solemn, all is restless here, All wears the ashy hue of agony. Above us bends a black and starless vault, Which ever echoes back the fearful voices That rise from the abodes of wo beneath. Around us grim-browed desolation broods, While, far below, a sea of pale gray clouds, Like to an ocean tempest beaten, boils. Whither shall we ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... moment. After the starless darkness and the icy night air, and the fierce silent two hours' race, his senses reeled on sudden entrance into warmth, and light, and the cheery hum of voices. A sudden unforeseen anguish assailed him, as now first he entertained the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... a God do anything by half? He foreknew and predestinated all The Great must pay for kissing things so small, And ever loves his little Maid the more The more she makes him laugh.' 'O, Mother, are you sure?' 'Gaze steady where yon starless deep the gaze revolts, And say, Seest thou a Titan forging thunderbolts, Or three fair butterflies at lovesome play? And this I'll add, for succour of thy soul: Lines parallel meet sooner than some think; The least ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... river below her, and all the eastward side of Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to Saint Cloud, great blocks and masses of black or pale darkness with pink and golden flashes of illumination and endless interlacing bands of dotted lights under a still and starless sky, but also the whole spacious interior of the great hall with its slender pillars and gracious arching and clustering lamps was visible to her. There, over a wilderness of tables, lay the huge maps, done on so large a scale that one might fancy them ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... failed to convince, at least silenced my opponents. And now the brief twilight, if so short a struggle between day and darkness deserved the name, passed off, and night suddenly closed around us—a night black and starless, for a heavy mass of lowering cloud seemed to unite with the dense vapor that arose from the river, and the low-lying grounds alongside of it. The air was hot and sultry, too, like the precursor of a thunder-storm, and the rush of the stream as it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... instantly the importance of this new move, and as quickly suspecting its purpose, leaped to the port-hole, and, endeavoured to gain a glimpse without. The night was still intensely black, the sky overcast and starless, the only glimmer of light the reflecting of foam tipped surges. If land was near it remained invisible, nor could he even be sure of the close proximity of a boat. There seemed to be a smudge there at the left, a black, lumping shadow, shapeless against the background ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... I reach Barbara's clear child-faith; Barbara, to whom God was as real and certain as I; never shall I attain to the steady confidence of Roger. I can but grope dimly with outstretched hands; sometimes in the outer blackness of a moonless, starless night; sometimes, with strained eyes catching a glimpse of a glimmer in the east. I can but feel after God, as a plant in a dark ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... The windows looked out on a view of Fordwitch Wood. As I opened the leaves which were to reveal to me the secret soul of the man whom I had so strangely met, the fading moonlight vanished, and the distant trees were lost in the gloom of a starless night. ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... skewers; wonderful phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, and then closed behind it with no ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... how sound you sleep! Though your mother's care is deep, You can lie with heart at rest In the narrow brass-bound chest; In the starless night and drear You can sleep, and never hear Billows breaking, and the cry Of the night-wind wandering by; In soft purple mantle sleeping With your little face on mine, Hearing not your mother weeping And the breaking ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those who had seen his seraglio;—but few, indeed, had seen him,—a lonely man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted by the curse of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... western sky lies glimmering, faint and far, With day's red embers dimly glowing there. Hark! how the wind comes gathering in its course, And sweeping onward, with resistless force, Howls through the silent space of starless skies, And on the breast of the swol'n ocean dies. Oh, though art terrible, thou viewless power! That rid'st destroying at the midnight hour! We hear thy mighty pinion, but the eye Knows nothing of thine awful majesty. We see ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... starless night, muffled overhead as the day had been, but without rain or mist. He had a lantern hanging at his saddle bow, ready to light. In the open lands we rode side by side, but through growths along the Fox first one and then the other led ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... mounting up and up, though the cliffs grew higher over it; till at last they were but going on a narrow shelf, the Shivering Flood swirling and rattling far below them betwixt sheer rock-walls grown exceeding high; and above them the cliffs going up towards the heavens as black as a moonless starless night of winter. And as the flood thundered below, so above them roared the ceaseless thunder of the wind of the pass, that blew exceeding fierce down that strait place; so that the skirts of their garments were wrapped about their ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... soldiers were stationed in the town, and sentinels kept a very careful watch. On the Sabbath, as the people were returning from public worship, one or two Indians were seen on the neighboring hills, which led the people to suspect that an assault was contemplated. The night was moonless, starless, and of Egyptian darkness. The Indians, perfectly acquainted with the location of every building and every inch of the ground, crept noiselessly, three hundred in number, each to his appointed post. They spread themselves over all parts of the town, skulking behind every fence, and rock, and tree. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... dark and starless night. Tattoo-beat had long been heard, and Hay's Brigade, weary after a long day's march, rested beneath the dewy boughs of gigantic oaks in a dense forest near the placid Rappahannock. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The troops were lying on nature's rude couch, sweetly sleeping, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... of broad leaves! In lonely wastes, When next the sunshine makes them beautiful, Gay troops of butterflies shall light to drink At the replenished hollows of the rock. Now slowly falls the dull blank night, and still, All through the starless hours, the mighty Rain Smites with perpetual sound the forest-leaves, And beats the matted grass, and still the earth Drinks the unstinted bounty of the clouds— Drinks for her cottage wells, her woodland brooks— Drinks ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... came over her indeed. She had left all on earth in the thick darkness of a starless spring night, yet all around her was lighted up like a mellow harvest eve, when the sun shines refulgent through masses of golden clouds on the smiling pastures and emerald meadows of the west. She looked up, but she could see no cause for this illumination. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... minutes past ten when they arrived at the air base at Los Alamos. The desert sky was cloudy and starless, and powerful searchlights probed the thick cumulus. There were sleek, purring black autos waiting to rush the air passengers to some unnamed destination. They drove for twenty minutes across a flat ribbon of desert ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... to part from you, but it has to be, and you must make up your mind to it.' Then she drew her golden comb gently through Elsa's hair, and bade her go to bed; but little sleep had the poor girl! Life seemed to stretch before her like a dark starless night. ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... cautious step beyond his hands touched a slippery, pliant vine. And his whisper ended as he felt the thing turn and twist beneath his hand. It was alive!—writhing!—cold as the body of a monster snake, and just as vicious and savage in the way that it whipped down and about him in the gloom of the starless night. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... blood atone, And make her arm puissant as your own! O! once again to Freedom's cause return The patriot Tell,—the Bruce of Bannockburn! Yes, thy proud lords, unpitied land! shall see that man hath yet a soul,—and dare be free! A little while, along thy saddening plains, The starless night of Desolation reigns; Truth shall restore the light by Nature given, And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven! Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurled, Her name, her nature, withered ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of night was drawn And crowded earth, mysterious sea Became one sweet, enchanted ground For us, until the starless dawn Dissolved the failing moon—then we In one long ecstasy were bound. Now, I, alone in silence and in pain Weep for the ache of well-remembered bliss, For you who never can return again, For you, my spring time, for your ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Kenelm was standing beside his window looking out into the starless dark, Felicia's special knock sounded hollowly at ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... in a pitiless storm on a black and starless night. Suddenly his horse drew back and refused to take another step. He urged it forward, but it only threw itself back upon its haunches. Just then a vivid flash of lightning revealed a great precipice ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... saw, scarcely fifteen yards from the bay-window of the ballroom, the upturned face of a woman who lay prostrate on the lawn. Lights had been turned on in the house, making a glow which cut through the starless night. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... the sound of its magical bells. They will speak of the hopes that have perished, and the joys that have faded so fast With the music of memory wing'ed, they will seem but the voice of the past; As, when the bright morning has vanished, and evening grows starless and dark, The nightingale song of remembrance recalls the sweet ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... known, Though not so tall as most, and not full blown To shape and flush like a full-hearted rose; But like a summer wave her bosom flows Lax and most gentle, and her tired sweet face Seems pious as the moon in a blue space Of starless heaven, and in her eyes the hue Of early morning, gray through mist of blue. Not by a flaunted beauty is she guessed Queen of them all, but by the right expressed In her calm gaze and fearless, and that hold Upon her lips which Gods ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... twilight which like a silver clasp unites to-day with yesterday; when morning and evening sit together hand in hand beneath the starless sky of midnight. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... noonward sun was torn, Ere day dawn's rosy hues had banished; A starless midnight blotted out the morn, Ere childhood's dewy joys had vanished. No slow paced twilight ushered in the night; A spangled web, the Heavens were swept from sight; The full moon fled and never waned; And all of Earth that's beautiful and fair. Became as shadows in the empty ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Vast and starless, the pall of heaven Laps on the trailing pall below; And forward, forward, in solemn darkness, As if to the sea of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... look, I own, was much brighter and brisker, 20 But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisked round, in a waltz with the Jersey,[61] Who, lovely as ever, seemed just as delighted With Majesty's presence as those ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... strike me very solemn, as I did lie; and I do trust that you conceive how that there was, in truth, afar above in the eternal and unknown night, the stupendous desolation of the dead world, and the eternal snow and starless dark. And, as I do think, a cold so bitter that it held death to all living that should come anigh to it. Yet, bethink you, if one had lived in that far height of the dead world, and come upon the edge of that mighty valley in which all life that was left of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... reasoning powers strengthened, Mr. Hammond led her gradually to the contemplation of some of the gravest problems that have from time immemorial perplexed and maddened humanity, plunging one half into blind, bigoted traditionalism, and scourging the other into the dreary sombre, starless wastes of Pyrrhonism. Knowing full well that of every earnest soul and honest, profound thinker these ontologic questions would sooner or later demand audience, he wisely placed her in the philosophic palaestra, encouraged her wrestlings, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... blessing; or in glittering crowds, Gazing all rapt on woman's eloquent face, Nature's most witching and most treacherous page; Or high in mirth with those whose senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew pale and starless, and her solemn pomp, Out-glared by day, faded in hueless space. I do repent me of my worship. Night Was given for rest: who breaks this natural law Wrongs body and soul alike. One vigorous hour Of sober day-light thought is worth ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Indeed, I am inclined to believe that the whole play, which is very unskilfully constructed, is by Tourneur, or perhaps by the author[281] of the Second Maiden's Tragedy. All the figures are shrouded in a blank starless gloom; to read the play is to watch the riot of devils. Here is an extract from the scene where Orlando, returning from the wars, hears that Charlemagne, his uncle, has married Ganelon's niece, and that his own hopes of succession ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... dark and starless, and passed by us as nights are passed in times of difficulty and perplexity; no one out of fear daring to sit down, or to close his eyes. But as soon as day broke, brilliant breastplates surrounded with steel fringes, and glittering cuirasses, were seen at a distance, and showed that ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of hell, and the strong bands of a pitiless death dragging her to the grave—still she craved, as the awful hour drew near, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... be one of the jewels that will shine brightly in Mrs. Lue's crown, when she receives her reward from the hand of her Master. May none who read this be found starless or ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... sacrificed to that estate. Maiden she was, his eyes caressed the sign Black o'er the topaz beauty of her breast. The stranger spoke. "Malua am I called; I hold for title Tui Tua Kau. Over the violent seas, beneath the frown, Cold and untoward, of a starless sky, The waves of chance have borne me; thro' the night Around me and above the pitiless trades Were blind with darkness, blown like maiden's hair Across my face. As palm trees beaten by wind, The tortured breakers tossed their streaming ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They silently commune together, Each sitting on his own head-stone The roofless house, decayed, deserted, Its living tenants all departed, No longer rings with midnight revel Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil; No pale blue flame sends out its flashes Through creviced roof ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... A starless night fell across the desert. With danger of pursuit practically ended, and only a chance encounter to fear, de Spain tried to help himself by walking the horse and resting his bleeding foot in front of the pommel, letting the pony pick his way ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman |
