"Unearthly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stake-and-rider fence, with the woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow; and once Mary's blood turned, for an instant, to ice, at the unearthly shriek of the hoot-owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow road, and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... parted to our respective cabins. And when, the next morning, at that unearthly hour demanded by Philadelphia trains and other exigencies, the Newton made her dock, I rejoiced that breakfast was not till seven o'clock, that I had two hours more of the berth, which was luxury compared ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... sun streamed full in the face of Angelique. She saw herself reflected in the large Venetian mirror. Her countenance looked pale, stern, and fixed as marble. The fire in her eyes startled her with its unearthly glow. She trembled and turned away from her mirror, and crept to her couch like a guilty thing, with a feeling as if she was old, haggard, and doomed to shame for the sake of this Intendant, who cared not for her, or he would not ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... round in a cage. The warming-up exercises are on. They will continue until Frank Sundell shaves his last customer and gets up to the hall with his trombone. You can tell when he comes. He pulls the slide in and out a couple of times with an unearthly chromatic grunt, and then there is a deep, pregnant silence. They are going ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... fresh start. The Hottentots and Kafir vociferated and yelled, and made the unearthly row of a dozen wild beasts wrangling: the horses drew the bullocks, they the wagon; it crawled and creaked, and its appendages ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the name of the Blessed Virgin, who was that?" said the Marquis, rubbing his eyes, before which an Unearthly apparition seemed to have appeared. "Who was that that rode by with Henri? only that I know it is impossible, I should have said that it ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... that separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... fra' th' mouth o' Hell. We all saw wi' our own eyes, inside that fearsome wall o' ice—seventy miles long, as we could swear to—inside that gray, cold ice, came leaping flames, all red and yellow wi' heat o' some unearthly kind out o' th' very waters o' the sea; making our eyes dazzle wi' their scarlet blaze, that shot up as high, nay, higher than th' ice around, yet never so much as a shred on 't was melted. They did say that some beside our captain saw the black devils dart hither and thither, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, and touching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches in diameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, and yellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... effects, which please at first from their novelty, but will not bear a calm, critical analysis. On its first appearance, The Course of Time was immensely popular; but it has steadily lost favor, and its highest flights are "unearthly flutterings" when compared with the powerful soarings of Milton's imagination and the gentle harmonies of Cowper's religious muse. Pollok died early of consumption: his youth and his disease account for the faults ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... spears, bows, and arrows, or the long, slender blowguns, consisting merely of a hollow reed. Women and children there were, too, also dancing and leaping about, howling at the tops of their voices. Above the unearthly din could be heard the noise of the drums and tom-toms, while, as the adventurers drew up in front of their airship, there came a sort of chant, and a line of natives, dressed fantastically in the skins of beasts, came filing ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a supernatural effect to the room's deep shadows, the picture's funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy's countenance, startled our eyes like the painful glare of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... room in the same house with her. And she coming in to see him and talk to him as if he was one of the Four Hundred himself! The comfort and luxury with which he found himself surrounded sank into insignificance when compared with such unearthly luck as this. Lady Anstruthers came in to see him also, and she several times brought with her a queer little lame fellow, who was spoken of as "Master Ughtred." "Master" was supposed by G. Selden to be a sort of title conferred upon the small sons of baronets ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... held together as with a vice; their limbs stiff and rigid or wholly relaxed; their teeth would be set; they would go through the paroxysms of choking and strangulation, and gasp for breath, bringing froth and blood from the mouth; they would utter all sorts of screams in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed, sometimes bereft of all light and expression, cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into flames of passion; they would pass into the state of somnambulism, without aim or conscious direction in their movements, looking at some point, where was no apparent ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the San Carlos or in the Cathedral. The first object of interest is the large collection of stone idols which have been dug up from time to time in and about the Grand Plaza. There are dog-faced idols, and apish gods, and unearthly things, besides the sacrificial stone, and a rude attempt to represent a goddess. Whether or no this was a sort of Aztec Lady of Remedies I did not learn. The Aztecs might easily have produced these works without exhibiting ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... They remained at the top of the great hill, each staring down it into the long space of unearthly clearness and light. Automatically he withdrew his arm from her shoulders where it had been resting heavily and dropped his hand on the steering-wheel. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... caravans over the trackless portions of Sahara. I wonder what the people of Europe will say when I tell them, that The Desert—pictured in such frightful colours by the ancients, as teeming with monsters and wild beasts, and every unearthly and uncouth thing and being, not forgetting the dragons, salamanders, vampyres, cockatrices, and fiery-flying serpents, and as such believed in these our enlightened days—is a very harmless place, its menagerie being ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... wild, shrill and unearthly that ever came from the death-throe of a breaking heart, arose upon the air, and echoed through the woods, and the widow sunk, fainting, to the ground. They raised her up—the blood was flowing in torrents from her mouth. They bore her to the house, and laid her on the bed. John Dulan watched ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... fine woman was called an "elegant female." The following is a sample description of one of Brown's heroines, and is taken from his novel of Ormond, the leading character in which—a combination of unearthly intellect with fiendish wickedness—is thought to have been suggested by Aaron Burr: "Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and fascinating quality. Her features were modified by the most transient sentiments and were the seat of a softness at all times blushful ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... it, and placed in front two pots of pombe. At the village where we put up, however, the women and children of the head man at first all ran away, and the head man himself was very shy of us, thinking we were some unearthly creatures. He became more reconciled to us, however, when he perceived we fed like rational beings; and, calling his family in by midnight, presented us with pombe, and made many apologies for having allowed us to dine without a drop ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... reproduction of one of Honey's poses, his arms folded over his little pouter-pigeon chest, lips pursed, brows frowning, dimples inhibited, gazing into the water. Just beyond, one foot on the bottom, Peterkin pretended to swim. Peterkin had an unearthly beauty that was half Clara's coloring—combination of tawny hair with gray-green eyes—and half Pete's expression—the look, doubly strange, of the Celt and the genius. Slender and beautifully formed, graceful, he was in every possible way a contrast ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... length she sinks down near him and lays her head upon his mailed bosom. Upward she turns her face to him, all passion-flushed, her eyes brimming with love. Sir Roland falters. Fascinated by her unearthly beauty, he is about to stoop down to press his lips to hers. But as he bends his head she shrinks from him, for she sees the tender flush of morning above the eastern tree-tops. The living stars faint and fail, and the music of awakening ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... with the cold; but before he could reply, they chattered with fear. We heard a loud scream overhead. "What was that?" cried he. I confess that I was as much alarmed as Tom. The scream was repeated, and it had an unearthly sound. It was no human voice—it was between a scream and a creak. Again it was repeated, and carried along with the gale. I mustered up courage sufficient to look up to where the sound proceeded from; but the darkness was so intense, and the snow blinded me ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to face. Obedient to his master's hest His eager steeds the driver pressed On to the spot where, none to aid, The strong-armed chief his weapon swayed. Soon as the children of the night Saw Khara rushing to the fight, His lords with loud unearthly cry Followed their chief and gathered nigh. As in his car the leader rode With all his lords around, he showed Like the red planet fiery Mars Surrounded by the lesser stars. Then with a horrid yell that rent The ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and sepulchral clay of the wall, which bears you down on all sides and enshrouds you in a dismal solitude; its blind and moldy breath touches your face. On the last steps, reached after long labor, one is assailed by a hot, unearthly clamor that rises from the hole as ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... girls succumbed as predicted. Lavender's pride in owning the site of the great enterprise weakened before the tragic picture drawn for her warning, in which she saw herself roused from slumber at unearthly hours of the night, leaning out of an opened window to draw a frozen cord through bleeding hands. She decided that on the whole it would be more agreeable to lie snugly in bed and receive the messages from the boys over a warm and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cloak, he sprang upon the second of the highwaymen. Their battle was short, for the fellow's clumsiness made him an easy victim for the slender youth. Pinked but slightly in the arm, he gave vent to an unearthly howl and, turning away, he fled through the dark aisles of the woods, his diminishing shrieks denoting the speed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... when they're 'in love'. Love! It's just sentimental idealizing and the worship of what does not exist and therefore cannot last. You love me, don't you, Dammy, not an impossible figment of a heated imagination? This will last, dear.... If you'd idealized me into something unearthly and impossible you'd have tired of me in six months or less. You'd have hated me when you saw the reality, and found yourself tied ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... unearthly about the whole of this man's career. He is an object in some respects rather for admiration than for imitation. He could do and say things which other men could not without some sort of unreality. John Wesley, with his usual good sense, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... new life into worn-out phrases,—a man or two who can for a moment or for an hour, by the very weight and excellence of their thoughts, and because they truly and deeply feel them, arrest the age, and challenge and secure attention, in spite of all the infelicities of an antiquated style and an unearthly delivery. But in this age, more than ever before, we are summoned to surrender our scholastic preferences and esoteric honors to the exigencies of the million. And the men of this generation have, without much conference, come with great unanimity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic sword, repeatedly occur in the sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the celebrated Nibelungenlied, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is full of them. There Etsel, or Attila, is described as the wearer of twelve ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... little the logic of self-interest. I sometimes think a child's vision is clearer, even in worldly matters, than the eyes of those can be who have lived among the fumes and vapours that rise in these low grounds, unless the eyes be washed day by day in the spring of truth, and anointed with unearthly ointment. The right and the wrong were the two things that presented themselves to my view; and oh, my sorrow and heartbreak was, that papa was in the wrong. I could not believe it, and yet I could not get rid of it. There were oppressors ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dusky wall, against the indigo of the sky, and in front of him the prairie rolled away, silent and shadowy. There was scarcely a sound but the low ripple of the creek, until, somewhere far off in the distance, a coyote howled. The drawn-out wail had in it something unearthly, and Muller, who was by no means an imaginative man, shivered a little. The deep silence of the great empty land emphasized by the sound reacted upon him and increased ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... and willowy form was staggering back across the room, as though she had been shot or stabbed, staggering back till at last she struck the cavern wall, and then there burst from her lips the most awful and unearthly scream that I ever ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... its pallor, except for the bright, the terrifying flush of the cheeks; and the lips were dark with the sickly darkness of death. He lay on his back continually, apathetic and listless, his eyes closed. Now and again he opened them, and their vacant brilliancy was almost unearthly. He seemed to see horrible things, impossible to prevent, staring in front of him with the ghastly intensity of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... bridegroom in the early Grasmere days was about her for the nine years of her widowhood, "lovely as a Lapland night"; or rather like one of her own Rydal evenings when the sky is clear over the perfect little lake, and the reflections of island and wood and fell go down and down, unearthly far into the quiet depths, and Wansfell still "parleys with the setting sun." My grandmother writes of her—of "her sweet grace and dignity," and the little friendly acts she is always doing for this person and that, gentle or simple, in the valley—with a tender enthusiasm. She is "dear Mrs. Wordsworth" ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Englishman to the lone house on the Appia Via; and the mysterious and unearthly conversation of the starry visionary afforded to him, who had early learned to scrutinise the varieties of his kind, a strange delight, heightened by the contrast it presented to the worldly natures with which he usually associated, and the commonplace ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the common jack snipe seemed not a whit less mysterious than partridge drumming. It was usually heard on cloudy evenings, a strange, unearthly, winnowing, spiritlike sound, yet easily heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our sharp eyes soon detected the bird while making it, as it circled high in the air over the meadow with wonderfully ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... sins, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf," said the almost unearthly voice—"on rebellion, on rapine, on murder! Who stirred up the licentious John to war against his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... end of the hall, catch a bullet out of an exploded pistol in his hand, and perform other marvels equally irrational and disturbing. From this raree-show Father Higgins had gone home feeling that he had witnessed something about as unearthly as he was likely to be confronted with ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... and made hollow, like a dead man's face. What he would have said, God knows. He seemed to utter words, but they were such as man had never heard. And this was the most fearful circumstance of all, to see him standing there, gabbling in an unearthly tongue. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... because they could not enter it. Some of their number who had entered the control building now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... appeared throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for at the slightest noise the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... principle, either ... No! I, as an anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the worse things are, the better ... But, fortunately, I am a gambler and spend all my temperament on gaming; on that account simple squeamishness speaks louder within me than this same unearthly feeling. But it's amazing our thoughts coincided. I just wanted to ask ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... long, discordant cry could be heard somewhere in the distance, ending in a spasmodic jerk. It was like nothing human. Yet strangely it suggested something human. As if some unearthly ghoul were trying to simulate the wailing of human anguish.... Then again it was quite grotesque, bearing no resemblance to the cry of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... reaching the interior, was greeted by Dirck Hatteraick with a curse in his old fashion—the smuggler had been expecting her, and was waiting with anxiety for news of his band. The only light within the cave was from a charcoal fire, the dark- red glow from which gave a dismal and unearthly appearance ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... in check I crouched there, straining my ears for a repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever heard before,—a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out, now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... newly-landed passengers from the ocean-ferries. There is generally a tug, perhaps with a slow convoy, to be waited for or circumnavigated ere the "slip" can be entered. And they run so close in-shore that the pilot has to be wary, and in some cases to emerge with a series of unearthly steam screeches, lest he step upon one of them with his great "horseshoe" of a ferry-boat. The steam-yacht is the most graceful as well as agile of the species, as certainly it ought to be when as much money is sometimes put into one as would buy a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... stone in the church vibrated, without leaving its place; for the organ-pipes spoke, and I heard divine music mingling with the songs of angels, and unearthly harmony, accompanied by the deep notes of the bells, that boomed as the giant towers rocked and swayed on their square bases. This strange Sabbath seemed to me the most natural thing in the world; and I, who had seen Charles X. hurled from ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... pure are the pleasures of piety, Drawn from the fountain of mercy and love; Endless, exhaustless, exempt from satiety, Rising unearthly, and soaring above.—G. Brown. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in the act of handing a glass of champagne to the favored Overtop, when an unearthly shriek was heard, which startled the steadiest nerves. This shriek was repeated three times in quick succession, and seemed to come from the sidewalk in front of the house. There was a general rush to the window; but Wilkeson, Overtop, Maltboy, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... listening to the doctor's stories of a quack mesmerizer and looking at the ashes of his cigarette. There had been a period of repose, and he had sunk into oblivion. He had completely forgotten what was going on now. He heard the doctor's chat and understood it. Suddenly there came an unearthly shriek. The shriek was so awful that Levin did not even jump up, but holding his breath, gazed in terrified inquiry at the doctor. The doctor put his head on one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. Everything was so extraordinary that nothing could strike Levin as strange. "I suppose it ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... still, pale orb, the eye may see Dim spots of shadowy brown, like distant tree Or far-off hillocks on a moonlight lea. The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold, The viewless dew falls lightly on the wold, The gentle air, that softly sweeps the leaves, A strain of faint, unearthly music weaves; As when the harp of heaven remotely plays, Or cygnet's wail—or song of sorrowing fays That float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale, On wings of woven air in some ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... that there came out of the East a beam of unearthly light,—a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers hardly believed it. Slowly they saw the gates of Ellis Island closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... captain will be sure to believe that we are all dead," Charley agreed. "There is something unearthly about that ringing, but of course there is a natural cause for it if ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the devil in various guises. On one memorable occasion she witnessed two thieves being conveyed to the place of execution, and tortured, in a cart. Instead of lamenting their sins, they behaved like demons. Though no one else beheld anything unearthly near the culprits, St. Catherine saw a multitude of devils provoking them to blaspheme and curse. Having compassion on the unhappy men, she went into the cart beside them, drove the evil spirits away, and brought the condemned ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... earthly eye could see their forms. Light as bubbles they floated through the air without the aid of wings. The little mermaid perceived that she had a form like theirs; it gradually took shape out of the foam. 'To whom am I coming?' said she, and her voice sounded like that of the other beings, so unearthly in its beauty that no music of ours could ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... that afterthought and later years might labour vainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a fearful joy, upon her father's music. Those visionary strains, ever struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language of unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories, sensations of pleasure or pain,—all were mixed up inexplicably with those sounds that now delighted ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... exhibition of riding and the usual torchlight tricks, and then the supreme moment came. The massed bands had thundered out the first verse of the Evening Hymn, the refrain was taken up by a single silver trumpet far away—a sweet thin almost unearthly note more to be felt than heard—and then the bands gathered up the whole melody and everybody ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... hands pressed over her heart, only conscious of her trembling delight. Once or twice before she had felt thus, in watching a gorgeous sunset in the old pine grove; and now, as the musician seemed to play upon her heart-strings, calling thence unearthly tones, the tears rolled swiftly over her face. Images of divine beauty filled her soul, and nobler aspirations than she had ever known took possession of her. Soon the tears ceased, the face became calm, singularly calm; then lighted with an expression which nothing ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... opposite sex. The strangest symptom of all, however, is the physical change in the patient, whose features and figure, under the trained eye of the observer, gradually from day to day assume the symmetry and charm of a beauty almost unearthly, sometimes accompanied by a spiritual pallor which is unmistakable in confirming the diagnosis, and which, Dr. Lamour believes, presages the inexorable approach ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... music after the polyphonists. By Church music I mean music written for the Church, not necessarily religious music. The passage at "Ego cubui et dormivi" is sublime, Purcell's discords creating an atmosphere of strange beauty, almost unearthly, and that yields to the unspeakable tenderness of the naive phrase at the words, "Quia Jehovah sustentat me." The Te Deum was until recently known only by Dr. Boyce's perversion. Dr. Boyce is reputed to have ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... below them, a surging, tempest-lashed ocean of flame, with mile-long billows, mile-high breakers and mile-deep shadows. All about the flaming ocean, except to the leeward, was a sea of faces, white and upturned, and rapt as with some unearthly vision. Stretching out for miles were housetops swarming with crowds, gazing appalled at the spectacle in which the fate of every man, woman and child of them was vitally involved. At times the gale, with a strong, steady sweep, would level the billows of fire, and bear the current ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... noontide of the moon, and when The wind is winged from one point of heaven, There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then Is musical—a dying accent driven Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again. Some deem it but the distant echo given Back to the night wind by the waterfall, And harmonised by ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... like to measure strength with!" shouted Kukubenko, the hetman of the Nezamaikovsky kuren. Spurring his horse, he dashed straight at the Pole's back, shouting loudly, so that all who stood near shuddered at the unearthly yell. The boyard tried to wheel his horse suddenly and face him, but his horse would not obey him; scared by the terrible cry, it bounded aside, and the Lyakh received Kukubenko's fire. The ball struck him in the shoulder-blade, and he rolled from his saddle. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that I was entirely easy in my mind as we lay out that blizzard somewhere off Terror Point; I don't know how the others were feeling. The unearthly banging going on underneath us may have had something to do with it. But we were quite lost in the pressure and it might be the deuce and all to get out in the dark. The wind eddied and swirled quite out of its usual straightforward way, and the tent got badly snowed up: our sledge had disappeared ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... were not, at first sight, unpleasing, which, upon a nearer inspection, seemed to indicate the habitual prevalence and indulgence of evil passions, and a power of expressing mere animal anger, with an intenseness that I have seldom seen equalled, and to which an almost unearthly effect was given by the convulsive quivering of the sightless eyes. You may easily suppose that it was no very pleasing reflection to me to consider, that whenever caprice might induce her to return, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... close to him was a strange, unearthly figure. He was sitting perfectly still, grinning at Gabriel Grubb with such a grin as only a ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... said ghost travelled far and wide, for on dark, windy nights it knocked upon the doors of those that in its lifetime had been its tenants, and in a hollow voice declared that it had been murdered by the Abbot of Blossholme and his underlings, who held its daughter in durance, and, under threats of unearthly vengeance, commanded all men to bring him to justice, and to pay him neither ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain; But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move In hearts all rocky now ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... nothing in reply, but I had no intention of being left, for I did not know what dwellers the forest might contain, and I had a vivid remembrance of being greatly startled, only a day or two before, by unearthly cries in these very woods; of seeing a herd of young cattle rushing frantically away, turning apprehensive glances toward the sounds, and huddling in a frightened heap down by the bars, while the strange cries came nearer and ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... ethereal. He thought of his first visit to her, the open piano, "Proficiscere, anima Christiana," "The Scarlet Letter," and her quotation. What had she been thinking while she played Elgar's curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne's pitiful book? She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of escape from life. And her escape had been not into filth or violence, not into the salons of wit, or into the salons where ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... willing one, and his car had a tonneau capacious enough to accommodate the ex-naiad and her movable pool. But he would have to tell Tom the whole peculiar adventure to get him to take his auto out at such an unearthly hour. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... the Queen-Mother when Richard was crowned and anointed King of the English, unearthly pure, with eyes like stars, robed in dull red, crowned herself with silver. All those about her, marking the respect which the old Queen paid her, scarce dared lift their eyes to her face. The tall ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... supplied most important materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos—The Old Ghost—and one of the most singular examples of his vein of grotesque and ominous humour—The Oviparous Tailor. Yet it may be doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are traces in Beddoes' letters of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... more than three hundred of them now, but on they came, giving that hellish rebel yell at every jump—the cry of the hunter from the hilltop at the sight of his game! All Southern men are hunters, and that cry was transformed in war into something unearthly when it came from a hundred throats in chorus and the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... intellectual achievement; and while each has told many events, and given many traits which the others have omitted, that they have all performed their task in the same unique style of invention and the same unearthly tone of art; that one and all, while preserving each his own individuality, has, nevertheless, attained a certain majestic simplicity of style unlike any tiring else (not only in any writings of their own nation, their alleged sacred writings, and infinitely superior ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the shadows of the trees. The little gray rabbits, sitting up on end, were like circles of hobgoblins that dispersed and vanished at the approach of mortals. The leafless old hawthorns, rugged and crooked, silvered by the moonlight, were most ghostlike of all. They took every form, from the most unearthly to ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... ahead, I saw a beam of light stab through the darkness and strike the tossing surface of the lake. Another and another followed, and I could see that the SF-22 and her convoy were surrounded by these unearthly rays. They converged from high above to outline a brilliant circle where they met on the surface of the waters, and in the midst of the cone formed by the beams, the liner and its seven tiny followers could be seen to falter, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... that he was in a dream. In the realms of the subconscious he had heard just such sounds—exotic and unearthly—fleeting and evanescent. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... with only a few stars showing. A fitful wind moaned unearthly through the spruce. An occasional thump of hoof sounded from the dark woods. No cry of wolf or coyote or cat gave reality to the wildness ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... stillness on his spirit fell, Before th' unearthly train; For he knew Valhalla's daughters well, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the other day—the sick, I mean—how are they?" and he scrutinized the company. At last, he singled out one who was assuming a most unearthly appearance, and remarked that he looked as if he were extremely ill. "Yes," said the sailor dolefully, "I'm afeard, doctor, I'll soon be losing the number of my mess!" (a sea phrase, for departing this life) and he closed his ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... and Win leading the way. St. Helier's streets are indeed crooked, and paved with cobble stones of alarming size and sonorous qualities. Numerous men and boys tramped along in wooden sabots which made a most unearthly clatter. Even little girls wore them, though otherwise their dress was not unusual. Outside one shop hung many of the clumsy foot- gear, the price ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... issued and obeyed when the door fell in with a loud crash, and a hideous horned head appeared in the opening; but only to receive three ladles-full of the boiling soap full in its face, and fall back with a terrible, unearthly yell of agony and rage, into the arms of its companions, who quickly ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... beauty, as she came quickly toward him, struck Dale as almost unearthly. She was within a few yards of him when she saw him. A rich colour flushed her face as she recognized him and her ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the snow was swept before it in great, unearthly clouds of white, the fire crackled and leaped at the opening in the cabin door. The northern winter night closed down, ever deeper, ever darker, ever more fraught with those mighty passions of the human soul. But he responded no more to the wild music of the wind. The wilderness ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many-coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... stars pursue Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,— What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves, The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they view! But soon as morning bids the sky exult, As earth from nothing, so that countless host From slumber and from silence will awake To mighty being! while the forest-birds Rush into song, the matin breezes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... dashes past you in the mist. You can hear her, but the fog hides her. Then the boat goes ahead again, and gradually the fog bells on the shore grow louder and clearer, and in a little while the dock bursts suddenly upon you, so spectral and unearthly in its appearance that you hardly recognize it. The boat now glides swiftly into her "slip," and a sigh of relief breaks from the throng on ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... in the black woods, the silence about us almost unearthly, broken only by the dash of water over the rocks below where we were camped, promising a difficult portage on the morrow. Alone, oppressed by the silence, feeling my helplessness as perhaps I never had before, and the dread loneliness ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... frightened seaman, he sprang into the port rail, to see where the stranger would strike them. As he did so, that mysterious craft flew by, and the whole sea seemed lighted up by a strange illumination. It was like a terrible dream—so wild, so supernatural and unearthly. As Captain Lane stood by the port rail, he saw right under his quarter, a large, low, black brig, with her decks crowded with men, and guns protruding from her ports; while on the weather rail, clinging with one hand to the shrouds, stood ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... wedding guest, and carried off to the isolation and remoteness of mid-ocean. Through the chinks of the narrative, the wedding music sounds unreal and far on. What may not happen to a man alone on a wide, wide sea? The line between earthly and unearthly vanishes. Did the mariner really see the spectral bark and hear spirits talking, or was it all but the phantasmagoria of the calenture, the fever which attacks the sailor on the tropic main, so that he seems to see green meadows ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... said this last word suddenly and sharply, and Polly was quite startled; but fancy her alarm when a large black cat crept out from beneath the red cloak, and sitting down on his mistress's knee, looked up in her face with an air of unearthly sagacity, and poor Polly fell back in her chair, unable to move hand or foot. There she sat, motionless, but perfectly conscious, watching this dreadful old hag. And what do you think the creature did next? She took some strange looking herbs from her ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... at this unearthly hour,' said Smith, who was nothing to the eye except a very big man trying to make himself small, 'because I am coming to the conclusion that existence is really too rotten. I know all the arguments of the thinkers that think otherwise—bishops, and agnostics, and those sort ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... attired in gay dresses, and marching merrily on in the direction of the church. I soon perceived that it was a marriage-festival. The procession was led by a long orang-outang of a man, in a straw hat and white dimity bobcoat, playing on an asthmatic clarionet, from which he contrived to blow unearthly sounds, ever and anon squeaking off at right angles from his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... an unearthly style of preaching, if I may use the term, without the blood of human life in it: the people with their burdens in the pews—the burden of home, the burden of business, the burden of the problems of the day—whilst, in the pulpit, the minister is elaborating some nice point, which has taken his ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... old John sat, mute as a stock-fish, staring at him with an unearthly glare, and displaying, by every possible symptom, entire and complete unconsciousness. But when Solomon was silent again, John followed with his great round eyes the direction of his looks, and did appear to have ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... rushed toward the bridge, growing up to its full staring, brazen dimensions. Six or seven figures sat in it, all of the same dusty, shrouded likeness, their big glass eyes and their masked mouths suggesting some fabled, unearthly race, a family of replete and bilious ogres; so that as they flew honking by us ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... contrast to the lovely violet sky and the grand architectural magnificence above ground, among men who cared little for the things of time and sense, because life itself had not a moment's security, were nevertheless nourished thoughts of ideal beauty and unearthly grandeur, which afterwards yielded such glorious fruit in the Christian art of Italy. The frescoes of the Catacombs are the feeble beginnings of an artistic inspiration which culminated in the "Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Gibbs went into open hysterics at their guns, and even while sleeping on their arms, under humming bullets and crashing shells and over mines ready to be sprung, sobbed and shivered like babes, aware in their slumbers that they might "die before they waked." In the town unearthly bowlings and volcanic thunders, close overhead, cried havoc in every street, at every cave door. There Anna, in low daily fevers, with her "heart in New Orleans," had to be "kept quiet" by Miranda and Constance, the latter as widowed as Anna, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... dare-devil cavalier who once made a dash to steal the king's regalia from the Tower. Again—Loon Lake. Can you imagine two more lonesome wailing words to make a picture with? But—Cohocton. How oddly right my absurd instinct had been about that—and, shall we ever forget the unearthly beauty of the evening which brought us at dark to the quaint little operatic-looking village, deep and snug ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... heard until Wednesday. Then, before Isoult was down in the morning, having apparently risen at some unearthly hour, Mr Rose presented himself, and asked for John. The two went out of doors together, to Robin's deep concern, and not much less to Isoult's, for she had her full share of womanly curiosity in an ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... most unearthly yells, and they are joined in them by all who sleep near. The first imagines himself seized by a wild beast, the rest roar because they hear him doing it: this indicates the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the declining sun, for it was evening, shone aslant upon his form as it rose aloft, motionless, and commanding; his countenance was much worn and marked, as of one who had braved alike misfortune and the sternest vicissitude of many climes; but his eyes were bright with an almost unearthly fire; and when he raised his arm to speak, it was with the majesty of a man into whom the Spirit of a ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... ominously; lamps, chandeliers and girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower struck the ill-timed hour with a solemn, unearthly reverberation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... made this change to be something so high, disinterested, and superhuman, so removed from all natural and common habits and feelings, that the most earnest and devoted, whose whole life had been a constant travail of endeavor, a tissue of almost unearthly disinterestedness, often lived and died with only a glimmering hope of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of the next morning I was awoke by a most unearthly sound. It was as if all the cats on all the roofs of Santa Chiara were sharpening their claws and wailing their battle-cries. Presently out of the noise came a kind of music—very slow, solemn, and melancholy. The notes ran up in great flights of ecstasy, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an untoward accident, which quenched her ardor. Other models failing her for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened with unexpected rapidity. With much difficulty and some danger she was dug out, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... intrude unbidden into my mansion," she shrieked out in a wild unearthly tone, which made Algernon ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ottar sang the saga of the sword of Hiorvard; how the maiden warrior won it from the grave mound of her father, Angantyr, in spite of terror of the dead hero, and of the unearthly fires. That was a good saga, and when it was ended ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... when habit and impressions rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions must be earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, colour our habits, and so influence us at those times when the mind, almost by the necessity of our condition, cannot directly interpose its own deliberate decision as ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold |
