"Dank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love: the curtain closes; a ruder hand than hers has shut her from his sight! It has all vanished; the stars seem dim, the autumnal air is dank and harsh; and where he had gazed on heaven, a bat flits wild and fleet. Poor Ferdinand, unhappy Ferdinand, how dull and depressed our brave gallant has become! Was it her father who had closed the curtain? Could he himself, thought ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the sitting-rooms ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee!' The western wind was wild and dank with foam, And all ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... stands deep in the Klamm, in the dank gorge where it is always half-night. The road runs under the rock and the trees, half-way up the one side of the pass. Below, the stream rushes ceaselessly, embroiled among great stones, making an endless loud noise. The rock face opposite ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... in the sod and dines on clay; he makes no after-dinner speeches; he never responds to a toast; but silently revels on in his dark banquet halls under the dank violets or in the rich mould by the river. But the red worm never reaches the goal of his visions and dreams until he is triumphantly impaled on the fishhook of ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... cold. A close mist that had come from the mountains hovered over the court and crept into every crevice, chilling and dank. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Katharine; and after they had stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Dickey confronted two rather pale-faced girls when the party of explorers again stood in the sunlit halls above. Across their shrinking faces cobwebs were lashed, plastered with the dank moisture of ages; in their eyes gleamed relief and from their lips came long breaths of thankfulness. Turk, out of sight and hearing, was roundly cursing the luck that had given him such a disagreeable task as the one just ended. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to me—a pity distinct from the harrowing sensations of his miserable end. He had been evil in the obscurity of his life, as there are plants growing harmful and deadly in the shade, drawing poison from the dank soil on which they flourish. He was as unconscious of his evil as they—but he had a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... their yellow glare the huddled company—for the month was December, and the air of the vast room was chill and dank—looked anxious and ill ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... shocks of electricity, while the perspiration produced by my late violent exertions congealed in icy beads upon my forehead. My thirst was gone, and I fairly loathed the water. Starting to my feet, the sight of those dank rocks, oozing forth moisture at every crevice, and the dark stream shooting along its dismal channel, sent fresh chills through my shivering frame, and I felt as uncontrollable a desire to climb up towards the genial sunlight as I before had ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... determination to go to Saint James, but on reaching Madrid, I fell into the hands of a Basque woman, who persuaded me to live with her, which I have done for several years; she is a great hax, {8} and says that if I desert her she will breathe a spell which shall cling to me for ever. Dem Got sey dank,—she is now in the hospital, and daily expected to die. This is ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the deck below, and their movements were languid. That tropical daybreak was chilly. The Malay quartermaster, coming up to get something from the lockers on the bridge, shivered visibly. The forests above and below and on the opposite bank looked black and dank; wet dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched deck awnings, and it was in the middle of a shuddering yawn that I caught sight of Almayer. He was moving across a patch of burned grass, a blurred, shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house behind ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... liever voor die Liefde in u die u verblind heeft. Dank God dat gij hebt liefgehad" (No. Thank God rather for the Love within which blinded your eyes. Thank God ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... had fallen steadily, and the mists hung heavy over the valley. The lower hills were wrapped as in a winding sheet; dank and cold. The trees were dripping with moisture. The stranger looked ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... my first cigar! It was the worst cigar! Raw, green and dank, hide-bound and rank ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... ascending paths, to the bottom of a wooded hill where a motor lorry with picks and shovels met us. Thence along a narrow muddy path through a wood. The path circles round the hill. The east side of the hill faces the Boche front line. It was still quite light. The undergrowth thick and dank. Our fellows very merry. The Boches know this path, which is pitted with shell holes. They shell the place by day, oddly enough, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... cape and a cap of yellow That perched on his dripping coal-black hair. A red scarf set off his throat and bound him, Crossing his breast, and, winding round him, Flapped at his flank In a red streak dank; And his hose were red, with a purple sheen From his tunic's blue, and his shoes were green. He was most outlandishly patched together With ribbons of silk and tags of leather, And chains of silver and buttons of stone, And knobs of amber and polished bone, And a turquoise brooch and a ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... again. [E] A strange artist, Utrillo, personal enough, just as Modigliani was handsome enough, to satisfy the exigences of the most romantic melodrama, with a touch of madness and an odd nostalgic passion—expressing itself in an inimitable white—for the dank and dirty whitewash and cheap cast-iron of the Parisian suburbs. Towards the end, when he was already very ill, he began to concoct a formula for dealing with these melancholy scenes which might have been his undoing. His career was of a few years only, but those years were ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... has," said the old manager, with the same tell-tale inhalation through the teeth. Fergus felt worse than ever. He groped for the bald head and found it cold and dank. In an instant he was clamoring under the trap-door, leaping up and ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the first break of day, and, leaving the postillion fast asleep, stepped out of the tent. The dingle was dank and dripping. I lighted a fire of coals, and got my forge in readiness. I then ascended to the field, where the chaise was standing as we had left it on the previous evening. After looking at the cloud-stone near it, now cold, and split into three pieces, I set about prying narrowly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the eye a flow'ret 'mid the desolation drear, Or a spray of pleasant verdure which the gloomy scene might cheer; Nought but frowning crags and boulders, and long sea-weeds, ghastly, dank, With the mosses and pale lichens, to the wet ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... deal table discovered for all other furnishing broken chairs, coils of tarred rope, a rack of ponderous oars and boat-hooks, a display of shapeless oilskins and sou'westers on pegs. The windows were boarded up from sills to lintels, the air was close and dank with the stale flavour of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... her window, heard them depart, and heard the noise of their going lapse into the bland monotony of the rain's noise. This dank night now divulged no more, and she turned back into the room. Adhelmar's glove, which he had forgotten in his haste, lay upon the floor, and Melite lifted it and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the Sands o' Dee; The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, And ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... even; nor then the solemn nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays: Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed Their downy breasts; the swan with arched neck Between her white wings, mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower The mid aerial sky: others on ground Walked firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train Adorns him, colored with the florid hue Of rainbows and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... break, the rain was gradually ceasing, leaving in the air a damp, fresh smell, the smell of wet asphalt and the odour of dripping woodwork. It was warm; the atmosphere was dank, heavy, tepid. One or two stars were out, and a faint gray light showed him the vast reach of roofs below stretching away to meet the abrupt rise of Telegraph Hill. Not far off the slender, graceful smokestack puffed steadily, throwing ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Unhealthy exhalations are thus avoided, and the salubrity of the climate is increased; but the European will sometimes sigh for the soft, balmy airs of his own land, which have come flying over the sea, and seem to bring their wings still dank ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... we walked back towards Lieramont was to secure decent quarters before troops coming up should flood the village. Our first discovery was a Nissen hut in a dank field on the eastern outskirts. It wanted a good deal of tidying up, but 'twould serve. We were ravenous for breakfast, and the cook got his wood-fire going very quickly. There were tables and chairs to be found, and the dog and I crossed the road, russet-red with the bricks from broken houses ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... there was evidently no bark in him, poor little fellow; everything about him said that he had just managed to crawl home to die. His brisk white coat seemed dank with cold dews, and there was something shadowy about him and strangely quiet. His eyes, always so alert, were strangely heavy and indifferent, yet questioning and somehow accusing. He seemed to be asking us why a little ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... thee, Adelaide! 'twas sweet, though mournful. But why thy brow o'ercast, thy cheek so wan? Thou look'st as a lorn maid beside some stream, That sighs away the soul in fond despairing, While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her, Hangs o'er the troubled fountain ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... sight the camp had presented before we started digging out. The ponies like drowned rats, their manes and tails dank and dripping, a saturated blotting-paper look about their green horse cloths, eyes half closed, mouths flabby and wet, each animal half buried in this Antarctic morass, the old snow walls like sand dunes ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... Blinkerly Dank-some-Hankly triumphantly, "a perfect human race and teach it the immortal principles of woman's rights. So, if we can't persuade Parliament to come out for us, we'll take Parliament by the slack of its degraded trousers, some day, and throw ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and is grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Dan realized, as, with his head on the dank, fishy pillow, he looked up in the glory above him, the stars were always there. Blurred sometimes by earthly mists and vapors, lost in the dazzling gleam of jewelled lights, darkened by the shadows of crooked trees, they shone with pure, steadfast, guiding rays,—the stars ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... elevated if non-exhilarating view of back yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the debris of a long, hard winter. Familiarity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... for a minute while a picture rose before me: a dank, gray dawn; a firing-squad, and Franz von Blenheim's dark, grim face. No doubt he had died bravely; but I could not pity him; I had too clear a recollection of the hall ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... stationed his guardsmen all over the castle, and arranged for the removal of the lady, and for the custody of her husband. An hour later the two friends were riding swiftly down the country road, inhaling the sweet air, which seemed the fresher for their late experience of the dank, foul vapours of their dungeon. Far behind them a little dark pinnacle jutting over a grove of trees marked the chateau which they had left, while on the extreme horizon to the west there came a quick shimmer and sparkle where the level rays of the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the sun, inviting Noozak and Neewa to the feast. All these things Noozak smelled with the experience and the knowledge of twenty years of life behind her—the delicious aroma of the spruce and the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water-lily roots and swelling bulbs that came from a thawed-out fen at the foot of the ridge; and over all these things, overwhelming their individual sweetnesses in a still greater thrill of life, the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank; you must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering about with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no fear of cold, for in a few moments you feel an icy cloak settle on your shoulders, like the Commendatore's ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... cabbage,—gross, indelicate vegetables! And even now, as well present upon my table that other diabolic cabbage of the New England swamps,—in old legend said to have been conjured up out of the ground by the Indian pow-wows, to beautify and perfume the dank and gloomy resorts where Satan was wont to drill them in their hellish exercises,—as its grandchild, the big booby of the garden. For is it not deservedly, if disrespectfully, named a cabbage-head? That is because it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... anxious eyes, she smiled again. "Yes, he made it," she said, wondering if Ed were the other outlaw that the papers had said had escaped. She walked briskly to the end of the room and returned with a dampened towel and wiped the dank sweat from Pete's forehead. He stared up at her, his face white and expressionless. "It was the coat—my hand caught," ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... cellar, with the two long wooden platforms where the subterranean trains land or load their freights. A strangling gas tickled their throats and set them coughing. It was all dank and dark and gloomy. But little youth and love care for that! They were bubbling over with the happiness of this abnormal meeting. Both talked together in their delight, and Maude patted Frank's sleeve with every remark. They could ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... smell of autumn in the air At the bleak end of night; he shivered there In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in Under the freedom of that ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... It was found necessary to clear the entire pier from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities of the night would have increased manifold. To add to the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came drifting inland. White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... [Daniel always got under way slowly, as though fore-resolved not to stampede.] Echo demands, "Retreat?—The Iron Brigade in retreat?" 'Twas true. Rallied once again, but under another flag than the Bars, the Missourians rode all that dank, wet night lest they meet and have to fight their new friends, the guerrillas under Rodrigo Galan. It was a weird predicament. Two days before, they were peaceful settlers in the land—omne solum forti patria—their blood-flecked swords as ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... down and rested after his toil. It was not really so comfortable a seat as one of the school forms, but the satisfaction was to find anything at all that would serve for a chair. He sat there, still panting after the climb and his struggle through the dank and jungle-like thicket, and he felt as if he were growing hotter and hotter; the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the tingling fire seemed to spread all ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... thou'lt sing! for well thy magic Muse Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar! Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more! Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose; Let not dank Will mislead you to the heath: Dancing in mirky night, o'er fen and lake, He glows, to draw you downward to your death, In his bewitched, low, marshy willow brake!] What though far off, from some dark dell espied, His glimmering mazes cheer th' excursive sight, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when first going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues of romance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows became burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the high banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church. The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... birds stood on one leg, knee deep, dreaming of their enchanted home. Truly it is a perfect paradise, but it is almost as inaccessible as the Paradise which we all seek. What long-lost civilizations have ruled these now deserted solitudes? Penetrate into the dark, dank forest, as I have done, and ask the question. The only answer is the howling of the monkeys and the screaming of the cockatoos. You may start when you distinctly hear a bell tolling, but it is no call to worship ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection. Sunt lacrymae rerum, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... parasites. In the underwood you meet thorny aloes, the "pita" plant, and wild mezcal; various Cactacese, and flora of singular forms, scarcely known to the botanist. There are swamps, dark and dank, overshadowed by the tall cypress, with its pendent streamers of silvery moss (Tillandsia usneoides). From these arise the miasma—the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the dank, fat, savage island of New Gibbon, lying fifty miles to leeward of Choiseul. Geographically, it belonged to the Solomon Group. Politically, the dividing line of German and British influence cut it in half, hence the joint control by the two Resident ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... a woman; very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them. Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice; A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt. And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red morn, through the heavy mist, Just ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... human shape, in the dark grey of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at her pale face, her hair hanging dank and wet about it, and saw that, even under these disadvantageous conditions, she had grown more beautiful than before. Of late he had heard of her—heard a good deal of her—but had never dreamed that they would ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... garden and serene. The leaning reeds in quiet state About the pool, merged in the green Of misty leaves and hanging vines. The fireflies spun their silver lines Across the deeper atmosphere, And through the silence came the clear Persistent tuning of the frogs From dank recesses of ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... them as we go back, but now let us cross the "Creek." It is a creek only by courtesy or an Americanism, at the present day; but when those miles of fertile fields upon the north were unreclaimed, the dank herbage hindered evaporation, and Easton's Pond was fed by unfailing streams. Then the vast body of overflowing water swept a deep channel, which the sea, rolling far up towards the pond, widened and made permanent. Boats came from ships in the offing, and followed its course to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... as I pushed onward through the mire. For presently it had come on to rain—a thick, dank rain, which wetted through all covering, yet fell soft as caressing ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of the crow, the scream of the eagle, the infrequent twitter of small birds, the mighty but subdued roar of insects, the rush of water over the rocks and the sigh and sough of the wind among the pines, the lonely wanderer has no sign of aught but the rank and dank vegetation and a gloomy, oppressive plodding on and on, without an instant's relief in the sights and sounds of human life. We entered upon the descent of the rapids ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... years drew on and on Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding; And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone, As a vision what she had missed ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... people collected around me from all parts. They requested me to speak; but as I did not understand their language I could not answer them. They repeated often the word Dank, Dank, and supposing them to be Germans, I addressed them in this language, then in Danish, and finally in Latin; but they signified to me, by shaking their heads, that these languages were unknown to them. I tried ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... the first thing I saw on arrival was a dank-looking man holding forth on Spiritualism, and enjoying what I should call a chastened vogue with most of the company ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... in liveries dank and dry, The noontides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude, And hear the monotonous ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... amusing cuts of the punning order, after Seymour's designs. After the quarrel with A Beckett, the artist withdrew his assistance from its pages, and the illustrations show a fearful falling off after 1833. Many of the wretched designs which follow bear the signature of "Dank," and so destitute are they of merit that the "embellishments" (as they are termed) for 1834, are altogether ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... spirits in pain, that groped at inconceivable distances from anything lovely or harmonious, seemed to rise dimly up out of the waves of sound that gathered under his hands. Melancholy human love wandered out on distant heaths, or beneath dank and gloomy cypresses, murmuring its unanswered sorrow, or hateful gnomes sported and sang in the stagnant swamps triumphing in unearthly tones over the knight whom they had lured to his death. Such was Blokeeta's night's entertainment; and when he at length closed the piano, and hurried ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... winding woodland alley. They brushed their way through the delicate overhanging foliage. The dank scent of the place was seductive. It was intoxicating with an atmosphere such as lovers are powerless to resist. The murmur of the river came to them on the one hand, and the silence of the pine woods, on the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... was the earth and dank ere yet he reached That spot; and lo! where lamb had lain, and dove Had mourned, and child had raced, there stood indeed High-raised, the Cross of Christ. Before it long He prayed, and kneeling, marked that on a tomb That Cross was raised. ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... these creatures born mediocre, whose heritage is neither brains nor brawn nor endurance? They are sweated in the slums in an atmosphere of discouragement and despair. There is no strength in weakness, no encouragement in foul air, vile food, and dank dens. They are there because they are so made that they are not fit to be higher up; but filth and obscenity do not strengthen the neck, nor does chronic emptiness of belly ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... haply they may save But one poor soul from out the piteous heap. But as they worked, their honest hearts elate With love-inspiring toil, Oh, sad to tell! Another mass, far larger than the last, Fell from the dark flood-loosened mountain side, Burying those noble men beneath the deep Dank heap, like those they ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... in life worth purchasing by pulsations and respirations. The world is a dank, malarious marsh, with fitful Will-o'-the-Wisp flashes of false radiance—a vast cemetery waiting for our corpses. There is no ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death, disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door, braced with clamps and bolts and locks and studded with great dark iron ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... and remote cabins which sent their smoke curling into the dank morning air of the region thereabouts, there was not one in which disease was not already raging with fearful malignity. Doctors or hired nurses there were none; each stricken household was forced to battle single-handed with the destroyer ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it? My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; And now my heart is as a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver Upon the sighful branches of my mind. Such is; what is to be? The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity: ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... undulations, until at last it joined the ice-cap which weighted the plateau. As far as the eye could follow the river ahead it stood solidly. Across its entire face it was dripping; a thousand little rills and waterfalls ate into it, and over it swept a cool, dank breath. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... encircled by a moat which had been suffered to dry itself up, though still the little stream which used to fill it when the dams were in repair, murmured and meandered at the bottom of the hollow, and fed the roots of many a water plant and many a tree whose nature delights in dank and swampy soils. The verdure, however, which encircled this ancient edifice, added greatly to the beauty, when seen over the extent of waste and wild in which it stood. There can be no doubt but that the ancient possessors of this ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... his knees; and, in the silence that followed was heard the drip, drip, drip, from the sodden rags on the beaten earth floor. The people without, staring, open-mouthed and silent, saw the Friar look up; his hand hastily outstretched touched the dank, muddy hair; then he knew all, and fell on his face with an exceeding bitter cry. It was answered by another cry—the glad cry of a lost child ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... whose name was Achmet, took him as his own slave, swearing that he would bring down his proud spirit, and tame him as he would a wild beast-by hunger. Accordingly, Ranadar was placed in a dungeon, whose moist floor, and dank, slimy walls showed it to be beneath the surface of the sea-far down under ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... "Gott sie dank! nodt for me," said the large lady, shaking her head. "Undt not for Maria's fadder. Joe Maroni iss doin' vell. But many are ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak; with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably his ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... ONE dank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of the day girls disappear through the side gate. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... on the landing to pull back the tapestry curtain and open the windows above the alcove seat, letting in the freshness of the morning to rout some of the dank chill of the hall. Kneeling there, he watched Rupert come around the house. Rupert had shed his coat and his sleeves were rolled up almost to his shoulders. There was a streak of black across his cheek and a large rip ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... seven, she was as tall as most children of ten, immensely fat, with pendulous red cheeks that in spite of cold cream and soft water always looked as though they had just been rubbed with a grater. Her hair, long and fair, was dank, hanging in two emaciated pig-tails nearly to her waist, and her nails—another ineradicable trick—bitten ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... enough in those days which immediately followed our almost miraculous escape from the den of Fu-Manchu; and now; as I crouched there, nerves aquiver—listening—listening—I could not be sure if this dank panic which possessed me had its origin in nightmare or in ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... sitting up beside Mamma a long way off. She could see them looking at each other. Roddy and Dank were with them. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... easy to produce successfully as those of plot and character. But sometimes a place so profoundly impresses a writer that its demands may not be disregarded. Robert Louis Stevenson strongly felt the influence of certain places. "Certain dank gardens cry aloud for murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable." Perhaps all of us have seen some place of which we have exclaimed: "It is like a story!" When, then, scene is ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... new necktie, he's gotta go to dinner with the Lodge." A handful of dank sea-weed writhed around the old man's neck. "That's a turtle, that is," the boy went on, the need for imparting information justifying his lapse from ragging the drunkard. "There—swimming round—it's tied to that stake. You orter've seen it at low ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... when I first awoke and, rolling from my blanket, looked about me. Already a faint, dim line of gray, heralding the dawn, was growing clearly defined in the east, and making manifest those heavy fog-banks which, hanging dank and low, obscured the valley. The tired men of my troop were yet lying upon the ground, wrapped tightly in their blankets, oblivious of the deadly work before them; but I could hear the horses already moving uneasily at their picket- ropes, and ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... and wound down to the level of the torrent; on the other side it rose again, and was lost among trees. The woods were dank; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Sound, and against which the tide, at its flux and reflux, sets with extraordinary rapidity. The venerable and somewhat crazy mansion was distinguished from afar, by a grove of elms and sycamores that seemed to wave a hospitable invitation, while a few weeping willows with their dank, drooping foliage, resembling falling waters, gave an idea of coolness, that rendered it an attractive spot during the heats ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... watched this day by day till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... armies gathering rank on rank! Lo! dusky masses steal in dubious sight Along the leaguer'd wall and bristling bank Of the arm'd river, while with straggling light The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank, Which curl in curious wreaths:—how soon the smoke Of Hell shall pall ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the woods we long delayed, When hours were minutes all too brief, For Nature knew no sound of grief; But overhead the breezes played, And in the dank grass at our knee, Shone pearls of our green forest sea, The star-white flowers of triple leaf Which love around the brooks to be, Within the birch and ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... some twelve miles from my starting-place, and it was midnight. The plain, the level road (which often rose a little), and the dank air of the river began to oppress me with fatigue. I was not disturbed by this, for I had intended to break these nights of marching by occasional repose, and while I was in the comfort of cities—especially in the false hopes that ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... out and deplore me that this next sixty miles of way, but especially the heat of the days and the dank mists of the night, should have to be told as of a real journey in this very repetitive and sui-similar world. How much rather I wish that being free from mundane and wide-awake (that is to say from perilously dusty) ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... neighbourhood. Tempted by the beauty of the night, he dismissed his carriage, and, turning from the high road, took a by-path which led to the city. The air was serene and mild. The moon-light was sufficiently clear to chase away night's dank vapours. The ground had imperceptibly risen, until having ascended a grassy eminence, over which the path stretched, the well-lighted city ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... was dank and musty and cobwebs spread across the openings where the windows had been. Much broken glass and a couple of sash weights fastened to ends of rotten sash cord lay upon the floor. In the corner was a makeshift bed of straw, matted from age, damp and unwholesome. The place was in possession ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to be a human head, though with scarcely a vestige of the features remaining. Here and there, patches of flesh adhered to the bones, and the dank dripping hair hanging about what had once been the face, gave it ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ochreish station. Then, without warning or signal, it slipped off, as though casually, towards an undetermined goal. Often it ran level with the roofs of vague, far-stretching acres of houses— houses vile and frowsy, and smoking like pyres in the dank air. And always it travelled on a platform of brick arches. Now and then the walled road received a tributary that rounded subtly into it, and this tributary could be seen curving away, on innumerable brick arches, through the chimneypots, and losing itself in a dim horizon of gloom. At intervals ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... middle, was a wreath of bubbles on the water. That marked the end of the tunnel, over the shield. Down beneath those bubbles the sand-hogs were rooting. But what was the mystery that the tunnel held in its dark, dank bosom? Had ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... America" was next examined. The general air of gloom—hopeless gloom—was depressing. Such mawkish sentimentality and despair; such inane and mortifying confessions; such longings for a lover to come; such sighings over a lover departed; such cravings for "only"—"only" a grave in some dark, dank solitude. As Mrs. Dodge puts it, "Pegasus generally feels inclined to pace toward a graveyard the moment he feels a side-saddle ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... whirled. He held only a club as a means of defense. He was in rags. His black hair hung in dank ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... hill which encircled it on three sides, and what with its own dilapidation, its broken fences and gates, the trees which crowded about it, and the large green-grown pond in front of it, it produced a dank and sinister impression. The centre of the building, which had evidently been rebuilt about 1700, to judge from its rose-red brick, its French classical lunettes, its pedimented doors and windows, and its ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sym, whose windings they followed, gurgled over their stones almost as quietly as in summer. There was a fresh wet smell, consoling and delicious after the train, the smell of country puddles and country mud and dank dead leaves that had been rained upon all day. Fritzing sat with the Princess on the back seat of the dog-cart, and busied himself keeping the rug well round her, the while his soul was full of thankfulness that their journey should after all have been so easy. He was weary in body, but very jubilant ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim |
