"Darkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... billet-doux, and the Brethren on the northern frontier were setting out for Poland, Augusta and Bilek were on their way to the famous old castle of Prglitz. For ages that castle, built on a rock, and hidden away in darkling woods, had been renowned in Bohemian lore. There the mother of Charles IV. had heard the nightingales sing; there the faithful, ran the story, had held John Ziska at bay; there had many a rebel suffered in the terrible "torture-tower"; and there Augusta ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... float afar o'er the flood of waves, haste o'er the billows; nor him I abandoned. Together we twain on the tides abode five nights full till the flood divided us, churning waves and chillest weather, darkling night, and the northern wind ruthless rushed on us: rough was the surge. Now the wrath of the sea-fish rose apace; yet me 'gainst the monsters my mailed coat, hard and hand-linked, help afforded, — battle-sark ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... weeping voice of tender tone * And whispered I, 'Fair fall thy foot and welcome and well come!' His cheek I kissed a thousand times, and yet a thousand more; * Then clipt and clung about his breast enveiled in darkling room. And cried, 'Now verily I've won the aim of every wish * So praise and prayers to Allah for this grace now best become.' Then slept we even as we would the goodliest of nights * Till morning came to end our night and light up earth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... gripped it and pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest and most unavoidable of expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon their Planet; it was much more like the shy endearments of the shop boys and work girls who made the darkling populous about ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... standing on a grey sea-bank He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave As toward a stormier eve; And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth, Intolerable and inevitable; and all Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall. And far out of the quivering east, and far From past the moonrise and its guiding star, Began a noise of tempest and a light That was not of the lightning; and a sound Rang with it round and round That was not of the thunder; and a flight As ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... offspring and the lonely spouse: She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise The tearful eye in melancholy gaze, Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose The Highland seer's anticipated woes, The bleeding phantom of each martial form Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm; While sad, she chants the solitary song, The soft lament for him who tarries long— For him, whose distant relics vainly crave The coronach's wild ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Darkling, he fixed Malua with his eyes, Noting each shadow of his changing thoughts, When the dear dreams centred on Taka, dreams Dimming his sight. Holding his lips apart, He slowly rose, Uhila following, For in the dark the music ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... silk hat. Presently the stock in the window begins to deteriorate in quantity and quality, and then I know that credit is tightening. The proprietor no longer comes to the door, and his first bright confidence is gone. He regards one now through the darkling panes with a gloomy animosity. He suspects one all too truly of dealing with the "Stores." ... Then suddenly he has gone; the savings are gone, and the shop—like a hungry maw—waits for a new victim. There ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Now, in their sunset home on Libya's heel, Phoenicia's sons unwonted chillness feel: Now, with his targe of willow at his breast, The Syracusan bears his spear in rest, Amongst these Hiero arms him for the war, Eager to fight as warriors fought of yore; The plumes float darkling o'er his helmed brow. O Zeus, the sire most glorious; and O thou, Empress Athene; and thou, damsel fair, Who with thy mother wast decreed to bear Rule o'er rich Corinth, o'er that city of pride Beside whose walls Anapus' ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... of it! oh the joy of it! Even amid my dream, methought we questioned its reality, so unearthly in its perfectness, it seemed. We stood upon the college-green, and the sun was going down with a strange, darkling splendor; and from afar, ever and anon came the thunder roll of battle; but we had nought to do with it; our part was done; our time was out; we were to fight no more. And there we stood, watching the students' games; and there too was poor Hale, merry and full ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... second-cabin barrier thinking this, the first time she saw the passenger with the red hair. She had paused by mere chance, and while her eyes were stormy with her thought, she suddenly became conscious that she was looking directly into other eyes as darkling as her own. They were those of a man on the wrong side of the barrier. He had a troubled, brooding face, and, as their gaze met, each of them started slightly and turned away with the sense of having unconsciously intruded and having ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rested. When two hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to sever the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before, among the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of their new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in their bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt unutterable. Would they meet again some ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... away is gliding The pleasant Oxus's stream, I see the green glades darkling, I see the clear pools gleam. I hear the bulbuls calling From blooming tree to tree. Wave, bird, and tree are singing, 'Away! ah, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... sees no roses darkling, No stately hollyhocks dim; She is only thinking and dreaming Of the garden, the night, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady. They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset, and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at—and the little heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse's arms, from ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... us far on our way, and beautiful is the road; high above, beech- and pine-woods, and sloping down to the road green banks starred with large blue and white campanula, with, darkling amid the alders, the noisy ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the singer, which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all in the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, with the love-enraptured solemnity of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... they came to the open land They wheeled, deployed and stood; Midmost were Marcus and the King, And Eldred on the right-hand wing, And leftwards Colan darkling, In the last shade ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... a bit does remorse seize on Tim Cannon, being a person of no moral convictions whatever; and as for dread and disappointment—one moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes, though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain. For it is not the nature of him to falter or to parley with fortune—when she declares against him he takes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... believe the wonders I have witnessed, I confine the recital of my adventures to the social circle. But what profession affords such scope for varied incident as that of the soldier? Change of clime, danger, vicissitude, love, war, privation one day, profusion the next, darkling dangers, and sparkling joys! Zounds! there's nothing like the life of a soldier! and, by the powers! I'll give you a song ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... barren plains no longer spoke of a boundless freedom and the elemental battle. These things had become something to forget in the absorbing claim of a life to come, wherein the harshness of battle had no place. The darkling woods, scarce trodden by the foot of man, no longer possessed the mystic charm of childhood's fancy. The trackless wastes held only threat, upon which watchful eyes would now gladly close. The stirring glacial fields of summer, monsters of the ages, boomed out their maledictions upon ears deaf ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... clouds fast gather, The forest-oaks roar— A maiden is sitting Beside the green shore,— The billows are breaking with might, with might, And she sighs aloud in the darkling night, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... with lurid flashes gathered darkling, thick and high, Lines of cranes like gleams of laughter sailed ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Soars fancy's flight beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, In low pursuit; Know, prudent, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... beneath the silent night Where'er they went, to lead their darkling way, The cloud of glory lent its guiding ray And shone more splendid ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the woman, her face darkling with passion, "he is Victor's brother, and he is no good. He drinks and gambles and makes the big noise with his mouth. Bou, wou, wou! I am the big man! I can do this! I can do that! I am the best man in the world! Always ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire,— Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face,— Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart— When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory—to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die,— This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! Never ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Through the darkling night, faintly visible in the feeble starlight—there was no moon—were driving shapes, a full score of them converging ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... lengthened, darkling, over the land; street-lights flashed up in long, radiant ranks. Across the promenade hotels and shops were lighted up; people began to gather round the tables beneath the awnings of an open-air cafe. In the distance, somewhere, a band swung into the dreamy rhythm of a haunting waltz. Scattered ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Darkling{7} I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... happened she was being hurried through the clear summer night past the long garden-walls of Grange Lane. The stars were shining overhead, the leaves rustling on all sides in the soft wind—not a soul to be seen in the long line of darkling road. Miss Dora had no breath to speak, however much disposed she might have been. She could not remonstrate, having full occasion for all her forces to keep her feet and her breath. When Mr Wentworth paused for an instant to ask "which way did she go?" it was all Miss Dora could ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... shouldst indeed see wondrous things * That would efface all sorrows and disperse all sores of sprite:' Then deigned our Caliph's Bride to cry, 'Where is that dress of thine?' * And I replied, 'In house of him kept darkling as the night.' So down upon it pounced Masrr and brought it unto her, * And when 'twas there each feather cast a ray of beaming light: Therewith I took it from his hand and opened it straightway * And ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the day, And dim, deserted courts where Dis bears sway, Night-foundered, and uncertain of the path, Darkling they ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... dreams— Let speculation pass, nor progress touch Thy silvan homes with hard, unhallowed hand! The light wind whispers, and the air is rich With vapours which exhale into the night; And, round me here, this village in the leaves Darkling doth slumber. How those giant pears Loom with uplifted and high-ancient heads, Like forest trees! A hundred years ago They, like their owner, had their roots in France— In fruitful Normandy—but here refuse Unlike, to multiply, as if their spirits Grieved ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... folding camp-cot stripped of bedding, a dresser with half-open drawers that disclosed emptiness, a dusty book-rack standing on the floor. The little mirror on the tent-pole, hung too high for her own reflection, held a darkling picture of a pine-bough against a patch of stars. She sat on the edge of the cot and picked up a discarded necktie, sawing it across her knee mechanically to free it from the dust. Her husband placed himself ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... proceed no farther, being himself unfortunately blinded by a stroke of the impatient youth's switch across his eyes. Enraged at once by the smart and the indignity, the falconer started up, and darkling as he was, for his eyes watered too fast to permit his seeing any thing, he would soon have been at close grips with his insolent adversary, had not Roland Graeme, contrary to his nature, played for once the prudent man and the peacemaker, and thrown ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of the city ran down the hill to their home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and active with ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... indifference. After defying and being expelled by Louis XV., he adopted (what has never, perhaps, been observed) the wild advice of d'Argenson ('La Bete,' and Louis's ex- minister of foreign affairs), he betook himself to a life of darkling adventures, to a hidden and homeless exile. In many of his journeys he found Pickle in his path, and Pickle finally made his labours vain. The real source of all this imbroglio, in addition to an exasperated daring and a strangely secretive temperament, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... darkling sweep of desert had been transformed. It was now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere the endless straggling green cedars. A breeze whipped in, making the fire roar softly. The sun felt ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... grilling him with eyes. Newcomers received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing suspense was but the criminal's detention awaiting trial. A known ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood: Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seem to touch the goal ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... us with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and darkling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from sight of human face or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... together, side by side, through leafy byways and winding paths, past smiling cornfield and darkling wood; we talked of the Government, of country and town, of the Fashionable World and its most famous denizens, concerning which last my companion's knowledge seemed profound; we spoke but little of books, of which he seemed amazingly ignorant—in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... light of day declineth, And a swift angel through the sky Kindleth God's tapers clear, With ashen staff the lamplighter Passeth along the darkling streets To light ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... blossomed like a flower of wondrous worth, A rare, sweet flower of heaven that ne'er should die, Altho' the vase in which it grew should lie Most rudely rent amid the darkling dearth. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... of the London Ghetto sat at their porches basking in the evening sunshine. Children were playing on the steps. Fathers were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung. Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty—eyes black as night—midsummer night—when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks of eagles—eager quivering nostrils—lips curved like the bow of Love—every ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lilies burn Along the marsh, and hillward the roads are sweet with fern. All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue, Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew. The lone white star of evening comes out among the hills, And in the darkling forest begin the whip-poor-wills. The fireflies that wander, the hawks that flit and scream, And all the wilding vagrants of summer dusk and dream, Have all their will, and reck not of any after thing, Inheriting no sorrow and no foreshadowing. The ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... the plain, near where the adjoining forest loomed darkling, the tall grass parted to disclose a black form. Was it only a deceiving shade cast by a leafy branch—only a shadow? Slowly it sank, and was lost. Once more the gray, unwavering line of ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth To Milton's white republic undefiled That might endure so few fleet years on earth Bore in him likewise as divine a child; But born not less for crowns of love and ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... us far the Rushy Moors are spread: Soon will the Sun withdraw her chearful Ray: Darkling and tir'd we shall the Marshes tread, No Lay unsung to cheat the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... papers shot continuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them in smaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs in exchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, through a third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. And unceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall and unceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddened children, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... one joy From earth can reach souls freed from earth's alloy, 'Tis sure the joy to know kind hands are here Drying the widow's and the orphan's tear; Helping them gently o'er lone life's rough ways, Sending what light may be to darkling days— A better service than to hang with verse, As our ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Richard! if my brother died, 'Twas but a fatal chance; For darkling was the battle tried, And fortune sped ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... paradise the canon is guarded; but like paradise it is wondrous in delight. For when you descend you find that the tape-wide trickle of water seen from above has become a river with profound darkling pools and placid stretches and swift dashing rapids; that the dark green sluggish flow in the canon-bed has disintegrated into a noble forest with great pine-trees, and shaded aisles, and deep dank thickets, and brush openings where the sun is warm and the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... through the city—the same mighty fatherly river that washed the walls of his native town up north. In the river Christophe could recover the memory of his childish dreams.... But in his sorrow they took on, like the Rhine itself, a darkling hue. In the dying day he would lean against the parapet of the embankment and look down at the rushing river, the fused and fusing, heavy, opaque, and hurrying mass, which was always like a dream of the past, wherein nothing could be clearly seen ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... later, far out in the night, The stars shall over me wing their flight; Sooner or later my darkling dews Catch the white ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... glass through which he sees darkly and often with a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil—the veil that ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... marble, the fixed gaze Of dead and dying eyes, that was the time When first I looked on death, and when I woke >From my deep swoon, I felt the night air cool Upon my brow, and the cold stars look down, As swift we galloped o'er the darkling plain And saw the chill sea-glimpses slowly wake, With arms unknown around me. When the dawn Broke swift, we panted on the pathless steeps, And so by plain and mountain till we came to ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Summer, and thy Autumn's mellowed haze, If rightly lived and rightly spent, will bring rare, happy days, That temper with their sunshine the frigid Winter's wrath, When gathering storms are darkling o'er life's declining path, And lend a ray celestial that hoarded gold ne'er gave To lighten all thy journey, from the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... consented; and each one's particular fear was turned, ah me! to my single destruction. And now the dreadful day was at hand; the rites were being ordered for me, the salted corn, and the chaplets to wreathe my temples. I broke away, I confess it, from death; I burst my bonds, and lurked all night darkling in the sedge of the marshy pool, till they might set their sails, if haply they should set them. Nor have I any hope more of seeing my old home nor my sweet children and the father whom I desire. Of them will they even haply claim vengeance for my flight, and wash away this ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... passed a swift current, indeed, but quite unthinking of the price paid for their safety. Looking back on the darkling river, they saw ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... from the allegiance which we pay—and women especially like to pay—to the tradition of the playwrights and the novelists, that social results of all kinds are the work of deep, and more or less darkling, design on the part of other women—such other women as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... with foolish, unfounded hopes and he never permits mad despair to paralyse him. He takes life as it is, and, as we all have to do, makes the best of its confusions. If we are here "as on a darkling plain, swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night," we can at least be "true ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... far thou heardest her, but nigh; Nigh, 'twixt the waste's edge and the darkling sky. Turn back again, too soon ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... Whoever would with success try this spell must strictly observe these directions. Steal out all alone to the kiln, and darkling, throw into the pot, a clue of blue yarn: wind it in a new clue off the old one; and towards the latter end, something will hold the thread: demand, wha hauds? i.e., who holds? and answer will be returned ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... that heartless, cold expression All my being terrifies— Though my darkling fear is lessened By thy frank and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to cross by way of the Pont des Invalides—how unwisely was borne in upon him almost as soon as he turned from the brilliant Quai de la Conference into the darkling rue Francois Premier. He had won scarcely twenty yards from the corner when, with a rush, its motor purring like some great tiger-cat, a powerful touring-car swept up from behind, drew abreast, but instead of passing ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... festivities, as you may remember, for you were our honoured guest at the time, and greatly displeased at his absence," he resumed, after a few seconds of darkling reflection. "None of us knew where he had flown to, for he did not evidently consider his owl's nest sufficiently remote; but we had his fraternal blessing to sustain us. And after that he continued to make periodical disappearances to his ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... legend, and a warning to the young; a Richard in the bush to frighten colts. He was preached at boys caught playing marbles "for keeps": "Do you want to grow up like Joe Louden?" The very name became a darkling threat, and children of the town would have run had one called suddenly, "HERE COMES JOE LOUDEN!" Thus does the evil men do live after them, and the ill-fame of the unrighteous increase when ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... finding her upon the spot, or that the humour of silence that seized her before may again return. No, I will not, to save being thought a fool, neglect the course she points out. Many of her class set out by being impostors and end by becoming enthusiasts, or hold a kind of darkling conduct between both lines, unconscious almost when they are cheating themselves or when imposing on others. Well, my course is a plain one at any rate; and if my efforts are fruitless, it shall not be owing to over-jealousy of my own ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... beams of the sun vanished from the broad horizon, than a small, gentle rain began to fall, and the light as well as brightness of the day became obscured by darkling clouds. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... lukewarm and conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye. It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... and usually forced to thrust the stuff away in despair, and go unhappily to bed, conscious that after all his labor he had done nothing. And these were moments when the accustomed vision of the land alarmed him, and the wild domed hills and darkling woods seemed symbols of some terrible secret in the inner life of that stranger—himself. Sometimes when he was deep in his books and papers, sometimes on a lonely walk, sometimes amidst the tiresome chatter of Caermaen "society," he would thrill with a sudden sense of ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... improved during the night; and, for the first time since leaving the Hebrides, the sun had got the better of the clouds, and driven them in confusion before his face. The sea, losing its dead leaden colour, had become quite crisp and burnished, darkling into a deep sapphire blue against the horizon; beyond which, at about nine o'clock, there suddenly shot up towards the zenith, a pale, gold aureole, such as precedes the appearance of the good fairy at a pantomime farce; then, gradually lifting its huge back above the water, rose a silver ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... correspondent. But however soft the answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned away. Will there not be a coolness between him and the lady? and is it not possible that henceforth her fine eyes will look with darkling glances upon the pretty orange cover of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and you, Flaccilla, to you, my father and mother, Here I commend this child, once my delight and my pet, So may the darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhound Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear. Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter, Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest, Summoning from the innumerable boughs 20 The strange deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows The shutting flower and darkling waters pass, And where the o'ershadowing branches ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... it is well to have a switch in the kitchen to throw light in the basement, on the chance that the wood-box may get empty before the evening has spent itself. There is comfort, too, in not being forced to go darkling to bed, like Childe Roland to the tower, but to put out the light from the floor above. But we are carrying this business too far in mental concerns. Here is properly a place for a rare twilight. It is not well that a man should always flare himself ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... field so wide and sunny Where the summer clover is, Where each year the mower searches For the nests of wild-bee honey, All along these silver birches Stand up straight in shining row, Dewdrops sparkling, shadows darkling, In the early morning glow; And in gleaming time they're gleaming White, like ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... good mile behind me. The sun had already sunk over the crest of the cliffs, and I could just see the mounted savages through the darkling gloom—still fallowing as fast as their horses could gallop. In five minutes after, I had entered the gorge. The twilight continued no longer: in the canon it was night. I followed the stream upwards, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Note-Books, Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a delightful solicitude reigning at ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... table was in front of them, and one leapt upon its edge, but as he leapt, the old knight, all his years and sickness forgotten now, sprang forward and struck downwards, so heavy a blow that in the darkling mouth of the passage the sparks streamed out, and where the Saracen's head had been, appeared his heels. Back Sir Andrew stepped again to win space for his sword-play, while round the ends of the table broke two fierce-faced ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... with good effect. Fear, and the other low and bad qualities of the slave, are appealed to, but never the good. The relation, therefore, between capital and labor, which ought to be generous and confiding, is darkling, suspicious, unkindly, full of reproachful threats, and without concord or peace. This condition of things renders the interests of society a prey to politicians. Politics cease ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... climbing, Crabs from the great sea, Sea that is darkling. Black crabs and gray crabs 5 Scuttle o'er the reef-plate. Billows are tumbling and lashing, Beating and surging nigh. Seashells are crawling up; And lurking in holes 10 Are the eels o-u and o-i. But taste the moss akahakaha, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... weeks I had been adrift, and how feebly I had resisted them. I asked myself if there were not in the moral compass of men, who wander by land, some guiding star, as there is for those who wander over sea. I gazed high above the sloping roofs for some sign of moon, or star. The sky was darkling and overcast; but in lowering my eyes from heaven to earth, I saw what I had missed before—a fair, white face framed in a window above the stoop directly opposite my bench. The face seemed to have a background of gold; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... knows, sees all is well; How God had stayed his will and shaped his way, To bring the light to those that darkling dwell With gains ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... midst the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night, With her sweet brood, impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest unconscious of her toil: She, of the time prevenient, on the spray, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... you trow, nuncle, The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had its head bit off by its young. So out went the candle, and we were left darkling. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... gods think to speak outright to man, they will honourably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... cease to play, Dew must glitter near the brink, Though the weary mind decay, As of old it thought so must it think. Leave alone the darkling eyes Fixed upon the moving skies, Cross the hands upon the bosom, there to rise To the throb ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... brought to on the highest and most solitary part of the by-road. On the left, a row of fieldside trees beshaded it; on the right, it was bordered by naked fallows, undulating down-hill to the Queensferry Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked all about him, drinking the clear air like wine; then his eyes returned to the cabman's face as he sat, not ungleefully, awaiting John's communication, with the air of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... means: And I was fearful even of clouds that drive Across the dawn, and die—of all, of nought - Winds whispering on the darkling ways of thought, Sunbeams that flash like fire, and hopes like fears That slay themselves, and live again, and die. But in mine eyes thy light is, in mine ears Thy music: I am thine, and more than I, Being half of thy ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... silent, and stared at the old woman darkling. Then very slowly, "I said he was my father's friend; I have invited him to my house, and come he shall," she said; and with that she walked off to her room, where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss M'Glashan, for that was the aunt's name, read a large bible in the kitchen with some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earth; My father's ark of safety hath announced it; The very demons shriek it from their caves; The scroll[151] of Enoch prophesied it long In silent books, which, in their silence, say More to the mind than thunder to the ear: And yet men listened not, nor listen; but Walk darkling to their doom: which, though so nigh, Shakes them no more in their dim disbelief, 280 Than their last cries shall shake the Almighty purpose, Or deaf obedient Ocean, which fulfils it. No sign yet hangs its banner in the air; The clouds are few, and of their wonted texture; The ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "Darkness," Byron has imagined such a blind and darkling world as these legends depict; and he has imagined, too, the hunger, and the desolation, and the degradation ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... will blame him if his thought recurred, At such a time, to England and the maid Beloved, to whom he gave his plighted word Ere parting? Who will wonder at the shade Of sorrow darkling on his troubled brow, As he reflects on what may not ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... neighing of a horse startled him, and he looked across the woods beyond the house, the direction, he calculated, whence the sound came. But there was no horse to be seen. Nothing except the darkling cover of pine woods. It was strange. He was sure the sound came from that direction. No; there was certainly nothing in the shape of a horse out there. There wasn't even a cow. Perhaps it was a "stray" amongst the trees. So he dismissed the matter from his mind and chirruped ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... darkling fishes grope. Cautious to stir, staring with jewel eyes; Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope, Winding their sulky ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of light. The empire of the day broke into a thousand ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells |
