"Stilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his youngest brother from the farther side of the fireplace began to sing the air OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT. One by one the others took up the air until a full choir of voices was singing. They would sing so for hours, melody after melody, glee after glee, till the last pale light died down on the horizon, till the first dark night clouds ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... was always a favorite experience with me. In sultry weather one can nearly always get a whiff of freshened air, perhaps from the sea; and the quiet is not less reviving to the heated brain. Nowhere does the night seem more "stilly," or the sense of seclusion more profound, than in the middle of the broad bay on a midsummer night before or after the theatre-goers have crossed. The cities, veiled in moonlight or dim in the star-light, seem to be breathing peacefully in giant slumber. The prosaic features of the scene are hidden, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing in certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the interests of the United States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... felt her sadness; Her earth will weep her some dewy tears; The wild beck ends her tune of gladness, And goeth stilly as soul that fears. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... our noble Order, then (Our faith could boast no better men), Had by their daring lost their life, When thou forbadest us the strife. And yet my heart I felt a prey To gloom, and panted for the fray; Ay, even in the stilly night, In vision gasped I in the fight; And when the glimmering morning came, And of fresh troubles knowledge gave, A raging grief consumed my frame, And I resolved the thing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... finish." Making powder-horns—repairing rifles—employments in pleasing unison with old pursuits, and by the associations thus raised in his mind, always recalling the pleasures of the chase, the stilly whispering hum of the pines, the fragrance of wild flowers, and the deep solitude of ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... Memorial Arch was then half-masted, and the order was given for the troops to "reverse arms" and "rest on their arms reversed." The massed bands of the 13th Infantry Brigade played the "Dead March in Saul," after which "Oft in the Stilly Night" was played by the band of the 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The massed bugles of the 13th Infantry Brigade then sounded "The Last Post," and the flag on the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... possessed a highly cultivated voice. He frequently sang the beautiful old ballads so much in vogue at that period. I have heard through Mrs. Samuel L. Hinckley, an old friend of mine, who remembered the incident, that during a visit to Boston when he sang Tom Moore's pathetic ballad, "Oft in the Stilly Night," there was scarcely a dry eye in the room. In referring to the introduction of the Italian Opera into this country Dr. John W. Francis in his "Old New York" thus speaks of Dominick Lynch: "For this advantageous accession to the resources of mental gratification, we were indebted to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the clover! Dew on the eyes that will sparkle at dawn. Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover, Into the stilly world, Into the lily world. Into the lily ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... hears the merlin sing, In vain she seeks her flower alcove, In vain for her the roses spring. If holy peace she tries to seek, She hears Clorinda's maniac song, Or Florabel's ecstatic shriek, Sounding the stilly woods among. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... that moment over the appearance of the bay. It was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with glass, where the green submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Deer came at night to feed on the lily buds on the lake borders. They would come stealing among the alders and swim far out to soak their coats. When they had made themselves mosquito-proof, they would come back to the lily beds and I would swim among them stilly, steering by the red reflection of my camp-fire in their eyes. When my thought that was not the thought of killing touched them, they would snort a little and return to the munching of lilies, and the trout would rise in bubbly rings under my arms as I floated. But though I was a brother ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... muteness &c 581; solemn silence, awful silence, dead silence, deathlike silence. V. be silent &c adj.; hold one's tongue &c (not speak) 585. render silent &c adj.; silence, still, hush; stifle, muffle, stop; muzzle, put to silence &c (render mute) 581. Adj. silent; still, stilly; noiseless, soundless; hushed &c v.; mute &c 581. soft, solemn, awful, deathlike, silent as the grave; inaudible &c (faint) 405. Adv. silently &c adj.; sub silentio [Lat.]. Int. hush!, silence!, soft!, whist!, tush!, chut!^, tut!, pax! [Lat.], be quiet!, be silent!, be still!, shut ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve: a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The silly girly sugary crudity his given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Amenoph, who, on the Theban plain, With magic melody the sun salutes; Or he, far mightier, to whose conquering car Monarchs were yoked, Rameses: by the Greeks Sesostris styled. And yet no sculptor's art Moulded this shape, for form it seemed of flesh, Yet motionless; its dim unlustrous orbs Gazing in stilly vacancy, its cheek Grey as its hairs, which, thin as they might seem, No breath disturbed; a solemn countenance, Not sorrowful, though full of woe sublime, As if despair were now a distant ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... as glass; The frozen stars hang stilly down; I sit inside while people pass From the ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled her. Beware of ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... despite the noon's heat) until the sun began to decline and I was parched with thirst. But now, as I fitted the last of my timbers into place, the board slipped my nerveless grasp and, despite the heat, a sudden chill swept over me as borne upon the stilly air came a voice, soft and rich and sweet, uplifted in song and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... day was not suitably ended if, after tidying up the kitchen and practicing "The Harp That Once" and "Oft in the Stilly Night" on his fiddle, he did not go across the fields to Marietta Martin's and compare the moment's mood with her, either in the porch or at her fireside, according to the season. They lived, each alone, in a stretch of ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... he rode, and smote him behind his horse's arse a spear length. And then he alighted down and reined his horse on the bridle, and bound all the three knights fast with the reins of their own bridles. When Sir Lionel saw him do thus, he thought to assay him, and made him ready, and stilly and privily he took his horse, and thought not for to awake Sir Launcelot. And when he was mounted upon his horse, he overtook this strong knight, and bade him turn, and the other smote Sir Lionel so hard that horse and man he bare ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... couldn't be all in the name! the likeness was amazin'! amazin'!" And forth from the stilly air seemed to come to the good old butler's ear, "Dear little Jennie! dear ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... advanced thy honour, and been thy faithful man in thy rich court, and in each fight the highest of thy knights. And I have often heard anxious whisperings among thy courtiers; they hate thee exceedingly, unto the bare death, if they it durst show. Oft they speak stilly, and discourse with whispers, of two young men, that dwell far hence; the one hight Uther, the other Ambrosie—the third hight Constance who was king in this land, and he here was slain through traitorous ...
— Brut • Layamon
... (Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!) 5 And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light. Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be) Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents Snatch'd from yon bean-field! and the world so hush'd! 10 The stilly murmur of the distant ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Skarphedinn and his brothers, how they bend their course up to Rangriver. Then Skarphedinn said, "Stand we here and listen, and let us go stilly, for I hear the voices of men up along the river's bank. But will ye, Helgi and Grim, deal with Lyting single-handed, or ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... floating, On the bosom of a rill, Like a star sent back to Heaven, When the lake is calm and still; A woman's soul lies dreaming, On the stilly waves of life, Till love comes with its sunshine— Its ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... sat on the deck, with his back against the mainmast, in deep melancholy and listlessness, and fell, at last, into a doze, from which he was wakened by a peculiar sound below. It was a beautiful and stilly night; all sounds were magnified; and the father of all rats seemed to be gnawing ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... stilly sitting-room, away from the noisy crowd, to hear love's heart beating. He darted to the chair where Gertie had sat and guiltily kissed its arm. He tiptoed to the table, blew out the lamp, remembered that he should only have turned down the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... and long grey waste of waters, Lo, one lone sail on all the lonely sea A moment blooms to whiteness like a lily, As sudden fades, is gone, yet half-seems still to be; And you,—though that last time so strange and stilly,— Though you are dead, will ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the stilly hours of the early dawn those sleeping in tenements and extensions adjacent to the hall bedroom occupied by Caput were roused by a trembling voice that sought vainly to imitate the nonchalance of experience, declaiming: "Gentlemen of the jury, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... while the dew is sweet; Come to the dingle where fairies meet. Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our mossy dells; Stilly and lightly their vases rest On the quivering sleep of the waters' breast, Catching the sunshine thro' leaves that throw To their scented bosoms an emerald glow; And a star from the depth of each pearly ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... In the "early fifties" this latter was indeed a luxury, even in city homes. She uttered a little cry of delight, and flinging herself before the instrument, ran her fingers over the keys, and broke into his favorite song, "Oft in the Stilly Night." She had a beautiful voice, the possession of which would have made her renowned had opportunity afforded its cultivation. She had "picked up" music and read it remarkably well, and he, Indian wise, was passionately fond of melody. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... those tuneful chimes, Borne on the breath of morn, Proclaiming to the silent world Another Sabbath born. With solemn sound they echo through The stilly summer air, Winning the heart of wayward man Unto the house ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... while the dew is sweet, Come to the dingles where fairies meet; Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our forest dells; Stilly and lightly their vases rest On the quivering sleep of the water's breast, Catching the sunshine through the leaves that throw To their scented bosoms an emerald glow; And a star from the depths of each pearly cup, A golden star, unto heav'n looks up, As if seeking ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... elevated region. It is almost as light as day, and one can see to ride quite well wherever the road is ridable. The pale moon seems to fill the whole broad valley with a flood of soft, silvery light; the peaks of many snowy mountains loom up white and spectral; the stilly air is broken by the excited yelping of a pack of coyotes noisily baying the pale-yellow author of all this loveliness, and the wild, unearthly scream of an unknown bird or animal coming from some mysterious, undefinable quarter completes an ideal Western ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... To-morrow eve, more stilly laid, My couch may be the bloody plaid, My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid! It will not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... coast that the arm of the Romans reached even across the Channel. The first Roman officer who entered Brittany, Publius Crassus had already (697) crossed thence to the "tin-islands" at the south-west point of England (Stilly islands); in the summer of 699 Caesar himself with only two legions crossed the Channel at its narrowest part.(42) He found the coast covered with masses of the enemy's troops and sailed onward with his vessels; but the British war- ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to say so Arthur—cannot remember Mr Clennam until the word is out, such is the habit of times for ever fled, and so true it is that oft in the stilly night ere slumber's chain has bound people, fond memory brings the light of other days around people—very polite but more polite than true I am afraid, for to go into the machinery business without so much as sending a line or a card ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... friend I knew, In whose house died a son, Worthy of bitter rue, His only one. His head sank, yet he bare Stilly his weight of care, Though grey was in his hair ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... the "stilly sound" of the low murmuring brook Misprinted in 1851 as "slitty sound". Probably John Home, Douglas ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... hectic flush On thy sweet cheek is burning, That thou dost stilly hush Thy wrung heart's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... prayer of man and woman, the praise of lisping tongues, the hum of insect joy upon the air, the sheep-bell tinkling in the distance, the wild bird's carol, and the lowing kine, the mute minstrelsy of rising dews, and that stilly scarce-heard universal melody of wakeful plants and trees, hastening to turn their spring-buds to the light—this was the anthem he, the Lord of Day, now listened to—this was the song his influences had raised to bless the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... pillow-borne head, Had vorgotten their swing on the lawn, An' their father, asleep wi' the dead, Had vorgotten his work at the dawn; An' their mother, a vew stilly hours, Had vorgotten where he sleept so sound, Where the wind wer a-sheaeken the flow'rs, Aye, the blast the feaeir ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... patriotism in that unending repetition of rub-a-dub-dub which is supposed to represent love of country in the young. When the boy is tired out and quits the field, the faithful watch-dog opens out upon the stilly night. He is the guardian of his master's slumbers. The howls of the faithful creature are answered by barks and yelps from all the farmhouses for a mile around, and exceedingly poor barking it usually is, until ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stilly woods of oak? And the dread ditch beside? O that was where the Saxons broke On the day that ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... blossom in Tarma. Come, and see the valley of Vina: How sweet, how sweet, the Isles from Hina: 'Tis aye afternoon of the full, full moon, And ever the season of fruit, And ever the hour of flowers, And never the time of rains and gales, All in and about Marlena. Soft sigh the boughs in the stilly air, Soft lap the beach the billows there; And in the woods or by the streams, You needs must nod in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... splendor of the mid-day sun; for the dance and flurry of leafy shadows on the sward; for stilly wayside pools whose waters, deep and dark in the shade of overhanging boughs, are yet dappled here and there with glory; for merry brooks leaping and laughing along their stony beds; for darkling copse and sunny upland,—oho! for youth and life and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Church, the inhabitants of Grand-Pre were exposed to such treatment as may be conceived of. The smoke from the borders of the five rivers, overlooked by Blomidon, rose in the stilly air, and again the sea rolled past the broken dykes, which for nearly a century had kept out its desolating waters between the Cape and the Gasperau. Driven to despair, a few of the younger Acadians took up arms to defend their hearthstones, but the great body of the people submitted without ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... did wonders out there on stilly nights, when he wriggled "over the top," gripping its good blade in his teeth. Then No Man's Land became a jungle and the Bosch a beast whose dispatch was swift and sure under his cunning wrist. Dawn would find him squatting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... and stilly, No other sound is there Except their happy voices:— What is that cold bleak air That passes through the lime-trees, And stirs ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... fine fiber, when they think long and earnestly on one thing, have often divinations. The dark future seems to be lit a moment at a time by flashes of lightning, and they discern the indistinct form of events to come, And so it was with Lady Bassett: in the stilly night a terror of the future and of Richard Bassett crept over her—a terror disproportioned to his past acts and apparent power. Perhaps she was oppressed by having an enemy—she, who was born to be loved. At all events, she was full of feminine divinations and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... sits on the sky Like a swan sleeping On the stilly lake: No wild breath to break Her smooth massy light And ruffle it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... there they are, nor have they changed their cheer, The fields, the hut, the leafy mountain brows; Across the lonely dusk again I hear The loitering bells, the lowing of the cows, The bleat of many sheep, the stilly rush Of the low whispering river, and through all, Soft human tongues that break the deepening hush With faint-heard song or desultory call: Oh comrades hold; the longest reach is past; The stream runs swift, and we are ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... through the wood, And dark clouds fleetly hasten o'er the sky; Oh that a storm would rise, a raging storm; Amidst the roar of warring elements I'd lift my hand and strike! but this pale light, The calm distinctness of each stilly thing, Is terrible.—[Starting.] Footsteps, and near me, too! He comes! he comes! I'll watch him farther on— I cannot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... through the lonely dale, And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake! Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale, Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake; Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And evening comes with locks bedropt with dew; On Desmond's moldering turrets slowly shake The trembling rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... water in the font-like vessel. She learnt from me that he was one of seventeen children, and then bid him think of all his brothers and sisters, or as many of them as he could, gathered together in his father's cottage. Then she told him to look in the water, and there, reflected from its stilly surface, was that dead scene of many years gone by, as it was recalled to our retainer's brain. Some of the faces were clear enough, but some were mere blurs and splotches, or with one feature grossly exaggerated; the fact ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... never taken, caught up into an atmosphere, in Kom Ombos. I examined it with interest, but I did not feel a spell. Its grandeur is great, but it did not affect me as did the grandeur of Karnak. Its nobility cannot be questioned, but I did not stilly rejoice in it, as in the nobility of Luxor, or the free splendor of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time, with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were safely in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... mustn't be 'bothered' in here. It's gross disrespect to my brother-prefects—my colleagues. Besides, you knew perfectly well that in the stilly night a malicious attempt was made upon—not upon the life—but upon the cane of Mr. Fillet, which is, after all, the life and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... our day is past; When we lie stilly Under the earth at last, Clod by white lily. Give me neither tear nor sigh; Breath but this in passing by, Where empearled with morning dew The high grass above her Waves, and above me too,— "He was ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... plunging and tossing assured me the cursed ship had passed. I then looked up, and was just in time to catch a final glimpse of the brig, a few hundred yards to leeward, (she had passed close under our stern) before her lofty stern rose out of the water, and, bows foremost, she plunged into the stilly depths and we saw her no more. There was no need for the skipper to tell us that she was the phantom ship, nor did she belie her sinister reputation, for within a week of seeing her, yellow fever broke out on board, and when we arrived at port, there were ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... thee, boy, in my bower to dwell; Here are sweet sounds which thou lovest well,— Flutes on the air in the stilly noon, Harps which the wandering breezes tune, And the silvery wood-note of many a bird Whose voice was ne'er ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... seen Nature in those rare, ineffable moments when she appears to be asleep—when the stars, large and white, bend stilly over the dreaming earth, and not a breath of wind stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his niece Lulu, white and motionless as the magnolia flowers above her, mused the hour ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... one unpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill. The form of the ceiling offers too many facilities for bumping your head and too few for shaving. And the note of the tomcat as he sings to his love in the stilly night outside on the tiles becomes positively distasteful when heard ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... that dragged themselves out whilst I waited for her to speak seemed endless. At length her words came in an awed whisper, so faint that even in that stilly night ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... memory come back darkly in the stilly midnight hour, Dim and faded now, the pictures of Life's early glow and power, When the world was arched with halos of hopes unmixed with fears, And I marvelled they should tell me but of sorrowing and tears! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Oft. In the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... bellow, As moan of forests in the nightly tempest, Sounded his voice unto my ear! "What, Rota!" he shouted; Rota here! "Ye gods of heaven! Whom seekest thou, where unclomb rocks engirdle Peace, smiling peace? O say! whom, sent by Skulda, Wilt thou devote upon the stilly mountains? But ah! what light had I the power to kindle? Dark is my spirit. The terrific Norna, She who allots to time, ere it approaches, It's luck, and binds it with determined fingers Unto Fate's will, is silent, and drives Rota Far from each plain belov'd where battle ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... pure and sunny lives. Heavy honey 'tis she hives. To her sweet but burdened soul All that here she may control— What of bitter memories, What of coming fate's surmise, Paris' passion, distant din Of the war now drifting in To her quiet—idle seems; Idle as the lazy gleams Of some stilly water's reach, Seen from where broad vine-leaves pleach A heavy arch; and, looking through, Far away the doubtful blue Glimmers, on a drowsy day, Crowded with the sun's rich gray;— As she stands within her room, Weaving, weaving at ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... without expectation. From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... was thus cheating my benefactress of her fair perfections, she came in with her usual quiet and stilly step, and sat down beside me. The consciousness of what was passing in my mind, made the guilty blood rush warm to ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... at last with a start; it was evening; the stilly twilight was settling over all the land, and the train was still rushing onward, fleet as the wind. His eyes, as they opened dreamily, fell on a face half obscured in the gleaming; he leaned forward, bewildered and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... bells rang shrilly— The dream went with the hour: She lay in the cloister stilly, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... sorrowed for me, sunk far deeper into my heart than my friends then thought of. Little do they think, who minister to the sick or dying, how each passing word, each flitting glance is noted, and how the pale and stilly figure which lies all but lifeless before them counts over the hours he has to live by the smiles ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... stilly peace, the sacred dead repose, Afar from earth's turmoil and grief, and all of sick'ning woes; From racking pain, and withering pride, and avarice's care, Secure they rest in solitude, unaw'd by sin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... happened. A yell burst out behind us that split the night apart. Where stilly blackness had been, now four or five hundred crazy shadows leaped and danced, murdering the silence with marrow-curdling noises intended to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... trembling one! but let us listen—for angels guard her, and watch, with sorrowful eyes, the dread conflict, while they pray for heavenly strength to sustain her—let us listen to the words which go up from that heart, so stilly and whispered that they scarcely reach our ears, while in Heaven they ring out clear, and sweet, and sorrowful,—"Sweet Jesus! merciful Jesus! suffering, calumniated dying Jesus, pity me—rescue me," she murmured, folding her cold hands together. Far away fled ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... confident, that this temptation of the devil is more usual among poor creatures, than many are aware of, even to over-run the spirits with a scurvy and seared frame of heart, and benumbing of conscience, which frame he stilly and slily supplieth with such despair, that, though not much guilt attendeth souls, yet they continually have a secret conclusion within them, that there is no hope for them; for they have loved sins, therefore after them they will go. Jer. ii. 25, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... stillness. Mr. Craig sat down to the organ and played the opening bars of the touching melody, 'Oft in the Stilly Night.' Mrs. Mavor came to the front, and, with a smile of exquisite sweetness upon her sad face, and looking straight at us with her glorious eyes, began ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... me, Shane—what you need of me." Her hand sought his in the stilly dusk. "Come back only when you are ready dearest ... dearest ... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... these fair scenes the smooth Ticinus glides, And in soft murmurs rolls his slumbering tides: No mud disturbs the mirror calm and deep; The clouds upon its stilly bosom sleep: The varied beauties of the flowery scene Chequer the azure light, and paint the floods with green. Scarce seems the wave to roll, so sweetly flows The tranquil stream, inviting soft repose: While on its side, in tuneful contest gay, Their mellow notes the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... with me, my little bark is waiting 'neath the steep, And the midnight breeze is fresh to waft thee o'er the stilly deep; Though tempests blow they should not raise thy fears, nor scathe thy form, For love would hover o'er thee still, a halo ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred, Sir or Madam, Am I—this laurel that shades your head; Into its veins I have stilly sped, And made them of me; and my leaves now shine, As did my satins superfine, All ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... of a time, When creeping Murmure and the poring Darke Fills the wide Vessell of the Vniuerse. From Camp to Camp, through the foule Womb of Night The Humme of eyther Army stilly sounds; That the fixt Centinels almost receiue The secret Whispers of each others Watch. Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each Battaile sees the others vmber'd face. Steed threatens Steed, in high and boastfull ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... his golden throne—a thin, small man with a wrinkled face, with dead and listless eyes; in his gorgeous vestments he looked hardly human, he seemed a puppet, sitting stilly. At the end of the sermon he went back to the altar, and in his low, broken voice read the prayers. And then turning towards the great congregation he gave the plenary absolution, for which the Pope's Bull had been read from the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... harshly as to deprive the act of the semblance of good-nature. I think he very seldom again felt sympathy or compassion for any living creature. Perhaps he thought the world had behaved hardly to his dead love, and so never forgave it. She passed away very stilly and painlessly. She was leaning on his breast when he saw death come into her eyes: he shivered then all over, as if a cold wind had struck him suddenly, but spoke no word. She understood him, though. Her last motion was to draw his cheek down to hers with ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... biting file Of action, fretting on the tightened chain Of rough existence; all that is not pain, But utter weariness; oh! to be free But for a while from conscious entity! To shut the banging doors and windows wide, Of restless sense, and let the soul abide Darkly and stilly, for a little space, Gathering its strength up to pursue the race; Oh, Heavens! to rest a moment, but to rest From this quick, gasping life, were to ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... indistinctly from the village green, The bird's last twitter, from the hedge-row seen, Where, just before, the scattered crumbs I strewed, To pay him for his farewell song;—all these Touch soothingly the troubled ear, and please The stilly-stirring fancies. Though my hours (For I have drooped beneath life's early showers) Pass lonely oft, and oft my heart is sad, Yet I can leave the world, and feel most glad To meet thee, Evening, here; here my own hand Has decked with trees and shrubs the slopes around, And whilst ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... and break In terror and in tempests wild of tears. No rain fell on the rock; but flakes of foam Swept cold against our faces, where we sat Between the hush and howling of the winds, Between the swells and sinking of the waves, Between the stormy sea and stilly shore, Between the rushings of the maddened rains, Between the dark beneath and ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... oppressed, Low by rushes and sword-grass stooping, Lies she soft on the waves at rest. The desert heavens have felt her sadness; The earth will weep her some dewy tears; The wild beck ends her tune of gladness, And goeth stilly, as soul ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... about piously proclaiming the word duty. Beware of the woman who has ink-stains on her fingers and a duty to perform; beware of her also who never complains of the lack of time, but who is always harking on duty, duty. Some people live close to the blinds. Oft on a stilly night one hears the blinds rattle never so slightly. Is anything going on next door? Does a carriage stop across the way at two o'clock of a morning? Trust the woman behind the blinds to answer. Coming ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming, dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night. Yellow lightnings played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough magnificence. Now the riving and fall ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... light from heaven afar, Wild with the strains of thy guitar, This heart with rapture fill. Then, maiden fair, beneath this star, Come, touch me with the light guitar. Thy brow unworked by lines of care, Decked with locks of raven hair, Seems ever beautiful and fair At moonlight's stilly hour. What bliss! beside the leafy maze, Illumined by the moon's pale rays, On thy sweet face to sit and gaze, Thou wild, uncultured flower. Then, maiden fair, beneath this star, Come, touch me with ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... o'er my awe-hush'd soul, Like God's own Spirit over earth's void waters, And there arose order and life through all. She was my sun, set high to rule the day, And make my world all bright and beautiful; She was my moon, amid the stilly night Subduing darkness with her quiet smiles, And stealing softly through my anxious dreams, A sweet-soul'd hostage for departed day; She was my summer, clothing all my life With fragrant blossoms ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... should authors catechise, Especially, poor fellow, if, like me, Father and author both at once is he. Wise authors all such questions strictly ban, And never answer—even if they can. If of our good knight's wooing you would hear, Keep stilly tongue and hearken well, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... varied perspective. He still saw that inner prospect—the event he hoped for in yonder church. The wide Sound, the Breakwater, the light-house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, brigs, barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with tiniest motion, were as the dream, then; the dreamed-of event was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... been hanging all day in the dark clouds above them towards evening began to fall. Stilly and continually the tiny flakes came down, hiding all the ruggedness of earth under a spotless mantle, even as the white shroud covered the toil-worn ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... alas! he lies across my knees, With cheeks still colder than the stilly wave. The light beneath his eyelids seems to freeze; Here then, since Love is dead and lacks a grave, O come and dig it in my sad heart's core— That wound will bring a balsam for ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... By the stream rolling, Hour after hour went on Tolling and tolling. Long was the darkness, Lonely and stilly. Shrill came the night ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... his train behind the distant hills, Till all is lost to the admiring gaze, Which feasted on the beauties to the last. For darkness comes with night, his paramour, And cast their shadows over all the land; And in their stilly presence creeps repose, And folds his arms around the lifeful sounds, Till all is hushed of nature into rest, And all the tuneful throng is mutely still, And comes no sound of labor from the hill. Then thrilling is the grandeur of the calm; The only sounds which come upon the ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... them,—ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... this ruddy blaze of light, Breaking effulgent through the stilly night; Darting its blood-red form along the sky, Glowing with heaven's glorious majesty. How with its phalaxy of rays unfurl'd, It comes: its radiance circling all our mother world. The pharos of the night; where gods might dance. Heedless of mortals dull, unmeaning trance; Where spirits ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds,[1] That the fix'd sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch:[2] Fire answers fire;[3] and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber'd face:[4] Steed threatens ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... grateful when Kennicott invited her to go rabbit-hunting in the woods. She waded down stilly cloisters between burnt stump and icy oak, through drifts marked with a million hieroglyphics of rabbit and mouse and bird. She squealed as he leaped on a pile of brush and fired at the rabbit which ran out. He belonged there, masculine in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... from the great, dusty high-road and went by ways pleasantly sequestered. By shady copse and rustling cornfield; past lonely farms and rick-yards; past placid cows that chewed, somnolent, in the shade of trees or stood knee-deep in stilly pools; past hop-gardens from whose long, green alleys stole a fragrance warm and acridly sweet; past rippling streams that murmured drowsily, sparkling amid mossy boulders or over pebbly beds; past rustics stooped to their leisured toil who straightened bowed backs to peer after ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... vain? Did not a kind Providence vouchsafe to us a Daffy? Are there not corals? Are there not India-rubber rings? And is there not the infinite tenderness and pity which we learn for the small, wailing sufferer, as, during the night which is not stilly, while the smouldering wick paints you, an immense, peripatetic silhouette, upon the wall, you pace to and fro the haunted chamber, and sing the song your mother sang while you were yet a child? What a noble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sort of uproar, in which angry voices, the barking of dogs, the screams of frightened women drowning the feeble tones of "Oft in the Stilly Night," sent Timothy to his feet and his feet to speeding, not over the graveled driveway, but straight across the shaven lawn, where passage was forbidden. But no "Keep off the grass" signs deterred him, as he remembered now, too late, all that he had heard of the ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... aids—though the steep hills Send to the lake a thousand rills; In summer tide, so soft they weep, The sound but lulls the ear asleep; Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, So stilly ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... plaintive voice of the nightingale, no obtrusive sound disturbed the solemn silence. The blue vault of heaven, glittering with countless stars, the rich perfume flung around by the orange flower and jasmine, and a stilly languor that pervaded the spot, all disposed the mind ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the fluttering verdure of that pleasant land glittered like countless emeralds, and swelled itself in the breeze, as if conscious of, and glorying in, its immortality! Beside me flowed a river—or rather, a broad, bright, lovely lake—slumbering as stilly in the morning light as those who are at peace with the world, and with Heaven. Romantic woods skirted the shores of this waveless water;—here trees, for which the language of man hath no name, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... not sleep, she knew not why. Indeed, she did not wish or try to sleep. She never did when sleep did not come naturally; but always remained calmly waiting for the soother, till slumber dropped uncalled and stilly upon her eyelids. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Where frogs go plopping round the edge And gnats are humming through the sedge, And on the leaf of each wide lily The scaly newts do lay their eggs And the small people dip their legs To shatter the moonshine floating stilly O'er the pool's mystic weedy dregs! Think yet again on rolling hills Where little sleepy new-born rills Are bedded deep in upland mosses, Where tiny stars of tormentils Peer skyward with their golden gaze, Where lichened dikes and shallow fosses Are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... steadily through the tall pines, A-saying "Oh! hu-ush!" a-saying "Oh! hu-ush!" As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, For Hale in the bush; ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sun, the awful stillness came stealing to envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... fashion in which a mountain stream gets down from the perennial pastures of the snow to its proper level and identity as an irrigating ditch. It slips stilly by the glacier scoured rim of an ice bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken ledges to another pool, gathers itself, plunges headlong on a rocky ripple slope, finds a lake again, reinforced, roars downward to a pothole, foams and bridles, glides a tranquil reach in some still meadow, tumbles ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... her blooming child, Sat by the river pool, Deep in whose waters lay the sky, So stilly beautiful. She held her babe aloft, to see Its infant image look Up joyous, laughing, leaping from The bosom of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... forayed like the subtile haze of summer, That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, And revolutions works without a murmur, Or rustling of a ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... most effective is a melody linked to words which moved us in our youth. When an orchestra stops playing its waltzes and mazourkas of the latest fashion and takes up the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," "Oft in the Stilly Night," or "Robin Adair," one may readily observe a change come over the older part of the crowd who listen. The familiar air is like a shell murmuring in their ears sweet, far-off, imperishable memories of youth, and that special epoch of youth best described as "les ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... break the stilly night's repose. The seamen list once more, As from her bower, There fall those witching sounds they've heard before, In days long gone, from Ragnor's lofty tower. When hearts with voices ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain hath bound me Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me. The smiles, the tears, of childhood's years, The words of love then spoken— The eyes that shone, now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... hast lived before. Thy wing Hath swept the ancient folds of light Which once wrapt stilly everything, Before ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... to a man who can lie like that. Talk about Chatterton's Rowley deception, Macpherson's Ossian fraud, or Locke's moon hoax! Compared with this tremendous fib they are as but the stilly whisper of a hearth-stone cricket to the shrill trumpeting of a wounded elephant-the piping of a sick cocksparrow to the brazen clang of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... life we did not see; There was one stilly blooming Full nigh to where walked we; There was a shade entombing All that was ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... lovely time on Christmas. The night before the children hung up their stockings, but it was midnight before I could get round to fill them, they were so excited and wakeful. I "hied me softly to my stilly couch," and was just dropping off into delicious slumber when at 1 A.M. the strains of musical instruments (which you had sent) were heard below. Then I appreciated to the full the sentiment ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... daylight, and the listening air is chilly; Voice of bird and forest murmur, insect hum and quivering spray Stir not in that quiet hour: through the valley, calm and stilly, All in hushed and loving silence watch ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Gay plume and rustling banner, And fife, and trump, and drum; But soon the foremost column Sees where, beneath the shade, In slumber, calm as childhood, Their wearied chief is laid; And down the line a murmur From lip to lip there ran, Until the stilly whisper Had spread to rear from van; And o'er the host a silence As deep and sudden fell, As though some mighty wizard Had hushed them with a spell; And every sound was muffled, And every soldier's tread Fell lightly ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... found myself all trembling and holding my breath. Then, though the soft sand deadened all sound of my going, I crept forward. So came I where she lay, her wet draperies clinged fast about her; and standing above this stilly form I looked down upon her slender shapeliness yet feared to touch her. And now I saw that one sleeve was torn away and upon her round, white arm the marks my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol |
