"Dank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curtain closes; a ruder hand than hers has shut her from his sight! It has all vanished; the stars seem dim, the autumnal air is dank and harsh; and where he had gazed on heaven, a bat flits wild and fleet. Poor Ferdinand, unhappy Ferdinand, how dull and depressed our brave gallant has become! Was it her father who had closed the curtain? Could he himself, thought ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... through the passage, which was as dark and dank as the pit, and the officers followed her in single file. They crawled, and they crawled, and they kept on crawling, for the passage was not big enough to allow them to stand upright. It turned this way and twisted that, sometimes like ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the olive and looked up. Directly in range stood the strange young man, although he was at the far side of the loft. He was leaning against a window frame, his hat in his hand. She noted the dank hair on his forehead, the sweat of revolting nature. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... fire escapes Or sprawl over the stoops... Upturned faces glimmer pallidly— Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air as at ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... vaulted passageway was its most striking feature. Of the time of the first Edward, there were signs of decay in tower and still more ancient keep. Crevices bare of mortar gave rare holding ground for moss and wall flower, and ivy and clematis mantled chapel and turrets with a dank shroud that added to the picturesqueness of ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... her horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, and looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dank grass. It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wander because it did not ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... eerie the moor-birds protested against this invasion of their haunts. The moon came slowly up over the eastern end of the moor, flinging a silver radiance abroad, and softening the shadows cast by the hills. A strange, dank smell rose from the mossy ground—the scent of rotting heather and withered grass, mixed with the beautiful perfume from beds of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... o'clock when Jen drew rein in the yard at Galbraith's Place. Through the dank humours of the darkest time of the night she had watched the first grey streaks of dawn appear. She had caught her breath with fear at the thought that, by some accident, she might not get back before seven o'clock, the hour when her father rose. She trembled also at the supposition of Sergeant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... still allowed to grow in bushy beauty and to spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and their movements were languid. That tropical daybreak was chilly. The Malay quartermaster, coming up to get something from the lockers on the bridge, shivered visibly. The forests above and below and on the opposite bank looked black and dank; wet dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched deck awnings, and it was in the middle of a shuddering yawn that I caught sight of Almayer. He was moving across a patch of burned grass, a blurred, shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house behind him, a low house of mats, bamboos, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... was dank and heavy with overgrown, dying things, as ill-cared-for gardens are wont to be at the end of September, but the tall bush of sweet-scented verbena, that grew by the door in the south wall, was still as green and sweet as in high summer. Christian broke off some sprays ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But the room was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picture which Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's a civilised land, and they'd ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... effect upon the atmosphere. Unhealthy exhalations are thus avoided, and the salubrity of the climate is increased; but the European will sometimes sigh for the soft, balmy airs of his own land, which have come flying over the sea, and seem to bring their wings still dank with the ocean spray. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... sight towards whom his looks, his thoughts were directed. He took off his hat and waved it, touching one part of it as if with particular meaning. When he turned away at last, Hepburn heaved a heavy sigh, and crept yet more into the cold dank shadow of the cliffs. Each step was now a heavy task, his sad heart tired and weary. After a while he climbed up a few feet, so as to mingle his form yet more completely with the stones and rocks around. Stumbling over the uneven and often jagged points, slipping on the sea-weed, plunging ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... inert figures of the girl, and Tom Franklin. They were lying uninjured on two other small couches against the room's metal wall. The girl stirred a little as he touched her dank forehead. Her dyed blonde hair had fallen disheveled to her shoulders. Franklin lay sprawled, his stiff white shirt bosom dirty and rumpled, his thin sandy hair dangling over his flushed face. His slack mouth was open. ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... scent of the recovered macchia through my nostrils, and inhaled it as a man inhales tobacco-smoke, and could have whooped for joy. Not by one-fifth was the scent so intense as I have since smelt it in spring, when all Corsica breaks into flower; yet intense enough and exhilarating after the dank odours of the valley. But the colours! On a sudden the macchia had burst into fruit—carmine berries of the sarsaparilla, upon which a few late flowerets yet drooped, duller berries of the lentisk, olive-like berries of the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave for Phoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house where Death and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too violent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midst of the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spread around itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; and it might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... opinion concerning these heaps of stones had been that they were tombs; and this opinion remains unaltered, though we found no bones in the mound, only a great deal of fine mould having a damp dank smell. The antiquity of the central part of the one we opened appeared to be very great, I should say two or three hundred years; but the stones above were much more modern, the outer ones having been very recently placed; this was also ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings; Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews; Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air. Gone, gone—sold and gone ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... the solemn nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays: Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed Their downy breasts; the swan with arched neck Between her white wings, mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower The mid aerial sky: others on ground Walked firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train Adorns him, colored with the florid hue Of rainbows and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... took the pistol from his pocket and, automatically releasing the safety, moved to the door, opening it with his left hand. The hall was unlighted; he could feel the pressure of the darkness above. The dank silence flowed over him like chill water rising above his heart. He turned, and a dim thread of light, showing through the chink of a partly closed doorway, led him swiftly forward. He paused a moment before entering, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... deck was filled with the foul dank choking fumes of exploded gunpowder, the thick smoke was blinding, and the men crouched in their places for the moment forgetful of their orders till they heard the voice of Hilary Leigh shouting to them to come on, and they leaped ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... of his peregrinations, that there existed in two places under the Chicago River—in the first place at La Salle Street, running north and south, and in the second at Washington Street, running east and west—two now soggy and rat-infested tunnels which were never used by anybody—dark, dank, dripping affairs only vaguely lighted with oil-lamp, and oozing with water. Upon investigation he learned that they had been built years before to accommodate this same tide of wagon traffic, which now congested at ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... guide invisible points out their way, O'er the dank marsh, bleak hill, and sandy plain? 340 The courteous Muse shall the dark cause reveal. The blood that from the heart incessant rolls In many a crimson tide, then here and there In smaller rills disparted, as it flows Propelled, the serous particles evade Through the open pores, and with ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a snatch of ribaldry that made my foot twitch in my boot. Behind his back, I pocketed the priceless relic, dank and red with my unworthy blood, and followed him ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... those things, and she doesn't seem to see I've changed. Why, hang it, Kent, Cold Spring Coulee's no place for Browning—he doesn't fit in. All that sort of thing is a thousand miles behind me—and I've got to—" He stopped short and brooded, his eyes upon the dank ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... got upon his knees and then and there—in the dark and dank prison-house—prayed most earnestly for guidance and spiritual light in the name of Jesus. At first the Frenchman listened with what we may style kindly contempt, and then with surprise, for the Englishman ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... mysterious clusters of masts, and to hear the clank of chains and the creak of restless boards. There were few people about and a great silence everywhere. The air was damp and thick, and smelt of rotten soil, as though dank grass was everywhere pushing its way up through the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... square in shape, built of variously sized logs, and banked over with two or three feet of moss and grass-grown earth, so as to resemble an outdoor cellar. Half of one side had been torn down by storm-besieged travellers for firewood; its earthen floor was dank and wet with slimy tricklings from its leaky roof; the wind and rain drove with a mournful howl down through its chimney-hole; its door was gone, and it presented altogether a dismal picture of neglected ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... too, thou'lt sing! for well thy magic muse Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar; Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more! Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose; 90 Let not dank Will[46] mislead you to the heath; Dancing in mirky night, o'er fen and lake, He glows, to draw you downward to your death, In his bewitch'd, low, marshy, willow brake! What though far off, from some dark dell ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... delves in the sod and dines on clay; he makes no after-dinner speeches; he never responds to a toast; but silently revels on in his dark banquet halls under the dank violets or in the rich mould by the river. But the red worm never reaches the goal of his visions and dreams until he is triumphantly impaled on the fishhook ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... tide of spring seemed to renovate the muddy flats, setting the weeds, that had lain dank and dispirited, a-floating again on the return of the water. No one could quite resist the magic of the season, and Georgie, who had intended out of mere politeness to go to see the earliest of Perdita's stupid flowers (having been warned of its epiphany ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the clouds stole upon them—reached out white arms and enfolded them in sudden whirls of thin and smoke-like mist; eddied over their heads and round their feet; swathed them at last as in a funeral pall, blotting from their sight every object save wreaths of dank vapour, rendering wholly uncertain the direction in which they were moving, and giving a sense of doubt and danger to every step they took. Kenrick had only told the master who had given them leave of absence from dinner that they meant to go a long walk. He had not mentioned Appenfell, not from ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... masque by the Children of the Chapel at Gray's Inn. Little Tom Poope sang Apelles's song and ruffled it afterward among the ladies of the court, as lightly as Essex himself. Armadas came out into the dank Thames air humming over the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... could not feel the keen wind that was blowing up on Exmoor. The waters of the Sym, whose windings they followed, gurgled over their stones almost as quietly as in summer. There was a fresh wet smell, consoling and delicious after the train, the smell of country puddles and country mud and dank dead leaves that had been rained upon all day. Fritzing sat with the Princess on the back seat of the dog-cart, and busied himself keeping the rug well round her, the while his soul was full of thankfulness that their journey should after all have been so easy. He was weary in ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... gave a poignant anguish to his realization. He tore the rotting planks aside, and looked as it seemed, down into unrelieved blackness. Then his sun-dazzled vision adjusted itself to the gloom and he saw the dank, slime-covered stones that formed the sides of the well, and below the black gleam of water and something pink and white, that struggled and went ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... for sportsmen. One sniffed the dews, and could fancy fresh smells of stubble earth and dank woodland grass in the very streets of dirty Bevisham. Sound sleep, like hearty dining, endows men with a sense of rectitude, and sunlight following the former, as a pleasant spell of conversational ease ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were on shuffled into the narrow track, whose sides and roof brushed the great cane howdah, and in a few moments they had passed from the glaring sunshine into the hot dank gloom of the forest, where the swishing noise of the abundant growth, forced aside and trampled down by the huge animals, was for a time ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... cavern. Crabs were clattering over the stones, and rays and eels could be seen writhing shadowy, in pools. The brawling of the ocean came smothered, faint, but portentous, and in the green light that mounted through the submerged door the grotto seemed a place of dreams,—a dank nightmare. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of this. Another spectacle appears to his fancy, commands his eyes. Four walls, bare and dank, enclose a narrow cell, lighted by a single streak of day. On the moist and noisome floor is a mat; on the mat an old man dying. Beaten down by fever, he lies and looks about him, calling a name, in strangling voice, with tears. No one—a clanking chain, an echoed groan somewhere; ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... human head, though with scarcely a vestige of the features remaining. Here and there, patches of flesh adhered to the bones, and the dank dripping hair hanging about what had once been the face, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... simile because it occurred to me as I traversed the Italian quarter and gazed upon its denizens, an occasional accidental rub against one of whom made me shudder. Innocent they may be, but they don't look it, and when I was taken up a court—a horrible, dark, dank cul-de-sac—and shown the identical spot which a few weeks beforehand had been the scene of a murder, I made a sketch in the quickest time on record, keeping one eye on the ghastly place and the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... dome, That now is void, and dank with rain, And one,—oh, hope more frail than foam! The bird to his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee!" The western wind was wild and dank with foam, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... air it grew chill as the Gryxabodill Raised his dank, dripping fins to the skies To plead with the Plunk for the use of her bill To pick the tears ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... gents of dismal mien, And dank and greasy rags. Came out of a shop for gin, Swaggering over ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... woman; very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them. Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice; A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt. And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... state of stupefaction turned away. Clat-clat! sang the little wooden shoes. A plaintive gonk rose as she prodded a laggard from the dank gutter. A piece of gold! Clat-clat! Clat-clat! Surely this had been a day of marvels; two crowns from the grand duke and a piece of gold from this old man in peasant clothes. Instinctively she knew ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... beauties were thrusting themselves up into the warm glow of the sun, inviting Noozak and Neewa to the feast. All these things Noozak smelled with the experience and the knowledge of twenty years of life behind her—the delicious aroma of the spruce and the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water-lily roots and swelling bulbs that came from a thawed-out fen at the foot of the ridge; and over all these things, overwhelming their individual sweetnesses in a still greater thrill of life, the smell of the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... its rolling drifts is safer hunting than this forest world. What glory, doomed prisoners between the woods and the sea within the shadow of the great forests and a great fear? The smell of wildwood things, of flower banks, of fern mold, came dank and unwholesome to these men. Their {3} nostrils were for the whiff of the sea; and every sunset tipped the waves with fire where they longed to sail. And the shadow of the fear fell on Gudrid. Ordering the vessels loaded with timber good ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? If through long fret and irk Thine eyes within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair; Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush The fragile ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... Lake. The first golden tints were ripening in the canoe-birch leaves, and the tremulous whisper of autumn was in the rustle of the aspen trees. The poplars were yellowing, the ash were blood red with fruit, and in cool, dank thickets wild currants were glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September. The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in the air that stirred the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to hope even yet, he boldly plunged into the darkness, reason assuring him that the cul-de-sac would come sooner or later. But for once reason was wrong; the passage opened ever before him, more airy than ever, always dank and odorous, but with never a barrier—a passage the builders of the castle had executed for an age of sudden sieges and alarms, but now archaic and useless, and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... he murmured, looking up at her with limpid eyes. "You haf seen how I suffered, unt you haf taken pity. Gott sie dank! Gott ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... calm, she explored the ground for a resting-place. She cleared the twigs away from the roots of a tree, and laid herself down there on the moss and old leaves. Everything seemed dank with the never-failing dews of the deep and sheltered gorge; but she did not mind the dampness of her couch. A strong wind was rising, and the great trees above her swayed and moaned. She was vexed by mosquitoes that bit as if they then for the first time tasted ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the rickety old gate with care, and he closed it after them; then they walked out over the dank leaves, through the brilliant coloring of the forest. The day was soft and tempting, while a ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Berlin." Send the letter, not through me, but officially, through M. de Pfuel.* (* At the head there must be "Allerdurchlauchtigster, grossmachtigster Konig,—allergnadigster Konig und Herr." Then you begin, "Euer koniglichen Majestat, wage ich meinen lebhaftesten Dank fur die allergnadigst bewilligte Unterstutzung zum Ankauf meiner Sammlung fur das Gymnasium in Neuchatel tief geruhrt allerunterthanigst zu Fussen zu legen. Wusste ich zu schreiben," etc. The rest of your letter ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... the traitress, who beneath the weight Of Sabine shields and bracelets basely sank, Stifled and dying, at the city-gate, Lies buried there—and now the long weeds, dank With baneful dews, bend o'er her, and the rank Entangled grass, the timid lizard's home, Covers the sepulchre—the wild flower shrank To plant its roots in that polluted loam— Pity that such a tomb should ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the land, I think this river connecting Ayzingo and Lake Ncovi wanders down this valley between the mountain spurs of the Sierra del Cristal, expanding into one gloomy lake after another. We run our canoe into a bank of the dank dark- coloured water herb to the right, and disembark into a fitting introduction to the sort of country we shall have to deal with before we see the Rembwe—namely, up to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his imagination Ephraim had pictured a wan, grief-worn figure, and now he saw before him a strong, well- built man, who certainly did not present the appearance of a person who had just emerged from the dank atmosphere of a prison! On the contrary, he seemed stronger and more vigorous than he had ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... vestibule—a mere projection from the roof supported on a few rough beams—but never a garden, scarcely a tree to cast a cooling shade on hot summer afternoons, or clump of lilies or mimosa to sweeten the air that came dank and fetid from over the marshes beyond ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Julia; for it breathed of freedom. She turned her face up to the dark boughs that met and interlaced above her head, and whispered her thankfulness. Then, obedient to Mr. Thomasson's impatient gesture, she hastened to follow him along a dank narrow path that skirted the wall of the house for a few yards, then turned off ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... which they fall with little splashes of light and colour. The air 'hangs heavy as remembered sin,' and the gloom of a great cathedral is on every side. Everything is damp, and moist, and oppressive. The soil, and the cool dead leaves under foot are dank with decay, and sodden to the touch. Enormous fungous growths flourish luxuriantly; and over all, during the long hot hours of the day, hangs a silence as of the grave. Though these jungles teem with life, no ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... FARMER of the Augustan age Perused in Virgil's golden page, The story of the secret won From Proteus by Cyrene's son How the dank sea-god sowed the swain Means to restore his hives again More briefly, how a slaughtered bull Breeds honey ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... as there enjoyed; To brighter world they never had aspired, Had they not felt unfilled an aching void, And heard a whisper of a life attired In sapphire robes, 'midst gleams of golden light, Above their present world, so dank and chill, Where all day long they wing their happy flight From roses sweet ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... led the way to their dank and noisome den, opening from a street trap-door and giving at the other extremity on a sort of water-rat exit underneath the pier. She handed Louise down the steps and taking her things remarked in a self-satisfied tone: "Here are ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the Augustan Age Perused in Virgil's golden page, The story of the secret won From Proteus by Cyrene's son— How the dank sea-god showed the swain Means to restore his hives again. More briefly, how a slaughtered bull Breeds ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... flat and desolate, dank and dirty-looking. The flat, dull, dirty marsh country seemed to be without life; the very grass seemed blighted. And we were drifting ashore to it, fast drifting ashore to the tune of ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Dickey confronted two rather pale-faced girls when the party of explorers again stood in the sunlit halls above. Across their shrinking faces cobwebs were lashed, plastered with the dank moisture of ages; in their eyes gleamed relief and from their lips came long breaths of thankfulness. Turk, out of sight and hearing, was roundly cursing the luck that had given him such a disagreeable task as the one just ended. From the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... was odd that as he emerged into the open air, the familiar smells of Earth struck his nostrils as strange and unaccustomed. The laboratory was redolent of the tree-fern forest into which the Tube extended. And Smithers was watching amid those dank, incredible carboniferous-period growths now. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... its gardens are well laid out. These gardens have this peculiarity, that at the entrance of each of the grand avenues is a figure of a man on horseback caparizoned in armour, like the Knights of old. This is all I have to say about Mantua. The Mincio beset with "osiers dank" ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... in this wise. We were come to the spot, Bearing the dreadful burden of thy threats; And first with care we swept the dust away From round the corse, and laid the dank limbs bare: Then sate below the hill-top, out o' the wind, Where no bad odour from the dead might strike us, Stirring each other on with interchange Of loud revilings on the negligent In 'tendance on this duty. So we stayed Till in mid heaven the sun's resplendent orb Stood ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... sitting on the stone, The dank moss dripping from the wall, The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, I love them—how I love ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... barred my way. He seemed to have a helmet upon his head, but as I drew closer I perceived it was the head itself I saw—so distorted as to bear but a doubtful resemblance to the human. A cold wind smote me, dank and sickening—repulsive as the air of a charnel-house; firmness forsook my joints, and my limbs trembled as if they would drop in a helpless heap. I seemed to pass through him, but I think now that he passed through ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... between these bushes when nobody is passing. There's room for us both, and I can get a pull at the string between these branches. We'll have a rehearsal now, and see how it works." He crawled forward on the dank earth, in easy unconcern for the knees of his trousers, dropped the daintily-wrapped parcel on to the centre of the pavement, and crept back to his place, holding in his hand the end of ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... lips were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams And still my ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... of the dead, brings to Pluto's kingdom their psyches, "that gibber like bats, as they fare down the dank ways, past the streams of Okeanos, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, to the meadow of asphodel in the dark realm of Hades, where dwell the souls, the phantoms of men outworn." So begins the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey. ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... sets with extraordinary rapidity. The venerable and somewhat crazy mansion was distinguished from afar, by a grove of elms and sycamores that seemed to wave a hospitable invitation, while a few weeping willows with their dank, drooping foliage, resembling falling waters, gave an idea of coolness, that rendered it an attractive spot ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... trilogy consisting of "Gebet," "Legende" and "Dank des Paria," was begun in 1816, but not finished until December, 1821. Even then it was not quite complete. The appearance of Delavigne's Le Paria and still more of Michael Beer's drama of the same name, spurred Goethe to a final ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... crucifixes stands deep in the Klamm, in the dank gorge where it is always half-night. The road runs under the rock and the trees, half-way up the one side of the pass. Below, the stream rushes ceaselessly, embroiled among great stones, making an endless loud noise. The ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... plack insite!" poor Schmucke replied in heartrending tones; "so plack it is dot I feel death in me.... Gott in hefn is going to haf pity upon me; He vill send me to mein friend in der grafe, und I dank Him for it—" ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Pass—in the Jungle! I knew the place, a spot of dank pestilence and mystery. "You never could have gone there," ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... sure of it," said the President. "Things have got to such a pass, that in towns the meanest people have tea at the morning's meal, to the discontinuance of the ale which ought to be their diet; and poor women dank this drug also in the afternoons, to the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... grown so think and close that they shouldered one another out of their places, and the weakest, forced into shapes of strange distortion, languished like cripples. The best were stunted, from the pressure and the want of room; and high about the stems of all grew long rank grass, dank weeds, and frowsy underwood; not divisible into their separate kinds, but tangled all together in a heap; a jungle deep and dark, with neither earth nor water at its roots, but putrid matter, formed of the pulpy offal of the two, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... vague and highly colored notions of a smugglers' cave, his narrow lungs filled with air, Bubbles dove, swam between two slimy barnacled piles, and came up presently in a dark, dank, stale, gurgling region, wonderfully cool after the blazing sunlight which ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... evident that the searching water had found out the secret sins of the house's construction, for there were great fissures of discoloration in the white and gold paper in the corners of the wall. There was a strange odor of the dank forest in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain had brought out the sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and white satin furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre tables had taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones. Mr. Mulrady, who had always retained his ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... the ages, hoary with time, grim guardians of such forest solitudes; climbed long hills roughened by innumerable boulders with sharp edges hidden beneath the fallen leaves, that lamed our horses; or descended into dark and gloomy ravines, dank with decaying vegetation, finally halting for a brief meal upon the southern edge of a small lake, the water of which was as clear and blue as the cloudless August sky that arched it. The sand of the ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... tropical, and malaria, with its fever and ague, is prevalent. The mean temperature of the year is 75 degrees, and the thermometer has never been seen lower than 68 degrees. The atmosphere is dank, steamy, and heavy with moisture during the wet season, and parching and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... been encircled by a moat which had been suffered to dry itself up, though still the little stream which used to fill it when the dams were in repair, murmured and meandered at the bottom of the hollow, and fed the roots of many a water plant and many a tree whose nature delights in dank and swampy soils. The verdure, however, which encircled this ancient edifice, added greatly to the beauty, when seen over the extent of waste and wild in which it stood. There can be no doubt but that the ancient possessors of this castle, which, from the single remaining ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the night, he dismissed his carriage, and, turning from the high road, took a by-path which led to the city. The air was serene and mild. The moon-light was sufficiently clear to chase away night's dank vapours. The ground had imperceptibly risen, until having ascended a grassy eminence, over which the path stretched, the well-lighted ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... place was the embodiment of decay: the fading red glare from the setting sun, which came in at the west window, emphasizing the end of the day and all its cheerful doings, the mildewed walls, the uneven paving-stones, the wormy pews, the sense of recent occupation, and the dank air of death which had gathered with the evening, would have made grave a lighter mood than ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... gone—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air, Gone, gone—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... settlements. I do not regret the gold to which you so delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection. Sunt lacrymae rerum, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Bruder sat in the dusky corner with his head in his hands, the picture of dejection. But, as Dennis entered, he rose and came forward. He tried to speak, but for a moment could not. At last he said, hoarsely: "Mr. Vleet, you haf done me and mine a great kindness. No matter vat the result is, I dank you as I never danked any living being. I believe Gott sent you, but I fear too late. You see before you a miserable wreck. For months and years I haf been a brute, a devil. Dot picture dere show you vat I vas, vat I might haf been. You see vat I am," ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... whisper softly of the sweet-voiced, tender-eyed woman from whose fairy bower it came in rosy wrappings. And this Nemophila, 'blue as my brother's eyes,'—the brave young brother whose heroism and manhood have outstripped his years, and who looks forth from the dank leafiness of far Australia lovingly and longingly over the blue waters, as if, floating above them, he might catch the flutter of white garments and the smile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... went through the passage and down to the back door together. The house was large, but it was servantless now, and desolate. At the back was a small bricked house-yard, and beyond that a big square, gravelled fine and red, and having stables on two sides. Sloping, dank, winter-dark fields stretched away on the ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... passed the Morgue, I saw the dead body of a young woman which had been taken that morning from the river, and laid out for recognition by her friends. As I looked on her livid, bloated face, her drenched and tattered garments, her long dark hair hanging in dank matted masses, and streaming over the edge of the table on which she lay, my heart was moved with pity. Yet I half envied her position, and might have followed her example, but for my belief in a future state. Her body was free from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dignified air in his arm-chair, and in a voice which seemed to come from a profound abyss began to dictate: "Von al-len Lei-den-shaf-ten die grau-samste ist. Have you written that?" He paused, took a pinch of snuff, and began again: "Die grausamste ist die Un-dank-bar-keit [The most cruel of all passions is ingratitude.] ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... more than two years since the last chapter, and a still cold day at the end of February—still and somewhat damp—in one of the midland shires—say Clayshire. The dank hedges and sodden fields had a melancholy aspect, which seemed to affect a couple of horsemen who were walking their jaded, much-splashed horses along a narrow road, or rather lane, which led between a stretch of ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the remembrance of what I had gone through on the preceding day; the sun was shining brightly, but it had not yet risen high enough to show its head above the trees which fenced the eastern side of the dingle, on which account the dingle was wet and dank from the dews of the night. I kindled my fire, and, after sitting by it for some time to warm my frame, I took some of the coarse food which I have already mentioned; notwithstanding my late struggle and the coarseness of the fare, I ate with ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Nemesis, is the greatest of all the Battle-gods that move on the waters. As I will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate instinct for what is in the enemy's minds may enable a destroyer to thread her way, slowing, speeding, and twisting between the heavy salvoes of opposing fleets. As the dank-smelling waterspouts rise and break, she judges where the next grove of them will sprout. If her judgment is correct, she may enter it in her report as a little feather in her cap. But it is Joss when the stray 12-inch ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... broke, broke." The tears rushed into her eyes, but at a noise as of opening doors or windows at the house, terror mastered her again, and she hurried on to hide herself from the dawning light, which was beginning to increase, as she crossed the park, on turf dank with Maydew, and plunged deep into the thick woods beyond, causing many a twittering cry ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dying like beasts. And how do they fare, these creatures born mediocre, whose heritage is neither brains nor brawn nor endurance? They are sweated in the slums in an atmosphere of discouragement and despair. There is no strength in weakness, no encouragement in foul air, vile food, and dank dens. They are there because they are so made that they are not fit to be higher up; but filth and obscenity do not strengthen the neck, nor does chronic emptiness ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten, that while Angelico prayed and wept in his olive shade, there was different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;—wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... hands of a Basque woman, who persuaded me to live with her, which I have done for several years; she is a great hax, {8} and says that if I desert her she will breathe a spell which shall cling to me for ever. Dem Got sey dank,—she is now in the hospital, and daily expected to die. This is ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... strangers see of it? The foreshore to them is the unending monotony of grey streets, sometimes grim, often decayed, and always reticent and sullen, that might never have seen the stars nor heard of good luck; and the light would be, when closely looked at, merely a high gas bracket on a dank wall in solitude, its glass broken, and the flame within it fluttering to extinction like an imprisoned and crippled moth trying to evade the squeeze of giant darkness and the wind. The narrow and forbidding by-path under that glim, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... large multitude of people collected around me from all parts. They requested me to speak; but as I did not understand their language I could not answer them. They repeated often the word Dank, Dank, and supposing them to be Germans, I addressed them in this language, then in Danish, and finally in Latin; but they signified to me, by shaking their heads, that these languages were unknown to them. I tried at last to declare myself in the subterranean tongues, namely, in Nazaric and ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... the contemporary crypt of St. Peter's-in-the-East, but not, perhaps, less interesting. The square-headed capitals have not been touched, like some of those in St. Peter's, by a later chisel. The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise much as Robert D'Oily left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor. It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work very well, and gives satisfaction to the persons who have to ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... shall other changes find, And open still and vary still the mind. The countless clans that tread these dank abodes, Who glean spontaneous fruits and range the woods, Fixt here for ages, in their swarthy face Display the wild complexion of the place. Yet when the hordes to happy nations rise, And earth By culture ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... respect we must have seen Verona under a disadvantage: there was no sunshine during our short stay. The beautiful, lordly gardens of the Palazzo Giusti on the declivity of a hillside on the left bank of the Adige were dank and dripping; there was no temptation to linger near their chilly statues and gloomy cypresses; even the view from their noble terraces, formed partly by the wall of the town, was cold and colorless under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the lofty red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest again, dim and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and oppressive stillness. The forest primeval! When we rode out of that into open slopes the afternoon was far advanced, and long shadows lay across the distant ranges. When we reached camp, supper and a fire ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... my "Funny," as I'm wont, beneath the bank, Listening to Cam's rippling murmurs thro' the weeds and willows dank, As I chewed the Cud of fancy, from the water there appeared An old man, fierce-eyed, and filthy, with a long and tangled beard; To the oozy shore he paddled, clinging to my Funny's nose, Till, in all his mud majestic, Cam's gigantic form arose. Brawny, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... me. I watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank Under the billows of the heaving sea; But from its beams deep love my spirit drank, 490 And to my brain the boundless world now shrank Into one thought—one image—yes, for ever! Even like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank, The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver Through my benighted mind—and were extinguished ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and the brown earth, never so unlovely, exhaled faint wreaths of vapour that caused old-fashioned folk to shake their heads and to speak of full graveyards. The sun seemed to draw up in the form of mist more and more of the water that had been soaking into the soil. People moved about in a dank haze, that rose gradually to the tops of the houses, until by noontime it had obscured the moist blue sky and turned the sun into a dull-red disk set in a golden aura. There was something ominous ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... grow at Blakeney Sea pansies, sedge, and rosemary; Frail fronds thrust forth in dim dank air, A message from those lying ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... weather-be-witched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth—what with match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in summer, and dinner-giving ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... in England "now that April's there," would have been disappointed had it been possible for him to turn up to-day. So dark and dank that at three o'clock, when Questions opened, electric light was turned on. Revealed dreary array of half-empty benches. Had Closure been promptly moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... fishing, for then he took us with him, and while he stood motionless on the bank, rod in hand, looking, in the light-blue suit he always wore, like a vast blue pillar crowned with that broad red face, we romped on the sward, and revelled in the dank fragrance of the earth ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Ich dank' von alle Liebes-Proben, Von alle Sorgfalt und Geduld, Mein Herz soll alle Guete loben, Und ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... mountains, the beautiful Apennines, and Merrihew counted so many tunnels he concluded that this was where the inventor of the cinematograph got his idea. Just as some magnificent valley began to unfold, with a roar the train dashed into a dank, sooty tunnel. One could neither read nor enjoy the scenery; nothing to do but sit tight and wait, let the window down when they passed a tunnel, lift it when they entered one. By the time they arrived in Genoa, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... obliged to strip himself, one after another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and the days of that I know in my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I still enjoy, and who sees the circle of impotence closing very slowly but quite steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dispirited word is harmful, a crime of LESE- HUMANITE, a piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it, and, if he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the business ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once been little better than a wilderness was now a wide and well-kept park. The rose pleasaunce had been restored to its pristine glory. The lawns were smooth-shaven and glowing in their rich emerald-green. The lakes and ponds were no longer overgrown with dank rushes; but had been reclaimed from being little better than marshes into bright expanses of clear water, where fish swam and swans loved to sport. Long avenues and cool, shadowy walks wound far away through the groves; and the stately oaks and elms around the Castle had ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and simple naughtiness. But alack and alas for our blasted hopes and the human weakness that had been worked on by the adroit press agent! The show was a "fake:" there was nothing naughty about it—and very little that was nice. No refrigerating plant ever contained a freezing room so dank, cold and gloomy as that theatre! After the first act, the ladies—Heaven help them!—put on their furs; in the second, an odd man or two began to sneak out, and by the time the curtain rose on the last act there was hardly a soul in the house! The weary "Corkonians" wended their way to the hotels ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the hand-gate, and toiled up the steep path, threading their way among a wilderness of overgrown box shrubs, long dank grass and strange weeds. Helen, with her eyes fixed upon an open window on the right wing of the cottage, fell a little behind. The others came to a ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were dank with dew. His eyes were puddles of utter stupefaction. He had been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this, however, I was ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... see the gleam of lake and stream, The silver glint in frost portrayed Of the bright cascade; They bear the moisture of marshes dank, The dew of the lawn, or river bank, The river itself by sunlight drank; All these in frigid air, That strange alembic, crystallize In odd, fantastic shape and size ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard |
