"Sightless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power to afford him protection? Is that all that this boasted American citizenship amounts to? Go tell it, sir, to the father whose son was starved at Andersonville; or the widow whose husband was slain at Mission Ridge; or the little boy who leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, made blind by the winds and the sand of the Southern coast; or the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side, that this Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the father lost his eyes, and the others ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... of raising a band of volunteers for some expedition against the enemy, rides from aoul to aoul summoning all good swords to follow, he transports along with him on the crupper of an attendant the aged minstrel, who at the gates sings the call to arms. His sightless eyeballs in frenzy roll, and the braves, both old and young, carried away now by his pathos and now by his rage, shout in chorus their ka-ri-ra, and spring into their saddles. And when at last the warrior's race finished, his companions ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... time To Learning's tender eye thou didst unfold The classic page, and what high bards of old, With solemn notes, and minstrelsy sublime, Have chanted, we together heard; and thou, Warton! wouldst bid me listen, till a tear Sprang to mine eye: now the bold song we hear Of Greece's sightless master-bard:[81] the breast 70 Beats high; with stern Pelides to the plain We rush; or o'er the corpse of Hector slain Hang pitying;—and lo! where pale, oppressed With age and grief, sad Priam comes;[82] with beard All white he bows, kissing the hands besmeared With his last hope's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... "not all the money that is in this country could pay a just price for these wares of mine. This nail," he continued, pulling off his hat and turning up his sightless orbs, "is one of those wherewith man's salvation was secured. I had it, together with this piece of the true rood, from the five-and-twentieth descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, who still lives in Jerusalem alive and well, though latterly much afflicted by boils. Aye, you may ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... general belief in the evil of human servitude? Has it sapped the foundations of the infamous system? No. Has it decreased the number of its victims? Quite the contrary. Unaccompanied by philanthropic action, it has been in a moral point of view worthless, a thing without vitality, sightless, soulless, dead. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Father Feral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... their way about the rim of the valley, and in doing so caught glimpses of Professor Gurlone, the elderly man they had spotted in Manaos, and also saw the big Portuguese with his sightless eyes. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... herself to Pyatnitsky Street. She found old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which the service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers, and without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair, blinking with his sightless eyes. ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... end my days sightless, Mary, I knew I could not come to you again; but Heaven has willed it otherwise. It has been a long, long waiting, hopeless till within the last month, and it was only within the past few days that the doctor told me that all was safe, and I might ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... long shivering sigh—he died! The first beams of the rising sun, piercing through the dark, moss-covered branches of the pine-trees, fell on his clustering hair, and lent a mocking brilliancy to his wide-open sightless eyes: there was a smile on the closed lips! A burning, suffocating sensation rose in my throat, as of rebellious tears trying to force a passage. I still held the hand of my friend and enemy—it had grown cold in my clasp. Upon it sparkled my family diamond—the ring SHE had given ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Rosina, after wiping her sightless eyes with the corner of her white apron—"we were all, as you will understand, happy enough, and looking forward shortly to the birth of the child, when, one afternoon, while my master and mistress were out driving, and I was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The people could only laugh ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... horrible head had smashed in search of food. One entrance port was torn open, and the head itself still hung where it had lodged. The mouth gaped flabbily open; above it was the suction cup that formed a snout; and above that, a row of staring, sightless eyes. Chet had slammed into the mass of serpents just in time, Harkness realized. Just in time, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... and his usual cheerful voice now sounded cracked and discordant, as with an oath he tore the paper from his comrade's hand, read the name, and then sat down, with one hand pressed to his sightless orb, his whole frame trembling from head ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... air, bright blaze of eagle-wings! Crassus, sub pennis, penis! How he swings His bulk from yonder sightless poise, to bear me back to the Dominion of the air Where I shall bear the cup of Jupiter! Blind babes, love one another, no less true Because the gods have deigned to dwell with you! ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... was followed by others, and a stillness fell upon Nature; the birds ceased to sing, the grasshoppers were still, the bees paused. All Nature was listening and the Princess was conscious in her dream that there were others besides herself listening, unseen shapes and sightless phantoms; a crowd, a multitude of attentive ghosts, that were hidden from her sight. The melody rose and swelled in stillness; it was melting and ravishing and bold with a human audacity. As she listened it reminded her of something; she felt she had heard such sounds before, though she could ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... and upon the broad roof of the temple were about three thousand people watching Samson while he showed his strength, for his hair had grown and his strength was returning. At last as he was standing between two great pillars that held up the roof, he prayed, lifting his sightless eyes to God: ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... been born blind. It had worried his father and mother greatly, for they knew when he grew to manhood he would not be able to hunt and support himself. They hoped as he grew older he might yet receive his eyesight, although both eyes were white and sightless. At last when he became seven or eight years of age his ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... as minutely as I could and with all the pathos I could command, the grim surroundings of this poor family—the grandfather, with his serene, sightless face and strangely deep trust in Providence; the clean, but faded, worn garments they all had on—not one of them, apparently, possessed of a decent suit of clothes; and then their horror of help from the town. Mrs. Flaxman wiped her eyes sympathetically when I repeated the grateful words ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt grey beard; he remembered how one day after drinking a glass too much at dinner, and spilling the gravy over his napkin, he began to relate his conquests, growing red in the face, and winking with his sightless eyes; he remember Varvara Pavlovna,—and involuntarily shuddered, as a man shudders from a sudden internal pain, and shook his head. Then his! thoughts came to a ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... stern, the fell, Midst the uproar of shriek and shout Stung tho Greek emperor's eyes both out: The Norse king's mark will not adorn, The Norse king's mark gives cause to mourn; His mark the Eastern king must bear, Groping his sightless way in fear." ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... short silence. Andrew stood with his almost sightless eyes turned upon his friend, and Duncombe was looking up through the elm trees to the Hall. He was trying to fancy her as she must have appeared to this man who dwelt alone, walking down the meadow in ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Murray indulged in a blast of malediction on the road, the company, the government, his comrades, even his benefactors, and then thoughtfully demanded drink. There was no longer a stern corporal to forbid, for Connelly, suffering and almost sightless, had been led into a rear coach. But there was no longer money with which to buy, for Foster's last visible cent had gone up in smoke and flame, and, scorched and smarting in a dozen places, wrapped in a blanket in ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... tremblingly plead, "Lead, kindly light." "Lead, kindly light." The words are whispered by the old, whose tired feet are unable to move, whose palsied hands are helpless, whose head is bowed by the weight of years, whose eyes are sightless, from whose trembling lips are scarcely heard the ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... bloodier than the former: I arose, With all the nobles, and as I looked down Along the lines of lifted faces,—from Our bannered and escutcheoned gallery, I 100 Saw, like a flash of lightning (for I saw A moment and no more), what struck me sightless To all else—the Hungarian's face! I grew Sick; and when I recovered from the mist Which curled about my senses, and again Looked down, I saw him not. The thanksgiving Was over, and we marched back ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... within thine hand, Life seems eternal, till the crumbling dust Runs through thy clenching fingers, and thy gage Mocks thee up from the mould'ring frame of Earth. There is no mystery like Death; it comes Sightless as the first breath of infant life, And goes to an unsearched Eternity— The End ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... one might treat the bite of an insect in the face of some imminent danger. He did not reply to it; he did not appear to have heard it. His eyes traveled over me, as though they had been sightless, and challenged Paul's. In the excitement of the moment, his words sounded ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and dragged through the door, Cara stood rigidly upright, white in the intensity of voiceless outrage, until the gigantic brute with one sightless eye and a greasy tarboosh reached out his grimy hand and seized her. Then she sickened at the profaning shock of his ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the pomp with which she surrounded herself was so magnificent, that Rome, enthralled, applauded. Beyond, on the Rhine, a city which is today Cologne, rose in honor of her sovereignty. To her wishes the senate was subservient, to her indiscretions blind. Claud, who meanwhile had been wholly sightless, suddenly showed signs of discernment. A woman, charged with illicit commerce, was brought to his tribunal. He condemned her, of course. "In my case," he explained, "matrimony has not been successful, but the fate that destined me to marry impure women destined ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... yourself, and you are moved to help him to carry it as in his infirmity he struggles along. What a contrast to the stalwart porters of Prague, or Rome, or Brussels. Poor wights! It is they who are paying for the war. Sightless soldiers led by little children come selling you sticking-plaster in the restaurants. Germany is too poor to care for them. It is they who are paying for the war. The drab, many-headed middle class of Berlin with its poverty-stricken breakfast-table, the old black bread of the war and no sugar ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... of light down here; he might have been sightless. But just as the blind develop an extra perceptive sense of unseen obstacles, so did Shann now find that he was aware of a change in the nature of the space about him. His weary arms and legs held him against the solidity of a wall, yet the impression that there was no longer another wall at his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... had never stopped long in the ranks of any Puritan party, or given satisfaction to Puritan ecclesiastics and theologians. In his youth he loved the night; in his old age he loves the sunlight of early morning as it glimmers on his sightless eyes. The music which had been his delight since childhood has still its charm, and he either sings or plays on the organ or bass-violin every day. In his gray coat, at the door of his house in Bunhill Fields, he sits on clear afternoons; a proud, ruggedly ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... half-opened lids had gently closed, hiding the sightless eyes, and she lay almost breathless ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands perished in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... then clutched it again with violence; a broken, strangling rattle came from the throat; and a spasm of convulsion seizing upon every limb, it was suddenly raised a little upon one arm, so as to display the countenance, covered with blood, the eyes retroverted into their orbits, and glaring with the sightless whites. It was a horrible spectacle,—the last convulsion of many that had shaken the wretched and insensible, yet still suffering clay, since it had received the death-stroke. The spasm was the last, and but momentary; yet it sufficed to raise the body of the mangled ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... legless, sightless grub, easily confused, by inexperienced eyes, with those of various honey-gathering Hymenoptera. Its more apparent characteristics consist of a colouring like that of rancid butter, a shiny and as it were oily skin and a segmentation accentuated by ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... to captives grown supine, Chained to their task in sightless mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free, In thunderous throes of life divine ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... offspring dead. Ah, deed most profitless as worst—a deed of wanton useless guilt; As though a pupil's hand accurs'd[146]—his holy master's blood had spilt. But not mine own untimely fate—it is not that which I deplore, My blind, my aged parents state—'tis their distress afflicts me more. That sightless pair, for many a day—from me their scanty food have earned, What lot is theirs, when I'm away—to the five elements returned?[147] Alike all wretched they, as I—ah, whose this triple deed of blood? For who the herbs ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... after leaving the hospital. I was received in the dining-room on the ground floor by Boyce and his mother. He wore black glasses to hide terrible disfigurement—he lifted them to show me. One eye had been extracted. The other was seared and sightless. He greeted me as heartily as ever, made little jests over his infirmity, treating it lightly for his mother's sake. She, on her side, deemed it her duty to exhibit equal cheerfulness. She boasted of his progress in self-reliance and in the accomplishment of various ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... my heavenly Father reveals more to me than He does to others, 'cause He, in His wisdom, has taken so much from me. He has left me here a poor old woman, deaf, blind, and lame. I can't see the faces of my friends through these poor sightless eyes, nor the beauties of the fields and sky, nor the blossoms and fruit of the trees, nor the flowers in the garden; neither can I hear the sweet music of the birds, nor even the prattle of the dear little children who come ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... came round the corner, and he would have been dead but for his cry 'Kamerad blesse.' I lowered my rifle, and, making sure he had no weapon, passed him to the rear and led on. We had just connected up with our party on the left when I felt a pressure of tons upon my head. My right eye was sightless, with the other I saw my hand with one finger severed, covered in blood. A great desire came over me to sink to the ground, into peaceful oblivion, but the peril of such weakness came to my mind, and with an effort I pulled myself together. ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... in the valley. In its centre was a solitary lake, black and bottomless, and haunted by a giant white water-snake, sluggish, blind and very old. Stray prospectors swore they had seen it, just at dusk, and its sightless, staring eyes were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... his nose, ears, hands and feet, and sent to Dehli. Death came to his relief upon the road, it is believed by his being hanged upon a tree 3rd March, 1789, and the mangled trunk was sent to Dehli, where it was laid before the sightless monarch, the most ghastly Nazar that ever was ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... lordless, And homeless lords! The mass must always suffer That one should reign! the collar's but newly clamp'd, And nothing but the name thereon is changed— Master? still masters! mark you not the red Of shame unutterable in my sightless white? Still hear me, Cromwell, speaking for your sake! These fifteen years, we, to you whole-devoted, Have sought for Liberty—to give it thee? To make our interests your huckster gains? The king a lion ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and he waited impatiently till evening should come and he could rub the precious dew on his sightless eyes. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... in the dark—deep down in the dark, With the terror of death in each sightless eye, Which tells how hard 'tis to burn and die Down—down in ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... over the edge of the sofa. Goddard's sightless eyes were turned for an instant in ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... her way to him and clung to his strong arm as if it was her only stay. Paul drew her close, saying wistfully, as he caressed the beautiful sightless face leaning on his shoulder, "Mia cara, would it break your heart, if at the last hour I gave up all and let the word remain unspoken? My courage fails me, and in spite of the hard past I would ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... curdling blood sent again with quickened impulse through his veins, as his dull ears were saluted with the horrible sound of the howlings of wild beasts in the distance; and the last things that his closing, almost sightless balls beheld were the glaring eyes of the monsters of the forest, as they gloated ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... feel, dearie," said the old lady, softly, turning her sightless eyes toward the girl, hearing ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... religious zeal, that men Should know how the Lord hath acted, Makes me tell it, that one day To my doors a blind man rambled, Gormas was his name, who said, "God who sends me here commands thee In His name to give me sight;" I, obedient to the mandate, Made at once the sign of the cross On his sightless eyes, that started Into life and light once more From their state of utter darkness. At another time when heaven, Muffled in the thickest, blackest Clouds, made war upon the world, Hurling at it lightning lances Of white snow, which fell so thickly On a mountain, that soon after ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... well enough to come for food, Yet she sees me not; Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, Sightful, sightless, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... the wolf-man, pricked up against the vaguely lustrous background of the river, fascinated me. For all the world those pointed ears seemed to be listening. But I knew they were dead and dried; that a man's eyes were gazing through the sightless ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... know dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning? * * * * * He is a portion of the loveliness, Which once he made ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... for tiding him over such periods—reading, tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here, to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs; and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, physically, to make ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... no room for him on the sidewalk, so he took up his position beyond the curbstone. The light from the large arc-lamp overhead, exposed the old man's thin white hair, withered face and threadbare clothes. His sightless eyes were turned toward the passing throng, and his head was slightly bent in an expectant attitude. But the hand that drew the wheezy bow across the strings of the violin often faltered, and the broken music, instead ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... and lean, with a shock of black hair. Blue glasses concealed one sightless eye. It was the chief sacristan who had thus ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... soon, with bright, exultant eye, Where fierce revenge flashed wild and high, Accusers gathered fast; From prison-keep and living grave Came forth the mutilated slave, With faltering step aghast; And sightless men with silver hair, The record of their dungeon air, Who for long years had sought to die, And wrestled with their agony Till thought grew wild and intellect grew dim, The clanking fetters' ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... gazed darkly into the steely, sightless eyes of the traitor. Death's awful calm had set the expression; but the man's whole life was there, its better part sadly shining forth among the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... troubled fashion, the little trembling hands moving nervously from side to side. It is a very, sad sight, the sadder for, the mournful change that crosses the face of the sleeping girl. The lips take a melancholy curve: the long lashes droop over the sightless eyes, a long, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a beautiful day in summer, and Margaret was sitting before the cottage porch, feeling the sun's benevolent warmth, and tempering, with the closed lid, the hot rays that were directed to her sightless orbs. She had no power to move, and was happy in the still enjoyment of the lingering and lovely day. She might have been a statue for her quietness—but there were curves and lines in the decrepit frame that art could never borrow. Little there seemed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... air, nor was there any movement in the pulses of their hands. No breath! No life! The eyes of the girl were closed. How strangely innocent she looked! Larry's open eyes seemed to be gazing at her shut eyes; but Keith saw that they were sightless. With a sort of sob he drew down the lids. Then, by an impulse that he could never have explained, he laid a hand on his brother's head, and a hand on the girl's fair hair. The clothes had fallen down ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... young men away to fight. It is not right. The young men should not fight." Then putting his hand in his pocket he drew out a little silver cross that had been given him some years before when he had been confirmed, and holding it up as if his sightless eyes could see it he said, "That's good. That means that men should not fight, but live ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... made, and his light as shining in darkness that comprehended it not. Now, he may have conceived of matter as uncreated, eternally existing in formless night, the ground of the devil's being, and may have limited the work of creation to breaking up the sightless chaos, defining it into orderly shapes, filling it with light and motion, and peopling it with children of heaven. Such was the Persian faith, familiar at that time to the Jews. Neander, with others, objects to this view that it would destroy John's monotheism and make him ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... knowing it, this heroic man was yielding to a sleep more powerful than that which had overcome his companions. While trying to save those who were weaker than himself, he had been literally freezing. Sightless, benumbed, moving half unconsciously about his work, he staggered, staggered, staggered, and finally sank in the snow. All slept! As he put no more fuel upon the fire, the flames died down. The logs upon which the fire had rested gave way, and most of the coals fell ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... and start at once, so as to take your time. Your god-daughter Matheline will accompany you; and I will follow with friend Sylvestre, for fear some accident might happen to him with his lame leg and sightless eye." As he proposed, so it was done; for Josserande suspected nothing, knowing that her son had promised, and that he would not ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... she still leading him by the hand, like a child. Like a child, or rather like a blind man, he sat down in the chair which she placed for him. His eyes did not move from her face; but they looked almost like sightless eyes. Hetty stood before him, with her hands clasped tight. Neither spoke. At last Dr. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... positions, these dead men. Some have their heads pillowed peacefully upon their arms as if in sleep. Others have their hard faces half buried in the sand. Others still lie prone upon their backs with bits of seaweed in their hair and their sightless eyes ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... the closely set chairs and tables to the pavement. The sightless stare of light-blanched spectacles met his eyes. A gentlemanly-looking lady in short skirts stood ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... stray bone, some particle, Which far-diffused sense would know as his: Heart-glad she would sit down, and watch the tide Slow-growing—till it reached at length her feet, When, at its first cold touch, up she would spring, And, ghastful, flee, with white-rimmed sightless eye. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... be that can recollect that?" was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. "Ye maun be full o' years. Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... powerful hands and big feet. He had an enormous nose, shaggy eyebrows and a bristling black moustache. But the one striking peculiarity about him was his missing right eye. The large heavy eyelid was drooped and closed tightly over the sightless socket, which seemed to have sunk deep into his head. This cavern on one side of his face gave to the other eye a strange power. When he looked at you, it gleamed a fierce steady blaze like the electric headlight of an engine. How he lost that ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... empty sleeve or a sightless eye Or a legless form I see, I breathe my thanks to my God on High For His watchful care o'er me. And I say to myself, as the cripple goes Half stumbling on his way: I may brag and boast, but that brother knows Why ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... Melisanda, and the Sightless. Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated from the French by ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... it,—so tranquil it seems, so cool, so careless, so morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious society, but there I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man, who resorts thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his own, with a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that others less unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point apparently not always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy that the darkness puts him on an equality ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... That upturned sightless white eye of his took possession of my imagination. I don't think that even then I was swayed by any crude melodramatic conception of injustice. I was quite prepared to believe the card wasn't a punctiliously accurate statement of fact, and that a case could be made out for Lord Pandram. Still there ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... uncertain light it was not easy to tell where the cloak ended, and the stain that embrued the snow began. On the other side of the block a decapitated head stood mounted on an upright pike, and the sightless eyes of Ramiro del' Orca looked from his grinning face upon the town of Cesena, which he had ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... at once. She uttered a scream, and fell with her forehead on the horse's neck. Even that movement probably checked him, for he reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him; with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round. Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The spot where she was saved was within a single bound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Die, for none other way canst live. When earth and heaven lay down their veil, And that apocalypse turns thee pale; When thy seeing blindeth thee To what thy fellow-mortals see; When their sight to thee is sightless; Their living, death; their light, most light- less; Search no more— Pass the gates of ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... by a sudden impulse from the wall against which she had leaned: she threw herself at the feet of Stratonice; she embraced her knees, and looking up at her with those sightless but touching eyes: ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon a sandy shore. Here, too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock of lories, making the dark low trees gay with flying living blossoms. And here she would lie with her feet towards the east, her sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean which she would ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a half start. He did not like the white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the floor, nose within an inch of ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... horror we experienced when the silent figure before us moved in its grave of lead and sand. Slowly, before our eyes, it writhed, and, with a faint rustling of the immemorial cerements, rose up, and, through sightless and bandaged eyes, stared across the yellow candlelight at the woman who had ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the extreme north of the Argentine Republic, where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the place of sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whom the monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence, sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated in them, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become aware that this ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the time to labour, to marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children—the power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would be bleared, and, perhaps, sightless; my arms and thighs strengthless and sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a wooing then—no labouring—no eating strong flesh, and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when all ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Fortune Trubert, who lay dying, within thirty paces of the Military Bureau where he had worn out his life, on a pallet of sacking, in the cell of some expelled Barnabite father. His livid face was sunk in the pillow. His eyes, which already were almost sightless, turned their glassy pupils upon his visitor; his parched hand grasped Evariste's and pressed it with unexpected vigour. Three times he had vomited blood in two days. He tried to speak; his voice, at first hoarse and feeble as ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... made the examination, opened the door of the cage for him. The bear—a medium-sized black animal—wandered aimlessly about, stumbling over the water pan and knocking its head against the bars, its eyes, which were evidently sightless, shining like two fiery opals as they reflected the ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... with a blood-vessel burst. And his game heart went on." Here a rush close behind Made him cast a glance back with despair in his mind. It was Cimmeroon rushing, his lips twitcht apart, His eyes rolled back sightless, and death in his heart. He reached to Right Royal, then fell, and was dead, Nevermore to stretch reins ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... were short in comparison with his body and arms; his legs were bare, but he wore blue kandrisa as far as the knee; every features of his face was ugly, exceedingly and bitterly ugly, and one of his eyes was sightless, being covered with a white film. By his side on the ground was a large barrel, seemingly a water-cask, which he occasionally seized with a finger and thumb, and waved over his head as if it had been a quart pot. Such ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to drive them, and Sarpedon drags down a portion of the Achaean battlement, and Aias leaps into the trench with his deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and shines beneath the sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and sees it with his sightless eyes, sees also the Trojan women working at the loom, cheating their anxious hearts with broidery work of gold and scarlet, or raising the song to Athene, or heating the bath for Hector, who never again may pass within the gates of Troy. He sees the poor weaving woman, weighing the wool, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... saliva, said to him, 'Be opened'; and the man could hear (vii. 34). The other is, the gradual healing of a blind man whom our Lord again leads apart from the crowd, takes by the hand, lays His own kind hands upon the poor, sightless eyeballs, and with singular slowness of progress effects a cure, not by a leap and a bound as He generally does, but by steps and stages; tries it once and finds partial success, has to apply the curative process again, and then the man can see (viii. 23). In addition to these instances there are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... stain. On the lounge, stretched at full length, a stiffening human shape, a yellow-white, parchment-like face above the black clothing, a bluish, half-opened mouth whose yellow teeth showed savagely, a fallen chin and jaw, covered with the gray stubble of unshaved beard, and two staring, sightless, ghastly eyes fixed and upturned as though in agonized appeal. Stone-dead,—murdered, doubtless,—all that was left of ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... hall-gate sat Capys, Capys, the sightless seer; From head to foot he trembled As Romulus drew near. And up stood stiff his thin white hair, And his blind eyes flashed fire: "Hail! foster child of the wondrous nurse! Hail! son ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... touched and bound all the worlds together in its wonderful circle of life. One root it sent deep down into the sightless depths of Hel, where the dead lived; another it fastened firmly in Joetunheim, the dreary home of the giants; and with the third it grasped Midgard, the dwelling place of men. Serpents and all kinds of worms gnawed continually at its roots, but were never able to destroy them. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... felt very humble in the presence of those who had taken part in the more famous campaigns under Napoleon himself. The history of another of my old soldiers was pathetic. He was led daily into the cabaret, where my guests were wont to fight their battles o'er again, his eyes absolutely sightless, and his hair as white as snow. Getting into conversation with him I learned that he had gone to Egypt with Bonaparte, had fought at the Battle of the Pyramids, had been blinded by the glaring sun on the sand ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Capys, Capys the sightless seer; From head to foot he trembled As Romulus drew near. And up stood stiff his thin white hair, And his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan of: "Water—water! For the love of God, water!" It was a pitiable sight beyond all human power of description, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... our two stampedes. As he had never worked with the herd, his first question was, did we receive any blind cattle or had any gone blind since we started? He then informed me that the old Spanish rancheros would never leave a sightless animal in a corral with sound ones during the night for fear of a stampede. He cautioned me to look the herd over carefully, and if there was a blind animal found to cut it out or the trouble would he repeated in spite of all precaution. I ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... inquiry the blind man seemed scarcely able to answer. Big tears gathered into the sightless eyes, and folding his hands across his bosom, ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. The seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noticed their loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither and thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on. They had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which they made ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... she went up and down in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl's landing, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony, and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the departed forefathers of his race, when the wretch will meet them in the world to come? Having hurled from the throne his in-offensive sons, will he be able to declare that he had treated them in a blameless way? He doth not now see with his mind's eye how he hath become so sightless, and on account of what act he hath grown blind among the kings of this entire earth. Is it not because he hath banished Kunit's son from his kingdom? I have no doubt that Vichitravirya's son, when he with his sons perpetrated this inhuman act, beheld ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... begotten: or that they are real devils with a human body either simulated or purloined. For if the devil, by divine permission, may take possession of the whole man and change his mind, is it strange that he may disfigure also his body, causing men to be born sightless or cripples? ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... who, living many years With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun, Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune To visible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Brenner lifted her head so that her face, swollen beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her almost sightless eyes fastened themselves on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... brooding, drawn apart From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart Envy, which biting inwards did corrode His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad, Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry, And working tongue, and danger in the eye; And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn: "O fools, think not to trick me!" then forlorn Would gaze about green earth or out to sea: "This is the end of man in ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... blind to the world about them, conscious only of the sunlight and the rain, with no imaginative knowledge, it would seem, or sympathy with their brethren. It always filled Hugh with a sort of pity to think of the sightless life of trees and flowers, each rising in its place, in plain, on hill, and yet each enclosed within itself, with no consciousness of its own beauty, and still less conscious of the beauty of its fellows. And what was the life that animated them? Where did it come from? Where did it pass to? Had ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would have fitted him out with eyes, in the provinces, except that such were better obtainable in Paris. Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that lay before him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he was a surgical triumph, kept sobbing, kept weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept jerking his four stumps in supplication, kept begging ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... of others, they would be inconceivable except to those who had similar sensations and feelings. If the mental consciousness of the deaf-blind person were absolutely dissimilar to that of his fellows, he would have no means of imagining what they think. Since the mind of the sightless is essentially the same as that of the seeing in that it admits of no lack, it must supply some sort of equivalent for missing physical sensations. It must perceive a likeness between things outward and things inward, a correspondence between the seen and the unseen. I make use of such ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... we have introduced as Arthur Elwood, was of a diminutive size, with commonplace features, and a severe, forbidding countenance, made so, perhaps, by intense application to business, together with the unfavorable effect caused by a blemished and sightless eye. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of cheerfulness is perhaps more apparent than real. He points out that it is in company that the blind is least conscious of his misfortune, and that the deaf and dumb is most conscious of it. That is certainly the case. In conversation the sightless are on an equality with the seeing, while the deaf and dumb are shut up in a terrible isolation. The fact that they see is not their gain but their loss. They watch the movement of the lips and the signs ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... loss, and uttered no lamentations. She received the condolences of her friends with gratitude, and strove to interest herself in their pursuits. But a deadly paleness, which never left her, spread over her face, and "the sad smile on her lips was heart-breaking." Sightless and sad, it was time for her to die. Madame de Stael and Montmorency, the friends of her youth, had long since departed. Ballanche was gone, and now Chateaubriand. She survived the latter only eleven months. Stricken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... William, to our village! Peaceful dwell, devoid of pillage, Cherished son! On her sightless steps attendant, Wear a crown of light resplendent, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... perish in the face of day." Who has not shuddered over the description of that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and bowie-knife, in a dark room? One thrills to think of those first few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation, —then the confused encounter, the slippery floor, the invisible, ghastly terrors of that horrible chamber. Many a man would shrink from that, who would march coolly up to the cannon's mouth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... I saw a grave near which I was standing suddenly begin to open, as if a living being were pushing up the ground from within. Then I saw a fleshless hand appear above the disturbed sods. Then a sightless human skull thrust itself forth, and presently, filling me with a terror I cannot describe, the entire skeleton emerged from the partly open grave, and arose and ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... great office."[4] Thus my Lady, nor yet moved she her look from its fixed attention after than before these words of hers. As is he who gazes and endeavors to see the sun eclipsed a little, who through seeing becomes sightless, so did I become in respect to that last fire, till it was said, "Why dost thou dazzle thyself in order to see a thing which has no place here?[5] On earth my body is earth; and it will be there with the others until our number corresponds with the eternal purpose.[6] With their two garments ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Affirm you know your own Unknowable, And lock the winged soul in a new hell; Lest it be you, lip-worshippers of Truth, Who break the heart of youth; Lest it be you, the realists, who fight With shadows, and forget your own pure light; Lest it be you who, with a little shroud Snatched from the sightless faces of the dead, Hoodwink the world, and keep the mourner bowed In dust, real dust, with stones, real stones, for bread; Lest, as you look one eighth of an inch beneath The yellow skin of death, You dream yourselves discoverers of the skull That old memento mori of ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Guthrie, leaning his sightless face forward, "will you kindly inform me for what reason my wife has been summoned to Witanbury this afternoon? The Dean's letter—I do not know if you have read it—is expressed in rather ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... light in his eyes. She bent her head till the fingers of the lily-petals touched her cheek. She crept back through the house, and looked at Foh-Kyung smoking. His eyes were dull, even as are the eyes of sightless bronze Buddhas. No, she would never risk going in to speak to him. If she heard the sound of his voice, if he called her "little Flower of the House," she would never have the strength to go. So she stood in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this leafy place Quiet he lies; Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies; 'Tis but another dead: All you ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... said, turning towards where Barnaby stood looking on, 'that one who has the gift of sight, would lay this out for me in bread to keep me on my way? Heaven's blessing on the young feet that will bestir themselves in aid of one so helpless as a sightless man!' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned his sightless eyes in our direction ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... And yet ships go far, and the human fate is often mysteriously sad. It might be that the wonder-child was born to be wrecked, to be cast up, streaming with sea-water on the strand of this lonely isle. It might be that the eyes which worshipped the rainbow were sightless beneath that stone yonder; that the hands which pointed to it were folded in the eternal sleep. And, if so, was not the lie justified? If so, could Peter Uniacke regret it? He saw this man who had ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... her basket again upon her arm, turned to give one last look of fiendish satisfaction at the corpse, which lay like a dead angel slain in God's battle. The bright lamps were glaring full upon her still beautiful but sightless eyes, which, wide open, looked, even in death, reproachfully yet forgivingly ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... approach: the closet-door folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but sightless pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like, the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was more terrible to me in that moment than any pale-eyed ghost ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... high enough to illuminate the whole front as Adams climbed the broad, massive steps to the paved space before it. Leaning against the heavy balustrade he enjoyed the picture. The shadows were deep and through the sightless windows shone a few silver stars. The magnificent front of solid granite with graceful scroll-work and carved outline, blackened here by smoke and there by age, with vines and trees growing from crevices, ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their course through other countries—strange-looking, dimly-lighted, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night! And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... shrinking from the light, is lifted by his burly father. The child is carried to the spring, and puts out a groping hand when his father bids him drink. He cannot find the glass, and his father must put it to his lips. He is blind, except to light,—and that only visits those poor sightless eyes to agonize them! Where the water flows off below the basin in a clear jet, the father bathes his boy's forehead, and gently, gently touches his eyelids. But the child reaches out his wasted hands, and dashes the water against his face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... grey, sightless head from side to side, as if feeling for the faces below him—and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... white-haired man And long since blind, there sat he in his hall, Untamed by age. At times a fiery gleam Flashed from his sightless eyes; and oft the red Burned on his forehead, while with splenetic speech Stirred by ill news or memory stung, he banned Foes and false friend. Pleased by his daughters' tale, At once he stretched his huge ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... were counted off, I am told. Ten Germans came forward, ten British, in wheeled chairs, on crutches, the sightless ones led. The exchange was made. Then ten more, and so on. What a sight! What a horror! No man there would ever be whole again. There were men without legs, without arms, blind men, men twisted by fearful body wounds. Two hundred and sixteen British officers and men, and as ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... character of the council, and the choice of the courses open before it. As Socrates describes the incident, the disputes were running so high, from the mere pleasure of argument, that there seemed likely to be no end to the controversy, when suddenly a simple-minded layman, who by his sightless eye or limping leg bore witness of his zeal for the Christian faith, stepped among them and abruptly said, "Christ and the apostles left us not a system of logic nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth to be guided by faith and good works." "There has," says Bishop Kaye in recording ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various |
