"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment only. And so Gral stood stark in his moment of awe, truly frightened as he visioned what such a blow might have done to Obe. But Gral was truly man, truly prototype; for the time of one deep breath he felt it, then awe and fright ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... we were sailing along, we saw people stand on the shore looking at us: we could also perceive they were black and stark naked. I was inclined to go on shore, but Xury cried, "No, no:" however, I approached nearer, and I found they run along the shore by me a good way. They had no weapons in their hands, except one, who held a long stick, which Xury told me was a ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... little picture by Ruysdael, has employed the pencils of several students;—among the most successful of whom are Messrs. Stark, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... you have not gone stark mad, you must have had a sunstroke," said Harold, coming forward, "what's ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... had brought her to the Nuns' Chapel, her orisons had been concluded, for she had turned her back upon the altar, and sat gazing sorrowfully down at her lap, where lay in pathetic pose a white rabbit and a snowy pigeon,—both dead, quite stark and cold,—laid out in state upon the spotless linen apron, around which a fluted ruffle ran crisp and smooth. One tiny waxen hand held a broken lily, and the other was vainly pressed upon the lids of the rabbit's eyes, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... were looking on were two men, stark naked, who had been bathing near by. About fifty or sixty people soon collected, and some time passed before it occurred to any one to remark that these two men had ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... it is in my power to present a drawing, made expressly for the purpose, of the picturesque costume worn by the Royal Company of Archers, or King's Body Guard of Scotland. This is described in Stark's "Picture of Edinburgh" thus:—"Their uniform is 42nd tartan, with green velvet collar and cuffs, and a Highland bonnet, with feathers; on the front of the bonnet is the cross of St. Andrew, and a gold arrow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... or high-shouldered scavenger's cart, the road was deserted. Once a low-hung two-wheeled vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting tail- board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched sideways on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and lashed it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip. He was collarless, and the scarlet and orange handkerchief, knotted about ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... o'er bank, o'er ditch, o'er stark, She flang amang them a', man; The butter-box got many knocks, Their riggings paid for a' then. They got their paiks, wi sudden straiks, Which to their grief they saw, man: Wi clinkum, clankum o'er their crowns, The lads began to ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... Mrs. Carpenter of Chicago sang sweetly, playing her own accompaniment; Mr. Frank Lincoln gave some of his amusing impersonations; Miss Maud Powell of Chicago, only fourteen years of age, who had been taking lessons in France and Germany for some years, played exquisite airs on the violin; Mrs. Flora Stark, Miss Alice Blatch and Miss Conway gave us some fine classical music on the piano, and Nathaniel Mellen sang some pathetic negro melodies.[581] Altogether it was a pleasant occasion and I felt quite proud of the varied talents manifested by our young people. Some English ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sense of vastness and durability. A dark and waveless sheet lay stretched before him, merging speedily into general blackness. About four yards away and as many apart, two gigantic pillars arose out of the motionless flood stark and ghostly gray. Behind them, suggestive of rows with an aisle between, other pillars were seen, mere upright streaks of uncertain hue fainter growing in the shadowy perspective. Below there was nothing to arrest a glance. Raising his eyes to the roof above him, out of the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... first, then loudly, frantically. But no answer came, except that now the mocking din of the baboons seemed to jeer at us. They appeared to be gathered near us, all together. As we ran towards the sound the moon burst through a rift in the clouds. There ahead of us, stark naked, and running swiftly towards the baboons, we saw the figure of Hector, his body gleaming white in the moonbeams, and by his side the grey figure of ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... the day before, now glittered forth in blooms of unfamiliar beauty. Towards that spot were attracted myriads of happy insects, whose hum of intense joy was musically loud. But the form of the life-seeking sorcerer lay rigid and stark; blind to the bloom of the wild-flowers, deaf to the glee of the insects,—one hand still resting heavily on the rim of the emptied caldron, and the face still hid behind the Black Veil. What! the wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well-nigh ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slumbering negress, partly disclosed through the lacework of some rigging, lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts, was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from the deck, crosswise with its dam's; its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually rooting to get at the mark; and meantime giving a ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... think the Breitmann Must be the greatest man Who ever went a-fighting Since History began, I dressed me like a soldier, For I am stark of limb; With Breitmann for a model, And try to ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... passed away, after which the conversation necessarily drifted into more serious courses. It could hardly be otherwise in view of the circumstances by which they were all surrounded. Youth and beauty and love cannot always feast upon themselves. They must perforce return to the stark realities of life. They spoke of the war and of all the miseries attendant upon it—the sufferings of the poor, the privations of the sick, the anxieties of parents, the pangs of absence, the rigours of the cold, and the terrible sacrifices which even the commonest soldier ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... from the house in the direction of Main Street, he experienced a sudden sense of exaltation. Viola was not his sister! As suddenly came the reaction, and with it stark realization. Viola could never be anything to him ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... shining hull was a thing of beauty through stark grandeur now, but obviously incomplete. The ray projectors were not mounted, but they were to be ray projectors of a type never before possible. Space is the transmitter of all rays, and it is in space that those energy forms exist. Arcot ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... manly blood, and, child as he was, he did not crouch or fawn upon me. I heard him cry that he would try to love me, - not that he did, - and then I saw him running back towards the house. The next I saw was my own sword naked in my hand, and he lying at my feet stark dead, - dabbled here and there with blood, but otherwise no different from what I had seen him in his sleep - in the same attitude too, with his cheek resting upon ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... it—having been rebuilt indeed upon Saxon foundations in the days of William Rufus—yet lies among its ancient elms. Farther on, situate upon the slope of a vale down which runs a brook through meadows, is the stark ruin of the old Nunnery that was subservient to the proud Abbey on the hill, some of it now roofed in with galvanised iron sheets and used ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... be brief, I handed in that stark old traveller from nowhere at the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity sat in the waiting-room while they examined him. In five minutes the house-surgeon on duty came in to see me, and with a shake of his head ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... although I did not think it curious then, that these men should have accepted so unquestioningly Lancelot's command over them. But they were old soldiers, who had promised to obey Captain Amber, and he had himself devolved his command upon Lancelot. And so, until Lancelot went stark staring mad, which he was not in the least likely to do, they were perfectly ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sympathy," interrupted Flavia. "Ah, my dear, you could not be expected to understand. You can't realize, knowing Arthur as you do, his entire lack of any aesthetic sense whatever. He is absolutely nil, stone deaf and stark blind, on that side. He doesn't mean to be brutal, it is just the brutality of utter ignorance. They always feel it—they are so sensitive to unsympathetic influences, you know; they know it the moment they come into ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. "As a prince hast thou power with God," he calmly said, "and thou hast prevailed. For the King of kings was never obdurate, my dear, to them that have deserved well of Him. So He will ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... down a dark side way which led them to the water-front. Wharves where work was going on roared and shone. The masts and spars of ships rose stark against the sky. Beyond, the river was dotted with lights against the luminous horizon of Manhattan. He slackened his pace. At his side the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... stark oblivion froze above their names Whose glory shone round Shakespeare's, bright as now, One eye beheld their light shine full as fame's, One hand unveiled it: this did none but thou. Love, stronger than forgetfulness and sleep, Rose, and bade memory rise, and England ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive agony; and then congealed forever in a ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Rev. Oliver P. Stark, the first superintendent of this institution, died there at the age of 61, March 2, 1884. He was a native of Goshen, New York, and a graduate of the college and Theological Seminary at Princeton, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... winding-sheet, There stark she lay on her carven bed: Seven burning tapers about her feet, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... official Church, now another, perhaps the exact opposite of the last. Now they denied something as old as Europe—such as the right to property: now a new piece of usage or discipline such as Communion in one kind: now a partial regional rule, such as celibacy. Some went stark mad. Others, at the contrary extreme, did no ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... heart out before his father's eyes. Hardly any man or woman survived, except by accident. A body of some hundred burghers made their escape across the snow into the open country. They were, however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon the trees by the feet, to freeze, or to perish by a more lingering death. Most of them soon died, but twenty, who happened to be wealthy, succeeded, after enduring much torture, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... nothing but Charming, very charming.—The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our general mother. There were many amongst them as exactly ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... we meet, when shall we be * Again united after severance stark? And I shall win my choicest wish and view? * Blame end and Love abide without remark? Were Nile to flow as freely as my tears, * 'Twould leave no region but with water-mark: 'Twould overthrow Hijaz and Egypt-land * 'Twould deluge Syria and 'twould drown ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... overwhelming evidence. There were persons present (a small minority only) who considered this want of composure on the part of the prisoner to be a sign in his favor. Self-possession, in his dreadful position, signified, to their minds, the stark insensibility of a heartless and shameless criminal, and afforded in itself a presumption, not of innocence, but ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... story we have an account of the brothers in the London house of Captain Con, the happy husband married to a stark English wife of mechanical propriety—a rebellious husband, too, when in the sociable atmosphere of his own upper room, amid the blackened clay pipes and the friendly fumes of whiskey, he sings her praises, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... language, and not even sure before you start whether you will be given enough to eat. Either it is that saddest of courage forced on the timid by necessity, or, as Doctor Johnson would probably have said, it is stark insensibility; and I am afraid when I look at her I silently agree with the apostle of common sense, and take it for granted that she is incapable of deep feeling, for the altogether inadequate reason ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... men—Jim Lewarne, sunk in a drunken slumber, Calvin Oke bawling in his ear, Old Zeb on hands and knees, scraping the embers together, Toby Lewarne (Jim's elder brother) thumping a pannikin on his knee and bellowing a carol, and a dozen others—in stages varying from qualified sobriety to stark and shameless intoxication—peering across the fire at the game in progress between them and the faint line that marked where sand ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... experiences in the Great Republic. It may well be that a long list of inconsistencies might be made out for any country, just as for any individual; but so far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of vision. He saw the little grocer lying stark and huddled among the phlox by the stable, and the group of men that ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at present, Stark, I'm crawling on my umbilicus same as the rest of you; the only difference is that I retain the charm ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... pedagogical side of their art, as for instance have Tausig, Ehrlich or Joseffy, all of whom have produced remarkable works on technic. Liszt's contribution to the technic of the instrument was made through his pieces, not through exercises; his contributions to the Lebert and Stark Stuttgart Conservatory method consist of two well-known concert studies. Personally, I am opposed to set methods, that is, those that pretend to teach the pupil factory-wise. Of what value is the teacher if he ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... receive, whose every word deserves To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, Together working with thy jealousies, Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle For girls of nine, O! think what they have done, And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour, To have him kill a king; ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... farm were, the new manager found, three black fellows and two 'gins,'{*} all of whom were in a state of stark nudity; but they welcomed him with smiles and an overpowering smell of ants, the which latter is peculiar to the Australian nigger. One of the bucks, who when Denison entered was sleeping, with three exceedingly mangy dogs, in the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark, Bedlam crazy!" ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... in praying for a miracle. But we have learned down here to pray for things we want, and, anyhow, just at that moment the miracle occurred. The wind fell off suddenly, and came with a light air from the southward, and then dropped stark calm. The ice was now "all abroad," which I was sorry for, for there was a big safe pan not twenty yards away from me. If I could have got on that, I might have killed my other dogs when the time came, and with their coats I could hope to hold out for two or three days ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... grey Allan's mates with awe Heard of the visioned sights he saw, The legend heard him say; But the Seer's gifted eye was dim, Deafened his ear, and stark his limb, Ere closed that bloody day. He sleeps far from his Highland heath, But often of the Dance of Death His comrades tell the tale On picquet-post, when ebbs the night, And waning watch-fires glow less bright, And ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... with a curve not larger than that of an oyster-shell, which when open to the tide, his mouth very much resembled. As for his neck, it was so long that no portion of dress at that time discovered was capable of covering more than one third of it; so that there were always two parts out of three left stark naked, and helplessly exposed to the elements. Whenever he smiled he looked as if he was about to weep. As the squire said, he was dreadfully round-shouldered—had dangling arms, that kept napping about him as if they were moved by some machinery that ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... gauzy wrappings that enveloped her from head to foot. There, too, standing near to her were the Khania Atene and her uncle the old Shaman, who looked but ill at ease, and lastly, stretched upon his funeral couch, the fiery light beating upon his stark form and face, lay the ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... find it occupied, and I expected to find, in addition to my books of memoranda, an outfit of clothing. Where is it? No—don't rise. I can see it's gone. Now, just at present, though the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man to run about stark, the evenings are quite chilly. I want clothing—and other accommodation; and I must also have ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... have been to see the lying in state, as lying stark and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... way of being baking hot along the Little Missouri, and even in the late afternoon the air was usually like a blast from a furnace. But the country which appeared stark and dreadful under the straight noon sun, at dusk took on a magic more enticing, it seemed, because it grew out of such forbidding desolation. The buttes, protruding like buttresses from the ranges that bordered the river, threw lengthening shadows across the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... time it was grey dawn, and we were working up in shore, without dreaming of breaking the blockade, when it fell stark calm. Presently the Spanish squadron, anchored under Punto Canoa, perceived us, when a corvette, two schooners, a cutter, and eight gunboats, got under weigh, the latter of which soon swept close to us, ranging themselves ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... near that you cannot but wonder at their recklessness. There is a species of impudence which seems to be specially attached to little birds. In them it reaches the highest pitch of perfection. A bold, swelling, arrogant effrontery—a sort of stark, staring, self-complacent, comfortable, and yet innocent impertinence, which is at once irritating and amusing, aggravating and attractive, and which is exhibited in the greatest intensity in the whisky-john. He will jump down almost under your nose, and seize ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... stark staring mad. The needle jumped from pole to pole with sudden and surprising jerks, ran round, or as it is said, boxed the compass, and then ran suddenly back again as if it ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Louis and Richard Hautville came home. They had been trapping on Green Mountain, they said, camping in the little lodge they had built there. When they came in laden with stark white rabbits and limp-necked birds, and one of them with a haunch of venison on his back, Madelon faced them with sudden fierceness, as if to speak. Then she turned away to her work, without a word of greeting. The boy Richard stared at her with a ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would involve this country in diplomatic difficulties with Germany. Next, the Germans protested against our selling munitions of war to the Allies. Neither custom nor international law forbade doing this, and the protest stood out in :stark impudence when it came from Germany, the country which, for fifty years and more, had sold munitions to every one who asked and had not hesitated to sell impartially to both antagonists in the Russo-Japanese War. By playing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... offer; and this is all the work of Nature. How clear the water is! We can see everything on the bottom with perfect distinctness. Rich green water plants bend their limbs gracefully to the force of the current. Old dead sticks lie stiff and stark, that once were living branches swaying and singing above their present burial places, not dreaming of death and decay, so beautiful were they. Great rocks heave their brown backs up to the very top of the water. Beds of gravel still ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... cross blistered the Morning-gold, And the body upon it was stark and cold. The wind of the dawn went merrily past, The high grass bowed her plumes to ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... and Buffalo he succeeded in winning the pennant with that organization, he having the services of John M. Ward and "Bobby" Matthews as pitchers, Lewis J. Brown as catcher; Joe Start, M. H. McGeary and W. L. Hague on the bases; with "Tommy" Stark, Paul Hines and James O'Rourke in the field. Emil Grace and John Farrell replaced Brown and Hague toward the close of ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... garden! The only place where it might fitly grow is by the side of the road that led Childe Roland to the Dark Tower: between the bit of "stubbed ground" and the marsh near to the "palsied oak," with its roots set in the "bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this time,—[July, 1867.]—when in fancy I see his credulous victim, Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never come—but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and gray beneath the burning skies. Wellnigh again its mighty frame-work grows To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn From hot humanity's impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... night a sword-light in the sky Flashed a swift terror on the dark. In that sharp light the fields did lie Naked and stone-like; each tree stood Like a tranced woman, bound and stark. Far off the wood With darkness ridged ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man, past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions when "his old cap was new." Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives; but all the stark wickedness that actually gives the momentum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age and outlived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... of awnings, with bare decks, stark as gladiators, sombre and terrible, they conveyed a relentless significance heightened by the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Blackburn no longer lay peacefully on its back. It had been turned on its side, and remained in a stark and awkward attitude. For the first time the back of the head ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... was addressed to her stark naked baby, which broke from a tremendous stare into a benignant laugh, that had the effect of shutting up its eyes at the same time that it ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... but impregnated the air of the country with such sober and salutiferous steams as very much comforted the heads and refreshed the senses of all that breathed in it. A discarded statesman that, at his first landing, appeared stark, staring mad, would become calm in a week's time, and upon his return home live easy and satisfied in his retirement. A moping lover would grow a pleasant fellow by that time he had rid thrice about the ...
— English Satires • Various
... precious vermin. You moving dirt, you rank stark muck o'the world, You oven-bats, you things so far from souls, Like dogs, you're out of Providence's reach, And only fit for hanging; but be gone, And think of plunder.—You right elder sheriff, Who carved our Henry's image on a table, At your club-feast, and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... dark-coloured, but not black; that the man and woman appeared to be very old, being both grey-headed; that the hair of the man's head was bushy, and his beard long and rough; that the woman's hair was cropped short, and both of them were stark naked. Mr Monkhouse the surgeon, and one of the men, who were with another party near the watering-place, also strayed from their companions, and as they were coming out of a thicket, observed six Indians standing together, at the distance of about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... John Randolph set himself stark and grim. "The question is," said he, replying to Calhoun's new nationalism, "whether or not we are willing to become one great consolidated nation, or whether we have still respect enough for those ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... hurdles of reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foot and more by a hurdle of wood On these, round about the house, they lie, heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house.... In some places are from two to fifty of these houses together, or but little separated by groves of trees." [Footnote: Smith's History of Virginia, Richmond ed., ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... stark and bare of one common-sense idea. In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... I thought the captain was stark, staring mad to fire his fallow on such a windy day, and that blowing right from the lake to the house. When Old Wittals came in and towld us that the masther was not to the fore, but only one lad, an' the wife an' the chilther ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... land would absorb it, or at least give a background to shadow over its likelihood, the scenery and atmosphere to lend an evanescent credibility, changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, flat, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... bred to kintra-wark, And counted was baith wight and stark, Yet that was never Robin's mark To mak a man; But tell him, he was learn'd and clark, Ye ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... after, we saw two sail to leeward from, off the quarter-deck, for they kept no look-out from the mast-head, and we presently observed they were in chace of us. The French and Spaniards on board now began to grow a good deal alarmed, when it fell stark calm, but not before the ships had neared us so much, that we plainly discerned them to be English men of war, the one a two-decker, the other a twenty-gun ship. The French had now thoughts, when a breeze should spring up, of running the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... late one afternoon, and the low sun was beginning to strike athwart the stark columns and down the long aisles of the redwoods on the High Ridge. The doctor, returning from a patient at the loggers' camp in its depths, had just sighted the smaller groves of Laurel Springs, two miles away. He was riding fast, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a bygone age! He stood there, ludicrous and unreal in his stark black nakedness, his frayed robes of crimson whipping to tatters in the breeze. Yet he had forgotten his wounds—Horab was standing upright—and Garry's hand that held the pistol fell loosely ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... a humbug and fabricator of sham attitudes, and ally myself with democracy. Fact, valiantly faced, is of more value than any reputation. The false aristocrat is robed to the chin and unwashed beneath, the true goes stark as Apollo. The false is ridiculous with undignified insistence upon his dignity; the true says like God, "I ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... slaves jes' like people sell hosses now. I saw a lot of slaves sold on de auction block. Dey would strip 'em stark naked. A nigger scarred up or whaled an' welted up wus considered a bad nigger an' did not bring much. If his body wus not scarred, he brought a good price. I saw a lot of slaves whupped an' I was whupped myself. Dey whupped me ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... straight and stark, as though, thought Rankin despairingly, she were already dead. Her right arm was out over the sheet, her thin hand nerveless. Her face was very white, her lips swollen and bleeding as though she had bitten them repeatedly. She was absolutely motionless, lying on ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... our dead. Stark they came into the world, and stark they passed out over the side of the longboat and down into the dark freezing ocean. Lots were cast for the clothes. This was by Captain Nicholl's command, in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... consoling household motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six miles of stark-naked plank walk, rows on rows of bath closets, leagues of flimsy carpentry-work, in the way of cheap-John shops, tin-type booths, peep-shows, go-rounds, shooting-galleries, pop-beer and cigar shops, restaurants, barber shops, photograph galleries, summer theatres. Sometimes the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... covered only with a blanket), rushed excitedly into the crowd of soldiers and servants. When they tried to stop him, and seized hold of his blanket, he gave a cry of terror, and took to flight like the others, leaving his garment in the hands of the soldiers. And so he ran stark-naked, with desperate leaps, and his bare body ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... not that his memory was at fault, but because he was perpetually dumbfounded by her genius. Originally, this living-room had been a dolorous cave with varnished yellow-pine woodwork, gas-logs, yellow wall-paper to induce toothache, and a stark chandelier with two anemic legs kicking out at vacancy. She had caused the Orpheum electrician to remove the chandelier; with her own hands, she had painted the woodwork a deep, rich cream-colour; she had ripped out the gas-logs ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... this Order who lead the most ascetic life in the world, going stark naked; and these worship the Ox. Most of them have a small ox of brass or pewter or gold which they wear tied over the forehead. Moreover they take cow-dung and burn it, and make a powder thereof; and make ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... clothes even to the skin, which was scourged with nettles till he was blistered from head to foot, notwithstanding all the eloquence of his tears and supplications. When I was satisfied with the stripes I had bestowed, we carried off his clothes, which we hid in a hedge near the place, and left him stark naked to find his way home in the best manner he could, while I took care to be there before him. I afterwards understood that, in his way to the lodgings of a friend, who lived in the skirts of the town, he was picked up by the watch, who carried him to the round-house, from ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... "I defy thee, Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What, sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... his head, saw for the first time the crumpled debris of the black ship, a hundred feet away, saw stark forms. "There's nothing to be afraid of now," he said. "It's all over. We'll soon be with your father's ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the full extent of the Cavaliers' loss discovered. Within the lines well-nigh four hundred men lay stark and stiff where they had fallen, struck down by the fire from the houses and the fierce onslaught in front and rear, few ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the old days she had always been a sincere person; she had deceived me about facts, but she had never deceived me about herself. Her personal, stark frankness had been her essential strength. And it was gone. I came back to find Amanda an accomplished actress, a thing of poses and calculated effects. She was a surface, a sham, a Lorelei. Beneath that surface I could not discover ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... one power—one weapon, still left to me unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to be stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very cause you are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way—if it be of God— to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole truth told, isn't better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the hope that something may ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... though faint, emaciated, and stark, He buoy'd his boyish limbs, and strove to ply With the quick wave, and gain, ere it was dark, The beach which lay before him, high and dry: The greatest danger here was from a shark, That carried off his neighbour by the thigh; As for the other two, they could not swim, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... his pilotage they anchored on the first of November close to the Isthmus of Darien. One of the greatest princes of the country soon came on board. The courtiers who attended him, ten or twelve in number, were stark naked; but he was distinguished by a red coat, a pair of cotton drawers, and an old hat. He had a Spanish name, spoke Spanish, and affected the grave deportment of a Spanish don. The Scotch propitiated Andreas, as he was called, by a present of a new hat blazing with gold ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... second out of endless time Fell, sundering the night. I saw the Housatonic hurled, A ship of light, Out of a molten sea, Hang an unending pulse-beat, Glowing, stark; While the hot clouds flung back a sullen roar. Then all her pride, so confident and sure, Went reeling ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... were on the campus to-day, and we decided to go down the creek to-morrow afternoon and take our suppers. There'll be Ellen Stark, and Georgia Prentiss, and myself. And the boys will be Tom Angell, and Frank Morris, and Eugene Babler. And Professor Rayburn was there when we were talking about it, and so we asked him to go along, but we told him he must take a girl. And he said, 'I wonder if ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... deadly poison. We all can live here for the next nineteen minutes in perfect safety, then at the first breath we draw we expire instantly. It is a lovely death. There is no pain, no contortion of the countenance, but we will be found here in the morning stark and stiff in our seats. I propose, gentlemen, that we teach London the great lesson it so much needs. No cause is without its martyrs. Let us be the martyrs of the great religion of Anarchy. I have left in my room papers telling ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... boiling in a cast-iron pot over the fire. Outside another two reindeer were being cut up. Each tent contained an inner sleeping-room of deerskin, which was lighted and warmed by lamps of train oil. There played small stark-naked children, plump and chubby as little pigs, and sometimes they ran in the same light attire out over the rime between the tents. The tiniest were carried, well wrapped up in furs, on the backs of their fathers and mothers, and whatever pranks they ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... as though the rushing foam were a firm thing and could save them. She heard the wild thin wind screeching across the ocean furrows, breathless in his race with death. And then all seemed quiet, and she could see a grand form of a man, stiff-limbed and stark, the yellow hair all hanging down and the broad white throat turned up in death, floating solemnly through the deep green water, and seaweed, and ooze, far down ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... blue-white bark of the 'white-box' trees; a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight—every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one: you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... and glittering. In the church-yard, upon some of the pews arranged for the purpose, had been placed the lifeless bodies of the three men who had died during the night. There they lay, stark and stiff. Upon these cold, dead faces no mourners' tears would fall; no friends would bear with reverend tread these honored forms to their last resting-place. Rough pine boxes would soon cover the faces once the light of some far-away home, careless hands would place them ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... crowded his mind. When he had first met Niaga, almost a week before, she had been lying on the sandy bank of the stream, idly plaiting a garland of red and blue flowers. Niaga! A copper-skinned goddess, stark naked and unashamed in the bright spot light of sun filtered through the trees. Languorous, laughing lips; long, black hair loosely caught in a net of filmy material that ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... at all events, that he had had enough of it, as he looked along the deck and saw numbers of the men who had been slightly hurt binding up each other's wounds. Several lay stiff and stark, whose bodies were dragged on one side, while not a few, severely hurt, had been carried below to the cockpit, where the surgeon and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jeffreys was at this time tortured by a cruel internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the debauch: but the Chancellor brought ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a common bird. A few miles further north, however, it has been found almost abundant. On one occasion, during a three mile drive from town, six males were seen and heard singing along the roadside. Mr. H. K. Coale says that he saw a mocking bird in Stark county, Indiana, sixty miles southeast of Chicago, January 1, 1884; that Mr. Green Smith had met with it at Kensington Station, Illinois, and that several have been observed in the parks and door-yards of Chicago. In the extreme southern portion of the state the species is abundant, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... outta them. One was th' Bible Ma brought long when she was married. T'other—that sure was kinda queer how we got that. Pa was in th' Rangers, an' he had this run-in with some Comanches—" Anse's eyes were suddenly bleak, and Drew remembered the few stark sentences the Texan had once spoken to explain his reason for being in the army—a return to a frontier ranch to find nothing left, nothing he wanted to remember, after the Comanches ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... little, Striving in love the traveller to whittle. We went into the house of one John Pinners, (A man that lives amongst a crew of sinners) And there eight several sorts of ale we had, All able to make one stark drunk or mad. But I with courage bravely flinched not, And gave the town leave to discharge the shot. We had at one time set upon the table, Good ale of hyssop, 'twas no AEsop-fable: Then had we ale of sage, and ale of malt, And ale of wormwood, that could ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... dead: "Who spills the foremost foeman's life, His party conquers in the strife."— "Then by my word," the Saxon said, "The riddle is already read. Seek yonder brake beneath the cliff,— There lies Red Murdoch, stark and stiff. Thus Fate has solved her prophecy, Then yield to Fate, and not to me. To James, at Stirling, let us go, When, if thou wilt be still his foe, Or if the King shall not agree To grant thee grace and favour free, I plight mine honour, oath, and word, That, to thy ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... histories were in great demand, and the pages of Shakespeare were turned over for inspiration. Each boy was to compile his own speeches, and many hurried consultations were held over back fences, and in haylofts; one boy, who represented General Stark, selected Hamlet's 'to be or not to be.' A companion objected to the lines as inappropriate, but General Stark replied, "Well, I know the piece because I've spoken it in school, and I ain't going to learn another, I can tell ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... heavily, when the "guards back" and the "flying wedge" were the favorite formations; and the Blue would never forget how, after a series of line plunging, bone-breaking rushes, he had dragged himself over the enemy's goal line with the whole frantic eleven piled on him, while the Blue stands went stark raving mad over the prowess of their champion. That famous goal had won him an undisputed place on the All-American team for that year and the captaincy of his own team ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... west bank of the Big Black, the east bank was watched by a rebel cavalry-division, commanded by General Armstrong. He had four brigades, commanded by Generals Whitfield, Stark, Cosby, and Wirt Adams. Quite frequently they communicated with us by flags of truce on trivial matters, and we reciprocated; merely to observe them. One day a flag of truce, borne by a Captain B...., of Louisville, Kentucky, escorted by about twenty-five men, was reported ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... might brag that he was become a fool by too much wisdom. Some there are who through fear anticipate the hangman; and there was the man, whose eyes being unbound to have his pardon read to him, was found stark dead upon the scaffold, by the stroke of imagination. We start, tremble, turn pale, and blush, as we are variously moved by imagination; and, being a-bed, feel our bodies agitated with its power to that degree, as even sometimes to expiring. And boiling ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... you copied for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about you, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Mr. Speaker; they do not cant it with your book-learning, your orbs, your centres, your prime magnitudes, and your nebulones, things I profess that would make a sober man run stark mad to hear them; while we, who should be considering the honor of our country and that it goes now or never upon our hand, whether it shall be ridiculous to all the world, are going to nine-holes or trow madam for our business, like your dumb Venetian, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... dead, drew off from the field, and we, remaining there, were able to claim the victory, which, however, my son, was one of a kind which was scarce worth winning. It was a sad sight to see so many men stretched stark and dead, and these killed, not in fighting with a foreign foe, but with other Englishmen. It made us all mightily sad, and if at that moment Lord Essex had had full power from the Parliament to treat, methinks that the quarrel could have been settled, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the morning of December 3, '84, the rain fell persistently in the midst of a profound silence. The trees stood stark in the grey air as if petrified; there was not wind enough to waft the falling leaf; it fell straight as ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... that led around into Beaver Dam Lake, in which Molly and the boy had been attacked. Sandy viewed the chaparral, the trees that covered the lesser slopes, the stark cliffs above. Part of this lay in the Waterline territory. The chances that Plimsoll had left some one on guard were not to be slighted. But he rode on down the narrow trail. Once in a while he broke a branch and left it swinging ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Beer (The Century Magazine) has a certain stark faithfulness which makes of somewhat obvious material an extremely vivid and freshly felt rendering of life. There is a certain quality of observation in the story which we are accustomed to think of as a Gallic rather than an American ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... giant arm of land reached out into the water, high and stark and rocky; further on a group of white farallones lay in the tossing foam and over them great flocks of seabirds dipped and circled. Finally, along the coast to the northward, they descried those chalk cliffs which Francis Drake had aptly named New Albion, and still beyond, what seemed to ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... a word of truth in it," said the agitated captain. "I never thought of such a thing. That old mischief-making mummy must be mad—stark, starin' mad." ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs |
