"Starless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and vivid, and the thunder seemed breaking on the very topmasts of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering darkness. The storm was at its ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... It was a starless night, muffled overhead as the day had been, but without rain or mist. He had a lantern hanging at his saddle bow, ready to light. In the open lands we rode side by side, but through growths along the Fox first one and then the other led ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending procession, little ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... The rain beat ceaselessly against the curtained windows; the wild spring wind shrieked through the city streets, icily cold; a bad, black night—starless, moonless. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... which like a silver clasp unites to-day with yesterday; when morning and evening sit together hand in hand beneath the starless sky of midnight. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... home, Yet ne'er the perfect glory came—Lord, will it ever come? The weeding of earth's garden broad from all its growths of wrong, When all man's soul shall be a prayer, and all his life a song. Aye, though through many a starless night we guard the flaming oil, Though we have watched a weary watch, and toiled a weary toil, Though in the midnight wilderness, we wander still forlorn, Yet bear we in our hearts the proof that God shall send the dawn. Deep in the tablets of our hearts he writes that yearning still, The ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Starless night; violet night in which the white sandals of a beloved pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts two long ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone, Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me Walking the cold and starless road of Death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. [19] I will rise and go Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth Talk with the wild Cassandra, [20] for she says A fire ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... so that it would not be affected by choppy seas, seems to have been generally used by Europeans as early as the thirteenth century. It greatly aided sailors by enabling them to find their bearings in murky weather and on starless nights. The compass, though useful, was not indispensable; without its help the Northmen had made their distant expeditions in ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... are writ in gore, Nor written thus in vain— Thy triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain: If thou hadst died as Honour dies, Some new Napoleon might arise, To shame the world again— But who would soar the solar height, To set in such a starless night?[ip] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Star shone upon the front of the house, once more; while the sun showed, only as a great bow of green fire. An instant, it seemed, and the sun had vanished. The Star was still fully visible. Then the earth moved into the black shadow of the sun, and all was night—Night, black, starless, and intolerable. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... fairest of loves! Life's most fanciful of gifts, Joy and treasure, love and wonder, Waking's elusive reality, Dream's ever-yielding divinity. Even thou must pass Beyond time's starless bar: Thy eyes, their lambent flames Shall no more illumine my night; Nor thy brow, home of many moods, Tranquil yet tormented as a sea, Shall ever wear the coronal of my kiss. Ah, kisses! blisses of fire, Passion's ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... choose her position and compel her adversary to strike; but the presence of two more Englishmen, rapidly coming up astern, forced the Americans to abandon their prey and continue their flight. It was then late in the evening, and the night was dark and starless. Every light was extinguished on the American frigate, in the hope that by so doing she might slip away under cover of the night. But the British lookouts were sharp-eyed; and by eleven o'clock two frigates had closed in on the crippled ship, and a third was ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... east the ramparts of the city loomed, set at regular distances with electric lights; from the invisible citadel rockets were rising, spraying the fog with jewelled flakes, crumbling to golden powder in the starless ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Red Cross train, stationary, and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... whirlpool. "Shouldst thou find no place of resting, I will banish thee still farther, To the Northland's distant borders, To the broad expanse of Lapland, To the ever-lifeless deserts, To the unproductive prairies, Sunless, moonless, starless, lifeless, In the dark abyss of Northland; This for thee, a place befitting, Pitch thy tents and feast forever On the dead plains of Pohyola. "Shouldst thou find no means of living, I will banish thee still farther, To the cataract of Rutya, To the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... stood to gaze his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment through the window, and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Barbara's clear child-faith; Barbara, to whom God was as real and certain as I; never shall I attain to the steady confidence of Roger. I can but grope dimly with outstretched hands; sometimes in the outer blackness of a moonless, starless night; sometimes, with strained eyes catching a glimpse of a glimmer in the east. I can but feel after God, as a plant in a dark place feels after ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... a moment. After the starless darkness and the icy night air, and the fierce silent two hours' race, his senses reeled on sudden entrance into warmth, and light, and the cheery hum of voices. A sudden unforeseen anguish assailed him, as now first he entertained the possibility of being ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely any parallel in history. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Perchance a blessing; or in glittering crowds, Gazing all rapt on woman's eloquent face, Nature's most witching and most treacherous page; Or high in mirth with those whose senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew pale and starless, and her solemn pomp, Out-glared by day, faded in hueless space. I do repent me of my worship. Night Was given for rest: who breaks this natural law Wrongs body and soul alike. One vigorous hour Of sober day-light thought is worth a night's Slow ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... passed: all nights—even the starless night before dissolution—must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold, fresh well-water. Entering by the carre, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... nothing he could do—absolutely nothing. She had given her orders, and they must be obeyed. He returned to the Quai Massena, to the shore of the sea; but he walked nervously now, in a world that, as far as he was concerned, was starless and colorless. He had thought at first, naturally enough, that Hamilton was in some way concerned; but he dismissed that now as wholly unplausible. Instead of running away, in that case, she would have sent for ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... star will go on in an unbending line forever unless hindered by the attraction of other stars. If they go on thus, they must, after countless years, scatter in all directions, so that the inhabitants of each shall see only a black, starless sky. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... shack, and before he was halfway through the pine woods that separated Aldercliffe from Pine Lea darkness had fallen, and he was compelled to move cautiously along the narrow, curving trail. How black the night was! A storm must be brewing, thought he, as he glanced up into the starless heavens. Stumbling over the rough and slippery ground on he went. Then suddenly he rounded a turn in the path and stood ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... when, having gone down into a dark corner of the area the Sunday following, she found, as did he, that no stars were to be seen anywhere. After that she believed in his theory of starless sky-spots; starless, but not plain. For in addition to the sun, many other things lent interest to that field of blue—clouds, rain, sleet, snow, and fog, all in their time or season. Also, besides the birds, he occasionally ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... sand, and entered the now well-marked wagon road between the dark green meadow land on either side. Egypt was in shadow—her sun behind the Libyan heights,—but the short twilight had not fallen. Overhead were the cooling depths of sky, as yet starless, but the river was breathing on the winds and the sibilant murmur of its waters began to talk above the sounds of the city. To the north, the south and the east was pastoral and desert quiet; to the west was the gradual subsidence of urban stir. Frogs were beginning to croak in the distance, and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... good progress through the smooth sea, the natives in the boats singing a melodious chorus as, all in perfect unison, they plunged their broad-bladed paddles in the water, and the tow line surged and shook off thousands of phosphorescent drops at every united stroke. The night was dark, but not quite starless, and presently Frewen, who was talking to Foster, remarked that some heavy rain would fall ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... morn the Countess Louis heard Young light sing in the lark. Ere eve it was that other bird, Which brings the starless dark. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wings a slow and watchful flight, His neck is bare, his eyes are bright, His plumage fits the starless night. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... embattled hosts. Here was war indeed, upon its grandest scale and in all its infinite variety: The tireless march under burning sun, chilling frosts, and driven tempests; the lonely vigil of the picket under starless skies, the rush and roar of countless "hosts to battle driven" in the mad charge and the victorious shout that pursued the fleeing foe; the grim determination that held its line of defenses with set teeth, blood-shot eye, and strained muscle, beating back charge after charge ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... it seemed a perfect blaze of illumination. And there were the Magellanic clouds, white-looking patches made up of countless stars individually unseen to the naked eye, and nebulae—mists of radiating light—all shining brilliantly and revolving around the starless South Pole. To the northward was the constellation of the Great Bear, which reaches its meridian altitude about the same time as the constellations of the Cross and the Centaur. As the boys looked, stars appeared and disappeared. They ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... minutes past ten when they arrived at the air base at Los Alamos. The desert sky was cloudy and starless, and powerful searchlights probed the thick cumulus. There were sleek, purring black autos waiting to rush the air passengers to some unnamed destination. They drove for twenty minutes across a flat ribbon ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... prison of high brick walls. But the place gave room for the air to blow in it, and distanced the tumult of the busy streets. The moon was up, shined round tenderly by a little border-work of pale yellow light. Elsewhere, the awful void of night was starless; the dark lustre of space shone without ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the hour when he left me, his fancied bride, to that last meeting, when, at a word, and ere I knew what I had said, he turned on me that cold and careless eye, and left me, haughtily and forever? And now—(reading)—misapprehension, has it been! Is the sun on high again?—in this black and starless night—the noonday sun? He loves me still.—Oh! ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... to the imposture, and smarted under it; still he held there was nothing for him but to temporize, for if he ordered the seizure and banishment of the all-powerful hypocrite, he could trust no one with the order. The time was dark as a starless night to the high-spirited but too amiable monarch, and he watched and waited, or rather watched and drifted, extending confidence to but two counsellors, Phranza and the Princess Irene. Even in their company he was not always comfortable, for, strange to say, the advice of the woman was invariably ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... species of vanity in her that wanted to hold and save this helpless man who, it seemed, could not live for a day without her. And she got no answer to the question—the black water rushed past, chill and pitiless: the rain-swept sky was starless, the streaming ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... worth our while to wait two, or it may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the starless night, to brood over the street; and summon forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for nothing else, yet because we did not live in those days. ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel how beautiful ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... hither so cunningly. He lifted his nimble cudgel in the air and waved it conceitedly to and fro in time to the song that rose beyond the window. "Fau'ow er Wur'!—Fau'ow er Wur'!" he cried delightedly again and again in my ear, eager apparently for my approval. So we stood, then, beneath the starless sky, listening to the rich choragium of the "World's End." They sang in unison, sang with a kind of forlorn heat and enthusiasm. And when the song was ended, and the roar of applause over, Night, like a darkened water whelmed silently in, engulfed ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... me. He carried me back to my dungeon, laid me tenderly on the bed, gave me some medicine, and asked me if there was any thing more he could do. Then he went away, and I was left with my own thoughts—starless as ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... and Cato might discharge their souls, And give them furloughs for the other world; But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand In starless nights ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... hopes that have perished, and the joys that have faded so fast With the music of memory wing'ed, they will seem but the voice of the past; As, when the bright morning has vanished, and evening grows starless and dark, The nightingale song of remembrance recalls the sweet ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... of Life; As one who, wandering in a starless night, Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, And hears the thunder of an unknown sea Breaking along an ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley; but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep, rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... you do not care to go out into the starless night. Perhaps there are those who wait for you, eh? ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... to the third opinion given, the waters above the firmament have been raised in the form of vapors, and serve to give rain to the earth. But according to the second opinion, they are above the heaven that is wholly transparent and starless. This, according to some, is the primary mobile, the cause of the daily revolution of the entire heaven, whereby the continuance of generation is secured. In the same way the starry heaven, by the zodiacal movement, is the cause whereby different bodies are generated or corrupted, through ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... arm about her shoulder, and led her gently on to the verandah. The night had fallen dark and starless. Through the black veil they saw the gleam of bivouac fires and heard the voices of men calling to one another, and the clatter of piled arms. They remained silent, after the storm and stress of the past, content to be together and at peace. They knew that the long night was ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... of the tents on the lowly ground, Where our patriot soldiers lie; And the sentry's bleak and lonely march, 'Neath the dark and starless sky. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... he followed it, then slipped and rolled back as the fatal paralysis deadened all power of movement in his limbs. He lay where he fell, moaning out his grief with his wide-staring eyes turned straight up into the cold gray of the starless sky. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Czar's look, I own, was much brighter and brisker, 20 But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisked round, in a waltz with the Jersey,[61] Who, lovely as ever, seemed just as delighted With Majesty's presence as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... grasped no sceptre save the sharp tulwar, made Of steel that fell from heaven,—for 'twas Indra forged that blade! And many a starless midnight the shout of "Soorj Dehu" Broke up with spear and ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... and starless and the tide on a strong ebb. The voyage down-stream was without incident, and by midnight he had landed within the city lines, but much farther up-town than upon the occasion of his first adventure. His plan was ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the room, stopping at a window and going on, stopping at another to stare out into the starless night. There had been rain, and there was that haunting wet fragrance from the garden. "I must see him," she said, and put her hand to ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... It was night, starless and black, but a couple of lanterns shed a few broken rays on the massed seamen with their wondering, upturned faces, and the tall figure of the silent captain. Hamilton explained in a dozen curt sentences that they must run into port for ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... gained no more than sixpence; how could she return with only that humble amount to face Mother Mawks and her vituperative fury? Her throat ached; she was very tired, and, as the night darkened from pale to deep and starless shadows, she strolled mechanically from the Strand to the Embankment, and after walking some little distance she sat down in a corner close to Cleopatra's Needle—that mocking obelisk that has looked upon the decay of empires, itself impassive, and that still appears to say, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... the wish audibly, though her lips did move a little, while her gaze black like a starless night never for a moment wavered before him. He stepped in, and as he turned to close the door she was still there motionless and disturbing, with her voluptuous mouth and slanting eyes, with the expression of expectant sensual ferocity of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... quite decided that she would neither quit the cave, nor entrust herself to the anchorite, till she had once more seen and spoken to Polykarp. He no doubt knew where to seek her, and certainly, she thought, he would by this time have returned, if the storm and the starless night had not rendered it an impossibility to come up the mountain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride; and in the eye which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the waning life broke into a momentary blaze,—that flash, so rapid and evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being it has animated, and night—the starless and eternal—falls over the extinguished lamp! The hand of the right arm (which was that unshattered by the fall) was clenched and raised; but, when the words which came upon Clarence's ear had ceased, it fell heavily by his side, like a clod of that clay which it had then become. In those words ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mortal danger or a threatened shame. But he could not speak at once; his teeth closed with tetanic force upon each other. Later, as they walked to the hotel, through the warm, soft night in which the south wind was roaming the starless heavens for rain, he found his voice, and although he felt that he was speaking unnaturally, he made out to answer the lively questions with which she pelted him too thickly to expect them to be answered severally. She told him all the news of the day, and when ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... years To shrines of long ago, My heart, a hooded pilgrim, turns with tears— For could I know That in the temple of thy constancy There still may burn a taper lit for me, 'Twould be a star in starless heaven, to ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... course of the life upon earth. So, though we know, and therefore dare say, little about that future, I do beseech you to take this to heart, that he who there can stand before God, and say, 'Behold! I and the children whom God hath given me' will wear a crown brighter than the starless ones of those who saved themselves, and have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... I knew darkness then, And saw the stars that hung so still; but when I lay abed the old starless dark came back again. ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth like ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... that when he stays lost, and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's eye,—the image of Zosephine! This—this! that he had never set out to achieve—this! if he ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... what succeeds this era joyous, bright? Is it a cloudless eve or starless night? To those who're busied in life's brilliant dawn With gathering flowers that bloom when spring is gone, And, ere their morning sun begins to wane, Add many a link to fond affection's chain, To Heaven's supreme behest have meekly bowed— ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... houses have already closed their wooden sliding doors for the night, so that the streets are dark, and the lanterns of our landlord indispensable; for there is no moon, and the night is starless. We walk along the main street for a distance of about six squares, and then, making a tum, find ourselves before a superb bronze torii, the gateway to the great ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... swept, there was the raven's cemetery! He was sexton of all he surveyed! lord of all that was laid aside! I stood in the burial-ground of the universe; its compass the unenclosed heath, its wall the gray horizon, low and starless! I had left spring and summer, autumn and sunshine behind me, and come to the winter that waited for me! I had set out in the prime of my youth, and here I was already!—But I mistook. The day might well be long in that region, for it contained the ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... execution. Thus far my dream gave me no intimation of the horrible scene which next burst on me,—a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing and touch, in a manner unprecedented in any dream I have previously had. It was night, dark and starless, and I found myself, together with the whole company of doomed men and women who knew that they were soon to die, but not how or where, in a railway train hurrying through the darkness to some unknown destination. I sat in a carriage quite at the rear end of the train, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... unimaginable rapidity, shooting constellations, momentary darts of fire, through that black, enormous night. More than anything else it was like a dusty draught, sunbeam-lit. Broader and wider and deeper grew the starless space, the vacant Beyond, into which I was being drawn. At last a quarter of the heavens was black and blank, and the whole headlong rush of stellar universe closed in behind me like a veil of light that ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... circle with its multiform restraints. As in "Hamlet" the stage on which the whole is acted is really the heart of Hamlet, so he makes his visible stage as it were, slope off into the misty infinite, with a grey, starless heaven overhead, and Hades open beneath his feet. Hence young people brought up in the country understand the tragedies far sooner than they can comprehend the comedies. It needs acquaintance with society and social ways to clear ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... it the return of the lieutenant's official manner. He saw the trio slide over the top, one by one, vanishing in the starless dark. "Good luck going and coming," he whispered; and it sounded almost ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... quick sighs, and suffocative breath, Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death. —Then shrieks of captured towns, and widows' tears, Pale lovers stretch'd upon their blood-stain'd biers, 65 The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight, The trackless desert, the cold starless night, And stern-eye'd Murder with his knife behind, In dread succession agonize her mind. O'er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet, 70 Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet; In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries, And strains in palsy'd lids her tremulous eyes; In vain ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... no more right to disparage the character of any individual, who did his best in the midst of less favourable circumstances, than we should have to reprobate the helmsman of former days, because in the darkness of a starless night he had no compass wherewith to save ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... my first despatch. It was a dark, starless night; very misty on the road. From the brigade I was sent on to an ambulance—an unpleasant ride, because, apart from the mist and the darkness, I was stopped every few yards by sentries of the West Kents, a regiment which has ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... beyond the still grey shoji For the breadth of innumerable countries, Is the sea with ships asleep In the blue-black starless night. ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... rolling forever, and winds moaning forever, and faithful hearts trusting and sickening forever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds forever; and still at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... is all nature as a resting wheel. The Kine are couch'd upon the dewy grass; The Horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is up, and cropping yet his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky. Now, in this blank of things, a harmony Home-felt, and home-created seems to heal That grief for which the senses still supply Fresh food; for only then, when memory Is hush'd, am I at rest. My Friends, restrain Those busy ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... was but a dull, poor life coming for Lloyd. He was too young to be put to hard, hard work with neither chance for learning nor play. But, as she sat looking in the fire, she suddenly remembered how God, who held the great, moaning sea and the starless night in the hollow of His hand, held ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... in me lifted his lean hands to the starless sky and cried into night's ear with his ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... were no teachers and no money with which to employ teachers. No night in Egypt in the time of Israel was darker than those years immediately following the Negro's emancipation. And what must have been our condition to-day had not those pillars of light been placed in our starless sky? But what is more, for thirty years the same spirit and the same people who first made these colleges possible among us, have continued their aid, and still make ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... intensity where the stimulus of the sun's rays was withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary deep blue, the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never seen before or since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the train that was rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of night was drawn And crowded earth, mysterious sea Became one sweet, enchanted ground For us, until the starless dawn Dissolved the failing moon—then we In one long ecstasy were bound. Now, I, alone in silence and in pain Weep for the ache of well-remembered bliss, For you who never can return again, For you, my spring time, for ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... along the coast, often at the very edge of the high, precipitous cliffs, with no more between it and the rocks far beneath than a low wall. It was a road of dangerous curves and corners which needed careful negotiation even in broad daylight, and this was a black, moonless and starless night. But Copplestone had impressed upon his driver that he must get to Scarhaven as quickly as possible, and he and his companion were both so full of their purpose that they paid no heed to the perpetual danger ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... sound you sleep! Though your mother's care is deep, You can lie with heart at rest In the narrow brass-bound chest; In the starless night and drear You can sleep, and never hear Billows breaking, and the cry Of the night-wind wandering by; In soft purple mantle sleeping With your little face on mine, Hearing not your mother weeping And the breaking ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... astonished the others by her rash boldness, her absolute contempt for danger and obstacles, and her strange and adroit strength. She charmed them also by a magic philter which came from her hair, which was darker that a starless night, from her large, black, coaxing, velvety eyes, that were concealed by the fringe of such long lashes that they curled upwards, from her scented skin, that was as soft as rice paper, and every touch of which was a suggestive and tempting caress, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... such maddened tempests rave, I cannot rest at home, For then the billows deck his grave With flowers of snow-white foam; And here I pray till break of day Beneath night's starless dome." ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of the Flowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be like a flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget the Seasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose their meaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These are the lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely stealing over the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... peals the roaring thunder flies. Cast from our course, we wander in the dark. No stars to guide, no point of land to mark. Ev'n Palinurus no distinction found Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reign'd around. Three starless nights the doubtful navy strays, Without distinction, and three sunless days; The fourth renews the light, and, from our shrouds, We view a rising land, like distant clouds; The mountain-tops confirm the pleasing sight, And curling smoke ascending from their height. The canvas ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... which the victim is carried away in a sack; the romantic abduction in a boat—but a lake is necessary!—the Venetian abduction, in a gondola—ah, you have no lagoon! Moonlight abduction, or the abduction on a dark and starless night—those moonlight abductions are quite the style, though they are a little dear!—Besides these, there is the abduction by torch-light, with cries and screams, and clash and shock of arms; the brutal abduction, the polite abduction; the classical one with masks; ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the earth on which ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Kentuckians had won from the wilderness, from the savage, from the wild beast and the pestilence. Southward, and a long way off, lay the great Cypress Swamp. The wavering sable line of its tree-tops spread a pall across the starless horizon. The deadly white mists which shrouded its gloomy mystery through the sunniest day were now creeping out to enshroud the higher land. Through the mingled mist and darkness the sombre trunks of the towering cypress ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... long time barefooted in the passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door—where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... still with all her towers and domes The city sleeps on yonder shore,— How many thousand happy homes Yon starless sky is ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... the sky. It was not the sky of the City, distant, and marbled with streaks of smoke. It was close and clear; starless, too; and no moon hung upon it. Yet though it was night there ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... disappeared. Her heart now for the first time sank within her. She listened, but no sound, save the ominous moan in the air, came to her ear. The solemn, still, black night was all about her. She looked up, and a cold, starless, dim blank was all over her; and all around, standing thick, were cold, dark, silent trees. She stood and tried to think back: where was she, and how came she there? She knew she had once turned back, from something to somewhere—to the old road, as she remembered; and it flashed across ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... his hand on mine, with a glad countenance, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding though the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible cries, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and hoarse, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls forever in that air ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... A starless night fell across the desert. With danger of pursuit practically ended, and only a chance encounter to fear, de Spain tried to help himself by walking the horse and resting his bleeding foot in front of the pommel, letting the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... companion whether he could take us through the darkness to a place called the "Buck Pens." Ko-nip-ha-tco said he could. Under his guidance we started in the twilight, the sky covered with clouds. The night which followed was starless, and soon we were splashing through a country which, to my eyes, was trackless. There were visible to me no landmarks. But our Indian, following a trail made by his own people, about nine o'clock brought us to the object of our search. A black mass suddenly appeared in the darkness. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... now inky black outside and billows of it beat against the protecting barrier. It might have been midnight of the blackest, starless night. ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... smile back at her. Then he went out of the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace. A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's secrecy. The moon this night, afloat in a luminous gray void, somehow reminded Florian of a glistening ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... shall stay in such stead; O thou, whose brilliancy lights his brow, * Shaped like sandhill-tree with his locks for shade, Forbid Heaven my like to aught else incline * Save you whose beauties none like display'd: Art thou no amongst mortals a starless moon * O beauty the dazzle ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the log house by the Spring Waiontha, lantern in hand and my packet tucked beneath my arm, it was twilight, and the starless skies threatened rain. Road and field and forest were foggy and silent; and I thought of the first time I had ever set eyes on Lois, in the late afternoon stillness which heralded ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of the sun was blotted out completely, and it was as dark as a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then a fine dust choked his throat, and he would have coughed and vomited up his very life ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... crisp coldness as of lingering frost in the gloom and the dulness. Heavy clouds, as yet unbroken, hung over the cathedral and the clustering roofs around it in dark and starless splendour. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... lost his way in a pitiless storm on a black and starless night. Suddenly his horse drew back and refused to take another step. He urged it forward, but it only threw itself back upon its haunches. Just then a vivid flash of lightning revealed a great precipice upon the brink of which he stood. It was but an instant, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... mistook it for her destiny or not, she seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the "streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... employed the first medical advice of New York, Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Berlin, for he was his only son. No help came. First his body gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering. Then his mind gave way and he became a raving maniac. Then his soul went out blaspheming God into a starless eternity. He died at thirty years of age. Behold ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... full and broad in the dark blue starless sky, and the broken ground of the heath looked wild enough in the mysterious light to be hundreds of miles away from the great city that lay beneath it. The idea of descending any sooner than I could help into the heat ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... faint light waxes fainter,—it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... well In the dark starless night I lay; And dropping water like a bell, Like a bell ringing far away, Struck liquid notes in monotone,— An echo of a distant bell Tolling the knell of yesterday. Deep down beneath the mossy ground The liquid notes in ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... to be at work. A bucket of water for present necessities was withdrawn from the water-butt, which was then emptied and rolled before the kitchen fire to dry; and the two brothers set forth on their adventure under a starless heaven. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... brown john. He will not believe that the flavour is more delicate in the smaller dose. He will not believe that to walk this unconscionable distance is merely to stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, will be savourless and ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whatever with the nebula, being, in fact, only a simple continuation over it of the general ground of the Galaxy. The conclusion can hardly be avoided that, in looking at it, we see through and beyond the Milky Way, far out into space, through a starless region, disconnecting it altogether from our system. It is not easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle which this nebula offers as it enters the field of view of a telescope, fixed in right ascension, by the diurnal ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... "constellations,'' preserving the memory of mythological heroes and heroines, and perhaps of otherwise unrecorded history. * The tendency of stars to assemble in immense clouds, swarms, and clusters. * The existence in some of the richest regions of the universe of absolutely black, starless gaps, deeps, or holes, as if one were looking out of a window into the murkiest night. * The marvelous phenomena of new, or temporary, stars, which appear as suddenly as conflagrations, and often turn into something else as eccentric as themselves. * The amazing ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn! I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, She ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Ranny inviting the children to spend the following week at Valley Mead. But, in spite of the success of his mission, he sat with a box of fresh eggs in his lap and a huge bunch of flowers in his hand, his hat rammed over his eyes, staring gloomily out of the car window into the starless night. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... nothingness," is the reason of existence of all that is. I said just now that the sun was declining to the horizon. Now the last glimmer of twilight has disappeared; night has closed in—a dark and starless night. Yes, Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark as to warrant us in despairing of the return of the dawn. If the modern mind is such as it is described to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... The prospect of the coming months filled her with dismay. When this last brief spell of pleasure was over, there was nothing left, to which she could look forward. The approaching winter stretched before her like a starless night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. What was she to do?—what was to become of her, when the short dark days came down again, and shut her in? The thought of it almost drove her mad. Desperate with fear, she shut her eyes and went ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... can foil, but not my friends! Strange allies to his cause! Well, dusk was long My portion; now all gathering storms of hate Are less than naught to me. Six months ago, When here I stood that memorable night, My gloom was starless; now one fiery star Pierces it. And this broken frame of mine Cannot annul that much of victory— The solace born of passion to destroy That shall survive me if indeed I die. Alone my life was lived; if now I go, It is alone into a ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... the ocean one cold starless night, A small bark was sailing in pitiful plight: The boom of the billows, as on rushed the storm, O'ercame the stout hearts of the men ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... realizing instantly the importance of this new move, and as quickly suspecting its purpose, leaped to the port-hole, and, endeavoured to gain a glimpse without. The night was still intensely black, the sky overcast and starless, the only glimmer of light the reflecting of foam tipped surges. If land was near it remained invisible, nor could he even be sure of the close proximity of a boat. There seemed to be a smudge there ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... At the starless midnight hour, When winter rules with boundless power: As the storms the forests tear, And thunders rend the howling air, Listening to the doubling roar, Surging on the rocky shore, All I can—I weep and pray, For his weal that's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... dissatisfaction with the present life, the secret yearning for something better, the impulse towards something worse. She sighed furtively, and half-impatiently went outside to tend the evening camp-fire. The blazing branches illuminated the starless summer night, and cast a superb glow over the beautiful half-clothed figure crouching not far from them. Beyond, the dark blue bay ebbed ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... outlined in the purple pall of a starless night. Stripped to the very essentials of a battle—"Fighting Order" but carrying the valise on the shoulders and the haversack by the side. Steel helmets, gas masks and one hundred and seventy rounds of ammunition per man; no overcoats; no blankets; ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... morning—that sunrise of which poets write so sweetly, but which to the unromantic traveller is wont to seem a dreary thing—mother and nurse and child went their way in a great black steamer, redolent of oil and boiled mutton; and at nine o'clock at night—a starless March night—Clarissa and her belongings were deposited on St. Katharine's Wharf, amidst a clamour and bustle that ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They silently commune together, Each sitting on his own head-stone The roofless house, decayed, deserted, Its living tenants all departed, No longer rings with midnight revel Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil; No pale blue flame sends out its flashes Through creviced ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that he wearied of her. Love's young dream had been sweet indeed; but, ah! how bitter was the awakening. Her castles in the air had all melted into clouds, and here in the very flower of her youth she felt that her life was ruined, and she was as one wandering in a sterile waste, with a black and starless sky overhead. She clasped her hands with a sensation of pain, and a rose at her breast fell down withered and dead. She took it up with listless fingers, and with the quiver of her hand the leaves fell off and were scattered over her white dress in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... told of Bosambo, and all his movements may be explained by this revelation of his benevolence. In the silence of his hut had he planned his schemes. In the dark aisles of the forests, under starless skies when his fellow-huntsmen lay deep in the sleep which the innocent and the barbarian alone enjoy; in drowsy moments when he sat dispensing justice, what time litigants had droned monotonously he had ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... away silently from the kitchen door into the deep murk of a starless night. The moaning of a rising sea upon the outer reefs was the requiem of Sheila's hopes. One thing, she saw clearly, she must do. If she remained and fought for her place with the Balls, she must stand alone. Whether or not she held her place, she must not allow Tunis to be linked with her ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... soared into the sky like the eruption of a volcano, and the wooden cottage, with its flat logs and blazing roof, looked like a sacrificial pyre consuming the body of some warrior or Viking. In the light of the flames the soft sky, which was starless and flooded with stillness by the large full moon, had turned from blue to green. A dense crowd had gathered round the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... wall. The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and they went out into the cool night, decided against a supper, found the car where Alix had parked it in a quiet side street, and made their way to the ferry, and so home under the dark low arch of a starless and moonless sky. Cherry shared the driver's seat with her sister to-night; they spoke occasionally on the long drive; everybody was weary and silent. Alix, racing between Sausalito's low hills and the dark, odorous marshes, wondered if in the packed theatre ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... and Wilhelmine woke with a start as a more than usually violent jolt flung her against the door. She peered out into the darkness but could see nothing, for the night was absolutely starless. The road was so steep that at moments the heavy carriage threatened to run backwards down the hill, in spite of the straining of the wretched horses that struggled onwards, slipping and floundering on the dripping road. At the top of the hill the driver pulled ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the heavy darkness of the starless night, Arthur saw her. She was seated on the stone bench as when last he had spoken with her. In her anguish she sought not to hide her face. She looked at the ground, and the tears fell down her cheeks. Her bosom heaved with the pain of ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... leeward shore" they were doomed to experience during a moonless and starless night. They reduced their sails to a few yards of canvass, and lowered their yards on deck. The waves, that rolled the vessel with irresistible force, threatened to swallow them up; a tremendous sea ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... chaos of all cries! making the space Through which they penetrate to flutter like The heart of a trapped hare,—are revelling round us. Unlike the gloomy realm we just have quitted, Silent and solemn, all is restless here, All wears the ashy hue of agony. Above us bends a black and starless vault, Which ever echoes back the fearful voices That rise from the abodes of wo beneath. Around us grim-browed desolation broods, While, far below, a sea of pale gray clouds, Like to an ocean tempest beaten, boils. Whither shall we ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... night There came a boy with lantern light And he was linen-pale with fright; It was not hard to guess my task, Although I raised the sash to ask— 'Oh, Father,' cried the boy, 'Oh, come! Quickly with the viaticum! The sailor-man is going to die!' The thirsty silence drank his cry. A starless stillness damped the air, While his shrill voice kept piping there, 'The sailor-man is going to die'— The huge ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... ideal tones,— Binding in one, as with harmonious zones, The heart and intellect. And I no more Shall with thee gaze on that unfathomed deep, The Human Soul: as when, pushed off the shore, Thy mystic bark would through the darkness sweep, Itself the while so bright! For oft we seemed As on some starless sea,—all dark above, All dark below,—yet, onward as we drove, To plough up light that ever round us streamed But he who mourns is not as one bereft Of all he loved: thy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... to life from out the tomb; Death's bands thus swiftly rent, Life's tidal force Undammed, had rushed with too impetuous vent, Did not a tortuous cave arrest its course, Ere he at length emerged beneath night's starless gloom. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... to break off the conversation, interesting as it might be, and to think of our departure: for the afternoon was fast wearing away, and a starless, if not a tempestuous, night threatened to succeed. Charles Rohfritsch was despatched to the inn below—to order the horses, settle the reckoning, and to bring the carriage as near to the monastery as possible. Meanwhile ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... strong, just womb, Challices nodding the not distant strife; Great honey'd blossoms, a balsamic tomb For weary poets blanched with starless life. ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living might, Blushed to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and life's pale light Flashed through those limbs so late her dear delight. 5 'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!' cried Urania. Her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... the Sun and Moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky, A horror of great darkness at ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
