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Waning   Listen
noun
Waning  n.  The act or process of waning, or decreasing. "This earthly moon, the Church, hath fulls and wanings, and sometimes her eclipses."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books



... elapse before marriage. All these superstitions are suggestive of that which Tylor calls 'one of the most instructive astrological doctrines'—namely, that of the 'sympathy of growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning moon.' Tylor says that a classical precept was to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and that a Lithuanian precept was to wean boys on a waxing and girls on a waning moon—in order to make the boys strong and the girls delicate. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... Listening to the small sacred concert that thereupon ensued, we had remained until quite late in the evening; and, on our way home through the churchyard, as we loitered along, looking at the graves, and trying to decipher by the slowly waning light the half illegible inscriptions on the headstones, we came across ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... a fine latinism or dig his pen through a false quantity as if he were cutting down an enemy? Thomas Jack has departed into oblivion along with his Onomasticon: but this record of the friendly reception he and his book met with affords a delightful gleam of light upon the historian's waning days. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... was waning. The buyers might return at any moment, as Forrest's herd had no doubt crossed the river but a few ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to striket having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating, and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, and of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... throng in the town hall had shown waning interest in this discussion. There seemed to be matters outside that distracted the attention of those near ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... look he wore at directors' meetings, while a furtive smile flickered for an instant across his loose mouth under the drooping ends of his moustache. His ungainly body, with its curious suggestion of over-ripeness, of waning power, straightened suddenly as if in reaction from certain destructive processes within his soul. Though he was only just passing his prime, he had lived so rapidly that he bore already the marks of age in his face ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... said Waring, kneeling down with an expression of repugnance. He was something of a surgeon, and knew what he, was about. His task over, he made up the fire, warmed some food, fed the old man, and helped his waning strength with the contents of his flask. 'At least you placed all my property in the dug-out before you set me adrift,' he said; 'may I ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... scream. Some of the more irresponsible took to dancing like idiots, clasped in each other's arms. In fact, every known device for "rattling" a pitcher was resorted to, of course legitimately, in order to further their waning cause. ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... empire was once more in Lower Egypt, and art had visibly declined with the waning power of the country. All spontaneity seemed to have passed out of it, it was repetition of repetition by poor workmen, and the simplicity and purity of the technic were corrupted by foreign influences. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... influence of the moon's changes on plants—a belief which still retains its hold in most agricultural districts. It appears that in years gone by "neither sowing, planting, nor grafting was ever undertaken without a scrupulous attention to the increase or waning of the moon;"[1] and the advice given by Tusser in his "Five Hundred Points of Husbandry" is not forgotten even at the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... quite unforeseen, nor had any plan of action been preconceived to meet it, but it was in Rumania's case a situation unique from the number of conflicting considerations and influences at work within it. Still under the waning influence of the thirty years quasi-alliance with Austria, Rumania was not yet acclimatized to her new relations with Russia. Notwithstanding the inborn sympathy with and admiration for France, the Rumanians could not be blind to Germany's military ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some pantomime, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new scene be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... daylight when they at length reached the weed-grown steps at the side of the sea-wall, and the smoke was already beginning to rise from the chimneys of Yport. The gale was waning as the day came, but the sea was at its highest, and all the houses facing northward had their wooden shutters up. The waves were breaking over the sea-wall, but the two men with their senseless burden took no heed of it. They were all past thinking ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... then he paused to let us float along with the tide as it slacked, and take the sense of the night. And all the tall grass that edged the side began to wave in a strange light, and there blew on a little breeze, and over the rim of the world tipped up a waning moon. If there'd been anything needed to make us feel as if we were going to find the Witch of Endor, it was this. It was such a strange moon, pointing such a strange way, with such a strange color, so remote, and so glassy,—it was like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... half the time he is there, and always with his eye on me. What an air he has!—like a judge on the bench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would never more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us be thankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How short it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and already the performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into so brief a space! The passion of a life-time into the quarter of a year! They are impatient to ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... securities against hypnotism, and these would be found in older Scotch castles. Another element of safety, the purling brook, is here mentioned; all noise is a good antidote; it is perhaps the case that with hypnotism from a distance the hypnotic state is continually waxing and waning, one link, generally a weaker one, succeeding another in the chain of impressions on the temperament. The diminution being continual, the force is renewed by people getting near enough to get a strong hold again, otherwise ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... questions upon him, made him tell her stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant, coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed him. He told her—without giving names—the story of Sam Miller and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want into factories ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... Jeronimo Lobo, both visited the sources of the Blue Nile. In 1663 the Portuguese, who had outstayed their welcome, were expelled from the Abyssinian dominions. At this time Portuguese influence on the Zanzibar coast was waning before the power of the Arabs of Muscat, and by 1730 no point on the east coast north of Cape Delgado was held by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... America clear lessons of wisdom for the future? At least certain negative conclusions may be safely drawn. It is a history of a vacillating public opinion toward the policy of protective duties. Always the policy has kept some hold on public sentiment, but it has varied in strength, now waxing, now waning. The time of revisions has been determined nearly always by varying needs of revenue. When more income has had to be raised, this has nearly always been made the occasion and pretext for increasing the degree of protection for many industries. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... time to tell Deianira that if she wanted to keep Hercules always true to her she had but to take his shirt, and, when her husband's love was waning, prevail on him to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... expectancy of a Martian after the age of maturity is about three hundred years, but would be nearer the one-thousand mark were it not for the various means leading to violent death. Owing to the waning resources of the planet it evidently became necessary to counteract the increasing longevity which their remarkable skill in therapeutics and surgery produced, and so human life has come to be considered but lightly on Mars, as is evidenced by their dangerous sports and the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a moon, and when the moon was waning, I wearied and wandered away through the streets of the city and came to the garden of its god. The priests in their yellow robes moved silently through the green trees, and on a pavement of black marble stood ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... intervals, his mutterings, continued to be active far into the night, long after the callers had gone, and though his household and the neighborhood were at rest, with never a katydid outside to rail at the waning moon. And by a coincidence not more singular than most coincidences, it happened that at just about the time he finally fell asleep, a young lady at no great distance from him awoke to find her self ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... viewing the scene with never-waning interest. These German taverns were the delight of his soul. Everybody was so kindly and orderly and hungry. They ate and drank like persons whose consciences were not overburdened. From the corner of his eye he observed that the vintner ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... left the lake and Muskrat House some thirty miles behind them, and had got into a thick and profoundly still part of the great wilderness, when the waning light ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Wanderer" chiefly because it is the only one of our Butterflies that migrates like the birds. In the late summer it gathers in great swarms when the bright days are waning, and flies away to warmer lands. I have often seen it going, yet I do not remember that I ever saw it come back in the springtime; but it comes, though not in great flocks like those ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... to make room for her and I brought her a chair. There was nothing else one could do. There is almost no twilight in that part of East Africa; until dark there is scarcely a hint that the day is waning. She sat with us for twenty or thirty minutes making small talk, her maid watching us from a window above, until the sun went down with almost the suddenness of gas turned off, and in a moment we could scarcely ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... a rent in the canvas and peered out into the sunlight of the waning day. The stranger had come up beside Mrs. Braddock, talking to her as they crossed the lot in the direction of the street. She apparently paid no heed to his remarks. Braddock made no effort to keep up with them, but loafed ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... passed since the popularly called gallant M'Carstrow led the fair Franconia to the hymeneal altar; and, now that he has taken up his residence in the city, the excitement of the honeymoon is waning, and he has betaken himself to his more congenial associations. The beautiful Franconia for him had but transient charms, which he now views as he would objects necessary to the gratifications of his coarse passions. His feelings ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... given them. She had tales of her own, fashioned in part from the wild myths of the aborigines, to account for the special relations of such as made a group. She would weave the travels of the planets into the steady history of the motionless stars. Waning and waxing moons had a special and strange influence upon her. She would dart out of doors the moment she saw the new moon, and give a wild cry of joy if the old moon was in her arms. Any moon in a gusty night, with a scud ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... by November, and half-faded, as it were, in the waning light, are most meet offerings for the departing year to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... waning And waves shall o'er us sweep, The wild winds sad complaining Shall lull us still to sleep, For as a gentle slumber E'en death itself shall prove To those whom Christ doth number As worthy of ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... it lay before us like a vast frozen ocean, lighted up faintly by the slender crescent of the waning moon in the east, and the weird blue streamers of the aurora, which went racing swiftly back and forth along the northern horizon. Even when the sun rose, huge and fiery, in a haze of frozen moisture at the south, it did not seem to infuse any warmth ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... and far off, high in the maples The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence, Under a moon waning and worn and broken, ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale

... him say that if no desert wind lifted the sand he could follow to that hidden nest of the Hawk. It was very dark now except for glimmer of stars through lacy, slow-drifting clouds,—there was no wind. Later there would be a waning moon! Much of every waking life is a dream, and her dreams were of the No Man's Land of the desert,—the waterless trail from which she had ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Montcorbier chose to make the most with a very special purpose. He caused, it seems, many emissaries of his to quit Paris and find shelter within the Duke of Burgundy's lines, pretending to be deserters from the waning cause of the king, each of whom had the same tale to tell to the credulous ears of the enemy; namely, that the king's new favourite was a wastrel and a fool, who had no better purpose in life than the rhyming of madrigals, the tuning of lutes, the draining of flagons, and the pressing ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... cornice inside some large building. They often breed in colonies. At Dig in Rajputana, where they are sacred in the eyes of Hindus, thousands of them nest in the fort, and, as Hume remarks, a gun fired in the moat towards evening raises a dense cloud of pigeons, "obscuring utterly the waning day and deafening one with the mighty rushing sound of countless strong and rapidly-plied pinions." According to Hume the breeding season for these birds in Upper India lasts from Christmas to May day. The experience of the writer is that April, May and June are ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... stone facing, and looked out; and the wonderful witchery of the solemn night wove its spell around her. Great, golden stars clustered in the clear heavens, and were reflected in the calm, blue pavement of the Mediterranean, where not a ripple shivered their shining images. A waning crescent moon swung high over the eastern crest of the Apennines, and threw a weird light along the Doria's marble palace, and down on the silver gray olives, on the glistening orange-groves, snow-powdered with fragrant bloom, and in that wan, mysterious, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... he retired before cavalry sent to pursue him—he even shot his horses as they gave out, in the forced flight—his expedition had accomplished its object. It had proved that no point of harassed territory was safe from Federal devastation; that the overtaxed and waning strength of the South was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... game of the day, father," said my sub-freshman, with the haughty consciousness of superior knowledge which the waning, though reigning, generation has so often to ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... long time he sat wondering on the edge of his cot—the light from a waning moon streaking across the cabin floor. He tried to go to sleep, in the hope that his dream might continue, but he dreamed of horses breaking through the ice. He wakened again at the first glimmer of dawn—dressed ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... yet dark when the Texan rolled from the blankets at the edge of McWhorter's haystack, and dumped a liberal measure of oats into the blue roan's feed box. While the animal ate, the man carefully examined his outfit by the light of the waning moon. Gun, cinch, bridle, saddle, rope, each came in for its bit of careful scrutiny, and when he had finished he saddled and bridled the horse in the stall and led him out just as the first faint hint of dawn greyed the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... was considered an important undertaking. This was always done by the lucky member of the family. It was usual to put fowl to sit so as to get the chick out of the egg at the waxing, and not at the waning, of the moon. It was thought that the young birds were strong or weak according to the age of the moon ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... now waning fast On Sona's pleasant shore they passed. Then, when the dawn began to break. To Rama thus the hermit spake:— "The light of dawn is breaking clear, The hour of morning rites is near. Rise, Rama, rise, dear son, I pray, And make thee ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... locks December stands 'Mid sleet and storm; his wasted hands A frosty scepter grasp and hold; His frame is bent, his limbs are old; His bearded lips are iced and pale; He shivers in the winter gale. Come then, O day of warm heart-cheer, Make glad the waste and waning year, While old December shivering goes To ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg

... long time They lingered. And the child slow faded, till One day Eve frighted cried, "See, Adam, still She lies! Ah, little one, unseal those eyes! Rouse but awhile, ere waning daylight flies!" For she discerned not yet its doom, nor knew The hour was near. But Adam, parting, drew Beneath the thorn, lest he might see the child. And all the lone hours through Eve, babbling, smiled Adown. And blew her warm breath o'er the ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... campaigning, as he had summoned to the colors. Without food and without arms, they were beginning to desert their Eagles. The spirit of the marshals and great officers whom he had raised from the dust to affluence and power was waning. They were worn out with much fighting. They wanted peace, almost at any price. He remembered their eager questions when he had joined the ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... covered with rags and bedaubed with mire, sit, half sleeping in disease and hunger on decayed door-stoops. Men with bruised faces, men with bleared eyes; men in whose every feature crime and dissipation is stamped, now drag their waning bodies from out filthy alleys, as if to gasp some breath of air, then drag themselves back, as if to die in a desolate hiding-place. Engines of pestilence and death the corporation might see and remove, if it would, are ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... year are waning, and the setting sun casts a ruddy but not warming light upon two figures under the arch of the side door; while one of these figures locks the door, the other, who seems to have a music book under his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

... in the Atrium altered chiefly through the growing up of Terentia, whose fifteenth birthday was celebrated soon after Almo left Italy, and by the steady waning of Causidiena's eyesight. She could still recognize familiar persons when between her and the strong light of a door or window in the daytime; she could still place pieces of wood on the fire, if it was burning well. But she was ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... long. The practice of the duel begot the peculiar animal logic of the nobler savage, which tends to magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity, and hunger for a blood that is not demanded by the appetite. Moreover, a waning practice, in disfavour with the new generation, will be commended to the conservative barbarian, as partaking of the wisdom of his fathers. Further, too, we may have grown slothful, fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to Omphale, our tyrant lady of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs; but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory— got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... has such a brutal and inveterate habit of killing the weaklings. The half-stifled baby in the tenement, the underfed, overworked laboring man, the old man with rigid arteries and stiffening muscles or waning life vigor, the chronic sufferer from malnutrition, alcoholism, Bright's disease, heart disease—these are its ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... "Law of National Expansion," in view of the present war, is interesting. In his History of Rome, which was published in 1857, he says in substance that a young nation which has both vigor and culture is sure to absorb older nations whose vigor is waning and younger nations whose civilization is undeveloped, just as an educated young man is sure to supplant an old man in his dotage and to get the better of a muscular ignoramus. That nations, as well as individuals, should ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... that here is grandeur, and that there where the temple fronts you grandiosity begins, you will be rhetorical, but, again, you will not be wrong. The day of my furtive visit was sober and already waning, with a breeze in which the fountains streamed flaglike, and with a gentle sky on which the population of statues above the colonnades defined themselves in leisure attitudes, so recognizable all that I am sure if they had come down and taken me by ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... flame hovering on them; a spiral wreath of light shot upwards, and the log was reduced to a mass of glowing ashes and half-burnt embers. At this critical moment the stranger deliberately approached the hearth. He threw a whole flagon of liquor wilfully upon the waning faggots, and in a moment fiz, splutter, and smoke proclaimed that the warfare of the elements, like many others, had ended in the destruction of both the contending belligerents. The yule-log was extinguished. There was a general rush, and a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him. He reached his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a moment ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to say 'tis spring. The russet clouds across the 'Lo Fu' lie, so e'en to dreams it's closed. The green petals add grace to a coiffure, when painted candles burn. The simple elf when primed with wine doth the waning rainbow bestride. Does its appearance speak of a colour of ordinary run? Both dark and light fall of their own free will into ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... dim line of canyons from which rose an up-Hinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... the waning fire; she turned restlessly again, elbows close together on her knees, face framed in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... towards the line he goes, or thence returns, More felt is each AEolian messenger, Warming the more with every lengthening day What time towards burning Cancer he remounts. And equal to this heat, this cold, this zeal Are these my tears, my sighs, the ardour that I feel. My constant sighs, my never waning flames Are only equal to my tears. My floods and flames howe'er intense they be, Are never more so than my sighs; I burn with fervid heat, And, firmly fixed, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... gentleman in Europe, to the turnkey who brings him a glass of water; and composes his clothes and hassock as carefully, as good Madame Blaize could do. In private—within the walls of the condemned cell—every word and action of his waning life, is a lie. His whole time is divided between telling lies and writing them. If he ever have another thought, it is for his genteel appearance on the scaffold; as when he begs the barber "not to cut his hair too short, or they won't know him when he comes out". His last ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... her recompense, love her guerdon. And never in camp, or in cave, or in home, Rose voice of mother or mate complaining. And never the foot of her sought to roam, Till love in the heart of the man seemed waning. ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... street in front of his office stood Red King. Other horses were hitched here and there, but there was no human being in sight. The quiet peace of the waning afternoon had settled over town; it was the period when ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... waning of daylight, the other groups had finally abandoned their search of the Shopton area without turning up any information. "I'll notify the FBI ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... different places. The Nandi[395] have two seasons (the wet and the dry) and twelve months named from meteorological phenomena, and each day in the month receives a name from the attendant phase of the moon. The great ceremonies are conducted in the period of the waxing of the moon, and its waning is an occasion of mourning. The new moon is greeted with a prayer that it may bring blessing. A similar custom exists among the Masai.[396] On the other hand the Todas, though the times of their festivals are all regulated by the moon, appear to have no lunar ceremony;[397] if ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... was waning when once more they came in sight of the sea. The setting sun had turned the expanse of ocean into a vast plain of shimmering, quivering gold. The Meadow-Brook Girls uttered exclamations of delight when they set eyes on the scene. For a few moments they stood still, gazing and gazing as ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... logs crackled, The drink-horns emptied soon; Without, the black cloaks of the clouds Strangled the waning moon. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... we were at a cross-roads, where a little place faced a biggish mosque. I could see in the waning light a crowd of people who seemed to be moving towards us. I heard a high-pitched voice cry out a jabber of excited words, and it seemed to me that I had heard ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... is he Who the Day's father is, But Night was of Norve born; The new and waning moons The beneficent powers created ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... romped with the younger Windibrooks and climbed a tree in the security of her sylvan seclusion and the promptings of her still healthy, girlish blood, and only came back to cake and tea and her new hat, which she had prudently hung up in the summer-house, as the afternoon was waning. When they returned to the house, they found that Mr. Windibrook had gone out with his visitor, and Cissy was spared the advertisement of a boisterous escort home, which he generally insisted upon. She gayly took leave of the infant Windibrook ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... glass everything is green, and now Roy thought he could remember many little instances of Tom's waning interest in the troop. Naturally enough, Roy thought, these scout games and preparations for camping seemed tame enough to one who had gone to France and fought in the trenches. Tom was older now, not only in years but in experience, and was it any wonder that his ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... waited—as it seemed to me for hours. The waning day-light faded and became dusk; the dusk thickened into dark; the fire burned red and dull; and still I crouched there in the chimney-corner. I had no heart to read, work, or fan the logs into a ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards

... the Western world that no one shall be compelled to marry against his or her will. The first revolt from family control of marriage, that which made so many persons believe that any one should be allowed to marry any one whom he or she might choose, is now, however, waning. Elements of social control are superseding the "marriage broker" and the parental office in deciding what unions shall ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... encouragement to 'patient continuance in well doing,' 'till the day break, and the shadows flee away.' And there, on the other hand, was the substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but waning, and soon to ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... sit down as before to receive the Captain. The light is by this time waning rapidly, the darkness creeping ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... everything is old-fashioned, cheery, and sanctified by long usage. No one wrote so pleasantly about the pleasures of a comfortable room as Cowper. And was he not right to do so? After all, every hearth is the altar of the family, whereon the sacred fire should be kept constantly burning, waxing and waning with the seasons, but never be permitted to die out altogether. Miss Sprotts, as before mentioned, was much in favour of a constant fire, because of the alleged dampness of the house, and Madame Midas did not by any means object, as she was a perfect salamander for heat. Hence, when the outward ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... to the place of his birth after three years' absence ever met a grayer welcome. I had left my grandfather unimpaired, and it was well-nigh impossible to figure that harsh and domineering spirit in decay. Abram Pendarves belonged to the ancient hearty, savage race of British sea-captains, now fast waning to extinction. After a youth of wild and black adventure under the rule of just such salt-water despots as he himself became, he had spent some two score years practising the tyrannies and what one may call the brutal virtues he had learned on every sea and beneath every ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... administration. The blow fell suddenly, a few weeks after his appointment as justiciar of Ireland. It was precipitated by one of those fits of passion to which the king was prone; but the influence of Hubert had been for some time waning before that of Peter des Roches and his nephew Peter des Rievaux. Some colour was given to their attacks by Hubert's injudicious plea that he held a charter from King John which exempted him from any liability to produce accounts. But the other charges, far less plausible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... the fugitives were now three quarters of a mile away, out of the sound of rifle shot. He had urged Carpenter to marshal them on as far as he could. But the silence endured yet a while longer. In the dull gray light of the somber day and the waning afternoon the marsh was increasingly dreary and mournful. It seemed that it must always be the abode of dead ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in which the poor bears emerge from their six months' wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which they have acquired the previous summer. Even so, in our long winters, multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength which they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open, and fresh air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever and spring biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing the blood in the spring. All these things are the pantings and palpitations ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a silence, during which the fussy gentleman stared fixedly at Mottle-face, who chirruped to the horses solicitously, and turned a serene but owl-like eye up to the waning moon. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... changed with the waning afternoon and now blew gently from the southwest, promising a period of fair weather. It gave us, also, the advantage of greater freedom in noises; for, when living in the wild, one comes to realize how potent a carrier, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... increasing in celebrity, and rising still higher, if that were possible, in the estimation of the public, his health was rapidly waning, amidst his anxious and multiplied duties. "Would to God," says he in a letter written shortly afterwards—"Would to God that I were a tailor, for then I should have a Sunday's holiday!" Meantime a cough, the herald of consumption, tormented him, and "the slow minings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... notwithstanding the rioters made little scruple in declaring their intentions, the authorities were not using the slightest effort to restrain them, or to protect the parties threatened. Day was fast waning, and the approaching night brought with it ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... come again, mother, beneath the waning light, You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night: When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool, On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... would be quiet at this hour," said Rose Delano, seating herself opposite her friend in the library, the Thursday evening after the funeral. They looked so different even in the waning light,—Ruth in soft black, her white face shining like a lily above her sombre gown, Rose, like a bright firefly, perched on a cricket, her cheeks rosy, her eyes sparkling from walking ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... out of a waning dream And sees with instant eyes the naked thought Whereof the vision as a web was wrought, I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam, Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave, One like a prophet standing by ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 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 dawn is ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... waning. Her beauty, her sincerity, her tenderness, her innocence, her sweetness thrilled him. He turned ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... farthest corner of the room, awaiting a sign from his master, stood the magistrate's clerk, a little man with a round head, and legs like the sickle of the waxing or waning moon. He carried under his short arms two ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to those who ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... were returning to New York in its waning season because the decorating of a house they had bought was just completed. They begged Annesley and Knight to be their first visitors, and the invitation was given so unexpectedly that Annesley, taken unawares, found ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... thee for thy gifts divine, In the December of thy beauties waning, Will still admire with joy those lovely eine, That now behold me with their beauties baning. Though Januarie will never come againe, Yet Aprill yeres will ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield

... domestic happiness leaves them no lurking discontent to spur them onto verse writing. This is the conclusion of the happily wedded heroes of Bayard Taylor's A Poet's Journal, and of Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House; likewise of the poet in J. G. Holland's Kathrina, who excuses his waning inspiration after his marriage: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... PHRU to explain that he goes on urgent affairs, that he will come back to her and to his sons, perhaps before the waning of the new moon. Their parting is sad with the pensive sadness of look and gesture peculiar to ...
— For Love of the King - a Burmese Masque • Oscar Wilde

... spread before the public will any idea be formed of the magnitude and importance of the work which it has done. Nor even then. Never, till every soldier whose last moments it has soothed, till every soldier whose flickering life it has gently steadied into continuance, whose waning reason it has softly lulled into quiet, whose chilled blood it has warmed into healthful play, whose failing frame it has nourished into strength, whose fainting heart it has comforted with sympathy,—never, until every full soul has poured out its story of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... came In Heaven-protected ships, The waning tide of hope to swell, With 'Lusitania' and 'Cavell' As watchwords on ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... direction of Lockton Moor. At last the friendly little oil-lamps on the platform at Levisham Station appear just below, and soon the railway is crossed and we are mounting the steep road on the opposite side of the valley. What is left of the waning light shows the rough track over the heather to High Horcum. The huge shoulders of the moors are now majestically indistinct, and towards the west the browns, purples, and greens are all merged in one unfathomable blackness. The tremendous silence and the desolation become almost ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... and the garden darkened by delicate yet swift degrees; a cloud had gone over the moon, fleecy, silver-edged, but still a cloud. The waning of the light seemed to her significant; she feared lest some bitter change might befall the moment; and went in, bolting the door behind her. Once within her own little bedroom, she loosened her hair, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... waning now. The fog hung heavy on the treetops, and dripped upon their heads. The horses were getting tired, and slipped and stumbled in the deep clay paths. The footmen were more tired still, and, cold and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Mundilfoeri, who, on account of their beauty, called his son Mani, and his daughter Sol." Here again we observe that the moon is masculine. "Mani directs the course of the moon, and regulates Nyi (the new moon) and Nithi (the waning moon). He once took up two children from the earth, Bil and Hiuki, as they were going from the well of Byrgir, bearing on their shoulders the bucket Soeg, and the pole Simul." [20] These two children, with their pole and bucket, were placed in the moon, "where they could be seen from earth"; which ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... sat sadly and silently in the library where Major Graham had left her. Her sweet gray eyes were fixed on the fire burning brightly and cheerfully in the waning afternoon light, but she saw nothing about her. Her thoughts were busily travelling along a road which had grown very familiar to them of late: she was recalling all her past intercourse with Kenneth Graham since the time when, as boy and girl, they had ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until then, encountered. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... they whispered, and both felt very uncomfortable. The solemnity and mystery of the night was on them and weighing more heavily with the waning light. The feeling was oppressive. Neither had courage enough to propose going to the house or their camping would have ended. Sam arose and stirred the fire, looked around for more wood, and, seeing none, he grumbled (to himself) and stepped outside in the darkness to find some. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... awhile, For yonder height will tax my waning strength, And many a brier all beautiful with bloom Hides many a thorn that will dispute my path ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... in a while sent them far along with a strong stroke, then only an occasional plash broke the charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,—dun, malign, and distant, a coppery blotch on the rich darkness of heaven. They floated slowly, still; now and then she dipped a hand into the cool current; now and then he drew in his oars, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... later, Gandia's thrice-stabbed corpse lay rolling and bobbing at the Tiber's edge, as dead things do in the water, caught by its silks and velvets in wild branches that dipped in the muddy stream; and the waning moon rose ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... a single impression of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know not whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling. To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils of scirocco. Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its Riva to the point of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee, A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row bench of the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with her son's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, her bosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnet blinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes must ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... irons off, and then we'll talk, boys. I'm putting salt on old Burgess's tail." The rough jest was received with a roar, and Jones, looking momentarily down from his window on the staging, saw, in the waning light, a group of men freeing themselves from their irons with a hammer taken from the guard-house; while two, already freed, were casting buckets of water on the beacon wood-pile. The sentry was lying ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... instruction and time required. Here follows a brief syllabus of the plan, in the hope of placing it within reach of men who can afford but little time for anything outside of their pressing office duties. We can no longer take delightful vacations of indefinite length to restore our waning vitality. The country needs every man and needs him at ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp



Words linked to "Waning" :   waxing, decrease, drop-off, wane, lessening



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