"Darkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... careful and honourable figure crowded out by meaner men at meaner wages, by the German waiter who has learnt five languages in the course of running away from his own, or the Italian waiter who regards those he serves with a darkling contempt which must certainly be that either of a dynamiter or an exiled prince. The human and hospitable English waiter is vanishing. And Dickens might perhaps have saved him, as he ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... crypto-Catholic, but he was not permitted to practise one creed and profess another. THAT the Pope would not stand. So it was on his death-bed that he made his desperate plunge, and went, it must be said, bravely, on the darkling voyage. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... who thought of this. It reminded him of Jack and the Beanstalk, where Jack, reaching the top of the vine, found himself in a strange country. Susan did not remember much about Jack. She was engrossed in recognizing the ravine, scanning the darkling hollows for ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Presbyterian Church, the drug store and dwelling of Dr. Pelliter, and was on the outskirts of the village. The shadow of the western range had now slipped across the valley and nearly climbed the opposite wall; lavender scarfs of mist veiled the far, jumbled peaks in the darkling rift; slim, swaying columns of smoke from the clustered chimneys of Greenstream towered dizzily through the shaded air to where, high above, they were transformed to gold by the last, up-flung rays ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... some rich bank of flowers Where 'neath each blossom a fay lies dreaming? Or is it on yonder silver lake Where the fish in green and gold are sparkling? Or is it among those ancient trees Where the tremulous shadows move soft and darkling? Oh, no! said the moon, with a playful smile, The best of my beams are for ever dwelling In the exquisite eyes, so deeply blue, And the eloquent glance of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 'tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one. Omen? omen? —the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint. —Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold —I shiver! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... they saw rocks. Darkling and indistinct they loomed up out of the white opaque light. As the children approached they almost bumped against them. They rose up like walls and were quite perpendicular so that scarcely a flake of snow could settle ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... alarm, else I would have rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble, and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed conventionalities of our Christian civilization might all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs darkling between the pale and evanescent present and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May I trouble you for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the people as a God rever'd: Him, as he fled before him, from behind Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Smote with the sword; and from the shoulder-point The brawny arm he sever'd; to the ground Down fell the gory hand; the darkling shades Of death, and rig'rous ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the Rushy Moors are spread: Soon will the Sun withdraw her chearful Ray: Darkling and tir'd we shall the Marshes tread, No Lay unsung to cheat the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... hours; but the sun at last Went down to his lodge in the west, and fast The wings of the spirits of night were spread O'er the darkling woods and Wiwst's head. Then, slyly she slipped from her snug retreat, And guiding her course by Wazya's star, [62] That shone through the shadowy forms afar, She northward hurried with silent feet; And long ere the sky ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... through the city—the same mighty fatherly river that washed the walls of his native town up north. In the river Christophe could recover the memory of his childish dreams.... But in his sorrow they took on, like the Rhine itself, a darkling hue. In the dying day he would lean against the parapet of the embankment and look down at the rushing river, the fused and fusing, heavy, opaque, and hurrying mass, which was always like a dream of the past, wherein ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town that became strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was held gazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy spaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in the distant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, and luminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrow streets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... with dark hedges of Norway spruce drawn about it like a funeral scarf. The panelled wooden shutters of the front windows were never opened, and a stranger passing by would have thought the house uninhabited; but all Elmerton knew that behind those darkling hedges and close shutters, somewhere in the depths of the tall many-chimneyed house, lived—"if you can call it living!" Mrs. Tree said—Miss Virginia Dane. Miss Dane was a contemporary of Mrs. Tree's,—indeed, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... gazed elate With hope set higher than fear or fate, Or doubt of darkling days in wait; And when her thankful praise waxed great And craved of him the sword again, He would not give it. "Nay, for mine It is till force may make it thine." A smile that shone as death may shine Spake toward him bale ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the lights in the farm-house. He heard the two Wrinkles, with cracked voices, singing a hymn as they sat in their rocking-chairs on the porch. The very stars seemed to hang lower from the darkling mystery overhead; he felt light enough, in his boundless content, to rise to them and drink at their twinkling founts. His soul seemed to swell to the point of bursting. "Oh, God, I thank Thee!" he said, deep within ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence. He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow-beings, and sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... were now on me thou shouldst indeed see wondrous things * That would efface all sorrows and disperse all sores of sprite:' Then deigned our Caliph's Bride to cry, 'Where is that dress of thine?' * And I replied, 'In house of him kept darkling as the night.' So down upon it pounced Masrr and brought it unto her, * And when 'twas there each feather cast a ray of beaming light: Therewith I took it from his hand and opened it straightway * And saw its plumd bosom ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... was ready, and our rude meal in that darkling place was a merry one. Elspeth sat enthroned on a couch of pine branches—I can see her yet shielding her face from the blaze with one little hand, and dividing her cakes with the other. Then we lit our pipes, and fell to the long ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold—I shiver!—How now? Aloft there! ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... their boughs, and clove them on the sward, And bound the logs behind their steeds to draw, And drave them homeward; and the snorting steeds Went straining through the crackling brushwood down, And by the darkling forest-paths the Gods Follow'd, and on their shoulders carried boughs. And they came out upon the plain, and pass'd Asgard, and led their horses to the beach, And loosed them of their loads on the seashore, And ranged the wood in stacks by Balder's ship; And every ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... padre pointed to the sea. The hopeless aspect of its moonlit and darkling calm struck me so forcibly that I did not even ask how he proposed to get us out there. I only made a gesture of discouragement. Outside the Casa, my life was not worth ten minutes' purchase. And how could I risk her there? How could I propose ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... this order they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two others, who bore the burthen of the chant, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" like a garrison catch. The little girls were timid ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Like darkling birds her eyelashes Upon her cheek lay fluttering light. Her kirtle's swinging cadences Displayed her ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... was so dense that the majority of us could not see the singer, which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all in the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, with the love-enraptured ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... heartless, cold expression All my being terrifies— Though my darkling fear is lessened By thy frank ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... at Doune?— Like bloodhounds now they search me out,— Hark, to the whistle and the shout!— If farther through the wilds I go, I only fall upon the foe: I'll couch me here till evening gray, Then darkling try my dangerous way.' ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them—ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems—in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... criminal, dangerous, and fatal; and if it be possible to devise means of freeing ourselves from it, we ought at once to set about the employing of those means. It would be the most wretched and imbecile fatuity, to shut our eyes to the impending dangers and horrors, and "drive darkling down the current of our fate," till we are overwhelmed in the final destruction. If we are tyrants, cruel, unjust, oppressive, let us humble ourselves and repent in the sight of heaven, that the foul stain may be cleansed, and we enabled to stand erect as having common ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the huge man stood looking down darkling upon the girl. He would have given his soul if he could have clasped that slender form in his arms! A sudden impulse assailed him, and bade him fall upon his knees before her, and ask her forgiveness and guidance. She stood ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the West. The night falls darkling over the ocean. They are gone: but their hearts are at home yet a while. In silence, with a heart inexpressibly soft and tender, how each man thinks of those he has left! What a chorus of pitiful prayer rises up to the Father, at sea and on shore, on that parting night at home by the vacant bedside, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Though the fountain cease to play, Dew must glitter near the brink, Though the weary mind decay, As of old it thought so must it think. Leave alone the darkling eyes Fixed upon the moving skies, Cross the hands upon the bosom, there to rise To the throb of the faith ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... his darkling, shabby old third-floor room and threw himself into the arm-chair before the fire to think. It was a room without beauty, merely walls, repapered once every twenty years, and furniture of the mid-Victorian era. The mantelshelf ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... darkling, could easily have punished her. Tessie knew it. But he never did, or would. She knew that, too. Her very insolence ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... and grew vague; it was recalled that he had done dread things; he became a tradition, a legend, and a warning to the young; a Richard in the bush to frighten colts. He was preached at boys caught playing marbles "for keeps": "Do you want to grow up like Joe Louden?" The very name became a darkling threat, and children of the town would have run had one called suddenly, "HERE COMES JOE LOUDEN!" Thus does the evil men do live after them, and the ill-fame of the unrighteous increase ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... dear name my lips should pass, My blushes would our love declare; No, no! I'll say my longing was To see the moon appear O'er yonder darkling hill; Yet 'tis on thee mine eyes ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... o'er moving worlds presides, Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides, On darkling man in pure effulgence shine, And cheer his clouded mind ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... "My wine has run Indeed out of my cup, and there is none To gather up the bread of my repast Scattered and trampled,—yet I find some good In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up, Clear from the darkling ground,—content until I sit with angels before better food. Dear Christ! when thy new vintage fills my cup, This hand shall shake no more, nor ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... when darkness fills The dismal days with darkling ills, Rest in the calm the promise gives, That Christ, thy ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... in hasty visits come! As swiftly follow'd by the fleeting gloom. O Night! thy smiles are short, and short thy shade; Thou art a freakish friend, and all unstay'd: Yet from thy varied changes who are free? Full many an honest friend resembles thee. Then let my doubtful footsteps darkling stray, Thy next fair beam will set me on my way: E'en take thy freedom, whether rough or kind, I came not forth to quarrel ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... regions it divides And borders with its furrowed sides. The seaward valley laughs with light Till the round sun o'erhangs this height; But then the shadow of the crest No more the plains that lengthen west Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps Eastward, until the coolness steeps A darkling league of tilth and wold, And chills the flocks that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... in the room, Phipps yawned. The failing was infectious, and the gathering having, as you can easily understand, talked itself weary, dispersed on trivial pretences. But not to sleep immediately. Directly Dangle was alone he began, with infinite disgust, to scrutinise his darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little man in spite of his energy. The whole business—so near a capture—was horribly vexatious. Phipps sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal disgust, a collar he would have thought incredible ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... secret, and smite us with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and darkling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from sight of human face or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... could stand it no longer. The game was up, the cosmic game for which I had laboured so long and strenuously, and with one despairing yell of "Ulla! Ulla!" I unfastened the chain, and, leaping over the limp and prostrate form of the unhappy Tibbles, fled darkling down the deserted street. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... It matters little what may come to me Of outward circumstance, as hunger, thirst, Social condition, yea, or love or hate; But what shall I be, fifty summers hence? My life, my being, all that meaneth me, Goes darkling forward into something—what? O God, thou knowest. It is not my care. If thou wert less than truth, or less than love, It were a fearful thing to be and grow We know not what. My God, take care of me; Pardon and swathe me in an infinite love, Pervading and inspiring me, thy child. And ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... they scattered now? To them was linked the long forgotten quiver Of nights of youth, those evening hours in which Vague fear with monstrous, sultry happiness Was mingled, and the perfume of young locks With darkling breezes wafted from ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the infamy of the situation. The Impostor had been secretly watching us. He had envied us our happiness. Into his degenerate mind had stolen the darkling and criminal thought that he—Audacious Scoundrel—might impose upon me by pretending he was not merely "a robin" but "The Robin"—Tweetie himself and that he might supplant him in my affections. But he had been confounded and cast into outer darkness ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Note-Books, Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in Boston. Some of the letters ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest, Summoning from the innumerable boughs 20 The strange deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows The shutting flower and darkling waters pass, And where the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... who 'mid the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night With her sweet brood; impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... her sitting there, the breeze blowing tendrils of bright hair about her face, her strong, lithe hands clasped youthfully about her knees, her beautiful eyes darkling or brightening with the thoughts that passed, could not have connected her with the mere passivity of ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... is the peculiar property of California's foothill valleys in the late afternoon; the world seemed very distant and not at all desirable, and to Kay there came a sudden, keen realization of how this man beside her must love this darkling valley with the hills above presenting their flower-clad breasts to the long spears of light from the dying ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... became conscious that the boy was keeping a watchful eye on him. If Raven went up to the hut, Dick was sure to appear there, in ten minutes at the most. Once, after a heavy snow, Raven had the wood road broken out, and Dick looked on in a darkling conjecture. And when Raven, now even to Jerry's wonder, proceeded to break from the hut to the back road, Dick found it not only impossible to restrain himself but wise to speak. They were standing by the hearth ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... stealthy, shuffling, weighty, sounded again. It was never the echo of her own deft, light step! A distinct, sibilant whisper suddenly hissed with warning throughout the place, and as she turned with the instinct of flight she caught a glimpse in the darkling mirror across the dining-room of a fugitive speeding figure, then another, and still another, all frantically, noiselessly fleeing—why or whom, she could not descry, she did not ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... brethren, in that most weirdly wonderful of all Mr. Kipling's inventions—the one that carries us back, not as his other stories do, to the India of the cities and the bazaars, of the supercilious tourist and the sleek Babu, but to the older India of unbroken jungle, darkling at noonday through its green mist of tangled leaves, and haunted by memories of the world's long infancy when man and brute crouched close together on the earthy breast of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the roads are sweet with fern. All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue, Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew. The lone white star of evening comes out among the hills, And in the darkling forest begin the whip-poor-wills. The fireflies that wander, the hawks that flit and scream, And all the wilding vagrants of summer dusk and dream, Have all their will, and reck not of any after thing, Inheriting ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... Troy the capture till that prize obtain'd. "Where then the mighty Ajax? Where the boasts "Of this brave hero? Why this risk evade? "Why dar'd Ulysses through the watchful guards "Steal 'mid the darkling night? and find his way, "Not merely past the Trojan walls, but high "Through raging swords their loftiest turrets scale; "Bear off the goddess from her sacred fane, "And with the prize again repass the foe? "This deed not done, Ajax had bore in vain "On his huge arm the sevenfold oxen ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Darkling, deliberate, what sings This wonderful one, alone, at peace? What wilder things than song, what things Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, Dearer than Italy, untold Delight, and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... wakes of turbulent keels, swift-sent or laboring, boiled their swirling splendor against the black water. Mysterious, couchant, straining, the bulwarked city rode the waves; a mighty ship, her funnels the great buildings beyond, where sullen streamers of smoke trailed motionless and darkling; the indescribable, multitudinous hum of the city's blended voices for purring of monster engines, deep in her hold; bold and high, her restless prow swung seaward in majestic curve, impatient to beat ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... flame in the darkling circle, she whirled around, drew them with her smile, and sang, "I want my party to be noisy and undignified! This is the christening of my house, and I want you to help me have a bad influence on it, so that it will ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... gaunt pines imprison her sad gaze, All still the sky and darkling drearily; She feels the chilly breath of dear, dead days Come sifting ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... "my heart was in my mouth. As I comed along to you, I saw Mun, coachey, pop along from the back-door to the stables. He was within a hop, step, and jump of me. But he had a lanthorn in his hand, and he did not see me, being as I was darkling." Saying this, he assisted Miss Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the route; on the contrary, he was remarkably silent and contemplative, a circumstance by no means disagreeable to Emily, to whom his ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... I reserved to take an early opportunity of reading, but replaced for the present, and, having come at last upon one hopeful-looking key, I made haste to return before my candle, which was already flickering in the socket, should go out altogether, and leave me darkling. When I reached the kitchen, however, I found the grey dawn already breaking. I retired once more to my chamber, and was soon ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... are tamed by Dione her doom. Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade! Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess' command how they sing unafraid!— Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that shatters the hush of the lake; Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds darkling the poplar awake, So melting her soul into music, you'd vow 'twas her passion, her own, She chanteth—her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone. Hush! Hark! Draw around to the circle . . . Ah, loitering Summer, say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gripped it and pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest and most unavoidable of expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon their Planet; it was much more like the shy endearments of the shop boys and work girls who made the darkling populous about them with ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... into the outer rooms, and very hard in Mr. Chopper's face; but there were not any explanations. It was remarked that Mr. Osborne was particularly quiet and gentle all day, to the surprise of those who had augured ill from his darkling demeanour. He called no man names that day, and was not heard to swear once. He left business early; and before going away, summoned his chief clerk once more, and having given him general instructions, asked him, after ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Darkling{7} I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... waste-paper basket she had bought for him, and found him sitting at the little toilet table at which he was to "write." The outlook was, for a London outlook, spacious, down a long slope of roofs towards the Junction, a huge sky of blue passing upward to the darkling zenith and downward into a hazy bristling mystery of roofs and chimneys, from which emerged signal lights and steam puffs, gliding chains of lit window carriages and the vague vistas of streets. She showed him the basket and put it beside him, and then her eye caught the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... I stood On a white cliff, topped by a darkling wood. Below me, placid, bright and sparkling, lay The equal waters of a lovely bay. White cliffs surrounded it—and calm and fair It lay asleep, ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... what tower of darkling chance Or dungeon of a narrow doom, Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance That for the cross make crashing room? Come! with strained eyes the battle waits In the wild van thy mace's swing; While doubters parley with their fates, Make thou thine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the darkling hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the east and drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing faintly from the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden among the trees. The faith which it betokened ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... speak to me, and felt again the old breath on my brow. The sun died away across the old swaying woods; the rattling hone upon the scythe; the measured sweep; the mellow music—all were gone away. The day was done, and the long twilight came—twilight, which mixes the crimson of the darkling west, the yellow moonlight in the azure east, and the red glimmering starlight overhead, into one magic light. And so we went home merrily, with pleasant thoughts and talk; such pleasant thoughts I wish to all. Thus wrote one who ever delighted in ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... and crimson streamed raggedly up above and through the half stripped trecs of Kensington Gardens, and he found himself wishing that Heaven would give us fewer sublimities in sky and mountain and more in our hearts. Against the background of darkling trees and stormily flaming sky a girl was approaching him. There was little to be seen of her but her outline. Something in her movement caught his eye and carried his memory back to a sundown at Hunstanton. Then as she came nearer he ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Grewgious, but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot. I venture to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. "A night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to have helped ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... if my brother died, 'Twas but a fatal chance; For darkling was the battle tried, And fortune sped ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and the song of the birds, driven to a distance by our voices, seemed to quicken the darkness into life. 'Darkling, we listened'—how long I know not, for the subliminal world was awake, and the measure of time was lost. Snarley was the first to speak, taking up his parable from the very point where he had left it, as though he were unconscious that a long interval ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not given her ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... destruction. And now the dreadful day was at hand; the rites were being ordered for me, the salted corn, and the chaplets to wreathe my temples. I broke away, I confess it, from death; I burst my bonds, and lurked all night darkling in the sedge of the marshy pool, till they might set their sails, if haply they should set them. Nor have I any hope more of seeing my old home nor my sweet children and the father whom I desire. Of them will they ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... that hath birth matches the worth Of Love, in God's own Heaven and Earth, For through His power divine Love opes the golden eye of day, Love guides the pale moon's lonely way, Love lights the glow-worm's glimmering ray Amid the darkling bine. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... you I might have advantage of the occasion to express my friendship and declare how high I hold you as a journalist and a man. Or I might speak of those years at Washington when in the gallery we worked shoulder to shoulder; I might recall to you the wit of Hannum, or remind you of the darkling Barrett, the mighty Decker, the excellent Cohen, the vivid Brown, the imaginative Miller, the volatile Angus, the epigrammatic Merrick, the quietly satirical Splain, Rouzer the earnest, Boynton the energetic, Carson the eminent, ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... imperative to send abroad, the messenger must then go openly, advertising himself to the police with a huge brand of cocoa-nut, which flares from house to house like a moving bonfire. Only the police themselves go darkling, and grope in the night for misdemeanants. I used to hate their treacherous presence; their captain in particular, a crafty old man in white, lurked nightly about my premises till I could have found it in my heart to beat him. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... narrow at the turn, for Annie is precious to us. I will confess, also, that it is well to have a switch in the kitchen to throw light in the basement, on the chance that the wood-box may get empty before the evening has spent itself. There is comfort, too, in not being forced to go darkling to bed, like Childe Roland to the tower, but to put out the light from the floor above. But we are carrying this business too far in mental concerns. Here is properly a place for a rare twilight. It is not well that a man should always flare himself ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... soft as farthest skies That hold horizon rain; Or when, steel-darkling, stoic-wise, They ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... drank and smiled on Grimhild above the beaker's rim, And she looked and laughed at his laughter; and the soul was changed in him. Men gazed and their hearts sank in them, and they knew not why it was, Why the fair-lit hall was darkling, nor what had come to pass: For they saw the sorrow of Sigurd, who had seen but his deeds erewhile, And the face of the mighty darkened, who had known but ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... glowed like sheets of gold, darkling here and there with shadow; long ledges of rock, bearded with deep-water growth, sparkled rarely in the light; stretches of sodden sand, colored with salts of the waters, and littered with curious ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... with its headlong gulfs Had lost all memory of the world below; For all those cloudless throngs of glittering stars And all those glimmerings where the abyss of space Is powdered with a milky dust, each grain A burning sun, and every sun the lord Of its own darkling planets,—all those lights Met, in a darker deep, the lights of earth, Lights on the sea, lights of invisible towns, Trembling and indistinguishable from stars, In those black gulfs around the mountain's feet. Then, into the ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Arches above him! Loveliest weather, Born of blue ether, Break from the sky! O that the darkling Clouds had departed! Starlight is sparkling, Tranquiller-hearted Suns are on high. Heaven's own children In beauty bewildering, Waveringly bending, Pass as they hover; Longing unending Follows them over. They, with their glowing Garments, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... wind and wave and wood —Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters Betraying the close kisses of the wind— And win him unto me: and few there be So gross of heart who have not felt and known A higher than they see: They with dim eyes Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee To understand my presence, and to feel My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power. I have rais'd thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven, Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense Listenest the lordly music flowing from Th' illimitable years. I am ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... these things made the foundation on which their affection rested. When two hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to sever the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before, among the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of their new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in their bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt unutterable. Would they meet again some day? and how, under what circumstances ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... had been precipitated into the Seine so unexpectedly and with such violence he kept control of his wits: he did not utter a cry as he fell head foremost into the darkling river. He was an excellent swimmer: all aching as he was, he let himself go with the current and presently reached the sheltering arch of the Pont Neuf. There he took breath for ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... glance what was wanted, guided them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... light of day declineth, And a swift angel through the sky Kindleth God's tapers clear, With ashen staff the lamplighter Passeth along the darkling streets To light our ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... stars rise and fall, The rounding seasons come and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe; The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star. Of all I see, in earth and sky,— Star, flower, beast, bird,—what part have I? This conscious life,—is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bit does remorse seize on Tim Cannon, being a person of no moral convictions whatever; and as for dread and disappointment—one moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes, though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain. For it is not the nature of him to falter ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... office, I sought to engage myself with the papers of an approaching suit, but it was impossible to ignore the darkling cloud of disaster which impended. I returned ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... wall with her hands behind her and looked up at him triumphantly. To her confusion, no answering gleam illumined the young man's darkling eyes. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... been lulled in the long calm of the respite, and when roused again, even by this sudden sorrow, she woke to her old trust and hope. And when she listened to the expressive though calm rehearsal of that solemn sunrise-greeting to the weary darkling fishers on the shore of the mountain lake, it was to her as if the form so long hidden from her by mists of her own raising, once more shone forth, smoothing the vexed waters of her soul, and she could say with a new thrill of recognition, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glass through which he sees darkly and often with a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil—the veil that covers the face ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the Wina-waves were flowing. There she sees, on the horizon, Something darkle in the sunlight, Something blue upon the billows, Speaks these words in wonder guessing: What is this upon the surges, What this blue upon the waters, What this darkling in the sunlight? 'Tis perhaps a flock of wild-geese, Or perchance the blue-duck flying; Then upon thy wings arising, Fly away to highest heaven. "Art thou then a shoal of sea-trout, Or perchance a school of salmon? Dive then ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... a good mile behind me. The sun had already sunk over the crest of the cliffs, and I could just see the mounted savages through the darkling gloom—still fallowing as fast as their horses could gallop. In five minutes after, I had entered the gorge. The twilight continued no longer: in the canon it was night. I followed the stream upwards, keeping along near the bank. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to Odin's eyes as he looked out there at the ruins and remembered the splendor that had been. As he thought of all who had died there, his hands were begging for the feel of Grim Hagen's throat. Darkling he stood there on that narrow ledge and thought how strange he and Gunnar must seem. Like two trolls peering out ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... bound No other tree could live. But gallantly The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung In crimson clusters all the boughs among, Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee; And oft at nights the garden overflows With one sweet song that seems to have no close, Sung darkling from our ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... quickly, gazing earnestly at the Honourable John Ruffin, who folded his arms and wore his best darkling air. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... with dignity and went to the window, gazing out a moment into the darkling night where unknown myriads of mosquitoes lurked all unconscious of the doom ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... welcome, the auspicious day, When from the mountain where he darkling lay, The Polish sun into the firmament Sprung all the brighter for his late ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... period of inertia to the fact that he is one of the Tenebrionidae, or Darkling Beetles? By no means, for here in the same group is Pimelia bipunctata, who turns a somersault on his round back and finds his feet the moment he has turned over; here is a Cellar-beetle (Blaps ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... ire; Throughout his vast divinity the deeps Concurrent thrilled with action, and away, As sweeps a thunder-cloud across the sky In harvest-time, preluded by dull blasts; Or some black-visaged whirlwind, whose wide folds Rush, wrestling on with all 'twixt heaven and earth, Darkling he hurried, and his distant voice, Not softened by delay, was heard in tones Distinctly terrible, still following up Its rapid utterance of tremendous wrath With hoarse reverberations; like the roar Of lions ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crabs are climbing, Crabs from the great sea, Sea that is darkling. Black crabs and gray crabs 5 Scuttle o'er the reef-plate. Billows are tumbling and lashing, Beating and surging nigh. Seashells are crawling up; And lurking in holes 10 Are the eels o-u and o-i. But taste the moss akahakaha, Kahiki! how the sea rages! The wild sea of Kane! The pit-god has come ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson |
