"Soundless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the coach was black, and soundless, except for some one's swift, excited breathing. As he extended his cramped leg to the floor he touched a motionless body. Not until then had he realized the possibility of death also within. He felt downward with one hand, his nerves suddenly throbbing, and his finger touched ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... both stood, and not a word to say, By silence overborne, until at last The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray Of heavenly light never the verge has past. Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here, And then gray light, and then the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... herself for a while, until Lark really slept, then she buried her head in the pillow and her throat swelled with sobs that were heavy but soundless. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... does its blossoming: Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too Blushing through the mist and dew Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled From the ploughboy's heavy shoon; When the Night doth meet the Noon In dark conspiracy To banish Even from her sky. —Sit thee there, and send abroad With a mind self-overawed Fancy, high-commission'd:—send ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri, alone, majestic here in the wilderness, soundless save for their own dashing—those wonderful cascades, now so well known in industry, so ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... the first of the gray dawn, while the house was in utter stillness, and rising at once, rose and dressed herself with soundless haste. It was hard indeed to go and leave James thus in danger, but she had no choice! She held her breath and listened, but all was still. She opened her door softly; not a sound reached her ear as she crept down the stair. She had neither to unlock nor unbolt the door to leave the ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... above the medium height, and added to the sense of grandeur conveyed by her presence. Her carriage was erect to the verge of stiffness, and her step too firm to be quite soundless. Advancing years had not produced any unseemly embonpoint, nor had her figure fallen into the opposite extreme, and sharpened into meagre angularity; its outline retained sufficient roundness not to lose the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... such as can be bought in the street generally diffused a slight scent through the air, making another peculiarity which had its effect on Sidney's imagination. When Jane moved about, it was with a soundless step; if she placed a chair or arranged things on the table, it was as if with careful avoidance of the least noise. When his thoughts turned hitherwards, Sidney always pictured the old man sitting in his familiar mood of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... place where Lewti lies When silent night has closed her eyes: It is a breezy jasmine-bower, The nightingale sings o'er her head: Voice of the Night! had I the power That leafy labyrinth to thread, And creep, like thee, with soundless tread, I then might view her bosom white Heaving lovely to my sight, As these two swans together heave On ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on the cool stone of the coping ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... As a soundless shell, as a songless nest, Seems now the room that was radiant then And fragrant with his happier rest Than that ...
— A Dark Month - From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wild beauty of the Swiss scenery did she find rest, not by the calm lakes of sapphire blue in which she saw reflected the rugged mountains, soul-satisfying in their majestic grandeur, not in the soundless, the mysterious regions of the eternal snows—but in the north of Holland, where she found herself when autumn ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... from red, A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head, Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray Springs, or the dusk of dawn knows red from grey, Being as a soul that knows not quick from dead. From far beyond the sunset, far above, Full toward the starry soundless east it blows Bright as a child's breath breathing on a rose, Smooth to the sense as plume of any dove; Till more and more as darkness grows and glows Silence and night seem likest ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lock. Unlike the soundless discharge of his special gun in the outer airlessness, the blast of air that came into the waiting chamber was like a hurricane in noise and force, as the room filled in ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... on the preceding night, pacing a winding lobby, brightly illuminated, the man who kept that watch was suddenly met by a person wearing a masque, and armed at all points. His surprise and consternation were great, and the more so as the steps of The Masque were soundless, though the floor was a stone one. The guard, but slightly prepared to meet an attack, would, however, have resisted or raised an alarm; but The Masque, instantly levelling a pistol at his head with one hand, with the other had thrown open the door ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again; We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn; We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn. O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly; By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky; By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content; By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent. Through the black canyon's ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... is aye your soundless voice, Lifted in an awful patience o'er the world's uproarious noise; O'er its jarrings and its greetings—o'er its loving and its hate— Silence! Bare thy brows all dumbly to the snows ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... for it presses the clouds and the sea. Those men who were going to fish are about to return without launching. Wait a little, is it not spring? will not the wind be quiet? this wind is only the voice of the lasting pine- trees, ready for stillness. See how the air is soundless, or would be, were it not for the waves. There now, the fishermen are putting out with even ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... course, they consider that they should not be expected to wait a moment for a second servant to hand the gravy or jelly or whatever goes with the meat. No service is good in this day unless swift—and, of course, soundless. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... at last he choked out: "My mother taught me." Here Paddy retired from the room, doubled in a strong but soundless convulsion. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the heavy incompatibility of the best intentioned adult intruder to even the most hypocritically polite child at such a moment. A sense of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent woods empty and soundless. He was relieved, however, after penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's pocket accordion. Following the sound he came ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unmistakable sour smell of magic, and saw soundless words moving Richard's little khaki moustache. Then she found that ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... still and vague and dusky as in pillared aisles. There were no birds, no animals, nothing living except the giant columns which bore a woven canopy of leaves so dense that no glimmer of blue shone through. Centuries had spread the soundless carpet that we trod; eons had laid up the high-sprung arches which vanished far above us where vault and column were dimly merged, losing all form in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... where people might speak to her, she took the short cut through the sun-pavilion, which would bring her nearer to the stairs. But on throwing open the door she stood still on the threshold with a little soundless gasp. "Oh!" ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... one of her daughters sank beside her. Diana had sped an arrow from her bow that is like the crescent moon. Without a cry, nay, even as they murmured words of comfort, the sisters died, one by one. It was all as swift and soundless as snowfall. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... was needed and feasible. The ship behaved well. Of course, it was some time before we could pause in our fierce and laborious exertions; but all through the work, the excitement, the uproar, and some dismay, we were aware of this silent little man at the break of the poop, perfectly motionless, soundless, and often hidden from us by the drift ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... many of the best houses. In a crisis like that of Black Friday the sluice-gates of passion open. Cloaked in the masquerade of genuine distrust, came forth whispers whose only origin was in ancient enmities, long-treasured spites, the soundless depths of unquenchable malignities. Firms of staunchest reputation felt the rapier-stroke of old angers. The knowledge that certain houses were large holders of particular stocks was the signal of attacks upon the shares. Despite of outside orders for vast ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... felt the horror of the great empty space opened up between him and Nicky, deep and still and soundless, but for the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, womanly, reasonable action, and when she died her passing was of the same emotional stress. She clung to earth like one whose body was about to drop into soundless deeps. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... borne irresistibly upward on the human tide, there was one overpowering moment of fear and clamor, in which the cry of "The Prophet! The Prophet!" dominated her consciousness; then, to her, the world became suddenly and mercifully sightless, soundless, and void. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... tightened skin, lost to all presences save the Identical and Shagpat. So they edged away from Bootlbac in awe, saying, 'He's inspired, Bootlbac! 'tis the triumph of Shagpat he drummeth.' They feigned to listen to him till their ears deceived them, and they rejoiced in the velocity of the soundless tune of Bootlbac the drum-beater, and were stirred by it, excited to a forgetfulness of their fasting. Such was the force of the inspiration of Bootlbac the drum-beater, caused by the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always a thing forgotten When all the world goes well; A thing forgotten, as long ago When the gods forgot the mistletoe, And soundless as an arrow of snow The ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling of security and peace which ought ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... here we shall stay as late perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from home since we came—just as if we had never known Paris. People come sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... hush of peace—a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till Earth was lost ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... profound as death, if death Be visited by stealthy dreams; A vagrant note from soundless themes That ring the comet-paths of space, Seemed vibrant in the windless air That trembled with its presence there. Out beyond the nameless place Where neither fields nor clouds exist, Grey from the background of the mist, I saw three vague forms drawing near. My ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... was a very quiet one. But every incident of life was quiet in the Vicarage. Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost soundless movements made. The two men seated themselves and talked calmly while the rain pattered on the window panes and streaming down them seemed to shut out ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but soundless lips—Ludowika Penny. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was there any phantom memorial of life, nor wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor creeping thing, that moved or stirred upon the soundless waste.—DE QUINCEY. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... limped closer, smashing the remains of the night with an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a gleaming fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the background sat the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink back on his trembling hump. The scrawny fingers of his hand covered his forehead and face. His whole ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... foot; its bulk of body, not fat, but overlaid with muscle; its long, slender neck, of swanlike curvature; the head, wide between the eyes, and tapering to a muzzle which a lady's bracelet might have almost clasped; its motion, step long and elastic, tread sure and soundless—all certified its Syrian blood, old as the days of Cyrus, and absolutely priceless. There was the usual bridle, covering the forehead with scarlet fringe, and garnishing the throat with pendent brazen chains, each ending with ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in silence for a time, until at last the soundless night became too oppressive, and Holden was forced to speak ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... as she remembered that first day she had seen Orvay Lafarge, and she said to Bissonnette: "Loce, do you mind the keg in the water-pail?" Bissonnette paused on an out-pull, and threw back his head with a soundless laugh, then ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... toward the Martian Princess and the searchers on the hull. He cried out in the soundless dark. The searchers had left the hull and were pursuing him through open space. Their speed far exceeded his. It was futile to run before them—and futile to leave the haven of the Martian Princess. His only chance of survival or success ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... voice was swept away and drowned, and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the burden of the uproar. Men ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... hear, nor smell; and that, notwithstanding the excellence of his own eyes, ears, and nose, the universe the materialist is mapping out so deftly is, and must be, monophysical, lightless, colourless, soundless—a phantasmagoric show—a deceptive series of undulations, which become colour, or sound, or what not, according to the organism upon which ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the gate of her father's premises. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Michael's hand violently, looking with flaming eyes of rage into his, and added something, but not audibly. Only her lips moved, her teeth chattered, and her eyes rolled—they were soundless words. What could she have said? Timar stared in a dazed way like a sleep-walker, then suddenly raised his head to ask Athalie something. He was alone—only the key grasped in his hand showed that it was ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... among the pillows, breathing heavily, the perfect picture of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet cloth to ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... open by clockwork. Heavy curtains were withdrawn by servitors half seen in the twilight, and the visitors were committed to the care of an Austrian groom of the chambers, who, wearing the aspect of a king who had stepped out of the Almanach de Gotha, led the way over soundless carpets to a library. This was furnished with a number of deep armchairs; and I recollect how, on the first occasion of my entering it, each of these chairs was monopolized by a drowsy Persian cat. For a moment, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... where his bubble joined his suit, and the impact drove the man downward to the unyielding surface of the asteroid with a soundless smash. Rip threw up his arms to cushion his helmet as he struck the ground beyond his enemy. He threw the air bottles away. He fought to keep his feet under him and almost succeeded, but his knees hit the ground, and pistol and knife bit ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ice-plumes of the cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the storm. At the horizon, a wicked, dull glare gave threat of the typhoon's approach. All as yet was soundless, only the far-flung clouds told of the fury which was hurling them ahead of the circling ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... moved, neither the beast nor the man. They stood face to face, each perhaps with an equal astonishment, motionless and soundless, in that mad Indian moonlight that makes all ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... its own soundless peace the outstretched forms of rough warriors and removes them from grim reality into the passing realms ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... rode noiselessly up the broad avenue which leads from the quays of Aaanthor to the great central plaza, he and his mount might have been mistaken for spectres from a world of dreams, so grotesque the man and beast, so soundless the great thoat's padded, nailless feet upon the moss-grown flagging of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein's house. Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and says often that he is "preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . ." while he waves his ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... executive had predetermined to act, not the perfection of clockwork, not the very masterpieces of scenical art, can ever have exhibited a combined movement upon one central point—so swift, punctual, beautiful, harmonious, more soundless than an exhalation, more overwhelming than a deluge—as the display of military force in Dublin on Sunday the 8th of October. Without alarm, without warning—as if at the throwing up of a rocket in the dead of night, or at the summons of a signal gun—the great capital, almost as populous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... through his window across the crowded street into the shattered window whence issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame in the raw November air still stood Mrs. Harvey Herrington, turning the giant leaves of her soundless oratory. The heckling request which then struck George's eyes began: "Will ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... growing—dark," he murmured, in indistinct, half-recovered speech, then fell off again into his soundless slumbers. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... seemed that the moon had slid beyond her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tongue soundless. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... silence tugs at my breast With formless lips, Like a heavy baby, Attenuates me, Draws me through myself into it. I sit in the womb of an idiot, Helpless before its mouthing tenderness. The huge flap ears are attentive, And the soundless face bends ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrils dilated; and he followed over the soundless cushion of brown needles, down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upper breezes, filling all the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... we were sitting on the Casino veranda overlooking the wonderful Harbor of Port Arthur. It was one of those quiet, balmy, semi-tropical nights for which this part of the world is famous, one of those crystal, clear, soundless nights, and the silhouettes of Russia's grim silent battle monsters riding at anchor were sharply outlined on the moonlit waters of the bay. We were smoking our pipes, having just finished a long chat about the history of these ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Soundless, as it had fought, it died, and though weak from pain and loss of blood, it was with an emotion of triumphant pride that I stepped across its convulsively stiffening corpse to snatch up the most potent secret of a world. A single glance assured me it was the very ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips grew tense in what seemed to be a smile—or a soundless sort of laugh. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... a little when she saw her glide soundless in across the silent dusk of the morning, that filtered through the heavy drapery of the windows, but she recovered herself at once when she saw the bundle about her neck, for it both assured her of Curdie's safety, and gave her hope of her father's. She untied it with joy, and Lina stole ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... turned now and was making for the ladder with the soundless agility of her race. I grasped McCord's wrist and dragged him after me, the lantern banging against his knees. When we came up the cat was already amidships, a scarcely discernible shadow at the margin of our lantern's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the button of the ray tube. That soundless spear of death struck in midsection of that barrel body. The thing howled, threw itself in a mad forward rush at their bush. Hume snapped a second blast at the head, and the ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... the inspirer of that thing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this feeling into the soundless formulas of thought. To him she was unique and dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... out into the shadows, the dawn having barely lifted the hem of night's purple raiment from the edge of the world; out into the desert stretching silver-grey, soundless, half-waking; just stirred by the light touch of the breeze, which, heralding the dawn, sends little spirals of sand dancing away to the east and away to the west and blows out ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... repetition of the permission. Whatever the madness of Mad Maitland, he was concerned only to profit by it. Never before had the long arm of the law stretched hungry fingers so near his collar. He went, springing down the hall in long, soundless strides, vanishing into ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... down the soundless valley Thunders, and dark is here; And the wind blows, and the light goes, And the night ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... for thy peace, O God Deep as the soundless sea, Which falls like sunshine on the road Of those who ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... boatshed, even at the risk of falling into the Inlet. But he had not proceeded very far before, suddenly, as he had hoped it would, the mist began to lift. Swiftly, before the puff of a warmer breeze, it eddied and thinned. Its soundless, impalpable pressure lessened. The wharf, the sea, the city began to steal back, sly, expressionless, pretending that they had been there all the time. Even Mr. Johnston could be clearly seen coming down from the boatshed with a curious figure beside him—a figure so odd ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slow soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didn't prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest "Never!" I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow the tears had come into my ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... reach he waded, forgetful of his clothes. He caught another trout, another and another, stringing them on a green withe. He cast indefatigably, but with the greatest possible economy of effort; his progress was all but soundless; he slipped down stream like a thing of the woods, fishing with delicate art, with ardor, with ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... washed the sands of a white beach, the cocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman lay on his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freed from the treetops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath of smoke, over the tree-tops of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of the stairway he took my hand, and I did not know whether it was his hand or mine that was trembling. He led me across the lawn to the seat in the shrubbery that almost faced my windows. In the soft and soundless night I could hear his footsteps on the turf and the rustle of my dress ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... with margin of cottonwoods or willow thickets flowed here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting green, nor were cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving objects at all, nor any bird in the soundless air. The last gate was shut by the Virginian, who looked back at the pleasant trees of the ranch, and then followed on in single file across the alkali of No ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Madame de Vallorbes' lips parted in a soundless exclamation. Then she pushed back the modest folds of the mantilla, leaving her neck free. The action of her hands was very graceful as she did this, and she looked fixedly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... assist him in his musical efforts,—he who could not turn a tune,—he knew that Jones had himself well in hand. In his left hand the Secretary held a formal-looking paper with which he was quietly tapping the table in front of him as though keeping time to his soundless and imaginary ditty. With his chin well down, he was looking from under his heavy eyebrows with eyes that ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... smooth and lustrous as satin, soft as floss silk. What necklace of a duchess ever surpassed in beauty the circles of feathers which he wears, layer shooting over layer, up and down, hither and thither, an amber waterfall, swift and soundless as the light, but never disturbing the matchless order of his array? What plume from African deserts can rival the rich hues, the graceful curves, and the palm-like erectness of his tail? All his colors are tropical in depth and intensity. With every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... door and turned away; started forward along the deck. I followed. My steps were soundless in my elastic-bottomed shoes. Anita swaggered with a noisy tread. Near the door of the smoking room a small incline passage led downward. We ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... right, the murmur of it rising and falling in ceaseless volumes of sound, riven at intervals by a horrid scream or a thunderous roar which shook the earth; and always I was haunted by that inexplicable sensation that unseen eyes were watching me, that soundless feet dogged my trail. I am neither nervous nor highstrung; but the burden of responsibility upon me weighed heavily, so that I was more cautious than is my wont. I turned often to right and left and rear lest I be surprised, and I carried my rifle at the ready in ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has at a sudden call. But there had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river broke the stillness under the stars. But all through this silence and this vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of bed and to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's the matter?" in a sleepy voice, and "Nothing," I answered, reaching for my dressing gown and slippers. I listened for a moment, my head ringing with all the frightened ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... landed and made camp at a spot where the bank rose sharply for a hundred yards to a level stretch of ground. Our canoes were moored to trees. The axemen cleared a space for the tents; they were pitched, the baggage was brought up, and fires were kindled. The woods were almost soundless. Through them ran old tapir trails, but there was no fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few piums and gnats, and a few mosquitoes after dark, but not enough to make us uncomfortable. The small stingless ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... plain blue stone Briefly inscribed, a gentle Dalesman lies; From whom in early childhood was withdrawn The precious gift of hearing. He grew up From year to year in loneliness of soul; And this deep mountain valley was to him Soundless with all its streams. The bird of dawn Did never rouse this Cottager from sleep With startling summons; not for his delight The vernal cuckoo shouted, not for him Murmured the labouring bee. When stormy winds Were working the broad bosom of the Lake Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... he was standing at the steps. She would not look up. She thought if she did not, he would go away. She did not know either the Indian or the lover nature. After a time, finding the consciousness of the soundless presence intolerable, she looked up, and surprised on Alessandro's face a gaze which had, in its long interval of freedom from observation, been slowly gathering up into it all the passion of the man's soul, as a burning-glass ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the full and slumbery Fal seemed nearly a soundless thing. But all the real river-noises were there; the birds were singing endlessly in the groves; the gulls with their hoarse language were flying seawards from the mud-flats of Truro; the water was gently lapping the sides of the boat; and voices ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... custom, and then the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about her. Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those of a serpent. It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... series to factors of attention and control; and the significance, in connection with the process of rhythmization, of auditory stimuli produced by and accompanying the reaction series, that is, the comparison of soundless ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... out of the room. He moved about behind him for a short time with footfall so almost entirely soundless that Tembarom became aware that, if it went on long, he should be nervous; in fact, he was nervous already. He wanted to know what he was doing. He could scarcely resist the temptation to turn his head and look; but he did not want to give himself away more entirely than was unavoidable, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Prince consented, and she glided away from him with soundless footsteps. Close, close behind her he followed till they reached the threshold of the Cave Hall. There he tarried out of sight, yet where his eyes could still keep guard ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... extinguished at midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers in the City ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was a time when I conceived, commenced, and half finished the work without the expectation of its being performed during my lifetime. Even last winter your confident tone, as you took leave of me, and your hope of releasing me soon from my mute and soundless exile, gave me the courage (which by that time had become a difficult matter) to continue. Such encouragement was indeed required, for, after having been without any stimulus, such as a good performance ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... were deadened to all sounds save from the immediate machine-guns and the big hounds above; to his eyes the swaying strings of infantry smoke-puffs in the valley were spectral and soundless. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... the corner before turning to the entrance of Troyon's, keeping his weather-eye alert the while. But when the car was gone, the street seemed quite deserted and as soundless as though it had been the thoroughfare of some remote village rather than an artery of the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached him through two senses only—sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thus uncorrected, went what ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... hydro, Sinbad at his heels. But in a moment the cat was back, leaping up on Dane's knee. He did not curl up, but rubbed against the young man's arm, finally reaching up with a paw to touch Dane's chin, uttering one of the soundless, mews which were his ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... alone and dared not wind about their calm clear brows, and dared not steal to touch the roses at their lips, knowing that ere the birth of the worlds these were, and when the worlds shall have perished these still will reign on:—the slow, sure, soundless, changeless ministers of an eternal rest, of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Obedient to the message flashed from the Flagship a few minutes earlier, the Light Cruisers that had been invisible on the quarter now emerged from behind the curtain of the mist and were rapidly moving up to a new position. Presently the same mysterious, soundless voice ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... him. They stood there for a moment, Ken on the lower step. The step was half sunk into the earth and mint grew thickly about and over its edge. Often crushed by so many passing feet it gave out its essence freely, and the spicy odour hung round them like a soundless, invisible benediction. Ken looked up at Rilla, whose hair was shining in the moonlight and whose eyes were pools of allurement. All at once he felt sure there was nothing in that ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... captain surmised his soundless words. They were insults. It was the insult of the man of the superior hierarchy to his faithless servant; the pride of the noble official who accuses himself for having trusted in the loyalty ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fairy Lilian? I think some other life she must have been a soundless ghost. You look up and she is ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... surprise and pleasure made both men follow her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and darkness, Rose turned, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of which few could tell anything. Here and there in the hollows between the motionless earth-billows, flowed, but did not seem to flow, what they called a brook. But the brooks there were like deep soundless pools without beginning or end. There was no life, no gaiety, no song in them, only a sullen consent to exist. That at least is how they impress one accustomed to real brooks, lark-like, always on the quiver, always on the move, always ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... light that fastened upon it, boring its way in. Then, slowly at first, it fell; faster and faster it dropped, until it struck the ground with a great crash—the first and only sound of all this soundless warfare. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... Life that had song for its leaven To quicken the blood that ran Through the veins of the songless years More bitter and cold than tears, Heaven that had thee for its one Light, life, word, witness, O sun, Are they soundless and sightless and hollow, Without eye, without speech, without ear? O father of all of us, Paian, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... laughter, tears—0 heaven! The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!) This glaze of God's serenest purest sky, This film of Satan's seething pit, This heart's geography's map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; Out from the convolutions of this globe, This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe, Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;) These burin'd eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... should they, her botch-work, turn about And stare disdain at me, her finished job? Why was the place one vast suspended shout Of laughter? Why did all the daylight throb With soundless guffaw and dumb-stricken sob? ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... universal laws which rule the timeless changes of events. Out of this colorful world of the senses, science creates a system of abstract concepts, in which the true nature of things is conceived to exist—a world of colorless and soundless atoms, despoiled of all their earthly sensuous qualities. Such is the triumph of thought over perception. Indifferent to change, science casts her anchor in the eternal and unchangeable. Not the change as such but the unchanging form of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously and spotlessly—these two poor souls alone in that continuous, soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... this moment, had she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? They had had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at least, had been for what equally concerned them. Here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. He was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands—as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it were, to be disengaged, contrasted ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... bridge, his elbows on the rail, his eyes upon the darkening surface of the river, as it swept down upon him from out the purpling hills. As of old, its mystery held him, the mystery of its ceaseless coming, the mystery of its ceaseless going on and on, until it lost all individual existence in the soundless, boundless sea. To-night, in the apathy which held his senses in subjection, he watched it through the dying twilight, until it ceased to be to him a river, but appeared to him as an embodiment of life itself, coming, coming, coming down ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... sure he was. They redoubled their precautions, ceasing all talk for the while, and allowing no bushes to rustle as they passed. Willet led the line, and Tayoga brought up the rear. Grosvenor was just behind Robert. He, too, was now able to bring down his feet in soundless fashion, and to avoid every stick or twig that might break with a crack beneath his weight. While he was aware of the perils before them, his heart beat high. He felt that he was making further progress, and that he was ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... voice no more. Then, suddenly startled at the thought of being alone, she looked hastily over her shoulder. The cottage was indeed empty of all visible life. It was soundless, too: there was not even a ticking clock or a flapping flame. The fire burned still and smouldering-wise; but it was all the company she had, and she turned again ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... after the fight Ishmael went over the moor to the sea. Everything was very still, even his footsteps were soundless on the thick turf. It was one of those days filled with a warm mist, so fine it cannot be observed near at hand, but always seeming to encircle the walker, as though he carried some charm to make a hollow ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... silence Gillian made her way up the short central aisle until she reached the chancel steps. For a few minutes she knelt, her face crushed against the flowers she held, in silent passionate prayer that knew neither form nor words—a soundless supplication that was an inchoate appeal to a God of infinite understanding. Then rising slowly she pushed back the iron gate and went into the chancel. Directly to the left the new monument gleamed cleanly white against ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the great seas were rolling past, a little quicker than usual, he thought, but in long, smooth undulations, which slipped, unbroken and soundless, even along the black ledges of his rock. And when the stars came out—brighter than ever with the burnishing of the gale—the long black backs of the waves, and the darker hollows between, were sown so thick with trailing gleams that he could not be certain whether ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... slightly round so that I could watch her. Nothing struck me particularly as I did so except the extreme grace and attraction in the moving form. The heavy silk skirt dragged backwards and forwards over the carpet almost soundless, the moonlight and gaslight alternately gleaming on its folds. Each time that she came between me and the table my eyes followed with dizzy delight the soft side curve of her breast, the lines of the exquisite waist, the white idle hand that sometimes ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... ready! She nodded her head sharply, as though in imperative self-command, and running back, her footfalls soundless on the rich, heavy rug, she picked up the plush-lined necklace case. She dropped this again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With the case apparently burst open as it fell, and the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... left to send her for the bottle of blood-restorer pills, and just enough strength left to swallow several of them when she brought it. Then he boarded the phantom ship that had mysteriously appeared beside him and set sail upon the soundless sea of night. ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... aside from her presence in the patio—that night when the posse had entered Showdown. He had thought of her while riding to the Ortez rancho—and now he was thinking of her again . . . He raised his head and glanced around. The starlit desert was as soundless as the very sky itself. The soft creak of the saddles, the breathing of the horses, the sand-muffled sound of their feet . . . Directly ahead loomed a wall of darkness. Pete touched Brevoort's arm and gestured ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... In the long, soundless nights that had the cold stillness of infinite space, Bruce always had the sensation of being the only person in the universe. He felt alone upon the planet. Facts became hazy myths, truths merely hallucinations, nothing seemed real, actual, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... spurred his pony, making him rear. The sheep plunged ahead, those in front swerving as they came to the canon's brink. The crowding mass behind forced them on. Fadeaway reined up. A great gray wave rolled over the cliff and disappeared into the soundless chasm. A thousand feet below lay the mangled carcasses of some five hundred sheep and lambs. A scattered few of the band had turned and were trotting aimlessly along the edge of the mesa. They separated as the rider swept up. One terror-stricken ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... battle, but quiet as a street of tombs in a buried city, and bordered on each hand by ghostly cliffs of that faint granite purple which seems, in its far-away height, as unsubstantial as the dark blue that bounds it;—the whole scene so changeless and soundless; so removed, not merely from the presence of men, but even from their thoughts; so destitute of all life of tree or herb, and so immeasurable in its lonely brightness of majestic death, that it looks like ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared. What did everything mean—what, that is, did she mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all—unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction; he had never till within these last few months ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... wood to my left, issued something, running fast, but with soundless feet, over the snow. I doubted in my dream whether the object were a live thing or only a shadow. It came nearer, and I saw it was a child, a little girl, running as if for her life. She came straight to the tree I sat in, and when close to it, but without a moment's halt, looked ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... lilies were bending their white foreheads to the near kiss of death, but the pinks were fragrant, the poppies were poised on slender stalks like brilliant butterflies at rest, the hollyhocks shook soundless pink bells to the wind, roses as scarlet as June's lips bloomed everywhere and the richness ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... impotent, crushed look about him as of one nearing the end of his strength. The lips under the heavy grey moustache moved a little as though they formed soundless words. He drew his breath once or twice sharply through his teeth. Finally, with a curious groping movement he reached out and struck a small hand-gong on the table in front ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the soundless tread of the moccason walked fearlessly over the bed of echoes in this valley, two warriors, Wabausee and Waubeeneemah, came one day upon the river, at its opposite sides. Both were, weary with the march; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... baffled quest, Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine? What makes thee in the haunts of home A wonder and a sign? No foot is on thy silent deck, Upon thy helm no hand; No ripple hath the soundless wind That ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... spoke face to face with a man, he never seemed to be giving more than half his attention, for might not someone else approach if he lost himself in order to listen to any one voice? He had covered half the length of the room with that soundless step before she heard, and rose with a glad ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... he stopped to rest a moment and to listen for the stroke of pick or shovel from the opposite side of his living grave. But no sound came to him. He seemed to be in a soundless universe except for the rasp ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think: "To him this must have been a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... feet I trod softly through the soundless woods. Under the dark branches it was already dusk, and the air had the cool chill of evening. As I neared the clump where the body lay, I walked with redoubled caution, watching and listening with strained alertness. Then I heard a twig snap; and my blood leaped, for I knew the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... uncontrollable qualm that comes to every one who finds himself suddenly on the edge of a soundless deep. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... her hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... ever Beltane could stay him, Walkyn o' the Dene laid by his axe, and, his soaked shoes soundless upon the stones, began to steal upon the unconscious singer, who yet lolled upon his spear some thirty paces away. With great body bowed forward and hairy fingers crooked, Walkyn stole upon him; six paces he went, ten—twenty—twenty-five— ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... something about it all—about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron—that arrested attention and fixed it. The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... fell. As it was, however, the black bull-calf never saw a bear in any attitude save that of sulkily slinking away from his mother's neighbourhood; and therefore, in that first summer of his life, he conceived a very dangerous contempt for bears. As for the lynxes,—those soundless-footed, gray shadows of the wild,—neither he nor his mother ever saw them, so fearful were they of the voice of the bell. But their screeches and harsh caterwaulings often filled his heart with wonder. Fear he had as yet had no ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... encircling all, A soundless, shoreless sea! Wherein at last our souls must fall, O Love of God ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... that hath a moon, Staining all the cloudy white; Sinking with a soundless tune Deep into the spirit's night. Then a morning clear and soft, Amber on the purple hills; Warm high day of summer, oft ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... in the white snow In a soundless space; With footsteps quiet and slow, At a tranquil pace, ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... the library, waiting for Cicely to be brought to her. A lull had descended on the house—a new order developed out of the morning's chaos. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the machinery of life was carried on. And Justine, caught in one of the pauses of inaction which she had fought off since morning, was reliving, for the hundredth time, her few ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... about twenty alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been much, for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, glistening cobble-stones. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless, colourless, without perspective, with little thickness and less solidity—a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A world, or a dream for that matter, to be comprehensible ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... rough table where he laid it down noiselessly, as though with that quietness he were doing something to offset the fatal blatancy with which it had just spoken. He looked down at the lifeless figure with burning eyes entirely devoid of pity, then went with a soundless tread, in spite of his heavy-soled boots, to the bed and spoke softly to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... was repeating. He gripped me at the window. "Look." In his hand was an ugly-looking, smokeless, soundless automatic of the Essen type. "And I've got another one for ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... back from Paris; everything was re-arranged; the pair were again shoulder to shoulder in their high encounter with life, their large and complicated game. The fine soundless pulse of this game was in the air for our young woman while they remained in the shop. While they remained? They remained all day; their presence continued and abode with her, was in everything ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... void and soundless river On the outer edge of space, Where the body comes not ever, But the absent dream hath place, Stands a city, tall and quiet, And its air is sweet and dim; Never sound of grief or riot Makes it mad, or ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... progress, for the great mastiff Hero, since Hugo Jocelyn's death, had taken to such dismal howling that it had been found necessary to keep him away from the house in, a far-off shed where his melancholy plaints could not be heard. Treading with light, soundless footsteps down the stairs, she reached the front-door,— unbarred and unlocked it without any noise, and as softly closed it behind her,—then she stood in the open, shivering slightly in the sweet coldness of the coming dawn, and inhaling the fragrance ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the same musical instruments—pipes, cymbals, long reed-like trumpets. The story, indeed, included the building of an organ, just such an instrument, only on a larger scale, as was standing in the old priest's library, though almost soundless now, whereas in certain of the woven pictures the hearers appear as if transported, some of them shouting rapturously to the organ music. A sort of mad vehemence prevails, indeed, throughout the delicate bewilderments of the whole ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... vast space. Imagine the vast space to be void of ether and the subtle seeds of creation. Perfect stillness reigns supreme over the ocean of universal space, beginningless and endless. What supports it? It is supportless, soundless, cloudless. He does not see. Yet he is not blind, does not hear, yet he is not deaf. He goes beyond the feeling of time and space. Every time the true seer enters a state of dreamless sleep he enjoys ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... these watchmen stood was so high, that between them and the horizon the sea lay like half a world—an immeasurable expanse, spreading as if from a vast depth below up into the very sky. Dim and soundless lay the mass of waters— breaking, no doubt, as for ages past, against the rocky precipice below; but not so as to be heard upon the steep. If might have appeared dead, but that a ray from some quarter of the heaven, capriciously touching its ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and hid in the branches to keep vigil, there to crave strength from the Saghalie spirit, the Hyas Tyee who dwells in the heavens, to grant him the strength, the wisdom, the courage to kill the dread witch. The night was long and the vigil lone, soundless except for the night hawk on wing, or the howl of the wolf in the quest of the red deer, or the splash of the salmon ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... silence; words seemed the rankest superfluities. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from heart of master to disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed that my guru knew God, and would lead me to Him. The obscuration of this life disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories. Dramatic time! Past, present, and future are its cycling scenes. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was going to be a bore and you pretended to be a ghost, trusting to your noiseless and mysterious manner of appearing and disappearing to work on my fears and frighten me off. And, truth to tell, there is something uncanny about your peculiarly soundless and rustleless movements." ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... hospitality to the big buttress of the church. Another buttress, corresponding with this (the two, between them, sustain the gable of the north transept), is planted in the small cloister, of which the door on the farther side of the little soundless Rue de la Psalette, where nothing seems ever to pass, opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard. There is a very genial old sacristan, who introduced me to this cloister from the church. It is very small and solitary, and much mutilated; ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... sleep and eat the night before execution, I was no longer able to suffer apprehension. I was past that. Just at the foot of the stairs I stubbed my toe against Halsey's big chair, and had to stand on one foot in a soundless agony until the pain subsided to a dull ache. And then—I knew I was right. Some one had put a key into the lock, and was turning it. For some reason it refused to work, and the key was withdrawn. There was a muttering of voices outside: ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... breathless, soundless moment and we had pierced the veils. A globule of sapphire shone afar, the elfin bubble of her ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... are untravelled of sail or bird; The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach. The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard, The viewless void to be visible: all and each, A closure of calm no clamour of storm can breach Concludes and confines and absorbs them on either side, ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... garment flung over his head and drawn tightly about his neck. He was in a fair way to strangle, and his vigorous efforts at escape were useless in the hands of so many. He might have been plunged at once into a great abyss of limitless, soundless depths, so futile did any resistance seem. And so, as it was useless to struggle, he lay like one dead and put all his powers into listening. But neither could he hear much, muffled as he was, and bound hand and foot now, with ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... in the castle. The very soldiers, as they saluted her as the wife of their general, appeared to gaze upon her with rude, yet earnest commiseration; but neither word nor rumor reached her ear. Several times she essayed to ask of her husband, but the words died in a soundless quiver on her lip. Yet if it were what she dreaded, that Stanley had fulfilled his threat, and they had fought, and one had fallen—why was she thus summoned? And had not Morales resolved to avoid him; for her sake ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... trust not, sir. But he may hope to be quieter—that is, if he dies honestly. It's grand for a soldier! He sweeps on the roaring billows of war into a soundless ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the peculiar mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as distance and arrangement were concerned, and whether that could possibly have any intellectual significance. The nebulous conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless depth of space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial in view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... bearing in my breast, Penned tight, Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest In the seventies; aye, I bore them in ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy |
