"Starless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would imitate with the most ludicrous exactness the motions and the voice of their sly patron the fox. Then a startling yell would be given. Many other warriors would leap into the ring, and with faces upturned toward the starless sky, they would all stamp, and whoop, and brandish their weapons ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the sundown here The twilight hangs half starless; half the sea Still quivers as for love or pain or fear Or pleasure mightier than these all may be A man's live heart might beat Wherein a God's with mortal blood should meet And fill its pulse too full to bear the ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dressed in a dark business suit, so he was not likely to be observed from a distance, for it was a starless night. Half way to the end of the great yard he began to wonder if the light he had seen might ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... Maiden she was, his eyes caressed the sign Black o'er the topaz beauty of her breast. The stranger spoke. "Malua am I called; I hold for title Tui Tua Kau. Over the violent seas, beneath the frown, Cold and untoward, of a starless sky, The waves of chance have borne me; thro' the night Around me and above the pitiless trades Were blind with darkness, blown like maiden's hair Across my face. As palm trees beaten by wind, The tortured breakers tossed their streaming crests, And all the light of all my life seemed dead— ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... early morning—that sunrise of which poets write so sweetly, but which to the unromantic traveller is wont to seem a dreary thing—mother and nurse and child went their way in a great black steamer, redolent of oil and boiled mutton; and at nine o'clock at night—a starless March night—Clarissa and her belongings were deposited on St. Katharine's Wharf, amidst a clamour and bustle that ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Stroke of Disillusion, Yet never have I broken faith with Joy: Flame-broidered trance and starless cold confusion Of slain and flying dreams shall not destroy The radiant oath to that bright Suzerain Whose lightning-lovely succour ambushed lies Even in the most impossible strait of pain. Mystical paradox, divine surprise Of rapture! By intensities ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... her under the tent's roof, he found himself wakeful. It was starless and still, the song of the river fusing in a continuous flow of low sound with the secret, self-communings of the tree. The girl's light breathing was at his ear, a reminder of his ownership and its responsibilities. In the idleness of the unoccupied mind he mused on the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... broad leaves! In lonely wastes, When next the sunshine makes them beautiful, Gay troops of butterflies shall light to drink At the replenished hollows of the rock. Now slowly falls the dull blank night, and still, All through the starless hours, the mighty Rain Smites with perpetual sound the forest-leaves, And beats the matted grass, and still the earth Drinks the unstinted bounty of the clouds— Drinks for her cottage wells, her woodland brooks— Drinks for the springing trout, the toiling bee, And ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the starless darkness and the icy night air, and the fierce silent two hours' race, his senses reeled on sudden entrance into warmth, and light, and the cheery hum of voices. A sudden unforeseen anguish assailed him, as now first he entertained the possibility ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... a friend. I thank you for the drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... dejectedly to and fro on the branches all day had flown off into the darkness. Presently, the light in the window went out, and as the hours wore on, a fine drizzling rain began to fall, as soft as tears, from the starless sky over the mulberry tree. A sense of isolation greater than any she had ever known attacked her like a physical chill, and rising, she went over to the fire and stirred the pile of coal into a flame. She was alone in her despair, and she realized, with a feeling of terror, that one is ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... can not believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. And I would rather that every God would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, that that just one soul should suffer eternal agony. I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will forgive the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... sky. It was not the sky of the City, distant, and marbled with streaks of smoke. It was close and clear; starless, too; and no moon hung upon it. Yet though it was night there was light everywhere—warm, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... I own, was much brighter and brisker, 20 But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisked round, in a waltz with the Jersey,[61] Who, lovely as ever, seemed just as delighted With Majesty's presence ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... consist with the hypothesis that nebulae are remote galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal system. If there were but two nebulae, and both were so placed, the coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on finding that there are thousands of nebulae so placed? Shall we ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... calmer. Whether she mistook it for her destiny or not, she seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the "streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying passion for knowledge and the spectacle ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the burial trenches at Oriskany—thirty-five wagon-loads in all. Scarcely an officer of rank remained to lead the funeral march when the muffled drums of the Palatines rolled at midnight, and the smoky torches moved, and the dead-wagons rumbled on through the suffocating darkness of a starless night. We had few wounded; we took no prisoners; Oriskany meant death. We counted only thirty men disabled and some ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... for the air to blow in it, and distanced the tumult of the busy streets. The moon was up, shined round tenderly by a little border-work of pale yellow light. Elsewhere, the awful void of night was starless; the dark lustre of space shone without ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... awakening. Her castles in the air had all melted into clouds, and here in the very flower of her youth she felt that her life was ruined, and she was as one wandering in a sterile waste, with a black and starless sky overhead. She clasped her hands with a sensation of pain, and a rose at her breast fell down withered and dead. She took it up with listless fingers, and with the quiver of her hand the leaves fell off and were scattered over her white dress in a pink shower. It was an allegory ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... was dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his control seemed ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... long silver skewers; wonderful phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, and then closed behind ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... their slight support. Cold dews my pallid face o'erspread, With deadly languor droops my head. My ears with tingling echoes ring, And life itself is on the wing; My eyes refuse the cheering light, Their orbs are veil'd in starless night: Such pangs my nature sinks beneath, And feels a ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... shown him into the room the window was wide open to the hot, starless night, but the landlord, though he had left the window open, had drawn the thick curtains across it. That was all right; Chester had no wish to be wakened at five in the morning by the sunlight streaming into the room. He meant to have a really ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was an old hand on the Plains, and notwithstanding the darkness and the generally stony nature of the ground, he presently discovered that the fresh trail of the wagons was missing. Thurstane tried to retrace his steps, but starless night had already fallen thick around him, and before long he had to come to a halt. He was opposite the mouth of the ravine; he was within five hundred yards of Clara, and raging because he could not find her. Suddenly Coronado's cooking ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... was a sound heard among the silent and impassive throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water, the death-wail burst from the Indians with one impulse and one voice,—a people's cry for its lost chief, a great tribe's lament for the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... darkness was profound. As the wind in great blasts swept over the tops of the trees, its voice was raised to piercing shrieks that gradually died away into low moans. We thought of the vast wilderness lying all about us under the pall of a moonless and starless night. Where had all the people in the world gone ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... nebula: that it seemed a perfect blaze of illumination. And there were the Magellanic clouds, white-looking patches made up of countless stars individually unseen to the naked eye, and nebulae—mists of radiating light—all shining brilliantly and revolving around the starless South Pole. To the northward was the constellation of the Great Bear, which reaches its meridian altitude about the same time as the constellations of the Cross and the Centaur. As the boys looked, stars appeared ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... moment I was in the "Place"—a light, misty rain was falling, and the night was dark and starless; the "Scelerat" was brilliant with lamps and candles, and crowds were passing in and out, but it was no longer a home for me—so I passed on, and continued my way toward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... It was a starless night, muffled overhead as the day had been, but without rain or mist. He had a lantern hanging at his saddle bow, ready to light. In the open lands we rode side by side, but through growths along the Fox first one and then the other ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sailed as in a mirror; on it great ships floated at anchor and islets nestled down; all round the sheltering hills verily clapped their hands. In the great dome of the universe there was not a cloud. Through the starless windows of that glorious dome they could see into the fathomless depths of Eternity. Under the magic of the moon not even the sordid work of man struck a discordant note. At their feet the faint ripplings of this crystal lake whispered ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Sarmatia's tears of blood atone, And make her arm puissant as your own! O! once again to Freedom's cause return The patriot Tell,—the Bruce of Bannockburn! Yes, thy proud lords, unpitied land! shall see that man hath yet a soul,—and dare be free! A little while, along thy saddening plains, The starless night of Desolation reigns; Truth shall restore the light by Nature given, And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven! Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurled, Her name, her nature, withered ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... shall invade; * Save thy love and thyself naught shall stay in such stead; O thou, whose brilliancy lights his brow, * Shaped like sandhill-tree with his locks for shade, Forbid Heaven my like to aught else incline * Save you whose beauties none like display'd: Art thou no amongst mortals a starless moon * O beauty the dazzle of day ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... my shoulder touched by some one who, it appeared, was standing close to me for some seconds; but so occupied was I in gazing at her that I paid no attention to the circumstance. The carriage drove away and disappeared in the thick darkness of a starless night. I turned to re-enter the house, and as I did so, the night lamp of the hall fell upon the features of the man beside me, and showed me the pale and corpse-like face of Fred Hammersley. His eye was bent upon me with an expression ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fled when, having gone down into a dark corner of the area the Sunday following, she found, as did he, that no stars were to be seen anywhere. After that she believed in his theory of starless sky-spots; starless, but not plain. For in addition to the sun, many other things lent interest to that field of blue—clouds, rain, sleet, snow, and fog, all in their time or season. Also, besides the birds, he occasionally ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... life from out the tomb; Death's bands thus swiftly rent, Life's tidal force Undammed, had rushed with too impetuous vent, Did not a tortuous cave arrest its course, Ere he at length emerged beneath night's starless gloom. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... beyond the still grey shoji For the breadth of innumerable countries, Is the sea with ships asleep In the blue-black starless night. ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... upon the front of the house, once more; while the sun showed, only as a great bow of green fire. An instant, it seemed, and the sun had vanished. The Star was still fully visible. Then the earth moved into the black shadow of the sun, and all was night—Night, black, starless, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... of its magical bells. They will speak of the hopes that have perished, and the joys that have faded so fast With the music of memory wing'ed, they will seem but the voice of the past; As, when the bright morning has vanished, and evening grows starless and dark, The nightingale song of remembrance recalls the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... wakened suddenly. Outside, a black starless sky bent over a cool, quiet earth. A thick darkness hid all the world. Dead stillness everywhere. And yet, I listened for a voice to speak again that I was sure I had heard as I wakened. I waited only a ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the veil of night was drawn And crowded earth, mysterious sea Became one sweet, enchanted ground For us, until the starless dawn Dissolved the failing moon—then we In one long ecstasy were bound. Now, I, alone in silence and in pain Weep for the ache of well-remembered bliss, For you who never can return again, For you, my spring time, for ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... prevented him from scolding me. He carried me back to my dungeon, laid me tenderly on the bed, gave me some medicine, and asked me if there was any thing more he could do. Then he went away, and I was left with my own thoughts—starless as the midnight darkness ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... and suffering in silence the keenest pangs of affliction. Around him the votaries of fashion and wealth were flushed with gayety. Paris was in the ecstasy of Christmastide. But the depths of his soul were starless and chill, and in the midst of all this mirth one heart was tuned to melancholy. He writes to ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... One heavy, sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint light waxes fainter,—it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley; but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep, rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... became more frequent and vivid, and the thunder seemed breaking on the very topmasts of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering darkness. The storm was ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it was to find herself in the depths of a moonless and starless night. A heavy unbroken crust of cloud stretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a distant halo which hung over the town of Casterbridge was visible against the black concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast with the circumscribing darkness. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed—a star in an else starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... merely rebellion against the defects of her own nature, which prompted her. The prospect of the coming months filled her with dismay. When this last brief spell of pleasure was over, there was nothing left, to which she could look forward. The approaching winter stretched before her like a starless night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. What was she to do?—what was to become of her, when the short dark days came down again, and shut her in? The thought of it almost drove her mad. Desperate with fear, she shut ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a Red Cross train, stationary, and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape were a Japanese ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Berlin, for he was his only son. No help came. First his body gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering. Then his mind gave way and he became a raving maniac. Then his soul went out blaspheming God into a starless eternity. He died at thirty years of age. Behold the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... him, whipped by icy blasts— Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird, And, like himself, grown old in that same place. Through the dark network of their undergrowth, Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown. Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist. This—nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... was blotted out completely, and it was as dark as a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then a fine dust choked ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... my voices: "Wherefore strive or run, On dusty highways ever, a vain race? The long night cometh, starless, void of sun, What light shall serve thee like her golden face?" For I had pondered on a rune of roses, And knew some secrets which the ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... were wild and rugged. I had never seen a more forbidding coast. When the night dropped down upon us—as it did suddenly, and a starless sky o'er-head—I wondered how Pedro could smell his way through. I heard Tugg roaring something in Spanish about "the beacon" and then a spark of fire flared out in the darkness far ahead. It looked like a stationary lamp and ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... a representation of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute. It was a warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... universe; save where The western sky lies glimmering, faint and far, With day's red embers dimly glowing there. Hark! how the wind comes gathering in its course, And sweeping onward, with resistless force, Howls through the silent space of starless skies, And on the breast of the swol'n ocean dies. Oh, though art terrible, thou viewless power! That rid'st destroying at the midnight hour! We hear thy mighty pinion, but the eye Knows nothing of thine awful majesty. We see all ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... they separated. Good-byes were said, and tender-hearted little Agnes cried as she said good-bye to Doctor Frank. The priest and the physician walked to the little village together, through the cold darkness of the starless winter night. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... it were, of large stars spread over another of very small ones, the intermediate magnitudes being wanting, and the conclusion here seems equally evident that in such cases we look through two sidereal sheets separated by a starless interval. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... lights adjourned, an usher came in on the stage through a side entrance with a kerosene lamp. I guess he would have stood there and held it for Nilsson to sing by, if 4,500 people hadn't with one voice laughed him out into the starless night. You might as well have tried to light benighted Africa with a white bean. I shall never forget how proud and buoyant he looked as he sailed in with that kerosene lamp with a soiled chimney on it, and how hurt and grieved he seemed when he took ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... how sound you sleep! Though your mother's care is deep, You can lie with heart at rest In the narrow brass-bound chest; In the starless night and drear You can sleep, and never hear Billows breaking, and the cry Of the night-wind wandering by; In soft purple mantle sleeping With your little face on mine, Hearing not your mother weeping And the breaking ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... and they strengthened their hearts for the daring attempt, waiting patiently for the afternoon to wane and die into the night, which, arrived moonless and starless and heavy with dark, as they had hoped and predicted. Just before, a little spasmodic firing came from the besiegers, but they did not deign to answer. Instead they waited patiently until the night was far advanced and then they prepared quickly ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... fisherman's cottage in Havre a young man was walking up and down in feverish uneasiness. From time to time he looked through the window which opened on to the sea. The waves ran high, the wind whistled, while dark clouds rolled over the starless sky. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... something, a mortal danger or a threatened shame. But he could not speak at once; his teeth closed with tetanic force upon each other. Later, as they walked to the hotel, through the warm, soft night in which the south wind was roaming the starless heavens for rain, he found his voice, and although he felt that he was speaking unnaturally, he made out to answer the lively questions with which she pelted him too thickly to expect them to be answered ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... barefooted in the passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door—where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herself that no ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... over his, only a blurred crimson blob that flashed away like a vanishing star in the viewport. It flamed out into green darkness, vanished, and Bart fell through what seemed to be a bottomless chasm of starless night. ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... through might of seas we drive, 200 Nor e'en might Palinurus self the day from night-tide sift, Nor have a deeming of the road atwixt the watery drift. Still on for three uncertain suns, that blind mists overlay, And e'en so many starless nights, across the sea we stray; But on the fourth day at the last afar upon us broke The mountains of another land, mid curling wreaths of smoke. Then fall the sails, we rise on oars, no sloth hath any place, The eager seamen toss ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... should be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:— 50 Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clod, until ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to the log house by the Spring Waiontha, lantern in hand and my packet tucked beneath my arm, it was twilight, and the starless skies threatened rain. Road and field and forest were foggy and silent; and I thought of the first time I had ever set eyes on Lois, in the late afternoon stillness which heralded a ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... troubled eyes to the dark starless sky. He had been so sure everything was all right. Jimmy had made no recent confidence to him. He had thought Christine looked well and happy—and now, after ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... starless. As he stood there on the terrace swinging his lantern, he looked back at her, up into her eyes. And as he looked she bent down, impulsively stretching out both arms and whispering, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... his head in his hands, bowed down by the first great trial of his young life, the starless sky overhead, the restless sea beneath, and all around him suffering, for which he had no help, a soft sound broke the silence, and he listened like one in a dream. It was Mary singing to her mother, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... before dawn, Caesar, tired of not sleeping, got up and started to take a walk in the corridor. It was raining; on the horizon, below the black, starless sky, a vague clarity began to appear. Caesar took out his Proudhon book ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... that of the birth of Vishnu, Birth of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Told the wise ones, Heavenward looking, Waiting, watching for thy gleaming In the darkness of the night-time, In the starless gloom of midnight; Shining Herald of the coming Of the kingdom of the righteous; Teller of the Mystic story Of the lowly birth of Godhead In the stable of the passions, In the manger of the mind-soul; Silent singer of the secret Of compassion deep and holy To the heart with sorrow ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... chair. Take them with you thru the streets, along the highways, and over the unbeaten paths of your life. Take them with you down the rivers, and out into the storm driven sea. Chain them to the wheel of your ship, sail on thru the starless night alone. Trust them, for they are the initiative of the ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... maketh lovers wise In her pale beauty trembling down, Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes, A strangeness not her own. And, though they shut their lids to kiss, In starless darkness peace to win, Even on that secret world from this Her twilight ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... by day in hair and mien, Yet shun not the old dangerous baits and dear, Nor sever from the laurel, limed and green, Which nor the scorching sun, nor fierce cold sear. Dry shall the sea, the sky be starless seen, Ere I shall cease to covet and to fear Her lovely shadow, and—which ill I screen— To like, yet loathe, the deep wound cherish'd here: For never hope I respite from my pain, From bones and nerves and flesh till I am free, Unless mine enemy some ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the social circle with its multiform restraints. As in "Hamlet" the stage on which the whole is acted is really the heart of Hamlet, so he makes his visible stage as it were, slope off into the misty infinite, with a grey, starless heaven overhead, and Hades open beneath his feet. Hence young people brought up in the country understand the tragedies far sooner than they can comprehend the comedies. It needs acquaintance with society and social ways to ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... in, black and starless, yet fortunately with a gradual dying away of the storm. For an hour past they had been struggling on, doubting their direction, wondering dully if they were not lost and merely drifting about in a circle. They had debated this fiercely ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of hell, and the strong bands of a pitiless death dragging her to the grave—still she craved, as the awful hour drew near, to see once more the home of her innocent childhood. Not that she thought ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the North-Star, hath shrunk into his den, Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn, 5 Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less, Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn. Sunless and starless all, the desert sky Arches above me, empty as this heart 10 For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now. All night have I heard voices: deeper yet The deep low breathing of the silence grew. 15 While all ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... at him, and snuggled down good naturedly to their broken slumbers again, but Cameron stood in his corner, glaring out the tiny crack into the dark starless night that was whirling by, startled into thoughtfulness. The dream had been so vivid that he could not easily get rid of it. His heart was boiling hot with rage at his old enemy, yet something stronger was there, too, a great horror at himself. He had been ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... Countess Louis heard Young light sing in the lark. Ere eve it was that other bird, Which brings the starless dark. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the starless night before dissolution—must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold, fresh well-water. Entering by the carre, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... face of heav'n is ravish'd from our eyes, And in redoubled peals the roaring thunder flies. Cast from our course, we wander in the dark. No stars to guide, no point of land to mark. Ev'n Palinurus no distinction found Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reign'd around. Three starless nights the doubtful navy strays, Without distinction, and three sunless days; The fourth renews the light, and, from our shrouds, We view a rising land, like distant clouds; The mountain-tops confirm the pleasing sight, And curling smoke ascending ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... though the cliffs grew higher over it; till at last they were but going on a narrow shelf, the Shivering Flood swirling and rattling far below them betwixt sheer rock-walls grown exceeding high; and above them the cliffs going up towards the heavens as black as a moonless starless night of winter. And as the flood thundered below, so above them roared the ceaseless thunder of the wind of the pass, that blew exceeding fierce down that strait place; so that the skirts of their garments were wrapped about their knees by it, and their feet were well-nigh stayed ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... "constellations,'' preserving the memory of mythological heroes and heroines, and perhaps of otherwise unrecorded history. * The tendency of stars to assemble in immense clouds, swarms, and clusters. * The existence in some of the richest regions of the universe of absolutely black, starless gaps, deeps, or holes, as if one were looking out of a window into the murkiest night. * The marvelous phenomena of new, or temporary, stars, which appear as suddenly as conflagrations, and often turn into ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... through the gate, under the single electric light that showed the way, and turned swiftly into the dark lane, threatening rolls of thunder already smote the air and faint flashes of lightning shot through the black, starless sky. A gust of wind blew a great swirl of dust from the roadway, filling his eyes and half blinding him. As he bent his half-turned body against the growing hurricane, a pair of strong arms seized him from behind; almost simultaneously a thick ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... beaten him into submission long since. Dona Brigida, without a word, drove Pilar into the cave, and she and the vaquero, exerting their great strength to the full, pushed the stone into the entrance. There was a narrow rift at the top. The cave was as black as a starless midnight. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth like ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the starless night of death Our being's brief eclipse, When faltering heart and failing breath Have bleached the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... For shadows gather round, and should we part, A dreary starless night May fill my heart,— Then pause and ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35 In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain: If thou hadst died as Honour dies, Some new Napoleon might arise, To shame the world again— But who would soar the solar height, To set in such a starless night?[ip] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the mantling mists that circle round the tomb, Where bitter groans resound for aye amid the starless gloom; Who saw the cities of the blest, and with as fearless tread Paced through the ebon halls of hell, the mansions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... crisp coldness as of lingering frost in the gloom and the dulness. Heavy clouds, as yet unbroken, hung over the cathedral and the clustering roofs around it in dark and starless splendour. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... moment, notwithstanding the heavy darkness of the starless night, Arthur saw her. She was seated on the stone bench as when last he had spoken with her. In her anguish she sought not to hide her face. She looked at the ground, and the tears fell down her cheeks. Her bosom heaved with the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... silently from the kitchen door into the deep murk of a starless night. The moaning of a rising sea upon the outer reefs was the requiem of Sheila's hopes. One thing, she saw clearly, she must do. If she remained and fought for her place with the Balls, she must stand alone. Whether or not she ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... mild twilight which like a silver clasp unites to-day with yesterday; when morning and evening sit together hand in hand beneath the starless sky ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... At the starless, midnight hour When Winter rules with boundless power, As the storms the forests tear, And thunders rend the howling air, Listening to the doubling roar, Surging on the rocky shore, All I can—I weep and pray For his weal that's far away, On the seas and far away, On stormy seas ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... was misty and starless and the tide on a strong ebb. The voyage down-stream was without incident, and by midnight he had landed within the city lines, but much farther up-town than upon the occasion of his first adventure. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... fear, uprose; yet ere for flight in a mood Served his torn wings, a form before him stood In gloomy majesty. Like starless night, A sable mantle fell in cloudy fold From its stupendous breast; and as it trod The pale and lurid light at distance rolled Before its princely feet, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... coast, often at the very edge of the high, precipitous cliffs, with no more between it and the rocks far beneath than a low wall. It was a road of dangerous curves and corners which needed careful negotiation even in broad daylight, and this was a black, moonless and starless night. But Copplestone had impressed upon his driver that he must get to Scarhaven as quickly as possible, and he and his companion were both so full of their purpose that they paid no heed to the perpetual danger which ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... was no moon that night, and the copse in which our pavilion stands was like a blot against the starless heavens. As I drew near it, my dog, the invariable companion of my walks, lifted a short, sharp bark from the stables. But I knew whose hand had fastened him, and I went on without giving him a thought. At the door of the pavilion I stopped. All was dark within as without, and the ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... February, and in the terrible winter of 1719. The trees were powdered with hoar frost, and it was at this time impossible to glide quietly along in the little boat, for the lake was covered with ice. And yet, in this biting cold, in this dark, starless night, a cavalier ventured alone into the open country, and along a cross-road which led to Clisson. He threw the reins on the neck of his horse, which proceeded at ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Scientist keeps straight to the course. His whole inquiry and demonstration lie in the line of [15] Truth; hence he suffers no shipwreck in a starless night on the shoals of vainglory. His medicine is Mind— the omnipotent and ever-present good. His "help is from the Lord," who heals body and mind, head and heart; changing the affections, enlightening the mis- ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... became separated from his companions he never knew; but when his senses awoke from that dreadful stupor, he found himself alone, on a common, and in the far distance he saw the glimmer of lights—very feeble and wan beneath the starless sky. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... unbending line forever unless hindered by the attraction of other stars. If they go on thus, they must, after countless years, scatter in all directions, so that the inhabitants of each shall see only a black, starless sky. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... intimation of the horrible scene which next burst on me,—a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing and touch, in a manner unprecedented in any dream I have previously had. It was night, dark and starless, and I found myself, together with the whole company of doomed men and women who knew that they were soon to die, but not how or where, in a railway train hurrying through the darkness to some unknown destination. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ——, where I had been advised ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... way. And yonder, farther still, away to the south, float the Magellanic clouds, and the "Coal Sacks"—those mysterious, dark spots in the sky, which seem as though it had been rent, and these were holes in the "azure robe of night," looking out into the starless, empty, black abyss beyond. One who has never watched the southern sky in the stillness of the night, after the sea-breeze with its turmoil is done, can have no idea of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... wish audibly, though her lips did move a little, while her gaze black like a starless night never for a moment wavered before him. He stepped in, and as he turned to close the door she was still there motionless and disturbing, with her voluptuous mouth and slanting eyes, with the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of this moonless, starless, sky-beclouded night, you shall soon be driven. May it faintly prefigure the unending blackness of that eternal night you have chosen as your future portion. As you have willfully, voluntarily, and most ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes — Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness and darkness! . ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... theory. This is the existence of vacant spaces—holes, so to speak, in the groundwork of the Milky Way. For instance, there is a cleft running for a good distance along its length, and there is also a starless gap in its southern portion. It seems rather improbable that such a great number of stars could have arranged themselves so conveniently, as to give us a clear view right out into empty space through such a system in its greatest thickness; ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... knew darkness then, And saw the stars that hung so still; but when I lay abed the old starless dark came ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... volcano, and the wooden cottage, with its flat logs and blazing roof, looked like a sacrificial pyre consuming the body of some warrior or Viking. In the light of the flames the soft sky, which was starless and flooded with stillness by the large full moon, had turned from blue to green. A dense crowd had ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. Several of the long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. The hour was moonless and starless and the air heavy and still—which was why, in her evening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer darkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her, within, on her sofa, as a beast might have leaped ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... trodden continent of years To shrines of long ago, My heart, a hooded pilgrim, turns with tears— For could I know That in the temple of thy constancy There still may burn a taper lit for me, 'Twould be a star in starless heaven, to ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... peaceful breast of Faith My troubled soul hath found repose, Free from the sad and starless gloom That ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... Shall with thee gaze on that unfathomed deep, The Human Soul: as when, pushed off the shore, Thy mystic bark would through the darkness sweep, Itself the while so bright! For oft we seemed As on some starless sea,—all dark above, All dark below,—yet, onward as we drove, To plough up light that ever round us streamed But he who mourns is not as one bereft Of all he loved: thy living Truths ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... such maddened tempests rave, I cannot rest at home, For then the billows deck his grave With flowers of snow-white foam; And here I pray till break of day Beneath night's starless dome." ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... me to part with you, but so it must be, and therefore you must also submit quietly." Then she passed her golden comb through Elsie's hair and told her to go to bed. But how should poor Elsie sleep this unhappy night? Her life seemed like a dark starless night-sky. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... on the ocean one cold starless night, A small bark was sailing in pitiful plight: The boom of the billows, as on rushed the storm, O'ercame the stout hearts of the ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... pair had sufficiently refreshed themselves the gloom of the departing day was deepening into the darkness of a moonless, starless night; and as they entered their hut the first shimmer of sheet lightning which was the precursor of the coming storm flickered above the tree-tops of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... over the city. The night was starless, the sea black as ink. Stephanie stood alone in the darkness of her balcony, and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight. I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a large gig with three persons. They must have been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... raven's cemetery! He was sexton of all he surveyed! lord of all that was laid aside! I stood in the burial-ground of the universe; its compass the unenclosed heath, its wall the gray horizon, low and starless! I had left spring and summer, autumn and sunshine behind me, and come to the winter that waited for me! I had set out in the prime of my youth, and here I was already!—But I mistook. The day might well be long in that region, for it contained the seasons. Winter slept there, the night through, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... shot out and down into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... composed forms and still features. Those divergent currents have carried them out upon the same placid sea at last; and the same solemn light streams upon the clasped hands and the uplifted faces. We don't mind the drapery so much then. It seems a very superficial matter beside the silent and starless mystery ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... cunningly. He lifted his nimble cudgel in the air and waved it conceitedly to and fro in time to the song that rose beyond the window. "Fau'ow er Wur'!—Fau'ow er Wur'!" he cried delightedly again and again in my ear, eager apparently for my approval. So we stood, then, beneath the starless sky, listening to the rich choragium of the "World's End." They sang in unison, sang with a kind of forlorn heat and enthusiasm. And when the song was ended, and the roar of applause over, Night, like a darkened water whelmed silently in, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... Kessel resounded in the hall. Frederick saw the dead hero tossing about in the great black waters under a starless heaven. Above the performer's shrill voice, he heard the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... noble girl, why had I not guessed the truth," and he stood rapt with gratitude and admiration before her. Kindly dusk of the starless prairie that hid the blushes ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... nature as a resting wheel. The Kine are couch'd upon the dewy grass; The Horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is up, and cropping yet his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky. Now, in this blank of things, a harmony Home-felt, and home-created seems to heal That grief for which the senses still supply Fresh food; for only then, when memory Is hush'd, am I at rest. My Friends, restrain Those busy cares that would allay my ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... project. The snow had melted, and a great gale blew from the sou'-west, boisterous but not cold, which caused the tall elms that stood about to screech and groan like things alive. In such a wind as this they were sure that they would not be heard, nor could they be seen beneath that murky, starless sky, while the rain which fell between the gusts would wash out ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Dante begs Virgil to interpret, and learns they are about to descend into Hades. Having visited this place before, Virgil boldly leads Dante through this portal into an ante-hell region, where sighs, lamentations, and groans pulse through the starless air. Shuddering with horror, Dante inquires what it all means, only to be told that the souls "who lived without praise or blame," as well as the angels who remained neutral during the war in heaven, are confined ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... glory never, Though to the sullen gaze of grief the sight Of sun illumined skies may seem less bright, Or gathering clouds less grand, yet she, as ever, Is lovely or majestic. Though fate sever The long linked bands of love, and all delight Be lost, as in a sudden starless night, The radiance may return, if He, the giver Of peace on earth, vouchsafe the storm to still This breast once shaken with the strife of care Is touched with silent joy. The cot—the hill, Beyond the broad blue ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... in 1864 he was depressed by the absence of military achievement. But he did not weaken. He telegraphed Grant to "hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible,"[983] and then, in the silence of early morning, with Raymond's starless letter on the table before him, he showed how coolly and magnanimously a determined patriot could face political overthrow. "This morning, as for some days past," he wrote, "it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... trumpets, the breaking of vials, the sounds of woe, the tramp of marching feet, the clash of battle, fire falling out of the heavens, trees and grass in flame, the waves of the sea turned to blood, fountains and streams become as wormwood and gall, the sun as black as a starless midnight, the moon hanging in the lowering heavens like a clot of blood, earthquakes, the scarlet tongues of outpouring volcanoes, thunderings and lightnings, all manner of wickedness and pervading sin, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... Italy had passed, and it was now completely night, dark and starless, which made more startling the sudden appearance of several blazing torches, borne by masked and hooded figures attired in black, who struck loud and repeated blows on the gates of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various |
