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Wane   /weɪn/   Listen
Wane

verb
(past & past part. waned; pres. part. waning)
1.
Grow smaller.  Synonyms: decline, go down.
2.
Become smaller.
3.
Decrease in phase.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wane" Quotes from Famous Books



... for passing the honeymoon in a balloon appears to be on the wane in this country. The reason for this may be that a majority of those who enter wedlock find they "go up" soon enough without the aid ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... death-doom, blight upon her seed. "My faith is, Love will never pass away"— That song must cease, and in its stead be heard: "My faith is, that I loved you yesterday!" [As uplifted by inspiration. No, no, not thus our day of bliss shall wane, Flag drearily to west in clouds and rain;— But at high noontide, when it is most bright, Plunge sudden, like a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... by sleeking, are so lean, That they're like Cynthia in the wane, Or breast of goose when 'tis pick'd clean, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... ashes in the sun, When the feast of love is finished, and the heart is overrun; When the hungry soul is sated and the tongue at last denies Expression to the wonders that are wearing out the eyes, Then the splendor it will wane like a dream that haunts the brain, Or the swift dissolving beauty of the bow above the rain; And the summer domes of pleasure that bubble up the sky Will tumble into legends in the twinkling of an eye; But the art of man endureth, and the heart of man will glow With ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... was over, she said; there had been tableaux and charades, and broom-drills, and readings and charity concerts. Now the season was on the sentimental wane; every night the rooms were full of whist-players, and the days were occupied in quiet strolling over the hills, and excursions to Cooperstown and Cherry Valley and "points of view," and visits to the fields to see the hop-pickers at work. If there were a little ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... that very often results in careless and poor work. It has been said with some truth that once a writer is established he can write anything he likes. This is to an extent true, and such work may even be published and fairly popular, but he will find sooner or later that his influence is on the wane. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... that leads us Home again, How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising wait for us At this same Turning—and for One ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... force remain? If not, what counsel to retain? Did Le Sage steal Gil Blas from Spain? 520 Was Junius writ by Thomas Paine? Were ducks discomforted by rain? How did Britannia rule the main? Was Jonas coming back again? Was vital truth upon the wane? Did ghosts, to scare folks, drag a chain? Who was our Huldah's chosen swain? Did none have teeth pulled without payin', Ere ether was invented? Whether mankind would not agree, 530 If the universe were tuned in C? What was it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... preceding two or three generations. Ben-hadad, disembarrassed of Shalmaneser, desired to profit by the respite thus gained to make a final reckoning with the Israelites. It would appear that their fortune had been on the wane ever since the heroic death of Ahab. Immediately after the disaster at Eamoth, the Moabites had risen against Ahaziah,* and their king, Mesha, son of Kamoshgad, had seized the territory north of the Arnon which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Royal Company was by this time definitely on the wane Sir Paul Painter succeeded in presenting his petition regarding affairs in Barbadoes to the House of Commons, in September, 1667. Although the Royal Company was ordered to produce its charter no further action was taken. The planters ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane within him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn, or weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into evil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate parentage. But it is no small part of human redemption ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... now lost, but re-written by the contributor, from scraps of recitation by an old woman in Berwickshire, localises the story of the fire-drake ('the laidly worm') near Bamborough in Northumberland; and Kinloch said that the term 'Childe o' Wane' was still applied by disconsolate damsels of Bamborough to any youth who champions them. However, Mr. R. W. Clark of Bamborough, who has kindly made inquiries for me, could find no ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... calling where such a combination of requisites, mental and bodily, were indispensable. In all others the principal may practise after he has been visited by the afflicting hand of Providence—some by the loss of limb, some of voice, and many, when the faculty of the mind is on the wane, may be assisted by dutiful children or devoted servants. Not so the actor, He must retain all he ever did possess, or sink dejected to a mournful home. (Applause.) Yet while they are toiling for ephemeral theatric fame, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... the New York Tribune announced the death of Lucretia Mott, eighty-eight years old. Having known her in the flush of life, when all her faculties were at their zenith, and in the repose of age, when her powers began to wane, her withdrawal from among us seemed as beautiful and natural as the changing foliage, from summer to autumn, of some grand old oak I have watched ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... St. Auban became the head of Tallwoods household. Not that week did she leave, nor the next, nor the one thereafter. The winter advanced, it was about to wane, and still she remained. Slowly, the master advanced toward recovery. Meantime, under charge of the mistress, the household machine fell once more into proper ways. The servants learned obedience. The plans for the work of the spring ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... youthful and inquisitive niece; "but my children are not troublesome, I am thankful to say. I was going to tell you that marsh-mallows makes one of the finest poultices you can have. Pluck it when Jupiter is in the ascendant, and the moon on the wane, and you'll find it first-rate for easing that foot of yours.—Gilbert, I heard thy mother tell thee not ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... With duteous sighs, Filial and kind, and with averted eyes, I meet the gay temptation, as it falls From a seducing pen.—Here—here I stay, Fix'd by Affection's power; nor entertain One latent wish, that might persuade to stray From my ag'd Nurseling, in his life's dim wane; But, like the needle, by the magnet's sway, My constant, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... thought to wane, Where Paradise leaned over Iran's plain, A man god looked from his templed fane On a maiden wondrously fair: He saw her first in the Cashmere's danks, Singing at dawn by a river's banks, Where the long grass leaned to her, ranks on ranks, Forget-me-nots ...
— In the Great Steep's Garden • Elizabeth Madox Roberts

... intermediate processes which are ever going on, from one to the other opposite, and back again; where there is a greater and a less there is also an intermediate process of increase and diminution, and that which grows is said to wax, and that which decays to wane? ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... the Browning passion would wane and pass, and the club was succeeded by, or perhaps it blended with, a German class which met at regular intervals at the Clemens home to study "der, die, and das" and the "gehabt habens" out of Meisterschaft and such other text-books as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... I fare, my lord, as other empresses, That, when this frail and [86] transitory flesh Hath suck'd the measure of that vital air That feeds the body with his dated health, Wane with enforc'd and ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... the pursuit of motors did not wane, however, and after trying every known make of car, and investigating the advance reports of all cars designed for manufacture in the early future, she blithely invested her fortune in a sturdy blue Rollsmobile, and was immediately ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... for national song was much on the wane, when it was restored by the successful efforts of Allan Ramsay. He revived the elder ballads in his "Evergreen," and introduced contemporary poets in his "Tea Table Miscellany." The latter obtained a place on the tea table of every lady of quality, and soon became eminently popular. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... observed, was disgusted at the supposed discovery which the soldier had made in his absence to the commodore. They, perceived their mutual umbrage at meeting, and received each other with that civility of reserve which commonly happens between two persons whose friendship is in the wane. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... sake of which the acts are done diminishes. The zest which partially concealed the bitter taste of the once eagerly swallowed morsel is all but gone, but the morsel is still sought and swallowed. Impulses wax as motives wane, the victim is like an ox tempted on the road to the slaughter-house at first by succulent fodder held before it, and at last driven into it by pricking goads and heavy blows. Many a man is so completely wrapped in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Decrease — N. decrease, diminution; lessening &c v.; subtraction &c 38; reduction, abatement, declension; shrinking &c (contraction.) 195; coarctation^; abridgment &c (shortening) 201; extenuation. subsidence, wane, ebb, decline; ebbing; descent &c 306; decrement, reflux, depreciation; deterioration &c 659; anticlimax; mitigation &c (moderation) 174. V. decrease, diminish, lessen; abridge &c (shorten) 201; shrink &c (contract) 195; drop off, fall off, tail off; fall ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... entirely and must needs have private matters. All this Hurstwood could see, and it left a trace of feeling, for he was used to being considered—in his official position, at least—and felt that his importance should not begin to wane here. To darken it all, he saw the same indifference and independence growing in his wife, while he looked on and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... commencement of the New Testament in a most earnest and impressive manner, as though it were especially appropriate to the occasion. In time, an oath became a rare thing amongst us. Drunkenness was on the wane too. Casual travellers passing through the Gulch used to marvel at our state of grace, and rumours of it went as far as Ballarat, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... as the strength of the afternoon sun began to wane, and headed due west As they rode round the side of the largest pool, the three horses of the dead men, which were camped under the shade of the Leichhardt trees, brushing the flies off each other's noses with their long tails, raised their heads ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... began to wane as they came in sight of Cairo on its low point of land at the junction ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... M—— was on the wane, I felt my heart gripped as by a hand of ice, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I made no sign. Notwithstanding, I took the story for an atrocious calumny, but yet the matter was too near my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Exalted truths, in learned verse they told, And nature's deepest secrets did unfold. How at th' eternal mind's omnisic call, Yon starry arch, and this terrestrial ball, The briny wave, the blazing source of light, And the wane empress of the silent night, Each in it's order rose and took its place, And filled with recent forms the vacant space; How rolling planets trace their destin'd way, Nor in the wastes of pathless AEther stray; How the pale moon, with silver beams adorn Her chearful orb, and gilds ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... possible. The bright days of summer were doubtless favourable to the patient. When he could lie with open windows, breathing the pure soft air from woodland and field, he seemed able to make a stand against the grim enemy of human nature. But the summer was now upon the wane; the golden sunshine was obscured by the first driving rains of the approaching equinox; and it seemed to those who watched at the sufferer's bedside that his life was ebbing away as slowly and as steadily as the hours of sunshine in ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Turner attended to the still while the day began to wane, and shadows cast by the tall hills were lengthening ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... of battle changes," he said, "your brother's enthusiasm will wane. He will remember the slight ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... was now on the wane; the robins sang clear, wild little songs in the shrubberies, the sunshine fell slanting across the grass. And at night, the stars twinkled with a frosty brilliancy, and the flowers were cut down by cruel invisible hands. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... party that the half nude was a hundred times more suggestive than the complete; a few silver threads in the heads of our old acquaintances; and the radiant countenance of Manuel Antonio, the most fetching of all the sons of the famous city, showed signs that his beauty was on the wane, like a dream fading in the cold wind of morning, or snowdrops falling in the silence of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o'clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... poor peasant was soon on the wane, and before long he was reduced to abject poverty.[15] These legends, in addition to illustrating the fairy mythology of bygone years, are additionally interesting from their connection with the plants ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... and beanes, in the wane of the moone, Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soone That they with the planet may rest and arise, And flourish, with bearing most ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... tell how many days (though not in reality for very many), when there came one afternoon in which everything seemed to draw towards the close. It is the time when the heart fails most easily and the tide of being runs most low. The light was beginning to wane in those dim rooms, though a great golden sunset was being enacted in purple and flame on the other side of the house. The child's eyes were dull and glazed; they seemed to turn inward with that awful blank which is like the soul's withdrawal; its little powers seemed all exhausted. The little ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... But this suspicion did not prevent him, the next time Honora regaled them with more adventures of the palace by the summer seas, from listening with a rapt attention. No two tales were ever alike. His admiration for Honora did not wane, but increased. It differed from that of his sisters, however, in being a tribute to her creative faculties, while Edith's breathless faith pictured her cousin as having passed through as many adventures ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... chief cause for this wane was the putting into operation, by President Wilson and the triumphant Democrats, of many of the Progressive suggestions which the Democratic Platform had also contained. The psychological effect of success ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... could near them with the flight unflown, We should but find them worlds as sad as this, Or suns all self-consuming like our own Enringed by planet worlds as much amiss: 25 They wax and wane through fusion and confusion; The spheres eternal are a grand illusion, The empyrean is ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky; and when night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens bespangled and adorned with stars; the surprising variety of the moon, in her increase and wane; the rising and setting of all the stars, and the inviolable regularity of their courses; when,' says he, 'they should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there are Gods, and that these are ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... again be the religious enthusiast and fanatic he has been in the past; he has not worshiped his last, but he has worshiped his best. He will build no more cathedrals; he will burn no more martyrs at the stake. His religion as such is on the wane. But his humanitarianism is a rising tide. He is becoming less and less a savage, revolts more and more at the sight of blood and suffering. The highly religious ages were ages of blood and persecution. Man's ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... shall snatch the sceptre from thy hand, thy moon shall wane, no longer wilt thou be strong and proud, then thy servants shall be ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... and though his still unpublished poems were at the service of The Liberal, he did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903] was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering Don Juan (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of The Liberal, he meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of Childe Harold. There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics and the congress ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... material good. She will think of his food, and his raiment, and his well-being, and never of her own—only, if she is wise she will hide all these things in her heart, for the average man cannot stand this great light of her sweetness, and when her love becomes selfless, his love will wane." ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... dined, I at the planter's board, my "slaves" under the house-grove trees, Euonymus took the lines, and for five hours Luke slept inside. Then they changed places again, and Euonymus and I, face to face, watched the long hot day wane, and pass through gorgeous changes into twilight. Often I saw questions in the young eyes that watched me so reverently, but I dared not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had its questions. How ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... lion-like head and broad shoulders. He had begun life as a bricklayer's labourer, and was now the secretary of a recently formed Union. His influence had been considerable, but was said to be already on the wane; though it was thought likely that he would win a seat ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the sun Does his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore Till moons shall wax and wane no more. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... a token of distress? No single tear, no mark of pain: O sorrow, then can sorrow wane? O grief, can grief be changed ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... give any account of this curious calendar, with all its changes and symbols. But there is one proposal, which, could we alter the general notions of time—a thing of very dubious possibility—would be convenient. The week is made to wax and wane, culminating on the Sunday, {208} which comes in the middle. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, are ascending or waxing days; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, are descending or waning days. Our six days, lumped together after the great distinguishing day, Sunday, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... Street was in its pavement, its pedestrians. Art thou old enough, O reader! to remember the Bond Street Lounger and his incomparable generation? For my part, I can just recall the decline of the grand era. It was on its wane when, in the ambition of boyhood, I first began to muse upon high neck cloths and Wellington boots. But the ancient habitues—the magni nominis umbrae, contemporaries of Brummell in his zenith, boon companions of George IV. in his regency—still haunted the spot. From four to six in ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ball-players, as a class, were a disreputable set of men, who made a practice of spending their money foolishly, and of saying and doing things on the ball field that were decidedly objectionable; also if, in consequence, the interest in the game had not to a very large degree been on the wane for a number of years past? He said he had read in the papers of a number of acts that had led him to believe that such was the case, and that, while formerly he had been an attendant at the games, that latterly he had lost his desire in that respect, though he still had an interest in all that ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... former case. The wife was not alone in this, for the husband waited for a certain time in the moon to sow his peas—that is, if he wished to ensure a good crop. He also thought it unlucky to kill hogs in the wane of the moon, because the pork would shrink and waste in the boiling. The finding of an old horseshoe was a sure sign of good luck, and it was quite common to see one nailed up over the door. It is said that the late Horace Greeley always kept a rusty one over the door of his sanctum. To begin ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... offered no guarantee to the ancient imperial dynasty. There was no security that the provinces bestowed in momentary reward for her alliance must not, on the first occasion, be restored. Nor was public opinion entirely without weight.[17] Napoleon's star was on the wane, whole nations stood like to a dark and ominous cloud threatening on the horizon, and Count Metternich prudently chose rather to attempt to guide the storm ere it burst than trust to a falling star. Austria had, as early as the 27th of June, 1813, signed ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... sink into feebleness and apathy merely because of the passing of years has some mental or spiritual weakness in him which he has not the Will to overcome—the woman who suffers her beauty and freshness to wane and fade on account of what she or her 'dearest' friends are pleased to call 'age,' shows that she is destitute of spiritual self-control. The Soul is always young, and its own radiation can preserve the youth of the Body in which it dwells. Age and decrepitude come to those with whom the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... his enemies then. If he could but see her now, could but plead with her. Perhaps he might persuade her. But there was no opportunity. Even as far back as December, as soon as the rebellion began evidently to wane, Edwards had began to turn the cold shoulder to him on his visits to the store. He had put up with insults which had made his cheek burn, merely because at the store was his only chance of seeing Desire. But Edwards' ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... later he entered the Twenty-third Street subway station en route to Canal Street, and no sooner had he bought his ticket than his enthusiasm began to wane. After all, he reflected as he boarded the train, ten dollars' worth of cut glass seemed rather extravagant when one considered the size of an order that in the most favourable circumstances might emanate from a store in Bridgetown. Indeed, as the train pulled into the Eighteenth Street ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... productive of more zeal in the cause, and her raw uncivilised hordes continued to issue forth under the banners of the cross in numbers apparently undiminished, when the enthusiasm had long been on the wane in other countries. They were sunk at that time in a deeper slough of barbarism than the livelier nations around them, and took, in consequence, a longer period to free themselves from their prejudices. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... people who had fallen into lethargy, if attacked by less civilized and numerous hordes. Frequently we find in history that the ruder and victorious tribe is made to recover as it were civilization, already on the wane with a refined nation. Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, it is, nevertheless, amply proved by history, that the closest contact and consequent exchange of thought and produce and enlargement of knowledge, between two otherwise severed nations, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... children and of fools! I kiss'd the kind, warm neck that slept, And from her side this morning stepp'd, To bathe my brain from drowsy night In the sharp air and golden light. The dew, like frost, was on the pane. The year begins, though fair, to wane. There is a fragrance in its breath Which is not of the flowers, but death; And green above the ground appear The lilies of another year. I wander'd forth, and took my path Among the bloomless aftermath; ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... should have received them with pleasure. But their threats never came to anything, for as the days passed by and every one knew how completely they had been scored off, their desire for revenge seemed to wane. Ridicule smothered them, and try as they would to live it down, their influence, as far as the college was concerned, disappeared entirely. Some of the set pulled themselves up and became more or less silent, while ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... Pelhams, who lent their own persons to him, had set up the Duke of Grafton, to list their own dependents under against their rival. When the Chamberlain would head a party, you may be sure the opposite power is in the wane. The Newcastle is at open war, and has left off waiting on the Duke, who espouses the Bedfords. Mr. Pelham tries to patch it up, and is getting the Ordnance for the Duke; but there are scarce any terms kept. Lord Sandwich, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... to the future: "What is the plain where Surt and the blessed Gods shall meet in battle?" Odin replies, and proceeds to question in his turn; first about the creation of Earth and Sky, the origin of Sun and Moon, Winter and Summer, the Giants and the Winds; the coming of Njoerd the Wane to the Aesir as a hostage; the Einherjar, or chosen warriors of Valhalla. Then come prophetic questions on the destruction of the Sun by the wolf Fenri, the Gods who shall rule in the new world after Ragnaroek, the end of Odin. The poem is brought ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday

... his father's life might be saved, of that and nothing else. Were they feeding him with milk every ten minutes?—he could not trust nurses, nobody but himself. Were they shouting in his ear, keeping him awake, as it were, stimulating his consciousness at wane? ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... well," I said to myself. "Life had better wane slowly away than to go out in lurid gleams like the flashes of ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till six o'clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... and was away for nearly two years. In Rogers's "Table Talk," it is recorded—"Before his going abroad, Garrick's attraction had much decreased; Sir W.W. Pepys said that the pit was often almost empty. But, on his return to England, people were mad about seeing him." His popularity did not wane a ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... stalwart Huns and strident, Who can't come home again, Because base Albion's trident, Though largely on the wane, Still occupies successfully the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... to break off his mourning, he presently forgot his father's charge, and his head was turned by his riches; he thought fortune would always wone with him as it was, and that wealth would ever wax and never wane. So he ate and drank and made merry and took his pleasure and gave gifts of gear and coin and was profuse with gold and addrest himself up to eating fowls and breaking the seals of wine-flasks and listening to the giggle of the daughter of the vine, as she gurgled from the flagon and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... starry firmament thou seest my countenance; when the spring blooms out in flowers, that is my smile, Harmachis. For I am Nature's self, and all her shapes are shapes of Me. I breathe in all that breathes. I wax and wane in the changeful moon: I grow and gather in the tides: I rise with the suns: I flash with the lightning and thunder in the storms. Nothing is too great for the measure of my majesty, nothing is so small that I cannot find a home therein. I ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... manner from their hospitals in the North. In addition to all this, the surgeons and ambulances and their corps continued with their respective commands, to meet emergencies of like nature, to be repeated before the September moon had begun to wane. ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... vanished; and I haste to discharge my duty, for if I have a failing, it is doing my duty. Should you see the editor will you please state not only the fact of the subscription paid, but that I have heard this pursued Hafiz swear that not many moons should wane before he wrote to Dwight's Journal of Music a letter about things in New York, "our new music and other ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... the afternoon sun had begun to wane, the big pails were filled and shaken down and filled again, the pickers had eaten almost as much more, and surfeited, hot, and thirsty they found themselves on the edge of the slash that bordered ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... mo', For which Diana wrought them care and woe. There saw I many another wondrous story, The which me list not drawen to memory. This goddess on an hart full high was set*, *seated With smalle houndes all about her feet, And underneath her feet she had a moon, Waxing it was, and shoulde wane soon. In gaudy green her statue clothed was, With bow in hand, and arrows in a case*. *quiver Her eyen caste she full low adown, Where Pluto hath his darke regioun. A woman travailing was her beforn, But, for her child ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... the moone praied her mother to make her a peticoate fit and proportionate for her body. Why, how is it possible (quoth her mother) that I should knit or weave one to fit well about thee considering that I see thee one while full, another while croissant or in the wane and pointed with tips of horns, and sometime again halfe rounde?" [65] Old John Lilly, one of our sixteenth-century dramatists, likewise supports this ungallant theory. In the Prologus to one of his very rare dramas ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... flourished in man to such an extent, that there was no need for any signs of faith and salvation to be prescribed to him, but each one was wont to make protestation of his faith, by outward signs of his profession, according as he thought best. But about the time of Abraham faith was on the wane, many being given over to idolatry. Moreover, by the growth of carnal concupiscence natural reason was clouded even in regard to sins against nature. And therefore it was fitting that then, and not before, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... introduce this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old one out of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to its inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began to wane, and it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... boit to go to the sea. The Bischop of Murray, (then being Priour of Sanctandross,[133]) and his factouris, urgeid him for the teind thairof. His ansuer was, Yf thei wald haif teynd of that which his servandis wane in the sea, it war but reassoun, that thei should come and receave it whare his gatt the stock; and so, as was constantlye affirmed, he caused his servandis cast the tenth fische in the sea agane. Processe of curssing was led against him, for non payment of such teindis:[134] which when ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... by Le Gentil from "El Artista." In this poem he assails academic poetry like that produced by his old fellow-academicians of the Myrtle. It betrays the peevishness of a Romanticist writing when Romanticism was already on the wane. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... twilight was now on the wane, and the shades of evening were gathering fast over the deep basin of the lake. The figure of Maso, as he continued to pace his elevated platform, was drawn dark and distinct against the southern sky, in which some of the last rays of the sun still lingered, but ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... theine in tea and the theobromine in cocoa are so similar to caffeine that chemists can not differentiate them. These drinks when first taken cause a gentle stimulation under which more work can be done than ordinarily, but this is followed by a reaction, and then the powers of body and mind wane so much that the average output of work is less than when the body is not stimulated. The temporary apparently beneficial effect is more than offset by the reaction and therefore partaking of these beverages makes people inefficient. Coffee is very hard on the nerves, causing ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... Mohammed's banner ever float On Salem's ruins? Shaft her sacred dust Where Christ has shed His blood, by infidels Be ever trodden down? Shall her temple Prostrate lie, to cause the impious mock Of Mussulmen for ever? It may not be. Ere many years wane in eternity, That banner shall be plucked from its proud height— Those tow'ring minarets shall fall to earth And God again be worshipp'd thro' the land. David's fair city shall be then rebuilt; Her pristine beauty shall be far surpassed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... scenery is added; the movable tent is translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the scene encroaches till the sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and the stage wax, the dromenon and the orchestra wane. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, and sinks into relative dinginess when the mating ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and appreciation of flowers as flowers, rather than to call attention to the skill of the florist in producing freaks which are only attractive as curiosities. I sincerely hope that the day of Chrysanthemums a foot across and Roses as large as small Cabbages is on the wane. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... was still browsing, but with less apparent voracity. He drew the shoots toward him with a gentler sweep of his arms, selecting only the most succulent. His appetite was on the wane; it was evident he would soon leave off eating and return to his roosting or resting-place. In the forest, of course, though they knew not where. It might be on the tree over their heads, or on one close at hand; or it might be afar off. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... moon began to wane that the Arab marauders became troublesome. Shots whizzed about the place at night, and one continually heard the high pitched, nervous challenge of native sentries: "'Alt, who goes da?" It was unwise to move about after dark without a lantern. In peace time Amara is not ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... said, 'understand that your sun is near its setting. We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do believe you love your King his ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... brow of snow, Lovely wanton! fly not so. Though the wane of age is mine, Though youth's brilliant flush be thine, Still I'm doomed to sigh for thee, Blest, if thou couldst sigh for me! See, in yonder flowery braid, Culled for thee, my blushing maid,[1] ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... process of life presents the same appearance [Note 1] of cyclical evolution. Nay, we have but to cast our eyes over the rest of the world and cyclical change presents itself on all sides. It meets us in the water that flows to the sea and returns to the springs; in the heavenly bodies that wax and wane, go and return to their places; in the inexorable sequence of the ages of man's life; in that successive rise, apogee, and fall of dynasties and of states which is the most ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... House in the early part of the session, when the tricolor of France, a present from the French government to the United States, was sent by Washington to Congress, to be deposited with the archives of the nation, French influence was on the wane. The common sense of the country got the better of its passion. In the reaction the Federalists regained the popular favor for ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... more bitterly than ever—tears of rage, salt tears which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde angel, whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury. Her six-and- thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared slightly blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the precocious development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved that her stepdaughter's obtrusive ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... false-bottomed seats, and Denver knew too well from past experience what the temptation was likely to be; yet for all his admonitions when he met Owen in the morning he caught the bouquet of whisky. It was disguised with sen-sen and he pretended not to notice it but his hopes of first money began to wane. They went out again to the backyard of an old saloon where a great block of granite was embedded and while their admirers looked on they practiced their turn, for they had never worked together. A Cornish miner, ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... the wane of thy stately prime, Hear'st thou the silent warnings of Time? Look at thy brow ploughed by anxious care, The silver hue of thy once dark hair;— What boot thine honors, thy treasures bright, When Time tells of coming ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... Life with fleeting years; A mournful change, should Reason fail to bring The timely insight that can temper fears, And from vicissitude remove its sting; While Faith aspires to seats in that domain Where joys are perfect—neither wax nor wane. WORDSWORTH. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... is seldom heard, and the blueberry plains are given over to silence save for the buzzing of gorged flies, the humming of bees, and the chirping of crickets that stir the drowsy air when the summer begins to wane. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... us Always, as the sky with suns and showers Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous; Yet some days for love's sake, ere the bowers Fade wherein his fair first years kept chorus Night and day with Graces robed like hours, Ere this worshipped childhood wane before us, Change, and bring ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... sometimes assisted by Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer, professional readers both—the last distinguished more for grace and beauty, even though now on the wane of life, than she ever had been for talent, but eminently fitted, both by education and character, for a guide ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... Castle—for such was the name of his mansion—was to be confined to the lords of the creation. It was to be one of those days on which he collected round his board all the notables of the county, in order that his popularity might not wane, or the established glory of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... of Queensberry, Prior's 'Kitty, beautiful and young,' lorded it, with a tyrannical hand, over the court. Her famed loveliness was, it is true, at this time on the wane. Her portrait delineating her in her bib and tucker, with her head rolled back underneath a sort of half cap, half veil, shows how intellectual was the face to which such incense was paid for years. Her forehead and eyebrows are beautiful: her eyes soft though lively ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... sun, should ever be complete, While thine, O changing moon, doth wax and wane. But now our sun hath waned, weak and effete, And moons are ever full. My heart with pain Is firmly bound, and held in sorrow's chain, As to the body cleaves an unwashed dress. Silent I think of my sad case; in vain I ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... the far end of that long street visible from outside the gate, discovering its excitements to wane gently into mere blacksmith and carpenter shops. He retraced his steps, this time ignoring the long row of offices for the opposite line of stages. From one dark interior came the slow, dulled strains of an orchestra and from ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... Then without taking her black eyes from my face, she solemnly put one finger in her mouth and jerked it out with a loud 'pop,' much to her mother's gratification. But when she decided to crawl up into my lap, my interest began to wane, for she exuded such a concentrated 'essence of Mongol' and rancid mutton fat ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... may he reign! May his Faith never waver, His Trust never wane. May the Lord make him gentle And gracious and gay, Yet quick to resent The least offer of pay: May he soften his heart As he softened, we're told, To the Israelite's 'touch,' The Egyptian of old; ...
— Happy Days • Oliver Herford

... moment in the life of every great man in which he touches the height of his possibilities, and reaches the limits of his powers of expression. To Signorelli it came late, at an age when most men begin to feel at least their physical powers on the wane. The two last frescoes of the Monte Oliveto series indicate that an immense force lay in reserve, waiting an opportunity for some wider and freer field of action, than had hitherto presented itself. That opportunity now came, when, at the age of ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell



Words linked to "Wane" :   waning, ebbing, diminish, decline, wax, wear on, decrease, drop, lessen, fall, diminution, dip



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