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Waning   /wˈeɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Waning

adjective
1.
(of the Moon) pertaining to the period during which the visible surface of the moon decreases.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books



... wandered here and there through the waning of the day, and when they entered at last into the cool dusk house, then they loved and played together, as if they were a pair of lovers guileless, with no fear for the morrow, and no seeds of enmity and death ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

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

... square bulk loomed faintly before them in the waning moonlight. It might be a house—might be a mountain! Jot ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... to a team to feel that their home folks believe in them to the limit. Just as soon as this interest gives signs of waning the best of teams grow careless, and show signs of disintegration. So Jack hoped the girls as well as the boys and grown- ups of the town would be with them all the while, ready with cheering words and praise for good deeds, as well as apologies for mistakes such as the best of players ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... a quiet autumn afternoon when I stopped at the solitary station, and set forth alone on foot by the well-remembered road. The waning sun was shining faintly through thin white clouds—the air was warm and still—the peacefulness of the lonely country was overshadowed and saddened by the influence ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

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

... the shooting, so later said the guard, the waning moon, only a dull crescent, was up far enough above the eastward heights to throw a faint gleam over the valley. One of Turner's own men was on post at the south-east corner, and his yell for the corporal, instantly following the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... girl. But, as a matter of cold fact, he was a bachelor, and most of the couples he knew were veterans of several divorces. In Reggie's circle, therefore, the home-life of Archie and Lucille shone like a good deed in a naughty world. It inspired him. In moments of depression it restored his waning faith in human nature. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... night they went out together into the street. The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka a fire glowed—the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... cold December morning, stars winking frostily in a cloudless sky, and a waning moon casting sharp black shadows over the whitened ground, saw him out of Dumfries, and well on his homeward road. And, as he blew on his fingers, and beat his unoccupied hand briskly against his thigh, to warm himself withal, M'Fadyen ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... it had seemed to her that even this price was worth paying to remove Sakr-el-Bahr definitely and finally from her son's path—which shows that, after all, Fenzileh the mother was capable of some self-sacrifice. She comforted herself now with the reflection that the influence, whose waning she feared might be occasioned by the introduction of a rival into Asad's hareem, would no longer be so vitally necessary to herself and Marzak once Sakr-el-Bahr were removed. The rest mattered none so ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... waning day; and the anxiety I had now dismissed for myself redoubled for my poor ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... please," she prayed, with her face upturned to the waning stars, "make me worthy of his love. Make me worthy to be ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... alarm and humiliation; and, conceiving that it betokened a relaxation of power in the springs to whose action they trusted for their speedy return to office, they resolved to leave no means untried to agitate the country from one end to the other, in order to recover their waning influence. To this end the dismissal of the ministry was announced as exclusively the work of the queen, and as the result of a deep tory plot, and complicated tory intrigues. These tales, however, failed in creating the universal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

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

... became terribly grasping as he saw his power waning, Leonora would send her father a few hundred francs from London, from Naples, from Paris. The Doctor, though in direst poverty, would at once return the checks "to the sender" and, without writing a word; where-upon Leonora paid an ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... days of waning prosperity Bunning-Ford had noticeably changed. With loss of property he had lost much of that curious veneer of indolence, utter disregard of consequences, which had always been his. Not, that he had suddenly developed ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... wigwams from the bitter cold, and then all alone, except with Him Who hears His people's cry, I knelt down in the snow and prayed, or tried to pray. But I could only weep out my sorrow as I thought of this old man's precious soul passing into eternity under such strange circumstances. With his waning strength he exhorted his loved ones to be Christians, and yet he himself was performing some of the foolish and unmeaning rites of paganism, not because he had much faith in them, but because there was no Missionary or teacher ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... walking slowly back, resumed her seat on the couch. Margaret came to her from the other side of the bed, where she had been working by the window, for the last quarter of an hour, for the sake of the waning light. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... circle; spiritual energy declines or is diverted into wrong channels; thereupon the physical forms, social, industrial, political, slip a degree or two lower out of sympathy with the failing energy, and these in their turn exert a degrading influence on the waning spiritual force, which declines still further only to be pulled lower still by the material agencies which continue their progressive declension. Theories, no matter how high-minded and altruistic, cannot stand before a condition such as this, for self-protection decrees otherwise ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... cannot be denied, however, that Bjornson's changed and unorthodox attitude towards religious matters—an attitude little expected except by those who knew him best—contributed a good deal towards the temporary waning of his popularity at this time. Leonarda is (like A Gauntlet) a good example of the root difference between Bjornson's and Ibsen's treatment of problems in their dramas. Ibsen contented himself with diagnosing social ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what a gloom and silence pervaded the other two sharers of the modest dinner. It was evening before Helen and Laura came into the sitting-room to join the company there. She came in leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning light, so that Arthur could not see how pallid and woe-stricken her face was, and as she went up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the day, and placed her fond arms on his shoulders and kissed him tenderly, Laura ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... vague report which had circulated of a nephew of old Gradelle being transported to Cayenne for murdering six gendarmes at a barricade. She had even seen this nephew on one occasion in the Rue Pirouette. The pretended cousin was undoubtedly the same man. Then she began to bemoan her waning powers. Her memory was quite going, she said; she would soon be unable to remember anything. And she bewailed her perishing memory as bitterly as any learned man might bewail the loss of his notes representing the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... taste. I remember one narrow, gloomy alley, of boxwood, or yew, called "Queen Mary's Walk," after bloody Mary, who used to take her evening exercise here alone, marching slowly up and down in the waning twilight, meditating, I fear, those frightful persecutions, rackings, and burnings of the poor Protestants, and trying to steel her heart against the womanly pity that would creep into it sometimes, in spite of all the admonitions of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... slope. As he came into camp the Chihuahuanos dropped their plates, reached for their guns, and stood in awkward postures of defence, some wagging their big heads in a braggartly defiance, others, their courage waning, grinning in the natural shame of the peasant. In Hardy they recognized a gentleman of categoria—and he never so much as glanced at them as he reined in his spirited horse. His eyes were fixed upon the lone white man, their commander, who stood by the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... And the waning moon cast a pathetic beauty over the Eden-like land, till dawn brought that mystical silence in which every new day is born. Then Robert Worth rose from the chair in which he had been sitting so long, remembering the past and forecasting ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... life suddenly made her own. Betty and Betty's friends had such a way of enjoying every-day things. Becky was learning to be happy in simple ways she never had before. She went to sleep too, and the stars shone on, and late in the night the waning moon came up, strange and red; then the dawn came creeping into the morning sky, and one wild creature after another, in the crevices of rocks or branches of trees, waked and went its ways ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

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

... and its burden down in a convenient position just within the clearing, the two Englishmen plunged back into the forest, and, using their hangers as axes, vigorously proceeded to hew down all the dry, dead branches and underwood they could find; for the afternoon was waning apace and it was essential that the flames should be kindled in time to allow of their returning to their camping place by daylight. Fortunately there was no lack of suitable material close at hand; and an hour's arduous work sufficed ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Then there was that other one called Waning Day, or something. Two people in a boat sailing on dry land! Then that picture of a purple man with a green beard! Oh, my dear! The people who took me there told me it was full of—something French—essayage, or mouvement, I think. The man who tried to make me buy it ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... be applied to private and public buildings in cases where it would be economical and advantageous to maintain for a short time a waning or twilight, so as to obviate the necessity for lighting earlier the gas or other artificial light. It may also be used in powder-mills and stores of powder, and in other cases where combustion or heat would be a constant source of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... sedition, II. results of the Federalist policy, II. animus of Federalists, II. unpopularity of Federalism, II. Federalist discussion, II. Federalist opposition to the administration, II. Federalist strength waning, II. its after influence, II. opposition of Federalists to war of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... saw. Oh, that it were another document! he whispered to himself; and, as it was, he felt it was the sweetest assurance that his highest wish would be fulfilled. Thus it remained in his hands, thus he continued to press it to his heart, although disfigured by a third name subscribed to it. The waning moon rose up over the wood. The warmth of the night drew Edward out into the free air. He wandered this way and that way; he was at once the most restless and the happiest of mortals. He strayed through the gardens—they seemed too narrow for him; he hurried out into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... when I was young, that I see occasionally in the young men of your time, has become conscious only because it is about to be smothered in the great advancing waves of European banality. I was thinking the other day that perhaps states of life only became conscious once their intensity was waning." ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... and nothing but Patriots, better or worse. So ran the November Elections: to the joy of most citizens; nay the very Court supported Petion rather than Lafayette. And so Bailly and his Feuillants, long waning like the Moon, had to withdraw then, making some sorrowful obeisance, into extinction;—or indeed into worse, into lurid half-light, grimmed by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and bitter memory of the Champ-de-Mars. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... to the subject in hand, I wish to reply to some remarks of the previous speaker, lest I forget them—they are of so little weight. He finished by saying that my prestige was waning. If he were right, I should feel like saying "Thank God," for prestige is a very burdensome affair. One suffers under its weight, and quickly gets tired of it. I do not care a farthing for it. When I was very much younger, about as old as the previous speaker is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... seemed to awaken her anxiety; for she knew that no one came to the house which sheltered Aaron save those who were adherents of her brothers, the leaders of the people. If such men's blitheness was already waning, what must the outlook be to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the same interval had elapsed. That the ship had struck and was in dire distress there could be no doubt, but when they gazed at the dark, heaving waves which rolled in crested with foam, and just discernible in the fast waning twilight, and felt the fierce blast against which even they could scarcely stand upright on the slippery pier, hardy and bold as they were, they hesitated about venturing forth to the rescue of the hapless crew. Long before they could reach the wreck darkness ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

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

... sun and moon is probably unlucky, especially if one dreams of the waning moon. But it is not unlucky to dream of ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... field ice, with icebergs still attached to the floe and rearing aloft their mass as a hill might suddenly rise from a level plain. Ahead and to the south and east huge floating monsters were showing up through the waning darkness, their number added to moment by moment as the dawn broke and flushed the horizon pink. It is remarkable how "busy" all those icebergs made the sea look: to have gone to bed with nothing but sea and sky and to come on deck to ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... Maricourt appeared and presently, in the waning light, they all went down towards the convent of the Ursulines, and made their way round the rock, past the three gates to the palace of the Intendant, and so on to the St. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... what is interior to what is exterior is discrete, not continuous. Degrees are of two kinds, those that are continuous and those that are not. Continuous degrees are related like the degrees of the waning of a light from its bright blaze to darkness, or like the degrees of the decrease of vision from objects in the light to those in the shade, or like degrees of purity in the atmosphere from bottom to top. ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... of the World, Congreve must have found his wit becoming readier, his tact surer, his appreciation of natural comedy finer and (as personal keenness decreased) more equable, his popularity greater, and—in fine—the world more pleasant and the attractions of the study waning and waning in comparison. He was a finished artist, he was born, one might almost say, with a style; but his inclination was to put his art into life rather than into print. Even in our days (thank God for all His mercies!) everybody is ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... I've given up all my wild proceedings. MAR. My taste for a wandering life is waning. DES. Now I'm a dab at penny readings. MAR. They are not remarkably entertaining. DES. A moderate livelihood we're gaining. MAR. In fact we rule A National School. DES. The duties are dull, but I'm ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... campaign," said I, and then returned in some haste to my balcony. The mists of the waning day were rising from the valley below. The smell of rain was in the air. I looked in vain for the lady's tresses. They were gone. The sun was also gone. His work for the day was done. I wondered whether she was putting ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... them to see if any of them were those fellows, but he could not find them. He seemed to be the only person awake on the Common, and wandered out of it and down through the empty streets, filled at times with the moony light of the waning electrics, and at times merely with the grey dawn. A man came along putting out the gas, and some milk-carts rattled over the pavement. By and by a market-wagon, with the leaves and roots of cabbages sticking out from the edges of the canvas that covered it, came by, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... waning in intensity in this period of feminization? There have always been some bad, careless, selfish mothers; has their number increased? Probably not, yet the maternal instinct now has competition in the heart of the modern woman. The desire to participate in ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... the pine-tree; the barrier in the meadow of the Thorn; and the horse-combat at the carrefour; and the jousts in the foret devoyable; the carousals in the castle halls; the jollity of the banquet tables; the morescoes danced till they were reminded "how the waning night grew old!"—in a word, when the costly dream had vanished,—that he was a ruined man for ever, by immortalising his name in one grand chivalric festival! The Sieur de Sandricourt, like a great torch, had consumed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... crushing the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady business, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... has "reconstituted" the story under the title of Lucien Leeuwen (the hero's name). But some not inconsiderable experience of reconstitutions of this kind determined me to waste no further portion of my waning life on ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Sherman and his army were hundreds of miles away in the heart of Georgia. It will be remembered that when Sherman started from Atlanta for Savannah his old antagonist, General Hood, was at Florence, Alabama, refitting his army to the limit of the waning resources of the Confederacy, for an aggressive campaign into Tennessee. If Hood's campaign had proved successful Sherman's unopposed march through Georgia would have been derided as a crazy freak, and, no doubt, the ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger

... saw him still at the window, his eyes on a waning planet, his cheek resting on the little glove laid in his right hand, and singing more sweetly than ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the breeze at the waning of day, When it passes and murmurs "Good-bye." The dear little breeze — how it wishes to stay Where the flowers are in bloom, where the singing birds play; How it sighs when it flies on its wearisome way. Ask it what ails it: it will not reply; Its voice is a sad one, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... seeing a tub full of water, denotes domestic contentment. An empty tub proclaims unhappiness and waning ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... by its constellation, and this is held to be a nymph or goddess, who controls events during its course. Similarly, as shown in The Golden Bough, [113] many kinds of new enterprises should be begun in the fortnight of the waxing moon, not in that of the waning moon. Days are also thought to be concrete and governed by their planets, and from this idea come all the superstitions about lucky and unlucky days. If a day had been from the beginning realised as a simple division of time no such superstitions could exist. Events, so far ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... Port Hudson; but the maps were even more imperfect than usual, and when a reconnoissance, naturally retarded by the enemy's advance guard, showed that the road by which the guns were to have gone into position did not exist, the daylight was already waning. A broken bridge ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... existence. Oh, how guilty he felt towards Rogojin! And, for a few warm, hasty words spoken in Moscow, Parfen had called him "brother," while he—but no, this was delirium! It would all come right! That gloomy Parfen had implied that his faith was waning; he must suffer dreadfully. He said he liked to look at that picture; it was not that he liked it, but he felt the need of looking at it. Rogojin was not merely a passionate soul; he was a fighter. He was fighting for the restoration of his dying faith. He must have something ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... notwithstanding his boasting, that the courage of Shoreditch was waning fast, and he at last proposed to his leader that they should return as soon as the rain abated. But the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... sleeping and waking: and the rhythmic noises of the train sounded a continual cadence, Dalhousie's unquiet requiem. But she must have fallen sound asleep without knowing it; for her eyes opened suddenly with a start, and she was aware of the clanging of bells, the waxing and waning of men's voices, the hiss of steam and the flaring of yellow lights. Looking out under the blind, she saw that they had come to a city, which must be ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... parallel. Marguerite was the daughter of the famous Catherine de Medicis, and was given in marriage by her scheming mother to Henry of Navarre, whose ascendant Bourbon star threatened to eclipse (as afterwards it did) the waning house of Valois. Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne of France, but all were childless. Although the king of the petty state of Navarre was a Protestant, and Catherine was the most fanatical of Catholics, she made this marriage a pretext for welding the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... greeting, Khosrul!" he said slowly and with a sinister smile—"The Lion's paw has struck thee down at last! Too long hast thou trifled with our patience,—thou must abjure thy heresies, or die! What sayest thou now of doom,—of judgment,—of the waning of glory? Wilt prophesy? ... wilt denounce the Faith? ... Wilt mislead the people? ... Wilt curse the King? ... Thou mad sorcerer!—devil bewitched and blasphemous! ... What shall hinder me from at once slaying thee?" And he half drew his formidable ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... three remained in tableau while, as if on another planet, the dusk deepened from moment to moment: Gramma Pilot, two yards away, brought supper to her squealing sow; and further off, out on the waning mirror of the harbor, a conch lowed faintly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Master sat on the crest of the world[F], Sat at the door of his mighty lodge, Tossing bright stars at the waning moon[G], When there came on the winds the woes of the pair, And pity filled his soul, And grief weighed down his heart. He called to his side the spirit that guards The warlike Indian race, The spirit of courage, and wisdom, and strength, And the fearless spirit came. "Dost thou see," said he, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This arrangement enabled Washington to revive the waning enthusiasm of the country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, and on ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning a shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the calm content of having lived and lived well. And among the hills, on their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads bent over the same pages, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... at sundown I travelled well into the night, for progress was slow through the scrub and trees in the darkness, but little relieved by the light of a waning moon. Feeling sure that I had gone far enough, I was preparing to rest awhile and find our camp in the morning, when the welcome glow of a fire shot up through the branches. Jim and Paddy, with characteristic thought and resource, had climbed to the top of two tall and dead gum trees and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... about the head of the swathed figure. I shall never forget the face of the woman as I saw it then. The uncertain flicker of the flames and sparks from our beacon (which, though itself invisible, darkened and lightened like sheet lightning), the dismal umbery glimmer of the waning moon, and the pale approach of day over the mountains to the east, made the face appear almost ghastly. But I was quite unprepared for the effect which the sight ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... that they should sell the house and garden at Wittenberg, and go and live at Zulsdorf. The Elector, he said, would surely leave him his salary at least for one year more, near as he was to the close of his fast-waning life, and he would spend the money in improving his little farm. He begged his wife, if she would, to let Bugenhagen and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... was still. Occasionally a shutter flapped in the wind, the hinges creaking dismally, or some of the loose window-panes rattled as the sash was blown to and fro. It was not a pleasant aspect, and as the afternoon was waning, and the sun was going down, while a cool wind sprang up, Jack was anything but comfortable in his ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... what each asserts. With consummate skill also he arranges his recital like a series of dissolving views, showing how epochs overlap, and how as Babylon is fading Assyria is rising, and as the latter in turn is waning Media is looming into sight. We are, in this third instalment of Maspero's monumental work, brought to understand how the decline of one mighty Asiatic empire after another, culminating in the overthrow of the Persian dominion by Alexander, prepared at length for the entry of Western nations ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... open felucca with the green water running over? You did your best. Five hours out of that pitch black night you beat up, first trying one harbour and then the other. Amalfi gave in first, just as the waning moon rose, and you got under ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... on earth when from the sky The lightning-flashes rent with flame the ramparts of the world, And smitten Athos blazed! Then, Phoebus, sinking to the earth, His course complete, and waning Luna, offerings received. The changing seasons of the year the superstition spread Throughout the world; and Ignorance and Awe, the toiling boor, To Ceres, from his harvest, the first fruits compelled to yield And Bacchus with the fruitful vine to crown. Then Pales ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

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

... shall be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall no more go down,' and 'there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... was slowly withdrawing her waning silvery light from the billowing mass of tawny hair, tumbling in lavender-scented masses around the girl; lingering for a moment on the eyes staring from under the unblinking eyelids, and for a second upon the glint of even teeth showing through ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... seen that, on the continent of Asia, Egypt possessed a nucleus of territories, so far securely under her rule that they might be actually reckoned as provinces; beyond this immediate domain there was a zone of waning influence, whose area varied with each reign, and even under one king depended largely on the activity which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... reformation made itself apparent in Sir Ferdinando's character. He grew regular and economical in his habits; he even became temperate, rarely drinking more than a bottle and a half of port at a sitting. The waning fortune of the Lapiths began once more to wax, and that in despite of the hard times (for Sir Ferdinando married in 1809 in the height of the Napoleonic Wars). A prosperous and dignified old age, cheered by the spectacle of his children's growth and happiness—for ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... oak trees have taken on an autumn look. I am told that this is due to a local irruption of caterpillars, and not to the waning of the summer, but it has a suspicious air. Probably the caterpillars knew. It seems strange now to reflect that there was a time when I liked caterpillars; when I chased them up suburban streets, and took ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... The day was waning now. The fog hung heavy on the treetops, and dripped upon their heads. The horses were getting tired, and slipped and stumbled in the deep clay paths. The footmen were more tired still, and, cold and hungry, straggled more and more. The horse-tracks led over an open lawn of grass and fern, with ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... fancied grievance. On his return he called at the White House and apologized handsomely for his "imprudent language."[261] The President was more than glad to patch up the quarrel, for he could ill afford now, in these waning hours of his administration, to part company with one whom he regarded as "an ardent and active political supporter and friend." Cordial relations resumed, Polk read to Douglas confidentially such portions of his forthcoming message as related to the tariff, the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... stirring moment it is to live in! I never took such intense interest in newspapers. It seems to me as if life were breaking out anew with me, or that I were entering upon quite a new and almost unknown career of existence, and I rejoice to find my sensibilities, which were waning as to many objects of past interest, reviving with all their freshness and vivacity at the scenes and prospects opening around me." He expects the breaking of the thralldom of falsehood woven over ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... Even Wilson became roused at sight of these. He began to realize their value and the power such wealth would give him. If the girl was still alive, he now had the means of moving an army to her aid. If she was still alive—but the day was waning and the Priest, now thoroughly aroused, doubtless moving towards her intent upon wiping out every stranger, man ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... the children home to dinner, and afterwards Jim taught them to throw the lasso and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen and saw the sunbeam grow pale with the waning of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like lead, yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night to face. At sundown she cooked supper, but she no longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had taken possession of her and she spun about the kitchen, doing the same errand many times, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... time, even these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people carried in their minds, until they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered round the winter fire, and waning every year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long remained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were built, and children played at battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long ago made Christmas logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep green patches ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... friend," Kinglake called him; "odious" is the epithet I have heard commonly bestowed upon him by less affectionate acquaintances. Kinglake was reserved, shy, reticent, with the high breeding, grand manner, quiet urbanity, grata protervitas, of a waning epoch; restraint, concentration, tact of omission, dictating alike his silence and his speech; his well-weighed words "crystallizing into epigrams as they touched the air." {26} When Hayward's last illness ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... the Protestant errors of total depravity and predestination for the sake of dwelling on the Biblical and historical credentials of Church authority. He knew, indeed, that extravagant individualism is to this day a fundamental Protestant error, but the waning power of its doctrinal assertion has deprived it of aggressive vigor. There is less danger of its assault upon the Church, Father Hecker thought, than of its sceptical tendency upon its own adherents. To emphasize the obligation ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... thereon, and much marvelled what it might be; and so much, that they beheld how one of the heads of the said tun was newly arrayed. Wherefore they unheaded it, and found the Lady therein, in such case as though her hour were waning, for air failed her. Her body was big, her visage all swollen, and her eyes ugly and troubled. But when she saw the air, and felt the wind, she sighed a little, and the merchants stood about her and called unto her, but she had no might to speak. But at last the ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... paper to the waning light and read: "Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate ... but it shall be called Beulah, for ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... 1598, was in early life a minister in the Palatinate. Driven thence by persecutions in 1635, he was sent to Brazil in 1636 by the Dutch West India Company, and remained there, minister at Itamarca, till the waning of the company's fortunes in that country and the loss of Pernambuco compelled his retirement. In 1654 he went thence to New Netherland, and became provisionally minister of Midwout, the first Dutch church on Long Island. From 1656 to 1660 he was minister of Midwout, Breukelen and ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... Joseph was buried in Egypt, not at Hebron, though he had made the Israelites swear before his death that his mummy should be eventually taken to Palestine. The road to Hebron, it is clear, was no longer open, and the power of the Hyksos princes must have been fast waning. The war of independence had broken out, and the native kings of Upper Egypt were driving the foreigner back into Asia. The rulers of Zoan had no longer troops to spare for a funeral procession through the ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... babyish face came back to him as he had first seen it under floating cherry-colored ribbons, and his anger of the last half-hour melted and vanished utterly away. For the sake of those few months, when the waning fire within him had leaped despairingly toward the flame of life, he knew that he could never quite put Connie from his heart—for the sake of his short romance and for the sake, too, of his child that had lived three hours. The thin, heavily veined hand on the arm of his ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... 4th. Public interest in the abortive attempt to reinstate Dom Corria De Sylva as President was waning rapidly when it was fanned into fresh activity by news that reached this port to-day. It appears that on the 31st ulto. a daring effort was made to free De Sylva, who, with certain other ministers expelled by the successful revolution of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... reached the rear guard of the army of Rosecrans, which was already marching southward in the direction of Chattanooga to meet that of Bragg. They advanced now over the Cumberland mountains through a country wild and thinly inhabited. The summer was waning, but it was cool on the mountains and in the passes, nor was it so dry as the year before, when they fought that terrible battle at Perryville ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... it was but just that those should obtain it, by whose blood and sweat it was obtained." The patricians rejected the proposal with scorn; some even complained that the once brilliant talents of Kaeso were now becoming wanton, and were waning through excess of glory. There were afterwards no factions in the city. The Latins were harassed by the incursions of the AEqui. Kaeso being sent thither with an army, passes into the very territory of the AEqui to depopulate ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... kind-hearted Josephine viewed all these things with sadness, for her power over the heart of her husband was waning, and the sun of her glory had set. Her prayers and tears had no longer a prevailing influence over Bonaparte, and she had not been able to avert the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... another city dweller they may take habit for preference, but the longing for the freedom of the woods, though unconscious, will voice itself some way. The nighthawk's cry, falling from the high gold of the waning sunset to dusky pasture glades, has no note of melancholy but a soothing sleepiness about it that makes it a lullaby of contentment. I rarely hear him after dark. I fancy he goes higher and higher to keep in the soft radiance of the fading glow. Only once have ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... skilled ease, the flow as of original composition, the sustained spirit, and force, and fervour—in short, by the mastery, and by the keen zest of Writing. They are the works of his more than matured mind—of his waning life; and they show a rare instance of a talent so steadfastly and perseveringly self-improved, as that, in life's seventh decennium, the growth of Art overweighed the detriment of Time. But, in good truth, no detriment of time is here perceptible; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... watch-chain. The men at the booths sat down to lunch upon the least presentable of their own pies. The proprietor of the magic arrow, who had already two large breastpins on his dirty shirt, selected from his own board another to grace his coat-collar, as if thereby to summon back the waning fortunes of the day. But Madam Delia still sat at her post, undaunted. She kept her eye on two sauntering militia-men in uniform, but they only read her sign and seated themselves on the curbstone, to smoke. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... ever!" he answered, glancing to where Anthea sat with her chin propped in her hand, gazing up at the waning moon, seemingly quite ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... have a noiseless, desultory, dawdling, almost stationary quality, which makes them less of an offence than usual. It was a Sunday afternoon and the light was yellow save under the trees of the avenue, where, in spite of the waning of September, it was duskily green. Three or four peasants, in festal attire, were strolling about. On a bench at the beginning of the avenue sat a man with two women. As I advanced with my companions ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... oak-trees, whose wide and shadowy boughs seemed to offer her the protection of which she was in need. Farther and farther sank the sun, leaving clouds of purple and gold to fade into the soft shades of twilight. The hush of evening fell upon nature; stars peeped out. Laura watched the waning light until, too tired to keep her eyes open, she laid her head upon her little knapsack, and was soon in a deep slumber. Whether or not wild beasts came prowling about, or owls hooted, or the night winds sighed in the tree-tops, ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... through a lot of stock arguments familiar to every man, woman and child in America, but in the meantime kept a furtive eye on the clock at the end of the court room, and gleefully observed that the afternoon was waning, and that outside it threatened an early twilight, intensified by a new fall of snow. He decided that it was time to get in his precious work of assisting the Judge's ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... sat was unlighted save by the waning sun, and I could see but little of its long vista, without neglecting a very imperious appetite. The lattice was covered, I thought, with vine-leaves, and I felt sure, too, that some orange boughs, reaching across the patio wall, mingled with the foliage ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... hardly come in at this time and the coffin was carried by the mourners on long stakes. The straggling procession of pedestrians behind wound its slow way in the waning light to the kirkyard, showing startlingly black against the dazzling snow; and it was not until the earth rattled on the coffin-lid that Little Rathie's nearest male relative seemed to remember his last mournful duty to the dead. Sidling up to the favoured mourners, he remarked casually and in ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... go with me—that when my failing age needs your young hand, it shall be ready; and that so the master's waning powers may be forgotten in the ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... and put them back again without remark to resume the interrupted contemplation of Fifth Avenue in the waning light of a drab, drizzly day. A man in a shiny "slicker" was pushing a sweep and shovel in the centre of the thoroughfare. They wondered how long it would be before a motor ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... lamps, they made far more rapid progress than poor Derrick had in the darkness, and soon approached the place where he had discovered the dim, reflected light above the mouth of the old air-shaft. Just here the oil in their leader's lamp began to give out, and its flame to burn with a waning and uncertain light. ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... the Moon that is waning, thou movest along— Silent, pensive, and pale—through thy sorrow's dark Night; For thou draw'st from the rays of our bright Sun of Song The white coldness that lives where ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... [impatiently.] Isn't there the match of her in every parish public, from Binghamstown unto the plain of Meath? Come on, I tell you, and I'll find you finer sweethearts at each waning moon. ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... to lead him to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... essential that the sowing take place between the time of the burning and the next full moon. But the exact date varies according to the locality. Thus, in Umaam district, the time for sowing is said to be the ninth day after the first waning moon that follows that spell of hot weather, known as guybang, whereas in the upper Agsan 12 nights are counted from the first new moon after the guybang and the sowing takes place the following day. It is thought that this procedure ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... in the same kind are for the most part very inferior: they could hardly fail to be so, seeing that the formative, plastic powers of a language are always waning and diminishing more and more. It may be, and indeed is, gaining in other respects, but in this it is losing; and thus it is not strange if its later births in this kind are less successful than its earlier. Among the poets of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

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

... Mr. Bryan's defeat in 1900 was the incipient waning of anti-imperialism, the conviction growing, even among such as had doubted this long and seriously, that the Administration painfully faulty as were some of its measures in the new lands, was pursuing there absolutely the only honorable or benevolent ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... glare-like lightning's flash springing forth between the pillars of the portico—on swiftly by it, lest thy heart faileth and thou diest. Having passed this temple, take the winding road at its rear. This will bring thee to where three roads meet, and there thou wilt see, by the light of the waning moon and the flickering stars, an altar, and, rising above it, the three-figured statue of the Triple Goddess. She, as Hecate, holding in her hands the keys of hell and of death, facing the pit in which the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... The afternoon was waning, and the declining sun cast a genial glow upon the weatherboarded front; gilding, too, the near side of a crooked flag-pole set jauntily in the yard. Except for evidences of recent life the place seemed utterly deserted, and emboldened, even though disappointed by this, he went ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... submit sketches for the Town Hall—the Palazzo Vecchio—and Michael Angelo was his rival. The choice fell to Angelo, and after a life of supremacy Leonardo could not endure the humiliation with grace. Added to disappointment, someone declared that Leonardo's powers were waning because he was growing old. This was more than he could bear, and he left Italy for France, where the king had invited him to come and spend the remainder of his life. Francis I. had wished to have the picture in the Milan monastery taken to France, but that ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon



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



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