"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the countries that play politics with pestilence. But if he's sent here, he'll get in some way. In fact, Stark, the public-health surgeon at Puerto del Norte, let fall a hint that makes me think he's on his way now. Probably in some cockleshell of a small boat manned ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... alone again, that was all—alone, as in reality he had always been alone, without having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had said had been the mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and irrevocable between ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... over these months in which he fished salmon and trout, climbed the frowning escarpments of the Coast Range, gave himself up to the spell of a region which is still potent with the charm of the wilderness untamed. There had always lingered in his receptive mind a memory of profound beauty, a stark beauty of color and outline, an unhampered freedom, opportunity as vast as the mountains that looked from their cool heights down on the changeful sea and the hushed forests, brooding in the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... March, one sunny day, and foretold that, ere the next noon passed, a terrible tempest would devastate Scotland. The stout Earl laughed, but his laughter was short, for by next day at noon the tidings came that Alexander III., that much loved King, was lying stiff and stark on the sands of Kinghorn. He also foretold the battles of Flodden and Pinkie, and the dule and woe which would follow the defeat of the Scottish arms; but he ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the mother's breast; there was the lover, stretched across the dainty limbs of his adored! The rats, (for they clustered in numbers to that feast,) disturbed, not scared, sate up from their horrid meal as the light glimmered over them, and thousands of them lay round, stark, and dead, poisoned by that they fed on! There, too, the wild satire of the gravediggers had cast, though stripped of their gold and jewels, the emblems that spoke of departed rank;—the broken wand of the Councillor; the General's baton; the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of my men, Thou shalt have the very flower; Vidrik, and stark Diderik, Many kemps ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... the heat, her passions, hunger, and wretchedness, her head was turned, and she became so mad that she went out of the house stark naked, and ran up and down St. Peter's Place, asking those who stopped her to take her to my house. This sad story went all over the town and caused me a great deal of annoyance. The poor wretch was sent to an asylum, and did not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. Stark was encamped upon the same side of it ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Just for luck I put the wheel hard over in the opposite direction to which it had been left by Hermann, and I lean back and gaze up at the stars. There is nothing else for me to do. There is nothing to be done with a sailing vessel rolling in a stark calm. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Chatterton. Everybody who was musical, wanted to revel in her voice; and everybody who wasn't, wanted the same thing because it was so talked about. So she was asked to sing at musicales and receptions without end, until Alexia exclaimed at last, "They are all raving, stark-mad over her, and it's all Polly's own fault, the whole ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... take a two-dollar bill instead of a one, as Mr. Stark would hardly notice the mistake. Still, he might ask to look at the bill, and that would be awkward. So the boy contented himself ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... question. This was Paris' case, And he was blind in 't, and there was a great cause; For how was 't possible he could judge right, Having three amorous goddesses in view, And they stark naked? 'Twas a motion Were able to benight the apprehension Of the severest counsellor of Europe. Now I look on both your faces so well form'd, It puts me in mind of a question I ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... June, Gone like the rose the winter through, Save in the ribbed anatomy Of ebon line the moonlight drew, Stark on the snow, of tower or tree, Like letters of a ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... most extraordinary thing that men should be 'judges,' being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have absolutely no influence on their conduct. The same stark, staring inconsequence is visible in many other departments of life, but in this region it works its most tragic results. The message which many of my hearers need most is—follow out your deepest convictions, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the desert thus it was, 70 As I came through the desert: I was twain, Two selves distinct that cannot join again; One stood apart and knew but could not stir, And watched the other stark in swoon and her; And she came on, and never turned aside, 75 Between such sun and moon and roaring tide: And as she came more near My soul ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... in a whisper. She clenched her hands and leapt from the chair, fighting down her grief and with such a stark horror in her beautiful eyes that from my very soul I longed to be able ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... time it was grey dawn, and we were working up in shore, without dreaming of breaking the blockade, when it fell stark calm. Presently the Spanish squadron, anchored under Punto Canoa, perceived us, when a corvette, two schooners, a cutter, and eight gunboats, got under weigh, the latter of which soon swept close to us, ranging themselves on our bows and quarters; and although we showed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... narrows, he went by lanes parallel with it as far as the Rue St. Denis, which he crossed. Everywhere he saw houses gutted and doors burst in, and traces of a cruelty and a fanaticism almost incredible. Near the Rue des Lombards he saw a dead child, stripped stark and hanged on the hook of a cobbler's shutter. A little farther on in the same street he stepped over the body of a handsome young woman, distinguished by the length and beauty of her hair. To obtain her bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands; afterwards—but God knows how long ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... shortly. "Stark, staring mad! No thanks to you that every bone in your body isn't broken. I wonder what Miss Phipps would have said if she had come in, while you were pirouetting on the mantelpiece! It would have been your turn to be surprised then, my ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I lay, stark with fear. But my visitor seemed to be very harmless. She drew up a chair by the side of the bed and took her seat, muttering something I couldn't catch. Then she bent over me and I felt her warm breath on ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about you, and about our acquaintance and our love-making, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... its possessors at the beginning a marked military and governmental superiority over the neighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it a certain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk at the mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savage souls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people that had been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling waves of barbarism wash over them. ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... cease, for why should I prolong My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song? Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist! Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist, So pleased the printer's orders to perform For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme. Go—Get thee hence to Paternoster Row, Thy patrons wave a duodecimo! (Best form for letters from a distant ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... happened. He found himself standing on his feet, entangled in the frozen branches of a fir tree. A little way off he heard Gamechick, whinnying with fear, while under a fallen boulder Colonel Fortescue's horse lay, his neck broken. Close by Colonel Fortescue lay stark upon the ground. Broussard ran to him; he was lying upon his back and said as coolly ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... powwow in a confusion of gutturals, with a plentiful mixture of saliva; for it is a moist language, a gurgle that approaches a gargle, and in three weeks the unaccustomed ear scarcely recovers from the first shock of it; a memory of totem poles in stark array, and of the high feast in the Indian villages, where the beauty and chivalry of the forest gathered and squatted in wide circles listening to some old-man-eloquent in the very ecstasy of expectoration; the memory of a non-committing, uncommunicative race, whose religion is ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... visits to Benham became of necessity more frequent; flying trips, but he generally managed to obtain a few words with Selma. He continued to lend her books, and he invited her criticism on the slowly growing church edifice. The responsibility of critic was an absorbing sensation to her, but the stark glibness of tongue which stood her in good stead before the classes of the Institute failed her in his presence—the presence of real knowledge. She wished to praise, but to praise discriminatingly, with the cant of aesthetic appreciation, so that he should believe that she knew. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... that seriatim I would enumerate. First there is natural strength and will. All other trades have their limits, when a man may tell himself, 'That's the best I can do,' and shut his book or set down the tool with no disgrace in the relinquishment. But a soger's is a different ploy; he must stand stark against all encountering, nor cry a parley even with the lance at his throat. Oh, man! man! I had a delight in it in my time for all its trials. I carried claymore (so to name it, ours was a less handsome weapon, you'll observe), in the ranting, roving humour of a boy; I sailed ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee, Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What, sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... twelve-pound carronades— still unsecured, with their rammers and sponges flung down on the deck beside them, shot lying in the scuppers, overturned wadding-tubs, cutlasses, pistols, boarding-pikes, strewed all over the deck, and— horrible sight—several dark, silent figures lying stark and still in pools of blood, just as they had fallen in the fight. The ship's davits were empty, both her gigs having been lowered to facilitate the transfer of the plunder to the brigantine; her long-boat also was in the water, as already stated, but there were two fine cutters lying bottom up over ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the eaves and under the leads of churches (though a recent edict by the Bench of Bishops has forbidden them the towers by causing wire netting to be placed over the louvre boards), and also in places the most remote from mankind. In the most solitary groves on Beaulieu Heath, under the ledges of stark Cornish precipices, and in ruins on islets in mountain lochs in Scotland, they tend their hungry nestlings with the same assiduous care. The good done by the starlings throughout the spring, summer, and autumn is incalculable. The young are fed entirely on insect food, and as the birds always seek ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... and duty! But come along with me, I'll write a note to Mrs. Malaprop, and you shall visit the lady directly. Her eyes shall be the Promethean torch to you—come along, I'll never forgive you, if you don't come back stark mad with rapture and impatience—if you don't, egad, I will marry ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... they were ordered into the "brig," a jail-house between two guns on the main-deck, where prisoners are kept. Here they laid for some time, stretched out stark and stiff, with their arms folded over their breasts, like so many effigies of the Black Prince on his monument ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle. I said something about the stark romance of it—of Jeb Stuart flitting like a wraith through the forests; of Sheridan's attack at Chattanooga, when the charging troops on the ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of Leonidas Polk, last of the warrior Bishops, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and was already about the ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... who supplies new feeling fresh from God, quickens and regenerates the race, and sets it on the King's highway from which it has wandered into by-ways—not the man of mere intellect, of unkindled soul, that supplies only stark-naked thought. Through the former, "God stooping shows sufficient of His light for those i' the dark to rise by." ('R. and B., Pompilia'.) In him men discern "the dawn of the next nature, the new man whose ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... is life? Nay, I would rather see The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, All that he was and all he thought to be: The rebel stark against his country's laws: God's own mad lover, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... stand me in greater stead than I was aware of: could tell her, before me, that she must for the future shew me all the respect due to one he must love; at another, acknowledged before her, that he had been stark naught, and that I was very forgiving; again, to Mrs. Jewkes, putting himself on a level with her, as to guilt, "We are both in generous hands: and, indeed, if Pamela did not pardon you, I should think she ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... position had made my house, where, of course, I allowed no signs of poverty to appear, exceedingly popular. My Wednesday receptions became more brilliant than ever. Interesting strangers sought me out, in the hope that they, too, might attain to equal fortune through knowing me. Fraulein Ingeborg Stark, who afterwards married young Hans von Bronsart, put in an appearance among us, a vision of bewitching elegance, and played the piano, in which she was modestly assisted by Fraulein Aline Hund of Weimar. A highly gifted young French musician, Camille Saint-Saens, also played ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... inability and folly of the Comptroller that occasions it. When come home I to Sir W. Pen's, to his boy, for my book, and there find he hath it not, but delivered it to the doorekeeper of the Committee for me. This, added to my former disquiet, made me stark mad, considering all the nakedness of the office lay open in papers within those covers. I could not tell in the world what to do, but was mad on all sides, and that which made me worse Captain Cocke was there, and he did so swear and curse at ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... on 'Hamlet's' forehead, and a glimmer of something dangerous in his eye, as he glanced on his stark acquaintance. But the feeling was transitory and unreasonable, and he greeted him with a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... should set all Bellfont in a flame, but for my care of her. Heaven and earth should not restrain me,—no, they should not,——But her least frown should still me, tame me, and make me a calm coward: say this, say all, say any thing to charm her rage and tears. Oh I am mad, stark-mad, and ready to run on business I die to think her guilty of: tell her how it would grieve her to see me torn and mangled; to see that hair she loves ruffled and diminish'd by rage, violated by my insupportable grief, myself quite bereft of all sense but that of love, but that ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... boats, But they turn back, ... The frigate toward Germany drifting floats, A broken wrack! What once had been ours overboard was strown, Each kinship mark Was quickly removed, to the sea it was thrown With curses stark! The Northern lion, that figure-head gray, Now had to fall, In pieces 'twas hewn, and the frigate lay Like a shattered wall. ... Repaired and refitted, its canvas it spread Near Germany's coast, With ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Dissatisfaction with his conduct led Congress to replace him in command by General Gates. On the 13th of August Burgoyne despatched a force to Bennington, Vermont, under the German colonel Friedrich Baum, to capture stores and overawe the country. On the 16th Baum was attacked by General John Stark with the militia from the surrounding country, and was overwhelmed. Colonel Breyman, marching to his relief, was also routed. The misfortune cost the British 1000 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... there's your cousin, Wendell Phillips, out on the Common, hanging stark on the limb of ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... this second night, it is no common apprehension which keeps him awake, but one of the intensest kind, akin to stark terror. For, added to the fear of his fellow man, there is something besides—a fear of God; or, rather of the Devil. His soul is now disturbed by a dread of the supernatural. He saw Charles Clancy stretched dead, under the cypress—was sure of it, before parting from the spot. Returning ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... is in my power to present a drawing, made expressly for the purpose, of the picturesque costume worn by the Royal Company of Archers, or King's Body Guard of Scotland. This is described in Stark's "Picture of Edinburgh" thus:—"Their uniform is 42nd tartan, with green velvet collar and cuffs, and a Highland bonnet, with feathers; on the front of the bonnet is the cross of St. Andrew, and a gold arrow on the collar of the jacket." There is a something in the very idea of an archer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... hare nor partridge, but those they caught themselves would eat heartily: The pains, and the story a man tells of the taking them, makes the meat go down more pleasantly. Besides, last night I had a sweet dream of her, and, gad, she I have once dreamed of, I am stark mad till I enjoy her, let her be ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... all he can bestow,— If he gives that wi' willin heart, he does some gooid below. An when th' time comes, as come it will, when th' race is at an end, He'll dee noa poorer for what gooid he's ivver done a friend. An when they gently put him by,—unconscious, stiff an stark, His epetaph shall be, 'Here's one 'at didn't miss ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... went down the great staircase of Gaunt House, the morning had risen stark and clear over the black trees of the square; the skies were tinged with pink; and the cheeks of some of the people at the ball,—ah, how ghastly they looked! That admirable and devoted Major above all,—who had been for hours by Lady Clavering's side, ministering to her and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a tree-shaded pool that had formed in the bed of a stream running across the farm. They had no bathing frocks but their skins, and sometimes Clive, sitting stark on the bank, palette in hand, painted the others as they tumbled in the dark brown water, sporting and splashing like a lot of schoolboys. Afterwards they would mooch home through the shimmering noontide heat, deliciously tired, wrapped in reflection ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Darry, and Pete—Pete, he say de meetin' de oder night war 'bout de best meetin' he eber 'tended; he wouldn't miss it for not'ing in de world; he's sure; and dere's ole 'Lize; and de two Jems—no, dere's tree Jems dat is ser'ous; and Stark, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was set on his head that did it. She lived to see herself despoiled of her estate, and of her moveables: and lastly, her father, by rendering up to the Crown of France the Earldom of Provence and other places, for the payment of fifty thousand crowns for her ransom, to become a stark beggar. And this was the end of that subtility, which Siracides calleth "fine" but "unrighteous:" for other fruit hath it never ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the Travis Underwoods, Phyllis's young man's bosses. If he makes as good a thing of it as they have done, she will be no end of a swell. Mr. Travis Underwood has brought down his hunters and gives me a mount. Claude would go stark staring ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moonlight killed the pallor of Karyl's face, but added a note of stark accentuation to his set chin and labored self-containment. Von Ritz, despite his bedraggled masquerade was as composed and expressionless as though he had seen nothing beyond the expected. With Von Ritz nothing was ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Warren, Ohio, and the same year removed to Canton, Ohio, which has since been his home. In 1867 his first political speeches were made in favor of negro suffrage. In 1869 was elected prosecuting attorney of Stark County, and served one term, being defeated two years later for the same office. Mr. McKinley took an active interest in State politics, and made speeches in many of the campaigns. On January 25, 1871, married Miss Ida Saxton. Two daughters were born to them, both of whom ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... and how black they would all look at that!' No; to enquire, perhaps too curiously, what that present state of English development and civilization is, which according to Mr. Lowe is so perfect that to give votes to the working class is stark madness; and, on the other hand, to be less sanguine about the divine and saving effect of a vote on its possessor than my friends in the committee-room at the Spotted Dog—that is my inevitable portion. To bring things under the light of one's intelligence, to see how ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... The great man-seal haul out of the sea, a-roaring, band by band; And when the first September gales have slaked their rutting-wrath, The great man-seal haul back to the sea and no man knows their path. Then dark they lie and stark they lie — rookery, dune, and floe, And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to dance with the houseless snow; And God Who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the wind along the snow. But since ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... eighteen brothers Diderik stark Dwells in the hills of Bern; And each I wot twelve sons has got, For manly ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Ascanius aimed his speedy shafts in war, Wherewith but fleeing beasts afield he used to fright before: 590 But now at last his own right hand the stark Numanus slays, Who had to surname Remulus, and in these latter days King Turnus' sister, young of years, had taken to his bed: He in the forefront of the fight kept crying out, and said Things worthy and unworthy tale: puffed up with ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to his sire, hail! and may Jove augment his good grace to thee, Door! which of old, men say, didst serve Balbus benignly, whilst the oldster held his home here; and which contrariwise, so 'tis said, didst serve with grudging service after the old man was stretched stark, thou doing service to the bride. Come, tell us why thou art reported to be changed and to have renounced thine ancient faithfulness ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... back of his head. It was a spectacle I could not bear to contemplate at length, while from the first I found myself physically unable to face the ferocious gaze of those implacable eyes. But Raffles only laughed at my squeamishness, and flung a dust-sheet over man and chair; and the stark outline drove me from ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the landlady that our father and mother and brother were all laid in one grave. And I remember going home, and seeing the stone flags up in the yard, and a deep dark hole near the pump, and thinking that was the grave; and how Margery found me stark with fright, and knew better, and told me that the grave was in the church-yard, and that this hole was only where workmen had been digging ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... when his thousand warriors fled— Their low-born valour quail'd and gone— He—the meek leader of that band— Remained, and fought alone. He stood; fierce foemen throng'd around; The hollow death-groans of despair. The clashing sword, the cleaving axe, The murd'rous dirk were there. Valour more stark, or hands more strong, Ne'er urged the brand or launch'd the spear But what were these to that old man! God ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... was never set in motion than the army I command, sir. They are our stark fighters—men who individually or in the mass can be depended on for any feat of arms in the power of mortals to accomplish. I know them from experience. They will blanch at nothing—yet ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Gibt uns Mut zu frischem Tun, Gibt uns Muesse, um am Herde Sonder Sorge auszuruhn. Aus des Bodens Scholle ziehen Wir des Lebens bestes Mark, Aus des Bodens Kraft erbluehen Die Geschlechter frei und stark. ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle
... the baneful night air. In the main room a drop-light with shade flung its radiance on a table and lit up the anxious faces of the few men gathered round it. It showed one poor fellow bolt upright, unspeaking, unmoving, his fixed white eyeballs staring into space, as though he would go stark mad. Those eyes have forever burned themselves into my brain, a pitiful protest against a mad, wild ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... choir. The only light penetrating the convent church proceeded from the moon, whose rays, shining through the painted windows, fell upon the graves of the old abbots in the presbytery, and on the two biers within the adjoining chapel, whose stark burthens they quickened into ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over her winding-sheet, There stark she lay on her carven bed: Seven burning tapers about her feet, And ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... eyes half shut as he looked at some inward vision. 'It was not at the great milliner's. It was at the Hotel-Dieu, in Bouchereau's department. A rough, white-washed cell, an iron bedstead with all the clothes thrown off, and on it, stark naked, covered with sweat and foam, contorted and twisted like a clown with sudden springs and with yells that re-echoed through the fore-court of Notre Dame, a madman in the last agony. Beside the bed two women, one on either side, the Sister, and one of Bouchereau's little lady-students, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... longer shall language be dumb! Thy vision shall grasp— As one doth the glittering hasp Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold— The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely. And out of the stark Eternity, awful and dark, Immensity silent and cold,— Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metals That cymbal; yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals, Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,— ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... first, then loudly, frantically. But no answer came, except that now the mocking din of the baboons seemed to jeer at us. They appeared to be gathered near us, all together. As we ran towards the sound the moon burst through a rift in the clouds. There ahead of us, stark naked, and running swiftly towards the baboons, we saw the figure of Hector, his body gleaming white in the moonbeams, and by his side the grey ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... after Burr's release Louis and Richard Hautville came home. They had been trapping on Green Mountain, they said, camping in the little lodge they had built there. When they came in laden with stark white rabbits and limp-necked birds, and one of them with a haunch of venison on his back, Madelon faced them with sudden fierceness, as if to speak. Then she turned away to her work, without a word of greeting. The boy Richard stared at ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Stark and immense it pointed up at the sky, a mass of steel and glass, set in a huge slab of concrete. Even as they watched the gun moved on its swivel base, whirring underneath. A slim vane turned with the wind, a network of rods atop a ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... to be led, but straightway followed the awful sounds, until she reached the chamber behind whose door they were shut. Upon the huge disordered bed, Sir Jeoffry writhed, and tried to tear himself, his great sinewy and hairy body almost stark. Two of the stable men were ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... once had I thought of it. Bare, stark, glaring up at the sun, lay the stone carved with the letters and the cross-bones. Forgetting in the haste of my departure to replace the vines upon the grave, I had left the stone to shout its secret to the first ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Johnstones and Armstrongs, and on the English the Graemes of Netherby; both clans being alike wild and lawless. It was a popular border saying that "Elliots and Armstrongs ride thieves a';" and an old historian says of the Graemes that "they were all stark moss-troopers and arrant thieves; to England as well as Scotland outlawed." The neighbouring chiefs were no better: Scott of Buccleugh, from whom the modern Duke is descended, and Scott of Harden, the ancestor of the novelist, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... thy soul, it is thou also that must bear the blame. It made Cain stark mad to consider that he had not looked to his brother Abel's soul. How much more will it perplex thee to think that thou hadst not a care of thine own? And if this will not provoke thee to bestir ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... misogynist exclaim, after reading it—"this is rank nonsense—it is stark lunacy!" And so it is, perhaps. At all events, these impassioned words are supposed to be uttered by a poor youth who had gone mad from love. Our misogynist—and may I venture to include the experienced married man?—will probably retort, that all love between young ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... fell continuously buried him, so that his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass, and nothing was left to indicate the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... chance escaped from the guardians which the good earl of Kent had put over him to' take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... commonplace realism of the average modern rhymester. Another bit of sinister psychology in verse is "The Unknown," by Elizabeth Berkeley. Mrs. Berkeley's style is less restrained than that of Mrs. Jordan, and presents a picture of stark, meaningless horror, the like of which is not often seen in the amateur press. It is difficult to pass upon the actual merit of so peculiar a production, but we will venture the opinion that the use of italics, or heavy-faced type, is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes, and off he goes!) within a rood— Bog, clay, and rubble, sand, and stark ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... valley a strip of blue sea bounds the horizon; westward are the distant mountains. In the foreground, in front of a farmhouse, snug-looking, with its roof of velvety-brown thatch, a troop of sturdy urchins, suntanned and stark naked, are frisking in the wildest gambols, all heedless of the scolding voice of the withered old grandam who sits spinning and minding the house, while her son and his wife are away toiling at some outdoor labour. Close at our feet runs a ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... him: He said, that these people were very dark-coloured, but not black; that the man and woman appeared to be very old, being both grey-headed; that the hair of the man's head was bushy, and his beard long and rough; that the woman's hair was cropped short, and both of them were stark naked. Mr Monkhouse the surgeon, and one of the men, who were with another party near the watering-place, also strayed from their companions, and as they were coming out of a thicket, observed six Indians standing together, at the distance of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... interfering in the good of others when he frequently met with unsuitable returns? "I could tell you, sir," says Macklin. "Well do sir; you are a man of sense and observation, and I should be glad of your definition." "Why then sir, the cause is impudence—nothing but stark-staring impudence." ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... excess; made himself for the most part a reasonable and sufficiently agreeable companion; and had no higher tastes, unless a collection of coins, well mounted and arranged and at times added to, may claim that title. He therefore considered Haviland stark mad in spending so much money and brains upon nonsense; and the subject made him testy when he reviewed his refusal to accept some arrangement by which they could share the local ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... it was opened and the stones pulled away. Bender was then discovered lying only a few feet back from the entrance. He appeared to have dashed the kettle aside, as if seeking to quench the fire and smoke. Tige was close behind him, Watch farther back. Very stark and grim all four looked when finally they were hauled out with a pole and hook and given a ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... left their wigwams and their love. By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark, Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh, Went forth to live on roots and bark, Sleep in the trees, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched.... On the field of Waterloo the blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland flowed in the same stream and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon this union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... remembered, a very queer passage. Certain magistrates in Berkshire, Puritan magistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer night they had ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they had come upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked, among the sheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their horses into the crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly have felt, how helpless without their clothes against armed and booted horsemen! The dancers were arrested, whipped, gaoled, set in the stocks; the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... putting a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark, Bedlam crazy!" ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... and stark and empty place, as you must perceive. And the far side did be great miles off, as I did say; and everywhere there was abundance of rock and lonesomeness. And before me there went the great and dim length of the gorge, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... interrupted suddenly by the familiar warning that rang in his mind like a bell. He realized suddenly, as he became blazingly aware of his surroundings, that he had somehow wandered into a definitely low-class neighborhood. Around him were the stark, plain housing groups of Class Six families. The streets were more dimly lit, and there was almost no one on the street, since it was after curfew time for Sixes. The nearest pedestrian was a block ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the mules and ponies captured by the thieving band of Dog Indians. But there was a greater loss than these. The Kiowas had come for revenge. It was blood, not plunder, they wanted. A dozen men with arrow wounds reported at roll call, and six men lay stark dead under the pitiless sky. Among them Davis of the St. Louis train, who had been too ill to take part in the struggle. One more loss was there to report, but it ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... enter into further detail. Another chamber was prepared for Eleanor's reception, to which she was almost immediately transported. The remains of the once fierce and haughty Luke, now stiff and stark, but still wearing, even in death, their proud character, were placed upon the self-same bier, and covered with the self-same pall which, but a week ago, had furnished forth his father's funeral. And as the domestics crowded round the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that has been forced too long to wing its broken way, the Eagle of the Sky—still two hundred yards from shore—lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderous hail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark, sun-baked Sahara shore. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the hotel saloon, and through the open door came the fragrance of mint and pineapple. There was a white-clad, wax-mustached man behind the bar in there, who, as Markham knew, could make a morning cocktail "to raise the dead," and not to raise them stark and rigid, like the bodies in Dora's "Judgment Day," but flexile and full of life. "Jack could mix me something that would help," he thought, and turned instinctively, but checked himself. More than a year had passed since he had tasted a morning ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... if you have not gone stark mad, you must have had a sunstroke," said Harold, coming forward, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... spell, man. Old Shotover sold himself to the devil in Zanzibar. The devil gave him a black witch for a wife; and these two demon daughters are their mystical progeny. I am tied to Hesione's apron-string; but I'm her husband; and if I did go stark staring mad about her, at least we became man and wife. But why should you let yourself be dragged about and beaten by Ariadne as a toy donkey is dragged about and beaten by a child? What do you get by it? ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... poured rum down his throat, and bandaged him up, and has sent for t' first doctor in Monkshaven for to get t' slugs out; for they say there's niver such a harpooner in a' t' Greenland seas; an' I can speak fra' my own seeing he's a fine young fellow where he lies theere, all stark and wan for weakness and loss o' blood. But Darley's dead as a door-nail; and there's to be such a burying of him as niver was seen afore i' Monkshaven, come Sunday. And now gi' us t' iron, wench, and let's lose no more ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... finds wherewithal to feed and quench his thirst, John Howland shall bring a mantle or cloak from my house to throw about him, for it is not seemly that our people should see us entertaining a man stark as ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... endeavored to masturbate him, which he resisted, but performed it for them. After the closing time came, I and about ten or twelve men all occupied the same room; the old man continued to play, and the youth, stark naked, continued to dance and suggested we others should do so, and an erotic scene took place which was only closed to view by the 'boss' who was present ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Stiffly stark and still they stood, Clad in elfish clothes; Some were wax, and some were wood, One had crushed his nose. "Playthings rare," he said and smiled, "For children rich and poor; Some I'll leave the crippled child, And some at the ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat, like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their wounded were few—for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them all—dead—lying out there dead—and they were willing to die themselves for the blood of the old woman—a negro for whom white ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... which was, however, suited to her character, was a second aunt, married to the Pastor Stark, incumbent of St. Catharine's Church. He lived much alone, in accordance with his temperament and vocation, and possessed a fine library. Here I first became acquainted with Homer, in a prose translation, which may be found in the seventh part of Herr Von Loen's ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and its appurtenancies, and one feels that the battle might have taken place yesterday. Strange that this town is an important and busy railway junction and yet so little has the old-world appearance of the place suffered in consequence; here are no ugly rows of railwaymen's cottages in stark evidence on the hillsides; in actual fact the coming of the railway has added to the antiquarian and historical interest of the town, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... no luck worse than his. In the evening, Cossacks came round him; stript him stark-naked; threw him, face foremost, into the nearest swampy place, and went their way. One of these devils had something so absurd and Teniers-like in the face of him, that Kleist, in his pains, could not help laughing at remembrance of it. In the night some Russian Hussars, human and not Cossack, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Pope stark mad; he stamped, foamed, and raved like one in a phrenzy: he swore the painter should suffer the most cruel death that could be invented, unless he drew another full as good as the former, for if but the least grace was missing, he ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... of the stark fiscal facts of the 1960's clearly demonstrates where the primary blame for rising prices ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wrappings that enveloped her from head to foot. There, too, standing near to her were the Khania Atene and her uncle the old Shaman, who looked but ill at ease, and lastly, stretched upon his funeral couch, the fiery light beating upon his stark form and face, lay ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window. Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... way they looked, there were barracks the color of the dust, and long stark roads, new and rough, the color of the barracks, with jitneys and trucks and men like ants crawling furiously back and forth upon them all animated by the same great necessity that had brought the men here. Even the sky seemed yellow like the dust. The trees ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... Owing to this, several families in Mal-hado were in great straits while the Spaniards resided among them, as many had died and the survivors strictly observed the custom. The houses in the island were of mats, and strewed with oyster shells, on which they lay at night stark naked round the fire. The inhabitants of the province of Tegesta[136], reaching from the Martyrs to Cape Cannaveral, feed better than those Indians among whom Cabeza resided, being extraordinarily expert fishers. Two of them will venture out in a small canoe to attack, whales when any are seen ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... carefully. "I meant to christen him Robinson Crusoe," she explained, as she laid the small garments, one by one, on the straw; "but he can't be Robinson Crusoe till I've dressed him up again." The doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and shoulders, and bulging bags of sawdust ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Stark related the finding of the hidden wealth of the murdered man which he had secured, an involuntary exclamation of surprise burst from the assembled listeners, and when he had finished his story a sigh of apparent ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the fireflies beginning to sparkle, when he rode through the home gates. In the dusk of the world, out of the deeper shadow of the surrounding trees, his house looked grimly upon him. The light had been at the side; all the front was stark and black with shuttered windows. He rode to the back of the house and hallooed to the slaves in the home quarter, where were lights and noisy laughter, and one deep voice singing ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... at the door of the next room. She knew both the speakers well. Ebenezer Jenkyns had indeed been paying her some attention of late, although she laughed him to scorn. Much more to her liking was bold John Stark, her father's kinsman; and as there was nobody in the room beside these two, she ventured to go a step ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... there lived a man whose name was Knoist, and he had three sons. One was blind, the other lame, and the third stark-naked. Once on a time they went into a field, and there they saw a hare. The blind one shot it, the lame one caught it, the naked one put it in his pocket. Then they came to a mighty big lake, on which there were three ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... mantle of everlasting snow spread its folds, with here and there a black ridge of granite thrusting wind-cleared fangs high above the far-flung shroud. But, if the crests of peak upon peak were thus clothed in white, their bases wore a garment of different texture. Save on the seaward terraces of stark rock, with their tide-marked base of weed-covered boulders, the densest vegetation known to mankind imposed everywhere a first barrier to human progress far more unconquerable than the awesome regions beyond. Pine forests of extraordinary density crammed ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... now fell full on her face. Had she deliberately challenged me to look into her secret mind if I could? Anything like the stark insensibility of that young girl to every refinement of feeling, to every becoming doubt of herself, to every customary timidity of her age and sex in the presence of a man who had not disguised his unfavorable opinion ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... to be satisfied about concerning him. The one is, what is he aiming at? and the other, how does he aim at it? In regard to the means, the men of the world bear the bell, and carry away the supremacy. Let in the thought of the end, and things change. Two questions reduce all the world's wisdom to stark, staring insanity. The first question is, 'What are you doing it for?' And the second question is, 'And suppose you get it, what then?' Nothing that cannot pass the barrier of these two questions satisfactorily is other than madness, if taken to be the aim of a man's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... gave two or three of the sentimental songs of the day, with her usual ability; and that popular song, "The Sea," was sung in fine taste by a chorus singer of Drury Lane. Richard's soliloquy was ranted in stark staring style by a young vagabond who spouted from tavern to tavern for a living. An Italian air was screamed and quivered by an elderly female, who once strutted upon the stage, but who now was half bent with care, want, and blue ruin (gin). It was considered ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown |
